[Bill Becker has written a great post, that we're adding to the series.]

Joe has pointed out the folly — and the disappointment — of two supposedly climate-friendly presidential candidates proposing a suspension of the federal gas tax this summer.

I can’t resist adding a few notes from the heartland.

The Denver Post reports this week that commuters in that city are riding mass transit in record numbers. The Regional Transportation District, which operates the city’s bus and light-rail systems, reports it carried nearly 98 million passenger trips during the year that ended in February. That’s the largest number for any 12-month period in the agency’s 30-year history.

Ridership on light rail alone averaged 68,000 passenger trips each day in February. RTD officials attributed the record ridership to the “high price of gasoline (and) a growing interest in environmentally friendly practices”.

The New York Times reports that “soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cares into a stampede“:

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The investigation into the firing of Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator Mary Gade has just begun. But this is not the first EPA scandal involving Dow Chemical’s plant in Midland, Michigan. In 1983, a dioxin-laced scandal involving the very same plant led to a dramatic shakeup of Reagan’s EPA, when Mary Gade was a young staffer at the agency.

As the New York Times reported in an April 19, 1983 story, Dow Chemical’s illegal attempts to avoid responsibility for its dioxin contamination began as far back as 1965:

Almost 20 years ago, scientists from four rival chemical companies attended a closed meeting at the Dow Chemical Company’s headquarters. The subject was the health hazards of dioxin, a toxic contaminant found in a widely used herbicide that the companies manufactured.

Shortly after the meeting, in Midland, Mich., on March 24, 1965, one of those attending wrote in a memorandum that Dow did not want its findings about dioxin made public because the situation might ”explode” and generate a new wave of government regulation for the chemical industry.

The “new wave” of regulations did come to pass, with the Environmental Protection Agency established in 1970 to enforce those laws. However, under President Ronald Reagan, the Environmental Protection Agency colluded with Dow Chemical to hide its responsibility for dioxin contamination:

Three weeks ago, for example, agency officials in Chicago told the Investigations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that their superiors in Washington ordered them to change an important report on dioxin to comply with the wishes of Dow.

The key deletion from the report was the following central conclusion about Dow’s Midland plant: ”Dow’s discharge represented the major source, if not the only source, of TCDD contamination found in the Tittabawassse and Saginaw Rivers and Saginaw Bay in Michigan.”

The Reagan administration doggedly attempted to cover up the scandal. As Maureen Dowd reported in Time Magazine in March 1983, President Reagan “tried to down-play the problems, blaming the press for exaggerating the story.” However, a congressional investigation exposed the extent of Dow Chemical’s influence over the EPA, leading to the dismissal of EPA Administrator Anne McGill Burford and 12 other officials:

Anne McGill Burford, for example, made at least two trips to Midland, Mich., in her 22 months as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Rita M. Lavelle, the former head of the Government program to clean up toxic waste dumps, met at least 14 times with Dow officials in the 11 months she held office.

Mrs. Burford, Miss Lavelle and 11 other political appointees recently resigned or were dismissed amid Congressional inquiries on allegations that the agency’s toxic waste program had been mishandled.

Like the dioxins still contaminating the waters of Saginaw Bay, it appears that Dow Chemical’s toxic influence over the Environmental Protection Agency continues to this very day.

(HT: Dave Dempsey, the Great Lakes Blogger and prominent Michigan environmentalist.)

UPDATE: As Michael Hawthorne reports in the Chicago Tribune, Dow Chemical and the business lobby are still fighting the public relations war:

“There is all of this mystique about dioxin,” said John Musser, a Dow spokesman. “Just because it’s there doesn’t mean there is an imminent health threat.” [...]

Bob VanDeventer, president of the Saginaw County Chamber of Commerce, said local leaders are trying to fight the perception that dioxin makes the area unsafe. He argued “not one illness” can be attributed to dioxin and insisted the only way someone could be exposed to dioxin is if they “eat the dirt.”

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency dismissed Midwest regional administrator Mary Gade, one of ten such officials appointed directly by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. Gade — a lifelong Republican and a prominent supporter of George W. Bush‘s pursuit of the presidency in 2000 — told the Chicago Tribune, “There’s no question this is about Dow.” Gade was locked in a battle with Dow Chemical over the cleanup of dioxin poisoning from its world headquarters in Michigan. As former EPA official Robert Sussman writes in the Wonk Room, “To remove a Regional Administrator because of a disagreement over policy at an individual site is unheard of.”

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) just spoke on the Senate floor about Gade’s firing. Whitehouse compared her firing with the U.S. Attorney scandal that enveloped the Department of Justice and led to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s resignation:

We do not yet know all the details of Ms. Gade’s firing, or everything that may have gone on between her office and Dow Chemical. But from everything that we’ve heard and seen so far, it looks like déjà vu all over again. From an administration that values compliance with its political agenda more than it values the trust or the best interests of the American people. Last year we learned that this is an administration that wouldn’t hesitate to fire capable federal prosecutors when they wouldn’t toe an improper party line. Today it seems that the Bush Administration might have once again removed a highly qualified and well-regarded official whose only misstep was to disagree with the political bosses.

