Somewhere on a Hollywood movie set for Groundhog Day, Part 2: Bill Murray wakes up to find he’s just lived through the hottest decade on record, just as he did in the 1990s, just as he did in the 1980s. And he keeps waking up in the hottest decade on record, until he gains the kind of maturity and wisdom that can only come from doing the same damn thing over and over and over again with no change in the result. Ah, if only life were like a movie.

Somewhere in PA: Punxsutawney Phil saw the shadow of unrestricted fossil-fuel pollution from Homo “sapiens” sapiens today. That means global warming for another six thousand weeks — and then some (see NOAA: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

If we keep listening to the siren song of delay, delay, delay from the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd and their enablers, then eventually people aren’t going to go through this elaborate charade of wondering whether some large rodent in Pennsylvania can predict the weather — the forecast will always be the same, “bloody hot”:

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I’ve seen plenty of people kicked out of X Games and other snow sports events for a variety of things. But getting kicked out for energy-related activism is a new one to me.

At the X Games in Aspen, Colorado this week, a group of a dozen young activists brought in anti-fracking signs and held a live, prime-time protest against natural gas fracking operations in Colorado during the men’s superpipe event. The signs read “Rig Free for You and Me” and “Stop Frac’ing Colo.”

If you don’t pay attention to the Winter X Games, it’s the premier event for extreme snow sports like freestyle snowboarding and skiing. In other words, a perfect nationally-televised event for raising awareness about an issue. The Colorado Independent talked to the young “Fracktivists” after their successful protest:

The ESPN Winter X Games provided an ideal venue, the activists said, to educate an extremely large and youthful crowd about fracking — a method of extracting natural gas and oil by breaking rocks with a pressurized mixture of fluids. The protestors specifically sought to raise awareness of the threat of drilling in the nearby roadless area of Thompson Divide and energy plays on the other side of the Elk Mountains in the North Fork Valley.

More than once, private security guards tried to physically remove DeVore and his signs from Buttermilk Mountain, where the Winter X Games were held, but he stood his ground. After the competition was over and the awards ceremony began, Pitkin County sheriff’s deputies approached DeVore, informed him that he was on private property and that he could avoid arrest if he left the grounds immediately. He did. But not before lifting his “Don’t Frac It Up” sign high for all to see.

Colorado has a growing number of activist groups focused on fracking issues, including the Thompson Divide Coalition, which is working to stop oil and gas drilling on federal lands in the Thompson Divide Area in central Colorado. Last year, Colorado passed a law requiring companies to disclose chemicals used in the fracking process.

Josh Fox, the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland, has issued the following statement about his arrest in the U.S. Capitol today.

I was arrested today for exercising my First Amendment rights to freedom of the press on Capitol Hill. I was not expecting to be arrested for practicing journalism. Today’s hearing in the House Energy and Environment subcommittee was called to examine EPAs findings that hydraulic fracturing fluids had contaminated groundwater in the town of Pavillion, Wyoming. I have a long history with the town of Pavillion and its residents who have maintained since 2008 that fracking has contaminated their water supply. I featured the stories of residents John Fenton, Louis Meeks and Jeff Locker in GASLAND and I have continued to document the catastrophic water contamination in Pavillion for the upcoming sequel GASLAND 2. It would seem that the Republican leadership was using this hearing to attack the three year Region 8 EPA investigation involving hundreds of samples and extensive water testing which ruled that Pavillion’s groundwater was a health hazard, contaminated by benzene at 50x the safe level and numerous other contaminants associated with gas drilling. Most importantly, EPA stated in this case that fracking was the likely cause.

As a filmmaker and journalist I have covered hundreds of public hearings, including Congressional hearings. It is my understanding that public speech is allowed to be filmed. Congress should be no exception. No one on Capitol Hill should regard themselves exempt from the Constitution. The First Amendment to the Constitution states explicitly “Congress shall make no law…that infringes on the Freedom of the Press”. Which means that no subcommittee rule or regulation should prohibit a respectful journalist or citizen from recording a public hearing.

