This is a ThinkProgress cross-post.

This weekend, David and Charles Koch, the co-owners of the $100 billion Koch Industries pollution conglomerate, hosted their annual meeting in Palm Springs to coordinate strategy and raise funds for the conservative movement.  Brad Johnson has the story.

For decades, the Kochs have quietly led a political agenda to concentrate America’s wealth and power among the richest few in the name of “liberty,” at the expense of the health and opportunity of the middle class.

At an event organized by Common Cause to “Uncloak the Kochs,” Center for American Progress senior fellow Van Jones described the threat that concentration of economic power poses to American liberty, democracy, and justice:

Read more

Oil prices and profits rise while big oil defends its tax loopholes

Daniel J. Weiss, in a CAP cross-post.

Oil prices are high and rising at an alarming pace. After hitting a low of $38 per barrel in January 2009, the price of oil doubled to $76 per barrel just a year later. By January 2011, prices rose another 14 percent, and the average barrel now costs around $87. And there is little reason to believe this will change anytime soon, as political instability in the Middle East may cause prices to rise even further. As oil prices rise, so do Big Oil company profits. But even with their cash registers overflowing with dollars from struggling families, Big Oil is mobilizing to defeat President Obama’s proposal to invest $4 billion annually in clean energy programs by ending unnecessary tax loopholes for this highly profitable industry.

Read more

68% agree humanity is causing climate change, while skeptics “represent a fringe position”

The public’s belief in global warming as a man-made danger has weathered the storm of climate controversies and cold weather intact, according to a Guardian/ICM opinion poll published today.

Asked if climate change was a current or imminent threat, 83% of Britons agreed, with just 14% saying global warming poses no threat. Compared with August 2009, when the same question was asked, opinion remained steady despite a series of events in the intervening 18 months that might have made people less certain about the perils of climate change

So the emails — which originated in Britain — had no noticeable impact, nor did a couple of “trivial mistakes” in the IPCC.  This suggests the British public understands that, after multiple vindications, the notion that a few cherry-picked quotes from e-mails undermined the overwhelming scientific understanding of climate science was just B.S.*

These findings are consistent with recent U.S. polling by Stanford (see “The vast majority of Americans know global warming is real,” discussed below).

But perhaps the most remarkable finding by the Guardian is the impact of the cold winter on British views of climate change:

Read more

–Our guest blogger is Prof. Scott Mandia, in a repost.

“Rigorous scientific studies have not identified links between autism and either thimerosal-containing vaccine or the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine” (Miller and Reynolds, 2009).  The scientific community also tells us that the world is round, that smoking is strongly linked to lung cancer, and that humans are causing global warming.  Recently, there were multiple editorials and op-eds in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) bemoaning the fact that people have not believed the scientific community on the question of vaccine safety. 

Unfortunately, while the WSJ touts accurate science with regard to vaccines, the WSJ is anti-science when it comes to climate change.  Read on for an analysis of the WSJ’s coverage of climate change and to read an excellent Letter to the Editor that was never published.

Read more

China now surpasses U.S. emissions by over 40%!

Click to enlarge

An atlas of pollution: the world in carbon dioxide emissions

The deepest recession since the 1930s has failed to reverse rising global carbon emissions, as plummeting industrial output in the west was offset by the continuing rapid expansion of China and a handful of other emerging economies, new statistics for 2009 show.

Read more

As gas prices spiral out of control again, threatening our economic recovery, President Barack Obama laid out a bold plan to address the threats of our dependence on oil.  Brad Johnson has the story.

Only by making our transportation system oil-free will Americans be free from skyrocketing gas prices, free from oil disasters, free from hostile governments that control foreign oil supplies. The great campaign to free America from the toxic influence of oil has been stalled for decades. Obama’s State of the Union address laid out a vision for restarting the United States, built upon a simple idea: less oil, more clean energy:

Read more