The plot thickens:
White House aides Monday were mum about what would happen to the Office of Energy and Climate Change except to declare that Browner, a former Senate staffer to Al Gore, believed energy issues would remain front and center for the president.
One wonders now if Obama will even mention climate during the State of the Union Address Tuesday night. With jobs and economy taking front and center and Browner’s announcement right before SOTUA, government climate initiatives may be relegated to the back-burner. We’ll have to wait and see.
And it gets stranger, Haunting the Library writes:
Andy Revkin of the New York Times reported that Hansen was not happy with the current Obama administration, as despite offering his services “I never heard back anything from the White House”. This “lame” approach, he said could be seen in past Democrat administrations:
Nowhere is the lame middle-of-the-road go-slow compromise approach clearer than in the case of nuclear power. The [Obama] Administration has been reluctant to admit that the Carter and Clinton/Gore administrations made a huge mistake in pulling the U.S. back from development of advanced nuclear technology.
That is the way to make nuclear power safer (nuclear power already has the best safety record of any major industry in the United States) and resistant to weapons proliferation
New York Times. Dot Earth. NASA’s Hansen Pushes Obama for a Carbon Cost and a Nuclear Push.
Hansen also slammed President Obama for buckling to advocacy groups who impede progress on nuclear power, rather than being a “responsible leader” and authorizing a major new programme of building new nuclear power stations:
Nevertheless, the easiest thing that he could do, and perhaps the best that we can hope for, is for him to give a strong boost to nuclear power.
Unfortunately, he seems to fall prey to Democratic politics on this, rather than being a responsible leader.
New York Times. Dot Earth. NASA’s Hansen Pushes Obama for a Carbon Cost and a Nuclear Push.
Hansen’s comments may well be a dig at blogger Joe Romm (Climate Progress), formerly Acting Assistant Secretary at the Department of Energy for the Clinton administration. Despite frequently proclaiming global warming to be an existential threat to humanity, Romm has hindered the move to low emissions energy by waging a campaign against nuclear power, which – as Hansen notes – has “the best safety record of any major industry”. Why is Romm ignoring the advice of the scientists he himself champions? Is it science, or is it politics?
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Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark.
Seems like the climate/green energy movement is self destructing on the eve of the SOTUA.
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Hansen needs to be worried about the ethics investigation into him, that could lead to real problems for this guy and he needs to quit poking the hornet’s nest.
Finally, Obama seems to have made an about face after climate-gate, good for him.
I’m not a fan of Hansen and believe he’s a bit of a kook about CO2 and politics.
But.
Anyone who’s read his views in the totality (not just the CO2 rants) knows that he’s ALSO a very strong advocate of nuclear power, and has been for a long time.
A more accurate PR stance for Hansen would be for him to protest in front of coal-fired power plants with a banner reading “Dump coal, build nukes!” I think that’s the accurate reflection of his true beliefs.
[snip – me@you.com is not a valid email address, which is required to comment at WUWT – Anthony]
The problem the Greenies have with CO2 and energy is you simply cannot persuade most folks to starve, risk hypothermia in winter, heat stroke in summer, bike/walk 25 miles to work and use an abacus to surf the web. All of which would be required for just about any scheme of “green energy”. One needs hydrocarbons long past the time your grandchildren die. Even then, go dig a grave with one of those not-yet-made electric backhoes. But not to worry, as cold as it’s getting we’ll just stack your corpse along with all the others and wait until the next interglacial. In fact, maybe the Greens will have perfected a way to sequester the carbon in your body.
What Obama is doing is just playing a three card monte scheme. Expect the wild crazy to be tossed (under that really big bus Obama seems to drive) out to avoid subpoena’s and the resultant embarrassments when they testify and their written history is presented. If one really expects to see Obama change actual, real world policies, watch the permitting process for any new, major energy development that’s not a Greenie Pipe Dream.
You COULD have stopped right there … (sorry, (well, not really sorry) for some of us Soros-funded lefty non-critical-thinking Arriana HufPo is a no-go zone)
.
Now we know who is receptive to his latest ‘press’ as reflected in recent approval polls …
Rebounding in the polls (via the lawyers at http://www.PowerlineBlog.com; Michael, take note of this website)
Can I say this? -> “In his re-election bid, I hope he fails.”
(Sorry; a take-off on another R.R. admirer and com. slayer!)
.
We Win. We all Win!
I just heard on CNBC, this czar position will be eliminated.
Joe Kernan said a bit pensively while breathing out heavily, regulating CO2 is a bit of a stretch, as the other two hosts winced and agreed. Yes, the biggest CAGW pushers CNBC said that.
Do not expect a rational discussion on energy from the left. Their public policy positions over the last decades have led this country into the corner of the checkerboard. Their enlightened position du jour is now wind and solar, which lacks the pre-requisites of energy density and scheduling/dispatch.
I’m looking for windmills on automobiles any day now. (And the press will have the photos on page one to prove it.)