This was an act of civil disobedience, yes done in an impromptu fashion, but at the moment when they told me to turn off the cameras, I could not. I know my rights and I felt it was imperative to exercise them.

When I was led out of the hearing room in handcuffs, John Boehner’s pledge of transparency in congress was taken out with me.

The people of Pavillion deserve better. The thousands across the US who have documented cases of water contamination in fracking areas deserve their own hearing on Capitol Hill. They deserve the chance to testify in before Congress. The truth that fracking contaminates groundwater is out, and no amount of intimidation tactics –either outright challenges to science or the arrest of journalists –will put the genie back in the bottle. Such a brazen attempt to discredit and silence the EPA, the citizens of Pavillion and documentary filmmaking will ultimately fail and it is an affront to the health and integrity of Americans.

Lastly, in defense of my profession, I will state that many many Americans get their news from independent documentaries. The Hill should immediately move to make hearings and meetings accessible to independent journalists and not further obstruct the truth from being reported in the vivid and in-depth manner that is only achievable through long-form documentary filmmaking.

I will be thinking on this event further and will post further thoughts and developments.

I have been charged with “unlawful entry” and my court date is February 15.

As politicians and pundits continue to deny the existence of climate change, one New York school district is not only teaching students about climate science but taking it to the streets. CBS 2 reports that the Plainview-Old Bethpage school district’s yellow buses are going green with a new eco-friendly bus that doesn’t use fuel of any kind but is powered solely by rechargeable batteries. What’s more, they cost the same as the traditional bus but “are quieter, cleaner, and cheaper to maintain”:

The new eco-friendly buses have electric motors, and don’t use fuel of any kind, meaning they don’t produce emissions. Instead they are powered by a network of rechargeable batteries.

The buses cost $100,000, about the same as traditional buses, but they are quieter, cleaner, and cheaper to maintain.

“It doesn’t have a transmission. It has very few moving parts, and the vehicle is charged up overnight when the electric grid is being used the least so it’s off-peak,” said Bart Marksohn of WE Transport Inc.

The district is starting out with a one-bust test run over the next 60 days. If approved, the first electric buses will be on the roads in September 2012. The decision to go green was simple for district officials. As one put it, “In implementing this we’re only echoing what the students are learning — to care about their environment. So we’re just building upon what’s being taught in the classroom on a daily basis.”

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS has released a new smear ad criticizing President Obama on the administration’s investment in the solar company Solyndra. The $500,000 ad is scheduled to run throughout the week, nationwide.

As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, his administration is committed to the promise of American clean energy, even though some companies may fail to others in the marketplace. 180,000 pages of documents from a Congressional investigation confirmed that the Department of Energy’s investment in the advanced technology of Solyndra was based on the merits.

The group, created by Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, launched their 35-second TV spot dishonestly painting “the Solyndra loan guarantee as a corrupt deal aimed at benefiting the president’s campaign donors,” the Hill reports:

“He gave his political backers billions – a big government fiasco- infused with politics at every level,” says a female narrator over the obligatory “SE7EN”-style, cut-and-paste imagery typical of super-PAC attack ads. “Laid off worker: forgotten. Typical Washington. Tell President Obama we need jobs not more inside deals.”

This is the second Crossroads GPS attack ad that uses Solyndra as a scapegoat for the clean economy.

Fossil-fueled conservatives are dead set on turning their imagined Solyndra scandal into a coordinated attack on the clean energy industry. The Crossroads GPS campaign is only the latest in a string of attack ads meant to play up the Solyndra bankruptcy as a potential liability for Obama in the coming election year. To date, Americans for Prosperity, the front group for the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers, has spent over $8 million in battleground states — Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — on two intentionally misleading ads taking aim at President Obama over Solyndra.

-Fatima Najiy

In less than one week, eight U.S. coal plants representing 4,099 MW of capacity have been put on the chopping block for closure or have been delayed in court due to environmental concerns. It is yet more proof of the major changes taking place in the American coal industry.

