Bizarrely asserts 2010 was “the warmest year in the last decade”

What do you think is scarier?  Is it that the powerful chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee flip-flopped to become a denier of basic climate science, like most Congressional conservatives?

Or is that he’s so ill-informed he actually told the National Journal‘s Ron Brownstein, “there was a report a couple of weeks ago that in fact you look at this last year, it was the warmest year in the last decade, I think was the numbers that came out”?  In fact, the report from both NASA and NOAA was that 2010 was the warmest year (tied with 2005) in more than a century of temperature records.

Brad Johnson reports (with video) and you decide!

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• The Koch brothers contributed over a quarter of a million dollars to House Energy and Commerce Committee panel members in 2010
• The committee is stacking the witness stand with big polluters and their allies
• Americans strongly support protecting our air and holding polluters accountable
• Public health professionals and business leaders oppose efforts to handcuff EPA

This fact sheet was put together by Noreen Nielsen and CAPAF.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing Wednesday to discuss blocking the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce carbon dioxide pollution.  We can expect the same old half-truths, misstatements, and outright lies from the new majority, with an extra dose of special interest pandering.

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Lead author Simon Lewis: “Current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world’s largest rainforest.”

New research shows that the 2010 Amazon drought may have been even more devastating to the region’s rainforests than the unusual 2005 drought, which was previously billed as a one-in-100 year event.

Analyses of rainfall across 5.3 million square kilometres of Amazonia during the 2010 dry season, published in Science, shows that the drought was more widespread and severe than in 2005.

The UK-Brazilian team also calculate that the carbon impact of the 2010 drought may eventually exceed the 5 billion tonnes of CO2 released following the 2005 event, as severe droughts kill rainforest trees. For context, the United States emitted 5.4 billion tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuel use in 2009.

The authors suggest that if extreme droughts like these become more frequent, the days of the Amazon rainforest acting as a natural buffer to man-made carbon emissions may be numbered.

Lead author Dr Simon Lewis, from the University of Leeds, said: “Having two events of this magnitude in such close succession is extremely unusual, but is unfortunately consistent with those climate models that project a grim future for Amazonia.”

That’s from the University of Leeds’ news release, “Two severe Amazon droughts in five years alarms scientists.”  The Science article itself is “The 2010 Amazon Drought” (subs. req’d).

Here’s a figure from the paper comparing the two droughts [click to enlarge]:

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Upton to press on with plans to block emissions rules

The chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee said Monday he’ll press forward with legislation to block the Obama administration’s plan to regulate emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to climate change.

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Lee Fang, in a TP cross-post.

In January, ThinkProgress interviewed billionaire pollutocrat David Koch about his views on climate science, his Tea Party movement, and his political plans for the future. On the day of our interview, we also discovered that he planned to hold a party for the new Republicans he helped elect.

As we have documented, Koch not only financed the rise of the anti-Obama Tea Party, he has also helped guide the movement to support the narrow business priorities of his conglomerate Koch Industries: Koch funds rallies for young children that attack the EPA, Koch’s front groups spread doubt about climate change, and Koch’s Americans for Prosperity hands out Tea Party talking points attacking clean energy. Building on this research, the Los Angeles Times reported this weekend about the central influence of Koch in the new GOP Congress.

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In this cross-post, CAP’s Richard W. Caperton, Kate Gordon, Bracken Hendricks, and Daniel J. Weiss discuss the design principles that can spur innovation and meet Obama’s goal of 80% clean electricity by 2035.

President Barack Obama laid out a broad agenda for investment, innovation, jobs, and American competitiveness in his 2011 State of the Union. At the heart of the president’s plan is an ambitious proposal to transform the nation’s energy infrastructure away from the technologies we’ve been using for over 100 years””inefficient and polluting coal-fired power plants””toward new, clean energy sources.

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By Junayd Mahmood, CAP energy intern.

President Obama made the short trip across Lafayette Park Monday morning to address business leaders at the United States Chamber of Commerce. The trip was widely seen as an overture to a familiar adversary in order to consolidate support for future economic initiatives. While President Obama pledged his efforts to promote American business and cut corporate taxes, he also mounted a spirited defense of environmental regulations:

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The last time the Republicans captured the House majority in 1994, it took them years to refine their pay-to-play system where lobbyists from K Street strolled right into the Capitol and dictated legislation.

The new GOP majority won’t squander this opportunity. It is quickly eliminating the middleman, so to speak. It’s putting former corporate lobbyists right on House staff payrolls.

The committee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency, which Republican hardliners want to kill, now harbors lobbyists from the natural gas “fracking trade,” the subsidized biofuels industry, oil drillers and coal diggers.

There’s a good column in the Buffalo News, excerpted below:

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