david wogan

And it’s only Monday!

Whether anguishing over American military interventions abroad or delivering jabs at Wall Street tycoons, this Twain is strikingly contemporary. Though the autobiography also contains its share of homespun tales, some of its observations about American life are so acerbic — at one point Twain refers to American soldiers as “uniformed assassins” — that his heirs and editors, as well as the writer himself, feared they would damage his reputation if not withheld.

“From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out,” Twain instructed them in 1906. “There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see.”

Balls. I can be loyal, dependable, and hardworking in Gryffindor. Right? No, okay.

(via jimray)

So it went throughout the area, as accommodations were made to try to avert brownouts or blackouts. Horse racing at Belmont Park was called off. New Jersey Transit canceled some morning trains. Amtrak warned customers of delays on its Northeast Corridor service on Wednesday because trains were operating at reduced speeds.

There were reports that a woman who died in Queens on Tuesday was the first heat-related death in the city, but officials had not confirmed that.

[…]

Con Ed was using all available tools for suppressing demand for power throughout its service area. For a second day, it had put all of its emergency programs into effect, which combined to cut usage by about 400 megawatts, according to Mr. Miksad. With them, consumption peaked just below 13,000 megawatts on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. Without them, it would easily have surpassed the all-time high of 13,141 megawatts, he said.

This article hits pretty close to home with the awful temperatures and humidity earlier this week here in D.C.

(thx, Seth!)

EPA’s recently proposed a “transport” rule that would replace the existing Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which reduces non-GHG emissions locally and downwind (that’s where the transport part comes from). But the D.C. Circuit Court has rejected CAIR because the of the uncertainty in the interstate trading.

It looks like we’ll be lucky if the final version of the new rule includes any interstate trading at all. Without interstate trading, the emissions reductions achieved by the new rule will be more expensive than they otherwise would be – possibly a lot more (I look forward to analysis from economists on exactly how much). Since the transport rule would replace both of the major cap-and-trade programs currently in operation in the U.S.—the Title IV SO2 program and the NOx SIP Call—this would mean an end to interstate emissions trading, at least for the 31 states affected by the new rule. It’s only a slight overstatement to say that cap and trade as we now know it would end.

In other words, the “trade” part of “cap and trade” is in jeopardy. This ruling applies to the existing Sox and NOx trading programs, which have been wildly successful. What does this mean for legislating carbon?

U.S. climate scientists have been receiving hate mail and death threats:

Professor Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and leading proponent of the “Hockey Stick graph”, said his experiences of hate mail were “eerily similar” to those described by Schneider. “I’m not comfortable talking about the details, especially as some of these matters remain under police investigation,” he said. “What I can say is that the emails come in bursts, and do seem to be timed with high-profile attack pieces on talk radio and other fringe media outlets.”

The short answer: no.

“When you look at the leading scientists who have made any sort of statement about anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, you find 97 percent of those top 100 surveyed scientists explicitly agreeing with or endorsing the IPCC’s assessment,” he says.

That result has been borne out by several other published studies that used different methodology, as well as some that are due out later this summer, he adds.

“We really wanted to bring the expertise dimension into this whole discussion,” Anderegg says. “We hope to put to rest the notion that keeps being repeated in the media and by some members of the public that ‘the scientists disagree’ about whether human activity is contributing to climate change.”