The dirtiest and oldest coal plants are being shut down in greater numbers because of

• cheap natural gas
• rising coal prices
• strengthening environmental standards
• more utilities embracing energy efficiency and demand response
• improving cost-competitiveness of solar and wind and other renewables

At the same time, a strong movement against coal is preventing new facilities from going forward.

The latest round of closures started last week when FirstEnergy said it would close six plants in its portfolio totaling 2,689 MW of capacity. The plants are getting very old, making them some of the dirtiest in the country. The average age of the six units is 55 years, with the oldest facility built in 1947. Five out of six of the plants had been relegated to reserve plants, FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin told Politico:

“The bottom line,” Durbin said, “is the plants haven’t run all that much in the last three years,” and the company doesn’t “think they’re going to be running much” in the years to come, so it “didn’t make business sense” to keep them open. Now that they know the plants have no future, “we couldn’t justify spending any additional money.”

Rather than clean up the plants to meet new standards for mercury and other air pollutants, FirstEnergy made the business decision to close the facilities.

And this week, the power company Dominion made an equally big announcement, saying it would close one of the oldest coal plants in America — an 80-year old facility (constructed in the 20′s and updated in the 60′s) worth 515 MW of capacity. Dominion spokesman Dan Genest told the Indianapolis Star than the price of gas and improved mercury standards didn’t make it feasible to keep such an old plant running:

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By Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund

Rather than face the unpleasant fact that hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells actually can lead to contamination of underground water supplies, Republicans on a subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee yesterday decided to shoot the messenger.

The messenger – no surprise here – is the Environmental Protection Agency, which in early December released a draft report based on a three-year investigation into possible groundwater contamination by natural gas drilling near Pavillion, Wyoming. The report concluded that hydraulic fracturing and other gas development drilling practices likely contributed to the contamination of groundwater by a suite of chemicals including materials found in fracking fluids. EPA is now in the process of having the draft report peer reviewed.

As Region 8 EPA administrator Jim Martin said in his prepared testimony today, aquifers appear to have been contaminated by fracking fluid:

Analysis of samples taken from the deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of benzene, methane, and synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids.

That carefully calibrated conclusion – including EPA statements that the geology around Pavillion is unique and that the study’s conclusions aren’t transferable to other gas producing areas – has shaken defenders of the oil and gas industry and its widespread practice of hydraulic fracturing. That process pumps a mixture of water, chemicals and sand at high pressure deep underground to stimulate production of natural gas from shale formations. Combined with advances in horizontal drilling it has opened up vast new reserves of shale gas for development extending from New York State to Texas.

As concerns about threats to drinking water supplies have mounted with the spread of hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas industry and its allies have frequently claimed that there has never been a documented case of groundwater contamination through fracking. Typical of those claims was ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson’s statement in congressional testimony in 2010 that “There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry, and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing.”

Because the EPA’s draft report deals a serious if not fatal blow to those claims, the industry is fighting furiously to discredit the EPA’s methods and conclusions in the Pavillion study.

Appearing before the subcommittee today, Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs at the Western Energy Alliance, accused EPA of being “a political body, not a disinterested scientific institution” and charged the agency had rushed its report “without proper review and verification.”

Republican members of the science committee went even further. Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), chairman of the panel’s energy and environment subcommittee, accused EPA of practicing “press release science” and “outcome-driven” regulation. Rep. Ralph M. Hall, chairman of the full committee, said the agency was “trying to build a case” for shutting down oil and gas production around the country.

But ranting and raving won’t make the damage disappear.

As EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a letter sent last month to Wyoming Gov. Matthew H. Mead,  her agency’s study of the Pavillion issue was “rigorous, transparent and objective.” The evidence “supporting the likely role of fracturing in the observed contamination is exhaustively presented in our draft report,” she said.

