Coal pollution may have felled Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), the longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate, at the age of 92. The aged giant of the Senate had been in declining health for years, but died last week after suffering from “symptoms of heat exhaustion” during Washington’s record heat wave:

Mr. Byrd, a 92-year-old Democrat from West Virginia, was admitted to an undisclosed hospital late last week with symptoms of heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as temperatures in the Washington area approached 100 degrees.

The record mid-Atlantic heat wave is part of the global boiling enveloping the planet, caused by greenhouse gases from coal and oil pollution. The increasingly deadly heat waves fueled by man-made global warming are a real threat to the health of Americans, especially the vulnerable elderly. The record heat in June — continuing to make 2010 the hottest year on record across the globe — has been identified as the killer at least 18 Americans across the nation:

June 2: PENNSYLVANIA A 50-year-old man wearing a heavy three-piece wool suit was found dead on a South Philadelphia street. At 88 degrees, the high temperature was 15 degrees above normal.

TENNESSEE A 47-year-old North Memphis woman was found dead in her home. She had last been seen alive on May 29. The high temperature of 92 degrees was 7 degrees above normal.

June 3: PENNSYLVANIA A 77-year-old man died in in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Wynnefield. At 89 degrees, the high temperatures was 15 degrees above normal.

June 19: TEXAS Anna Iovine, 79, died on her couch in North Dallas. At 98 degrees, the high was 9 degrees above normal.

June 20: TEXAS Dallas police “found the body of 73-year-old Rosie Mosley on her sofa” in southern Dallas. At 99 degrees, the high was ten degrees above normal.

June 21: TENNESSEE 70-year-old Robert Murry was killed in his Memphis home in the middle of an ongoing 23-day 90-plus heat wave.

June 23: TENNESSEE An “88-year old man was found dead in his North Memphis home.” The “high temperature was 95 degrees with a heat index over 100 degrees,” part of an ongoing 23-day 90-plus heat wave.

June 24: ARKANSAS “State health officials have recorded Arkansas’ first heat death of the year,” but “the state Health Department did not release details about the victim in an announcement today, citing patient confidentiality.” Little Rock suffered this month from 27 days of 90+ plus weather, more than twice the average.

June 25: TEXAS Rose Staubus, 73, was found dead in her Richardson, TX home, of high blood pressure and hyperthermia. She died on the 15th consecutive day of a 90-plus heat wave. Richardson, which normally has four days of 90-plus weather in June, had 26. Another Dallas-area resident was declared dead earlier in the month from heat exposure.

June 26: MARYLAND “Three heat-related deaths were reported in Maryland this week, as 90-degree temperatures ruled in the Washington region, and a 100-degree reading on Thursday broke a record that had stood for 116 years. Each of the people who died in Maryland was 65 or older and all had underlying health conditions, according to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. One of the three died in Montgomery County, and the other two were Baltimore County residents.”

June 28: CALIFORNIA Alfonso Zarate, 56, died of heat stroke in Arvin, CA “on a day when temperatures climbed as high as 107 degrees,” about 11 degrees above normal.

PENNSYLVANIA A “46-year-old woman was found dead in a first floor bedroom at a home” in Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane neighborhood. The high temperature of 96 was 13 degrees above normal.

PENNSYLVANIA An “88-year-old man was found dead in a first floor bedroom of a house in Germantown,” outside of Philadelphia.

June 29: MARYLAND Two senior citizens in Maryland, one in Cecil County and one in Prince George’s County, died of hyperthermia “as the mercury climbed past 90 degrees for the 11th consecutive day and the mark for the hottest June on record was tied.” The average high temperature in the region is seven degrees cooler.

If greenhouse gas pollution is not sharply reduced, most of the United States will bake under 90-plus heat waves that last the entire summer, either killing thousands more people or overloading our decrepit fossil-powered electricial network as those who can afford air conditioners use them.

