On Saturday, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli attended the Powhatan Taxpayers’ Alliance Tea Party rally to address his beloved base.  Think Progress has the details of his anti-science pandering:

Cuccinelli reportedly greeted the crowd by saying that it was “great to be with so many people who appreciate the Constitution” and then talked about his challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. In particular, the crowd loved when he made fun of the EPA and joked that they could hold their breath for a few seconds and make the EPA “happy”:

“The Attorney General’s office is a very reactive office. We wouldn’t be suing the EPA if the EPA did not abandon all semblance of science and law to put out its endangerment finding on the CO2. Now, let’s make them all happy just for a moment and everybody just hold your breath,” Cuccinelli waited several seconds before saying “There you go, just a short period of time with no CO2. Now the trees are going protest but at least the EPA will be happy”.

Cuccinelli is a full-on global warming disinfomer, saying that climate change is “unverifiable and doctored” science. However, environmental and energy groups in Virginia are increasingly pushing back on Cuccinelli’s attempts to dismantle regulations.

Related posts:

• Refuting state AG’s anti-science petition, Virginia climate scientists see “great risk” from greenhouse gases
• Cuccinelli’s climate denial lawsuits could junk auto industry’s recovery

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Source: RTT – The first round of U.N. climate talks after the Copenhagen conference ended in the German city of Bonn due to differences between developing and developed countries on how to deal with the outcome of the Copenhagen conference.
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It was the hottest March in both satellite records (UAH and RSS), and tied for the hottest March on record in the NASA dataset.  It was the hottest (or tied for hottest) January through March in all three records.

The record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It now appears to be over. It’s just hard to stop the march of anthropogenic global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is.

NASA’s prediction from last month is standing up:  “It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010.″ Actually, NASA made that prediction back in January 2009:

Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”

Of course, there never was any global cooling — see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” Indeed, the overwhelming  majority of the warming went right where scientists had predicted — into the oceans (see “How we know global warming is happening”):

Figure: “Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly] from 1950 (Murphy et al. 2009). Ocean data taken from Domingues et al 2008.”

NASA’s draft paper reported:  “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.”

NOAA points out that both satellite data sets show about the same amount of warming as the land-based record, “which increased at a rate near 0.16°C/decade (0.29°F/decade) during the same 30-year period” — once you remove the expected stratospheric cooling from the satellite records (see NOAA discussion here).

After the endless disinformation-based global cooling stories of the past few years, it’s time for the media to start do some serious fact-based global warming stories.

The top figure is from Roy Spencer’s blog.

Related Posts:

• The BBC asks “What happened to global warming?” during the hottest decade in recorded history!
• NYT’s Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!)
• Weather Channel asks, “July in April?”

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New information from the U.S. Geological Survey on glacier retreat and a new report, Glacier National Park in Peril, demonstrates the impact climate change is having on Glacier National Park and the prospects for permanently altering the landscape.

read more

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The death toll from Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion last week has reached a total of 29 miners, the worst coal disaster in 40 years.  The reckless CEO behind the disaster — Don Blankenship — cares more about his anti-science crusade than he does about the safety of its employees, as Brad Johnson explains in this repost.

The death toll from Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion last week has reached a total of 29 miners, the worst coal disaster in 40 years. When the disaster occurred, Massey was contesting millions of dollars in major safety violations levied against the mine. At his Labor Day anti-union rally last year, Massey CEO Don Blankenship attacked the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), claiming it “seeks power over coal miners.” He mocked both “Washington politicians” and local elected officials who attempt to ensure miner safety, calling their efforts “as silly as global warming”:

We also endure a Mine Safety and Health Administration that seeks power over coal miners versus improving their safety and their health. As someone who has overseen the mining of more coal than anyone else in the history of central Appalachia, I know that the safety and health of coal miners is my most important job. I don’t need Washington politicians to tell me that, and neither do you. But I also know — I also know Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety. The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming.

Don Blankenship — who uses his position on the boards of the National Mining Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to promote his conspiracy theories about global warming — said he spent one million dollars to put together the “Friends of America” right-wing rally and rock concert in Holden, WV on September 7, 2009, which starred Ted Nugent, Hank Williams, Jr., and Fox News host Sean Hannity. In 2009, Blankenship also complained that “politicians get emotional” about disasters and establish “nonsensical” safety rules.

Related Posts:

• Deadly Record: Massey’s Montcoal mine cited for 3,000 violations, over $2.2 million in fines
• FLASHBACK: Don Blankenship warned West Virginia that he believes in “survival of the fittest”
• Don Blankenship’s record of profits over safety: “Coal pays the bills”

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Source: AP – Climate negotiators renewed their skirmishes this weekend at their first conference since the acrimonious summit in Copenhagen, split over how to continue efforts to reach an all-encompassing agreement to control greenhouse gases and help poor countries deal with global warming.
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I will be testifying in front of Congress this week.  And my book, Straight Up, is coming out the following week (click here to buy it).

That means I’ll be doing a lot of media and trying to hone a simple, effective message for a far broader audience than Climate Progress readers.  I have my own favorite phrases but I’d like to hear from you what you think works both in terms of sound-bites and overall framing.

