Our guest blogger is Brad Johnson, campaign manager of Forecast the Facts

Countless lives were saved this weekend by vigilant government officials who warned of deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska — states whose politics are dominated by anti-government, anti-science ideologues. Over 100 tornadoes struck down in 24 hours, but only six people died in Oklahoma, Sen. Jim Inhofe’s home state, thanks to warnings from the National Weather Service scientists he has worked to discredit:

The tornadoes were unrelenting – more than 100 in 24 hours over a stretch of the Plains states. They tossed vehicles and ripped through homes. They drove families to their basements and whipped debris across small towns throughout the Midwest. In some areas, baseball-size hail rained from the sky.

And yet, in a stroke that some officials have attributed to a more vigilant and persistent warning system, relatively few people were killed or injured.

Wichita, Kansas, the headquarters of Koch Industries, suffered $280 million in damage from a ferocious twister, but the “ever-increasing government” demonized by the Koch brothers prevented any loss of life.

Greenhouse pollution from the fossil fuel industries that control the region’s politics is making our weather more extreme and dangerous. The heat trapped by carbon pollution is powering these earlier and more intense storms with record-warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. As Dr. Jeff Masters wrote on Friday:

This is the warmest March value on record for the Gulf of Mexico, going back over a century of record keeping. During the first two weeks of April, Gulf of Mexico waters remained about 1.5°C above average, putting April on pace to have the warmest April water temperatures on record. Only one year in the past century has had April water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico more than 1.1°C above average; that year was 2002 (1.4°C above average.) All that record-warm water is capable of putting record amounts of water vapor into the air, since evaporation increases when water is warmer. Because moist air is less dense than dry air, this warm, moist air flowing northwards from the Gulf of Mexico into the developing storm system over the Plains will be highly unstable once it encounters cold, dry air aloft. The record-warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico are a key reason for the high risk of severe weather over the Plains this weekend.

Related Post:

• Tornadoes, Extreme Weather and Climate Change, Revisited

Once again, the World Bank is pushing a massive, dirty coal plant in a developing country — this time in war-ravaged Kosovo. The 600-MW project would exacerbate public health problems, do nothing to improve Kosovo’s grossly inefficient electrical grid, and would put the poverty-stricken country into a massive carbon debt that would last for generations.

We wrote about the project last month. This week, activists working to stop coal in Kosovo released a fascinating 15-minute documentary on the issue, outlining the World Bank’s contradictory policies and the potential renewable energy solutions that could help avoid building more dirty coal in the country.

The World Bank says tackling climate change is necessary to “avoid the unimaginable.” But the organization continues to push the dirtiest resource imaginable, lignite coal. When will it actually treat climate change with genuine urgency?

by Dominique Browning, via Time Ideas

If you were watching the Masters golf tournament last weekend, you would have noticed it was laced with ads from Exxon Mobil calling for … better science. That’s right. The very company that funded decades of science denial takes it back. Sort of. ExxonMobil ranks high in a short list of powerful institutions that has done this country an enormous disservice in undermining the overall credibility of the scientific method in general, and climate scientists specifically.

They now realize, of course, that without scientifically sophisticated workers, our global standing slips backwards. The company plans to spend a small fortune on the ad campaign featuring the National Math and Science Initiative and is a founding sponsor of this effort to dramatically improve science education in the U.S.

I have a friend, Jackson Robinson, who runs a green investment company called Winslow Management. He regularly asks CEOs, what is keeping you awake at night? More than half the time, the answer has to do with the work force: how hard it is to find educated, skilled people to take their companies to the next level. The workforce issue has gotten so serious that Chicago, with 100,000 jobs that could not be filled in 2010, has had to launch a “college to careers” movement to train students. For the record, not one CEO has ever responded to Jack that he stays awake because of global warming. And I imagine one reason it isn’t top of mind: a disinformation campaign that has been raging for decades.

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Two of Southeast Asia’s most valuable crops — rice and cassava — are under pressure from multiple, simultaneous threats fueled by climate change.

In the last week, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security issued two pieces of research highlighting the devastating impacts that warming-fueled extreme weather is having on Asia’s agriculture.

The first piece of research looks at the impact of floods and droughts on Southeast Asia’s rice crops. According to researchers, severe flooding and drought throughout the region could reduce agricultural yields by up to 50% in the next three decades.

So-called “weather whiplash” — back-to-back extreme weather events — is already hitting rice crops hard. In 2010, Thailand experienced $450 million in crop damages due to a severe drought. The following year, flooding again decimated rice crops, causing $40 billion in damages throughout the country’s economy.

