New York Times:

A proposal to ban the international trade in polar bear parts was rejected on Thursday at a major international conference on wildlife trade, highlighting the difficulties of reaching a global consensus on protecting many kinds of endangered wildlife.

The decision on whether to upgrade the protective status of polar bears was one of the most high-profile issues being debated at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites, here in Bangkok.

Others include proposals to afford protection to three species of sharks, manta rays, fresh water sawfish and various types of timber.

The polar bear proposal had been put forward by the United States, but faced opposition from Canada, Greenland, and Norway, all of which have polar bear populations. A compromise proposal by the European Union that included export quotes and tagging to help control illegal trade also was rejected.

If the U.S. can’t get a ban on the trade of “polar bear parts,” how can U.S. enviros expect anything on climate change?

Joe Nocera writes in today’s New York Times:

Last Friday, at 3:40 p.m., the State Department released its “Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement” for the highly contentious Keystone XL pipeline, which Canada hopes to build to move its tar sands oil to refineries in the United States. In effect, the statement said there were no environmental impediments that would prevent President Obama from approving the pipeline.

Two hours and 20 minutes later, I received a blast e-mail containing a statement by James Hansen, the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA — i.e., NASA’s chief climate scientist. “Keystone XL, if the public were to allow our well-oiled government to shepherd it into existence, would be the first step down the wrong road, perpetuating our addiction to dirty fossil fuels, moving to ever dirtier ones,” it began. After claiming that the carbon in the tar sands “exceeds that in all oil burned in human history,” Hansen’s statement concluded: “The public must demand that the government begin serving the public’s interest, not the fossil fuel industry’s interest.”

As a private citizen, Hansen, 71, has the same First Amendment rights as everyone else. He can publicly oppose the Keystone XL pipeline if he so chooses, just as he can be as politically active as he wants to be in the anti-Keystone movement, and even be arrested during protests, something he managed to do recently in front of the White House.

But the blast e-mail didn’t come from James Hansen, private citizen. It specifically identified Hansen as the head of the Goddard Institute, and went on to describe him as someone who “has drawn attention to the danger of passing climate tipping points, producing irreversible climate impacts that would yield a different planet from the one on which civilization developed.” All of which made me wonder whether such apocalyptic pronouncements were the sort of statements a government scientist should be making — and whether they were really helping the cause of reversing climate change.

Let’s acknowledge right here that the morphing of scientists into activists is nothing new. Linus Pauling, the great chemist, was a peace activist who pushed hard for a nuclear test ban treaty. Albert Einstein also became a public opponent of nuclear weapons.

It is also important to acknowledge that Hansen has been a crucial figure in developing modern climate science. In 2009, Eileen Claussen, now the president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, told The New Yorker that Hansen was a “heroic” scientist who “faced all kinds of pressures politically.” Today, his body of work is one of the foundations upon which much climate science is built.

Yet what people hear from Hansen today is not so much his science but his broad, unscientific views on, say, the evils of oil companies. In 2008, he wrote a paper, the thesis of which was that runaway climate change would occur when carbon in the atmosphere reached 350 parts per million — a point it had already exceeded — unless it were quickly reduced. There are many climate change experts who disagree with this judgment — who believe that the 350 number is arbitrary and even meaningless. Yet an entire movement, 350.org, has been built around Hansen’s line in the sand.

Um, the Left is just now noticing the issue with Hansen’s NASA-funded activism? The rest from Nocera here.

An excerpt from their editorial today titled, “Environmentalists are fighting the wrong battles“:

Mr. Obama should also ignore the complaints about Ernest Moniz, whom the president nominated Monday to head the Energy Department. Mr. Moniz, an MIT professor, favors renewable sources of electricity — but also nuclear power and natural gas. That’s a sin among some in the environmental movement, although it should not be. Mr. Moniz was right, for example, when he argued that natural gas can help cut the nation’s carbon emissions over the next couple of decades, because burning it produces half the emissions of burning coal. What’s needed is not knee-jerk opposition to natural gas but, rather, sensible regulations to ensure that communities near well sites are safe and that the country sees the most emissions benefits from its use of the fuel. Mr. Obama so far has taken that course, and we hope his appointment of Mr. Moniz means that he will stay on track.

