Glacier National Park’s Jackson Glacier, 1911-2009

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) seems to want his legacy to be the destruction of Montana’s Glacier National Park. Baucus has joined the climate peacock caucus, saying that “climate change is a real issue that has to be addressed” but that “he supports a measure that would ban the Environmental Protection Agency from writing climate change legislation to regulate greenhouse gases linked to climate change.” As CNN’s Jessica Ellis reports, the unwillingness of senators like Baucus to act on global warming pollution is having profound consequences:

As recently as 100 years ago, Montana’s Glacier National Park had more than 150 glaciers throughout its more than one million acres. In 2005 only 27 remained. Today the total is down to a just 25 and those that are left are mere remnants of their former frozen selves. With warmer temperatures and changes to the water cycle, scientists predict Glacier National Park will be glacier-free by 2030.

Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) ecologist, told CNN he would not be surprised if the remaining glaciers are gone within the decade.

The destruction of the park’s ecosystem by the burning of fossil fuels doesn’t just matter to the mountain goats, bighorn sheep, and grizzly bears that call the remote, once-icy landscape their home. “Many people are directly dependent on the water coming out of mountains and in the arid western United States that figure is much larger, it is about 85 percent,” said Fagre.

Memo to all scientists, all who care about science, and all who are concerned about the health and well-being of our children and countless future generations:  You have a big stake in the upcoming election.  You sit on the sidelines at your peril.

Dr. Michael Mann makes that clear in a must-read op-ed  in the Washington Post today, “Get the anti-science bent out of politics,” which opens:

As a scientist, I shouldn’t have a stake in the upcoming midterm elections, but unfortunately, it seems that I — and indeed all my fellow climate scientists — do.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened that, if he becomes chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he will launch what would be a hostile investigation of climate science. The focus would be on e-mails stolen from scientists at the University of East Anglia in Britain last fall that climate-change deniers have falsely claimed demonstrate wrongdoing by scientists, including me. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) may do the same if he takes over a committee on climate change and energy security.

Mann deserves to be heard — and not just because he has been the focus of the most incessant and deceitful anti-science attacks, and not just because  is probably the most thoroughly vindicated  climate scientist in the country both  in his academic practices and scientific research (see “Much-vindicated Michael Mann and Hockey Stick get final exoneration from Penn State“  and “Two more independent studies back the Hockey Stick: Recent global warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause“).

Mann deserves to be heard because he is one of the country’s leading climatologists.  As the independent Penn State panel noted

His work “clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field”¦. Dr. Mann’s work, from the beginning of his career, has been recognized as outstanding.“

Mann writes:

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US in position to build massive wind farms- DOE

If politics and economics align, the United States is well-positioned to build massive wind farms off of U.S. coasts and in the Great Lakes to meet a substantial amount of the nation’s electricity needs, according to the Department of Energy.

In a 240-page study of the potential and barriers for building 54 gigawatts’ worth of offshore wind capacity, DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that doing so means the creation of at least 43,000 permanent jobs. Potential exists for $200 billion in economic activity, and government analysts predict 20 jobs would be created for every megawatt produced off of U.S. shores.

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Today’s guest bloggers are CAP’s Jorge Madrid and Araceli Ruano.

The forces behind Proposition 23 are hiding a lot of dirty secrets.  Not only are they attempting to effectively repeal California’s iconic environmental protection laws, they are also funding a national campaign against immigrants, and collaborating with anti-immigrant extremist groups.

The culprits:

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“The administration deserves to be criticized for how it dealt with the spill estimates,” said Joseph Romm, who writes the blog Climateprogress.org for the liberal Center for American Progress think tank.

He points out that BP always knew lower measurements of oil in the water could mean the company would have to pay less in damages.

“That meant the administration had an extra responsibility to do its own objective analysis,” Romm said. “It was a big deal, and it should have been pursued more systematically.”

I was interviewed by NPR this week on the BP oil disaster Commission, which released a draft report criticizing many aspects of the administration’s  handling of the spill undersea volcano (click here for audio).  I had written as far back as May 1 on the lowball estimates coming out of BP on the flow rate,  which the administration seemed to give  far too much credence to for far too long (see “Oilpocalypse Now: WSJ reports BP oil disaster may be leaking at rate of 1 million gallons a day“).

Brad Johnson has a good Wonk Room post on the report, which I cross-post below.

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