Last Saturday night, people all over the world celebrated an event called “Earth Hour” by turning off their lights for one hour beginning at 8:30 pm.  For an event that started just two years ago, it has achieved a remarkable level of attention and participation. According to the official Earth Hour website:

Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness. In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote.  VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet.

Many people who know me and my passion for environmental issues will be surprised to learn that I intentionally did not participate in Earth Hour.  I left my lights on, I watched NCAA basketball, and I Twittered and Facebooked about how and why I was blowing off the global demonstration.  The reason I did so is because I believe that such events can actually do detriment to the environmental cause.  In fact, a lot of things we do in the name of good causes do little but get in the way of real progress being made.  

About 10 years ago, I was driving with a group of friends from Richmond, VA to Florida.  We stopped for gas just before we got into South Carolina, because we were being careful not to spend any money in a state that flew the Confederate flag over its capitol.  Joining the economic boycott of the state that was in effect until the flag came down, we felt good about the fact that we were doing our part to fight racism. 

As I look back on that trip, though, I realize that the good feeling we got in our hearts was pretty much all that we achieved.  We didn’t do a damn thing to actually fight racism.  We did nothing to help eliminate the systemic evils in our government, our culture, and our economic system that do much more to oppress minorities than any piece of cloth ever could.  Even now, when the boycott has succeeded and the flag has come down, the deep racial divisions and inequalities in South Carolina remain as strong as ever.  Our well-intentioned “activism” turned out to be nothing more than a self-serving cop-out.  It took the place of more difficult and more effective forms of activism that would have required much greater commitment and sacrifice than just spending our money in one state instead of another.

And that’s the concern I have with Earth Hour.  Of course there is nothing wrong with turning your lights out for an hour and saving a little electricity.  Of course there is nothing wrong with finding solidarity with millions of other people who are doing the same thing.  And of course there’s nothing wrong with raising awareness and making a statement about the fight against global warming. 

But I fear that these mostly symbolic benefits of Earth Hour are outweighed by the practical detriment of what has been called “Point and Click Activism,” of choosing overly simple and convenient methods to address very difficult and complicated problems. 

Certainly, some of the people who turned out their lights on Saturday night are highly dedicated environmentalists who are deeply involved in struggles with corporations, governments, institutions, and entire cultures.  They are working hard and spilling their blood to reverse the suicidal cycles of consumption and destruction that our species is trapped in.  For them, the symbolic event of Earth Hour represents their very real involvement and activism.

But for most who sat and enjoyed the candlelight, an hour in the dark is about as far as they’re willing to go.  Or at least it’s as far as they’ve been asked to go.   At 9:30, when the lights came back on, the lion’s share of Earth Hour participants went right back to the same old lifestyles they had been living before - with one exception - they now have that warm feeling in their hearts that they did something good for the environment, just like my friends and I had when we thought we were fighting racism in South Carolina.

So here’s my suggestion for making Earth Hour more effective:  Make it an event that happens not just one night a year, but every single night of the year.  Imagine if we took the urgency and the spirit that has made Earth Hour so popular, and ingrained it into our culture until it became a part of our everyday lives.  Imagine that the first hour of darkness, the hour when we tend to use the most electricity, becomes a time when we habitually light our candles, sit around the table, and share food and fellowship with one another.  No lights.  No television.  No computers.  Then an hour after dark, we all switch on our electricity and get back to usual evening business. 

Now that really would make a difference, wouldn’t it?

As discussed in WashPost: Complicit in Disformation (or explicit collaboration)?, last Sunday’s George Will column was a disgraceful example of distorted discussion of climate change issues. This deceitful piece and the Washington Post’s seeming backing of it has created an uproar through the blogosphere that is seriously questioning what this sort of shoddy editorial management of opinion pages means for any Washington Post claim to journalistic integrity.

Now, this issue goes beyond this George F Will column to his serial stretching of fact to beyond the breaking point beyond truthiness. This issue goes beyond Will’s repeated will-ful deceit to the repeated Post publication of deception, often dishonest opinion pieces related to global warming and climate challenges. This is more than about Will’s deceit in Dark Green Doomsayers. Even so, it is worth returning to this specific deceitful piece to provide a simple summary of how it is deceitful with some quick references.

