The first time the debates have been silent on climate since 1988.
Over at Joe Romm’s paid for propaganda arm of the Center for American Progress they recently wrote:
Why It’s Impossible To Ignore Climate In A Presidential Foreign Policy Debate
Well, apparently it is possible… when it is Third rail politics.
Bill McKibben was so sure going in too…
[UPDATE: Bill McKibben emailed me to say he was in SFO when he made that tweet so it was PST, not EST where he normally tweets from. So it was going out of the debate and he was being ironic – Anthony]
This is the first time the presidential debates have been silent on climate since 1988, and is now hashtagged as #climateofftheradarwegotbiggerproblems
You can thank NASA’s James Hansen for making it an issue in 1988 (thanks to some Senate hearing room stagecraft in June of that year). He had a good run, now he needs to let it go, because nobody cares anymore and the leaders don’t want to ride the lightning.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Although both sides are still talking green energy.
Green energy and tons of coal.
Perhaps, but this does not consider Obama’s statement that if re-elected one of the priorities of his administration will be climate change.
At the species level I am just not so sure that the most critical test is if we can even comprehend bad data. I thought we passed that milestone centuries ago.
Looks like the politicians and the public are finally wising up.
The USA was actually exporting oil in my childhood. One power Eisenhower had, in order to restrain Great Britain and France in the 1956 Suez Crisis, was to threaten to cut off our oil to England. If Romney wins I imagine he will reverse Obama’s insane “ban all fossil fuels” philosophy, and we might actually get back to the energy independence we back then.
If that happens Romney will get the credit. but the engineers who refined the “fracking” drilling-techniques deserve the honor.
By the way, McKibben will not mope for long. Looks like a late season hurricane could threaten the east coast, like Hazel did in 1954. McKibben will, of course, forget history, and say it is “unprecedented” and utterly due to Global Warning.
Time to dust off: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/21/hurricane-warning-mckibben-alert/
Just remember what the EPA is doing right in front of you, without your input.
Vote!
If you don’t, You did !
If your goal is to win votes, the last thing you want to talk about is a carbon tax that will kill jobs and increase the cost of energy. That comes after the election. Isn’t that right Julia Gillard? I just found out that her slogan in 2010 was “moving forward.” Where have I heard that slogan recently? Hmm, I can’t quite put my finger on it.
How’s the Hansen-Chu….”Double the Gas Price Plan”….working for you ? ? ?
When scientists start to make policy, maybe they should expect more of this sort of thing ….
Today, a court in the central Italian city of L’Aquila sentenced six scientists and a government bureaucrat to six years in jail on manslaughter charges for their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake that left more than 300 people dead.
Why? Because Obama has to run on leading the world in subsidized Green-energy bankruptcies.
That’s why.
Louis, if you wan to know the history of the slogan “Forward” and its connection with Communism, check this out.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/forward-for-communism-is-obamas-new-forward-slogan-really-a-coincidence/
Keep Smiling
I feel like I’m back in grade school watching that stuff. So much higher level learning I already learned from my internet research left out. It’s a presidential puppet freak show. My presidential puppet freak is better then your presidential puppet freak, competing for the top CEO position. Romney’s like a used care salesman and Obama’s like a new care salesman. I’m not in the market for a car. I just want my country fixed. Not one brand of totalitarianism Vs another brand of totalitarianism.
McKibben!? Who even pays any attention to that raving loon anymore? I picked up a copy of his most recent book a few days ago in the remainder bin for $2, just to satisfy my curiosity. What a load of crap! Doesn’t he know that weather is not climate? Doesn’t he know that newspaper articles are not peer-reviewed science? What a pathetic alarmist….
…
Shhhh! Maybe they’ll just forget all about it.
Today’s Denver Post:
Layoffs, failures test Colorado’s “new energy economy”
Posted: 10/22/2012 12:01:00 AM MDT
By Steve Raabe
The resilience of Colorado’s vaunted “new energy economy” is being tested after a series of job cuts, financial setbacks and political firestorms.
The latest loss was Phillips 66’s announcement last week that it is pulling the plug on a major alternative-fuels research-and-development center that was planned on the former StorageTek site in Louisville.
That followed the recent news that Vestas Wind Systems was making its biggest round of Colorado layoffs, bringing the job-cut tally to about 500.
The Weld County district attorney’s office is investigating the failure of Colorado solar-panel manufacturer Abound Solar, and congressional Republicans are asking tough questions about Abound’s federal loan guarantees.
