Probably nobody.  Probably, it was just an accident...

My 18-year old son had an unusually serious look on his face when he got home from work last night. "What's wrong?" I asked. "I just got a text message from Mike" he said. "Do you remember, Bobby Chandler, the big guy who played Syria in the United Nations simulation we did this year?" Indeed, I did.  The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where I am receiving treatment, had not yet given my wife and I permission to go home when the High School held the simulation, so I had watched the two-day performance via choppy, streaming video in a tiny window on my laptop. My son had played Israel in the simulation and he and Bobby had had some rousing exchanges.

"Yeah, I remember him", I said.

"Well, Mike says, he was killed today fighting a fire in California."

Given the speed with which we are approaching global warming doomsday, Al Gores recommendations make eminent sense.  The problem seems to be entrenched vested interests including the politicians feeding of the non-renewable energy sector trough.  The discovery of large new reserves of oil compounds the problem.

When members of Energize America panel went on stage with Gov. Bill Richardson at Las Vegas two years ago, we brought with us an ambitious twenty point plan to revise America's energy policy. Swinging for the fences, we called for policies that would create two million new "green collar" jobs and increase conservation. We also called for moves as radical as:

• 25% of Electrical Production from Renewables
• Reduce Greenhouse Gases by 50%
• Increase average fuel economy to 33mpg

And all of this was supposed to happen by the astonishing date of 2020.  

It seemed like a solid, even aggressive, plan at the time. It certainly asked for more to be done than most other proposals on the table. In particular, that 25% of electrical production from renewables within fourteen years seemed like a lofty goal.

That was then.  With the recent challenge set out by Vice President Gore, many things about that 2006 plan suddenly seem timid.  Gore's proposal would have us power 100% of electrical grid from carbon neutral sources by 2018.  Many voices have already been raised in support of Gore's plan, but predictably the defenders of the status quo are legion. It's funny how some of the same voices who are quick to point to the transition from whale oil to petroleum as a sign that technology will always be there to save us, are now screaming "not yet!"

Let's get this straight from the start.  There's no question that Gore's plan is possible.

But the biggest advance of Gore's plan might be more psychological than physical.  By setting such a lofty and laudable target, Gore draws both the screams of the naysayers and the minds of the general public in a way that a more timid plan would never achieve.  The result is exactly what the first paragraphs of this post already show -- to make plans that previously seemed at the cutting edge, look like the dull side of the knife.  In one speech, Al Gore has pushed the Overton Window of energy policy to the wall.  Everything that's proposed now will be measured not against half-measures, but against that 100% goalpost at the end of the field.

That change is important, and it's made even more important because the GOP, after decades of giving tax breaks to oil companies "for exploration" are determined to blame Democrats for high gas prices. You know, because oil companies somehow couldn't do any exploration.

For Energize America, the combination means that we can (gleefully, joyfully) throw away some of those goals set in 2006. In their place we need steps that recognize both the new space that Gore's plan provides, and the constraints that still need to be shifted. Some new proposals were already presented at Netroots Nation for the rest we're going to need the kind of passion and involvement from our fellow Kossacks that created Energize America in the first place.  

For candidates this fall, there is no way they can be less than fully engaged in this fight. 2008 is going to be a campaign that focuses on the economy, but in 2008 the economy is all about energy.

Cross-posted on THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

Today it was revealed that EPA administrator Stephen Johnson told Bush last December that there is "compelling and robust" evidence that our recent temperature increases are caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions which endanger the American people.  Bush did not open the email with this dire warning contained in a 38-page document because the US Supreme Court ruled that if the EPA finds that greenhouse gases endanger the public, then the government must regulate them.

Undaunted by Bush's cover-up, last week, the EPA issued a refreshingly honest, detailed 283-page report which details how global warming endangers Americans.

Two days ago, the EPA Inspector General issued another report that Bush's voluntary programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industries is a flop.

The following are conceptual elements being submitted to the 2008 Democratic Platform through Barack Obama's "Listening to America" web utility, and to the 2008 Republican Platform via the RNC's Online Platform input system.  Neither party has a monopoly on new ideas; in fact, recently, at the party level, they both seem almost completely devoid of them.  Let us hope that Senators Obama and McCain, as both somewhat 'unconventional' candidates, can change that, in the final analysis.

While it is unlikely for the following to work its way through the various levels of active screening (or lack thereof) in either party to actually reach any of the policy wonks or K-Street hacks who will handcraft the two platforms, the formulation is a useful exercise nontheless.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive prescription to cure the nations ills, merely some supplemental thinking to address some of the most compelling priorities that are recognized across the political spectrum.  (more...)

Sure, the leaders of he National Rifle Association (NRA) are going to spend $40 million dollars of their members’ money in a campaign against Senator Barack Obama.  But, we may have reached a tipping point on gun policy and gun politics.  Because, according to CQ Politics, even the NRA’s own members aren’t buying the anti-Obama spin:

The National Rifle Association (NRA), for example, has struggled to convince members that McCain is the candidate most supportive of gun rights. After the NRA sent out an e-mail last month attacking Obama, the group was surprised by the backlash it received. "Amazingly, some people still don't believe Obama is radically anti-gun," a follow-up message sent the next week said. "Some have gone so far as to claim that NRA was actually misrepresenting Obama's anti-gun positions."

It is time for a change in the gun debate.  

There is a new, highly potent global greenhouse gas, known as Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF3).

NF3 is said to be 17,000 times stronger than CO2 per molecule in terms of global warming, and lasts approximately 550 years, according to Michael J. Prather and Juno Hsu of the Earth System Science Department, at the University of California, Irvine.

NF3 is increasing in industrial use, and is not covered by the Kyoto protocol.

More details to follow.

Wetlands, understood to be an essential ecosystem in promoting biodiversity and flood control, is also another key element in slowing climate change - as wetland destruction potentially accelerates global warming.  

As reported in Science Daily, leading scientists are now meeting in Brazil at the 8th International Wetlands Conference, discussing actions to better understand, protect and manage this key global resource.

How big a deal are the wetlands?

Covering just 6% of Earth's land surface, wetlands (including marshes, peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river floodplains) store 10-20% of its terrestrial carbon. Wetlands slow the decay of organic material trapped and locked away over the ages in low oxygen conditions.

WOW.
What a bad day for the drill, drill, drill crowd.

COLLAPSE #1 FOR THE REPUBLICAN DRILL, DRILL, DRILL PLAN

The party of John McCain and Exxon released the perfect status-quo, oil-company-designed Energy Plan today.

While despoiling the steps of the Capitol Republicans revealed their laughable Big Oil Giveaway today.
AND THE REPUBLICANS WERE MET WITH A LARGE COUNTER - PROTEST.

UPDATE: NEW HEADLINES

Embarassing turnout for Republicans at House GOP drilling event

Protesters Overrun GOP Event

The Washington Post has reported that the Environmental Protection Agency has made an announcement that should surprise no one who has lived through the last seven and a half years of the Bush Administration: a human life in the United States is now worth less than it used to be.

Last week, it was revealed that an Environmental Protection Agency office had lowered its official estimate of life's value, from about $8.04 million to about $7.22 million. That decision has put a spotlight on the concept of the "Value of a Statistical Life," in which the Washington bureaucracy takes on a question usually left to preachers and poets.

This value is routinely calculated by several agencies, each putting its own dollar figure on the worth of life --not any particular person's life, just that of a generic American. The figure is then used to judge whether potentially lifesaving policy measures are really worth the cost. [My emphasis]

It was just a few years ago the very idea that the Arctic was showing signs of increased summer melts was hooted down as alarmist. The threat to native species and native cultures presented by the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment was laughed off as just another crazy, radical, environmentalist scheme to mess with the economy. Except for a few wigged-out pockets of denial amplified by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, most of the laughing has ceased. Not, of course, that the Cheney-Bush administration has retreated from its censorship of science, as noted here by smintheus, to provide one example. In that instance, the censorship came about for the purpose of getting some new Arctic oil leases into the ... uh ... pipeline without pesky scientific concerns being allowed to introduce obstacles into the discussion.

Discussion of the situation is made more difficult because the melting is not a steady downward plunge. This year, for instance, as of a week ago, Arctic sea ice extent clocked in at 3.44 million square miles. This was well below the 1979-2000 average of 3.83 million square miles. But it was 0.41 million square miles above the value for July 16 last year.

So, you can expect to hear any day now from the usual suspects that the wider extent of ice this year proves the Arctic may not be heading for ice-free summers in the next couple of decades. This claim, of course, will ignored data showing that, while first-year ice is thicker than was predicted this summer, multi-year ice is much thinner than seen in 2006 and 2007. In other words, the long-term trend and consequences are not in doubt, whatever spikes may occur year-to-year.

Meanwhile, nationalists and entrepreneurs seem to have no doubts about the melting. There continues to be a laying of claims to the Arctic seabed, which began last year when famed explorer Artur Chilingarov led a Russian North Pole expedition and planted a Russian flag 13,390 feet below the surface, and remarked: "The Arctic is Russian. We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian landmass"

Paul Coring at the Globe and Mail wrote Tuesday:

"We were there first and we can claim the entire Arctic, but if our neighbours like Canada want some part of it, then maybe we can negotiate with them," says Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant Russian ultranationalist, who happily hands out pictures of a Russian flag sitting on the seabed at the North Pole. ...

Supposedly cooler heads prevailed in Greenland this spring at a meeting of the five circumpolar countries: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States. They agreed "to the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims" in a joint communiqué called the Ilulissat Declaration.

