They called this year’s U.S. Open “Bathpage.”

And yes, Tiger Woods lost, even though I called him an “all-climate player” after he won “the brown British Open” at drought-stricken Royal Liverpool in 2006 and the “Hottest Major of All Time.” In fact, I had predicted “No doubt he’ll some day win the ‘wettest major of all time,’ too” — but a bad draw and bad putting thwarted him, as I’ll discuss at the end.

And this was a bath.  As Newsday reported Thursday evening about the rainsoaked first day,

The golf-hating storm system that soaked the U.S. Open tournament in Farmingdale Thursday broke records for the date in Long Island and New York City, continuing a streak that may make this one of the wettest Junes on record, according to the National Weather Service….

“If this keeps up, New York City could see its rainiest June”….

A weather station at Long Island MacArthur Airport recorded 1.53 inches by 8 p.m., beating its previous record of 1.44 inches.

The 2.26 inches that fell at Kennedy Airport shattered the record of 1.49 inches set in 1972.

I’m going to borrow and modify a term from the scientific literature and call this a “global-warming-type” deluge — see Must-have PPT: The “global-change-type drought” and the future of extreme weather.  After all, this type of extreme downpour is precisely what climate science projects would happen when you put more water vapor into the air.  And it is precisely what major peer-reviewed studies have shown the United States has been experiencing in the past few decades (see Why the “never seen before” Fargo flooding is just what you’d expect from global warming, as Obama warns):

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As the House of Representatives nears a landmark vote on green economy legislation this Friday, some environmental organizations are staking hard positions — both for and against its passage. Although most national environmental groups are calling on Congress to “strengthen and pass” the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), a few groups are going farther. Most notably, the League of Conservation Voters announced Tuesday it would withhold its influential endorsements from any member who votes against the “historic” Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation:

In light of the tremendous importance of this legislation, LCV has made the unprecedented decision that we will not endorse any member of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election cycle who votes against final passage of this historic bill.

In contrast, Friends of the Earth has announced its opposition to the bill, arguing that the support it has received from companies like Duke Energy and Shell Oil has come at too great a price to the environment and the American people:

There’s a simple reason polluting and irresponsible corporations support the Waxman-Markey bill: It showers them with hundreds of billions of dollars, but doesn’t require them to reduce pollution fast enough to avoid devastating climate change impacts. Worse, the bill guts the EPA’s preexisting authority to use the Clean Air Act to reduce this pollution. That means the bill is actually counterproductive — enacting it into law would be a step backward. What we need from Congress is much stronger legislation that puts us on a path to the clean energy future President Obama talked about during his campaign.

At Open Left, progressive blogger Chris Bowers argues that LCV drew its line in the sand in the wrong place. “LCV could have made the strengthening amendments the line in the sand,” Bowers explains, but its position “could put the LCV in a position where it works against members of Congress who voted to strengthen the bill” and voted against final passage if they “feel it is too weak.”

Center for American Progress John Podesta indirectly responded to Friends of the Earth — which is running ads on progressive and environmental websites — when he called on progressives to support this “imperfect” bill, which he believes still represents a dramatic improvement from the status quo.

“Why did Rick Boucher vote to kill Virginia jobs?” Newt Gingrich’s coal-powered front group, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), asked this incendiary question of the coal-district Democrat in a full-page advertisement in the Roanoke Times. The ad, acquired by the Wonk Room, claims Boucher voted “for new energy taxes on every Virginian” when he supported the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) in the House energy committee last month. ASWF goes on to cite terrorizing statistics about “Boucher’s new energy tax”:

Boucher’s new energy tax would:

1. Kill 1,105,000 American jobs per year on average

2. Increase electricity rates 90%

3. Increase gas prices 74%

4. Increase an average family’s annual energy bill by $1,500

5. Send U.S. jobs to China and India

These figures are drawn from a repeatedly discredited study by the Heritage Foundation, who used an unrealistic economic model to examine the effects of a cap-and-trade system that does not resemble the comprehensive clean energy provisions of Waxman-Markey. In reality, independent experts from the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency have found that the clean energy legislation will:

– Decrease electricity bills 7 percent

– Improve the budgets of the poorest 20 percent of Americans

– Cost between 22 to 48 cents a day for the average American household

– Cut global warming pollution and oil dependence

And these studies didn’t even take into account the economic benefit of averting catastrophic climate change. Furthermore, creating powerful standards for global warming pollution and clean energy create good American jobs, not kill them. Boucher’s vote was a down payment on a national investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency that would dramatically reduce U.S. global warming pollution would create 45,000 jobs in Virginia and create 1.7 million jobs every year.