Note:  I’m not trying to persuade the unpersuadable.  And the energy message is, I think pretty well understood (see “Messaging 101: ‘Green’ jobs are out, ‘clean energy’ jobs are in“).

You might take a look at this new messaging report, Climate Communications and Behavior Change:  A Guide for Practitioners just out from The Climate Leadership Initiative.   I don’t agree with everything in it, but it is pretty good, much better than those efforts to try to get people to stop talking about global warming (see EcoAmerica’s phrase ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’ isn’t going to replace ‘global warming’ — and that’s a good thing.)

We’ve already had a big CP discussion about what is the best phrase to use, given the flaws in both “global warming” and “climate change” (see Is “Global Weirding” here?).  This report floats:

1. “Rapid climate shift”
2. “Climate disruption”
3. “Climate shock”
4. “Climate breakdown”
5. “Climate failure”

Let’s drop the last two, but #1 and #3 have merit.  I’ll probably stick with using many different phrases, including GW and CC.  The report does have some good suggestions for how to phrase basic talking points:

Carbon dioxide and other pollutants collect in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun’s heat and causing the planet to warm up.

What are you thoughts for sound-bites and framing?

Related Posts:

• The rhetoric gap: Can Obama give ‘em Hell (and High Water) before it’s too late?

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Tom Toles cartoon today is about the other “Safety Warnings” we are ignoring about coal:

Unrestricted burning of fossil fuels just isn’t good for anyone’s safety (see “NRC: Burning fossil fuels costs the U.S. $120 billion a year — not counting mercury or climate impacts!“)

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called Palin a conservative leader on energy issues. She has also emerged as a conservative thought leader on climate science.

Yesterday, at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SLRC) 2010 — “the most prominent Republican event outside of the Republican National Convention,” Palin launched into another anti-science diatribe.  Here’s the video (via TP):

PALIN: We should create a competitive climate for investment in renewables and alternatives … none of this snake oil science stuff that is based on this global warming, Gore-gate stuff that came down where there was revelation that these scientists, some of these scientists were playing some political games. I sued the Feds over this, I sued the Feds over this as Governor for some bogus listing on the ESA, just about got run out of town, of course, by the environmentalists. But now we feel a little bit vindicated because we’re realizing through Gore-gate that there was some snake oil science involved in the data collection there.… We invented the Internet, unless that was just another Gore-gate thing too.

Palin is so practiced at repeating falsehoods — even in her supposed area of expertise (energy) — that during last year’s presidential campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.”  Her remarks here contain multiple whoppers.

Of course, Palin and her conservative allies have never supported creating a competitive climate for investment in renewable alternatives.  Indeed, they have bitterly opposed it:

• GOP proposes to cut solar technology funding and the clean energy jobs it would bring
• Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan
• The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma

If you listened to her speech is all about how American ingenuity will solve our energy problems — “We put a man on the moon” — but of course we put a man on the moon, and we invented the Internet using science, something Sarah Palin stands firmly against.

Palin has been incoherently attacking climate science by pushing “The Scandal Formerly Known As Climategate” for many, many months — abetted by a media that values sensationalism over substance (see WashPost goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months — on climate science and the hacked emails!).

But they provide no evidence whatsoever to undercut the ever-strengthening scientific evidence that humans are changing the climate dramatically and face catastrophic impacts if we listen to the do-nothing crowd now led by Sarah Palin:

• House of Commons exonerates Phil Jones:  Based on their inquiry and evidence, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason … to challenge the scientific consensus … that ‘global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity’.”

The “bogus listing on the ESA” is a bit jargony for the normally down-home ex-Gov, but then I suspect she didn’t want to actually explain to the audience in any detail that she sued the Bush administration (!) for listing the polar bear as an endangered species because of the threat warming poses to its primary habitat, the Arctic ice.  Yes, even the Bush’s uber- Conservative Interior Secretary Dirk Kepthorne had to admit the basic case (see Bye-polar Kempthorne: Polar bear IS endangered):

• The polar bears need sea ice for feeding.
• The sea ice is being destroyed by human-caused emissions, much faster than the models had predicted (see Study: “It is clear … that the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice”:  Physicist: “If temperatures change just a few tenths of a degree then this oh-so-thin ice cap is doomed”).
• Thus, the polar bear is endangered.

This is a very widely held scientific view:

“The survival of polar bears as a species is difficult to envisage under conditions of zero summer sea-ice cover,” concludes the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, by leading scientists from the eight Arctic nations, including the United States. Another 20 study, by Canadian scientists, agreed:

[G]iven the rapid pace of ecological change in the Arctic, the long generation time, and the highly specialised nature of polar bears, it is unlikely that polar bears will survive as a species if the sea ice disappears completely.

Fox put Palin on the wrong show.  They shouldn’t have put her on FoxNews, but in their scifi thriller “Fringe” (which, off topically, has gotten a bit better recently but, frankly, lacks the kind of anti-science villain that Palin could portray without actually acting).

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Source: Le Monde – Comment recoller les morceaux quand on a tout cassé ? C’est la question que se posent les 1 700 diplomates réunis à Bonn depuis vendredi 9 avril, jusqu’à dimanche 11, pour reprendre les négociations sur le climat.
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