Our guest blogger is Shauna Theel, a researcher at Media Matters for America. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Media Matters. With reporting by Josh Israel and Brad Johnson.

According to leaked documents, Nucor Corporation (NUE), one of the largest steel producers in the United States, is the top named funder of the Heartland Institute’s climate denial efforts, which consist of smearing scientists, distorting climate science, and teaching children that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”

Nucor gave over half a million dollars to the Heartland Institute specifically for the Environment and Climate News (ECN) project in 2010 and 2011, internal documents reveal. Edited by Heartland fellow James M. Taylor, ECN promotes conspiracy theories about climate scientists, distorts climate science, and attacks regulation of air and water pollution.

Nucor’s support for climate denial is in conflict with the company’s branding campaign as an environmentally friendly corporation, deeply concerned about “issues concerning climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.” Nucor has called itself a “Green Company” and even registered the slogan “It’s Our Nature” in order to promote its “promise to be environmentally conscious” and its practice of primarily using recycled scrap metal.

Why the contradiction? It turns out Nucor’s green credentials may be more talk than action. A closer look at Nucor’s website reveals unscientific claims that the climate is experiencing a “natural recovery” from a relatively cold period in the 19th century and that “scientists still debate whether man is impacting the climate.” The company’s source for these claims? The Heartland Institute.

Additionally, Nucor has a spotty environmental record. In December 2000, Nucor paid nearly $100 million to settle an EPA lawsuit that alleged Nucor polluted groundwater and failed to meet air pollution limits. Based on Nucor’s 2006 air pollution emissions, the University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy Research Institute ranked the company the 24th most toxic large corporation in the United States.

In official filings, Nucor sees regulation of carbon pollution, not the impacts of climate change as a material financial risk. Its 2010 annual report cautioned that “onerous” legislation or regulation of greenhouse pollution could cause legal and business costs from the “alleged impact of our operations on climate change.” A Nucor iron plant in Louisiana was the first project to have a permit for greenhouse gas pollution, granted in the beginning of 2011. Months before, Heartland argued the permit program “will stifle innovation and choke off job growth.”

A Nucor spokeswoman told ThinkProgress Green that the company has not released a statement on its support of the Heartland Institute and had no comment on this story.

NOTE: One in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green. ThinkProgress is among several publications to have published documents attributed to the Heartland Institute and sent to us from an anonymous and then unknown source. The source later revealed himself. Heartland Institute has issued several press releases claiming that one document (“2012 Climate Strategy”) is fake and asserting other claims regarding the other documents. ThinkProgress has taken down the “2012 Climate Strategy” document as it determines the document’s authenticity.

Bipartisan support for the production tax credit continues to pour in from around the country. This week, the National Governor’s Association sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to extend key tax credits for wind and other renewables.

Citing the need to stimulate new types of economic activity and maintain job growth in the clean energy sector, the bi-partisan organization called for a four-year extension of the production tax credit (PTC):

Predictable tax policies provide a foundation for renewable energy development and can play an important role in our nation’s economic recovery. Therefore we are encouraging an extension of the both the PTC and ITC for at least 4 years. These tax credits can continue to encourage robust investment and deployment of renewable technologies by affording industry a reliable investment framework within which to operate.

Also adding to the public call for an extension of wind tax credits were the commissioners of Wheatland County, Montana. Wheatland County is a very conservative area of the country. According to one clean energy campaigner, getting these commissioners to write the public statement is “deeply encouraging” and shows “there are still elected officials with common sense.”

With the help of the additional taxes from the Judith Gap Wind Farm, Wheatland County has benefited greatly. We have a new county shop and fire hall, a great tax base as well as a grant program that benefits nonprofit organizations in our county.

The potential for more wind farms is in jeopardy if the U.S. Congress does not vote to extend federal tax incentives such as the Federal Production Tax Credit. Support is needed from Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. John Tester and Rep. Dennis Rehberg as well as the Montana public to ensure progress continues and that Montana meets its full potential.

These are two in a long series of letters written by conservative and progressive politicians in favor of clean energy tax credits.

The PTC provides project owners with a credit of 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced. It will expire at the end of this year. Since tax credits were introduced for the wind industry, they have stimulated tens of billions of dollars in private investment and helped drive the cost of wind down by 90%. However, with natural gas prices at historic (and unsustainable) lows, an expiration of the credit would freeze the industry overnight — potentially killing 37,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, even though the top five oil companies brought in $137 billion in profits last year, they still receive billions in U.S. tax breaks each year — with many of those credits permanently imbedded in the tax code.

At the end of last month, 47 Senators voted against the PTC while voting in favor for keeping $24 billion in tax cuts for oil companies.