Here are just three of the explicit arenas of his deceit:

1. Claims that scientists (especially climatologists) were united in concerns over Global Cooling in 1970s. FALSE.
2. States that sea ice is same today as 1979. At best, misleading and disingenuous. And, his source disagrees with him.
3. States that there has been no global warming for a decade. At absolute best, misleading and disingenuous. And, his source disagrees with him.

“Global Cooling”.

Will writes:

In the 1970s, “a major cooling of the planet” was “widely considered inevitable” because it was “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950″

And, he has reference after reference seemingly nailing the coffin shut to prove this point. Only problem: it is not true that there was some form of scientific consensus around Global Cooling. Science works from hypothesis to testing of hypothesis to, if it stands up to testing, that hypothesis becoming a theory. Unlike Global Warming / Climate Change, which is a Theory, Global Cooling was never more than “hypothesis” and a “widely” disputed one at that. Last fall, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published the peer-reviewed review of this issue with the revealing title of The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. It begins

There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then.

But, the true extent of Will’s deceit goes further than this. One of the authors of this study, John Fleck, wrote both blog posts and an opinion piece following Will’s article. In Cherry-Picked Facts Heat Up Climate Debate (which should be a must read for the Post’s hand-picked fact checking team), Fleck points out that Will selectively quotes from articles, misrepresenting the actual conclusions. As to Will-ful deceit, Flect notes

When George Will last wrote about this subject, in May 2008, I sent him a copy of the 1975 Science News article, hoping he might get a fuller picture of what was going on at the time. I got a nice note back from him thanking me for sharing it. It doesn’t seem as if he read it, which would have been nicer.

After a fact and truth filled piece, Fleck concludes:

George Will is entitled to his own opinions. He is not entitled to his own facts.

Correlation of Will comments with the truth? Zero.

Global Ice Coverage

Will stated:

As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

To start with, the concerns from experts were over the dramatic fall in both the extent of Arctic ice and the thinner nature of existing ice coverage, not so much the global ice coverage. Thus, that is a misrepresentation. RE the Arctic ice,

Well,the Arctic Climate Research Center has these two paragraphs on their front page:

Observed Climate Change

Recent observed surface air temperature changes over the Arctic region are the largest in the world. Winter (DJF) rates of warming exceed 4 degrees C. over portions of the Arctic land areas. …

Sea ice extent averaged over the Northern Hemisphere has decreased correspondingly over the past 50 years (shown right). The largest change has been observed in the summer months with decreases exceeding 30%. Decreases observed in winter are more modest

To reinforce this point, lets go back to the WMO:

Because ice was thinner in 2008, overall ice volume was less than that in any other year. … Ice 70 metres thick, which a century ago covered 9 000 km2, has been chiselled down to just 1 000 km2 today, underscoring the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic. The season strongly reinforces the 30-year downward trend in Artic sea ice extent.

It is not just about total coverage, but also total amount of ice. George might want to confuse with a recent spurt in ice extent coverage without addressing the greatly reduced total ice coverage.

But, let us turn to the global ice coverage. The ACRC actually chose to post a direct rebuttal to George’s claims, calling them false.

“We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km.
Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.”

In fact, George relied, almost certainly, on another deceiver whose deception was unraveled by greenfyre. This compared (incorrectly, it seems) Dec 1979 with Dec 2008 ice and this misleading piece has shot throughout the global warming denier / skeptic communities. Even if this were correct, this is a two-month old piece of material. As per Brad Johnson,

Will’s claim about global sea ice extent would have been reasonably accurate — though irrelevant to the question of “evidence of man-made global warming” — if it had been published over a month ago. But by the time Will’s column was published, global sea ice extent had dropped well below its equivalent 1979 levels. I assume [the Post's editors] would have corrected Will if his column claimed George W. Bush was still president.

Correlation of Will comments with being truthful? Nada.

Recent Global Warming

Will ends his travesty with the following:

Real calamities take our minds off hypothetical ones. Besides, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade, or one-third of the span since the global cooling scare.

