“Yesterday afternoon Senator Whitehouse took to the Senate floor to deliver his weekly speech about climate change. It was a speech that had been prepared in advance, and which included a general reference to tornadoes in Oklahoma. Tragically, and unbeknownst to the Senator at the time, a series of tornadoes were hitting Oklahoma at the same moment he gave his remarks. Senator Whitehouse regrets the timing of his speech and offers his thoughts and prayers to the victims of yesterday’s storms and their families, and he stands ready to work with the Senators from Oklahoma to assist them and their constituents in this time of need.”

Here's white Whitehouse said yesteray, via Watts Up With That?:

So you may have a question for me:  why do you care?  Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings, and disgrace ourselves? 

I’ll tell you why.  We’re stuck in this together.  When cyclones tear up Oklahoma, and hurricanes swamp Alabama, and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, for billions of dollars to recover. 

And the damage your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas; it hits Rhode Island with floods and storms, and Oregon with acidified seas, and Montana with dying forests.  So like it or not, we’re in this together. 

You drag America with you to your fate. 

Let's deal with his "facts" point by point. . .

There's no evidence linking tornadoes to global warming, but the alarmists keep saying it anyway.

How about hurricanes? Larry Bell writes in Forbes:

But there’s a big disconnect from facts here. In reality, there has been no increase in the strength or frequency of landfall hurricanes in the world’s five main hurricane basins during the past 50-70 years; there has been no increase in the strength or frequency in tropical Atlantic hurricane development during the past 370 years; the U.S. is currently enjoying the longest period ever recorded without intense Category 3-5 hurricane landfall; there has been no trend since 1950 evidencing any  increased frequency of strong (F3-F-5) U.S. tornadoes; there has been no increase in U.S. flood magnitudes over the past 85 years; and long-term sea level rise is not accelerating.

And Texas wildfires? That's so 2011: 

Texas made it through the spring wildfire season without any significant outbreaks and officials don't expect a slew of massive fires during the summer season, either.

The grasslands and shrubs that fueled the historic wildfires in 2011 haven't grown back yet, so the ferocity of any fires this year isn’t expected to approach those levels.

Two years ago wildfires killed 10 people, burned 4 million acres and destroyed 4,000 homes.

No wildfire season was declared last year because of ample rain.

This year intermittent rainfall has kept the fire threat low across most of Texas, but if rains don't fall in the next couple months the state could see wildfires threats rise by mid-July.

So 2012 had no fire season and they're hoping this year is quiet.

Global warming, you capricious sprite you. Make up your mind!

President Obama should spend his remaining years in office making the United States part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem. If Congress sticks to its policy of obstruction and willful ignorance, Obama should use his executive powers to the fullest extent. We are out of time.

With each breath, every person alive today experiences something unique in human history: an atmosphere containing more than 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. This makes us special, I suppose, but not in a good way.

The truth is that 400 is just one of those round-number milestones that can be useful for grabbing people’s attention. What’s really important is that atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by a stunning 43 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The only plausible cause of this rapid rise, from the scientific viewpoint, is the burning of fossil fuels to fill the energy needs of industrialized society. The only logical impact, according to those same scientists, is climate change. The only remaining question — depending on what humankind does right now — is whether the change ends up being manageable or catastrophic.

Only someone who was ignorant of basic science — or deliberately being obtuse — could write a sentence like this one: “Contrary to the claims of those who want to strictly regulate carbon dioxide emissions and increase the cost of energy for all Americans, there is a great amount of uncertainty associated with climate science.”

The rest of his alarmism here.

The Center for American Progress, Washington’s leading liberal think tank, has been a big backer of the Energy Department’s $25 billion loan guarantee program for renewable energy projects. CAP has specifically praised First Solar, a firm that received $3.73 billion under the program, and its Antelope Valley project in California.

Last year, when First Solar was taking a beating from congressional Republicans and in the press over job layoffs and alleged political cronyism, CAP’s Richard Caperton praised Antelope Valley in his testimony to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, saying it headed up his list of “innovative projects” receiving loan guarantees. Earlier, Caperton and Steve Spinner—
a top Obama fundraiser who left his job at the Energy Department monitoring the issuance of loan guarantees and became a CAP senior fellow—had written an article cross-posted on CAP’s website and its Think Progress blog, stating that Antelope Valley represented “the cutting edge of the clean energy economy.”

Though the think tank didn’t disclose it, First Solar belonged to CAP’s Business Alliance, a secret group of corporate donors, according to internal lists obtained by The Nation. Meanwhile, José Villarreal—a consultant at the power-
house law and lobbying firm Akin Gump, who “provides strategic counseling on a range of legal and policy issues” for 
corporations—was on First Solar’s board until April 2012 while also sitting on the board of CAP, where he remains a member, according to the group’s latest tax filing.

