Dear Dems: you first.

AP:

ROME – The latest weapon in the U.N.’s fight against hunger, global warming and pollution might be flying by you right now.

Edible insects are being promoted as a low-fat, high-protein food for people, pets and livestock. According to the U.N., they come with appetizing side benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and livestock pollution, creating jobs in developing countries and feeding the millions of hungry people in the world.

But in all seriousness, if push comes to shove and the world needs to start eating bugs because of zombies, aliens or something even more remote like climate change that will destroy life as we know it on the planet, it’s great news that we can eat bugs if we have to. Exit question: do the alarmist climate models that predict we won’t have enough food to survive if we don’t do something to stop CO2 emissions take bug-eating into account?

I’m linking to the article in Mother Jones to add extra “oomph” that this isn’t a piece by one of us knuckle-dragging climate-deniers. But it does illustrate what us knuckle-draggers have been saying for years: you can’t trust the models.

Finally, Some Not-Terrible Climate News: Greenland Not Melting Any Faster

Back in 2006, scientists in Greenland made an alarming observation: Glaciers were crumbling into the ocean twice as fast. And not in little cocktail-sized cubes, either: Glaciologist Jason Box accurately predicted the spot where a hunk four times the size of Manhattan would later shear off into the sea.

At the same time, the inland top of the ice sheet was thawing at record levels; last summer, for the first time in 150 years, its entire surface was melting. By summer’s end, this water alone raised sea levels all over the world by a millimeter.

As Box told our Climate Desk Live audience in January, rising air and water temperatures—driven by greenhouse gas emissions—are to blame. And with more warming on the way, he made a grim prediction: melting from Greenland and the world’s other land-based glaciers could ultimately raise global sea levels by 69 feet, Box warns.

But don’t start building your flood-proof Ark quite yet: Advanced imaging released in August suggested the ice sheet is capable of quickly reversing its melting habit. And a study out today in Nature finds that the sped-up ice loss on the water’s edge, while still a problem, is unlikely to get much worse, even with a big rise in global temperatures. Taken together, these two studies suggest that Greenland’s ice melt problem isn’t as bad as experts like Box had predicted.

For the Nature study, Faezeh Nick, a researcher at Norway’s University Centre in Svalbard, led a team that took the closest-ever look at so-called “outlet glaciers,” the 200 or so outermost arms of the ice sheet that flow straight into the sea. Their findings suggest that the increase in melting rate is about to slow down, suggesting that in a medium warming scenario these glaciers will likely contribute just 19-30 millimeters to global sea levels by 2100. That’s much less than if the current acceleration of melting were to persist, but still a noteworthy share of the quarter- to half-meter rise projected by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Shocker: we don’t need to start planning for world-wide floods, but Planet Gore readers already knew that.

The rest here.

The Los Angeles Times:

The Tesla Model S high-end electric sedan has garnered a rare honor from Consumer Reports, with one significant caveat.

Add VPG to the list of government-funded failures:

A Michigan maker of vans for the disabled that received a $50 million Energy Department loan has quietly ceased operation and laid off its staff.

Vehicle Production Group, or VPG, stopped operations after finances dipped below the minimum required as a condition of the government loan, says former CEO John Walsh. Though about 100 staff were laid off and its offices shuttered, the company has not filed for bankruptcy reorganization.

VPG, of Allen Park, Mich., received its Energy Department loan under the same clean-energy program — now under fire by House Republicans — that originally committed $527 million to troubled plug-in hybrid carmaker Fisker Automotive and $535 million to solar start-up Solyndra, which has filed for bankruptcy reorganization. VPG was deemed eligible for the clean energy loan because some of its vans were to be fitted to run on compressed natural gas.

Bonus: It’s also a failure of the Pickens Plan to change the nation’s automobile fleet to compressed natural gas:

“. . .the company had raised $400 million in private capital from investors, including financier T. Boone Pickens, and built 2,500 MV-1 vans.”

And can we go for the hat-trick? Ties to an Obama fundraiser:

VPG’s DOE loan was controversial. In 2011, The Washington Post raised questions about a fundraiser for President Obama and the loan. It reported that VPG was part of the portfolio of companies under Washington, D.C.-based investment firm Perseus, whose vice chairman, James Johnson, was an Obama adviser and fundraiser. Perseus said at the time that Johnson played no role in procuring the loan for VPG. The Energy Department said at the time that the loan was based entirely on merit after two years of review.

So, what did the DOE think this company could do at the time? 

Oh, well. Just a little bit off judging the “merit after two years of review.”

