Political Climate Articles
Glenn Beck: "There aren't enough knives" for "dishonored" climate scientists to kill themselves.
Sarah Palin calls global warming studies "snake oil science."
The anti-science hatemongers have redoubled their efforts, as guest blogger Brad Johnson reports in this pair of ThinkProgress reposts.
On his radio show yesterday, Fox News host Glenn Beck argued that the world's climate scientists should commit suicide because they "have so dishonored themselves." After repeating exaggerated and false smears about the work of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international scientific and governmental body tasked with assessing the threat of global warming, Beck said "there's not enough knives on planet Earth for hara-kiri that should have occured," referring to the form of ritual suicide used by Japanese samurai:
There's not enough knives. If this, if the IPCC had been done by Japanese scientists, there's not enough knives on planet Earth for hara-kiri that should have occurred. I mean, these guys have so dishonored themselves, so dishonored scientists.
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As the World Burns
How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming
This was supposed to be the transformative moment on global warming, the tipping point when America proved to the world that capitalism has a conscience, that we take the fate of the planet seriously. According to the script, Congress would pass a landmark bill committing the U.S. to deep cuts in carbon emissions. President Obama would then arrive in Copenhagen for the international climate summit, armed with the moral and political capital he needed to challenge the rest of the world to do the same. After all, wasn't this the kind of bold move the Norwegians were anticipating when they awarded Obama the Nobel Peace Prize?
As we now know, it didn't work out that way. Obama arrived in Copenhagen last month without any legislation committing the U.S. to reduce carbon pollution. Instead of reaching agreement on how to stop cooking the planet, the summit devolved into bickering over who bears the most blame for turning up the heat. The world once again missed an opportunity to avert disaster - and the delay is likely to have deadly consequences. In recent years, we have moved from talking about the possibility of climate change to watching it unfold before our eyes. The Arctic is melting, wildfires are turning into infernos, warm-weather insects are devouring forests, droughts are getting longer and more lethal. And the more we learn about climate change, the more it becomes apparent how enormous the risks are. Just a few years ago, researchers estimated that sea levels would likely rise 17 inches by 2100. Now they believe it could be three feet or more - a cataclysmic shift that would doom many of the world's cities, including London and New Orleans, and create tens of millions of climate refugees.
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Obama orders 28% reduction of government-wide GHGs, which will cut energy costs $10 billion a year
While a comprehensive clean energy air, clean energy jobs bill languishes in the Senate, the President is wielding his executive powers now to green the government itself, creating jobs and spurring investments in new technologies.
Yesterday the president announced that the nation's largest consumer of energy -the Federal Government- will cut its emissions of global warming pollution by 28 percent by 2020.
This is a substantial reduction; much more aggressive than the economy-wide targets in pending legislation. Today's announcement was made in accordance with Executive Order 13514 for "Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance." Under the order, the President instructed each of the 35 federal agencies to perform a self-evaluation of their ability to reduce global warming pollution, and the target announced today is the aggregate of their commitments.
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Pentagon to rank global warming as destabilising force
The Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilising force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The quadrennial defence review, prepared by the Pentagon to update Congress on its security vision, will direct military planners to keep track of the latest climate science, and to factor global warming into their long term strategic planning.
"While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden on civilian institutions and militaries around the world," said a draft of the review seen by the Guardian.
Heatwaves and freak storms could put increasing demand on the US military to respond to humanitarian crises or natural disaster. But troops could feel the effects of climate change even more directly, the draft says.
More than 30 US bases are threatened by rising sea levels. It ordered the Pentagon to review the risks posed to installations, and to combat troops by a potential increase in severe heatwaves and fires.
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Kentucky lawmakers blast budget's proposed coal subsidy cuts
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's fiscal 2011 budget would cut roughly $2.3 billion in coal subsidies over the next decade, a move Kentucky lawmakers worry will mean heavy job losses in economically poor but coal-rich regions of Appalachia.
"Coal subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices," said a White House Office of Management and Budget analysis released Monday. "Removing these subsidies would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and generate $2.3 billion of additional revenue over the next 10 years, an amount that represents only a small percentage of annual domestic coal revenues - about one percent over the coming decade."
The cuts, along with the repeal of roughly $36 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry, is part the Obama administration's efforts to uphold an agreement struck last year during the G-20 summit in which member states committed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent.
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RESCUING FAILING STATES
By Lester R. Brown
One of the leading challenges facing the international community is how to rescue failing states, those countries most at risk of collapse due to a combination of weak governance, internal violence, and social upheaval. Continuing with business as usual in international assistance programs is not working, as evidenced by the continuing deterioration of places like Haiti, Somalia, and Yemen. The stakes could not be higher.
If the number of failing states continues to increase, at some point this trend will translate into a failing global civilization. Somehow we must turn the tide of state decline.(See earlier discussion of failing states at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/book_bytes/2010/pb4ch01_ss5.)
Thus far the process of state failure has largely been a one-way street with few countries reversing the process. Among the few who have turned the tide are Liberia and Colombia.