Let’s take a look, for a moment, at the UK’s Met Office which stated in Global warming goes on

Average global temperatures are now some 0.75 °C warmer than they were 100 years ago. Since the mid-1970s, the increase in temperature has averaged more than 0.15 °C per decade. This rate of change is very unusual in the context of past changes and much more rapid than the warming at the end of the last ice age. Sea-surface temperatures have warmed slightly less than the global average whilst temperatures over land have warmed at a faster rate of almost 0.3 °C per decade.

Over the last ten years, global temperatures have warmed more slowly than the long-term trend. But this does not mean that global warming has slowed down or even stopped. It is entirely consistent with our understanding of natural fluctuations of the climate within a trend of continued long-term warming.

These natural fluctuations include the El Niño Southern Oscillations (ENSO) in the Pacific Ocean. In El Niño years - those when cold surface water is not apparent in the tropical eastern Pacific - global temperature is considerably warmer than normal. A particularly strong El Niño occurred in 1998 resulting in the warmest year on record across the globe. In La Niña years - when cold water rises to the surface of the Pacific Ocean - temperatures can be considerably colder than normal. Volcanic eruptions can also cause temporary drops in global temperatures because of huge amounts of dust thrown high into the atmosphere that reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface. A La Nina was present throughout 2007 and much of 2008; despite this temporary cooling, 2008 is currently the tenth warmest in the global record.

Earlier in 2008, they questioned Is Global Warming Over?

The recent fall in global temperatures has led to increasing speculation that global warming is a thing of the past.

Despite this fall, a look at global average temperatures reveals a different picture. It shows large variability in our climate year-on-year – warmer some years, cooler in others - but what is very clear is an underlying rise over the longer term, almost certainly caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

…

Another way of looking at the warming trend is that 1999 was a similar year to 2007 as far as the cooling effects of La Niña are concerned. The global temperature in 1999 was 0.26 °C above the 1961-90 average, whereas 2007 was 0.37 °C above this average - 0.11 °C warmer than 1999.

As to the World Meteological Organization (WMO), they reported that 2008 AMONG THE TEN WARMEST YEARS; MARKED BY WEATHER EXTREMES AND SECOND-LOWEST LEVEL OF ARCTIC ICE COVER:

The year 2008 is likely to rank as the 10th warmest year on record since the beginning of the instrumental climate records in 1850, according to data sources compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global combined sea-surface and land-surface air temperature for 2008 is currently estimated at 0.31°C/0.56°F above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.2°F. The global average temperature in 2008 was slightly lower than that for the previous years of the 21st century due in particular, to the moderate to strong La Niña that developed in the latter half of 2007.

The Arctic Sea ice extent dropped to its second-lowest level during the melt season since satellite measurements began in 1979. Climate extremes, including devastating floods, severe and persistent droughts, snow storms, heatwaves and cold waves, were recorded in many parts of the world.

George F Will seems to be claiming that the WMO has stated that global warming is over. The WMO would seem to disagree.

Correlation of Will comments with honest dicussion? None to be found.

That isn’t all …

These are, in truth, just three of the Will-ful distortions and deceitful elements of Will’s OPED. But, take a look at these three. In all three cases, basic fact checking show that Will’s sources and the experts on the issues fundamentally disagree with him. And yet … and yet … the Washington Post stands behind its publication of his deceit and distribution of Will through the Washington Post Writers’ Group to over 450 newspapers One has to wonder how many of the editors, at those “over 450 newspapers”, realize how little seriousness the Post’s gives to its journalistic obligations?

NOTES:

1. Highly recommended: Brad Johnson, The Wonkroom, A Suggested Correction For Will’s ‘Dark Green Doomsayers’ Column. A playful, yet quite substantive, attempt to draft a Washington Post mea culpa for allowing Will’s deception into print. Links to substantive (definitive) refutation of key Will points. This follows up on Brad’s correspondance with the Post’s omsbudmen, who relayed “that the Post has a multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible”. Well, minus all those errors that the blogosphere was able to dredge up in minutes.

2. Blogosphere-wide outrage? The outrage is being widely expressed across the blogosphere, with some quite high quality discussions. In WashPost Embraces Will-Ful Deceit, I am attempting to provide a reasonable catalogue of the various responses to Will / the Washington Post. This also has links to discussions of other truthiness pieces published within the Washington Post in its ‘fair and balanced’ approach to Global Warming issues.

