A study found News Corp climate coverage “overwhelmingly misleading.” The only question is where that 7% at Fox came from.
Federal court upholds Obama EPA’s climate change regulations
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and the environment was based on “an ocean of evidence,” saying the agency’s move to limit those emissions from cars and trucks was “neither arbitrary nor capricious.”
Republican Response:
“This ‘big win’ for the Obama EPA is a huge loss for every American, especially those in the heartland states which rely on fossil fuel development and the affordable energy that comes with it,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The Republicans sycophantic worship of greed is as undeniable as global warming. Too bad global warming does not selectively kill only Republicans. Makes our job in protecting life on earth that much more difficult. Republican Inhofe and his fellow climate deniers will go down in history as the asskissingest bottom feeders ever shit on this Earth.
In addition, Mitt Romney supports nullifying EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
One For The EPA and Fuck the Shiteating Republican Party of Cowardly Greed
"In 2011, Republicans voted 37 times to block action to address climate change, including votes to overturn EPA’s scientific findings that climate change endangers human health and welfare; to block EPA from regulating carbon pollution from power plants, oil refineries, and vehicles; to prevent the United States from participating in international climate negotiations; and even to cut funding for basic climate science."
— U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, report, “The Anti-Environment Record of the U.S. House of Representatives 112th Congress.” (via climateadaptation)
We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.
But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.
President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.
The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.
Through November, 2011 has experienced the most extensive coverage of severe drought and abnormally wet conditions on record.
… NOAA’s Climate Extreme Index (CEI) reveals that (for the period covering January through November) 56% of the U.S. is experiencing either severe drought or extremely wet conditions, way above the historical average of 22%.
— WaPo’s Capital Weather Gang blog, 12 December 2011
(via socialuprooting)
The only thing the U.S. brought to the table was a wrecking ball. This isn’t just a delay, it’s a death sentence.
The U.N. climate talks desperately need a crisis. For the last 10 days, negotiations here in Durban, South Africa, have made little progress on the fundamental challenge these talks were set up to confront: how the world can come together to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Instead, the pace of negotiations has been set by the one country the rest of the world should be turning their back on: the United States.
The U.S. never signed the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding international agreement designed to reduce emissions, but it is allowed to take part in the negotiations in a separate track dedicated to securing a long-term climate agreement. After President Obama’s election, the international community had high hopes the new administration would bring a new sense of ambition and commitment to talks.
Instead, the only thing the U.S. brought to the table was a wrecking ball. Rather than standing out of the way and letting the rest of the world get on with setting up an international architecture to facilitate cutting emissions, stopping deforestation, and investing in renewable energy, the U.S. has spent the years since Copenhagen attempting to systemically dismantle the U.N. process.
(Source: socialuprooting)
Billion dollar weather disasters, but NOAA. This takes a minute to grasp. See the green bar on the far far right? It shows the number of climate related events in 2011 that exceeded one billion dollars. So far, it shows 12 event at $200 billion dollars in damage - the highest number of events and most costs in history. Background:
- To date, the United States set a record with 12 separate billion dollar weather/climate disasters in 2011, with an aggregate damage total of approximately $52 billion. This record year breaks the previous record of nine billion-dollar weather/climate disasters in one year, which occurred in 2008.
- These twelve disasters alone resulted in the tragic loss of 646 lives, with the National Weather Service reporting over 1,000 deaths across all weather categories for the year.
- Previously only 10 events were reported; the two new billion-dollar weather and climate events added to the 2011 total include:
- The Texas, New Mexico, Arizona wildfires event, now exceeding $1 billion, had been previously accounted for in the larger Southern Plains drought and heatwave event. This is in line with how NOAA has traditionally accounted for large wildfire events as separate events.
- The June 18-22 Midwest/Southeast Tornadoes and Severe Weather event, which just recently exceeded the $1 billion threshold
- NOAA continues to collect and assess data regarding several other extreme events that occurred this year including the pre-Halloween winter storm that impacted the Northeast and the wind/flood damage from Tropical Storm Lee. Currently, these events are not over the $1B threshold using the available data.
Source: NOAA
(via socialuprooting)
Russian heat wave statistically linked to climate change
The forces behind weather are notoriously hard to pin down, and so climate scientists need to be careful and nuanced when they assess whether extreme weather is linked to climate change or just a freak weather event. Some events, like the unprecedented heat wave that killed 700 in Russia last summer, seem obviously linked to climate change. Now, by using a modeling approach originally based on casinos, scientists can model weather and predict the impact climate change had.
In the case of the Russian heat wave, researchers predict that climate change was 80% responsible. “With climate change, it’s going to happen five times more often than without,” said climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf. These findings further solidify what climate scientists have been warning for decades: the hotter the Earth gets, the more likely extreme weather is to occur.
Added emphasis at the end is mine. We’ve taken the “ostrich” approach of putting our heads in the sand far too long.
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is worried that the EPA is going to regulate farm dust. So worried, in fact, that he pledged to eliminate the EPA during Thursday’s presidential debate. But maybe he should do some more research: It turns out, the EPA is actually doing nothing of the sort.
