… or maybe I have that backwards. It’s honestly getting so hard to tell McCain and Bush apart these days.

It was just yesterday that McCain flip-flopped on his opposition to offshore drilling, in an effort to send billions of dollars to U.S. oil companies while saving Americans pennies at the pump.

Now the Associated Press reports:

Bush wants to allow offshore drilling for oil

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush plans a renewed push to get Congress to end a long-standing ban on offshore oil and gas drilling.

With oil prices soaring and motorists paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, political pressures have been growing for more domestic oil and gas production.

White House press secretary Dana Perino tells The Associated Press that Bush believes Congress shouldn’t waste any more time. She says that on Wednesday the president will urge lawmakers to lift the ban on offshore drilling.

Congressional Democrats have opposed lifting those prohibitions. The ban has been in effect for more than 80 percent of federal Outer Continental Shelf waters for more than a quarter-century and includes both the East and West coasts.

The extreme storms and record-breaking floods that have devastated the Midwest, killing dozens, disrupting the nation’s infrastructure, causing billions of dollars in damage, and sending food prices skyrocketing, are consistent with the effects of global warming on the region predicted eight years ago.

In 2000, the National Assessment Synthesis Team of the US Global Change Research Program published “The Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change,” with regional overviews of possible and likely changes due to global warming.

In the Midwest overview, the authors noted the effects of climate change that were already evident in the region:

Annual precipitation has increased, with many of the changes quite substantial, including as much as 10 to 20% increases over the 20th century. Much of the precipitation has resulted from an increased rise in the number of days with heavy and very heavy precipitation events. There have been moderate to very large increases in the number of days with excessive moisture in the eastern portion of the basin.

The Midwest, models predicted, would suffer from both extreme precipitation and increased drought, as the region warms:

Despite the increases in precipitation, increases in temperature and other meteorological factors are likely to lead to a substantial increase in evaporation, causing a soil moisture deficit, reduction in lake and river levels, and more drought-like conditions in much of the region. In addition, increases in the proportion of precipitation coming from heavy and extreme precipitation are very likely.

This year’s floods come only two years after a drought gripped the region.

The report called special attention to the effects of the 1988 drought and 1993 flood on the critical transportation infrastructure of the region:

Climate extremes in the Midwest can drastically impede the highly weather-sensitive transportation systems that serve not only the region, but the entire nation. Chicago is the nation’s rail hub handling much of the nation freight traffic. Barges operating on the Mississippi River system, that includes the Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers, handle a large fraction of the country’s bulk commodities, such as grain and coal.

Prolonged heavy rainfall in the spring and summer of 1993 produced extensive flooding across nine states in the upper Midwest. The flood waters poured over and through many levees and inundated numerous floodplains that many of the key rail lines cross. The flood waters became an absolute barrier to surface transportation in the region for more than six weeks. Train traffic had to be rerouted around the flood area, resulting in long delays and large costs to manufacturing. River barge traffic suffered a similar fate with the additional costs to shipping and manufacturing approaching $2 billion.

A week ago, Gov. Chet Culver (D-IA) told reporters:

Very few people could anticipate or prepare for that type of event.

Unfortunately, just as with the Iraq debacle, Katrina, housing bubble, and September 11 attacks, experts warned against this type of disaster — but they have been ignored by the press and blackballed by this administration.

UPDATE: At Climate Progress, Bill Becker makes some excellent policy recommendations, and concludes:

Our sense of community now must come not from sharing disaster, but from the common effort to evolve past the carbon era. We need to pay attention to what scientists tell us we can expect from climate change, including extreme weather events. It should be obvious by now that we ignore their warnings at our own peril.

UPDATE II: In line with Becker’s post, Friends of the Earth is calling on the United States to “prepare and safeguard Midwest by changing flood control policy.”

Lost in all the deserved criticism of John McCain’s flipflop on offshore oil drilling is the most stunning sentence in his entire energy speech. Attacking Barack Obama, McCain says:

He doesn’t support more traditional use of coal, either.

Seriously. The same day McCain is pushing a new ad on global warming to pander to people who genuinely care about the climate and think he might be different from Bush, he is pandering to those who care nothing whatsoever about the climate.