Revkin asks me via Dot Earth, “What if The Public had Perfect Climate Information?”  Ahh, the hypothetical question that launches us into an alternative history.  Reminds me of that Saturday Night Live routine, “What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?”

I’d love your answer.  Here’s mine.

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Meanwhile, the blame pre-game show begins

Now that the Grand Oil Party has been overrun by anti-science extremists, even “reasonable” members of the GOP have to demagogue against the most moderate, market-oriented, business-friendly climate policies they once supported:

• Flashback: Carly Fiorina said cap-and-trade “will both create jobs and lower the cost of energy”
• The gold medal for climate flip-flopping goes to Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who now calls cap-and-trade a “disaster” three years after endorsing it

And now that it’s clear we’re not going to get an economy-wide cap and trade bill, Grist has assembled a collection of the Senate “GOP’s most notable flip-floppers” on the issue:

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Exhibit A:  “Scientists From Mars Face Public From Venus” by opinion blogger Andy Revkin.

Revkin was writing about — and soliciting expert opinions on — a Chris Mooney WashPost piece, “If scientists want to educate the public, they should start by listening.”

I wasn’t originally going to write about the piece because, as Evil Monkey points, out the piece doesn’t offer much in the way of news or solutions.  Also, Mooney conflates very different issues — climate change and vaccination (and Yucca Mountain).

Yes, science messaging sucks (see “Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1” and Part 2: Why deniers out-debate “smart talkers”).  And yet somehow the overwhelming majority of parents in this country get their children all the vaccinations they need, even though it is a time-consuming process that, for many, isn’t cheap, and oftentimes leads to crying children.

Mooney mentions this just in passing, though I mostly give him a pass because he had written about it at length in books and articles.  I don’t give him a pass for not mentioning at all the catastrophic collapse in science and environmental reporting (see With science journalism “basically going out of existence,” how should climate scientists deal with well-funded, anti-science disinformation campaign? and dozens of critiques here).

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And yet more pro-pollution falsehoods: “There’s no evidence in American history that regulations … work to create a better future.”

UPDATE:  I forgot about this amazing Gingrich video from 2007 in which he said, “the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading in the atmosphere…. And do it urgently, yes.”

Grist dissects former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in an interview.

Gingrich has long been an just another anti-science conservative eco-fraud pretending to care about the environment who adopted the anti-regulation, pro-technology approach suggested by GOP strategist, Frank Luntz, and popularized by his protege, George Bush (see Bush climate speech follows Luntz playbook: “Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah” and “Eco-fraud Gingrich has always opposed clean energy, climate action“).

The only “news” Gingrich makes is that he keeps fooling the media with his poll-tested disinformation (see “NYT’s Andy Revkin and E. O. Wilson get suckered by Newt Gingrich’s phony techno-optimism and Slate and the Post are suckered by anti-environmentalist Newt Gingrich).

Here’s some of the nonsense he told Grist:

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Tesla shares soar 40% on first day of trading

On their first trading day, shares of Tesla Motor Co.  rocketed $6.89, or 40.5%, to $23.89. The gain was all the more impressive because it came as the overall stock market plummeted

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He called effort to block EPA action a vote “to dismiss scientific facts” about climate change

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) died Monday.  America lost a great public servant and a likely ‘yes’ vote for climate action.  A TP piece about his career, “Byrd’s Life Of Learning,” is below.

Amazingly, one of the things that Byrd learned during his life is that coal consumption has serious environmental consequences, including human-caused global warming, which demand legislative action — see Sen. Byrd stunner (12/3/09): “Coal Must Embrace The Future: The truth is that some form of climate legislation will likely become public policy because most American voters want a healthier environment.”

More recently he issued a remarkably strong statement against Lisa Murkowski’s effort to block EPA regulation of greenhouse gases:

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But conservatives falsely claims pollution is energy and a carbon cap that starts in 2013 is “in the middle of a recession.”

Senators say President Barack Obama is insisting that any energy legislation put a price on carbon emissions “” something many Republicans call an energy tax they can’t accept.

