Climate Newsbits

From the department of "We Will Pay for Climate Change One Way or the Other": New York Governor Andrew Cuomo requests $30 billion in federal assistance for disaster relief and infrastructure improvements.

For example, Mr. Cuomo wants to replace the region’s power grid — at a cost of $30 billion over 10 years — with a so-called smart grid that would improve the ability of utility companies to pinpoint areas with power failures and respond to them.

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Earlier I mentioned that Norfolk, VA, a city of 240,000, might need $1 billion for a seawall. The climate queue appears to have begun.

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Since the Democrats kept the Senate in last week's election, James Inhofe will not ascend to the majority chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee. (It will be retained by Barbara Boxer of California.) In fact, he is term-limited by Republican caucus rules, so the minority chair will be David Vitter (R-La.), "a more moderate climate skeptic (if such a thing exists)."

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Oregon's Ron Wyden will become chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Wyden strikes me as one of the most thoughtful and reasonable politicians in the country (except for a little blip where he wanted to work with Paul Ryan on Medicare reform).

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New Zealand announces it will not commit to a second Kyoto protocol. Even the good guys are bailing (though 36 countries are on board).

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From an editor at Newsday, the biggest paper on Long Island, to James Inhofe: "Hey, senator, how about buying a house on the South Shore of Long Island?"

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Andrew Dessler:  “Science papers are frequently like cooking chili — you don’t really know how it’ll turn out until you put it in the fridge for a day or two,” he said.

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NOAA is now saying this winter is favored to be "ENSO-neutral."
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