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The Rise and Fall of Consumer Cultures
The culture of consumerism that is being promoted by the world's governments, big business, and the media is imperiling the environment. A new culture of sustainability is desperately needed to set the planet on a more viable path. In the first chapter of State of the World 2010, Project Director Erik Assadourian examines where our wasteful culture came from, what its hallmarks are, and what you can do to help. This and other chapters from the report are now available for free download.
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Rep. Barton earned $100K from gas investment
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) has earned nearly $100,000 from an investment in natural gas wells that he purchased from a longtime campaign donor who also advised the congressman on energy policy, according to interviews and records.
Amid talks on a sweeping energy bill that would boost demand for natural gas, Barton's interest could become controversial. Congressional experts say such deals raise ethical questions for lawmakers, who are expected by the public to maintain a divide between their personal finances and official duties.
Land records show that Barton purchased his interest from Walter Mize, a Cleburne businessman who donated more than $30,000 to Barton's campaigns. There is no law or prohibition against going into business with campaign donors or lobbyists, according to Stanley Brand, an ethics lawyer in Washington, D.C., and former House general counsel.
However, on a 2008 House financial disclosure form, Barton indicated that he purchased his interest from EOG Resources Inc., the fourth-largest gas producer in the Barnett Shale, rather than from Mize.
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India's Roaring Economy Is Hitched to a Galloping Addiction to Coal
JHARIA, India -- Night falls here by 5 p.m. and people stream into the open-air market to catch the latest political news. They have much to discuss, because elections are currently on in the state of Jharkhand, which is famous for three things: corruption, a home-grown terrorism threat called Naxalism, and this area's economic life, which is marked in every imaginable way by coal.
Coal-fired electricity lights a single incandescent bulb in each shop, and the combined yellow glow gives the market a festive air. Underneath this town, the earth is burning. Suresh Kumar, 50, secretary of a local union, leaves the tea shop where he has his makeshift office and steers his motorbike down a road lined with dark piles of mining debris.
The light from his headlight is blocked by plumes of smelly, sulfurous smoke seeping out of the ground. He stops suddenly, seeing how close he has come to the edge of an open-pit mine. In the far distance, there is an orange glow in the sky. It is a non-natural sunshine reflecting the burning of millions of tons of prime coking coal. The underground fire has burned out of control for nearly a century.
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Coal study details benefits, ignores costs
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A new West Virginia Coal Association study touts the industry's multibillion-dollar economic benefits to the state, but it does not attempt to account for the costs of the damage done to human health or the environment.
The study, prepared for the Coal Association by economists at West Virginia and Marshall universities, found that coal creates 63,000 direct and indirect jobs and pumps $25.5 billion into the state's economy. The industry accounts for 9 percent of the state's gross domestic product, the study said.
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Obama triples budget for nuke loan guarantee program- but hasn't seen a single promising application in two years
Nuclear remains slow, risky, and expensive
Riddled with ever-escalating cost overruns, years of delays, and a lack of public support, its baffling why the nuclear industry continues to enjoy the support of so many "fiscally conservative" members of the US legislature.
Earlier this week CAP's Dan Weiss blogged here about Obama's nuclear error, explaining that the President has proposed in his 2011 budget to triple loan guarantees for the nuclear industry - from$18.5 billion to $54 billion - without extracting any concrete promises from nuke proponents to support comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation in return.
The other problem is that there weren't any credible applicants even before the funding increase, let alone for a program three times the size, as this NGO analysis reveals:
According to experts from around the United States, - the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) faces today [an] extraordinarily weak crop of four reactor project candidates vying for loan-guarantee bailouts. The four proposed projects at the top of the list for $18.5 billion in federal bailout support are: the Southern Company's Vogtle reactors in Georgia (widely believed to be the current front runner); the NRG reactor project in Texas; the VC Summer reactors in South Carolina; and the Calvert Cliffs reactor in Maryland.
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Arctic melt to cost up to $24 trln by 2050 -report
WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.
"Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs," said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York state who co-authored the report, called "Arctic Treasure, Global Assets Melting Away."
He said the report, reviewed by more than a dozen scientists and economists and funded by the Pew Environment Group, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts, provides a first attempt to monetize the cost of the loss of one of the world's great weather makers.
"The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner and it's starting to break down," he said.
The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said.
The losses could grow as a warmer Arctic unlocks vast stores of methane in the permafrost. The gas has about 21 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide.
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FOX News just won't let it go - Penn State Probe into Mann's Wrongdoing a 'Total Whitewash'
How thoroughly did Penn State University investigate a top climate scientist who brought hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to the school? A growing number of critics say they hardly looked at all.
Penn State ended a two-month probe into the work of Michael Mann, a top climate scientist whose "hockey stick" graph of climbing world temperature helped galvanize support for the climate change movement, on Wednesday.
The probe stemmed from the release of thousands of hacked e-mails from a server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England that showed the internal debate and, some say, the manipulation of data, to support the scientific underpinnings of the case for global, man-made warming of the planet. Mann's e-mails were among those released and critics charged that he used "tricks" to make his data match studies that confirmed warming trends.
A three-person board of inquiry cleared Mann of three of four charges brought by the university that he falsified or tried to destroy data, and recommended further study on the fourth charge that his methods "deviated from accepted practices" of the scientific community.
They wrote in their report that "that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy e-mails, information and/or data."
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