CAP is a strong proponent of alternative energy, so there’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of its advocacy. But the fact that CAP has received financial support from First Solar while touting its virtues to Washington policy-makers points to a conflict of interest that, critics argue, ought to be disclosed to the public. CAP’s promotion of the company’s interests has supplemented First Solar’s aggressive Washington lobbying efforts, on which it spent more than $800,000 during 2011 and 2012.

“The only thing more damaging than disclosing your donors and having questions raised about the independence of your work is not disclosing them and have the information come to light and undermine your work,” says Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “The best practice, whether required by the IRS or not, is to disclose contributions.”

Nowadays, many Washington think tanks effectively serve as unregistered lobbyists for corporate donors, and companies strategically contribute to them just as they hire a PR or lobby shop or make campaign donations. And unlike lobbyists and elected officials, think tanks are not subject to financial disclosure requirements, so they reveal their donors only if they choose to. That makes it impossible for the public and lawmakers to know if a think tank is putting out an impartial study or one that’s been shaped by a donor’s political agenda. “If you’re a lobbyist, whatever you say is heavily discounted,” says Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and an expert on political ethics. “If a think tank is saying it, it obviously sounds a lot better. Maybe think tanks aren’t aware of how useful that makes them to private interests. On the other hand, maybe it’s part of their revenue model.”

Later in the article, more donors are exposed: 

According to these lists, CAP’s donors included Comcast, Walmart, General Motors, Pacific Gas and Electric, General Electric, Boeing and Lockheed. Though it doesn’t appear on the lists, the University of Phoenix was also a donor.

Hmmm. Let's search CAP's website for more potential "green" conflicts of interest, whereby CAP failed to disclose its financial interest in companies it was praising. . .

First Solar:

First Solar’s Antelope Valley, California, project will be the first utility-scale solar plant in the United States to incorporate thin-film technology on a system that tracks the movement of the sun. This technology will increase solar efficiencies and help make solar power more cost competitive. Antelope Valley, which will create 350 jobs and generate 230 MW of energy, received a $680 million loan guarantee.

General Motors:

When President Obama took office both General Motors and Chrysler teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Despite some public and congressional opposition, the president provided loans to the automakers to prevent their collapse and provide them with time to restructure.

One of the stipulations of the auto bailout was that the companies had to develop aggressive plans to return to viability by investing in energy-efficient cars. Both companies agreed to move toward a more fuel-efficient fleet. In a March 2009 press statement President Barack Obama said the landmark agreement would create “a 21st century auto industry that is creating new jobs, unleashing new prosperity, and manufacturing the fuel-efficient cars and trucks that will carry us towards an energy-independent future.”

In addition to the successful bridge loans, other major Obama administration policies helped the auto industry and the nation by creating jobs, reducing oil use, saving families money, and cutting pollution. These policies included modern fuel economy standards, investments in research of alternatively fueled vehicles, retooling facilities to manufacture cleaner cars, and incentives for consumers to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles.

In addition to returning General Motors and Chrysler to profitability, GM announced on January 4, 2013, that it is the first automaker to sell 1 million cars in one year that get 30 miles per gallon.

Pacific Gas and Electric

Some things do improve over time. Among them is the Obama administration’s plan for using government lands to anchor the renewable energy revolution.

Ten months after the Interior Department issued a draft plan for siting large solar energy projects in six western states, and after listening carefully to the views of conservationists, developers, utilities, and others, the Obama administration has made significant improvements.

[. . .]

Fong Wan, senior vice president for energy procurement at Pacific Gas and Electric Company, said the new process “will provide more certainty around project development on the front end, by helping to streamline siting, permitting and other potential challenges. It is steps like these that will help increase the likelihood of successful projects, propelling the country toward our shared renewable energy goals and clean energy future.”

General Electric:

China’s aggressive smart grid plan poses problems and promise for the United States. On the one hand, U.S. companies currently have the most advanced smart grid technology across the value chain—technology that could create big opportunities in China. State Grid is already working with General Electric Co., Honeywell International Inc., IBM Corp., and other U.S. companies on joint standardization projects. If those projects go well then at least some of China’s smart grid investments could go toward purchasing U.S. products and paying U.S. technology licensing fees.

You can read the entire piece at The Nation here.

A closer inspection of the numbers, however, reveals that the Palo Alto–based carmaker made its profit by selling $68 million in carbon credits to other automakers. Under a mandate that 15 percent of sales be zero-emission vehicles by 2025, California requires that automakers make a certain number of electric vehicles (EVs) or be penalized. And since Tesla makes only the athletic, $70,000 electric Model S, it has credits by the trunkload — while full-line automakers like GM pay a penalty.

“At the end of the day, other carmakers are subsidizing Tesla,” says Thilo Koslowski, an analyst at Gartner Inc. Combine the Golden State’s generous zero-emission credits with federal tax credits ($7,500) and a state rebate ($2,500) on purchase of each Model S, and the government subsidy amounts to $45,000 per car.

But the greater con is the fiction that electric cars are zero-emission vehicles.

