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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