“We Live in the State of Denial, the State of Texas” Censored Rice University Oceanographer John Anderson Tells Climate Progress

In one of the most flagrant recent instances of scientific censorship, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) refused to publish a report chapter unless all mention of climate change and its impact on sea level rise were eliminated.  The author — Rice University oceanographer John Anderson, a leading expert on sea level rise with more than 200 publications — refused.  As a result, TCEQ killed his chapter in The State of the Bay, a regular publication of the Galveston Bay Estuary Program.

Climate Progress interviewed Anderson along with other Texas scientists who revealed that this is not the first time officials removed references to climate change in a state report.  Dr. Wendy Gordon, a scientist who spent 8 years working for the TCEQ and its predecessor agencies, told me she was not surprised by this censorship at all.  She related the story of one of her colleagues whose attempt to incorporate climate change into a state water planning report was “eviscerated by the higher-ups.”

Governor Rick “4 Pinocchios” Perry is a proud denier of climate science, as is his appointed head of TCEQ, Bryan Shaw, so it’s no surprise his entire administration walks in lock step.  No doubt this is what the country should expect from a Perry presidency.  After all, we saw similar climate science censorship the last time an anti-science Texan was in the White House.

What makes this especially tragic is that Texas is one of the states most at risk from unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions — because of its vast low-lying shoreline, its vulnerability to hurricanes, and, of course, its vulnerability to devastating drought and heat wave.

But this is censorship of sea level rise, which is why I call it Flood-Gate.  Indeed, Anderson told me that “In Texas, I find people far less informed on sea level rise than even in Louisiana.   The state is not allowing this information to get out there.”  As he told Mother Jones:

“Sea level doesn’t just go up in Louisiana. We’re the next in line.  We are in fact starting to see many of the changes that Louisiana was seeing 20 years ago, yet we still have a state government that refuses to accept this is happening.”

Here is a 2009 analysis of the “The Socio-Economic Impact of Sea Level Rise in the Galveston Bay Region” by Texas scientists of what a Category 2 Hurricane like Ike would do after sea level rise (SLR) of 0.69 meter (27 inches) — click to enlarge:

And 27 inches is, optimistically, half the current business-as-usual SLR projection for 2100 (see here).

Anderson was particularly “shocked” at how ham-fisted all of this was.  His discussion of sea level rise is focused entirely on  peer-reviewed data that isn’t controversial at all.  Indeed, his discussion focused on sea level rise estimates from thermal expansion of the ocean — even though he is an expert on the West Antarctic ice sheet and thinks we are at great risk of catastrophic sea level rise this century.

The paper stated in the Summary (page 19):  “Current rates of sea level rise … are  approaching 3 mm per year and may well exceed 4 mm per year by the end of this century.”  In fact, SLR is projected to be several time faster than that by the second half of the century.  Anderson was bending over backwards to avoid exactly what happened.

“We can’t even present a conservative viewpoint,” he told me.  Below is the final draft he submitted and the stunning line edits demanded by senior TCEQ officials :
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The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), an agency whose three commissioners are appointed by climate denier Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), has censored a Texas climate scientist’s attempts to warn the public about the threat of global warming to the state’s residents. Rice University oceanographer John Anderson withdrew his article on the Galveston Bay from a collection commissioned by TCEQ after the agency stripped all mentions of climate change, sea level rise, and other man-made impacts on the environment. In an interview with Raw Story, Dr. Anderson said this was a “clear-cut case of censorship“:

This is a clear-cut case of censorship. It’s not scientific editing. It was strictly deletion of virtually any information that related to global change.

Among other deletions and re-writes, the agency altered Anderson’s text from “Sea level rise is one of the main impacts of global climate change and has accelerated” to “Sea level has changed over time”:

Part of the text censored by the Texas Council on Environmental Quality.

According to the Houston Chronicle, the co-editors of the project, Houston Advanced Research Center Vice President Jim Lester and scientist Lisa Gonzalez, have “informed TCEQ they did not want their names associated with the TCEQ version, fearing it would hurt their credibility as scientists.”

“It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it,” TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow told ThinkProgress Green in a written statement. “And here, information was included in a report that we disagree with.”

