The July Climate Extremes Index for the CONUS was 37 percent. This is the highest July value in the CEI record (since 1910). The culprits were, in order of impact: Extreme warm minimum temperatures (60 percent of the country, easily the largest on record), extreme wet PDSI (soaked northern plains & western great lakes), extreme warm maximum temperatures, and extreme dry PDSI (south-central U.S. through Gulf Coast). According to the Regional CEI, the South and Southeast had their 1st- and 2nd-most extreme July’s on record, respectively

That’s from the July “State of the Climate” by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

Didn’t know that our government kept a Climate Extremes Index? Why would you? The media hardly ever write about it.

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Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Max Baucus (D-MT) have been named to the fiscal super committee tasked with constructing a bipartisan plan to rein in the long-term federal deficit. Considering that Republicans have practically proscribed new revenues, new investments, or eliminating tax subsidies, the committee is likely to continue America’s slide into austerity.

However low the likelihood, the committee does have the opportunity to put together a package that actually addresses the real long-term threats the nation faces, with desperately needed clean-energy and climate-resilience infrastructure spending funded by strict taxes or a cap on carbon pollution.

Kerry has said he believes that climate change “biggest long term threat” to national security. His 2010 climate bill was scored by the Congressional Budget Office to reduce the deficit by $19 billion, even using its extremely conservative assumptions that a massive investment in clean energy and infrastructure would somehow slow economic growth. A more aggressive climate plan that reflects the true urgency of the climate crisis would do even more to restore jobs and cut the deficit.

“We owe it to our children and future generations to get this issue under control and soon,” Murray argues about climate change.

Unfortunately, Kerry and Murray have not yet spread their climate-hawk wings and pointed out that the only solution to the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook involves solving the climate crisis. On Meet the Press, Kerry described his view thusly:

And the real problem for our country is not the short-term debt. We can deal with that. It’s the long-term debt. It’s the structural debt of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid measured against the demographics of our nation. That, then juxtaposed to the lack of jobs and job creation and growth. That’s our problem, structural.

In a joint statement with Baucus, Kerry and Murray said:

Our challenge is to find common ground without damaging anyone’s principles. We believe we can get there.

Their challenges is to save this nation’s long-term economic future. One can only hope they choose reality over compromise, even if Republican Party principles like denying science are damaged.

Speculators drove up the price of petroleum, wounding the United States economy, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross charged today. Ross, an investor in domestic manufacturing, said the rise in the price of oil had been “hurtful” to gross domestic product growth. Fueled by unregulated, unrestrained speculators, the oil markets have surged from $35 a barrel in 2009 to $114 earlier this year, and have now slid to $82. That volatility — driven not by supply and demand but by hedge funds and profiteers — has crippled the economic recovery. In an interview on NPR, Ross said each $10 swing in the price of a barrel of oil is “probably worth one or two-tenths of a percent in gross domestic product growth”:

ROSS: The second thing is that the keys to us are things like decline in the price of petroleum. We think that $10 a barrel in petroleum is probably worth one or two-tenths of a percent in gross domestic product growth.

NPR: You mean if it goes down $10 a barrel.

ROSS: Yeah, if it goes down or up. If it goes up, it’s hurtful. Lately it’s been going down. The price of petroleum had really been driven up, mainly by speculation rather than by physical supply/demand characteristics.

NPR: Oh yeah, the war in Libya caused a lot of…

ROSS: Well, yeah, that was psychological, though. Libya’s very small potatoes in terms of world production, so there’s clearly no scarcity, it’s just a speculative thing.

Listen here:

As much as $50 of the $114 price of oil may be due to speculators, costing as much as a full percentage point of GDP growth. Furthermore, any domestic profits gleaned from expensive oil went almost entirely to the oil traders like Goldman Sachs and the Koch brothers, while working Americans suffered from high fuel costs.

Joe Bastardi has become the go-to anti-scientist for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.  But normally Bastardi doesn’t dress up his disinformation in this much blatant Charlie-Sheen-esque pseudoscience.

by Jocelyn Fong, in a Media Matters repost.

Those who watched Fox News over the weekend were treated to a brief but ambitious science lesson on “Why CO2 Can’t Cause Warming”:

Oh boy. Let’s take these one at a time.

During the segment Fox’s global warming expert, Joe Bastardi, who is employed by the WeatherBELL meteorological consulting firm, declared that the theory of human-induced climate change “contradicts what we call the 1st law of thermodynamics. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. So to look for input of energy into the atmosphere, you have to come from a foreign source.”

It’s not clear what to conclude from this except that Fox and Bastardi are not familiar with the greenhouse effect. Climate scientists aren’t claiming that humans are creating energy. They’re saying that humans are trapping more energy by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Duke University scientist William Chameides, who called Fox’s claims “utter nonsense,” explained via email:

It is true that global warming requires a source of heat. In this case it comes from the sun. What CO2 does is trap a larger amount of the heat from the sun, preventing it from escaping and thus driving up temperatures. To argue otherwise is to argue that the greenhouse effect does not exist. In fact the existence of the greenhouse effect was established by scientists more than a century ago. It would be impossible to explain the temperatures of Mars and Venus, as well as the Earth, without invoking this effect.

