Fueled by the carbon pollution giant Koch Industries, Tea Party Republicans in New Hampshire are attempting to scuttle the state’s involvement in the region’s successful climate program. Robocalls from Koch’s Americans for Prosperity group flooded the state over the weekend in support of a bill that would repeal participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has cut greenhouse and other pollution and created 1,130 jobs as a result of energy efficiency benefits. Rep. Sandra Keans (D-Rochester), told the Nashua Telegraph that AFP’s calls were “sleazy” and deliberately false. “I have never seen such a cowardly perpetration pulled on the citizens of New Hampshire,” Keans said.

On Wednesday, the state’s overwhelmingly Republican House of Representatives voted to support HB 519 by a nearly party-line vote of 246 to 104 (13 Republicans voted against, two Democrats for). The bill has to pass through the finance committee before a final house vote and consideration by the senate. Gov. John Lynch (D-NH), who has touted the success of RGGI in making the air healthier while increasing economic prosperity, is expected to veto the bill, but Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature. The bill is being championed by extreme climate deniers:

Deputy Majority Leader Shawn Jasper (R-Hudson) explained his vote: “Neither man nor cow is responsible for global warming.”

Rep. James Garrity (R-Atkinson), chairman of the House’s Science Technology and Energy Committee, claimed that RGGI relies on “shaky climate science.”

Rep. Frank Holden (R-Lyndeboro), vice chairman of the House’s Science, Technology and Energy Committee, wrote in the majority committee report that the “science of climate change is far from clear.”

Rep. Andrew Manuse (R-Derry): “The reasons used to promote RGGI were based in false, exaggerated and highly politicized science.”

In reality, with greenhouse pollution from fossil fuels building up in the atmosphere at an increasing rate, the world is now hotter than it has ever been in recorded history. New England is unambiguously warming. Fueled by the warmer world, catastrophic rainfall is rising, as “exemplified by the ’100-year’ floods that have occurred in southern New Hampshire in 2005, 2006, 2007.”

Americans for Prosperity operatives gleefully praised the vote for pollution and global warming denial:

AFP VP for Policy Phil Kerpen hopes the vote “could deal the death blow to cap and trade both regionally and nationally.”

AFP-NH Executive Director Corey Lewandowski: “We’re delighted by the strong House vote for consumers.”

AFP-NJ Executive Director Steve Lonegan, an admitted global warming denier, called the vote “a significant victory for ratepayers all over the Northeast.”

Lonegan is spearheading the Koch Industries effort to kill RGGI in New Jersey, after its multi-million-dollar campaign to kill climate action in California failed miserably.

Koch Industries and the politicians it supports have been making the argument that limits on carbon pollution have “always been about the money” and a plot to “collect some money from all of us to redistribute that wealth to a few of us.”

Of course, they fail to mention that by letting Koch Industries profit from billions of tons of carbon pollution for free, the government has actually allowed the Koch brothers to “collect some money from all of us to redistribute that wealth to a few of us” — namely themselves — while the lives of everyone else are put at risk. For the Kochs, it has “always been about the money.” For the rest of us, it’s simply about respect for science and the health of our planet.

Deniers still demand Inquisition

Inspector General’s Review of Stolen Emails Confirms No Evidence of Wrong-Doing by NOAA Climate Scientists

Report is the latest independent analysis to clear climate scientists of allegations of mishandling of climate information

Another day, another independent review finds that emails of climate science do nothing to undermine the overwhelming data-driven understanding that humans are changing the climate and that if we keep listening to the deniers, unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases will bring multiple catastrophes to countless future generations.

What a surprise (see “The first rule of vindicating climate scientists is you do not talk about vindicating climate scientists“).

The headlines are from the NOAA release, which continues:

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Top medical and health experts came together Thursday to say climate change is hurting Americans now — and if we don’t act now its effects will only get worse.  CAP’s Susan Lyon and Lee Hamill have the story (and audio).

The following top health and medical experts came together Thursday to alert us of the serious health threats posed by carbon pollution and to remind us of the necessity of the EPA in protecting our air, water, and health, on a briefing call hosted by the American Public Health Association (APHA):

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Which Nations Are Most Vulnerable to Climate Change? The Daunting Politics of Choosing

Is it worse to be swallowed by the sea or racked by famine?

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USA Today’s excellent science reporter Dan Vergano wrote an extensive overview of geoengineering, but failed to clearly explain the risk of intentionally poisoning our atmosphere to mitigate the effects of global warming pollution. Geoengineering describes a wide array of concepts to alter how planetary systems deal with greenhouse gas pollution, but Vergano fails to clearly distinguish reasonable efforts to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations from radical experiments to transform the planet. He cites several interviewees who depict extreme geoengineering in colorless, amoral economic policy language:

“We’re moving into a different kind of world,” says environmental economist Scott Barrett of Columbia University. “Better we turn to asking if ‘geoengineering’ could work, than waiting until it becomes a necessity.”

“That’s where geoengineering comes in,” says international relations expert David Victor of the University of California-San Diego. “Research into geoengineering creates another option for the public.”

“Geoengineering is no longer a taboo topic at scientific meetings. They are looking at it as one more policy prescription,” says Science magazine reporter Eli Kintisch, author of Hack the Planet: Science’s Best Hope — Or Worst Nightmare — For Averting Climate Catastrophe. “But it is yet to become a household word.”

Although Vergano attempts to describe the risks of, say, pumping millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere (“consigning hundreds of millions of the poorest people on the planet in Africa and Asia to recurring drought”), he has failed to accurately interpret the scientific literature. The only risks he has depicted — ones that involve the potential deaths of millions if not billions of people — are the “known” ones, the ones easily modeled by imperfect simulations of experiments never conducted before by humanity. The risks of geoengineering, particularly the ones that emulate the effects of a nuclear winter to dim the amount of sun reaching the earth, are practically unbounded. Depicting the known risks, as Vergano did, as the only risks of geoengineering, is astoundingly optimistic.

The only reason that serious climate scientists (other than Dr. Strangelovian extremists) are discussing geoengineering is that they fear the possibility of humanity’s extinction — or merely the utter collapse of human civilization — from unchecked fossil fuel pollution is significant enough to consider doomsday survival scenarios. “We should avoid geoengineering if possible,” Dr. Ken Caldeira, one of the climate scientists who has explored geoengineering scenarios, “but we need it in our toolbox in case of catastrophe.”

A ThinkProgress cross-post.  See also the Center for American Progress (CAP) post “How the United States Can Respond as Tripoli Heats Up,”

As Col. Muammar Qaddafi begins to lose control of his country to anti-government protesters, the Libyan dictator announced this week that he won’t go down without a fight. In a rambling speech on Tuesday, Qaddafi vowed to track down and kill protesters “house by house.” “I will fight on to the last drop of my blood,” he said. In fact, forces loyal to Qaddafi launched a counter offensive yesterday, and to date, the unrest has already claimed hundreds “” if not thousands “” of lives.

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CAP’s Tom Kenworthy, in a WonkRoom repost.

Speaking today at the Center for American Progress, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the Obama administration will not shy away from pushing for expansions of the nation’s network of protected lands, including the designation of new national monuments. He also issued a strong defense of his department’s new policy giving interim protections to wilderness-quality federal lands just a few days after the House voted to block the use of funds to implement the policy this year.

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