“I refer to Texas as a state of denial, and I don’t think we’re the only coastal state that’s in denial,” Anderson told Raw Story. “As long as we live in the state of denial, we’re just passing the check to our grandkids to deal with.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year by industrial polluters to demonize the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That epic propaganda campaign has grossly distorted the political environment in Washington, DC, with Republicans in lockstep against the EPA “Gestapo,” often supported by Democrats in districts with a strong polluter presence. However, the moves to cripple the EPA are not supported by the general public, who trust the agency to keep Americans healthy and safe.

Even among Republicans, who receive the most intense anti-EPA propaganda through Fox News and other conservative media outlets, the agency’s decisions to strengthen rules that limit pollution remain popular, a new poll has found. According to a national survey of 1,400 voters conducted by Hart Research Associates and GS Strategy Group and sponsored by Ceres, the EPA’s proposed Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Rule are popular both on general principle and on their specifics:

– 88% of Democrats, 85% of Independents, and 58% of Republicans oppose Congress stopping the EPA from enacting new limits on air pollution from electric power plants.

– 67% of voters support the CSAPR and 77% of voters support the Toxics rule.

– 65% of voters surveyed are confident that the health and environmental benefits of air pollution standards outweigh the costs of complying with them.

– 79% of voters agree that the rules are important to enact for health reasons.

– 75% of voters believe a compelling reason to implement these rules is the boost to local economies and thousands of new jobs that will be created from investments in new technology.

“Although some in Congress oppose these rules, the level of support from Republican voters is surprisingly strong,” said Greg Strimple of GS Strategy Group, a Republican pollster who jointly conducted the research. “The research clearly demonstrates Republican voters are willing to support new rules to reduce harmful emissions in order to improve public health. Republicans like clean air, too.”

by David Roberts, in a Grist cross-post

The debate over upcoming EPA regulations is a perfect microcosm of contemporary U.S. politics, in all its unreality and venality. Two rules in particular are in the hot seat at the moment, both of which would crack down on pollution from power plants (yes, I’m about to serve up some alphabet soup, but it’ll be delicious): the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), which would address smog and particulate pollution across state lines (it’s also known as the Clean Air Transport Rule, or CATR), and Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MACT), which would address, as one might expect, mercury and toxic emissions.

Two things have been fairly well established about these rules: Their benefits far exceed their costs and they are enduringly popular with the American people. Yet inside the Beltway bubble, it’s perfectly legitimate to argue that they would cripple the $14 trillion U.S. economy or, incredibly, that preventing them amounts to a jobs bill.

Nonetheless, the public gets it. The latest evidence comes from a nationwide poll conducted by Hart Research and GS Strategy Group, sponsored by Ceres. It found — like so many polls before it — that the public overwhelmingly supports clean air protections across demographic and party lines.

Some of the more striking results:

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Why We Need New Criteria to Rank Truly “Green” Companies

by Auden Schendler

On October 17th, Newsweek will release its attention-getting rankings of the top “green” publicly traded global companies.

Last year, the magazine ranked Dell  #1. Dell is no slouch on operational greening: the company, along with Hewlett Packard, has led the tech industry in lifecycle stewardship, with a willingness to take back and recycle its old hardware, among many other progressive internal waste reduction measures. Dell also leads in the energy efficiency of its products.

But is Dell really the greenest company in the world? It depends on your criteria. The Newsweek analysis looks at operational issues like emissions of nine key greenhouse gases, water use, solid-waste disposal, and emissions that contribute to acid rain and smog. That’s good and important.

But if you read Climate Progress regularly, you know two things: First, that the scale of the climate problem (the response to which is what defines corporate sustainability today) is so large that voluntary corporate action won’t solve it. Second, you know that because of this, how companies operate is vastly less important than how they try to influence policy, policymakers, and public opinion. If the lobbying power of one company — Koch Industries, for example — can more or less single handedly stop climate solutions, then what other companies do as climate activists is clearly critical.

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You may remember Paul Gilding, former executive director of Greenpeace International.  Tom Friedman has been writing columns about him since his 2009 piece on how the global economy is a Ponzi scheme.  I was quoted in that column, too, and as a result, have gotten to know him (see video, “Paul Gilding on The Great Disruption:  “You can’t just have an adaptation strategy. There’s no chance of that working”).

