Anti-science Republican candidate Rick Santorum said at a campaign event, “The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant.” But back in reality, carbon pollution poses very real dangers to the climate and public health, including inducing more asthma cases than ever. Last week, the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council also rolled out a seven-figure ad showing who suffers from the work of polluters and their lobbysts — asthmatic children:

“The icon of climate change, is more than the image of a polar bear on a melting ice floe trying to survive,” National Resources Defense Council senior scientist Kim Knowlton said. “It’s really the face of a child with asthma, using an inhaler to breathe.”

The EPA is about to release a nationwide carbon pollution rule limiting emissions from power plants, standards that ultimately protect children. The American Lung Association will have billboards in two states, on display in Columbus, OH and Pittsburgh, PA. View it:

One of the country’s best climate reporters proves once again that false balance is alive and well at even the best papers.

The article in question is “Rising Sea Levels Seen as Threat to Coastal U.S.” by Justin Gillis. It’s on the new Climate Central report whose news release we reposted earlier today. As Gillis explains:

About 3.7 million Americans live within a few feet of high tide and risk being hit by more frequent coastal flooding in coming decades because of the sea level rise caused by global warming, according to new research.

If the pace of the rise accelerates as much as expected, researchers found, coastal flooding at levels that were once exceedingly rare could become an every-few-years occurrence by the middle of this century.

This isn’t terribly controversial among climatologists I talk to, though this report appears to be the first to add storm surges to warming-driven sea rise, spell out the danger in every U.S. coastal region and ”estimate the proportion of the national population at risk from the rising sea.”

Gillis quotes the author, of course:

“Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing,” said Benjamin H. Strauss, an author, with other scientists, of two new papers outlining the research. “We have a closing window of time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas.”

But Strauss is the only scientist quoted in the article. To ‘balance’ Strauss, the Times quotes one of the top anti-scientist disinformers in the country, Myron Ebell, of the could-not-be-more debunked Competitive Enterprise Institute (see, for instance, “Santer, Jones, and Schneider respond to CEI’s phony attack on the temperature record“).

I’m assuming it’s the New York Times editors who are the ones who are still demanding this nonsensical balance — see Science Times stunner: “… a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity”).

Even so, that’s no excuse for this misleading paragraph:

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Last night, Stephen Colbert mocked the Republican presidential candidates for their derision of climate science and clean energy. Colbert took on Rick Santorum’s pithy argument against the threat of carbon dioxide pollution (“Tell that to a plant“), Mitt Romney’s attack on renewable energy and electric vehicles (“You can’t drive a car with a windmill on it“) and Newt Gingrich’s mockery of biofuels research (“Algae!“):

Watch it:

Colbert imagined what the past would have been like if the GOP’s present-day anti-science obsession held sway then.

“Hold on there sport, you want to cure my syphilis with the mold on a hunk of bread? I’d rather remain blind and insane,” Colbert said. “And I’m pretty sure these gentlemen [the GOP candidates] feel the same way.”

by Danielle Droitsch, reposted from NRDC’s Switchboard

A new report from the Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute shows how the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is an economic liability with the potential to cause significant job losses from a major tar sands spill.

Because tar sands oil is more corrosive and toxic than conventional oil, it can increase the frequency of pipeline spills.  Moreover, a  tar sands spill causes far more damage than a conventional oil spill. Take, for example, the 1.2 million gallon tar sands spill on the Kalamazoo River in Marshall Michigan in 2010 where the clean up costs have been 10 times higher than a typical conventional oil spill.

While there has been a lot of attention to the possible jobs created from the Keystone XL pipeline – far less than what proponents claim – there has been very little attention to jobs that could be lost from a tar sands spill. Keystone XL is expected experience up to 91 significant spills over a 50-year period.    Which jobs are at risk?  Hundreds of thousands of workers in the agricultural and tourism sectors contribute ten of billions of dollars to the economy in the Keystone XL pipeline states.  The Cornell report helps illustrate yet one more reason why the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline should be rejected.

Here are some of the key findings from the report:

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Frequency of coral bleaching is expected to rise dramatically in the coming decades

By 2030, more than 90% of coral reefs could be threatened by local activities like overfishing and global-wide events like climate change, say researchers at the World Resources Institute.

Destruction of these valuable ecosystems would be a devastating environmental and economic tragedy. While only 0.1% of total ocean area, coral reefs host around 25% of marine life. They also help drive economic activity from fishing, tourism and help protect communities from storm surges — providing a benefit that stretches far beyond the oceans.

Different reefs are at risk for different reasons. The World Resources Institute has been working on tracking damages to these ecosystems for the last three years, providing detailed maps and data on the health of reefs in different regions of the world.

