UPDATE (5/10 3:15 pm): Heartland Institute de-listed Roger Pielke Jr. as a ”Heartland Expert” today after Pielke asked them to make clear he has no affiliation with them in any way. Yet as recently as last night, in a response to this post, he asserted, “If they chose to highlight me as an expert, that is their business.” #FAIL. The other amazing thing is that Pielke knew about the listing as far back as May 4! Anyway, we’re now seeing an “exodus” of “Heartland experts,” since Benny Peiser also got de-listed after my post. Pielke’s original page is cached here. The delisted page is here.

On day 6 of Heartland-gate, we visit their distinguished list of “Experts.”

As you know, the Heartland Institute is still unapologetic for its ad comparing the Unabomber to those who accept climate science or report on it. And they still insist on their website that “the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

Their website also lists as “Heartland Experts” many of the most prominent advocates of climate science denial: John Christy, Joseph D’Aleo, Myron Ebell, Richard Lindzen, Bjorn Lomborg, Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney, Patrick Michaels, Steve Milloy, Lord Christopher Monckton, Marc Morano, Benny Peiser, Ian Plimer, Harrison Schmitt, Fred Singer, Fred Smith, Roy Spencer, Anthony Watts, and, last but not least, Roger Pielke.

Now, I’m sure you’re thinking, well, of course, Foreign Policy’s “Guide to Climate Skeptics” included Roger Pielke, Jr., but surely he isn’t an official “Heartland Expert.” And I say to you, stop calling me Shirley!

UPDATE: On his blog, Roger states he has “absolutely no relationship with Heartland — never have, never will. Period.” That’s great. Then he falsely claims that I said he is “official expert for Heartland” when I merely asked the obvious question. He amazingly asserts in the comments that he “looked at the webpage and there is nothing there that says that I am in anyway associated with them.” Anyone can look at the web page above and see that Heartland lists him as a “Heartland expert” — with his bio and photo. How anyone could have guessed this wasn’t official is, well, Pielke-esque. Glad to know it isn’t.

Even more amazingly, however, Pielke then goes on to say:

If they chose to highlight me as an expert, that is their business.

So he is apparently fine with how he appears on their website. I guess that makes him an unofficial Heartland Expert. Hope that clears things up.

UPDATE: Pielke claimed in a tweet to Prof. Scott Mandia that he “Learned of it on my blog ~48 hrs before Romm’s post.” But Mandia points out in a response that Pielke knew on May 4 (!). #FAIL

The point is that Pielke has known that Heartland listed him as a “Heartland expert” for a number of days now and had no problem with it whatsoever. Interestingly, the long-debunked, hard-core denier Benny Peiser appears to have gotten Heartland to remove him from the list within 12 hours of my post. Go figure!

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Richard Mourdock and Dick Lugar (AP)

Another day, another mainstream conservative Senator knocked off by the pollutocrat-backed Tea Party.

This time it was 6-term Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, crushed in a GOP primary 60% to 40% by state Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

Mourdoch, needless to say, is a hard-core science denier who last month actually demanded that Lugar resign as an “honorary vice chair” of the Alliance to Save Energy, a bipartisan alliance of businesses and nonprofits that promotes … gasp … saving energy. The Alliance’s crime? They backed the 2009 Waxman-Markey climate bill because it  aggressively promoted energy efficiency (see, for instance, “Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030“).

Mourdock said in a statement at the time:

“Clearly, Lugar is out of touch with Hoosier conservatives if he thinks that serving on the board of groups that advocate ‘cap and trade’ carbon tax schemes and the junk science associated with global climate change alarmism is prudent when he represents a state that meets the majority of its electrical needs with coal-fired generators.”

Yes, apparently Hoosier conservatives don’t like conserving things. Nor do they like climate science.  At least the ones that vote in GOP primaries don’t.

