Articles by Joseph Romm

Global warming ‘insurmountable’ without Heroes!

So the fall season has begun and, as expected, shows from Boston Legal to Moonlight are going green -- even William Shatner got into the act. I'd be very interested in hearing from readers if any of their favorite shows had a green element.

In the opening voiceover of the second season opener, genetics professor Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) says that humanity's problems, including global warming, are "insurmountable" without our Heroes. Shades of The 4400.

I'm glad the writers mentioned global warming. But the way they did leaves the impression that we can't solve the problem without superhuman abilities. And people can't fly or teleport or heal themselves from any injury -- can they?

Bush climate speech follows Luntz playbook

Bush has given us a new drinking game: Down a shot whenever the President uses the word "technology" in a climate speech. You'd get 19 shots for yesterday's 21 minute speech!

As predicted, Bush closely follows the Frank Luntz playbook on how to seem like you care about the climate when you don't. Bush stated the basic do-nothing message well:

Our investments in research and technology are bringing the world closer to a remarkable breakthrough -- an age of clean energy where we can power our growing economies and improve the lives of our people and be responsible stewards of the earth the Almighty trusted to our care.

Translation: "If we had those technologies today, then maybe we could take genuine action now. But, darn it, people, we don't. We can't grow the economy and be responsible stewards of the earth quite yet. We are close, though, so be patient already and stop with all those calls for mandatory regulation. Sheesh!"

Foreign media take a more discerning look at Bush’s climate meetings this week

Once again, the foreign media is not fooled by Bush's PR stunt, while the U.S. media buys the White House line. The U.K.'s The Independent labeled this a "Greenwashing Climate Summit" in its headline, and opened their story with:

For the first time in 16 years, a major environmental conference opens in Washington, hosted by the Bush administration. But no concrete results are expected, and that -- say European participants -- is the point of this high-level meeting.

Far from representing a Damascene conversion on climate change by President George Bush, the two-day gathering of the world's biggest polluting nations is aimed at undermining the UN's efforts to tackle global warming, say European sources. "The conference was called at very short notice," said one participant. "It's a cynical exercise in destabilising the UN process."

So how does the AP puff piece on the summit begin?

Hansen erroneously accused of predicting an ice age

After I heard a claim that our nation's top climate scientist "once warned of Ice Age" -- I (and no doubt many others) emailed Hansen and said he should reply to the rapidly morphing and spreading myth. He has here (PDF).

I will reprint what he has to say below (you can also go to that link for an interesting commentary, "Please talk to your grandfather"):