Get Energy Smart! NOW!

The White House just held a ‘progressive media and bloggers teleconference’ with Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to discuss just released “New Era” budget. Now, this budget has many changes, new elements with money from a cap and trade program going, in part, to support new energy programs. There is much to talk about, in the coming weeks and months, in this budget.

This is part of the White House’s reach out to new media, such as the earlier bloggers call with Jared Bernstein from the Office of the Vice President.

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The New York Times Andy Revkin evidently was feeling a bit jealous of the attention that George Will and John Tierney were receiving for their deceptive disinformation when it comes to Global Warming issues. Other than that its a bit hard to explain his convoluted and, well, deceptive article in today’s New York Times on ‘hype’ on global warming, throwing Al Gore and into George Will into the same pot in a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ discussion. Nowhere, however, does Revkin deal with an absolute core point:

• When challenged/questioned, Gore listened and absorbed the comments. He withdrew the slide, stopping basing his argument on scientists who said he (if accidently) misrpresented their work.
• When challenged/questioned/providing evidence against what he writes, George Will (Tierney / Lomborg / Samuelson / etc ) simply ignores it and keeps saying the same falsehoods.

One is actively engaged with the science community, seeking to find paths to communicate scientific results to broader communities, and ready to listen to those people who he cites in his presentations.

The others actively misrepresent people’s statements, misquote, and show utter disdain for scientists and the scientific process.

But, for Andrew Revkin, they’re the same because … Well, this is unclear. Perhaps they’re the same for Andy because, for whatever reason, “Faux and Balanced” is more important than true and truthful.

Maybe he’s emphasizing “Faux and Balanced” on the rumors that Robert Murdoch might be seeking to acquire The New York Times?

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In a powerful speech, President Barack Obama laid out starkly America’s serious problems and, as strongly, provided a vision for the future and the paths to get there. “It all begins with energy …” Holding the unenviable position of following President Obama’s oratory, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal delivered the Republican response. Consider the demonstrated Republican incompetence over the past eight years and the nation’s dire straits, Jindal’s speech provided a stark contrast. As David Brooks put it,

to come up at this moment in history with a stale “government is the problem,” “we can’t trust the federal government” – it’s just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic right now. … that idea that we’re just gonna – that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that – In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say “government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,” it’s just a form of nihilism. It’s just not where the country is, it’s not where the future of the country is. … I think it’s insane, and I just think it’s a disaster for the party

Jindal argued against “big government” by pointing to Katrina, arguing for the power of the individual citizen and the citizen’s spirit vs the faceless evil and unfeeling bureaucrat. No discussion of how Republican ideology of bad governance created the conditions for the disaster and Republican governance ineptitude drove the situation far worse.

And, well, when it comes to energy and an energy future, Jindal offer little more than Sarah “Energy Expert” Palin.

This evening, President Obama clearly stated challenges and offered a vision for future triumph. In what was clearly meant as an introduction the nation and a testing of the waters for larger office, Bobby Jindal successfully reminded US of eight years of disaster.

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My fellow Americans, we have a President who gets it. Our problems, their solutions, our path forward:

It begins with energy.

President Barack Obama spoke to Congress, to the nation about our serious challenges, our serious problems, and his visions for how we move forward to something better. “It begins with energy …”

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Ideological conservatives hold The New York Times and The Washington Post to be beneath contempt, as poster children of their bizaare conceptions of media thease are supposed bastions of liberal bias. When it comes to climate change issues, however, The Washington Post (and, more seriously, Washington Post Writers’ Group) embrace of “fair and balanced” rather than “true and truthful” should give these reality denying ideologues a cause for glee. A particularly atrocious George Will piece, abusive of sources and any valid claim to legitimate factual discussion, has raised an outroar in the blogosphere that has now moved to major environmental organizations calling on The Washington Post to correct Will’s disinformation.