Instead of indulging in distractions, Mr. Obama and his friends in the environmental movement should push for policies that could make a significant difference by cutting demand for carbon-intensive fuels. As we argued Sunday, a carbon tax is a cause that really is worth fighting for.

Sure, fight for that carbon tax. Especially with gas going north of $4/gallon. Voters will like that I think.

From their editorial today: 

Carbon Power Politics

The next EPA chief and next phase of the Obama green agenda.

President Obama gave his second-term global warming agenda a lot more definition Monday with a new Environmental Protection Agency chief to replace Lisa Jackson. Picking Gina McCarthy, one of her top lieutenants and the architect of some of the agency’s most destructive carbon rules, is a sign he intends to make good on his vow of “executive actions” if Congress doesn’t pass cap and tax.

Over the last four years running the EPA’s air office, Ms. McCarthy has been a notably willful regulator, even for this Administration. Her promotion is another way of saying that Mr. Obama has given up getting Congress to agree to his anticarbon agenda, especially given the number of Senate Democrats from coal or oil states. The real climate fight now is over the shape of forthcoming rules that could be released as early as this summer, and a brutal under-the-table lobbying campaign is now underway.

The main target, as usual, is the U.S. power industry, which accounts for 40% of U.S. carbon emissions and about one-third of greenhouse gasses. Last year Ms. Jackson and Ms. McCarthy imposed a moratorium on new coal-fired plants, plus other rules that are forcing utilities to shut down older plants and invest billions of dollars to upgrade everything else. The agency is about to go after the leftovers.

The rest here.

Because physicist Steven Chu worked out so, so well:

MIT Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems and director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Ernest Moniz will be nominated as the new head of the U.S. Department of Energy, an agency which runs 17 national laboratories, and has more than 16,000 federal employees and 90,000 contract employees.

President Barack Obama said Monday that he will nominate Moniz to lead the DOE, which is the largest funder of research in physical sciences.

A faculty member at MIT since 1973, Moniz has focused his research in theoretical nuclear physics and in energy technology and policy studies. Under Moniz’s direction, MITEI has been responsible for nearly 800 research projects at the institute and has brought in 25 percent of the MIT faculty in its pojects and programs, two-thirds of which have been in renewable energy, energy effeciency, carbon management and developing tools used in biotech and nanotech. Of those projects, more than 100 have been in solar energy.

In fact, MITEI received another $25 million pledge from oil giant BP for research over the next five years. The pledge doubled the amount the company has given to MITEI.

However, Moniz is on the record — post Fukushima — as supporting the continued use of nuclear power and is in favor of natural gas, calling it a “a bridge to a low-carbon future.” So maybe there’s some hope in this change? 

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is no fan of Gina McCarthy:

McCarthy “Wholly Unqualified” To Serve As EPA Administrator, CEI Says

Nominee Has Misled on Major Regulations and Is Implicated in Email Scandal

WASHINGTON, Mar. 4, 2013 — Gina McCarthy has decades of experience as an environmental bureaucrat, but a number of factors make her wholly unqualified to serve as EPA Administrator, say experts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. President Barack Obama nominated McCarthy on Monday to succeed Lisa Jackson to lead EPA.

“As Assistant EPA Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, Gina McCarthy has implemented radical environmental policies that will put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work but do little to nothing to improve environmental quality,” said Myron Ebell, Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at CEI.

“McCarthy has regularly tried to conceal the Obama administration’s economically destructive policies by misleading Congress, the public and industry. She has regularly stonewalled congressional requests for crucial information. And she is up to her ears in the Richard Windsor e-mail scandal,” Ebell said.

McCarthy testified under oath to Congress in October 2011 that fuel-economy standards and regulating greenhouse gas emissions are “closely aligned but not related.” Subsequent releases of information reveal McCarthy and the EPA were fully aware – as is everyone else – that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles is inextricably related to fuel-economy standards. This matters because EPA has statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions but not set CAFE standards for vehicles.

On coal, she told a gathering of industry officials the emissions regulations her office was developing would not require utilities to switch from coal to natural gas in building new power plants, as long as they used best available technology. But the New Source Performance Standards for new power plants released in 2011sets limits natural gas plants can meet but coal plants cannot.