With Southeast Asia now the “rice bowl” of the world, acceleration of warming-fueled extreme weather would make the local and global economic impact of these disasters enormous:

South and Southeast Asia are home to more than one-third of the world’s population and half of the world’s poor and malnourished. Absent new approaches to food production, climate change in this region is expected to reduce agriculture productivity by as much as 50 percent in the next three decades. And with agriculture serving as the backbone of most economies in the region, such plunging yields would shake countries to the core.

Now, the growing variability between seasons has increased pressures on water supplies, while at the same time rising sea levels are tainting freshwater supplies with high levels of salinity. This troublesome combination is putting Asia’s tremendous rice production at risk. Rice in Asia is grown in vast low-lying deltas and coastal areas such as the Mekong River delta, which produces more than half of Vietnam’s rice; the rise in sea level from climate change will change the hydrology and salinity of these fields. Moreover, some of the major river basins—including the Chao Phraya in Thailand and the Red in Vietnam—are considered “closed” because all of the water flow has been claimed.

Warming temperatures and changing weather patterns are also spawning new outbreaks of pests in the region, threatening the multi-billion dollar cassava industry.

Cassava is a root used for a variety of food products, animal feed and biofuels. Last year, Thailand exported about $1.4 billion worth of cassava — or roughly 60% of the country’s exports. Cassava farmers in the region already deal with multiple types of pests. But Researchers at CGIAR and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture say new types of non-native pests are emerging:

For cassava in Southeast Asia, mealybugs and whiteflies are already endemic in the region. But new threats, such as the tiny green mite (Mononychellus mcgregori), are already emerging, says the research, published recently in the scientific journal Tropical Plant Biology.

“The cassava pest situation in Asia is pretty serious as it is,” said Tony Bellotti, a cassava entomologist at CIAT. “But according to our studies, rising temperatures could make things a whole lot worse.”

“One outbreak of an invasive species is bad enough, but our results show that climate change could trigger multiple, combined outbreaks across Southeast Asia, Southern China and the cassava-growing areas of Southern India,” added Belloti. “It’s a serious threat to the hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers for whom cassava is a lifeline, and their main source of income.”

The combined impact of extreme weather and pest outbreaks could be catastrophic for the region’s agricultural sector.

With more than half a billion people, Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. According to the United Nations, the economic impact of a “business-as-usual” increase in emissions could cause a roughly 6.7% decline in the region’s GDP by 2100.

Related Post:

• Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security
• Oxfam Predicts Climate Change will Help Double Food Prices by 2030: “We Are Turning Abundance into Scarcity”

by Greg Rucks and Jessie Morris, via Rocky Mountain Institute

Last week, the NY Times invited readers to discuss our addiction to cars. RMI’s Rucks and Morris weighed in.

Greg Rucks: Consider Alternative Rational Pricing Approaches

In spirit, a gasoline “user fee” charges drivers in proportion to the benefit they receive—the revenues are used to build and improve the nation’s roadways through the Highway Trust Fund. In reality, however, a large portion of gasoline tax revenues have historically been diverted away from general road use and used instead for infrastructure improvements—often unrelated to roads—that benefit a select few. Mr. Salzman’s proposal of a “rational gas user fee” thus hinges largely on the “rational” part.

An alternative rational pricing approach promises to deliver proportional benefit to users that is directly linked—and proportional to—the extent of their contribution: a VMT (vehicle miles traveled) tax by which drivers are charged by the mile, not by the gallon. As the Oregon Department of Transportation found in 2005, this approach can also help de-congest roadways since rates can be adjusted to reduce driving during peak times (thus reducing traffic), avoiding the need for costly new infrastructure so we can focus on fixing the roads we already have.

Another benefit of a VMT tax is that it provides a pathway to a future where gasoline no longer fuels U.S. transportation. As the U.S. adopts increasingly efficient—and ultimately electrified—vehicles, gasoline revenues will dwindle and infrastructure funding will need an alternative source. Why not lay the groundwork for that future by establishing that source now?

Jesse Morris: Make Better Use of Our Existing Infrastructure

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As policy makers in Washington ignore the urgent need to extend federal tax credits for wind, there’s some new data for them to consider. Over the last decade, the number of states generating more than 10% of electricity from non-hydro renewable energy has increased from two to nine.

The main driver? Wind.