Amid all this, it seems reasonable to conclude that The New York Times editorial leadership has decided that not only The Washington Post should lay claim to “fair and balanced” when it comes to print journalism on the issues of climate change. While The Times is beefing up its enviromental (including climate change) and energy reporting, it has given a solid home to perhaps the worst “science” reporter / columnist directly working for any major traditional media outlet. With Tierney, it seems as if The Gray Lady is determined to give The Washington Post and George Will a run for their money in a competition as to the worst discussions of climate issues in a major traditional print outlet.

Tierney has been launching poorly sourced and deceptive attacks on the Obama Administration’s top scientists appointed to policy positions. In a continuation of this disinformation, latest monstrocity of appearing ‘reasonable’ while peddling disingenuous truthiness was published under the title “Findings”, as if it had some great degree of authoritative nature. This article attacks Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Science Advisor John Holdren, climate science and various solutions under the title “Politics in the Guise of Pure Science“. This article begins:

Why, since President Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” in Washington, do some things feel not quite right?

And, from there Tierney is off to the races with attacking Chu and Holdren as dishonest brokers, likely to engage in “stealth issue advocacy” rather than basing their recommendations and efforts on actual science. An example of Holdren’s abuse of science was his decision to join with others in a 11-page Scientific American “attack” on climate delayer Bjorn Lomborg’s serial truthiness and abuse of statistics.

Tierney bases his broadside in the seemingly reasonable voice of Roger Pielke, identified by Tierney with the following description:

Dr. Pielke, a professor in the environmental studies program at the University of Colorado, is the author of “The Honest Broker,” a book arguing that most scientists are fundamentally mistaken about their role in political debates. As a result, he says, they’re jeopardizing their credibility while impeding solutions to problems like global warming.

Honest Broker? Okay, to start with, Pielke is a regular in the global warming / skeptic community, and has been caught with “misconceived” (to be polite) analysis attacking Global Warming. Huh? Is it clear why Tierney’s piece is, without even going further, fundamentally flawed to the point of moving past simple embarassment for The Times?

While there are many good people working at The New York Times and The Washington Post. And, they can often have good (even great) reporting and editorial on energy, environmental and climate change issues. It is necessary, when seeing Tierney and Will published in their pages, to check the front page to be sure that one isn’t actually reading The New York Post and The Washington Times.

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There is plenty of reason to be frustrated with the Washington Post when it comes to its striving for “fair and balanced” when it comes to global warming, producing science-based editorials calling for action and having articles that discuss climate change in serious ways. Balancing this, to be fair to anti-science syndrome (ASS) sufferrers, is quoting global warming deniers amid the articles and turning oped space over to serial deceivers like Charles Krauthammer, Robert Samuelson, and George Will. Sadly, to top this off, the Washington Post is ready to defend untruthful work by the likes of Will.

Not all the Washington Post merits criticism in this regard and better work merits highlighting. Just today, the top-notch Capital Weather Gang published a story meriting attention (and concern): MIT Group Increases Global Warming Projections. The MIT study concludes that, without significant (“stringent”) reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, we might see far more significant climate change in the 21st century than previous assessments have suggested. From Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in Emissions (without Policy) and Climate Parameters,”

The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model’s first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.1°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study.

Six years later and their “BAU” (business as usual) scenarios is more than doubling the warming by the end of the century: some 9+ degress fahrenheit of warming.

By the way, yet again more data is proving that the models were wrong … in understating the implications of climate change and the risks we face us.

As Joe Romm puts it,

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change has joined the climate realists. The realists are the growing group of scientists who understand that the business as usual emissions path leads to unmitigated catastrophe

To place into context, the recommendation is to keep warming below 2 C (or 3.6 degrees F) to avoid catastrophic climate change. MIT is saying that that is impossible with just some change, we need a massive shift in course.