Researchers at WRI just put together a fascinating video using Google Earth maps to illustrate how reefs in the Caribbean, Middle East, Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific are fairing — and what kind of impact that could have to communities in those regions.

At 14 minutes long, the video is quite long. But it’s worth a watch. If you don’t have time to see the whole thing, check out the range of maps and charts on the health of these reefs.

For more background on the fate of coral reefs, see:

• Globe’s coral reefs suffer second worst bleaching on record during 2010
• “The end is in sight for the world’s coral reefs,” explains the former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science

A bombshell op-ed in today’s New York Times highlights the toxic and destructive nature of unbridled capitalism. Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith — and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa – explains “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs” after “almost 12 years at the firm”:

I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

This must-read piece underscores how self-destructive our largely unregulated plutocracy has become.

And for those progressives who think talking about this issue is politically risky, I’d note that in late November, Frank Luntz, arguably the GOP’s top messaging strategist told the Republican Governor’s Association, “Don’t Say Capitalism” Because Americans “Think Capitalism Is Immoral.”

As I’ve said before, “The Other 99% of Us Can’t Buy Our Way Out of the Impending Global Ponzi Scheme Collapse.” We have in fact constructed the grandest of Ponzi schemes, whereby current generations have figured out how to live off the wealth of future generations.

We are living unsustainably, and the ‘greed is good’ culture embodied by Goldman Sachs – where the only thing that matters is short-term profit – is one of the reasons why.

Here is more of this stunning piece, where we learn, among other amazing things, that at Goldman, managers routinely call clients “muppets”:

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Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) supports eliminating the Department of Energy (DOE), because the employees get to take off holidays like Presidents’ Day. Leader of an expensive witch hunt of the department’s support for renewable energy, Stearns has previously called for the firing of the Nobel-winning Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. At the same February 25 town hall meeting where he questioned Obama’s birth certificate, Stearns agreed with a constituent who called for the abolition of the nation’s nuclear, fossil, and clean-energy brain trust:

STEARNS: It seems to me we could take one — The Department of Energy is one that I feel we should probably cut their budget in half.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No! We ought to get rid of it! Get rid of it! Don’t cut it, get rid of it!

STEARNS: I’ve asked for it. And I’m on a bill to get rid of it. You see, in public I try to be a little bit — but the Department of Energy was not — before Jimmy Carter we didn’t have a Department of Energy. Now we have this Department of Energy, it does about $30 billion in revenues we give them. And what are they doing to make us energy independent? And they’ve got thousands and thousands of employees. Every one of you would like to have one of their jobs. They start anywhere from 50 to 75,000 dollars. You’ve got a thrift savings account. You’ve got health care. You’ve got — You get off all these legal holidays. Presidents’ Day. I mean when I operated my motels and restaurants I never had a day off Presidents’ Day, or Lincoln Day. I never got any of these days off. I gave Christmas off probably, but even Christmas if a desk clerk got pulled I had to come in and help. I never got any of these days off. So I agree with you on the Department of Energy.

Watch it:

Stearns is correct that DOE employees get health care and national holidays. They include nuclear physicists, economists, mathematicians, and engineers, who could demand considerably higher salaries in the private sector working for oil companies or defense contractors. Under Republican rule, the House of Representatives — whose membership includes only 9 scientists and engineers — is only working 109 days this year.

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by David Roberts, reposted from Grist

Get a load of this:

Nearly 100 million Americans could install over 60,000 megawatts of solar at less than grid prices – without subsidies – by 2021.

That’s from a new report by John Farrell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance called “Rooftop Revolution: Changing Everything with Cost-Effective Local Solar.”

It’s about the spread of “solar grid parity” over the next 10 years, where grid parity is defined as “when the cost of solar electricity — without subsidies — is equal to or lower than the residential retail electricity rate.” People often talk about grid parity as if it’s some magic moment, but in fact it will happen in different places at different times, depending on local conditions and electricity prices. And it’s a moving target: It depends on how fast the cost of solar falls and how fast electricity rates rise.

Farrell says that the “installed cost of solar has fallen 10% per year since 2006 and grid electricity prices have averaged a 2% annual increase in the last decade.” In his projections, he uses 7 percent annual decline for solar costs and 2 percent for electricity increases, which seems conservative but reasonable. Obviously either of those rates could change, but almost everything I’ve read and heard predicts rising electricity rates; the rate of solar cost decline is somewhat harder to predict. As a technophile, my money is on the cost of solar falling faster than expected.

Anyway, given those assumptions, here’s a map that shows how and when solar grid parity will spread.

