“There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.”

Tomorrow the journal Science publishes a remarkable Lead Letter supporting the accuracy of climate science.  The must-read statement, “Climate Change and the Integrity of Science,” is signed by 255 of the world’s leading scientists.  It begins:

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular.

The lead signer, Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick, notes in a HuffPost piece:

It is hard to get 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to agree on pretty much anything, making the import of this letter even more substantial.

The letter underscores our deep understanding of human-caused climate change and helps illuminate how science works.  It deserves to be widely read in its entirety:

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Sen. Lindsey Graham doesn’t sound like someone who’s abandoned the push to pass a global warming bill….

“I’m not playing the game to win 43 [votes],” he said, referring to the high-water mark of past Senate climate bill roll calls. “I’m not in this to make a statement. I’m in this to win.”

Lindsey Graham is tough to read, that’s for sure.

UPDATE:  E&E News (subs. req’d) interviewed Graham in which he said, “I could see myself being the 60th vote for an energy-independent, job creation, clean air bill.”  But he has doubts the bill will get the other 59 votes and wants to see how the oil disaster plays out.  See also Politico’s piece today, “Graham unlikely to fold on energy bill.”

He apparently will not be joining his climate bill compadres Kerry and Lieberman next Wednesday when they launch the climate bill.  And he has given a multitude of conflicting statements in the past few weeks:

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The Wonk Room is blogging, photographing, and tweeting live from the Gulf Coast. See previous dispatches from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

The Senate-energy-committee-approved ACELA (S. 1462) would lift the moratorium on drilling in the Pensacola and Destin areas, just off the coast of the Florida Panhandle.

Florida Panhandle politicians who had been ardent offshore drilling advocates are changing their tune as the BP oil disaster begins harming their constituents. State Representative Greg Evers (R-FL-1) and State Senator Don Gaetz (R-FL-4) joined Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (R-FL) at a press conference at the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce yesterday. Before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, both Gaetz and Evers advocated drilling near the Florida shoreline. Now that “a lot of businesses are already feeling the pinch,” however, Evers says the white beaches of Escambia County “must be protected at all costs,” and Gaetz says that the “many” economic losses coming from this oil spill mean “these are the worst of times“:

GAETZ: We are very, very fortunate that in this fight for our economic and ecological lives, the Attorney General Bill McCullom is at the front of the fight. . . . These are the worst of times. We don’t know how badly or when we’ll be hit, but we’re pretty sure we will be hit.

EVERS: You have to understand: this is our way of life. These white sands are our way of life. We must protect them at all costs. . . . At this point, no, I’m definitely not comfortable with [drilling off the Florida coast], until actual safety precautions are put in place before any drilling is done, whether it even be off the coast of Texas right now.

Watch Evers’ comments:

Before this looming catastrophe, Evers and Gaetz were enthusiastic about bringing oil rigs within sight of their beaches. Evers called for an expansion of “clean, spill-proof drilling.” After the commander of the Eglin Air Force Base said in January that “oil and gas drilling in Florida waters could pose a threat to military operations,” Gaetz told reporters those concerns “are still not enough to convince him to oppose offshore drilling.”

In contrast, it should be noted that Republican State Senator Durrell Peaden (R-FL-2), who also represents the Panhandle coast, has never liked “the idea of risking our beaches on a crap shoot.”

McCollum, a candidate for Florida governor who had previously raised objections to bringing oil rigs off the valuable coast of Florida, told the Wonk Room he is willing to consider punitive damages against BP when the time comes.

Watch the full Wonk Room interview with Rep. Greg Evers.

A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report tells an incomplete picture about the impacts of clean energy and climate policies.  Opponents of reform are pushing CBO numbers showing that policies to reduce global warming pollution would slightly lower employment during the next few decades.  Based on the new CBO study, Bloomberg reports:

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Why weren’t containment chambers on shore and ready for deployment?

That is one of the many questions that Dr. Thomas D. Beamish poses in this guest post.

Part of the answer is that BP had joined the group think of the oil industry and truly believed a blowout disaster was ‘inconceivable,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and unforeseeable.  If you can’t conceive of it you can’t prepare for it.  Another reason is the voluntary, “trust us,” self-regulatory regime that BP and Big Oil demanded and received under the Cheney-Bush administration

Beamish is uniquely qualified to discuss these issues.  He is Associate Professor of Sociology at UC-Davis and his areas of expertise and interest include complex/ formal/informal organization, economic, and environmental sociology. He is author of the book “Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis” (MIT Press).

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In the wake of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a poll by Rasmussen has found that support for offshore drilling has “fallen dramatically.”

I wouldn’t put too much faith in the absolute levels of support in the polls, since Rasmussen tends to “produce conservative leaning results (see: here, here and here),” as Enviroknow notes.

I would also add that we’re only at the very beginning stages of a disaster that is likely to play out over many weeks if not months, so I wouldn’t be surprised if these numbers kept going in the same direction.

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Plus the threat the disaster poses to America’s primary coral reef

There has been a lot of confusion about the environmental impact of chemically dispersing oil.  I interviewed one of the country’s foremost authorities on the subject for a piece in Salon, which they headlined “Is BP’s remedy for the spill only making it worse?”

I have had a great interest in what we are doing to our oceans since I spent more than two years researching my Ph.D. thesis at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  So I’m always delighted to talk to true experts on the subject like Carys Mitchelmore, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.  And yes, she brought up global warming without even realizing that is my main focus.

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Sunlight With Cooling Factor

Although it sounds like a contradiction in terms, using the power of the sun for refrigeration is proving to be an original energy concept. In Tunisia and Morocco, Fraunhofer research scientists are using solar energy to keep perishable foodstuffs such as milk, wine and fruit fresh.

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BP is financially responsible for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, so it is desperately trying the limit the financial and legal fall out. The company tried to buy off coastal residents and local fishermen hired to help clean up the mess with payments and jobs in exchange for signing a waiver promising not to sue.

Tony “What the hell did we do to deserve this?” Hayward, CEO of British Petroleum, the Goldman Sachs of Big Oil, is at it again, as TP reports in this repost.

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Bottom line: This bill has no chance to pass unless President Obama gets behind it with all his power, mobilizes the public and rounds up the votes. He has to lead from the front, not the rear. Responding to this oil spill could well become the most important leadership test of the Obama presidency.

The president has always had the right instincts on energy, but he is going to have to decide just how much he wants to rise to this occasion “” whether to generate just an emergency response that over months ends the spill or a systemic response that over time ends our addiction. Needless to say, it would be a lot easier for the president to lead if more than one Republican in the Senate was ready to lift a finger to help him.

Tom Friedman had a good NYT column yesterday, “No Fooling Mother Nature” on the implications of the BP oil disaster.  He joins a long list of folks pleading with the President to seize this leadership moment (see “Is Obama blowing his best chance to shift the debate from the dirty, unsafe energy of the 19th century to the clean, safe energy of the 21st century?“).

Here’s more:

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GOP witness is TVMOB aka Lord “Hitler Youth” Monckton

You can watch it online at http://globalwarming.house. Details below.

The anti-science witness is none other than the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.  Rather than being given a platform, he should be widely condemned for his extremist hate speech and disinformation:

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For the original article and its correction, click here.