Let’s be honest: It is a national scandal that lawmakers in Congress continue to vote against tax credits for wind — threatening 37,000 American jobs and preventing the country from taking the slightest steps forward on addressing climate change — while keeping in place tax credits for oil and gas.

Congress needs to listen up to the loud bipartisan chorus calling for support of wind.

Today is my last day at ThinkProgress, after four exciting years of reporting on the front lines of climate and energy politics. The experience has taken me from Biloxi to Copenhagen, from New Hampshire to Cancun. I’ve gotten to publish guest bloggers from John Kerry to Van Jones, from Bill McKibben to Paulina Borsook. And I’ve been privileged to share my own perspective on this special moment in history.

Here are some of the highlights of that work:

Exposing The Koch Brothers. One of my proudest achievements was in starting the national conversation on the corrupting influence of the Koch brothers on our politics. I was the first ThinkProgress writer to start investigating the Kochs in 2008, exposing McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer and Americans For Prosperity president Tim Phillips as Koch operatives. I covered the extremist AFP summit and AFP’s goofy climate-denial ads. When Lee Fang joined ThinkProgress in 2009, he took the lead in investigating how the Kochs manipulated Tea Party activists and DC politics as the puppetmasters of American conservatism, kindling their fame. In 2010, I even hosted a conversation about the Kochs with AFP staffer Phil Kerpen at the Center for American Progress.

Supporting Climate Hawks. The best moments of the climate fight have been interviewing climate hawks such as Ira Magaziner, Tim DeChristopher, John Fullerton, Nicholas Stern, NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Kevin Trenberth, Gavin Newsom, Bangladesh Environment Minister Hasan Mahmud, Rep. Jay Inslee, Maggie Fox, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Dr. Markus Reichstein, C40 Climate Leadership Group manager Simon Reddy, African environmental activist Mawusé Hountondji, and Tulane University student Stephanie Stefanski:

How Carbon Cash Polluted Climate Legislation. Unfortunately, the effort to achieve Barack Obama’s promised goal of strong climate change legislation was hobbled by the U.S. Senate from the start of his presidency, when enough Democrats voted with Republicans to preserve the power of the filibuster over any kind of clean-energy legislation whatsoever. Along with detailed analysis of the provisions of several iterations of climate legislation, I investigated how the carbon pollution industry manipulated Congress through campaign contributions, powerful lobbying, paid-for witnesses, and dirty tricks.

Sen. Scott Brown Begs David Koch For Money. At the public dedication of MIT’s David H. Koch Integrative Cancer Institute in 2011, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) effusively thanked conservative billionaire David Koch for supporting his election in 2010 and made a plea for help in his re-election campaign next year. David Koch directly gave the National Republican Senatorial Committee $30,400 in November 2009, and the Koch Industries PAC threw in $15,000 to NRSC plus $5,000 more directly to Brown right before Brown’s special election. In a conversation I recorded on camera, Brown thanked Koch and his wife Julia for their support, saying “I can certainly use it again.”

The Billionaires Behind Drill-Baby-Drill. The same old men that propelled George W. Bush into office in 2000 and 2004 were behind Newt Gingrich’s multimillion-dollar front group, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), which capitalized on the energy crisis caused by the Bush presidency to promote a “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” campaign. I uncovered the seven right-wing billionaires, headed by casino kingpin Sheldon Adelson, bankrolling this “non-partisan” organization:

The Climate Zombie Caucus. With painstaking effort, I uncovered the fact that every Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2010 was a climate denier — and then found that global warming conspiracy theorists were running for the House and governorships in practically every state of the Union.

Confronting The Washington Post For Publishing George Will’s Lies About Climate Science. In 2009, Washington Post columnist George Will published an error- and lie-filled column on climate science. I researched his long history of repeating long-debunked canards, and exposed Fred Hiatt‘s and Alan Shearer‘s fact-challenged defense of Will’s pollution. After I helped expose Will’s lies and his defense by top Washington Post editors, their collusive climate denial was criticized by Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, reporters Steve Mufson, Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan, cartoonist Tom Toles, ombudsman Andrew Alexander, and blogger Andrew Freedman.

Investigating The Corrupt George W. Bush Administration. I helped expose the corrupt firing of EPA regional administrator Mary Gade, the pollutocrats of the Office of Management and Budget, the negligent career of creationist EPA administrator Stephen Johnson and his insouciant staff, the deliberate ignorance of climate negotiator Harlan Watson, as well as the astounding contempt for law and science from Dick Cheney and George W. Bush himself.

Poisoned Weather. The threat of global warming pollution is not merely a future challenge, but the new reality. For four years, I have documented the increasing onslaught of climate disasters, and explained how manmade pollution means that we now bear responsibility. Some of my first work on this topic garnered the attention of Rush Limbaugh, who called me a “wacko.”