By 2021, some 100 million people in the top 40 U.S. metropolitan areas will be at grid parity for residential rooftop solar. The number is larger if you take into account people living outside those areas. It expands again if you assume widespread time-of-use pricing. And of course it expands a whole lot more if you include non-residential (commercial and industrial) rooftops. Like so:

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Rising Sea Levels Threaten Millions by Boosting Storm Surges

This map shows the odds of floods at least as high as historic once-a-century levels, occurring by 2030, based on Climate Central research. The two bars extending from each study point contrast odds estimates incorporating past and projected sea level rise from global warming (red bars), and odds estimates not incorporating this rise (blue bars). Global average sea level has increased more than eight inches since 1880, and the rise is accelerating. Most or all of the rise can be attributed to global warming, which warms and expands global oceans, and causes glaciers and ice sheets to decay.

A Climate Central repost, study here, interactive map here

Sea level rise due to global warming has already doubled the annual risk of coastal flooding of historic proportions across widespread areas of the United States, according to a new report from Climate Central. By 2030, many locations are likely to see storm surges combining with sea level rise to raise waters at least 4 feet above the local high-tide line. Nearly 5 million U.S. residents live in 2.6 million homes on land below this level. More than 6 million people live on land below 5 feet; by 2050, the study projects that widespread areas will experience coastal floods exceeding this higher level.

Titled “Surging Seas,” the report is the first to analyze how sea level rise caused by global warming is compounding the risk from storm surges throughout the coastal contiguous U.S. It is also first to generate local and national estimates of the land, housing and population in vulnerable low-lying areas, and associate this information with flood risk timelines. The Surging Seas website includes a searchable, interactive online map that zooms down to neighborhood level, and shows risk zones and statistics for 3,000 coastal towns, cities, counties and states affected up to 10 feet above the high tide line.

In 285 municipalities, more than half the population lives below the 4-foot mark. One hundred and six of these places are in Florida, 65 are in Louisiana, and ten or more are in New York (13), New Jersey (22), Maryland(14), Virginia (10) and North Carolina (22). In 676 towns and cities spread across every coastal state in the lower 48 except Maine and Pennsylvania, more than 10% of the population lives below the 4-foot mark.

Tidal gauge records show that the sea has already risen 8 inches globally during the last century, and projections point to a steep acceleration. “Sea level rise is not some distant problem that we can just let our children deal with. The risks are imminent and serious,” said report lead author Dr. Ben Strauss of Climate Central. “Just a small amount of sea level rise, including what we may well see within the next 20 years, can turn yesterday’s manageable flood into tomorrow’s potential disaster. Global warming is already making coastal floods more common and damaging.”

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The public understands why gasoline prices are soaring, yet another poll reveals. Not surprisingly, they don’t blame the President, who has overseen rising domestic oil production:

Today’s Bloomberg poll found 66% of Americans blamed, “oil companies and Middle East nations” while 23% blamed the Obama administration’s energy policies.

We’ve reported that both Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and Koch-fueled Cato Institute agree: “It’s Not Obama’s Fault That Crude Oil Prices Have Increased.”

And yesterday it was the National Journal survey that found 38% singling out “the manipulation of prices by large energy companies” and 28% citing “tension in the Middle East, particularly over Iran and nuclear weapons,” whereas only 14blamed “the policies of President Obama.”

The notion pushed by some pundits that the president is losing popularity because the public blames him for high gasoline prices makes little sense and appears to be based on an outlier poll. We have 2 major polls confirming that the public doesn’t blame him for high gas prices. And multiple new polls showing the president gaining popularity in the wake of the improving job numbers and the never-ending, back-biting Republican presidential campaign.

The Bloomberg poll puts Obama’s favorable-unfavorable rating at 52-45. Yesterday a Reuters poll put his approval-disapproval rating at 50-48. Today a Pew Poll puts it at 50-41.

Finally, Bloomberg notes:

The White House has an advantage over Republicans in its core economic message. Asked the better way to promote growth, 51 percent favor government investment in infrastructure, education and alternative energy, a theme often sounded by Obama. Forty-one percent prefer reductions in taxes and government spending, a rallying cry of Republicans.

Even in economically troubled times, people would rather have government investment in the future, including clean energy, than lower taxes.

On a campaign trail rife with inaccurate gas price promises, Mitt Romney fought the idea that speculation and heated rhetoric on Iran is boosting gas prices. Romney instead argued high gas prices are related to insufficient drilling offshore, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the Keystone XL pipeline, saying “those things affect gasoline prices, long term”:

Maybe it’s related to the fact that you stopped drilling in the, in the Gulf. Maybe it’s related to the fact, Mr. President, that you are not drilling in ANWR. Maybe it’s related to the fact that you said we couldn’t get a pipeline in from Canada known as Keystone. Those things affect gasoline prices, long term.

Romney brushed off speculation’s role in the gas price spike, but McClatchy writes that oil prices have been skyrocketing “thanks again in no small part to rampant financial speculation on top of fears of supply disruptions… When they dominate the market, as they do, speculators’ bids can make their prophecies self-fulfilling.”

The Republican “solution” to drill more would mean “more profit for domestic crude producers rather than significantly lower gasoline prices for Americans,” according to the Koch-funded Cato Institute. The Wall Street Journal also wrote, “producing a lot of oil doesn’t lower the price of gasoline in your country.”

Like Newt Gingrich, who promises $2.50 gas, Romney’s claim that “drill, baby, drill” helps the 99 percent has no support.

Inspired by Politico’s “Emails We Didn’t Open,” I give you “New Stories We Didn’t Finish Reading”:

George W. Bush says Keystone Pipeline is a “No-Brainer”

TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from landlocked Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast, is a “no-brainer” that would create jobs and bolster the economy, former President George W. Bush said on Tuesday.

Let’s see. The Bush administration ruined the economy and destroyed jobs. He himself is a former oil-man who said “we are addicted to oil.”

Oh, he also said this:

Why is anybody still listening to this guy now that we don’t have to?

Growth built around fossil-fuel extraction is not sustainable

by Kiley Kroh and Kate Gordon

Drill, drill, and then drill some more. As gas prices rise, the chorus of pro-drilling voices continues to grow louder. Even though the number of oil rigs operating in the United States quadrupled since President Barack Obama took office, the massive influx of supply did nothing to reduce the price consumers pay at the pump this spring. The reason? Put simply, economic growth at home and abroad produces more demand for oil—demand that cannot ever be matched by enough supply given the that the United States only has 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves but uses 20 percent of the world’s oil.

Regardless, the calls to open more of our lands and oceans to be drilled for oil have only increased. The heart of our offshore domestic production is the Gulf of Mexico, a region significantly affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe. Though many families and businesses throughout the region continue to struggle with the lingering effects of the massive spill, discussions involving energy and economic growth remain centered on opening up more of the Gulf for drilling.

Absent from these conversations is any mention of the long-term strategies that might actually start to move Americans off our dependence on oil—and toward a future where we have real choices in what kinds of cars we drive, fuels we use, and transportation systems we frequent. Absent, too, is any mention of a future economic-development path for the Gulf Coast states; a path that diversifies this region away from oil jobs and toward a more balanced economy that includes new sectors, new innovation, and a broader range of jobs.

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Other stories below: Great Barrier Reef ‘at a Crossroads’; Slowing Brazil’s rainforest destruction lowers greenhouse burden

Why Twenty-First Century Oil Will Break the Bank — and the Planet (Michael Klare)

Oil prices are now higher than they have ever been — except for a few frenzied moments before the global economic meltdown of 2008. Many immediate factors are contributing to this surge, including Iran’s threats to block oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, fears of a new Middle Eastern war, and turmoil in energy-rich Nigeria. Some of these pressures could ease in the months ahead, providing temporary relief at the gas pump.  But the principal cause of higher prices — a fundamental shift in the structure of the oil industry — cannot be reversed, and so oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come.

In energy terms, we are now entering a world whose grim nature has yet to be fully grasped.  This pivotal shift has been brought about by the disappearance of relatively accessible and inexpensive petroleum — “easy oil,” in the parlance of industry analysts; in other words, the kind of oil that powered a staggering expansion of global wealth over the past 65 years and the creation of endless car-oriented suburban communities. This oil is now nearly gone.

The world still harbors large reserves of petroleum, but these are of the hard-to-reach, hard-to-refine, “tough oil” variety. From now on, every barrel we consume will be more costly to extract, more costly to refine — and so more expensive at the gas pump.

Those who claim that the world remains “awash” in oil are technically correct: the planet still harbors vast reserves of petroleum. But propagandists for the oil industry usually fail to emphasize that not all oil reservoirs are alike: some are located close to the surface or near to shore, and are contained in soft, porous rock; others are located deep underground, far offshore, or trapped in unyielding rock formations. The former sites are relatively easy to exploit and yield a liquid fuel that can readily be refined into usable liquids; the latter can only be exploited through costly, environmentally hazardous techniques, and often result in a product which must be heavily processed before refining can even begin.

The simple truth of the matter is this: most of the world’s easy reserves have already been depleted — except for those in war-torn countries like Iraq.  Virtually all of the oil that’s left is contained in harder-to-reach, tougher reserves. These include deep-offshore oil, Arctic oil, and shale oil, along with Canadian “oil sands” — which are not composed of oil at all, but of mud, sand, and tar-like bitumen. So-called unconventional reserves of these types can be exploited, but often at a staggering price, not just in dollars but also in damage to the environment.

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