After the Bush administration’s long fight to deter regulation of perchlorate, a toxic fuel ingredient found in everyday tap water, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it will likely regulate and set a safe standard for the substance, which for years has been widely known to cause thyroid problems in young children and pregnant women. Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, said today that “[c]lean water is critical to the health and prosperity of every American community and a fundamental concern to every American family,” and outlined the Obama administration’s new standards for the chemical (which could take up to two years to develop).

As a result of rocket fuel testing sites improperly disposing the fuel ingredient, significant levels of perchlorate have been found in more than four percent of public water systems, and an estimated 5 to 17 million people may be drinking water contaminated with the rocket fuel component right now.

Back in 2003, in the name of military “readiness,” the Bush administration asked Congress to shield the Pentagon and other defense contractors from an array of environmental laws, and specifically those pertaining to perchlorate, even though EPA’s assessment at the time was that the chemical could cause serious health risks at one part per billion. The Pentagon and several of its suppliers, which would have faced clean up costs in the billions of dollars, argued that concentrations of perchlorate are safe in drinking water up to 200 times what the EPA proposed.

Then, in 2008, the EPA released a proposal outlining the safe contamination levels of perchlorate, which was heavily edited by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). That same year, Melanie Marty, a representative of California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and chair of EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, said that the EPA’s recommended standard on perchlorate “is not supported by the underlying science and can result in exposures that pose neurodevelopmental risks in early life.”

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) characterized the EPA’s move as “wonderful news”:

‘After calling for this standard for over eight years, I was so pleased to hear Administrator [Lisa] Jackson’s wonderful news that we are finally going to protect our families from perchlorate,’ said Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer. ‘Exposure to perchlorate in drinking water is dangerous, especially for pregnant women, infants and children, because it can harm the body’s production of hormones necessary for mental and physical development.’

It’s important to note that a final decision on perchlorate’s regulation won’t be made until EPA’s public health assessment has been peer-reviewed and finalized, but based on current studies, Jackson said, “it is likely that we will tighten our drinking water standards for this chemical.”

– Paul Breer

Fox also hosts Joe Bastardi to push ‘utter nonsense’ on climate — but fails to question his unscientific claims about cooling.

In December, we learned that Fox News managing editor Bill Sammon required journalists and producers that report on even the most unequivocal scientific facts about global warming to dispute those facts  “IMMEDIATELY.”  This has now been carried to its illogical extreme.

Gawker reports that Fox News anti-science columnist Gene Koprowski is “seeking sources to to explain the ‘ridiculousness’ of the idea of global warming causing snow.”  Koprowski “posted this request to Profnet, the service that brings together desperate journalists and publicity-hungry sources” [italics added]:

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The Washington Post’s Andrew Freedman is an excellent reporter and a good person with whom to share a beer. In the past, he has understood that part of his role as a journalist is to help readers defend themselves from the anti-science propaganda campaign intended to defeat climate policy. However, in an execrable post today, he attacks leading climate scientist Dr. Kevin Trenberth for daring to use the word “deniers” to describe people who deny that humans are dangerously warming the planet. Seemingly arguing that “civility” is more important than whether people are telling the truth, Freedman lets pollution operative Marc Morano slander top climate scientists as “con men.” Professor Scott Mandia, a climate scientist who has organized the Climate Science Rapid Response Team to help journalists like Freedman do a better job, responded succinctly in the comments:

The world is round, smoking is strongly linked to lung cancer, and humans are causing the planet to warm. To insist otherwise is to be in denial. Trenberth is dealing with reality.

For the record, Watts along with McIntyre attempted to trash Dr. Keith Briffa’s reputation while Briffa was seriously ill in the hospital during the Yamal non-conspiracy.

Watts also claims that scientists are rigging the thermometer record to promote false warming.

Watts has no place to complain when he calls scientists frauds. By the way, Watts is not a “meteorologist.” He does not hold that degree. He is a weatherman.

Why would you give Marc Morano any space? Worse, you allowed him to segue from the Arizona shooting to calling scientists “con men”.

Andrew, this is just a bad piece and I think you will look back on this as one of your low moments.

Freedman seems to think that the path to “a more civil dialogue on climate science” lies in a “Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate” conference, ignoring the fact that the conference is funded by the oil industry and populated by climate deniers like Steve McIntyre and Steve Goddard. In fact, a civil dialogue requires an acceptance of reality by all participants — instead of the toxic propaganda of the pollution-funded climate deniers.

From America’s Finest News Service:

WASHINGTON””In a strong rebuke of President Obama and his domestic agenda, all 242 House Republicans voted Wednesday to repeal the Asteroid Destruction and American Preservation Act, which was signed into law last year to destroy the immense asteroid currently hurtling toward Earth.

The $440 billion legislation, which would send a dozen high-thrust plasma impactor probes to shatter the massive asteroid before it strikes the planet, would affect more than 300 million Americans and is strongly opposed by the GOP.

“The voters sent us to Washington to stand up for individual liberty, not big government,” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said at a press conference. “Obama’s plan would take away citizens’ fundamental freedoms, forcing each of us into hastily built concrete bunkers and empowering the federal government to ration our access to food, water, and potassium iodide tablets while underground.”

“We believe that the decisions of how to deal with the massive asteroid are best left to the individual,” King added.

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Why the agency needs to be allowed to reduce carbon pollution

Shortsighted members of Congress dropped legislation this week to block the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The EPA’s enforcement of clean air laws””which is already underway””will reduce pollution, stabilize our climate, and protect the health and welfare of the American people. Preventing EPA from doing this work is flat-out dangerous and goes against the letter of the law.

CAP’s Jake Caldwell has the story in this repost.

Let’s examine why enforcement of clean air laws is necessary to protect us from the impacts of climate change, what the law permits EPA to do, and what actions the EPA has already taken to mitigate carbon pollution. The agency is clearly taking a cautious and common sense approach that values the public’s input and takes the effects of regulation on businesses and power suppliers into consideration.
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Somewhere on a Hollywood movie set for Groundhog Day, Part 2: Bill Murray wakes up to find he’s just lived through the hottest decade on record, just as he did in the 1990s, just as he did in the 1980s. And he keeps waking up in the hottest decade on record, until he gains the kind of maturity and wisdom that can only come from doing the same damn thing over and over and over again with no change in the result. Ah, if only life were like a movie.

Somewhere in PA: Punxsutawney Phil saw the shadow of unrestricted fossil-fuel pollution from Homo “sapiens” sapiens today. That means global warming for another six thousand weeks — and then some (see NOAA: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

If we keep listening to the siren song of delay, delay, delay from the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd, then eventually people aren’t going to go through this elaborate charade of wondering whether some large rodent in Pennsylvania can predict the weather — the forecast will always be the same, “bloody hot”:

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Coal ash a key source of tap-water toxin — report (subs req’d)

With U.S. EPA’s chief preparing to testify today before a Senate panel on toxics in drinking water, a new report from environmental and health groups identified the waste from coal-burning power plants as a key source of one of the chemicals coming under the microscope.

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Koch Industries, the private company of the billionaire Koch brothers, is one of the primary sources of carbon pollution in the United States. However, the actual emissions profile of the diversified giant, with its oil and gas, chemicals, cattle, forestry, and synthetics holdings, is unknown, because of the lack of mandatory carbon reporting in the United States.

Brad Johnson has the story — and his estimates of the Koch carbon pollution.

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