According to the Energy Information Administration, there are now 20 states generating more than 5% of electricity from non-hydro renewables. The two most dramatic increases in renewable generation were in South Dakota and Iowa, which now have 21% and 17% penetration respectively, up from about 1% a decade ago.

These figures don’t include on-site distributed generation — a sector that is still very small, but growing steadily.

There’s a reason why many Republican lawmakers, including Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Iowa Representative Steve King, want to see the Production Tax Credit for wind extended. The industry has supported more than 3,000 manufacturing and operations jobs in the state, providing more than $12.7 million in annual land lease payments for Iowans each year.

Related Posts:

• Jennifer Granholm Pushes Boehner On Wind Tax Credits: ‘Mr. Speaker, This Is Your Lucky Day’ To Create Jobs
• 47 Senators Side With Big Oil And Vote To Kill 37,000 American Wind Jobs

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) relentlessly attacks the administration's National Ocean Policy even though it would streamline government involvement, eliminate duplication of effort, and ensure taxpayers get more value for their dollars.

by Michael Conathan

Even in the bitterest partisan times, ocean issues tend to exist outside the traditional political boxing ring. They usually foster alliances based far more on geography than on party affiliation. Members who represent coastal states and districts usually recognize the value of sustaining and investing in our valuable ocean resources, and they prioritize them more than their inland counterparts. But in recent months the escalation of rancor and polarization encompassed even the normally temperate issue of ocean policy.

Nowhere is this tone more prevalent that in the House Committee on Natural Resources, where Republicans have made President Barack Obama’s National Ocean Policy public enemy number one.

Ever since its roll-out, the policy—implemented by an executive order in 2010 to provide a comprehensive set of guiding principles for the “stewardship of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes”—has been taking fire from opponents who cite it as an overreach that would spawn “job-killing regulations,” according to Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and would mean the “death of all land-use planning” in this country, in the words of Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA).

Leaving aside the inherent contradiction espoused by Rep. McClintock—that the National Ocean Policy’s nefarious efforts to develop a framework for the great evil of ocean-use planning would in turn kill the wonderful benefits of land-use planning—boiling these statements down to their roots leaves little more than bald political rhetoric. In practice, the policy will improve scientific management and will help safeguard the commercial and recreational fishing industries—some of the most fundamental drivers of our ocean economy.

Rep. Hastings, who chairs the Committee on Natural Resources, and Rep. McClintock both hail from coastal states, yet neither of the regions they represent in Congress actually touch the Pacific Ocean. Still, the rivers that run through their districts ultimately terminate in the sea, and new findings are proving regularly what we already knew—what enters those rivers flushes into the ocean and directly affects all facets of marine life, including our fisheries.

Rep. Hastings has held multiple hearings about the National Ocean Policy in his committee this year, repeatedly questioning administration officials, scientists, industry members, and advocates about what he sees as an authoritarian overreach and a prime example of the regulatory stranglehold the Obama administration is putting on America’s economic growth. (I testified before Rep. Hastings’s Committee on October 29, 2011.)

On April 2 Rep. Hastings sent a letter to his colleagues in the House Appropriations Committee—the holders of the congressional purse strings—asking them to “prohibit the use of funds for the implementation of the National Ocean Policy.”

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Our round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Please post more links below.

A forecast for intense heat during Monday’s Boston Marathon prompted race officials to issue dire warnings over the weekend, along with the offer of a deferment for runners willing to wait until next year. [Wall Street Journal]

To figure out what is likely to happen to Earth’s climate this century, scientists are looking 3 million years into the past. [Reuters]

“The glaciers are still shrinking – and rapidly”: With glaciers and ice sheets covering such a diverse range of latitudes (from the tropics to the poles) and altitudes (from sea level to over 6,000 metres), it is not surprising that there are regional variations in their behaviour. Such variability should not, however, distract from the broader and more important story unfolding, which is one of profound and likely irreversible changes to global land and sea ice cover. [Guardian]

Scientists from the United States Geological Survey have cautiously weighed in on a subject that has sparked public concern in some parts of the country: spates of small earthquakes in oil- and gas-producing areas. [New York Times]

Solar panels prices have kept marching lower this year, extending steep declines seen in 2011 and keeping pressure on hard-hit manufacturers who have struggled to eke out profits, industry experts said. [Reuters]

To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea lanes and a slew of potential conflicts. [Washington Post]

The recent setbacks in UK clean energy policy reflect deep confusion over the main governing party’s direction on green policy. One prominent Tory MP said: “As someone who’s convinced by the science, and wants to tackle climate change, I’m finding myself an endangered species within my own party.” [Guardian]