That’s the initial brief AP story after Obama met with a bipartisan group of nearly two dozen senators today.  As Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson notes, the GOP keeps claiming “Pollution Is Energy.”

The UK Guardian pushed the status quo media’s conventional wisdom in their headline “Barack Obama fails to rally support for energy bill.”

In fact, Olympia Snowe issued a long statement endorsing a utility cap but repeating some tired myths — including the nonsensical conservative talking point that taking action on climate starting three years from now would somehow threaten the recovery, when the reverse is true (see Nobelist Krugman attacks “junk economics”: Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities”).

Here is Snowe’s full statement:

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The habitability of our planet is threatened by fossil-fueled politicians who can’t tell the difference between pollution and energy. After a White House meeting on energy reform this morning, Republican senators rejected President Obama’s call for a price on carbon pollution, repeating the Newt Gingrich lie that it would be a “national energy tax”:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “As long as we take a national energy tax off the table, there’s no reason we can’t have clean energy legislation.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “A cap-and-trade energy tax will not sell at this time. We’ve got to find a path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who refused to attend the meeting: “I wish the president would focus his attention on stopping the spill and cleaning it up instead of trying to use this crisis as an opportunity to push for a new national energy tax.”

These senators know they’re lying when they equate greenhouse gas pollution with “energy.” Their states are being ravaged by our overheated climate system, including the freak flooding of Nashville and Kentucky and the melting of Alaska’s tundra.

Murkowski is being especially disingenuous about finding a “path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.” Right now, American taxpayers are paying the costs of fossil fuel pollution — the destruction of our health, our oceans, and our climate — while corporate polluters like oil disaster giant BP rake in the profits.

The rhetoric of these climate peacocks who put party over planet can’t hide their track record of playing the willing stooge for pollution profiteers.

Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Susan Lyon, Special Assistant for Energy Policy at American Progress give a recap of the best policy proposals for oil savings of 2010 in this repost.

Oil, oil, everywhere, but not a drop for fuel. This is the stark view of Gulf Coast residents who see a 24,500 square mile oil slick menacing their shores. The devastating BP oil disaster has clearly increased the urgency to dramatically reduce America’s oil consumption; and cutting our consumption would save consumers money, reduce foreign oil imports, help our economy, increase national security, and reduce global warming pollution.

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This TP crosspost (with video!) could be filed under “Signs of the Apocalypse.”  But these days I think the smaller, more manageable category would be “Signs there isn’t going to be an apocalypse.”

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Across the US and in countries from Greenland to New Zealand, citizens gathered on beaches linking hands and standing quietly to show their opposition to offshore drilling for oil and their support for clean energy development. Founded “” ironically, before the Deepwater Horizon disaster “” by Florida restaurateur and surfer Dave Rauschkolb, the Hands Across the Sand movement blossomed rapidly in four short months, undoubtedly fueled by the two-month-old specter of tens of thousands of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Sarah Busch, intern for the energy team at American Progress and Shirley Gregory, a Gulf coast resident who blogs at Gulf Oil Monitor, share their experiences participating in simultaneous rallies in Washington and Navarre, Florida.

On the Florida coast…

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And the Tea Party postponed their Las Vegas convention

Before getting to the irony of the anti-science Tea Partiers canceling their big convention because the weather is too hot, let’s look at some of the staggering extreme weather events around the globe.

In China, “The Southern Daily said over 600 millimetres (24 inches) of rain fell in Guangdong’s Huilai county over a six-hour period on Friday, a 500-year record.”  That’s two feet of rain in 6 hours!

As Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told me earlier this month:

There is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.

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Germany setting up $500 million climate fund

Germany says it is setting up a $500 million fund to provide micro-finance loans to developing countries for projects such as new supermarket freezers and biomass heating to help cut greenhouse gas emissions.

