An electric utility in southern Illinois is frightening thousands of its customers by spreading misinformation about President Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. The Wayne-White Counties Electric Cooperative has joined the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” propaganda campaign, telling its members to oppose the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Wayne-White is even “organizing a bus trip” to the state capital to join an API rally on September 1:

Wayne-White encourages concerned citizens to participate in the free bus trip and rally in Springfield. The co-op recently mailed out nearly 10,000 informational letters and signature forms to enable concerned citizens to help themselves by speaking out and opposing this issue. As of Monday, more than 4,000 postcards had been returned to the co-op office which will be hand-delivered to Burris and Durbin at their Springfield offices, the Wayne-White news release said.

Wayne-White’s CEO Daryl Donjon has claimed that the legislation, which would spur a clean-energy economy by capping pollution and supporting renewable energy and efficiency, “is an unfair tax to the Midwest and would raise electric rates by 80 percent.” In the letter sent to Wayne-White’s captive audience, the utility claims “Cap & Trade” will “lead to the transfer of wealth from the midwestern states to the coastal states” and is “scary.”

Donjon is repeating the fearmongering about clean energy reform promoted by conservatives from Newt Gingrich to Wayne-White representative John Shimkus (R-IL), who have been repeatedly debunked. In reality, the EPA has found that the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act would lower electricity bills, not raise them.

Scientific models project that Illinois is one of the top ten states most at risk of rising temperatures due to global warming in the coming decades — science that Daryl Donjon rejects.

On August 23, 2005, a tropical depression formed 175 miles southeast of Nassau. By the next day, it had grown into tropical storm Katrina and was intensifying rapidly. Early in the evening on August 25, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near North Miami Beach. Even though it was only a Category 1 storm, with sustained wind speeds of about 80 miles per hour, it caused significant damage and flooding, and took 14 lives.

The hurricane’s quick nighttime trip across Florida barely fazed the storm. Entering the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters quickly kicked Katrina into overdrive, like a supercharged engine on high-octane fuel. Hurricanes fuel themselves by continually sucking in and spinning up warm, moist air.

On August 28, Katrina reached Category 5 status, with sustained wind speeds of 160 mph and a pressure of 908 millibars. A few hours later, wind speeds hit 175 mph, which they maintained until the afternoon.

At 4:00 pm, the National Hurricane Center warned that local storm surges could hit 28 feet, and “Some levees in the Greater New Orleans Area could be overtopped,” a warning that was tragically ignored by federal, state, and local emergency officials. Over the next 14 hours, Katrina’s strength dropped steadily. When the hurricane’s center made landfall Monday morning, it was a strong Category 3, battering coastal Louisiana with wind speeds of about 127 mph. The central pressure of 920 millibars was the third lowest pressure every recorded for a storm hitting the U.S. mainland.

The devastation to the Gulf region was biblical. The death toll exceeded 1300. The damage exceeded $100 billion. [Combined with the effects of Hurricane Rita] two million people were forced to leave their homes, more than were displaced during the 1930′s Dust Bowl. One of the nation’s great cities was devastated.

About 20 miles to the west of the second Gulf landfall was the small town named Pass Christian, Mississippi, where my brother lived with his wife and son.

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Millions in Nepal Facing Hunger as Climate Changes

Millions of people in Nepal face severe food shortages because global climate change has disrupted weather patterns and slashed crop yields in the Himalayan nation, an international aid agency warned Friday.

Changing weather patterns have dramatically affected crop production in Nepal, leaving farmers unable to properly feed themselves and pushing them into debt, Oxfam International said in a report released in Katmandu.

The British aid agency described the situation as ”deeply worrying.”

”Communities told us crop production is roughly half that of previous years … Last year many could only grow enough (food) for one month’s consumption,” said Oxfam’s Wayne Gum, adding that less precipitation has been forecast this winter, which will make the situation worse.

More extreme temperatures, drier winters and delays in summer monsoons have all compounded the situation, the report said.

More than 3.4 million people in Nepal are estimated to require food assistance, and food stocks in farming communities will last only a few months, it warned.

Oxfam said Nepal will likely suffer more frequent droughts because of climate change. River levels will decline due to the reduced rainfall and glacial retreat, making it harder to irrigate crops and provide water for livestock.

Here is the report, Even the Himalayas Have Stopped Smiling:  Climate Change, Poverty and Adaptation in Nepal.

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I’m reposting this piece by Ryan Grim, which was on the front page of Huffington Post yesterday.  This is a new analysis from The Nature Conservancy of the temperature and precipitation impact on the country of staying on our current emissions path.  The darkest red on the map is where average annual warming greater than 10°F.  The results are very similar to “Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year.“  I changed the HuffPost headline since this is really just a map of where warming will be the greatest.  Where “climate change” (including all the impacts) will hit the hardest is a tougher to say, but Florida and Louisiana probably top that list.  To bad three of the four senators from those states are also likely to vote for inaction and hence inundation.

Note:  If you want to see how the deniers mock one more warning of what’s to come, read “Exclusive Weekly Standard Climate Change Projection.”

The politics of climate change are difficult in the Senate, it’s often said, because it’s a regional issue: coal state senators are afraid their economies will be driven under if the price of dirty energy rises too quickly.

Climate change is, in fact, a regional issue, but not in the short-term way that the coal senators think, according to new analysis from The Nature Conservancy. The environmental group finds that rural Midwestern states will face the greatest consequences of climate change. The three that will face the steepest rise in temperature — Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa — are farm states whose soil will be significantly less productive as temperatures rise more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit there by 2100.

The rise by by 2050 — only 41 years from now — is also projected to be substantial. (Click here for an interactive map of the analysis.)

The two Republican senators from Kansas, which will be most ravaged by climate change, are unlikely to support legislation addressing it.

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My key takeaway from the new ABC-WashPost poll:  A lot of people understand energy prices are going up if we do nothing. In fact, 36% of 1001 voters polled believe “the proposed changes to U.S. energy policy” won’t make much of a difference on energy costs and 16% it will decrease them.  And this in spite of relentless negative messaging to the contrary from the disinformers.

Many Americans understand the “do nothing” energy tax, since they saw that annual energy costs under President Bush jumped over $1000 (see here).  Americans understand that our rising dependence on oil and our inaction on climate change are untenable.  And they really, really believe in clean energy and understand that oil companies and Republicans have been blocking action for a long time.

The Post piece on the poll, “On Energy, Obama Finds Broad Support” has a great quote:

“Something definitely has to be done,” said Marian Eldridge, a former legal secretary from East Windsor, N.J., who participated in the survey. “Anything’s worth a try at this point.” She said she tries to “ignore the politics; you get discouraged.” But she said that higher energy costs were “inevitable” and that “we’re too dependent on other countries.”

The fact that American — especially likely voters — support climate and clean energy action should not be a surprise:

• Zogby: 71% of likely voters support House climate bill
• Public opinion snapshot: Public backs key elements of global warming bill
• Mark Mellman must read on climate messaging: “A strong public consensus has emerged on the reality and severity of global warming, as well as on the need for federal action” “” ecoAmerica “could hardly be more wrong”
• Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 2: Opposing clean energy hurts GOP “” Mellman

Here’s more on what the new poll finds:

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