The DOE approved loans of only $8.4 billion out of the $25 billion authorized, so overall losses will be minimized. And of the $8.4 billion loaned, $5.9 billion went to Ford while $1.4 billion went to Nissan — companies that can pay the loans back regardless of the success of their underlying venture. This is not, as Veronique de Rugy pointed out in her must-read analsysis of the ATVM program, as good news as it seems:

The worst part of this story, once again, is that most of the money guaranteed by the Department of Energy went to companies that should have borrowed money on their own. Instead, the government played venture capitalist with our money, causing systemic and unintended distortions to the market.

Yep.

Via the Washington Post:

As the centerpiece of Europe’s pledge to lead the global battle against climate change, the region’s market for carbon emissions effectively turned pollution into a commodity that could be traded like gold or oil. But the once-thriving pollution trade here has turned into a carbon bust.

Under the system, 31 nations slapped emission limits on more than 11,000 companies and issued carbon credits that could be traded by firms to meet their new pollution caps. More efficient ones could sell excess carbon credits, while less efficient ones were compelled to buy more. By August 2008, the price for carbon emission credits had soared above $40 per ton — high enough to become an added incentive for some companies to increase their use of cleaner fuels, upgrade equipment and take other steps to reduce carbon footprints.

That system, however, is in deep trouble. A drastic drop in industrial activity has sharply reduced the need for companies to buy emission rights, causing a gradual fall in the price of carbon allowances since the region slipped into a multi-year economic crisis in the latter half of 2008. In recent weeks, however, the price has appeared to have entirely collapsed — falling below $4 as bickering European nations failed to agree on measures to shore up the program.

The collapsing price of carbon in Europe is darkening the outlook for a greener future in a part of the world that was long the bright spot in the struggle against climate change. It is also presenting new challenges for those who once saw Europe’s program as the natural anchor for what would eventually be a linked network of cap-and-trade systems worldwide.

Carbon “started as the commodity of the future, but it has now deteriorated,” said Matthew Gray, a trader at Jefferies Bache in London and one of a diminishing breed of carbon dealers in Europe. “Its future is uncertain.”

The problems plaguing Europe’s cap-and-trade system underscore the uphill battle for international cooperation in the global-warming fight. After middling progress at various summits, officials from more than 190 countries have been charged with forging a global accord by 2015 aimed at cutting carbon emissions. But critics point to the inability of even the European Union — a largely progressive region bound by open borders and a shared bureaucracy — to come together on a fix for its cap-and-trade system as evidence of how difficult consensus building on climate change has become.

The rest here.

Via the Green River Star:

Southwest Wyoming might have the most lithium in the United States. The University of Wyoming’s Carbon Management Institute discovered the deposits as part of their CO2 storage research project for the Rock Springs Uplift, which is east of Rock Springs and north of Point of Rocks. According to UW News, the 25-mile area might have 228,000 tons of lithium which would handle all U.S. demand, and it’s possible there could be up to 18 million tons of lithium in the area. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, world production and reserves of lithium in 2011 was 34 million tons.

The demand for lithium worldwide has increased because it is used in so many electronics.  Lithium batteries are used in laptop computers and other portable electronics and in power tools. Car manufacturers are also starting to use lithium batteries more often for hybrid and electric vehicles.

“Given how valuable it is, it’s very exciting. It helps diversify our mining industries,” Wyoming Governor Matt Mead said.

He added he hoped the reserves turned out to be immense, and if it was, he said southwest Wyoming would know how to take advantage of it. Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce Director Dave Hanks said the finding was significant, but added there would be economic hurdles to developing it. He explained it was good knowing about it for future use. 

The rest here.

The Hill:

Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to recognize that climate change is hurting women more than men, and could even drive poor women to “transactional sex” for survival.

The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.

“[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health,” it says.

Two things: 

One, we should run this idea by Al “Second Chakra” Gore to see if he agrees with the science? And. . .

Two, with a recent survey declaring that 9 percent of Yale students have accepted money for sex, we need to ask the question, “Is it too late to stop global warming from turning women into prostitutes?” If so, simply cutting carbon emissions might not be enough to help these women cope with the horrors of a warming planet.

Details here.

And I can see why Team Obama is so thrilled with Mayor Foxx as he buys into the administration’s agenda of spending money on transportation projects without a clue on how to pay for them:

Charlotte faces a $3.3 billion funding gap to complete its transit corridor plan, and the price tag is likely to increase because of future delays to secure financing.

Those grim numbers were disclosed this week as part of a presentation to a transit funding work-study group formed at the suggestion of Mayor Anthony Foxx.

Jeffrey Parker, head of the infrastructure advisory group at Ernst & Young and a frequent adviser to the Charlotte Area Transit System, outlined the projections during the 30-member study group’s meeting at the Government Center. The figures exclude the Blue Line Extension, a 9.3-mile, $1.2 billion light-rail line scheduled to open in 2017. Construction is expected to begin in January for the line spanning uptown to UNC Charlotte.