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This morning, President Barack Obama is meeting at the White House with “a bipartisan group of senators to discuss passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation this year.” The 23 attendees include several climate peacocks, but not Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who said last year that “the green economy is coming,” and told administration officials in May, “I’m in this to win.”

Graham has chosen instead to attend the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and for Gen. David Petraeus, where he can continue to talk before the cameras. The other notable non-attendee is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), yet another indication that the Republican caucus will pursue the same strategy of obstruction they followed with the stimulus, health care, and financial reform.

The “climate peacocks” — senators who tried to block the EPA from acting on greenhouse pollution because they claim it’s Congress’s job — attending today’s White House meeting are:

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Agriculture Chair
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Commerce Chair
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
George Voinovich (R-OH)

The other sixteen attendees include Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and key actors on climate and energy, including the chairs of the energy, environment, foreign relations, and finance committees:

Harry Reid (D-NV)
Max Baucus (D-MT), Finance Chair
Mark Begich (D-AK)
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Energy Chair
Barbara Boxer (D-CA) , Environment and Public Works Chair
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Tom Carper (D-DE)
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
John Kerry (D-MA), Foreign Relations Chair
Joe Lieberman (I-CT)
Richard Lugar (R-IN)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Strikingly, the only Gulf Coast senators attending the White House meeting on day 70 of the greatest oil catastrophe in United States history are the two Democrats from the region, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).

I have known guest blogger Jane Dale Owen for more than a decade.  She is one of Houston’s leading environmental champions and president of Citizens League for Environmental Action Now (CLEAN).  Owen is the granddaughter of Robert Lee Blaffer, co-founder of Humble Oil, which “would later consolidate with Standard Oil of New Jersey to become Exxon.”

Throughout history, industry has endangered public health and the environment by ignoring early warning signs. Government and industry leaders have failed to follow the Precautionary Principle, a guide toward preventing harm to the planet and to human health. Instead, industry has been allowed to play Russian Roulette with the environment and our lives. Now 11 people have died and much of the Gulf is dying as a result of the latest outrageous industrial catastrophe.

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The Tea Party crowd is anti-science, pro-pollution and anti-regulation.  This wouldn’t matter so much if they remained a fringe group.  But they have been embraced by the mainstream conservative movement, and successfully won GOP nominations for national office (see Rand Paul: “I believe business should be left alone from government”).

One of the biggest successes of the Tea Party movements is U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV).  Think Progress has the latest on her extreme pro-Big-Oil and pro-mining views:

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Climate peacocks like to preen and call attention to themselves with flashy moves — but they are not sincerely interested in taking the difficult but necessary steps toward reducing carbon pollution.  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has the story of this rara avis, which should be an endangered species, but, sadly, isn’t.

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Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is giving obstructionist senators a chance to finally take action on climate and clean energy, after they attempted to block the “unelected bureaucracy” of the Environmental Protection Agency from doing so. After holding a “thrilling” climate caucus with his members last week, the Democratic majority leader plans to bring an “impenetrable” comprehensive package of legislation to repair the damage caused by fossil fuels to our economy and our planet.

Earlier this month, 47 senators — every Republican and six Democrats — voted for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) resolution to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific global warming endangerment finding, finalized after years of delay in following a Supreme Court mandate to obey the language of the Clean Air Act.

Twenty-one of Murkowski’s supporters claimed they voted to reject science in order to preserve the “balance of power” between the legislative and executive branch. They said that they had to overturn the EPA’s scientific finding because setting pollution limits should instead be the job of the elected members of Congress. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) even said he voted for Murkowski to “ensure that Congress keeps its responsibility to establish our nation’s environmental regulations.”

Like “deficit peacocks” who pretend to be hawkish on budgets but refuse any real solution, these “climate peacocks” claim to care about science, energy reform, and the environment, but have yet to find solutions to the threat of climate change. Reid is now calling the bluff of these twenty “responsible” senators, who will be proven to be fossil-fueled hypocrites if they fail to support policies that bring the swift reduction of carbon pollution that science demands.

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