3. ACTION: Consider raising your voice on this issue. There is always The Washington Post’s Ombudsman: ombudsman@washpost.com . Perhaps more importantly, if George Will’s deceptive and deceitful prose appears in your local newspaper, consider a letter to the editor questioning the editorial standards by which Will’s dishonesty is allowed to be published. This diary, Brad’s work, and the pieces linked to in WashPost Embraces Will-Ful Deceit provide far more than enough material for such engagement.

Whether it is avoiding fatty foods, saving money for the future, or taking cod liver oil regularly, somewhat unpleasant actions today to prevent disaster tomorrow are a struggle against our very nature. This struggle extends from individuals to society, as present consumption and today’s concerns too often triumph over a ‘discounted’ future.

With climate change, this problem is taken to nearly the penultimate extreme. Either we (individually, collectively as a nation, collectively as a global society, collectively intergenerationally) get our act together or we’re discounting future into catastrophe.

Now that we have an Administration where scientists will be able to speak about science without fossil fuel lobbyists or 20-something ideologues taking red ink to their science, the US government will be speaking more forcefully about Global Warming. Overshadowed by the President’s statement on energy and Global Warming, we have news of a new NOAA report that paints a very ugly and dry picture for a 1000 years out if we don’t get serious about our societal spoons of cod liver oil.

One of the best attributes of a quality media outlet is a willingness to correct mistakes and try to make things right. When Huffington Post published a piece over the weekend riddled with discredited attacks on Al Gore and anti-science propaganda, I was livid. Now, with a nudge from Adam Siegel and others, they have come correct with an explanation and clarification.

Via email, Huffington Post has provided Arianna’s statement:

Harold Ambler reached out to me about posting a critical piece on Al Gore and the environment. We are always open to posts that present opinions contrary to HuffPost’s editorial view — and have welcomed many conservative voices, such as David Frum, Tony Blankley, Michael Smerconish, Bob Barr, Joe Scarborough, Jim Talent, etc., to the site. We have featured also countless posts from the leading lights of the Green movement, including Robert Redford, Laurie David, Carl Pope, Van Jones, David Roberts, and many others — and I myself have written extensively about the global warming crisis, and have been highly critical of those who refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence.

When Ambler sent his post, I forwarded it to one of our associate blog editors to evaluate, not having read it. I get literally hundreds of posts a week submitted like this and obviously can’t read them all — which is why we have an editorial process in place. The associate blog editor published the post. It was an error in judgment. I would not have posted it. Although HuffPost welcomes a vigorous debate on many subjects, I am a firm believer that there are not two sides to every issue, and that on some issues the jury is no longer out. The climate crisis is one of these issues.

I really appreciate Arianna taking the time to explain what went wrong in the editorial process, and more importantly, to clarify her long-held position on the climate crisis. While I would have liked to have seen this posted on Huffington Post, as well as the deletion of Harold Ambler’s original post, this good-faith effort to do the right thing goes a long way toward making things right.

Meanwhile, Harold Ambler is caught yet another in a lie. In a comment on David Roberts’ piece, he writes:

My only contact with the site prior to being published was Arianna Huffington herself, who read my piece, accepted it, and directed her staff to post it.

Thanks but no thanks, Harold. I’ll stick with Arianna’s version of the story.

More from: Adam Siegel and David Roberts.

Two disturbing trends have emerged recently in the battle against global warming:

(1)  According to Daily Kos, the percentage of Americans who believe global warming is real has dropped from 79% to 71% over the past few years - mostly due to a decline in Republican belief from 62% to 49%.  Apparently, the conservative campaign to deny climate concerns, led by the likes of James Inhofe and James Dobson, has been making some inroads.   Even as the scientific evidence for global warming continues to mount, the effort to convince the public of the danger seems to be losing to the right-wing propaganda machine.

(2)  Edmunds.com reports that pick-up trucks and SUVs, with their lower gas mileage, have actually outsold cars over the past month, making up 51% of all vehicles sold - a distinct reversal of recent trends.  The reason for this reversal is simple, as gas prices have plummeted by more than 50% over the last few months.  What this trend makes clear is the fact that Americans, for the most part, base their purchasing decisions primarily on their pocketbooks, with little regard for environmental concerns.  It also indicates a disturbing trend for short-sightedness, as gas prices are certain to rise again before too long.

