Plus another record 12-month global temperature

Last month tied May 1998 as the hottest on record in the NASA dataset.  More significantly, following fast on the heels of easily the hottest April “” and hottest Jan-April “” on record, it’s also the hottest Jan-May on record [click on figure to enlarge].

Also, the combined land-surface air and sea-surface water temperature anomaly for March-April-May was 0.73°C above the 1951-1980 mean, blowing out the old record of 0.65°C set in 2002.

The record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It’s just hard to stop the march of manmade global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is.

Most significantly, the 12-month global temperature grew to 0.66°C — easily the highest on record.

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NRDC’s Beinecke: The Senate Votes in Favor of Science, Oil Savings, and Climate Action

UPDATE:  The Hill has posted, “Analysis: GOP backing for Murkowski EPA plan doesn’t sink climate bill,” excerpted at the end.

Today the Senate rejected Senator Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) big oil bail out resolution that would have blocked new fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for vehicles.  The motion to proceed to her resolution, S.J. Res. 26, failed on a vote of 47-53.

It failed on a mostly party line vote, with all Republicans voting with big oil, and all but six Democrats voting against it.  The Democrats who voted to block efforts to save oil and reduce pollution were:

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The protestations of foreign oil giant BP about their efforts to contain their cataclysmic oil disaster have become increasingly divorced from reality. “Fishermen, businesses and property owners who have filed damage claims with the company angrily complained of delays, excessive paperwork and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under.” “BP could fire all their contractors,” Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser testified this morning, “because they are doing absolutely nothing but destroying our marsh.” BP’s stock has hit a 14-year low. But BP says it is “is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.” Last night, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann noted that BP’s “evasion in the face of hard evidence” is strongly reminiscent of “another infamous flack” — Saddam Hussein official Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, known popularly as “Baghdad Bob.”

Watch it:

Featured in the montage are BP CEO Tony Hayward, COO Doug Suttles, and managing director Bob Dudley, the men running the disastrous response to their company’s catastrophe.

Senator votes against oil use reductions the same day she calls for oil use reductions

The U.S. Senate is a body with many senators who are not always ideologically consistent.  Nonetheless, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) set a new standard for “Senatorial Chutzpah” today by announcing her support for Senator Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) big oil bail out bill the very same day she published an article that says on the BP catastrophe that concludes:

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On World Oceans Day, a U.S. Plan for Wind

The Obama Administration has launched a new initiative to “jumpstart the offshore wind industry.”

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The Senate is now debating Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) resolution to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific finding, mandated by the Supreme Court, that manmade greenhouse gases endanger the American public. This is nothing less than a crass political attempt to defuse an existential threat by pretending it does not exist. Industrial polluters have been promoting the idea that there is a global conspiracy by the world’s scientific organizations to deceive the public about the threat of global warming. Unfortunately, the threat of manmade climate change is all too real.

I have prepared this infographic to help remind people on whose side the Senators voting for Murkowski’s “Dirty Air Act” are (click to enlarge):

Senators like Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Ben Nelson (D-NE) are siding with radical polluter-fueled snake oil instead of the scientific institutions that provide the intellectual framework for modern civilization.

This guest post is by John Englander, former CEO of The Cousteau Society.

June 11^th, marks Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s 100^th birthday. “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” television specials were the “must-see TV” of the 60′s and 70′s. The “Captain” and his team aboard the Calypso enthralled us. For many generations, he was the exemplification of a conservationist, who was also a genius at communication. While he may be remembered as the premier underwater explorer, he actually evolved to focus on broader concerns for the planet, its inhabitants, and their quality of life.

I keep thinking back to a private conversation we had, even before he hired me as CEO of The Cousteau Society.

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ThinkProgress spoke to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) about Senate GOP nominee Carly Fiorina.  I repost the amazing story and video below.

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This TP repost spells out the close relationship Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has with the oil industry she is working so hard to protect.

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Guest blogger Mike Roddy is a long-time CP commenter.  A UC Berkeley graduate, he has pursued many careers, including solar manufacturing, writing and research, and managing social housing projects on four continents.

Of all of the troubling developments concerning global warming in the last few years, accelerated emissions from China and India may be the most difficult to address. Consider:

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The BP Gulf Oil Gusher has shown the whole world the nightmarish risks of deep sea drilling.  But there is another, older, story of environmental destruction in the Mississippi River Delta wetlands–and it, too, is related to offshore drilling. This tragedy will continue long after BP’s well is shut down. And to make matters worse, there’s another kind of terrible accident just waiting to happen.  Guest Blogger Dominique Browning, author of the new book Slow Love, and writer with the Environmental Defense Fund website has the story.

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This week, MSNBC did a segment with NBC reporter Kerry Sanders, who was live in East Grand Terre Island, LA, one of the places hardest hit by the BP oil spill. The area is covered with “thick, goopy oil” that is “hot because the oil absorbs the heat of the sun.” Sanders talked about the deadly mix of oil and heat for wildlife:

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