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A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow

When the science behind Gore's CO2 "hockey stick" slaps you down, there's nothing like indulging in old-fashioned denialism.

What is to be done when the world's leading experts in a field come together in the largest, most extensively peer-reviewed inquiry in the history of science and arrive at a conclusion that is diametrically opposed to your own long-held worldview? Most of us would reevaluate our ideas so they actually mesh with reality. That's called learning.

But if you are the staunchly "free market," anti-regulation think tank called the Heartland Institute and the conclusion is that humanity must cooperate to get the world out of a worsening climate crisis ... well, then what you do is simply manufacture a conclusion that is more to your liking.

Make no mistake, this is what the Heartland Institute's "International Conference on Climate Change" is all about. Set to begin Sunday in New York, the gathering's guest list includes the standard roster of "scientist-denialists" -- a large group of "experts" who have never published a single peer-reviewed study in their lives, along with a handful of fringe researchers who do (though rarely) publish in the field of climate science. The conference tagline is: "Global Warming: was it ever really a crisis?" and the conclusion is predetermined. "Was it ever a crisis?" ... as if it isn't right now.

By conception, the Heartland gathering seeks to establish itself as an authoritative gathering of genuine experts in climate science. The claim the Heartland Institute makes is pretty simple: "more than 70 of the world's elite scientists specializing in climate issues" will be there.

So, Heartland says to the unsuspecting, the experts are all coming to this event, and they all say there is nothing to worry about. That actually makes the whole charade pretty easy to unmask.

We don't have to examine every particular scientific or pseudo-scientific argument that will be advanced during the conference (that's been done repeatedly), because the whole thrust of this conference is about who is attending, not what they are saying.

Gore declines to debate Lomborg

I forgot to mention: the one "newsworthy" event at today's conference was the fact that Al Gore was directly confronted by Bjorn Lomborg and refused to debate him.

Coal River Mountain sit-in campaign blooms

Cherry Pond Mountain, Coal River Mountain, West Virginia

Photo: Nicole Motson.

As the U.S. Supreme Court continues to hear the Brent Benjamin-Don Blankenship case on the compromise of judicial neutrality from special interest lobbies -- read: Massey Energy's Big Coal grip on West Virginia courts -- five more arrests took place today in a growing campaign to stop mountaintop removal in the Coal River Valley.

If the local and nationwide momentum is any indication of a promised spring and summer campaign of civil disobedience, Coal River Mountain is destined for an extraordinary Appalachian Spring.

Earlier this week, a student campaign at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit-related school in California, won a successful victory in getting their university administration to agree to divest from their stock in Massey Energy.

Today's action took place at 1:30 p.m., at the Massey Energy Edwight mountaintop-removal site on Cherry Pond Mountain. Calling attention to the mine blasting taking place near the Shumate Dam, a mountain valley Class-C dam which holds 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge that sits a few football fields above the Marsh Fork Elementary School, five activists unfurled a banner -- "Stop Blasting, Save the Kids" -- and were cited for trespassing and peacefully escorted by the state police to jail at Pettus, West Virginia. They were released.

World Bank approves $1.3 billion for Brazilian eco-projects

WASHINGTON — The World Bank said Thursday it has approved $1.3 billion for environmental and climate projects in Brazil, focused on fighting deterioration of the Amazon rain forest and renewable […]

Sean Hannity: Worst person in the world

Two good eco-related entries:

More perspectives on tax/auction revenue allocation

This post makes a point that I already made last Monday, but it bears repeating -- this time in the context of cap-and-trade.

Chaz Teplin gave some approximate numbers for how much Obama's cap-and-trade plan would raise energy prices (based on a $14.30/MT carbon price):

Effect of the Obama carbon price

• Petroleum fuel: adds 15¢/gallon
• Electricity: adds 0.8¢/kWh (compare to 7-10¢/kWh residential rates)
• Natural gas: adds 8¢/therm (compare to 85¢/therm residential rates)

The conclusion: "... energy prices would increase by about 10 percent. It's a start, but a very slow one." But that's not the whole story.

On the greenness of Jimmy Fallon's set

Word is that Jimmy Fallon's new late-night set is green, with features including low-VOC paint and reclaimed seats from Radio City Music Hall.

Which is cool and all. Except wouldn't it have been greener to just ... use the old set? (That said, kudos to Build It Green! for salvaging Conan's remains.)

And P.S.: As Kate rightly points out, Jimmy's house band, The Roots, is oh-so-green -- seen most recently at last weekend's Power Shift conference.

Google CEO tells conference to get ambitious

Following Mulally (that's fun to say ... following Mulally following Mulally whee!) last night was Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. Good lord what a contrast!

Most of what Schmidt had to say was about Clean Energy 2030, Google's big renewable energy plan. I won't go over that again. Suffice to say it's great.

WSJ's Alan Murray started off by asking Schmidt what he would say to a shareholder who didn't approve of Schmidt's focus on renewable energy and do-goody environmental stuff. Said Schmidt:

Money we save on energy goes straight to the bottom line. Lower costs mean higher earnings. Green energy done right is more profitable than old energy. Is that a crisp enough answer for you?

Yes. (More on Schmidt's remarks on the WSJ energy blog.)

One of my favorite things about Schmidt is that he clearly understands, as so few people in the climate/energy discussion do, that one of the central barriers to renewables and efficiency is dumbass utility regulations. People tend to recoil from the subject -- so boring! so technical! -- but nonetheless, it's the elephant in the room.

And it prompted one of the more interesting exchanges in the audience Q&A.

First, Michael Morris, CEO of American Electric Power (a Southeastern utility), stood up and and showed that fossils can walk and talk. In so many words, he said building retrofits are a myth, renewables are far away, and decoupling (so utilities can make money from efficiency) is bogus. Specifically, "I'm not a decoupler. If my revenues go down, they go down." (Yes, I'm sure AEP and the utility regulators it's in bed with will stand by idly and watch its revenue go down.)

Then Peter Darbee, CEO of PG&E (a California utility) stood up and showed what it looks like to live in the 21st century. He said he's made tons of money off decoupling. He said PG&E's found it easier to reach their renewable targets than anyone thought. He said ambitious targets always sound "impossible" when they're first proposed and American innovation always hits them.

Schmidt and Darbee come out of the forward-looking, ambitious, innovative culture of California tech. They both seem frankly astonished at the lack of ambition, the fear, the smallness of thinking -- not only of some of the business folk, but of the media too. Eventually Schmidt burst out: "This is America! We can do this!"

I hope.

Economists rip off climatologists, get away with it

As if we didn't have enough problems with the atmosphere, now along come economists to rip off the rhetoric of climatology. Or so I argue in an op-ed in the Ventura County Star. Here's the "nut graph," as they say in journalism:

The more we discuss the economic crisis in terms of the physical world, the less we discuss the climate crisis itself, even though restoring balance in the atmosphere will be far more difficult than reviving the faltering economy. It's an alarming irony. As we worry about our melting savings and our vanishing jobs, we forget about melting icecaps and vanishing species.

If you like to double-check sources, check out a linked version of the op-ed.

Gore backs idea for a new .eco domain name

Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection are partnering with the group Dot Eco LLC to pursue a new top-level domain for environmental groups and initiatives, “.eco.” Rather than […]