Articles by Joseph Romm

Johnson made a decision that should have belonged to Congress

Last week, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson published the official explanation of his decision to deny a waiver of preemption for California's program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles. Robert Sussman, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has a very good discussion of the misguided reasoning Johnson uses. The bottom line:

The role of state programs under a comprehensive climate change framework may be a legitimate subject for debate by Congress as it writes legislation. But Johnson's job wasn't to make policy judgments that belong to Congress. It was to apply the law. He failed in that responsibility. Although his decision will probably be undone, it will regrettably divert precious time and energy from the urgent task of slowing global warming.

Bush’s keynote at WIREC surpasses misinformation

Scholars have been debating that question for ages, along with "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, does it make a sound?" and "Why don't we see any baby squirrels?" and "What the heck is happening on ABC's Lost?"

(BTW, if anyone actually knows what the heck is happening on Lost, how Sayid ends up being Ben's hitman (!), let me know -- I still believe the "island is purgatory" theory -- it certainly is for viewers -- even though it has been debunked by the show's creator. As if! I guess that makes me a Lost denier ... but I digress.)

I was inspired to re-examine this age-old question after the recent remarks of the Disinformer-in-Chief in his keynote address at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference, a ministerial-level conference hosted by the U.S. government. He said:

Now, look, I understand stereotypes are hard to defeat. People get an image planted in their head, and sometimes it causes them not to listen to the facts. But America is in the lead when it comes to energy independence; we're in the lead when it comes to new technologies; we're in the lead when it comes to global climate change -- and we'll stay that way. [Applause.]

Side note: The "Is it still disinformation if the speaker gets applause?" question was actually settled by Aristotle himself in his little-known book The Duh of Rhetoric.

Manhattan Declaration disses IPCC, Gore, any attempts to reduce CO2

Okay, so at the recent Heartless Heartland skeptic/denier/disinformer/climate-destroyer conference (I promise to propose a better term this week!), one of the few attendees who was a non-non-believer in science emailed me the following:

Marc Morano, Sen. Inhofe's press secretary, just cited your post on the dangers of consensus as an example of how deniers are forcing climate action proponents to retreat. "We're making them afraid of using the term 'consensus'!"

Now, that is humor! After all, my article is titled "The cold truth about climate change: Deniers say there's no consensus about global warming. Well, there's not. There's well-tested science and real-world observations [that are much more worrisome]," and it explains that:

1. "Consensus" is far too weak a word to describe the collective scientific understanding of the dangers of human-caused global warming.
2. The reality of climate change is almost certainly going to be much worse than the "consensus" as that term is normally used (to describe the IPCC reports).
3. The deniers are peddling pseudoscience.

Bush’s refusal to consider clean technologies could be repeated by McCain

So, who said:

With $55 oil we don't need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives.

Yes, that would be our president, three years ago. And yet with oil at nearly twice that price, Bush still refuses to cut subsidies and shift that money to clean technologies. And he still claims that the solution to our energy and climate problems is "technology, technology, technology, blah, blah." But, as we've seen, that is all just rhetoric or sleight of hand.

Daniel J. Weiss, Director of Energy Strategy at the Center for American Progress, has an article on the urgent need for this switch in priorities: "Unbearable cost of oil: Record prices require Senate action." As Weiss points out, this will be one more chance for McCain to do the right thing: