High Water: Aussie inland tsunami labelled 1-in-370 year event

“This is a situation of historic proportions,” said Victoria Koenig, public information officer with the Texas Forest Service, in a phone interview with AccuWeather.com Tuesday. “The fuels are so dry. The winds are astronomical. The behavior of the winds is a perplexing situation. It’s never been like this before.”

Koenig added, “When you put all the ingredients together, you’re getting close to having the ‘perfect fire storm‘.”

That’s Accuweather meteorologist Heather Buchman writing about “a never-before-seen wildfire situation in Texas has led to the scorching of nearly 1 million acres and destruction of hundreds of homes and buildings.

ClimateProgress recently wrote about the record drought hitting Texas, just as the Congressional delegation votes to deny climate change.  It was clear in that post the unprecedented drought was setting the stage for a possible devastating wildfire, which, Buchman reports, is just what happened:

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1. BP is gunning to get back to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s the start of a long list by Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones.

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Another expert slams Nisbet’s “illegitimate assumptions”

The data suggest opponents of the bill far outspent environmentalists during the climate bill debate of 2009 and 2010:

• 8-to-1 on lobbying in 2009
  
• 4-to 1 (or more) on advertising in 2009
• 8-to-1 in donations to candidates and Congress members in 2010 cycle
  
• 10-to-1 on independent election expenditures in 2010
  

I am basing those numbers on a reanalysis of data in Dr. Matthew Nisbet’s discredited Climate Shift report [big PDF here].

This reanalysis, which I’ll present below, was done with the help of Dr. Robert Brulle. Brulle is a leading social scientist whom Nisbet had specifically asked to review his financial analysis — and who ultimately withdrew his name from the study in large part because Nisbet’s claims that enviros held the spending edge were “contradicted by Nisbet’s own data.”  Brulle’s withdrawal letter is here.

Yesterday, yet another expert, Thomas Webler, came forward to debunk Nisbet’s analysis.  His email to me focused on Nisbet’s claim that enviro overall spending resources exceed that of bill opponents and concludes:

Nisbet acknowledges that the green groups do many more things than simply work on climate legislation, but by posing this huge $1.4 billion number against the $787 million of the brown NGOs, I feel Nisbet is attempting to convey an idea that is actually false.  He seems to want to make the point that greens have more — and spend more — than browns.  But, when one looks beyond the surface, it becomes clear that this can only be done by making illegitimate assumptions that end up bending the truth.

It’s sad to see such misleading social science come out into the public sphere, but particularly troubling to see this on Earth Day.  I’m saddened to see such questionable scholarship acquire publicity it does not deserve.  Questionable scholarship does harm to our entire profession. I only hope that readers of the report will put the time in that is necessary to read critically, not accept claims on face value, and come to their own conclusions.

Webler is a founding member and Research Fellow at the Social and Environmental Research Institute.  He is on the Editorial Board of Environmental Communication, Society and Natural Resources and Human Ecology Review.

Since Nisbet’s debunked financial analysis is the big news hook for his study, and since this is a crucial area for understanding what happened to the climate bill, I’ll spend the rest of this post reanalyzing the data in great detail, to try to get a true picture of what happened.

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One year ago today the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon erupted in a torrent of oil, gas, drilling mud, and flames, claiming the lives of 11 men and setting off an 87-day environmental nightmare. The explosion also triggered an equally ferocious barrage of rhetoric in the nation’s capital. A frantic burst of congressional hearings emerged as the immediate oversight response. As usual, they were full of sound and fury””sadly but not surprisingly””signifying nothing.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that 101 oil-spill-related bills were introduced in the 111th Congress, which came to a close in 2010. Exactly zero were enacted into law. Another 15 have been introduced so far this year””none of which has been acted upon by its committee of jurisdiction.

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Energy Dept. says U.S. on track for 1M electric cars by 2015

U.S. President Barack Obama’s goal to have more than 1 million plug-in electric cars on U.S. roadways by 2015 is well on its way to being completed, according to Assistant Energy Secretary David Sandalow.

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As CP reported earlier this month, Glenn Beck is out at Fox News thanks to shrinking ratings and growing disconnect from reality.  Now Brad Johnson reports at ThinkProgress that Beck can’t leave fast enough to stop the crazy.  The good news is that Brad also has a clip of Van Jones.

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Plus I pose two questions to Nisbet

Prof. Matthew Nisbet has responded (here) to the multiple critiques that demonstrated his 99-page report, Climate Shift, was self-contradictory and false.

One of the main source of the critique, Dr. Robert J. Brulle, emailed me a response that notes “Dr. Nisbet does not respond to the evidence presented that the data in Chapter One of his own report contradicts the conclusions and executive summary regarding the financial differences between supporters and opponents of cap and trade.”

Brulle also disputes Nisbet’s characterization of both the review process and his reason for withdrawing his name from the report.  To set the record straight, Brulle also sent me his withdrawal email to Nisbet.  I’ll post Brulle’s email and then two questions that I posed to Nisbet by email last night:
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