Iago quits Othello, and other climate news

• Via a Rabett and a Gold-Digger, the voluminous Marc Morano appears to be leaving the employ of Senator James Inhofe (apologies to Othello for comparing Inhofe to him, btw). Circumstances of the departure aren't clear, but we can always hope that crime doesn't pay. Morano is leaving for some two-bit denialist website I hadn't heard of before. Time will tell whether this all is good news - Morano won't quit denying but will likely be much less important, and we'll find out how important this all is to Inhofe when he gets a new shill.

• The mayor of Palo Alto, Peter Drekmeier (a friend of mine), announced his support for a city-level carbon tax on electric power. People either pay the tax or use renewable power. While Palo Alto has more flexibility because it runs its own utility, this is still a great start. Carbon taxes are compatible with cap-and-trade, and this proposal will reduce Palo Alto's need to buy allowances. Palo Alto's a city of 60,000 people - not huge but not tiny either. If the other 5% most-progressive cities took the same action, we'd be making progress.

• My small local environmental non-profit received several postcard invitations to this year's Denialist Conference. Nice, full-color cardstock, so the bad guys still have some money to waste. The Sierra Club, just down the hall from us, got stiffed (hah!). My impression is that it's less prominent this year, but who knows.

• More if unnecessary proof of ocean acidification from carbon dioxide. There are some interesting legal hooks to acidification and sea level rise because they're not like a hurricane where one can question whether climate change played a role. Bad guys should be worried, and good guys should be looking for class action