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech University, has been besieged by vituperative and disturbing hate mails at the behest of right-wing operatives. Hayhoe was pilloried as a “climate babe” by hate-radio host Rush Limbaugh for her participation in a planned book edited by Newt Gingrich on a conservative response to the threat of manmade global warming. Climate-denier Chris Horner tried to force Texas Tech to turn over all of the “activist” Hayhoe’s records related to the book. Climate-denier operative Marc Morano, a former employee of Rush Limbaugh and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), published her email on a screed-filled website, encouraging attacks on Dr. Hayhoe.

Texas Climate News has published disturbing excerpts of the frightening, hate-filled messages she received as a result of this intimidation campaign:

– you are nothing but a liar; you lie

– AGW is a hoax […] Where are the facts? Prove your unproven hypothesis. Prove it. Show the world. You can’t. You are a fraud. […] Your name and the names of the other warming alarmists will be mud as the years go forward. You are a disgrace. You are a nut.

– DUMPED FROM GINGRICH’S BOOK HA HA HA […] IT’S A GREAT START!!! SEE YA, FRAUDSTER – GET A REAL JOB, MCDONALD’S IS HIRING

– Nazi Bitch Whore Climatebecile […] You stupid bitch, You are a mass murderer and will be convicted at the Reality TV Grand Jury in Nuremberg, Pennsylvania. AGW has never been anything but a Rockefeller depopulationary eugenical scam. […] After the Grand Jury indicts you, I would like to see you convicted and beheaded by guillotine in the public square, to show women that if they are going to take a man’s job, they have to take the heat for mass murder, just like the men do when they get caught. If you have a child, then women in the future will be even more leery of lying to get ahead, when they see your baby crying next to the basket next to the guillotine.

– I read your whiney comments about researching for a rejected book chapter instead of spending time playing with your baby. Perhaps you should take responsiblility how you choose to use your time. In my opinion, the problem with America is women refuse to stay at home taking care and nurturing their offspring while prioritizing their selfish ambitions attempting to carve out a career for themselves. Be a good mother or be a good researcher.

– I am afraid [blogger Anthony Watts] has exposed you as something of an academic fool. Try using actual data next time.

– Stop using Jesus to justify your wacko ideas about global warming. First, it is an insult to the Lord Jesus. Second, it is insulting to those of us who actually take our Christianity seriously. Third, it is juvenile.

– Do you believe in God? If you do, then you must believe that He is all powerful. But believing in AGW contradicts that, because to be able to change the climate in such a manner as you prescribe to would mean that we are more powerful than He is. I know better than that, but it would appear that you and your husband don’t. Maybe you should both take another look at your belief system. I think it needs some adjusting.

These attacks on climate scientists have been a troubling problem for years. In 2010, ABC News reported on death threats received by scientist Michael Mann. MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel received threats against his family for appearing at a recent forum with Republicans who want action on climate change. Morano published an attack on Emanuel’s wife at his website.

This kind of bile has a marked chilling effect on the decision by climate scientists whether to engage with the public. “I think that there is no question that much of this is intended to intimidate,” Hayhoe explained to Climate Crocks’ Peter Sinclair in a video interview.

In response to the campaigns of legal persecution, scientists have established the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.

America Already Runs More Drill Rigs than Rest of World Combined

by Kiley Kroh

Today the House Natural Resources Committee will take up a trio of “drill, baby, drill” bills that would partially pay for the House surface transportation reauthorization bill, designed to fund our nation’s programs for trains and automobiles.

As it stands right now, the bill would last four years and cost $260 billion. Unfortunately, the House Republicans’ version of the transportation bill would throw open protected pristine places for dirty petroleum production.  One proposal opens Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Another measure opens the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to be drilled and mandates more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The third proposal makes available millions of acres in the western U.S. to oil shale development.  Despite Boehner’s characterization of the measure as a “job creation package,” it seems to be little more than another Republican giveaway to Big Oil.