And yes, it’s been four years of explaining how the right wing is lying about why gasoline prices rise and fall. Even though the climate is being transformed, some things never change.

A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) team has found that a sharp jump in earthquakes in America’s heartland appears to be linked to oil and natural gas drilling operations.

As hydraulic fracturing has exploded onto the scene, it has increasingly been connected to earthquakes. Some quakes may be caused by the original fracking — that is, by injecting a fluid mixture into the earth to release natural gas (or oil). More appear to be caused by reinjecting the resulting brine deep underground.

Last August, a USGS report examined a cluster of earthquakes in Oklahoma and reported:

Our analysis showed that shortly after hydraulic fracturing began small earthquakes started occurring, and more than 50 were identified, of which 43 were large enough to be located. Most of these earthquakes occurred within a 24 hour period after hydraulic fracturing operations had ceased.

In November, a British shale gas developer found it was “highly probable” its fracturing operations caused minor quakes.

Then last month, Ohio oil and gas regulators said “A dozen earthquakes in northeastern Ohio were almost certainly induced by injection of gas-drilling wastewater into the earth.”

Now, in a paper to be deliver at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America, the USGS notes that “a remarkable increase in the rate of [magnitude 3.0] and greater earthquakes is currently in progress” in the U.S. midcontinent. The abstract is online. EnergyWire reports (subs. req’d) some of the findings:

The study found that the frequency of earthquakes started rising in 2001 across a broad swath of the country between Alabama and Montana. In 2009, there were 50 earthquakes greater than magnitude-3.0, the abstract states, then 87 quakes in 2010. The 134 earthquakes in the zone last year is a sixfold increase over 20th century levels.

The surge in the last few years corresponds to a nationwide surge in shale drilling, which requires disposal of millions of gallons of wastewater for each well. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, shale gas production grew, on average, nearly 50 percent a year from 2006 to 2010.

Read more

Cities located in drought-stricken states around the U.S. are experiencing a dramatic spike in rabies outbreaks.

The outbreaks are being linked to warm weather and drought conditions, which are forcing infected animals to seek water and food in more urban areas. That is increasing infection rates and causing headaches for cities around the country.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the rash of outbreaks happening in water-deprived states:

While the number of reported rabid animals declined nationwide in 2010, according to the most recent federal data, states such as South Dakota, Kansas and Texas have recently seen a jump in the number of skunks testing positive. In drought-stricken Texas, more than 1,000 animals last year were exposed to rabid skunks, double the number in 2010. “More skunks seem to have migrated to suburban areas where there is water,” said Ernest Oertli, a veterinarian with the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Researchers continue to issue warnings about the link between global warming and the spread of zoonotic viral diseases like Rabies, Bird Flu and Yellow Fever.

A warming planet will limit biodiversity, change migration patterns of infected animals, and influence extreme weather patterns — creating ripe conditions for the spread of deadly diseases.

For example, changing temperatures are helping to spread dengue fever in 28 states; flooding in Australia has increased outbreaks of the deadly Hendra virus in humans; and a changing climate could also influence genetic changes in bacteria like E.Coli, making them more hearty and deadly.

Related Post:

• Top medical groups warn Americans of health risks posed by climate change
• The Lancet’s landmark Health Commission: “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”

Ethical Electric, a new venture by progressive activist Tom Matzzie, aims to transform how Americans get power. The company is electricity-delivery company that will provide 100-percent renewable electricity to its members, while also mobilizing them on progressive energy and climate action.

in an interview with Good’s Sarah Laskow, Matzzie describes how he began working on Ethical Electric when his father, who had spent his life downwind of a coal-fired power plant, died of cancer in 2010:

I’d been a supporter of addressing climate change and clean energy as a progressive, but it became much more personal. I didn’t want to spend any more of my money on dirty energy. I wanted to only support 100 percent clean energy.

Laskow explains that Ethical Electric will operate in deregulated electricity markets as a competitive retail electric provider in Pennsylvania in New Jersey, starting this year:

In deregulated electricity markets, delivering power—maintaining the power lines and the infrastructure that make up the grid—and selling power are two different businesses. If all goes as planned, Ethical Electric will sell power sourced from renewable energy projects to customers, starting this fall in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

As the Washington Director for MoveOn.org, Matzzie mobilized efforts against the Iraq war. He was also Director of Online Organizing for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 and the Online Mobilization Director at the AFL-CIO from 2000 to 2004.

by Shauna Theel, reposted from Media Matters

The Daily Mail is a British tabloid that has repeatedly misrepresented climate research. Naturally, it is also one of Fox News’ chief sources on climate science.