More reasons from CEI on why she shouldn’t head the EPA here.

From Friday:

The Times is discontinuing the Green blog, which was created  to track environmental and energy news and to foster lively discussion of developments in both areas. This change will allow us to direct production resources to other online projects. But we will forge ahead with our aggressive reporting on environmental and energy topics, including climate change, land use, threatened ecosystems, government policy, the fossil fuel industries, the growing renewables sector and consumer choices.

Thanks to all of our readers.

Andrew Revkin, of the Time’s “Dot Earth” blog, isn’t very happy, however:

The news side of The Times has nine sports blogs; nine spanning fashion, lifestyles, health, dining and the like; four business blogs; four technology blogs (five if you include automobiles as a technology); and a potpourri of other great efforts, with four of my favorites being the Learning Network blog, Scientist at Work, the IHT Rendezvous blog on global news and Lens, run by the paper’s photo staff. You can tour the paper’s blogosphere here.

I would like to have thought there was space for the environment in that mix, even though these issues are still often seen by journalists weaned on politics as a sidenote (remember Candy Crowley‘s post-debate comment about “all you climate change people”?).

One of the sports blogs Revkin mentions is “The Rail,” providing an “insider’s view of horse racing action.” Who knew horse racing was more important to the Times than the environment?

Daniel F. Becker and  James Gerstenzang of the Safe Climate Campaign (what is a “safe” climate?) want the president to use his executive authority to, basically, kill coal-fired power plants:

Electric power plants spew about 40 percent of the carbon dioxide pollution in the United States, but, amazingly, there are no federal limits on utility emissions of this potent greenhouse gas. The Obama administration plans to remedy this situation by drafting rules that would curtail these discharges from existing plants. The president should make sure they are tough. Nothing he can do will cut greenhouse gases more.

By accomplishing this under the executive authority Congress granted him in the Clean Air Act, the president will be stepping in where recent Congresses have refused to go. He did the same thing last August, when he toughened auto emissions standards that will result in a new car fleet that averages 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025,and again last spring, when he proposed rules, restricting carbon dioxide emissions, that will effectively prevent the building of new coal-burning power plants.

Now President Obama should require existing power plants to reduce their emissions by at least one-quarter by 2020. These plants emitted 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2011, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, so a 25 percent cut would result in a reduction of more than 500 million tons. This would reduce lung-related illness and premature deaths, slow the accumulation of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere and demonstrate to the rest of the world that the United States was serious about taking on global warming.

But don’t worry. There will be a jobs bonanza!

The progression to using less coal will create new jobs to build the highly efficient appliances, wind turbines, solar farms and other technologies that capture renewable energy. In addition, jobs will be created as some states and utilities choose to comply by building natural gas power plants, which should be done only if they won’t cause environmental havoc.

A Solyndra in every pot!

More awful news from the Maldives, the hypocritical poster-child of global-warming alarmism.

Here’s the headline from the BBC:

Maldives girl to get 100 lashes for pre-marital sex

But, that’s a lie. She was raped:

A 15-year-old rape victim has been sentenced to 100 lashes for engaging in premarital sex, court officials said.

The charges against the girl were brought against her last year after police investigated accusations that her stepfather had raped her and killed their baby. He is still to face trial.

Prosecutors said her conviction did not relate to the rape case.

I love how the BBC describes the Maldives: “An Islamic archipelago.”

The legal system of the Maldives, an Islamic archipelago with a population of some 400,000, has elements of Islamic law (Sharia) as well as English common law.

I wonder if the Maldives uses that in their tourism materials? Come for the Sharia law, stay for the sun!

From his piece in today’s Washington Post:

Obama has the power to act on global warming

The test of President Obama’s seriousness about addressing climate change is not hispending decision on the much-debated Keystone XL pipeline. It’s whether he effectively consigns coal-fired power plants — one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions — to the ashcan of history.

Since his reelection, Obama has signaled a new focus on climate change. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms,” he said in an inaugural address that devoted eight sentences to the issue, more than he spent on any other item on his policy agenda.