Transportation advocates have sought a long-term reauthorization of highway and transit programs, which currently expire on March 31. Traditionally, improvements to roads, bridges, and public transportation are funded by the federal gasoline tax, but GOP leaders in the House are taking the unprecedented step to tie funding to an unnecessary and ineffective increase in fossil fuel production.  As CAP’s Donna Cooper writes, “Congressional Republicans are making this push so they can block movement to create jobs and rebuild our infrastructure while sounding like they are in favor of policies that do both.” Here are the key reasons this package is no solution to repair our nation’s aging transportation infrastructure.

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Once upon a time there were 16 disinformers with PhDs posing as climate scientists on the pages of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal of Lies.  Then along came three dozen real climate scientists to call them out:

Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.

You published “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.

Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter….

That’s just the opening salvo from a devastating letter to the editor by some of the world’s leading climate scientists (full list of names below).

The original op-ed was widely debunked, including its absurd claim that global warming has stopped (see “Murdoch’s WSJ Finds 16 Scientists to Push Pollutocrat Agenda With Long-Debunked Climate Lies“).

Here’s a good chart from Skeptical Science on the the difference between the cardiologists (aka realists) and dentists (aka skeptics aka posers aka disinformers):

The rest of the take down is well worth reading:

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by Jake Schmidt, reposted from NRDC’s Switchboard

Twenty-two high level representatives have just released their report – Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing—which sets out specific recommendations to “put sustainable development into practice and to mainstream it into economic policy as quickly as possible.”

The report reinforces the push to phase-out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, speed up the deployment of renewable energy, and accelerate energy efficiency efforts.  When world leaders meet several times this year – culminating at the Earth Summit 2012 in Rio – they must finally follow through on the commitment to phase-down these subsidies and help unleash even greater low-carbon energy action.

The high-level report was the result of the U.N. Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability.  The recommendations carry significant weight as they come from leading policymakers including current and former presidents and prime ministers, a leader from the business community, foreign ministers, and environment ministers.  They outlined 56 recommendations including calls to phase-out fossil fuel subsidies and speed up low-carbon energy action.  As they note, the time is ripe for this action:

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Other stories below: Climate change a fundamental health risk; Falling solar prices good for climate, bad for firms

Insiders: Energy Legislation Unlikely in 2012

In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama appealed to Congress for energy legislation. Among the items on his wish list: a clean-energy standard for electricity generation, an energy-efficiency program, clean-energy tax credits, and legal measures to boost domestic oil and gas production.

But with a divided Congress mired in election-year politics, the chances of any energy bills making it to Obama’s desk this year are slim to none, most National Journal Energy and Environment Insiders say.

“The annual Congressional Almanac predicts strong drought conditions through at least November 2012, and that’s not due to climate change either!” joked one Insider.

A whopping 81 percent of Insiders said it is unlikely Congress will send any energy legislation to Obama in 2012. Fifty-two percent said the prospects are “very unlikely,” while 29 percent said they are “somewhat unlikely.”

“Enacting legislation requires some level of concert between the House and Senate, and a working relationship between Congress and the president based on solving problems rather than scoring political points,” said one Insider. “Those conditions don’t exist.”

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In a scathing letter to the editor, thirty-eight of the world’s top climatologists have rebuked Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal for its publication of a “scientist” op-ed denying the threat of manmade global warming. The letter, authored by climate scientist Kevin Trenberth and colleagues from the world’s top science institutions, tells the Wall Street Journal editors to “Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate“:

You published “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.

The 16 climate deniers include a medical doctor, some engineers, and astrophysicists. One of the climate deniers who wrote the “No Need to Panic” op-ed, Richard Lindzen, questions whether smoking causes cancer, and another of the climate deniers, Claude Allegre, doesn’t believe asbestos is hazardous.

The climate scientists demolish the canard that global warming “stopped”:

Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter. And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.

The Wall Street Journal published the denier op-ed after rejecting a letter on the threat of manmade climate change from fossil fuel pollution by 255 members of the National Academies of Science.

Read the letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, in full:
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