Political Climate Articles
Foot in Mouth
"We've never said that [the stimulus] wouldn't create one job." -- House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), 6/30/10
VERSUS
"Government doesn't create jobs!" -- Boehner, 12/03/09
Major climate decisions may come from ozone treaty
GENEVA - Governments moved closer Friday to curbing the use of chemicals commonly used as coolants in refrigerators, air conditioners, hair spray and other household items in what some say would be among their biggest climate decisions ever.
The obscure round of U.N. ozone treaty talks in Geneva, which few people are following, laid the groundwork this week for a possible decision in Uganda in November to halt the promotion of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are manmade chemicals not found naturally in the environment, and are considered greenhouse gases.
The U.S., Canada and Mexico gave the talks a boost by joining the small island nations of Micronesia and Mauritius in petitioning to amend the ozone treaty known as the 1987 Montreal Protocol to drastically cut production and use of HFCs.
By 2050, scientists predict HFCs could account for 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gases.
"It's a controversial issue that has been discussed for the second year. It's gaining support and should the parties decide on this it would be the most important (climate) decision," said Marco Gonzalez, executive secretary of the U.N.'s ozone secretariat, which administers the treaty.
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Bid to suspend California's global warming law qualifies for November ballot
The battle over the initiative, launched by Texas oil giants Valero and Tesoro, will pit that industry against environmentalists and the state's clean-tech businesses.
California headed for a high-stakes battle over global warming Tuesday, as an oil industry-backed measure to suspend the state's aggressive climate-change law qualified for the November ballot.
The fight will pit the state's powerful environmental organizations and clean-tech businesses against the oil and manufacturing industries. It also arrays many conservative political leaders, including the GOP nominee for governor, Meg Whitman, against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fellow Republican who regards the global warming law as a key part of his legacy.
Whitman has said she would suspend the global-warming law for one year but has not endorsed the initiative.
The measure, launched six months ago by Texas oil giants Valero Energy Inc. and Tesoro Corp., comes as the industry has fallen under intense scrutiny in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.
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Oil and gas industry-funded GOP Congressman can't give safety assurances for lifting drilling moratorium
The GOP is still addicted to Deepwater exploratory drilling - and like many addicts, they pursue the next fix even knowing the dangers. TP has the story:
Today, a federal district court judge with financial investments in the oil industry ruled against the Obama administration's 6-month moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling, which the President issued in the wake BP's Gulf oil spill to ensure that future drilling is safe and environmentally sound. The White House has said it will appeal the decision.
Last week, Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) decided to take the legislative route, introducing a bill in the House to lift the moratorium, saying it "is turning a tragedy into a nightmare." He called it a "job-killing policy" because it will cause, he said, "other oil rich nations to move their rig operations overseas." But last night on Fox News, when host Greta Van Susteren asked Olson if he could guarantee that the rigs effected by the moratorium have been "inspected" and are "safe," Olson dodged, citing the "history of drilling" and the economy:
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Rep. Broun (R-GA) says clean energy legislation will cause southerners to die from hyperthermia!
The figure above shows the number of days the temperature will exceed 90oF by century's end in the IPCC's A2 scenario (850 ppm), which is actually lower than our current emissions trajectory (see "Global Warming Is A Medical Emergency": Hellish heatwaves to harm health of millions).
Yet even though much of his state is poised to exceed 90oF much of the year, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) went to the floor of the House last week to slam clean energy legislation because it would supposedly lead to … hyperthermia, where body temperatures skyrocket, and then "people are gonna die because of that"! Here is his bizarre rant:
BROUN: A lot of old people in Georgia and Florida and all out through the southeast and southwest they're depending upon air condition just to live. And if their electricity goes sky high, and the energy bill is gonna make that happen if it ever passes. And a lot of people aren't gonna be able to afford to run their air condition anymore. And a lot of people are gonna have a hard time with, hyperthermia is what we call in medicine as a medical doctor, their body temperature is gonna go up. They're gonna get dehydration and people are gonna have a lot of problems and it's gonna have a greater impact on our health care system and people are gonna die because of that. And it's gonna kill jobs too.
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Defense Experts Want More Explicit Climate Models
SAN DIEGO -- Tell us what you don't know.
That's the message military and national security experts gathered here want to send to climate scientists.
While political leaders on Capitol Hill seek definitive answers about how quickly the world's climate will change, military and national security experts say they're used to making decisions with limited information.
But as they turn their attention to the geopolitical implications of climate change, they're pressing scientists to help them understand the risk and uncertainty inherent in forecasts of future environmental shifts.
"Are we going to wait for perfect data? No. Not only the Department of Defense but any successful organization doesn't wait for perfection," said Rear Adm. David Titley, who heads the Navy's Task Force Climate Change. "But we need to understand, how certain are you? And what does that mean?"
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Jindal demagogues sand barrier 'solution'
...that probably won't help, will take many months, use up valuable resources, vanish in the first storm - and many scientists think will make things worse
Coastal geologist: "I have yet to speak to a scientist who thinks the project will be effective."