The strong words from Obama were a welcome surprise. Few doubted that the president understood and accepted the scientific consensus about humankind’s impact on the climate. His dramatic toughening of automobile fuel-economy standards, announced last year, was a major step that will eventually produce great benefits. But it has been unclear whether he is prepared to take similarly bold action to mitigate the other big source of atmospheric carbon dioxide: emissions from power plants.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” Obama vowed in his State of the Union speech. That’s what I’d call unequivocal.

As if Obama needed more of an incentive, a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study, published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, confirms that temperatures have been rising ever since the Industrial Revolution — when the burning of fossil fuels dramatically increased — just as climate scientists have been telling us.

The rest here.

Can we defund the IPCC? Yes we can, argues Larry Bell at Forbes.com:

It seems that along with 17 years of flat global temperatures there is some evidence that we are witnessing some cooling on global warming hype and hysteria in Washington as well. Following President Obama’s State of the Union pledge to double down on his frenetic “green” war to prevent climate change, U.S. Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) has introduced legislation to discontinue any more taxpayer green from being used to advance the U.N.’s economy-ravaging agendas. The proposed bill would prohibit future U.S. funding for the alarmist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and also for the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a scam devoted to redistributing American wealth in penance for our unfair capitalist free market prosperity.

Congressman Luetkemeyer strongly objects to the UNFCC’s use of IPCC’s suggestions and faulty data to implement a job-killing agenda here in America. He argues: “The American people should not have to foot the bill for an international organization that is fraught with waste, engaged in dubious science, and is promoting an agenda that will destroy jobs and drive up the cost of energy in the United States. Unfortunately, the president appears to be ready to fund these groups, revive harmful policies like cap and trade, and further empower out of control federal regulators at a time when we should be doing everything possible to cut wasteful spending, reduce regulatory red tape, and promote economic growth.”

While the amount we give to the UNFCC and IPCC may seem like a tiny pittance in the realm of government spending largesse, it’s important to realize that true costs of that folly amount to countless billions in disastrous policy and regulatory impacts. Under the Obama administration, the two organizations together have received a total average of $10.25 million annually, which will be upped to $13 million under a FY 13 budget request. The George W. Bush administration previously provided about $5.7 million each year.

The rest here.

Biofuels…is there anything they can’t ruin?

America’s prairies are shrinking. Spurred on by the rush for biofuels, farmers are digging up grasslands in the northern Plains to plant crops at the quickest pace since the 1930s. While that’s been a boon for farmers, the upheaval could create unexpected problems.

A new study by Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University finds that U.S. farmers converted more than 1.3 million acres of grassland into corn and soybean fields between 2006 and 2011, driven by high crop prices and biofuel mandates (right). In states like Iowa and South Dakota, some 5 percent of pasture is turning into cropland each year.

It’s a big transformation in the heart of the country: The authors conclude that the rates of grassland loss are “comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia.” And those changes are already having plenty of impacts.

Good thing Congress didn’t just continue to subsidize this madness as part of the Fiscal Cliff deal.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk thinks there’s a right-wing, anti–electric car, New York Times conspiracy that wants to make his company look bad.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The notoriously thin-skinned Musk has been on a personal crusade over the past week to demonize the Times’ John Broder for a negative review the environmental writer filed in a recent Sunday edition of the paper. Tesla’s bullying of media organizations is legendary (this reporter got an earful for his first criticism of Tesla’s Roadster sports car years back). Tesla sued Top Gear for libel over a negative review in 2008. Shooting the messenger isn’t usually a good strategy in the car business. Hasn’t Tesla ever heard of GM vs. Ralph Nader?

But accusing the Times of anti-green bias? One of the country’s most ideologically green media outlets? A paper that ignored Climategate and cheerleads for the green movement with little pretense of objectivity? That employs green disciples from Keith Bradsher to Elisabeth Rosenthal (whose most recent piece was titled, “Your Biggest Carbon Sin May Be Air Travel”)? Seriously? Broder himself is a global warming true-believer and ex-Times’ DC global warming correspondent who now writes reliably green copy here.

But reviewing cars — like sports teams — can be different. No matter your ideology, both products demand competitive results.

