Flopping News
McCain falsely claims he has 'never favored' capping global warming pollution
Yesterday, a local Arizona conservative talk radio host told McCain that "80 percent" of global warming science "is based on fraud and misinformation." Despite having previously refuted such nonsense publicly, McCain again remained silent. Pandering to the far right, the Arizona senator later said he "never" supported capping carbon emissions:
Q: If we knew then what we know today about these scientists and this fraud, would you still be in favor of capping carbon emissions at 2000 levels?
MCCAIN: I've never favored it at a certain level. I've favored reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the good of — I mean we all know that greenhouse gases are bad! But I've said, in order to achieve that we have to have nuclear power as a component of it.
In fact, McCain has actually co-sponsored cap-and-trade legislation. "We need a successor to Kyoto, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner," McCain wrote in a 2008 op-ed. And during the his 2008 presidential campaign, he delivered a major speech on his plan to address climate change. "A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy," he said in the speech. And he specifically outlined his plan to cap carbon "at a certain level":
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Regulator waffles on bisphenol A
EPA's tough talk goes silent after lobbyist meeting
Eight days after chemical industry lobbyists met with Obama administration officials, federal regulators delayed action on including bisphenol A in a new effort to better regulate dangerous chemicals.
The move is drawing suspicion, considering how the head of the Environmental Protection Agency had been talking tough in one speech after another last fall about the need to protect the public from such chemicals, particularly BPA.
But when the agency's list came out Dec. 30, identifying four chemicals that would face stricter labeling and reporting requirements, BPA was not among them.
While other agencies and governmental bodies are moving to restrict BPA's use because of concerns about its links to health problems, including cancer, the EPA now says it won't develop a tougher regulatory plan for the chemical for at least two years.
Critics say the Dec. 22 meeting might have been why BPA was dropped from the top of the agency's list.
White House notes about the meeting show how the American Chemistry Council aggressively pleaded its case that BPA should not be flagged for greater regulation.
Lobbyists for the trade group presented a group of studies - most of which the industry paid for - that downplayed the risks of the chemical. They complained that the EPA's plan to designate certain chemicals as a "chemical of concern," prompting tougher scrutiny, will hurt their profits.
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Republican Budget Commission Chairman Dismisses Claim That Spending Cuts Alone Will Rein In Deficits
Tomorrow, President Obama is expected to formally announce the creation of a commission charged with formulating a plan to address the country's long-term budget deficits. Obama will reportedly name former Republican senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton White House official Erskine Bowles as the commission's chairmen.
When Obama first made his intention to create a deficit commission known and said that he was "agnostic" regarding the proposals that it would consider, many Republicans went on the offensive, claiming that the commission was simply a way to push through tax increases. Instead, the GOP has been advocating for a commission that is explicitly barred from considering taxes and can only focus on cutting spending.
Fortunately, Simpson isn't buying that argument, and in an interview with the New York Times he "dismissed claims from Republicans that reining in deficits would be easy or accomplished with spending cuts alone":
"But they don't cut spending," he said, citing the administration of President George W. Bush when Republicans also controlled Congress. "Don't forget the Republicans never vetoed a single bill in six and a half years. How is that for cutting spending?" "To say that all we have to do is take care of waste, fraud and abuse, and foreign aid is a like a sparrow's belch in the midst of typhoon," he said. "That is nothing, less than 1 percent of the budget."
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Texas State Climatologist disputes his own state's climate-denier petition.
John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist
Texas's own state climatologist can find no scientific basis in his state's effort to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that greenhouse gases endanger the public. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R-TX) filed paperwork to challenge the EPA endangerment finding yesterday, asserting that the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) cannot be trusted because of "serious misconduct" by a "cadre of activist scientists colluding and scheming." In an email interview with ThinkProgress' Wonk Room, Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon dismissed the Climategate conspiracy theories:
Do I think that the EPA based its assessment on sound science? I think, by basing its assessments on the IPCC, USGCRP, and NAS reports, it was basing its assessments on the best available science. I have the expertise to independently evaluate the quality of these reports, and on the whole they constitute in my opinion the most comprehensive, balanced assessments of climate change science presently available.
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Climate: Eight Convenient Truths
In his remarks at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, President Obama did say (to my delight) that climate solutions advance both prosperity and security, but he hadn't time to rebut in detail the "sign error"—the widespread fallacy that climate solutions are intrinsically an economic burden.
Now that the post-Copenhagen dust has settled and it's time to refocus on what we should be doing and get back to work, here are eight convenient truths to consider and share about climate and energy.
1. For all world citizens who want a richer, fairer, cooler, and safer world, here's a heretical suggestion: whether you want to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions should not depend on your view about the reality and risk of climate change.
More importantly, your opinions about climate science shouldn't change what you should do about energy. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and prosperity, or climate and environment, exactly the same energy actions make sense and make money regardless.
Thus, if we focus on outcomes, not motives, we can build a wide and rapid consensus on what to do, even if we differ about why to do it.
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South Dakota legislators tell schools to teach 'astrological' explanation for global warming
Last week, the South Dakota House of Representatives passed a resolution to "urge" public schools to teach astrology. Brad Johnson has the amazing story in this Think Progress repost.
