Pesky Laws

The Terminator, a k a the Governator, is not happy. And you shouldn’t be either.


What has Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California incensed is the fact that two Texas oil companies with two refineries each in California are financing a campaign to roll back California’s landmark laws to slow global warming and promote clean energy innovation, because it would require the refiners to install new emission-control tools. At a time when President Obama and Congress have failed to pass a clean energy bill, California’s laws are the best thing we have going to stimulate clean-tech in America. We don’t want them gutted. C’mon in. This is a fight worth having
...
The real joke is thinking that if California suspends its climate laws that Mother Nature will also take a timeout. “We can wait to solve this problem as long as we want,” says Nate Lewis, an energy chemist at the California Institute of Technology: “But Nature is balancing its books every day. It was a record 113 degrees in Los Angeles the other day. There are laws of politics and laws of physics. Only the latter can’t be repealed.”

The Terminator vs. Big Oil by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Schwarzenegger tells it like it is.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Countdown


HT Whatshisname Climate Progress

Wish I understood this better

This paper will make the rounds again on all the blogs trying to diss global climate disruption. The work has been out for a couple of years... so it's not exactly breaking news.

A new version of the paper gets a big boost from a small but influential science journalism publisher today – the AAAS’s ScienceNow. Reporter Phil Berardelli doesn’t write it long, but long enough to get outside astronomers saying that the paper is legit. At issue, as he writes, is whether the extrapolation showing magnetic fields dropping in about 2015 below the minimum needed for sunspots reflects a very likely scenario. His hook is an update of the thesis, for an international virtual symposium, on line at the preprint site arXiv astro-ph.



This is a legitimate news topic. A decent chance that the Sun will moderate its overall output (which overall has positive correlation with sunspot number despite intuition that proliferation of big cool dark spots ought to dim a star), and thus counteract to some small or large extent the current warming driven by fossil carbon burning, merits full public airing. It sure would complicate efforts to get the world’s nations to drastically change their energy policies. A Maunder Minimum II could chill any chance for a carbon tax even if, when the minimum wanes, the climate-forcing rebound would cook us for sure. And anyway, ocean acidification would proceed apace.

...

The new paper, from a quick read, sees the anemic rise in sunspot number during the first phases of the 11-year solar cycle’s current iteration as evidence that whatever the trend’s fate, it’s not showing signs of stopping now. As it says, “It is important to note that it is always risky to extrapolate linear trends; but the importance of the implications from making such an assumption justify its mention.” That’s a heavily nuanced, if perhaps true, sentence. A reporter who sits down with, or just spends some time on the phone with these two to ask how they regard their paper’s role in political and ideological debates over global warming might get a terrific story.

One prediction seems safe: this series of ever-updated papers will get more press.
- Charlie Petit

AAAS ScienceNow: The way things are going, sunspots will disappear in five years and Earth might cool off.

Related post
Need Something Else to Worry About?

---

I will say this again... the Republicans in congress are a single organism. An X files fungus of immense proportions suffocating the democratic process. If they don't wake up and smell the climate change, they'll smother life on this planet as well.


Reaching at all
No, liberals did not ‘overreach’ on climate -David Roberts

---

Prop 23 and the Oil Companies (Legal Planet)

.It is frequently said that “the oil companies” are financing Prop 23. This turns out to be a bit of an overgeneralization. According to Greenwire,

While some companies are supporting Proposition 23, Shell Oil Co. opposes it, Chevron Corp. is officially neutral, Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC have decided not to get involved and ConocoPhillips has yet to contribute. Three oil refiners — Valero Energy Corp., Tesoro Corp. and Koch Industries — have contributed most of the $8.2 million raised to support Proposition 23.

Shell Oil, in particular, deserves praise for its position. Shell’s climate change adviser has posted a lengthy critique of Prop 23. (As an aside, it was pretty cool to find out that Shell even has a climate change advisor who maintains a blog). He makes a very cogent point about the impact of Prop 23 on business:

Related posts:
Must defeat CA's Prop 23
Shell Oil (Tuesday)

Must defeat CA's Prop 23

In an e-mail letter sent Tuesday to members of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, Charles Drevna, the group's president, said passage of Proposition 23, the ballot initiative that aims to roll back the state's greenhouse gas reduction law, is key to stopping climate change laws in other states and would mean "the difference of life and death" for the oil industry.

Oil industry group blasts Schwarzenegger over climate change law

---

What's wrong with this picture?

"As worldwide population increases by 40 per cent over the next 40 years, sparsely populated Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets," states the UCLA summary of Smith's vision. "While wreaking havoc on the environment, global warming will liberate a treasure trove of oil, gas, water and other natural resources previously locked in the frozen North, enriching residents and attracting newcomers."

Climate change could make Canada's North an economic hothouse

Um,  oil and gas? for generating more CO2?
And he forgot to mention METHANE locked in the frozen tundra... a major feedback that will worsen global warming.

---

California for sale?
California Braces for Showdown on Emissions

Traditionally, public support for environmental measures suffers during tough economic times. Here in California, backers of the initiative have seized on that anxiety — which is particularly acute in this state, with its 12.3 percent unemployment rate — in search of a victory.


“I believe the battle over cap and trade in America is taking place in California on Nov. 2 of this year,” said Dan Logue, a Republican assemblyman from north-central California who wrote the ballot initiative. He added: “What we’re saying is, this is not the time for political correctness. This is a time for putting America back to work; let the experiments happen later.”

...
Early polling suggests that voters who know about the measure are evenly split.

Yet supporters said they were concerned that the proposition could slip through at a time when Democratic spirits are low. More significant is the question of how much more supporters of Prop 23 can raise to finance their campaign. Of the $8.2 million raised so far, $1 million came from the Koch firm, $4 million from the Valero Energy Corporation and $1.5 million from the Tesoro Corporation; both corporations are based in San Antonio.