Because their advocacy on the “90% issue” of background checks worked out so well? Via @BarackObama:

ABC News reports:

He’s a Hollywood actor, producer and director, but Ben Affleck will be living beneath his means in a big way.

The Oscar winner, 40, is joining Josh Groban, Debi Mazar, Sophia Bush and “The Avengers” star Tom Hiddleston and getting involved with the Live Below the Line campaign, which encourages people to live on $1.50 per day for five days, from April 29 to May 3.

“1.4 billion people live on less than $1.50/day,” Affleck tweeted. “I’m joining Live #BelowTheLine on behalf of @easterncongo. Will you?”

With all due respect, it’s pretty easy to live for five days on $1.50 a day when you live in the United States. As a matter of fact, if you live in New York City you can have the online-grocer Fresh Direct deliver a five-pound bag of rice right to your home for $6.19, well under the $7.50 Affleck has budgeted for his 5-day-stunt. Or, if you think you need more than a pound of rice per day to live, go with a friend to Walmart and pick up a 20 pound bag for about $12. That gives you and your socially-conscious pal 10 pounds each for only $6. That’s roughly a diet of 3200 calories per day, well above the recommended daily allowance. But if you go with the two-pounds-of-rice-a-day regimen, please plan some exercise so you don’t gain weight during your five-day sacrifice.

But is Ben Affleck sacrficing at all?

Let’s look at it step-by step:

First, Ben Affleck will drive to a grocery store and purchase his rice. At the store, his rice will be fresh and free of contaminants like insects, leaves and animal waste. Next he’ll cook his rice on a stove, powered by either natural gas or electricity and use clean water from his tap that won’t give him any diseases. Any leftover rice can be stored in Affleck’s refrigerator which will keep the uneaten portion from spoiling and will allow the Oscar winner to eat his $1.50 a day worth of food at his leisure. And if his kitchen gets too hot while cooking his rice, he can always turn up the air conditioning in his home to make his sacrifice more comfortable.

Hypocrisy, they name is Ben Affleck along with the rest of these H’Wood clowns.

It may make the uber-wealthy in this country fee better to live like those in Congo for a whopping five days, but if they really want to help the poorest of the poor, there are other issues to address like making sure there is access to electricity and clean water. Bjørn Lomborg put it quite nicely in his Earth Day op-ed:

Poor countries should have the same opportunity to develop — so they, too, can have clean drinking water and switch to cleaner energy sources, instead of using dung and twigs for fuel.

We can also directly intervene in poor countries. Many charitable organizations are involved in solving these problems by improving access to clean water and sanitation. By addressing these challenges, we do far more good for our planet.

Maybe I’m wrong and Ben Affleck is using dung and river-water to cook his rice just like the people he wants to help in Congo. If so, I’ll gladly correct my post.

Freedom Works: 13 Worst Predictions Made on Earth Day, 1970

Washington Post: Europe is becoming a green-energy basket case

Hot Air: Blue states to sue EPA for not crushing coal industry fast enough

Daily Caller: States, enviros threaten lawsuit to force EPA to issue new emissions rules

New York Times: Chinese consumers wants bigger cars.

And no Earth Day is complete without a “Google Doodle”. . . 

And to our readers, I leave you with this: an homage to Clement Clarke Moore:

But I heard Al Gore exclaim, ere he flew on a private plane out of sight,
HAPPY EARTH DAY TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!

By tweeting a “Native American” proverb:

Oh, really Mayor? What tribe first spoke these inspirational words? Perhaps it’s part Elizabeth Warren’s high-cheek-boned family tradition.

Actually, we really have no idea where the proverb came from. It’s been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Amish, the Australian Minister for the Environment and Conservation, and many others.

Why couldn’t Booker just tweet it without attribution? Does “Native American” give some added oomph because it’s “Earth Day?”

There’s another “Native American” saying that goes something like, “Politicians who pander to the enviros of their base on made-up holidays tweet with a forked thumb.” Look that up, as I’m sure it’s as accurate as Booker’s.

I’m celebrating Earth Day by heating my home (and combating climate change!) with cheap, natural gas provided by the technological wonder of hydraulic fracturing.

Long live the anti-capitalist revolution!

McClatchy has a piece up today titled, “Coastal cities ponder how to prepare for rising sea levels” that’s filled with the usual alarmist hyperbole, but what stands out is how the piece depends on the reader’s inability to do simple math to make its case:

Rising sea levels caused primarily by global warming could worsen the effects of storms such as Sandy, particularly when it comes to storm surge. Since 1992, satellites have observed a 2.25-inch rise in global sea levels.