"In the end, we have a project that is incredibly expensive. There has been little scientific review. It is questionable if the proposed berm will prevent oil from entering the wetlands it is designed to protect. The structure will be very short-lived. And there are many potential negative impacts of this structure on the coastal environment that have not been evaluated. Coastal dredging and filling can cause significant damage to marine organisms and local ecosystems as massive amounts of sand are dug up in one location and then deposited on the sea floor in another spot. In addition, building a 45-mile sand berm could alter tidal currents and lead to the erosion of natural barrier islands that protect the Louisiana coast from hurricanes."
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Democrats Start to Play Hardball on Climate
Thanks to BP's oil spill, significant climate-change legislation now has a real shot at passing, though not because it will gain votes for the Senate's struggling energy-reform bills. Democrats have another tactic in mind.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's latest energy strategy is to fold a comprehensive climate bill in with bipartisan legislation reforming the oil industry. The "spill bill," a response to the BP oil spill that would impose new safety and environmental rules and reform regulation of offshore oil exploration, is fast-tracked for approval in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee next week. Both Democrats and Republicans have rallied behind the need for refined regulation to ensure that a disaster like the Gulf spill does not happen again. Democrats are hoping that by sneaking energy provisions into the bill, Republicans won't be able to vote against it without looking like they're siding with Big Oil.
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Wall Street Front Group Celebrates Record Success Electing Radical Pro-Corporate, Pro-BP Candidates
John McArdle reported this week that the radical Wall Street front group "Club for Growth" is "celebrating" a near perfect winning streak this election cycle so far, especially given the results in run-off elections last Tuesday. The Club is known for running hard-hitting attack ads, especially in Republican primaries, against candidates who would consider raising any form of taxes on the rich or have done anything to hold powerful corporations accountable. Noting the Club's historic role of purging moderates from the GOP, Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) is quoted in the article calling it the "Spanish Inquisition."
Chaired by prominent Wall Street investors like Thomas Rhodes and Richard Gilder, as well as the wealthy and reclusive Howie Rich, the Club collects funds from employees of J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while being buoyed by large donations like a $1.4 million contribution from investor Stephen Jacksons of Stephens Groups Inc. The hand-picked candidates of the Club claim to lead the tea party movement, even though polls show that 70% of self identified tea partiers want the government to help create jobs, and nearly half want government to rein in executive bonuses.
Despite this contradiction, the Club-endorsed primary winners are already tacking to the extreme, pro-corporate right. For example, with BP's oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Club candidates are rushing to defend the rights of corporations over the rights of the American victims of the catastrophe:
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Sen. Snowe Is Working Quietly to Find 'Consensus' on Capping Utility Emissions
Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe expressed support yesterday for making electric utilities pay fees for releasing carbon dioxide, giving Senate Democrats a critical Republican supporter in their stalled pursuit of climate legislation.
The assertion could inject momentum into a downsized plan to regulate emissions, supporters say, following weeks of impasses and fractured opinions around a broader bill that sought to cut carbon from thousands of businesses.
Snowe, a moderate from Maine, has been discussing the utility option privately with colleagues for months, one source said, seeing it as politically appealing even as Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) were developing legislation to include refineries and factories under the cap.
Over that time, Snowe has been moving behind the scenes to encourage Democrats and Republicans to consider capping utility emissions, sometimes finding resistance from liberal members seeking deeper cuts. She believes the focused cap-and-trade program would protect businesses and electricity customers from stricter greenhouse gas limits -- and costs -- being drafted by U.S. EPA, which is poised to begin enforcing its first round of climate policies in January.
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Climate Peacocks
Like deficit peacocks who pretend to be hawkish on budgets but refuse any real solution, climate peacocks are politicians who strut with fine words about science, energy reform, and the environment, but reject solutions to the threat of climate change. "Climate peacocks like to preen and call attention to themselves with flashy moves," Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Joe Romm writes, "but they are not sincerely interested in taking the difficult but necessary steps toward reducing carbon pollution." With the greatest oil disaster in United States history destroying the Gulf of Mexico and the hottest year on record killing Americans with extreme heat waves and freak storms, now would seem to be the time for the Senate to end its allegiance to fossil fuels. Some senators, like James Inhofe (R-OK) and John Barrasso (R-WY), simply deny the threat of man-made global warming and defend the oil and coal companies who fill their campaign coffers. Unlike these true obstructionists, the climate peacocks hypocritically profess to be concerned and say that the Congress should act -- but somehow find fault in any solution offered. "The line from most of these folks is that they want Congress, rather than the [Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)], to take the lead on global warming," the New Republic's Brad Plumer writes. "Trouble is, many of them won't vote for a climate bill, either."
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EPA's Initial Testing Finds Dispersants Roughly Equal, But Raises Questions
After ordering BP last month to find and switch to a less toxic chemical dispersant than Corexit - which BP has sprayed in record quantities into the Gulf of Mexico -- the EPA announced today that based on initial testing, all eight dispersants the agency is studying "are roughly equal in toxicity."
So far, however, the dispersants have been tested only on their own - not in combination with oil, which some scientists believe [1] is more toxic than either oil or dispersant alone.
These are not the first toxicity tests conducted on these dispersants: according to an EPA fact sheet released today [2], the manufacturers "already tested both the toxicity and the effectiveness of each of these dispersants." In a conference call today, Paul Anastas, the EPA's assistant administrator for research and development, said the toxicology tests are "an important part of the listing criteria" for a product to be placed on the National Contingency Plan Product Schedule [3]- the EPA's list of authorized dispersants.
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