How hot has it been?  The first 9 days of August saw “Heat Records Outnumbering Cold Records by Amazing 24 to 1,” CapitalClimate reported.

This year’s record heat has spawned cow-killing algae, caused sidewalks to explode, and turned reservoirs blood-red. Now it’s causing an even costlier problem for communities in the U.S. – exploding water pipes.

As severe heat dries out the ground, old pipes shift around and are more susceptible to breaking. The problem is exacerbated by an increased demand for water during hot days. Towns across the U.S. are seeing increased rates of water pipe failures; Oklahoma saw 685 water main breaks since July – about four times the normal rate.

Kemp, Texas was the most recent victim. Last Wednesday, town officials were forced to shut off water supplies for the 1,110 residents after 14 water pipes burst:

Kemp Mayor Donald Kile says the old infrastructure has a lot to do with the problem. The local water treatment plant was last replaced 40 years ago, and a lot of the town’s 30 miles of pipelines were installed in the 1930s and haven’t been updated in years.
“It’s sad to say, but it’s poor planning,” said Kile, who was elected mayor recently. “When they put that water treatment plant in, they should have implemented something then….  It just wasn’t ever done.”

With virtually no updates to its water infrastructure in 40 years, Kemp is facing a serious water-reliability crisis. And the town is representative of the rest of the country: the Environmental protection agency says that about 700 water main ruptures take place in the U.S. daily because of aging pipelines. The EPA estimates the U.S. will need to invest in over $334 billion in water infrastructure over the next 25 years.

Climate change will make the problem far worse.

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Today, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) issued the first policy position of his presidential campaign by asking the White House to issue a “moratorium on regulations across this country”:

We’re calling today on the president of the United States to put a moratorium on regulations across this country, because his regulations, his EPA regulations are killing jobs all across America.

Watch it:

“We’re sending out a request today asking President Obama to put a moratorium on all regulations,” Perry said on WHO radio in Iowa, recorded live by ThinkProgress.

Under such a moratorium, the Food and Drug Administration would stop approving new drugs and preventing human experimentation; the USDA would stop checking for food safety; the EPA would stop monitoring for poisons in drinking water; the Library of Congress would stop loaning materials to blind people; the NTSB would stop investigating airplane accidents; HHS would end Medicare payments; no more patents, copyrights, or trademarks would be issued; DHS would stop protecting chemical facilities from terrorist attacks; the Treasury would stop printing currency; financial sanctions on hostile nations like North Korea and Iran would end; and the Federal Reserve System would shut down.

Perry’s “moratorium on regulations” would mean a literal end to the rules of law in the United States. At least it would also mean that all of President George W. Bush’s midnight regulations favoring polluters and industry abuses would also be lifted.

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has watched first hand the ravages of a warming climate first as Texas agriculture commissioner (killer droughts and record heat in 1996 and 1998) then as governor (droughts in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, with Texas’ hottest July in history). Perry declared the 1996 drought “the worst natural disaster in Texas in the 20th century.” He issued an official proclamation to pray for rain this year (it didn’t work). However, he argues that climate science is “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight” in his book, Fed Up!

For example, they have seen the headlines in the past year about doctored data related to global warming. They know we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists, and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time. Quite frankly, when science gets hijacked by the political Left, we should all be concerned. . . .

And it’s all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight. Al Gore is a prophet all right, a false prophet of a secular carbon cult, and now even moderate Democrats aren’t buying it.

In an e-mail interview with ThinkProgress, Dr. Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University responds that Perry is wrong:

There are dozens of credible atmospheric scientists in Texas at institutions like Rice, UT, and Texas A&M, and I can confidently say that none agree with Gov. Perry’s views on the science of climate change. This is a particularly unfortunate situation given the hellish drought that Texas is now experiencing, and which climate change is almost certainly making worse.

“Contrary to what one might read in newspapers, the science of climate change is strong,” Dr. Dessler and five other climate scientists from Texas schools wrote in the Houston Chronicle in 2010. “It is virtually certain that the climate is warming,” the entire faculty of the Texas A&M department of atmospheric sciences affirm. “It is very likely that humans are responsible for most of the recent warming,” and future climate change from man-made greenhouse emissions brings a “risk of serious adverse impacts on our environment and society.” The members of the Jackson School of Geosciences program in Climate Systems Science at the University of Texas at Austin also agree with “agree with the scientific assessment presented in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Below is a partial list of the Texas climate scientists who disagree with Perry’s denial of climate science, including the Texas State Climatologist and the directors of the Environmental Science Institute, the Texas Center for Climate Studies, the Center for the Study of Environment and Society, the Climate Science Center, the Cooperative Institute for Applied Meteorological Studies, the Institute for Geophysics, and the Center for Atmospheric Chemistry and the Environment:
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Meanwhile, the Interior Department recognizes that the “Arctic is experiencing variations that are accelerating faster than previously realized” due to climate change, but supports drilling for more fossil fuels in the region anyway.

Last week, Shell reported a ruptured oil pipeline in the North Sea, where it spilled around 750 barrels of oil. The leak was fixed over the weekend, but Shell has been quiet about exactly what happened, only saying it “responded promptly to the incident.”

Compared to last year’s five-million barrel gusher in the Gulf, this latest leak is very small and was contained quickly. Shell says it was able to contain and monitor the problem with the proper equipment in place. But what happens when there’s no infrastructure in place to address a spill?