ASWF’s attack exposes the conflict occuring within the American energy industry. From his perch in the energy committee, Boucher won significant concessions on behalf of the coal industry in the legislation. Some companies — like the coal-powered utilities Dominion Resources, American Electric Power, and Duke Energy — recognize that the United States must pass comprehensive climate legislation now, and have heralded Boucher as a champion of their interests. However, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, is bankrolling the dishonest attacks of Gingrich’s group and the National Mining Association.

The League of Conservation Voters has sent an “unprecedented letter” to House members stating (emphasis in original):

In light of the tremendous importance of this legislation, LCV has made the unprecedented decision that we will not endorse any member of the House of Representatives in 2010 election cycle who votes against final passage of this historic bill.

At the same time, 29 nonprofit groups, including the one I work for, have sent a separate letter to House members that opens:

Dear Representative:

On behalf of the millions of members and volunteers that our organizations represent, we write to urge you to support final passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES).

We also urge you to do everything possible to strengthen the bill between now and final
passage, and along its journey to the President’s desk.

These are the groups urging passage of ACES:

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I realize that in the blogging world you get no credit for claiming things after-the-fact.  But what has been obvious to some of us for a while is now I think becoming painfully obvious to the White House and Congressional Democrats:  A serious climate bill is politically easier than a serious health care bill.

The reason is simple.  It comes down to three letters of the alphabet — CBO.  The climate bill always had one big advantage — it pays for itself.  Most of the serious health care reform options on the table, however, add more than $1 trillion to the federal budget deficit according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Making climate action deficit neutral is easy.  Making healthcare deficit neutral ain’t, especially if you want to deal with those 50 million uninsured Americans.

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An important new study from U of M’s Transportation Research Institute, “Fixing Detroit: how far, how fast, how fuel efficient” concludes:

The impact of higher fuel economy standards on industry profits is very clear:  Increasing fuel economy 30% to 50% (35 MPG to 40.5 MPG) would increase the Detroit 3′s gross profits by roughly $3 billion per year, and increase sales by the equivalent of two large assembly plants. The sensitivity analysis showed our findings are very robust. The overall risk and reward profile is very positive, with only a small chance of losing and a very large probability of gain.

I’m gonna say “duh” (see “Has Obama saved Detroit from itself “” or is that simply impossible?“).  The NYT/AP has some excellent quotes from the report’s authors:

U.S. automakers ignored fuel-efficiency research — UM study

U.S. automakers have underestimated the importance of fuel efficiency to consumers, but new federal standards are expected to help the companies turn a profit, according to the results of a University of Michigan study released Monday.

Researchers at the U of M Transportation Research Institute said plans for vehicles to be 30 percent more efficient by 2016, along with federal intervention at General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Group, are forcing the companies to pay closer attention to fuel efficiency when designing new cars, something the automakers failed to do in the past.

At times there was a concerted effort by company officials to discount the results of consumer research when making planning decisions, said the authors of the report, also former GM employees.

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The EPA has posted its detailed analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) here.  The bottom line is that the total cost to consumers is low, just as CBO found — just as all major independent analyses of even strong action show (see “”Intro to climate economics“).  You can read the House Energy and Commerce summary of the EPA analysis here.  In this post from Wonk Room, guest blogger, Daniel J. Weiss, Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, discusses the EPA’s findings.  At the end, I discuss a few flaws in the analysis, as well as the implications of Waxman-Markey for coal.

The main argument conservatives and big oil and coal companies use against the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is that it would cripple American households with a crushing energy tax. To make that claim, they have distorted cost estimates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and conducted their own biased studies. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency obliterated these phony numbers with the release of its economic analysis of H.R. 2454. The EPA estimated the bill would actually lower household electricity bills:

As a result of energy efficiency measures, consumer spending on utility bills would be roughly 7% lower in 2020 as a result of the legislation.

That’s right “” lower bills. In 2007, this would have saved the average residential user $84, or 23 cents per day. EPA’s analysis also found:

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