The major difference between this situation and “Climategate,” as far as I can see, is that Gleick admitted to the conduct, while the hackers who stole the Climategate emails haven’t. So the focus was kept on the emails in Climategate (or their mischaracterization by climate change deniers), but the focus is only on the acquisition of the emails in the Heartland Institute affair.

The New York Times Andy Revkin laments the fact that a whistleblower at Heartland Institute misled colleagues to gather and release internal documents showing the Institute was planning to obfuscate climate science in school rooms in support of climate change deniers. But all that’s happened is that another set of climate denial shills has bee exposed, so now they want to draft Revkin to help continue the shilling.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has a new bill out to kill fossil fuel subsidies that come in the form of tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. Instead, Sanders would redirect those funds to generate 10 million solar roofs in America, which would create installation jobs and significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption.

The joy in some quarters over the Obama decision to deny the permit to TransCanada to build the Keystone XL pipeline to carry tarsands oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. I’m glad for the decision, but it was hardly a ringing endorsement of either concerns about potential damage caused by spills from the pipeline or concerns about what tapping into the tar sands will do to the climate. Rather, it was political posturing for effect by DC politicians on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The GOP forced a rider into must-pass legislation saying “You’ve got 60 days to approve or deny” and State said — back then — that with that kind of a time limit, they’d have no choice but to deny. And this week, they did just that.

As Bill McKibben says, “We’ve won no permanent victory (environmentalists never do) but we have shown that spirited people can bring science back to the fore.”

Come Tuesday, Bill will be taking a group of spirited people to Capital Hill, to take the fight to the science-deniers who live off the money from Big Oil. It should be quite something.

It seemed like the afterthought in the payroll tax cut extension fight. But the two-month clock is now ticking on whether Obama will approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada’s environmentally disastrous tar sands. If we want him to make the right decision and deny the permit, maybe it’s time to Occupy Exxon, with creative protests at local Exxon/Mobil stations.

The Keystone XL pipeline will now either receive or be denied its construction permit by February 21, according to the schedule worked out in the two-month stopgap deal to extend the payroll tax, unemployment insurance and the doctor’s fix. But the ultimate fate of tars ands oil may not be decided for years.

The countries at the Durban climate conference made an agreement to make an agreement. I am skeptical they will make an agreement in 2015, which would not take effect until 2020. For the time being, the world will still operate under the auspices of the Kyoto protocol, which only covered industrialized nations, and to which the United States, one of the world’s biggest emitters, is not a signatory.

Recessions tend to depress economic productivity and reduce demand for electricity generation (a primary source of carbon emissions in the US and China). That results in less greenhouse gas emissions. But that brief reprieve on emissions has ended, according to the latest studies, accelerating the climate crisis.

A variety of links to articles and interviews on current topics that may, or may not, be of interest.

A variety of links to articles and interviews on current topics that may, or may not, be of interest.