This latest incident comes as Shell prepares to drill in the icy waters of the Arctic – an area where a leak or blown-out well would be much more difficult to fix. Experts tasked with clean-up efforts continue to warn of the consequences of a spill in the region.

Two days before Shell went public with its spill in the North Sea, the Interior Department gave the company the go-ahead to drill exploratory wells in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the coast of Alaska. Assuming it finalizes the permitting, Shell will begin operations in the area next summer.

But the leader of the U.S. Coast Guard continues to raise concerns about the environmental implications of a spill there. Speaking to reporters on Friday in Alaska, Admiral Robert Papp explained that that the agency needs “an appropriate level of Arctic pollution response capability. Presently we have none.” From the Associated Press:

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A round-up of recent global climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

China to double solar capacity by year end: report

China will double its solar capacity to around 2 gigawatts (GW) by the end of the year as the world’s largest solar-panel maker ramps up domestic installation, a local paper said on Saturday citing a government-linked think tank.

The solar feed-in tariff, the price of solar-generated electricity, could drop below 0.80 yuan (12.5 cents) for each kilowatt-hour (kWh) by 2015, which would be on par with conventional coal-fired power tariffs by that time, according to s report by the Energy Research Institute, led by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

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Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), even before establishing super PACs to rake in unlimited contributions from Texas billionaires in his presidential run, has been one of the best funded politicians in history. Since his 1998 candidacy to be George W. Bush’s lieutenant governor, Perry has raked in $117,091,642 in campaign contributions, with the oil and gas industry the top contributor. Big oil has fueled Rick Perry’s career, the top industry contributor at $11,189,103, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics:

Top oil company contributions include $189,188 from Exxon Mobil, $147,895 from Valero Energy, and $116,000 from Koch Industries.

by Michael Conathan

Members of Congress have retreated to their respective corners over summer break while they wait for another brutal round of fighting over our country’s financial future. Meanwhile, Americans are streaming to the oceans and beaches in droves. As regular readers will have noted, this column missed its last edition while I joined my fellow beachgoers to take advantage of cool ocean breezes and escape the torrents of hot air cascading down from Capitol Hill.

What stood out to me during my “research” on Cape Cod and at Saquish Beach off the south shore of Massachusetts was that on its surface, the ocean looks pretty good. I taught my son to build drip castles in the surf—the sand and water were clean. We went swimming at night and when we dove in, the surface exploded in underwater fireworks of bioluminescence. My neighbor pulled his boat up on the sand early one morning after a 90-minute fishing trip and hopped out with a 34-inch striped bass and stories of the three other keepers he had caught and released because he only needed the one for supper.

While all this made for a spectacular vacation, it revealed, somewhat counterintuitively, that the ocean has an image problem. Only it’s not a problem in the typical sense. When we think “image problem,” we think Charlie Sheen. Or high fructose corn syrup. Or Congress. (The remarkable thing isn’t that Congress has a 14 percent approval rating; it’s that 14 percent of Americans actually think it’s doing a good job.)

The ocean’s image problem, however, is of the opposite kind. When we go down to the shore and look out at the waves, do a bit of bodysurfing, maybe watch a blazing orange and pink sunset, then swing by the fish market and pick up a fresh, local, sustainable filet of something white and flaky to bring home and fry up in the pan, we don’t see what’s really taking place beneath the surface. We don’t notice the decades of habitat degradation from coastal development and polluted runoff. We don’t see the microscopic organisms struggling to build their shells and skeletons in acidified water that dissolves them almost as quickly as they grow. We can’t comprehend that the populations of fish and marine life we experience today are such a far cry from the teeming ecosystems considered normal by even our parents and grandparents. Read more

A round-up of recent climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

Natural gas pipeline leaks into Missouri River

A natural gas pipeline that runs under the Missouri River has developed a leak.

Enterprise Products of Houston reported a drop in pressure Saturday, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources said. The affected section runs from Decatur, Neb., to just west of Onawa.

The company shut down the pipeline and an estimated 140,000 gallons of natural gas was being pumped out.

As of Sunday afternoon, the source had not been found but was suspected to be on the Iowa side.

Post-stimulus Financing: Will Renewable Growth Continue?

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This story was originally posted at PolitiFact.

Note: Tim Pawlenty dropped out of the presidential race this weekend [and was replaced by an even more hard-core science denier, Rick Perry of Texas, who believes global warming is “all one contrived phony mess"].

Climate change has become a touchy subject in the Republican primary. Though some candidates once supported plans to reduce carbon emissions, such strategies have fallen out of favor with Republicans in recent years. Even acknowledging that human beings are causing climate change can be politically problematic for some Republicans.

Our colleagues at the Miami Herald asked Republican presidential candidate and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty about his views on climate change in an interview on Aug. 3, 2011. His response piqued our interest:

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One of Peter Sinclair’s  best videos yet:

Do not miss the part starting at 7 minutes that proves once and for all Joe Bastardi is among the worst long-range forecasters on Planet Earth, blinded by his anti-science ideology into thinking we’re headed back to the temperatures of the 1970s.

Related Posts:

• How many major scientific misstatements does Joe Bastardi have to make before In-Accuweather fires him as their chief long-range forecaster?