McCain says he wants to cut U.S. carbon emissions from coal oil and natural gas by 70% by 2050, but he also says wants to drill for more oil offshore (which would cut U.S. gasoline prices maybe two to four cents in a decade or more) and he wants to build more traditional, dirty coal plants that don’t even capture their carbon.

Is he so cynical that he thinks the voters are that easily fooled?

Is his base (the media) that easily fooled?

Is there a Society of American Mavericks and Eccentrics (SAME) that can revoke his membership.

Related posts:

• Memo to media: McCain doubletalks to woo conservatives and independents at the same time
• On energy policy, is better than Bush enough?
• McCain, NOT the candidate of change, says no to Boxer-L-W without giga-subsidies for nukes
• Speech, Part 4: Will McCain bring conservatives with him on climate? As if!
• Climate speech, part 3: John McCain loves big government
• McCain speech, Part 2: Relying on offsets = Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic
• Speech, Part 1: Anti-wind McCain delivers climate remarks at foreign wind company
• McCain reveals cynicism, hypocrisy with call for summer gas-tax holiday, energy budget freeze
• Campaign stunner: McCain “might take [new CAFE standards] off the books”
• McCain’s non-straight talk on nuclear power
• McCain opposes ‘mandatory’ carbon limits
• No climate for old men: Why John McCain isn’t the candidate to stop global warming
• McCain’s Double-Talk Express on Global Warming

On the stump, Sen. McCain (R-AZ) makes great hay of his support for global warming legislation. And his willingness to take photo-ops in the Everglades and stand in front of green backdrops has convinced some in the political press that McCain is a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist. At the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller says, “On the environment … Mr. McCain has strikingly different views from Mr. Bush.” Joe Klein tells his Time.com audience Bumiller did the “voting public a great service today” with her article. They’re being bamboozled.

On the same day that he is drilling for cash in Texas with his new oilmen buddies, McCain has released a new advertisement trumpeting his global warming bona fides:

John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming — five years ago. Today, he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions, a plan that will help grow our economy and protect the environment. Reform. Prosperity. Peace. John McCain.

Watch it:

In truth, McCain’s record on the environment, like Bush’s, is execrable, with a lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters of 26 percent. McCain is demonstrating his willingness to play both sides of the field in releasing the ad the same day he’s making a speech that calls for increasing our addiction to oil — as both the National Journal and CNN noted. And his shining point of differentiation, his willingness to address climate change, is wilting as he embraces Bush’s political machine. McCain can’t be “realistic” about global warming and satisfy Texas oilmen with their “big time money” at the same time. So what is he going to choose?

Five years ago, McCain wasn’t running for president. The energy industry is fueling McCain’s campaign with millions of dollars and dozens of lobbyists in top staff positions — future generations of Americans, not so much.

UPDATE: This — the launch video for 350.org — is what a spot from true climate activists looks like:

[Bill Becker has a good follow-up on my post, "Global warming causes deluges and flooding, just like the Midwest is seeing (again)".]

From the standpoint of global climate change, nature’s incredible assault on the American heartland this year can be interpreted in one of two ways. Both offer lessons about the challenges of adapting to the climate we have created.

As of June 13, 1,577 tornadoes had been reported in the United States, with 118 fatalities. The season started in January, unusually early, with more than 130 reported tornadoes in the upper Midwest. As if to send voters a reminder to ask the presidential candidates about their positions on climate change, 84 tornadoes broke out the week of Super Tuesday in Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee.

As I write this post, record floods are inundating communities in the Mississippi River Valley at a level of intensity that may make the Great Flood of 1993 seem like an “ankle tickler,” as riverside residents like to call minor flood events.

On June 9 in Wisconsin, a breach in its dam emptied Lake Delton, a 245-acre man-made lake, into the Wisconsin River. My old stomping grounds in Wisconsin’s Kickapoo River Valley suffered record flooding for the second time in a year. Among the inundated communities was Gays Mills, now threatened with extinction due to its repeated damages.

By June 15, nine rivers in Iowa were at or above historic flood levels and 83 of the state’s 99 counties had been declared in a state of emergency. In Cedar Rapids, the Cedar River crested at 32 feet, 12 feet higher than the previous record set in 1929, causing an estimated $730 million in property damage and forcing 24,000 people to abandon their homes and businesses. If the usual post-disaster pattern holds true, many of the smaller businesses will never reopen.

The damage is far from over.

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