But the race to claim the top of the world and, more importantly, reap the vast bonanza of oil and gas believed to lie beneath the Arctic seabed is only just getting under way. ...

No surprise, then, that Russia is conducting naval exercises in the Arctic. Canada had soldiers stamping about in the North this spring, and some analysts fear power projection, not talks at the UN, will decide who controls the Arctic.

Under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries can extend their zones beyond 200 nautical miles (about 370 kilometres) from their coasts if they can prove the outer edge of the continental shelf extends beyond that distance. Hence, the contentious Russian claim to the Lomonosov Ridge.

The prize may be huge. One study estimates 400 billion barrels of oil lie beneath the Arctic seabed, beyond the existing 200-nautical-mile economic zones where countries can regulate and control drilling. That's a little less than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia and Iran combined.

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.

Today's Congress Party victory on the No-Confidence motion in New Dehli got scant coverage in U.S. media, reported more in the business press for its likely trade benefits to the American nuclear industry than for its profound social implications and probable beneficial impact with respect to Global Warming. The Indian decision to greatly expand its use of Carbon-free sources to meet its rapidly growing energy demand is the single greatest victory to date on Climate Change.

Running neck and neck for that title, however, is the epiphany of veteran oilman T. Boone Pickens, now an evangelist for a greatly expanded U.S. Wind Power sector, who recently dug into his very deep pockets to risk $4 Billion of his own cash on the world's largest wind energy project. His plan to convert 20% of American electric generating capacity to Renewable Energy represents greater progress on Climate Change and Energy Independence than all of the policies of the last eight administrations - of both parties - put together.

These are cause for Hope... (more...)

...Gore seems clearly to be trying to deceive, and the consequence of the success of his deception is likely to give him immense power over other people's lives.  Syndicated Columnist Tibor Machan  

...two things about this proposal merit attention. It points a country that uses too much energy down the right path. And Gore is showing that being environmentally responsible is economically sensible. WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne

The polar-opposite quotes above are examples of what was actually a very meager editorial response in American newspapers to Al Gore's recent "Challenge to America" speech. As I listened to the speech, (full video and text here) I wondered  how much attention Gore's message would get in the press and what newspapers around the country would say about it, so I decided to do some research. This diary is about what I learned.

Saturday at Netroots Nation Al Gore challenged the netroots just as he challenged America to become carbon-free in ten years. That means 100 percent of our power, if we succeed, will come from renewable energy sources.

You can watch Al Gore issue this challenge:

This is the second diary in my "I lost my virginity at NN" series. First of all - git yer minds outta that gutter. It's not what you think. I had several "firsts" at NN that felt like losses of virginity.

In this case, it was my first time talking to a VP, first time stumping a politician AND getting an honest answer, and the first time making national news. Wow! Below you'll find an open letter I wrote to Al Gore, which is posted on http://www.organicconsumers.org too. (If you haven't checked out that site, I recommend it)

As many of you saw, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom gave a green speech introduction for Van Jones on Sunday at Netroots Nation. But immediately after his green speech, a local blogger asked a very important question:

I just asked Newsom if he would support the Clean Energy Act.  At first, he said yes -- absolutely.  Then he said, "oh are you talking about the one about PG&E?"  I said yes.  He said, "oh no it's horrible."  I asked him to elaborate, but he would not.  I then asked, "is that because your consultant [Eric Jaye] is working for PG&E?"  Newsom denied it, but really.  It was kinda pathetic.

Indeed. As we all know, Al Gore thinks the entire country needs to go 100% clean electrically by 2019 and Mayor Newsom won't try for his city to do the same by 2040?

If you've ever lived in finitude and really who hasn't, then you know as I write this millions of stars and thousands of planets are ceasing to exist. So what's the rumpus? There are way too many stars as it is. Have you ever been to Death Valley at night, looked up and been pissed off with feelings of insignificance due to the vastness and googlesque, interstellar traffic jamming up the cosmos? I sure have and the only foreseeable cure was the lone bar in Stovepipe Wells getting shit faced at the prospect of living in abject obscurity in the universe as an under achieving speck of dubiosity. Couple that with Al Gore's 10 year clarion call to save Mankind and you have a cocktail that makes Jonestown' look like the Playboy Mansion.

Here's our weekly picture; it's facing the same direction as last week.  Yesterday morning was sunny, but this morning features thick fog and strong winds, as you can see from the ripples in the melt pond near the camera.

When it's foggy with a temperature above freezing, there is usually a significant loss of snow and ice. Under such conditions, atmospheric moisture condenses and releases heat onto anything frozen, because of the phase change from vapor to liquid water, which of course will, at least in part, melt the snow and ice. The temperature reading reported at the camera is 1.5°C, or 35°F.

Down below is a more general discussion of the condition of the sea ice.