Based on these developments, the challenge is two-fold.  The first task is to convince the more reasonable conservatives to listen to the facts of science instead of the distortions of the deniers.  This is a very achievable task.  23% of Republicans in Congress agree with the statement that “it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems.”  In addition, a number of evangelical leaders such as Rick Warren have backed a major initiative to fight the human causes of global warming.  The tide can be turned against the right-wing deniers, but it will require the left to work together with those who are environmentally sensitive on the right - despite our differences on other issues.

The second challenge should prove more difficult: convincing the typical American to buy fuel-efficient cars even when they can afford the gas-guzzling behemoths.  Perhaps this is where the government can step in and help provide the consumer with better options and incentives to buy green.  In his campaign, Obama proposed a plan to help Detroit automakers retool their factories to make more efficient cars, and many have said that a bailout of the Big 3 should include requirements to do just this.  I would advocate for even more aggressive measures, such as instituting a hefty tax on low gas-mileage personal vehicles that would help fund alternative energy research and the development of better public transportation.

At any rate, it is clear that we need to take seriously the deluded campaign of the right-wing deniers and the ongoing myopia of the American consumer.  If we don’t, all the science in the world can’t save us.

(cross-posted at Discipline for Justice)

As any who come to these pages are already aware, my passion is clear … helping my/your family, my/your community, my/your nation, my/our world find a path toward a prosperous and sustainable energy future. A path that will help us (US) navigate the dangerous seas of the Perfect Storm combination of Peak Oil (and other peak natural resources), Global Warming, and the Financial Meltdown around the globe.

At their core, all three of these challenges are resource challenges. And, solution paths exist to each of these challenges, even if finding our way to that solution could be extremely challenging. An even greater complexity is the simultaneity of these challenges. We must confront, tackle, solve each of these in a coordinated, reinforcing manner as the perfect solution for one challenge might be a lesser response, or even disaster, in another arena. What is the classic example of this? Investing in coal-to-liquids and tar sands could help ameliorate Peak Oil’s impact while providing the straw that breaks the camel’s back on our reckless rush into catastrophic climate change.

We must chart a course and find steady heads to navigate the treacherous seas of these converging of three major storms into the 21st Century’s Perfect Storm. We will either, in the next few years, chart and begin navigating such a course … or we can rest assured that human civilization will become shipwrecked in the coming decades, leaving behind something unfamiliar and undesirable to those currently enjoying the fruits of ‘developed’ global society.

The bright spot in this gloom: it is possible to chart a course.

And, even in the face of the immediacy of a global fiscal crisis and calls for fiscal discipline against any new spending and concerns that economic woes are chilling global warming action, even before the election, ever more voices were calling for a “green” route to a prosperous and climate-friendly global society. Back in October, Politico ran Can green jobs save us? which looked at how both Barack Obama and John McCain are speaking about “Green Jobs” as a core part of the path forward. (Even though John McCain’s rhetoric is, well, mainly hot air.) And, other voices called for ever greater boldness in the face of these crises.

this is a time to think big. We have to grow our way out of the economic depths. We have to use the money we’ll spend wisely enough to create external benefits for the next 50 to 60 years, to wire America like we electrified America in the 1930s, to fix the roads and bridges the way we built them then, to create a new, clean energy grid to replace the old one that served us well. We can not only face the biggest challenges in the world and create a sustainable economy at the same time, but they can complement each other. And we can say “hell no” to those Wise Men of Washington and the conservatives they enable, whose ideas on budgets and fiscal responsibility and supply-side economics have been totally discredited. We need only to have courage in crisis, and a willingness to lead the way.

At Grist, David Roberts articulated how the economic crisis should prompt more green infrastructure spending, not less

Before conventional wisdom hardens in the other direction, greens need to get out and start arguing that the current financial mess is not a reason to trim back our green ambitions, but to accelerate them with liberal spending on a smart grid, public transit, and other job-creating, emission-reducing, capital-intensive projects. Save the economy, save the planet.

And, Eric Pooley called this a Trojan horse approach

Say hello to Obama’s Trojan horse—a climate policy hidden inside an energy-and-economic policy. Obama takes Gore’s energy trifecta, lops off the climate message, and stores it in the belly of the beast while energy independence and economic renewal drive the contraption forward.

