The new ad for Nissan’s electric car, the LEAF, has hit the internet, and you’d be forgiven if you confuse it with a Charmin commercial. Salon is calling it a shameless ember thrown into the fires of the culture wars that will “will send you into a Tea-Party paroxysm of rage.” It’s more of a cuddly furball thrown into the political cage match of the global warming debate that will send you into an apolitical paroxysm of cute.

The news of Al and Tipper Gore‘s separation, for most in the media, came as a sudden minor tragedy, and not exactly something to be made light of. In the talk radio world, Rush Limbaugh saw it as a chance for a good laugh at the expense of Gore’s career as an environmental activist yesterday, finding an old report that suggested a high divorce rate in a country could contribute to global warming.

Just as Wolf Blitzer reached his 20th anniversary with CNN recently, he conducted a lengthy chat with the guy who started the network 30 years ago: Ted Turner.

The wide-ranging interview touched on some of Turner’s favorite topics – energy, the environment, his success at CNN – and some topics that very clearly were those Blitzer’s former CNN boss didn’t want to discuss.

It sounds like the title of an obscure Huffington Post column, but it’s today’s top story on CNN.com: “Is the Earth Striking Back?” Author Alan Weisman warns that the side effects of democracy in America are causing the earth to “strike back” at humanity with earthquakes and volcanos. Suddenly, global warming is the least of our problems.

In the debate on global climate change, Global Warming proponents may have just gotten their favorite closing argument back. The Associated Press is reporting that a British panel, made up of the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee, has completed an investigation today that clears the Climategate scientists of nearly all wrongdoing and validated their initial findings.

Didn’t we collectively get over the whole “calling everyone a Nazi” phase during the last election? And we didn’t learn our lesson the first time around? That’s why we were surprised to hear the old analogy brought back by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders during today’s Senate hearing on the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency because…what?

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman often makes valid points on climate change and clean energy, but for a variety of reasons, he’s the paper’s most vehemently-ridiculed columnist. Unfortunately, his latest column, which appeared today in the NYT print edition, will do little to quiet such criticism.

If this is the beginning of some sort of media match between Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow, then I think Maddow won the first round. To begin, it looks like Glenn Beck is in trouble again for not remembering what he himself has said. This time with Rachel Maddow. Also, he called her a liar. She did not take kindly to either. Let the evisceration begin.

The Snowpocalypse has given skeptics a reason to dance on the frozen grave of climate change, from Sean Hannity to Matt Drudge to Senator Jim Inhofe‘s grandkids. Needless to say, it is driving the greener-than-thou community and the scientists who actually study this material crazy. Case in point: former DNC chair Howard Dean on ABC News last night expressing complete loss of belief in the legitimacy of Republican global warming detractors and claiming they simply “don’t believe in science.”

Rachel Maddow takes no prisoners. Infuriated by the gratuitous right-wing jubilation that the massive Northeast snowstorms completely expose global warming as a hoax, Maddow took the liberty of making a series of analogies ranging from basketball to tadpoles to winning the lottery to disprove that connection. Short version of her argument: anomalies exist.

But just to assure the audience that her point was absolutely irrefutable, she brought an absolutely irrefutable personality on the air to agree with her: beloved childhood icon Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Rick Sanchez debuted his new show on CNN today called “Rick’s List,” loosely based around the ways one can “easily curating online comments around a topic, event or interest,” or so says the Rick Sanchez blog. One of the features on the new show is called “The List U Don’t Want To Be On.” The first entry? Actor Danny Glover, because he theorized somehow that global warming was to blame for the earthquake. Yup. He said that.

It appears that the relentless coverage of the Climategate scandal may have had some effect. Despite the record low temperatures — and regardless of what they may actually signify — fewer people believe that extreme weather conditions are the result of global warming than did just two years ago.

World Net Daily correspondent and conservative radio host Lester Kinsolving, with an assist from NBC’s Mike Viqueira, threw more hilariously loaded questions at Robert Gibbs from behind his signature shotgun mic. He touched on some subjects sure to tickle the sensibilities of the birther/global warming denier/dittohead set when he asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs why it was so cold out, did the President visit the hospital that Rush Limbaugh stayed in in Hawaii, and…just what hospital was the President born in?

Jesse Ventura‘s TruTV show Conspiracy Theory got contemporary last night when it covered two of today’s most-debated topics: global warming and Climategate. Last week, the show proved that it wouldn’t shy from controversy by taking on 9/11 conspiracy theories. But Ventura had already been on the record as a 9/11 skeptic before the show. With his unique take on global warming, Ventura takes it up a notch:

Climategate has slowly but steadily bubbled up from fringe meme on the Internet to hot-button political and scientific cause. Do a set of emails from a hacked climate research server show that global warming is a hoax? Paul Krugman contends that there was “not a single smoking gun” to Climategate, and that the global warming skeptics using the hacked emails as evidence need to brush up on their science.

Who: Steven D. Levitt talks with Stephen J. Dubner What: Thalia Book Club’s “SuperFreakonomics Live” Where: Symphony Space When: October 21, 2009 Thumbs: Up Stephen J. Dubner says that he faced a difficult adjustment when moving from covering his one-time subject, economist Steven D. Levitt, to collaborating with him on Freakonomics. On the contrary, Levitt [...]