Well, Friedman has a new column today, “Something’s Happening Here,” which asks:

When you see spontaneous social protests erupting from Tunisia to Tel Aviv to Wall Street, it’s clear that something is happening globally that needs defining. There are two unified theories out there that intrigue me. One says this is the start of “The Great Disruption.” The other says that this is all part of “The Big Shift.” You decide.

The Big Shift is “the merging of globalization and the Information Technology Revolution” to create a “huge global flow of ideas, innovations, new collaborative possibilities and new market opportunities.”  It basically means anyone, anywhere can make a contribution, get noticed, and rise to the top.

The Great Disruption ain’t so pretty:

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The latest victim of global boiling is peanut butter, one of the most enduringly popular staples of the American diet. The record-hot summer in the southern United States, fueled by global warming pollution, has ravaged peanut crops from Texas to Georgia. The Wall Street Journal reports that “startling price increases” in peanut butter are coming to stores because of the “hot, dry summer”:

Another hot, dry summer has devastated this year’s peanut crop, sending prices for the legume skyrocketing and forcing peanut-butter brands including J.M. Smucker Co.’s Jif, Unilever NV’s Skippy and ConAgra Foods Inc.’s Peter Pan into startling price increases.

Wholesale prices for big-selling Jif are going up 30% starting in November, while Peter Pan will raise prices as much as 24% in a couple weeks. Unilever wouldn’t comment on its pricing plans, but a spokesman for Wegmans Food Markets, the closely held supermarket chain in the Northeast U.S., said wholesale prices for all brands it carries, including Skippy, are 30% to 35% higher than a year ago.

Kraft Foods Inc., which launched Planters peanut butter in June, is raising prices 40% on Oct. 31, a spokeswoman said.

“Only 38% of the U.S. peanut crop was rated good or excellent last month, down from about 60% a year ago,” the Journal reports.

The cost of global warming to America’s farmers — and then to American families at the dinner table — is growing rapidly. However, many of the industry groups and politicians who purport to represent the interests of U.S. agriculture, like the American Farm Bureau and Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), deny the threat of climate change to farmers.

The Treasury Grant Program has been a huge success for the solar industry. By allowing developers and financial institutions to take a cash grant instead of a tax credit — an instrument still hard to monetize due to the economic malaise — solar has become one of the fastest growing industries in America, expanding 102% in 2010 during one of the worst economic times in our nation’s history.

But the Grant Program is set to expire at the end of this year. Although the grants have been a resounding success for the renewable energy sector, the program is politically tarnished because it was created under Obama’s stimulus program.

Allowing this program to get killed by election-year politics would be a major mistake, as it would severely limit the growth of a valuable industry that has boomed in spite of the lagging economy.

A new report out from the business-to-business market research firm EuPD Research shows the immense economic value that could be created with an extension of the program. According to the report, which was commissioned by the Solar Energy Industries Association, a simple one-year extension of the Treasury Grant Program could leverage an additional 37,000 jobs — a 12% increase over the baseline. That could also help bring an additional 2 GW of solar projects online from 2012 to 2016.

A five-year extension through 2016 could result in an additional 114,000 jobs — a 32% increase in employment.   That could result in an additional 7.3 GW of installations over the baseline scenario, as this figure shows:

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“The drought conditions should sure that have plagued farmers this growing season have taken a toll on the area’s peanut crop. Withered blooms, burned pods and few undeveloped peanuts define this year’s peanut crop for many area farmers.” (Photo/Jaine Treadwell)

First, we heard that climate change could decimate the chocolate industry. Now it’s peanut butter. Sending lovers of Reese’s Pieces into a panic, the recent spell of record-setting heat has caused “startling price increases,” according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal:

Wholesale prices for big-selling Jif are going up 30 percent starting in November, while Peter Pan will raise prices as much as 24 percent in a couple of weeks. Unilever would not comment on its pricing plans, but a spokesman for Wegmans Food Markets said wholesale prices for all brands it carries, including Skippy, are 30 percent to 35 percent higher than a year ago.

Kraft Foods Inc., which launched Planters peanut butter in June, is raising prices 40 percent on Oct. 31, a spokeswoman said.

The US Department of Agriculture estimates the current spot price for a ton of unprocessed Runner peanuts, commonly used in peanut butter, at about $1,150 a ton, which is up from about $450 a year ago. A pound of shelled peanuts, meanwhile, would fetch $1.20 currently, one broker said, up from 52 cents a year ago.