Last week the Daily Mail ran a story headlined: “Is this finally proof we’re NOT causing global warming? The whole of the Earth heated up in medieval times without human CO2 emissions, says new study.” Fox Nation ran a Newsmax summary of the article under the headline “Study Refutes Manmade Warming.”

The Daily Mail, along with Newsmax, Fox, and other conservative media, distorted the very research they are trumpeting. The study’s lead author, Professor Zunli Lu, said his paper “has been misrepresented by a number of media outlets” and “does not question the well-established anthropogenic warming trend.”

It is unfortunate that my research, “An ikaite record of late Holocene climate at the Antarctic Peninsula,” recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, has been misrepresented by a number of media outlets.

Several of these media articles assert that our study claims the entire Earth heated up during medieval times without human CO2 emissions.  We clearly state in our paper that we studied one site at the Antarctic Peninsula. The results should not be extrapolated to make assumptions about climate conditions across the entire globe. Other statements, such as the study “throws doubt on orthodoxies around global warming,” completely misrepresent our conclusions. Our study does not question the well-established anthropogenic warming trend.

Lu also told Peter Sinclair that “The reporter of that Daily Mail article published it anyway, after we told him the angle that he chose misrepresents our work.” If this reflects poorly on the quality of journalism at the Daily Mail, what does it say about outlets like Fox who simply parrot the tabloid’s inaccurate reports?

According to Newsmax, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rests its case for manmade global warming on an argument that that the “Medieval Warm Period” was not a global phenomenon. In fact, the IPCC simply said “there are far from sufficient data” to determine if it was global. More importantly, this whole debate over medieval climate has little bearing on the question of what is driving the current warming trend.

If scientists did find that the Medieval Warm Period was global in nature, that would not “refute” the extensive evidence that greenhouse gas emissions have been the “dominant cause” of the recent warming period. The Newsmax article said “Skeptics of manmade global warming claims can bolster their position with a new study showing that the Earth went through a previous warming period not caused by human CO2 emissions.” In reality, no climate scientist would dispute that the Earth warmed and cooled before. And as SkepticalScience points out, to argue that natural climate change in previous eras refutes manmade warming now is ”like arguing that humans can’t start bushfires because in the past they’ve happened naturally.”

Shauna Theel is a researcher with Media Matters for America. This piece was originally published at Media Matters and was re-printed with permission.

Joseph M. Kwasnik, reposted from Ceres

The Cape Wind project has received two positive jolts in recent weeks.

First came the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision upholding a long-term power agreement for National Grid to purchase half of Cape Wind’s 454 megawatts of wind power for at least 15 years.

Yesterday the second came – Massachusetts regulators gave final approval to a merger between NStar and Northeast Utilities, which includes a commitment by NStar to buy slightly more than a quarter of Cape Wind’s project’s electricity for 15 years.

With these key contracts in place, Cape Wind can secure the financing it needs to begin construction next year. After a tortuous decade-long journey, the project’s football-field sized wind turbines will start producing electricity as early as 2015. That’s an enormous breakthrough for homegrown renewable energy powering the Massachusetts and New England economies.

The rest of Cape Wind’s power will be sold into the competitive daily wholesale electricity market overseen by New England’s electric grid operator, ISO-New England. Cape Wind’s bids into the market will be among the lowest-priced electricity because generators can only bid the actual production costs of their electricity. For Cape Wind, their electricity has a close to zero cost because their fuel, wind, is free. On the other hand, generating plants fueled with coal or natural gas must include their fuel costs in their bids, thus making their electricity more expensive than Cape Wind’s.

Because of this Cape Wind will provide much needed downward pressure on electric wholesale rates in New England. This pattern is well documented in organized wholesale energy markets such as ISO-New England, the Eastern US grid and many European markets.

Read more

Other stories below: Tennessee is a national lab for clashes over science in the classroom; Global warming impacts Russia more than others

Climate Change Linked to Waterborne Diseases in Inuit Communities [National Geographic]

As global warming triggers heavier rainfall and faster snowmelt in the Arctic, Inuit communities in Canada are reporting more cases of illness attributed to pathogens that have washed into surface water and groundwater, according to a new study.

The findings corroborate past research that suggests indigenous people worldwide are being disproportionately affected by climate change. This is because many of them live in regions where the effects are felt first and most strongly, and they might come into closer contact with the natural environment on a daily basis. For example, some indigenous communities lack access to treated water because they are far from urban areas. (See a map of the region.)

“In the north, a lot of [Inuit] communities prefer to drink brook water instead of treated tap water. It’s just a preference,” explained study lead author Sherilee Harper, a Vanier Canada graduate scholar in epidemiology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. ”Also, when they’re out on the land and hunting or fishing, they don’t have access to tap water, so they drink brook water.”

Read more