Go nuke- and use the extra electricity at night to make hydrogen for my car.
Still has Holdren, Chu, and Jackson, plenty enough to cause mischief. So is Browner going out some sort of local politics, or is Obama changing his mind about energy and climate?
========================
Browner should take a medical test for Goritus, judging the picture she’s now in the phase where she can’t close her mouth anymore and James Hansen, I am sorry to say this but he’s not the Middle Point of the Planet.
Maybe a few years of hard labor in a Chinese coal mine can bring him to his senses and bring him closer to his goal (Middle Point of the Planet I mean of course).
And from Obama to Revkin I gently and humbly take up Joanna’s smart suggestion and suggest all other poster here to do the same: “nullius in verba” Take nobody’s word for it.
_Jim says: Wrote
January 25, 2011 at 3:35 am
‘You COULD have stopped right there … (sorry, (well, not really sorry) for some of us Soros-funded lefty non-critical-thinking Arriana HufPo is a no-go zone)”
Jim,
I’m not a lover of Huffing and Puffungton Post.
You know what they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, or something like that.
The usual splintering of a movement.
I don’t think Europeans have looked up to Americans since Kennedy for political leadership, but that has changed now. According to polls 80% of Europeans have a positive view of Obama. That is extraordinary. Usually American leaders have been ridiculed and seen as shallow and populist, if not down right evil like Bush.
Greens in Europe are desperate for Obama to make a stance on Climate, because it will help them considerably to put pressure on their own governments.
Well, personally I don’t mind Obama, but the way some see him as some sort of world-historical person is bit odd.
Blame the weather? I thought it was climate.
UK GDP Comes At Huge Miss To Expectations As Weather Is Blamed, “Inflationary Surge” Causing Big Head Scratching
http://www.zerohedge.com/
Browner is an avowed communist/socialist/fascist.
Her exit can only be described as positive.
That said, one must question the ulterior motives of an administration that would hire her in the first place.
I hate to admit it but I must agree with Herr Hansen about the nukes.
John Walker said:
“Meanwhile…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
Scroll down to the China sub-heading and weep…”
Note at the bottom of the article on the AP1000 reactor:
“On April 9, 2008, Georgia Power Company reached a contract agreement with Westinghouse and Shaw for two AP1000 reactors to be built at Vogtle.[19] The contract represents the first agreement for new nuclear development since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.[20] The COL for the Vogtle site is to be based on the revision 16 to the AP1000 design. On February 16, 2010, President Obama announced $8.33 billion dollars in federal loan guarantees to construct the two AP1000 units at the Vogtle plant.”
That must have been Obama’s nod to the nuke industry.
MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION! This is the Captain of the USS CAGW: DON THE LIFE JACKETS! MAN THE LIFEBOATS! SCIENTISTS AND POLITICIANS FIRST!
tokyoboy says:
January 25, 2011 at 12:14 am
Is this the lady who was monikered “Energy Czar”?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yes, and a pain against freedom lovers for sometime now.
to Joe: Yes the loan guarantees for nuclear power is a P.R. stunt. Nuclear will not go anywhere until the waste issue is solved politically. Several states have laws on the books–that have passed judicial scrutiny–that prohibit new nuclear units in that state until the waste issue is fixed. The waste issue is federal, so the states can’t fix it themselves. The reason to prohibit nuclear plants is to protect utility ratepayers from unknown and possibly exorbitant costs for waste disposal. Rates are a state issue. So no matter how may loan guarantees are available, if the waste problem is not fixed, there will not be many, if any new nuclear units. And the Obama administration has presided over the shutdown of Yucca Mountain and ended efforts to license it.
So there it is in a nutshell. Give with one hand and take with the other, and maybe some people won’t notice.
Here’s a conspiracy theory. Perhaps Browner read the tea leaves and saw herself being called to testify before a Congressional committee…
Buddenbrook says:
January 25, 2011 at 4:26 am <blockquote
I don’t think Europeans have looked up to Americans since Kennedy for political leadership, but that has changed now.
That’s the best indication I know that Obama is no good for the US.
Carol Browner pic.
Hansen has jumped Romm’s shark.
John Kehr says:
January 25, 2011 at 12:50 am
Politics is politics…
…
So I will give Hansen a rare compliment. At least he truly believes in AGW. I will give him that. It isn’t political to him, he really believes it is real.
Any warmist that opposes nuclear power doesn’t deserve the time of day.
John Kehr
Hi John, yes he really does. I used to spend a fair amount of time at Scripp in La Jolla Calif. Some time around 2005 I began to really look at the AGW issue. One day at Scripps I saw a man getting very emotional, talking to another man about AGW. He was almost histerical and very upset that people could not see, what to him, was the obvious disaster ongoing with CO2 emissions, and he was angry and baffeled by anyone doubting the sermon. One or two days later I came across a picture of him on WUWT.