Chalk up peanut butter as yet another potential causality of climate change. With heat waves getting worse, and the historic Texas drought expected to last well into the decade, the quality of the peanut crop may continue to get worse:

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By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund

The Occupy Wall Street movement has moved west, with approximately 150 people camping out in Salt Lake City, a number predicted to grow in advance of a large rally on Friday. In addition to the growing influence of this 99 Percent Movement, a group of Utahans lead by Alliance for a Better Utah unveiled on Friday a large billboard pointing out the incongruity of giving billions in tax breaks to oil companies while Republicans advocate slashing Medicare. The billboard asks “Big Oil Gets Tax Breaks, Grandma Gets Medicare Cuts?”

Craig Janis, executive director of Utah Common Values, a moderate and progressive Mormon group, discussed how his faith influences his view of tax breaks to gigantic oil companies:

America has major fiscal problems right now. And the way that we choose to respond to these problems will say a lot about who we are as a nation. Are we the kind of people that when times get tough, we, as the scriptures tell us to, we remember the plight of the poor and needy, the widows and the fatherless? As an LDS person that’s very important to me. It’s one of the four main missions of the LDS church, to help the poor and needy. I look at these kinds of tax cuts, and the idea that when times get tough we’re going to put the burden on those who can least afford to shoulder that burden—this doesn’t make any sense to me from a moral standpoint, a commonsense standpoint, or an economics standpoint.

Watch it:

These calls for ending subsidies to profitable oil companies reflect the messages of protestors in downtown Salt Lake City and across the country — that corporate greed at the expense of the other “99 percent” of the nation is tearing us apart. Billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies — the top five of which made $67 billion in profits in just the first half of this year — symbolizes what Occupy Wall Street protesters are against: profits over people, the unjustness of our financial system that continuously rewards the top 1 percent, and greed trumping values. Continued subsidies to Big Oil companies can be viewed as one of the clearest examples of how money and power have infiltrated our political system.

Oil companies have tremendous sway on our political system. In the 2012 election cycle, which doesn’t end until next November, oil and gas companies and their affiliates have already given $8.4 million in campaign contributions. Specific to the interests of Utahans, both senators and all three congressmen have taken between $2,000-96,900 from oil and gas in this election cycle.

As a sign held by an attendee at the unveiling of the billboard read: “Tax cuts for Big Oil equal poverty for 99%.”

As soon as the solar manufacturer Solyndra announced it was closing its doors after receiving a $527 million loan guarantee from the federal government, we knew the politics and the misinformation about the solar industry would get bad.

Leading Republicans have memorized the pro-pollution talking points, calling clean energy an “unproven theory” and “political propaganda” — even after asking the government for hundreds of millions of dollars in support for government-backed clean energy programs in their districts.

And finally, someone affiliated with a conservative media outlet is calling them out. In a column yesterday, Fox News commentator Juan Williams criticized leading House Republicans who seem more interested in bringing down the President than in establishing good government oversight — holding the entire solar industry hostage in the process.

They are so obsessed with discrediting the president that they are condemning the entire solar industry and making themselves into villains.

At a time when unemployment is stubbornly above 9 percent and Congress cannot pass a jobs bill that will get people back to work, the GOP is attacking an industry that employs more than 100,000 Americans. That number has doubled since 2009. And most green energy companies qualify as small businesses.

And with many industries still struggling to recover from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. solar energy industry grew 69 percent in 2010. Compare that to overall GDP growth, which was just 3 percent last year.

Stop the presses! Did Fox News really print that? Yes, go ahead and read it again.

These words are unbelievably refreshing to read. By separating the Solyndra debacle from the rest of the fast-growing solar industry (the fastest growing in America), Williams has finally brought some common sense to the conversation, while also explaining that jobs in this sector do indeed exist.

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PM Julia Gillard and Former PM Kevin Rudd.

Australia moves closer to law establishing carbon tax

The Australian government’s goal of implementing a carbon tax passed its toughest test today as the lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly approved a package of bills that institutes a phased-in carbon tax, to be followed by a carbon-trading system.The 18 bills now go to the Senate, where the law is all but assured of passage in mid-November.

According to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the system will reduce Australia’s carbon emissions by 159 million tons by 2020. Australia is the largest per-capita carbon polluter, with an economy deeply dependent on coal.

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