As weather extremes multiply, Colombian Prez pleas, “The tragedy the country is going through has no precedents in our history”

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has released its monthly global temperature data.  It reveals that there is no April in the temperature record before 2005 that was warmer than April 2011.

And that’s in spite of the fact that we are still in the tail end of a major La Ni±a and just coming out of “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.”  April 2011 is surpassed in warmth only by 2005, 2007, and 2010.  It tied with 2002 and just beat 1998.

The Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology foresees a transition to an El Ni±o this summer.  NOAA only foresees “ENSO-neutral conditions.”  NASA’s Hansen had predicted back in October that “It is likely that 2012 will reach a record high global temperature.”  An El Ni±o would make that an extreme likelihood.

We have, as reported, seen almost unbelievable extreme weather in this country (see Hell and High Water: Weather Channel labels Texas drought and Mississippi floods truly “exceptional”; Masters: This is “only” a “1-in-100 to 1-in-300 year flood).”

We have also been seeing record-smashing extreme weather around the globe, from England to Canada, from Colombia to China — but the U.S. media is so focused on the Mississippi that these events have received little attention here.

April was the hottest in the Central England Temperature record going back some 350 years:

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Our guest blogger is Bill Becker.

Whatever else we might say about Big Oil in the United States, we have to give the industry credit for one thing: It has mastered the art of scamming us with a perfectly straight face.

The scam has been underway for decades. This year’s example is the debate about repealing $21 billion in federal subsidies for big oil companies over the next decade. To their credit, President Obama and several Democrats in Congress are pushing the idea.

Oil executives have launched a counteroffensive reminiscent of Gordon Gekko’s argument that “greed is good”.

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, long a mouthpiece for the interests of the oil industry, has lashed out against the Democratic effort to roll back taxpayer subsidies for the Big Five oil companies. In a letter to the U.S. Senate, the chamber’s chief lobbyist, R. Bruce Josten, blasted S. 940, the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act, as “punitive taxation” that would “jeopardize U.S. jobs” and “increase energy costs.” The $21 billion in unneeded subsidies would go to reduce the federal deficit. Josten argues the deficit should be tackled through spending cuts at the expense of working families and the elderly, instead of the richest corporations on earth:

While the Chamber believes that deficit reduction is a laudable goal, this goal should be achieved through spending cuts that address the root cause of the deficit, and not thru [sic] punitive taxation. Bad tax policy and bad energy policy are not antidotes for the poison of the federal deficit.

Even the American Petroleum Institute’s chief economist has admitted that cutting subsidies for Big Oil would not hurt jobs — in fact, it could create jobs. As The Hill’s Andrew Restuccia reports, the “nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and the Joint Economic Committee both say the bill will not affect fuel prices.” Instead, cutting these subsidies would be a first step to rebuilding a nation that rewards work and responsibility instead of greed and political influence.

The chamber has a consistent stance that the richest nation on earth should increase economic inequality and suffering by cutting services for working families while cutting taxes for “businesses and upper income individuals.”

Over 6000 American businesses have joined 350.org’s “The Chamber Does Not Speak For Me” campaign to oppose the right-wing lobbying group’s toxic politics.

The chamber’s letter: Read more

USA Today: Evidence of plagiarism and complaints about the peer-review process have led a statistics journal to retract a federally funded study that condemned scientific support for global warming

Climate science is a solid edifice built around the work of thousands of scientists, vast amounts of data, and countless peer-reviewed publications.  As the National Academy of Sciences report put it, “Although the scientific process is always open to new ideas and results, the fundamental causes and consequences of climate change have been established by many years of scientific research, are supported by many different lines of evidence, and have stood firm in the face of careful examination, repeated testing, and the rigorous evaluation of alternative theories and explanation.”

Climate denial is a house of cards, built around the sleight of hand of a few disinformers, deniers, and pseudo-scientists — who keep repeating the same falsehoods no matter how many times they have been debunked.  One of the most important, yet flimsiest, cards holding up the house is the attack on the so-called Hockey Stick research — multiple, independent lines of data and analysis that demonstrate recent global warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (see “Two more independent studies back the Hockey Stick and below).  Indeed, as WAG notes, within a few decades, nobody is going to be talking about hockey sticks, they will be talking about right angles or hockey skates (see chart above).

A cornerstone of the disinformer’s ultimately self-destructive attack on climate science is a 2006 report, commissioned by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), and led by George Mason University statistician Edward Wegman, who is now himself under investigation by GMU (see Experts find “shocking” plagiarism in 2006 climate report).  You can find all the details you could want about the shoddy analysis of the report at Deep Climate “” including his “methodical demolishing of any hint of statistics” in the report, as John Mashey puts it in the comments.

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The U.S. Department of Energy sent out letters last week to several dozen renewable energy developers, saying their applications were on hold due to a lack of funds available in the 1705 loan guarantee program created under the stimulus package.  Here’s what that means.

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Hydropower’s Resurgence and the Controversy Around It

Hydropower, a renewable energy source often overshadowed by excitement about wind and solar power, is enjoying something of a global resurgence.

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WashPost editorial: Climate change denial becomes harder to justify

Last week I blogged on the major new climate report from the National Academy of Sciences, which called on nation to “substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions” starting ASAP.

A commenter pointed out a paragraph I missed buried on page 35 in the brief discussion of how “Many factors complicate and impede public understanding of climate change”:

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Within four decades, one of the world’s leading economies will be powered almost entirely by wind, solar, biomass, hydro, and geothermal power.

Stephen Lacey: As Germany is showing, it is very possible to get large penetrations of renewable energy while phasing out nuclear energy. With bold political and social support, a consistent incentive framework for clean energy investment, and creative thinking about how to deploy geographically-dispersed resources, Germany is undergoing a major transition in its energy sector.

Below, two experts on the German experience “” Wilson Rickerson of Meister Consultants and Arne Jungjohann of the Heinrich Boll Foundation ”” describe how the country will “reduce carbon emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 (and 80% by 2050)” without nukes.

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The fact that tax expenditures are government spending is widely recognized by conservative economists and politicians. President Ronald Reagan’s chief economic advisor, economist Dr. Martin Feldstein, noted recently that tax expenditures are equivalent to direct government expenditures.  CAP’s Seth Hanlon and Daniel J. Weiss provide the details in this repost.

The American Petroleum Institute, or API””the political arm of Big Oil””has spent millions of dollars in advertising to convince Americans to support retention of Big Oil’s tax loopholes worth more than $40 billion over the next decade. Unfortunately, some in the mainstream media have begun to repeat API’s claim that eliminating tax loopholes is the same as a tax increase. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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Last week, TP and CP wrote about how FSU accepts funds from petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch in return for control over its academic freedom.  The story is taking off:

• “Under fire this week for an unusual deal that gives a billionaire donor control over some faculty positions, Florida State University President Eric J. Barron has insisted that his institution’s academic  freedom has not been compromised.  But internal FSU emails show that top academic officers who reviewed drafts of the 2008 agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation had precisely those concerns.”
• “Some faculty members at Florida State University say their school has sold out to a conservative group that dangled a big donation.  Recently released details show the university gave the Charles Koch Foundation a role in hiring decisions, in exchange for a big grant.”

ThinkProgress details how FSU is just the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg of Koch’s efforts to control academic freedom in universities around the country:

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