Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) today introduced legislation with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to block the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing Clean Air Act protections against global warming pollution, rejecting the counsel of America’s public health advocates. A boon to Koch Industries and the other polluters who supported his campaign, Upton’s legislation would nullify the EPA’s Supreme Court-mandated scientific finding that burning fossil fuels is damaging our climate system. At a climate hearing on this week Upton justified his legislation by claiming the threat greenhouse gases pose to air quality and public health is a “myth”:

So let’s dispel a myth: air quality and public health will not be harmed or affected in any way by efforts to slow and then stop EPA’s expansive global warming agenda under the Clean Air Act. . . . . So we can stop the EPA from imposing cap and tax and the Clean Air Act will continue to make our families and communities healthier places. So let’s listen to the facts: this issue is not about air quality and public health, it’s about jobs.

Watch it:

By rejecting the clean energy economy, the only job Upton seems interested in saving is his own. Moreover, Upton’s denial of reality comes just days after the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association warned policymakers of the grave threat global warming poses to the health our families and communities. Based on scientific studies, experts agree that the following are key health risks from carbon pollution:

– More than doubled asthma rates and lengthened asthma season
– Threatened access to clean drinking water
– Increases in airborne and insect borne illnesses
– Increases in morbidity and mortality due to heat waves and other extreme weather
– Increases in diarrheal, respiratory, and heart disease
– Increased risk of salmonella spread as average temperatures rise

The health risks of climate pollution are particularly severe among low-income communities, children, and the elderly. With this attempt to rewrite the Clean Air Act, Upton is protecting polluter profits at the expense of his own constituents. And that’s no myth.

Do climate scientists have to caveat every attribution? Not until reporters do.

Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.

This statement is, according to NYT opinion blogger Andy Revkin, so unacceptably definitive as to warrant a whole blog post:  “In scientific literature you rarely see statements so streamlined and definitive. For climate science, this is the equivalent of a smoking gun.”

Actually, the statement isn’t a terribly strong one for the scientific literature, particularly given the use of the phrase “have contributed,” and most especially for a study about the trend in increased heavy precipitation, which is a trend many other studies have identified and is a very basic prediction of climate science.

A key reason Revkin’s piece (which cites a blog post by Roger Pielke, Jr.)  — and one by Time‘s Bryan Walsh (which cites Pielke and a blog post by Judith Curry) — are picking the wrong fight is that this particular climate impact is very basic physics.

Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of NCAR’s Climate Analysis Section, has explained the connection between human-caused global warming and extreme deluges:  “There is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.”

Trenberth has further said, “It’s not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability. Nowadays, there’s always an element of both.”

I asked Trenberth for this opinion on these critiques.  His reply gets to the heart of the matter:

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On Tuesday, House Republicans unanimously voted to continue big oil subsidies worth billions of dollars a year, even as oil companies are enjoying windfall profits from skyrocketing prices. The House GOP have used budget deficits to justify draconian cuts on services for working families but will do nothing to stop this corporate welfare. In a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted by Hart/McInturff, an overwhelming majority of Americans — 74 percent — support “eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries” in order to “reduce the current federal budget deficit”:

Nearly half of the American public “totally” supports eliminating government subsidies for the richest companies in the world, while another 27 percent find it “mostly acceptable.” Even former Shell CEO John Hofmeister and Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch claim to support ending the “crony capitalism” of “mandates, subsidies or protective tariffs.”

The only policies more popular among the American public for restoring fiscal health to the United States in this poll are eliminating unnecessary weapons systems (76 percent), eliminating earmarks (78 percent), and raising taxes on millionaires (81 percent). It’s time for Congress to start serving the American people instead of multinational polluters.

It is no big surprise that Americans don’t want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or K-12 education.   But the new WSJ/NBC poll does have some surprises:

The survey found that the most popular potential spending cuts were subsidies to build new nuclear plants, with 57 percent support….

Of course, nuclear is absurdly over-subsidized (see “Nuclear Pork “” Enough is Enough“).  In fact, a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies (the source of the chart above) finds:

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Global food prices increased for the eighth consecutive month in February, with prices of all commodity groups monitored rising again, except for sugar, [UN Food and Agriculture Organisation] said today.

What is driving up food prices to record levels?  As I’ve discussed in CP’s food insecurity series, it’s harvests ruined by extreme weather, coupled with rising oil prices, increasing demand from population growth and changing diets in a global market made all the tighter by unsustainable biofuels policies.

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On February 19^th, House lawmakers passed the Continuing Resolution, or CR, that would establish funding levels for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year.  The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) called this CR “the most anti-environmental piece of legislation in recent memory.”

LCV tracked how members of Congress voted on 25 amendments that impacted the environment or public health in a “National Environmental Scorecard” released March 1. CAP’s Matt Woelfel has the scores.

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– By guest blogger Bill Becker

As the House debated the federal budget this week, Democrats (176 of them, to be precise) tried to save billions of dollars by taking taxpayer subsidies away from the five biggest oil companies. The motion failed, but they shouldn’t give up.

If we are looking for ways to chip away at the budget deficit, to keep America competitive and to use market-based mechanisms to build a competitive clean energy economy, then subsidy reform should be near the top of the list.

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Clean Energy, Carbon Investment Rose 30% to $243 Billion in 2010

Global investment in clean energy and the carbon markets surged 30 percent last year from 2009 levels to a record $243 billion, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

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I’ve had teams of scientists working around the clock trying to figure out some connection between the latest crazed king of all media and what I write about here.  But then cartoonist Tom Toles beats me to the punch — with this Technicolor cartoon:

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In most Orwellian op-ed of the year, pollutocrat Charles Koch has the chutzpah to attack “crony capitalism.”  The Kochs wrote the book on crony capitalism, as ThinkProgress explains in this cross-post.

In an opinion piece published this week, Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch promised to continue to finance anti-government, right-wing front groups. Koch writes that the “purpose of business is to efficiently convert resources into products and services that make people’s lives better.” But when it comes to Koch’s carcinogenic pollution and carbon emissions, the purpose of Koch’s political giving is to avoid any financial responsibility “” no matter who gets hurt. Koch Industries has cornered the market in monetizing some of the most dirty industrial businesses. Koch imports oil from the Middle East, refines high-carbon Canadian crude, maintains coal-burning plants, owns one of the largest oil pipeline networks in America, runs environmentally hazardous lumber mills, produces toxic chemicals, and manufacturers fertilizer. The University of Masschusetts Amherst has scored Koch as among the top ten worst air polluters for its carcinogenic chemicals.

Much of the entire Koch political machine is geared towards ensuring that Koch Industries never has to compensate the people and ecosystems damaged by Koch Industries pollution. Koch front groups “” from Tea Party groups to think tanks “” have diligently promoted Koch Industries’ bottom line by denying global warming, fighting regulations on Koch’s cancer-causing chemicals, and snuffing out investigations into Koch’s environmental crimes:

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