Let’s break this down:

1992 to 2013 is 21 years. 21 years divided by the 2.25-inch total global rise in sea levels gives us an annual average rise of .11 inches. (Roughly 3 millimeters per year, as determined by NOAA)

This means, at the current rate, it would take 109 years for sea levels to rise by just one foot.

Well, with 100 years to go, I’m pretty sure cities have time to “ponder” all they like.

Yes, he went there:

FORMER US Vice-President Al Gore didn’t mince his words as he painted a vivid portrait of the worldwide devastation being caused by the invisible, tasteless and odourless greenhouse gases.

Climate change is causing devastation like that depicted in the Bible’s book of ‘Revelations’, he told delegates, including Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore, at the Hunger, Nutrition, Climate Justice international conference at Dublin Castle.

“We have to win the conversation about climate change – when you hear denial speak up,” he said.

“We cannot continue sleep walking towards the edge of history’s cliff,” he added.

I think Gore left out the part where he’s the “false prophet.”

Via the Register:

The latest ice-core analysis from the Antarctic shows that nothing unusual in terms of melting is occurring.

In research published yesterday, a large team of scientists used a deep ice core from the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide to produce records going back some 2,000 years. Their analysis shown that recent melting in that area, which has caused a good deal of hysteria* in climate alarmist circles, is in fact normal.

“If we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today,” comments Eric Steig, a senior earth-sciences boffin at the University of Washington and the lead author on the new research.

Ice loss in recent times from the Western Antarctic – considered to be one of the main places to worry about, if you worry about sea-level rises – may just “not be all that unusual”, according to Steig.

The problem, as with many climate change issues, is that conditions in the Western Antarctic vary so much over short time scales that it’s hard to work out if any long-term change is actually happening.

“The magnitude of unforced natural variability is very big in this area,” Steig comments.

The rest here.

Live Science:

The Mayan apocalypse may have been a bust, but a century-old understanding of the calendar that spawned the doomsday rumors appears to be right on.

In a new study, scientists used modern methods to double-check the match between the Mayan Long Count calendar and the modern European calendar. Understanding how the two coincide is important, because research on the rise and fall of the Maya suggests that climate change spelled their doom. To be certain of that link, however, researchers have to be able to match carved Maya historical records with dates in the modern calendar.

Linking the two calendars is no picnic. The Long Count calendar is essentially a cyclical count of days, known as k’in. The k’in are counted in 20-day cycles called winal or uinal, which in turn are catalogd in 360-day cycles called tuns. Twenty tuns make a 7,200-day k’atun (about 20 years), and 20 k’atuns then make a b’ak’tun.

The rest here.

Washington Post:

It’s official: EPA delays climate rule for new power plants

You might have been wondering whether the Obama administration was going to impose the first-ever greenhouse gas limits on new power plants, since the deadline is April 13.

We reported nearly a month ago that the Environmental Protection Agency was likely to delay the rule to bolster their legal case for imposing the new carbon restrictions.

On Friday, an EPA official who asked not to be identified confirmed that the agency would not finalize the controversial proposal on time.

“We are working on the rule and no timetable has been set,” the official wrote in an e-mail.

EPA is likely to alter the rule in some way in an effort to make sure it can withstand a legal challenge, according to sources familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the standard has not been finalized. One possibility could include establishing a separate standard for coal-fired power plants, as opposed to gas-fired ones.

The rule, which the EPA proposed a year ago, would require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

The rest here.

Quite possibly, yes. But not with its electric car.

A New York judge has just ruled in favor of Tesla allowing direct-to-consumer sales of its cars, bypassing a dealer network:

Tesla Motors Inc. says it’s won another round in its fight with established car dealers who want to stop the company from selling its electric luxury cars directly to consumers.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says, via Twitter, that a New York judge has tossed out a suit brought by New York auto dealers who challenged Tesla’s direct sales model as a violation of the state’s franchise laws.

Mr. Musk spent Wednesday in Texas making the case for a legislative proposal to change the law to allow direct sales of electric vehicles by U.S.-based manufacturers.Texas car dealers have opposed the measure, saying it would open the door for other car makers to sell electric cars direct to customers –  which could undermine the value of their franchises.

There are pluses and minuses to a dealer network, but at this time a consumer can’t buy a car directly from a manufacturer. And there are savings to be had if a consumer could do so. Charles Arlinghaus writes in the Union Leader:

A recent paper by the economic analysis group of the Department of Justice found potential savings of as much as $3,000 per vehicle from the currently prohibited direct-to-consumer sales of vehicles. In recent years, direct sales have been promoted by groups as diverse as the libertarian Cato Institute, the moderate Democratic Progressive Policy Institute, and the liberal Consumer Federation of America.

I’d, at the very least, like the option to purchase a car directly from the manufacturer and then use my own mechanic for its regular maintenance.