By a 36-30 vote, the legislators passed House Concurrent Resolution 1009, "Calling for balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools of South Dakota." After repeating long-debunked denier myths and calling carbon dioxide "the gas of life," the resolution concludes that public schools should teach that "global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact":
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:
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Refuting state AG's anti-science petition, Virginia climate scientists see "great risk" from greenhouse gases
Virginia's Attorney General is claiming that global warming is "unreliable, unverifiable and doctored" science, but the state's climatologists aren't buying it, as Brad Johnson reports in this Wonkroom repost.
Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) — a former state senator and corporate attorney — has joined Texas and right-wing industry groups in challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public. In a press conference announcing this petition, Cuccinelli claimed that hacked "Climategate" emails prove a conspiracy by scientists involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to replace real science with "political science." His efforts to block "job-destroying regulations based on unverifiable and unrepeatable so-called science" are supported by Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA):
It's very clear the process by which this was undertaken was not one that was set up to reach an objective conclusion. This wasn't the pursuit of truth. It was political science, not science in the typical sense of the word. . . . While we're open to seeing where honest, unbiased science leads us in the climate policy arena, we are not prepared to stand by while EPA proceeds to implement job-destroying regulations based on unverifiable and unrepeatable so-called science.
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Why should we believe the earth is round, just because scientists say so?
Tom Tomorrow poses the question in this hilarious cartoon for Salon:
This Modern World By Tom Tomorrow
Note: Someone sent it to me and I missed noting the publication year, which was 2007. The less things change….
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The top 5 ways the 'birthers' are like the deniers
The people who refuse to accept the reality that President Obama was born in the United States share much in common with those who refuse to accept the reality that humans are dramatically changing the climate.
5. Both groups are impervious to the evidence. During the campaign, "Obama released a certification of live birth, which is the official document you get if you ask Hawaii for a copy of your birth certificate," as Salon explains. Further, "state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii." Politico labels this "seemingly incontrovertible evidence." Similarly, the reality of human-caused warming has been overwhelmingly demonstrated and affirmed by the peer-reviewed literature, the hundreds of scientists who review and report on that literature periodically as part of the IPCC process and the more than 100 world governments (including the Bush Administration) who approved the 2007 IPCC summary reports word for word (see "Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report: Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly" and "Can you PROVE to me that global warming is being caused by mankind?"*).
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Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain
by: Jeffrey Sachs
In the weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the science of climate change came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence — and that the science itself is severely flawed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global group of experts charged with assessing the state of climate science, has been accused of bias.
The global public is disconcerted by these attacks. If experts cannot agree that there is a climate crisis, why should governments spend billions of dollars to address it?
The fact is that the critics — who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks — are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign, they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.
Many books have recently documented the games played by the climate-change deniers. Merchants of Doubt, a new book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway set for release in mid-2010, will be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. The authors show that the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.
Today's campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulphur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing "acid rain." Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too.
Later still, the group defended the tobacco giants against charges that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other diseases. And then, starting mainly in the 1980s, this same group took on the battle against climate change.
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Scientists dispute climate sceptic's claim that US weather data is useless
Ex-weatherman Anthony Watts says many US weather stations produce unreliable data because they are located next to artificial heat – but a scientific analysis suggests that, if anything, such stations underestimate warming
It appeared to have shaken the credibility of one of the most important global warming data sets in the world. A blog-inspired campaign by amateur climate sceptics seemed to show that numerous weather stations across the US were so poorly located they could not be relied upon.
But a new scientific analysis, using data from the sceptics, has shown that, if anything, the poorly located stations underestimate warming, rather than exaggerating it.
The US temperature record uses data from thousands of weather stations spread around the country. Their accuracy was called into question following a campaign by climate sceptic Anthony Watts, an ex-weatherman who runs the influential blog WattsUpWithThat.
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Water fallout: Utah's first nuclear plant won't float without water rights
The former uranium boomtown of Green River sits along I-70 in eastern Utah, 100 miles from the closest city. Now it may become the Western outpost of America's nascent nuclear renaissance. Blue Castle Holdings, a 3-year-old, politically connected startup, wants to build a nuclear power plant here -- Utah's first, and the first in the West since 1987.
Nuclear power has recently gained cachet -- and the backing of the Obama administration -- for its potential to help avert climate change. Nuclear generation emits a fraction of the greenhouse gases of coal or natural gas generation, and provides a steadier energy supply, at a larger scale, than solar or wind arrays. In January, President Obama made nuclear power the center of his "clean energy" agenda in his State of the Union speech. Two days later, he announced a commission to study nuclear waste solutions, and proposed tripling federal loan guarantees for new plants to $54 billion.
The Green River proposal has sparked intense skepticism. Critics ask where the funding will come from, where the electricity will go, and, of course, what will happen to the waste. But the first hurdle is more immediate. In the Utah desert, this possible climate change solution is colliding with one of its projected consequences: water scarcity.
Blue Castle needs some 50,000 acre-feet annually -- enough water to supply up to 100,000 homes -- to cool the reactors of its proposed 3,000 megawatt plant, which would produce enough electricity to power nearly 3 million households.
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