Bastardi went on to claim Le Chatelier’s Principle “says that any system in distress, physical or chemical in the atmosphere, tries to return toward normalcy. And that is why you’re seeing temperatures level off.”

In fact the notion of a system moving toward “normalcy,” or more accurately, toward a new “equilibrium,” explains why greenhouse gases do cause warming, rather than “Why CO2 Can’t Cause Warming.” By preventing infrared energy from efficiently escaping to space, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere make it more difficult for the earth to maintain its previous energy balance, and thus its previous temperature.

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Republican Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann calls the Environmental Protection Agency the “job-killing organization of America” and has threatened to have the agency’s “doors locked and lights turned off.” But before her strong anti-EPA rhetoric aimed at firing up the Tea Party during election season, Bachmann solicited the help of the agency to bring “long-term benefits to the environment and the economy.”

The Huffington Post is reporting this morning that Bachmann asked for direct assistance from the government 16 times – many though the stimulus package, a program that she said made President Obama a “gangster.” On numerous occasions, she urged the EPA to fund projects in her community to realize economic benefits:

In February 2007, well before Obama was in office, Bachmann co-signed a letter to the EPA urging its officials to help fund technical assistance programs and rural water initiatives “in small communities across Minnesota.” The authors of the letter, which included nearly the entire Minnesota congressional delegation at the time, noted that FY 2006 funding for the National Rural Water Association had been set at $11 million.

“We need to continue these efforts in 2007,” they wrote.

In other communications with the EPA, Bachmann was far colder to agency policy, criticizing spring 2009 federal management standards for coal combustion byproducts and 2008 National Ambient Air Quality standards. But in other instances, Bachmann turned to the EPA for constituent-related problems. In a Feb. 2, 2010, letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, she asked the agency to support a $270,806 grant application (filed with the EPA’s Clean Diesel Grant Program) that would help a St. Cloud bus company replace two older motor coach vehicles.

“Voigt’s Bus Service, with Community Transportation, Incorporated, is committed to bringing long-term benefits to the environment and the economy and they wish to accomplish this through the Clean Diesel Grant Program,” she wrote.

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A ThinkProgress analysis finds that a majority of the members on the congressional special fiscal committee oppose regulation of global warming pollution. Even with the three House Democrats left to be named, seven of the 12-member committee are known to be climate zombies. Every Republican on the so-called Super Congress, as well as Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), have voted to reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) work to limit greenhouse gas pollution. Most of the Republicans named to the committee are proud torchbearers of global warming denial:

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI): “I do not say that it is man-made.”

Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI): “From what I have read, there remains a great deal of uncertainty with regard to the scientific evidence about climate change.”

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA): “There has been an increase in the surface temperature of the planet over the course of the last 100 years or so. I think it’s clear that that has happened. The extent to which that has been caused by human activity I think is not as clear. I think that is still very much disputed and has been debated.”

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH): “When you analyze all the data, there is a warming trend according to science. But the jury is out on the degree of how much is manmade.”

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) — whose top contributors include Koch Industries — has joined Camp and Upton in numerous votes this year to deny the threat of climate pollution, including H.R. 910, the House bill introduced by Upton to overturn the EPA’s scientific finding that greenhouse pollution endangers public health and welfare.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) also voted in April in a failed attempt to overturn the EPA’s scientific finding. Toomey and Portman were co-sponsors of that legislation.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) also tried in April to prohibit the regulation of greenhouse gases from a wide range of polluters.

However, Baucus has claimed that he has wanted Congress to lead on fighting climate pollution while opposing the EPA. He has the opportunity to become a climate hawk and insist that the fiscal package his committee devises include a civilization-saving, economy-spurring, and deficit-reducing carbon tax or cap and trade program.

Of the nine members already named to the committee, only Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) have been unequivocal about their efforts to fight greenhouse pollution.

Jordan’s King Abdullah is a big Star Trek fan (and actually played an extra on the show). He likes the series so much that he’s backing the construction of a $1.5 billion Star-Trek themed park in his country.

That’s good news for fellow Star-Trek geeks who can afford a ticket to Jordan. But there’s good news for clean energy geeks too: The park will integrate renewables, water recycling systems and an educational center on energy issues, reports the Middle East Hotelier.

The themed entertainment destination will also serve as a model for “green energy,” incorporating state-of-the-art renewable technologies throughout the facility, and hosting a “future” pavilion where businesses, students and attendees can learn about alternative energy sources ranging from solar and wind energy to greywater harvesting.

There are no details in the early reports on how much renewable energy will be used. But the key word here is “incorporating,” hopefully meaning that these systems will be on-site and not some gimmick common in the services industry where a resort pretends to be “sustainable” by purchasing renewable energy credits.

And really, Jordan can’t afford to be gimmicky. The country has terrible water resources and relies mostly on imported energy, making the construction of a $1.5 billion energy-intensive theme park in the middle of the desert a particularly challenging task.