Also in the loss column is General Electric’s recent decision to suspend development of the proposed $300 million PrimeStar Solar plant in Aurora that would have employed 355 workers.
At the least, the setbacks are a speed bump in Colorado’s effort to maintain a leadership status in renewable energy. At worst, they could significantly impair growth of the industry.
The combined layoffs, plant closure and mothballed projects in Colorado represent the loss of more than 1,000 existing and projected jobs, plus millions of dollars of tax revenue and spinoff economic activity.
Hard times for the green industries stem from a combination of technical challenges, low-cost foreign competition and an uncertain outlook for government support of alternative energy.
“It’s not just Colorado,” said William Yeatman, an energy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based free-market think tank.
“Renewable-energy manufacturing is taking a beating across the country, primarily due to the fact that federal subsidies have run their course,” he said. “The 2009 stimulus has been spent, and the wind production-tax credit is set to expire in December. Without taxpayer handouts, these green industries simply cannot compete.”
There’s much more in the Post article, but link to it at your own risk – the site is riddled with pop-ups and ads.
http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_21825181?source=commented-
@Mike86 – Green Energy is a noble goal, though it should not be forced upon us with subsidies, carbon taxes, etc. The big problem is that the focus has been on the wrong kind of green energy. Solar and wind are losers. Hydroelectric, tidal, and geothermal are the way to go, but there are significant challenges to overcome with those before they will start to get enough market share to make a difference.
In the mean time, we need to invest in more efficient nuclear technology and get rid of the old reactors that are nearing the end, or are operating past the end of their life cycle.
I don’t agree. Romney continually mentioned using “all forms” of domestic energy. Obama’s
passion for destruction of clean coal is well known.
At the possible end of the present interglacial it’s really rather simple actually. At such a late point I am inclined to agree that CO2’s response is not logarithmic. Conceding that significant point, why would you even consider taking it out of the late Holocene atmosphere unless you are absolutely, precautionary principle certain, not a leap of superstitious faith mind you, that the decline since the early Holocene climate optimum to the present climate state is not anthropologically irreversible? Would we stay, in what the alarmists seem to suggest, is the perfect climate state perpetually if we shunned CO2?
Or would the wise wise (Homo sapiens sapiens) one accede to some sort of recognition of “when we live”, at a half-precession old extreme interglacial, and glom on to the possibility that every penny not spent on fusion research might turn out to be a penny wasted? The sun gone all quiet on us, what faith provides the bridge to an extended extreme interglacial (like MIS-11) if not CO2? I mean, it is the “consensus” climate security blanket…..or isn’t it?
The proposition has been placed before what passes for our species to opt for unreliable means to produce reliable energy.
Your decision please…………
In an email message to HuffPost, Michael E. Mann, a prominent physicist and climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Pennsylvania, suggested he was disappointed.
“There’s not a whole lot to say here,” Mann said. “Bob Schieffer obviously made the decision not to broach the topic. That’s really too bad. Given that climate change may be the greatest challenge we face in the decades ahead, to be silent on the issue over the course of four debates does a real disservice to the country.”
No, Michael, the big disservice was perpetrating an extremely costly scam that runs vast numbers of people into the ground to pay for.
Because nobody cares anymore and the leaders don’t want to ride the lightning.
You can’t keep feeding the “green” agenda when you run out of other people’s money.
I love being right. As I have maintained repeatedly, climate change has had its final mention. That includes the next four years of the Obama Administration.
The American people have become wise to the United Nations and its intellectual thugs in the IPPC. A toxic brand if ever there was one.
Man made Global Warming has killed no one.
Yet in Haiti the squeaky clean UN has managed to kill thousands by causing a cholera epidemic. In order not to vent I won’t go into other parts of the world where the UN has stood idly by whilst massacres and famine has raged through populations.
Wasn’t it Urgent
http://youtu.be/YFqGdK3bSX0
The media has gone pretty quiet on the issue over in UK too. No BBQ summer and another cold winter ahead…
Whether the majority of people still believe in global warming is debatable, but what’s beyond question, is that they no longer care about it. It’s at the bottom of most people’s priority list, because of economic hard times.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/an-assessment-of-current-alarmist-propaganda/
Pointman
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/22/us-elections-barack-obama-climate-denial
Stein calls Obama a “denier” for NOT talking about climate.
Since he did not mention the holocaust either the same logic presumably makes him a holocaust denier as well.
“The climate catastrophe that used to be generations away is rapidly closing in on us.”
No, Jill the realisation by the public that they have been lied to and misled in closing in on YOU.
Check you poll ratings.