No one doubts that Musk makes great vehicles. From the $110k Tesla Roadster to the $100k Model S, they are compelling luxury products. The question is: How do they stack up against equally competent gas-engine technology? Broder’s straightforward review takes Tesla’s premise — that its new Model S sedan (sweetened for purchase by Obama’s $7,500 tax credit for One Percenters) can be driven like a normal car — and puts it to the test.

The Model S fails for well-known reasons — the recharging infrastructure isn’t there, batteries perform poorly in cold weather, and you need a Tesla engineer riding in the back seat to help you navigate the car’s idiosyncrasies. In short, the real news of Broder’s piece is that electrics — as has been the case over 100 years — are still a niche vehicle for city dwellers or the statement-making well-to-do.

Musk doesn’t like that news so he takes a page from the Obama School for Impugning Motives and tries to destroy Broder. The Times’ man neatly parries every criticism here. Will Musk’s intimidation tactics effect Broder (or more likely his editors) in his next review? We’ll see. But the marketplace will continue to be Musk’s greatest challenge.

So much for settled science:

 Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model. The scientists in this group “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”

The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.

Nobody tell Al Gore.  

Via the Alaska Dispatch:

Report suggests feeding polar bears to save the species

At least most of the people quoted in the article think feeding the bears is a bad idea. 

The fight continues between Tesla and the scathing review the Times gave their Model S sedan.

First up, Elon Musk posted on the Tesla blog tons of technical information showing where the Times allegedly erred in their review.

Then the New York Times responded, with, basically, we stick by our story.

And finally, Rebecca Greenfield of the Atlantic wrote a detailed, point by point, analysis of the Musk technical data and concluded:

Not all of Musk’s data is entirely convincing and the parts that are don’t point to a malicious plot. In the end, it looks like Broder made some compromises to get from the Newark charging station to the Milford one, in both speed and temperature. Broder may not have used Musk’s car the way Musk would like, but Musk is, for now, overhyping his case for a breach of journalism ethics.

So, it’s a tie?

Oh no, $120 million dollars over nine years split over 100 organizations! Those evil Koch bros.:

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising “wedge issue” for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never be diverted to liberal causes.

“We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,” she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. “It won’t be going to liberals.”

Via twitter, Cato adjunct scholar Scott Lincicome commented (on his own behalf, not Cato’s):

In response to this New York Times review ripping the Tesla S, the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, is accusing the writer of faking it:

But Musk says Broder’s account was less than accurate.

As the price of Tesla’s stock fell on Monday, possibly a reaction to the review, Musk tweeted “NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour.”

Tesla enables data-logging on all of the cars it loans to the media for test drives as a safeguard against inaccuracies in reporting. It’s a feature available to owners, as well, to help provide the company with information to further develop its vehicles, but only with their express written permission.

In an interview with CNBC following the tweet, Musk called the article “something of a setup,” and “really misleading.” He went on to accuse Broder of not fully charging the battery, taking an extended tour of Manhattan and driving the vehicle faster than recommended on the highway, as much as 10 mph or more above the posted speed limit.

“We explicitly warned him that you can’t do these things,” Musk said.

Musk compared it to not filling up the tank of a gasoline-powered car, meandering around and then racing to your destination only to be surprised that you ran out of gas.

“People would just think you’re a fool.”

In response, The Times issued a statement calling the report “completely factual, describing the trip in detail exactly as it occurred,” adding that there was “no unreported detour.”

Tesla said it was preparing a blog post detailing its complaints with the article, but it has not yet been published on the company’s website.

We’ll publish the blog post from Tesla as soon as its available.

Climate Depot: Antarctic Sea Ice 24% Above Average (and only 8300 sq km short of a record)

How long before Governor Hickenlooper has this on tap at his Denver brewpub?

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper went to unusually great lengths to learn firsthand the strides the oil and gas industry has made to minimize environmental harm from fracking.

The first-term Democrat and former Denver mayor told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he actually drank a glass of fracking fluid produced by oilfield services giant Halliburton.

The fluid is made entirely “of ingredients sourced from the food industry,” the company says, making it safe for Mr. Hickenlooper and others to imbibe.

“You can drink it. We did drink it around the table, almost rituallike, in a funny way,” he told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “It was a demonstration. … they’ve invested millions of dollars in what is a benign fluid in every sense.”