As King Abdullah goes about building this 180-acre entertainment complex, we can only hope he follows the words of Captain Picard in Star Trek: Generations: “What we leave behind is as important as how we’ve lived.”

by John Cook, in a Skeptical Science cross-post

In 1859, physicist John Tyndall ran an experiment demonstrating the greenhouse effect. Visible sunlight easily passes through our atmosphere to warm the Earth. However, invisible heat rays rising from the Earth’s surface, otherwise known as infrared radiation, don’t easily escape back to space. What Tyndall showed by shining heat rays through tubes filled with different gases is that certain gases like water vapour and carbon dioxide block the heat rays. These became known as greenhouse gases.

Tyndall also made several predictions of what we should expect to see if greenhouse gases were causing warming (Tyndall 1861). In fact, we expect to see a number of distinctive greenhouse patterns in global warming. Observing these patterns strengthens the evidence that humans are causing global warming, as well as eliminates other possible natural causes. Let’s have a look at the many human fingerprints on climate change:

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Lawyers Make Insurance Claim in Bid to Prove Damages From Climate Change

In the face of courts hostile to the idea of awarding damages against major greenhouse gas emitters over the impacts of climate change, creative plaintiffs lawyers are placing their faith in the driest of subjects: insurance.

Courts — including the Supreme Court — have been reluctant to recognize common law public nuisance claims against utilities and oil companies due to the difficulty of attributing blame among thousands of emitters and the sense that it is a global issue that should be tackled at the international level.

But some plaintiffs lawyers think they can prove a concrete injury by showing that their clients’ insurance rates have increased as a direct result of climate change.

That is exactly what attorneys representing clients in Mississippi affected by Hurricane Katrina, who recently refiled a high-profile suit against various greenhouse gas emitters, are trying to do.

The complaint (pdf) in Comer v. Murphy Oil USA Inc. alleges that “as a result of defendants’ activities, plaintiffs’ insurance premiums for their coastal Mississippi property have risen dramatically.”

Fight Over Mining Near Grand Canyon, Other Riders Will Return After Recess

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The League of Women Voters has launched a major, nationwide campaign in defense of the EPA’s work to give Americans clean air. The People Not Polluters campaign asks Americans and their elected officials to join the Clean Air Promise:

I promise to protect America’s children and families from dangerous air pollution. Because toxics and pollutants such as mercury, smog, carbon, and soot, cause thousands of hospital visits, asthma attacks, and even deaths, I will support clean air policies and other protections that scientists and public health experts have recommended to the EPA to safeguard our air quality.

Watch the campaign spot:

LWV is mobilizing its members to tell personal stories of the cost of asthma for children and families, including outreach to vulnerable populations like seniors, Latinos, and African Americans.

Stephen Colbert isn’t taking any of this global warming nonsense. In fact, he doesn’t believe the science is in on the whole “warming” thing at all: “I say the science isn’t in on thermodynamics. I believe water boils because it’s scared of fire.”

The government-manufactured heat index is just as bad. Steven enlightens us by explaining that it’s a government conspiracy to tell you “how hot to feel” just like that silly “time index tells you how sleepy to feel.”

“Oh it’s midnight here, but it’s nine in LA. Which is it President Obama? I don’t have to go to bed!”

It’s time to wake up on this, America. Let the real pundits communicate science.

Some of the largest trucks on the road are set to get a serious make-over.

Yesterday, the Obama Administration announced new fuel standards for medium and heavy-duty trucks, buses and pickups that will improve efficiency of the nation’s fleet of big trucks, vans and buses  by up to 20 percent through 2018. The range of vehicles covered by the standards make up only 4 percent of America’s vehicle fleet, but represent around 20 percent of national fuel use.

The White House estimates the industry will save $50 billion in fuel costs and reduce consumption of 530 million barrels of oil by the time the targets are fully reached, while costing about $8 billion to implement. Long-haul trucks will save about 4 gallons of fuel for every 100 traveled, which could add up to about tens of thousands of dollars in savings for semi-truck drivers over the life of a vehicle.

Conservatives are already jumping on Obama for the standards, however. Writing on his blog, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lamented the plan, saying that it would “further tie the hands of job creators and add yet another hurdle to getting the economy up and running.”

But that first “hurdle,” which doesn’t begin until 2014, could lead to 40,000 new jobs over 6 years due to increased manufacturing activity as automakers ramp up new models to meet the rules, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Heritage Foundation, which believes drilling for more oil and getting rid of efficiency standards is the answer to the nation’s energy problems, described the standards as “focus-group tested” and encouraged “onshore and offshore access, as well as access to oil shale reserves.”

Never mind that the original law mandating the increase in efficiency for heavy-duty trucks was passed in 2007 under the Bush Administration. If by “focus group tested,” Heritage means auto manufacturers that support the standards, then yes, it was well tested. Reuters is reporting that the standards have “very aggressive support” from producers of heavy-duty autos.

The new standards were announced just two weeks after historic fuel standards for light automobiles that will increase the average mileage of the nation’s fleet to 54.5 mpg, up from 27.3 mpg today — saving consumers over $1.5 trillion and reducing gas consumption by 44 billion gallons through 2030.