Sadly, being a realist means that we should be terrified at the world that we are creating for ourselves and our descendents … unless we undertake some significant change in our path forward.
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T. Boone Pickens has been spending $millions (actually, $10s of millions) to promote The Pickens’ Plan which, while captivating to many, is a fundamentally flawed concept that could help nail the coffin shut on America’s future rather than, as he promotes, set the stage for something better. There are worthwhile elements in The Plan and there is a basic value for having a prominent Republican oil man emphasizing that “this is one problem that we can drill our way out of”. Even with those values, Pickens is offering transitioning from one fossil fuel addiction (oil) to another (natural gas) when it comes to transport, without offering anything to cut America’s other fossil fuel addiction (to coal).

Sigh …

Sigh …

T Boone, however, could put his eloquence (and, he is eloquent), knowledge, and resources to work to real solutions. And, even real solutions that build on some of his thoughts when it comes to The Pickens Plan. To do so, T Boone would have to become truly innovative in his thinking, moving beyond a stove-piped concentration on CNG (concentrated natural gas) vehicles. Here is one example of such a potential next step.

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Natural Gas School Buses (PHENGSBs).

Plug-In Hybrid Electric School Buses simply make sense on multiple levels: reduce oil addiction, reduce health risks to America’s school children, and providing wide-spread mobile emergency generators. But perhaps adding “NG” makes sense to make this an even better solution for America’s school transport.

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As discussed in WashPost: Complicit in Disformation (or explicit collaboration)?, last Sunday’s George Will column was a disgraceful example of distorted discussion of climate change issues. This deceitful piece and the Washington Post’s seeming backing of it has created an uproar through the blogosphere that is seriously questioning what this sort of shoddy editorial management of opinion pages means for any Washington Post claim to journalistic integrity.

Now, this issue goes beyond this George F Will column to his serial stretching of fact to beyond the breaking point beyond truthiness. This issue goes beyond Will’s repeated will-ful deceit to the repeated Post publication of deception, often dishonest opinion pieces related to global warming and climate challenges. This is more than about Will’s deceit in Dark Green Doomsayers. Even so, it is worth returning to this specific deceitful piece to provide a simple summary of how it is deceitful with some quick references.

Here are just three of the explicit arenas of his deceit:

1. Claims that scientists (especially climatologists) were united in concerns over Global Cooling in 1970s. FALSE.
2. States that sea ice is same today as 1979. At best, misleading and disingenuous. And, his source disagrees with him.
3. States that there has been no global warming for a decade. At absolute best, misleading and disingenuous. And, his source disagrees with him.

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[NOTE: 5 March 09: For a more up-to-date bibliograpy, see: The Will Affair … struggling to keep up.]

The Washington Post editors are, in essence, going silent when it comes to George Will’s use of their pages for disinformation on global warming issues. And, from that silence, the Post’s Ombudsman emerged to embrace the Will-ful deceit. And, for whatever reason, unlike the myriad other times that Washington Post opinion pages have been handed over to truthiness from global warming deniers, skeptics, and delayers, this occasion is seeing a bit of a blogosphere wide expression of outrage.

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In a new twist on the papparazzi set, the Times of London hired a firm to do thermal imaging of prominent “green” leaders’ properties in the United Kingdom. And, the result, in most cases, seems to be that these people are not practicing what they preach. While commentators (and the newspaper) highlight this as hypocrisy, this also suggests the value of the door-to-door, street-by-street comprehensive approach of the Extreme Makeover: UK Sustainability Home Edition. Let’s face facts, there are many barriers to taking steps to make ones like energy smart and to improve the energy efficiency of everyday aspects of one’s life. The draft UK plan to do a systematic, ‘house-by-house, street-by-street’ approach to improving energy efficiency is something that even many self-branded “environmentalists” might benefit from undergoing.

Thermal images of the residences of 10 high-profile green campaigners found that their heat loss was either worse or no better than that found in the average family home.

Now, the 10 included key government leaders.

The audit .. found Hilary Benn, the environment minister, Ed Miliband, the climate change minister, and David Cameron, the Tory leader, had the most energy efficient of the 10 properties.

Note, it is Ed Milibrand who has the lead for concept of doing a comprehensive program for improving UK housing energy efficiency.

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