Watch it:

Sen. Whitehouse also announced that he is conducting an oversight hearing into the politicization of the EPA and the circumstances of Gade’s dismissal next Wednesday. The last time EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson testified before Sen. Whitehouse, he put in a shameful performance, leading Whitehouse to state:

In my short time in Washington, I didn’t think I would again encounter a witness as evasive and unresponsive as Alberto Gonzales was during our investigation of the U.S. Attorney scandal. Unfortunately, today EPA Administrator Johnson stooped to that low standard.

UPDATE: Kate Sheppard at Gristmill writes that, according to an Energy and Commerce Committee spokesperson, Committee Chair John Dingell (D-MI) “is concerned about this and has asked his oversight staff to look into it.”

UPDATE II: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-MI) noted that Gade stepped down “the same day that Indiana forwarded its final draft air permit for the BP Whiting plant to EPA Region 5 for its review.” He has “asked for a meeting with the Administrator of EPA so that I can better understand why Ms. Gade has been placed on administrative leave,” and called on President Bush to “act swiftly to fill this important position with an administrator who will protect Lake Michigan and the communities that surround it.”

Sen. Whitehouse’s full remarks on politics at EPA, as prepared for delivery: Read more

Our guest blogger is Robert M. Sussman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and former Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Mary Gade

In a highly unusual move, EPA Administrator Steve Johnson reportedly stripped the Administrator of EPA Region 5, Mary Gade, of her powers and told her to quit or be fired by June 1. Mary is a loyal Republican and one of the most seasoned and experienced environmental policy-makers in the country.

In addition to many years as a career employee in Region 5, Mary was appointed by Republican Governor Jim Edgar to head the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. She served in that position with distinction, chairing the multi-state Ozone Transport Assessment Group which recommended groundbreaking controls of NOx emissions throughout the Eastern US. Mary was also the head and co-founder of the Environmental Council of the States, an influential and respected group of top environmental officials from state agencies.

While the facts are still coming to light, Mary has said that EPA political leaders wanted to block the Region from taking aggressive action to clean up dioxin contamination near the Dow Chemical facility in Midland, Michigan and removed her from her position because she would not go along. This would be an unprecedented and highly irregular action by EPA political management. The regions traditionally have broad discretion in handling cleanups.

To remove a Regional Administrator because of a disagreement over policy at an individual site is unheard of.

If Mary stood up for her career staff and pushed for strong action to abate contamination, she was only performing her job under the environmental laws as she saw it. It is hard to believe that Mary, an astute and successful lawyer in private practice with a long track record of implementing the federal contamination laws, would overstep legal boundaries. If her only sin was zeal in protecting the public, firing her was wrong and will send a troubling message to EPA employees all across the country who are trying to do their jobs. Clearly, it’s up to Steve Johnson to explain why he fired Mary and up to Congress to investigate the circumstances.

A staunch Bush supporter, Mary said in 2000 that “Governor Bush in two terms has put together a stronger bipartisan record on conservation and the environment than Al Gore has in twenty-plus years in Washington, D.C., precisely because Bush puts action and results above talk and posture.” Mary’s firing sadly demonstrates that “action and results” are not encouraged or rewarded at Mr. Bush’s EPA.

The Nature article that has caused so much angst about the possibility we are entering a decade of cooling — “Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector” (subs req’d) — has, in fact, been widely misreported. I base this in part on direct communication with the lead author.

In fact, with the general caveat from the authors that the study as a whole should be viewed in a very preliminary fashion, and should not be used for year-by-year predictions, it is more accurate to say the Nature study is consistent with the following statements:

• The “coming decade” (2010 to 2020) is poised to be the warmest on record, globally.
• The coming decade is poised to see faster temperature rise than any decade since the authors’ calculations began in 1960.
• The fast warming would likely begin early in the next decade — similar to the 2007 prediction by the Hadley Center in Science (see “Climate Forecast: Hot — and then Very Hot“).
• The mean North American temperature for the decade from 2005 to 2015 is projected to be slightly warmer than the actual average temperature of the decade from 1993 to 2003.

Before explaining where the confusion came from — mostly a misunderstanding of how the Nature authors use the phrase “next decade” — let’s see how the media covered it:

MEDIA CONFUSION

The UK Telegraph says “Global warming may ‘stop’, scientists predict” — “… Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a ‘lull’ for up to a decade.”

National Geographic News blares, “Cooler Climate May Hit N. America, Europe Next Decade.”

Revkin at the NYT wonders, “Can Climate Campaigns Withstand a Cooling Test?” and says the Nature study forecast “some Northern Hemisphere cooling in the coming decade.”

No surprise, global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe leaped on this with his own press release: ” ‘Global Warming Will Stop,’ New Peer-Reviewed Study Says: Global Warming Takes a Break for Nearly 20 Years?”

But none of these headlines accurately portray what the data presented in the paper actually says. Let’s look at the paper’s key figure, the one that looks at past and (forecast) future global temperatures, “Hindcast/forecast decadal variations in global mean temperature, as compared with observations and standard climate model projections” (click to enlarge)

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