But it does not have to be a “Trojan horse,” a hidden agenda.

We can, we should, we must extol the power of combining these challenges and placing a path that provides “a” real solution to these (and, actually, other) very serious challenges before us.

Investing for a smart energy future would:

We saw tremendous movement in the Presidential campaign on energy issues, especially on the D side, with the candidates outbidding each other on better energy policy. President-Elect Obama has spoken strongly on climate issues and put forward a very progressive (read: realist and fact-based) team when it comes to energy and environmental policy.

Within this movement and building on it, what follows is part of the concepts that should help guide us in the coming months and years, in words that might be fit for a weekly Presidential-elect video-log.

It must be that time of year again. Just like last year, the Minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Commitee (read James Inhofe (R-Exxon)) has just released another “report” somehow proving that the globe isn’t warming or, if that fails, that humanity has nothing to do with the warming or, if that fails, that it really doesn’t matter or, if that fails, that we can’t do anything about it anyway.

Let’s make some things clear, we should be outraged about this report. But, perversely, Inhofe and sidekick Marc Morano merit credit for using their positions of power quite effectively to do great damage to our abilities to move toward sensible policies that might actual provide a prosperous and secure future for Americans. Giving credit where credit is due is normally a pleasurable task. …

[DIGG this story.]

Despite their laudable corporate policy on environmental issues, General Motors has a really hard time getting their message on global warming right. Last night on 60 Minutes, Bob Lutz continued his efforts to turn General Motors’ commitment to the environment into a bad joke.

First, we learned that Lutz has a massive carbon footprint. Owning a helicopter and a jet is bad enough, but two of each is unheard of.

Speaking about his own personal carbon footprint, Lutz acknowledges he and his wife own two helicopters and two jets.

Leslie Stahl then moved closer to the issue we all want to hear about:

“You have a terrible reputation with environmentalists, as you well know.

Amazingly, Lutz denies this:

“Well, actually some of them like me but go ahead…,” Lutz replies.

Show me an environmentalist that “likes” Bob Lutz and I’ll show you a gullible fool. Seriously, I’d love to know who he is talking about. Maybe Tom Wilkinson will be kind enough to stop by and shed some light on this, because I’m not buying it.

In the following exchange, Leslie Stahl offered Bob Lutz a golden opportunity to apologize for his backwards remarks of the past. He refused to do so.

I have been participating in a dialogue with Tom Wilkinson of GM for the past several days. Here is my response to Tom’s most recent comment, from Friday evening.

Tom wrote:

First, I don’t think it is entirely fair to imply that Bob Lutz went on the Colbert show to mock established science. He went on the show to promote the Chevy Volt. Which is the product of established science. Steven brought up global warming. It made for good shtik.

Regardless of what his intentions were (and his intentions are questionable), the result was the same. A General Motors corporate executive with a history of denying global warming went on a widely watched television show and pushed a thoroughly discredited theory on the science of climate change. For a company with a supposedly firm commitment to being environmentally responsible, this is not acceptable. I am not the only one who feels this way, see this, this, and this.

I wrote yesterday about the fact that a top executive at General Motors doesn’t accept the role humans play in global warming. To be clear, man made global warming is established science. Anyone who says otherwise cannot be taken seriously.

Incredibly, General Motors dispatched Tom Wilkinson, Director of News Relations, to defend both Mr. Lutz and the company’s environmental policies. He did so by commenting on my piece on Huffington Post. He wrote:

Increased energy efficiency and reduced petroleum use are desirable for a lot of reasons. There is no reason a three-dimensional human being (like Bob Lutz) can’t be skeptical about global warming orthodoxy and still be wildly passionate about more efficient vehicles. Which he is, by the way.

As for GM policy, it is set by a board of directors and a senior leadership group, not by one individual. And you might be surprised to find that dissenting voices are welcome within GM. In fact, they are encouraged.

A few of these comments also ring of age discrimination — not so good…

GM is as transparent as any company about what it is and isn’t doing in the environmental area. So if you are interested in looking beyond your biases, please visit our media site: http://media.gm.com/us/gm/en/.