According to a comprehensive engineering study published in the February 2013 Journal of Industrial Ecology, greenhouse gas emissions for an EV’s full life cycle — from production through road use — are not much greener than a comparable gas-powered auto, and no more planet-friendly than a diesel car. Indeed, when you factor in the toxicity of materials used in battery production, it’s hard to make the case that EVs are a very green alternative.

“Almost half of an EV’s life cycle global-warming potential is associated with its production,” concluded a study group from the Department of Energy and Process Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “We estimate the GWP from EV production (to be) roughly twice (that) with gas-engine production.”

Read more at the Detroit News here.

One week ago, the Obama administration launched its National Strategy for the Arctic Region, outlining the government's strategic priorities over the next 10 years. The release of the strategy came about a week after the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the President at the White House Complex hosted a briefing with international Arctic scientists.

Despite giving lip service to the values of environmental conservation, the new document focuses on how the US can manage the exploitation of the region's vast untapped oil, gas and mineral resources in cooperation with other Arctic powers.

At the heart of the White House's new Arctic strategy is an elementary but devastating contradiction between what President Obama, in the document's preamble, describes as seeking "to make the most of the emerging economic opportunities in the region" due to the rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice, and recognising "the need to protect and conserve this unique, valuable, and changing environment."

Despite repeated references to "preservation" and "conservation", the strategy fails to outline any specific steps that would be explored to mitigate or prevent the disappearance of the Arctic sea ice due to intensifying global warming.

The rest here.

Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.

But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.

The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast.

But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term.

An international team of researchers looked at how the last decade would impact long-term, equilibrium climate sensitivity and the shorter term climate response.

Transient nature

Climate sensitivity looks to see what would happen if we doubled concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and let the Earth's oceans and ice sheets respond to it over several thousand years.

Transient climate response is much shorter term calculation again based on a doubling of CO2.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that the short-term temperature rise would most likely be 1-3C (1.8-5.4F).

But in this new analysis, by only including the temperatures from the last decade, the projected range would be 0.9-2.0C.

The rest here.

Tesla's announcement of a new stock and notes offering, partly to pay back an Energy Department loan early and with CEO Elon Musk's participation, boosted its shares more than 5% after hours Wednesday. The electric car maker's stock was up 1.9% during the regular session, and 150% for the year through Wednesday.

After failures of government-backed energy outfits such as solar manufacturer Solyndra, and amid the shaky status of that other federal loan-funded luxury electric car maker — Fisker Automotive — Tesla Motors (TSLA) chief [Elon] Musk has been intent on getting Tesla's own government loan balance down, and fast.

The company said in a press release emailed after the market close that it expects to raise about $830 million through public offerings of about 2.7 million shares of common stock and $450 million in convertible senior notes due 2018, as well as through options granted to underwriters and private placement.

"Tesla intends to use the net proceeds from the offerings to prepay Tesla's outstanding loan from the United States Department of Energy, pay the cost of convertible note hedge transactions and for general corporate purposes," the company said in its announcement.

The rest here.

As the EPA reads the statute, “major” stationary sources – entities that emit 250 or 100 tons per year of a regulated air pollutant – must obtain permits from environmental agencies to construct or operate their facilities. Carbon dioxide became a regulated air pollutant when the EPA’s greenhouse gas motor vehicle standards took effect on Jan. 2, 2011.

Whereas only large industrial facilities emit 250 or even 100 tons of conventional air pollutants per year, literally millions of small, non-industrial facilities – office buildings, restaurants, schools – emit CO2 in those quantities. The EPA and its state counterparts suddenly faced the prospect of having to process 81,000 pre-construction permits annually (instead of 280) and 6.1 million operating permits annually (instead of 15,000).

That gigantic work load would overwhelm their administrative resources unless, the EPA estimated, agencies hire 320,000 additional full-time staff at a cost of $21 billion annually. Otherwise, ever-growing bottlenecks would paralyze environmental enforcement and freeze economic development. Both the application ofcomplex and costly permitting requirements to tens of thousands of non-industrial facilities and the quantum jump in taxpayer burden qualify as “extreme measures.”

And Reuters has the latest:

With a barrage of legal briefs, a coalition of business groups and Republican-leaning states are taking their fight against Obama administration climate change regulations to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups, along with states such as Texas and Virginia, have filed nine petitions in recent weeks asking the justices to review four U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations that are designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

If the court were to take up any one of the petitions, it would be the biggest environmental case since Massachusetts v. EPA, the landmark 2007 decision in which the justices ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The court's decision on whether to take up any of the petitions, likely to come in October, could help shape or shatter the administration's efforts to solidify its climate change agenda before President Obama leaves office in 2017.

The EPA regulations are among Obama's most significant tools to address climate change after the U.S. Senate scuttled in 2010 his effort to pass a federal law that would, among other things, have set a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

The petitions give the court various options for cutting back on, or even overturning the 2007 ruling, according to John Dernbach, a law professor at Widener University in Pennsylvania, who represented climate scientists in the 2007 case.

If the court decides to hear any of the petitions, it "would be opening a really big can of worms," he said.

The rest here.