Think Progress reported today of Mourdoch’s victory:

His candidacy is fueled by dirty energy money and outside spending groups: It is unlikely Mourdock would have won the primary without an infusion of $1.6 million in spending from the pro-Wall Street Club for Growth, as well as over half a million from FreedomWorks, an astroturf Tea Party group. In addition, Mourdock enjoyed a maxed out contribution from Murray Energy’s PAC, which represents the nation’s largest privately-owned coal company. Mourdock, a former coal company executive, received an additional $18,000 in contributions elsewhere from the coal, oil, and gas industries.

Lugar issued a stinging statement after his defeat, which said of Mourdoch and the Tea Party led GOP:

In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party….

I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases.

That said, while Lugar’s spirit of bipartisanship will be missed, we should remember it was a relative spirit.

As The Hill noted last month:

Lugar was among the minority of Republicans that voted for failed cap-and-trade proposals in 2003 and 2005 sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

But in 2008 he voted against cap-and-trade legislation sponsored by Lieberman and then-senator John Warner (R-Va.), and in 2010 floated a broad energy security bill that did not include an emissions cap, although he touted other provisions that would help curb emissions.

He missed his chance to support bipartisan climate legislation when there was the only serious chance in a generation to get it passed, in 2009 and 2010. So he will be missed, relatively speaking.

Photo: Karin Dalziel, via Flickr

by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

When it comes to global climate change, there are two critical and intertwined, but distinct issues: science, and policy.  We generally focus on the science, because that is what dictates the appropriate policy response, or at least what our climate policy needs to accomplish.

Justin Gillis had an excellent article published in The New York Times this past week, which addresses both science and policy.  The science aspect of the article bears some resemblance to one of our posts from a year ago, Climate Sensitivity: The Skeptic Endgame.  The fundamental premise of both articles involves the fact that, because of the sound basic science supporting the human-caused global warming theory, there only remains one fallback position for the remaining relatively credible climate contrarians.  That fallback position involves climate sensitivity being lower than the body of scientific evidence indicates.

Gillis’ article focuses mainly on Richard Lindzen, who is one of the relatively more credible climate contrarians (although he has a long history of taking contrarian positions on nearly every climate-related issue, and being almost universally wrong on those issues).  Lindzen embodies the low climate sensitivity fallback position perfectly, but as we will see here, the basis of Lindzen’s argument, which itself is the basis of all remaining relatively credible climate contrarianism, is entirely false and undermined by three inescapable flaws.

Lindzen’s Three Sensitive Achilles’ Heels

We know that humans are rapidly increasing the level of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, we know that this GHG increase is causing some amount of warming, and will continue to cause additional warming as long as GHG levels continue to rise.  The remaining relatively credible climate contrarians like Lindzen acknowledge these realities; where they differ from mainstream climate science is in exactly how much warming the GHG increase will cause.  This is known as the climate sensitivity – how much the planet will warm in response to increasing GHGs, including feedbacks.

For contrarians like Lindzen, climate sensitivity must be low, or they have no case to make.  They have acknowledged that GHGs will cause warming, and their only argument against taking serious action to reduce GHG emissions is this premise that the GHG increase won’t cause very much warming.  That is why we described this argument as the ‘skeptic’ endgame, and Gillis accurately described it as the dissenters’ “last bastion.”

So what is Lindzen’s case for low climate sensitivity?

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by Gordon Scott, via the Sierra Club

The forest-shaded hills of the Appalachian Mountains near Charleston, WV, may seem an unlikely place for Indian activists to campaign against a destructive coal plant being built 8,000 miles away in Gujarat state in India.  But that is where Soumya Dutta of the People’s Science Forum and Debi Goenka of the Conservation Action Trust are headed this week, to meet with local communities engaged in similar struggles against coal corporations and to build a global coalition to fight back against dirty coal.

Last month Dutta led a team of retired Indian justices and high-level officials on a fact-finding mission to the site of a massive new 4,000 MW coal-fired power station along the shoreline of the Arabian Sea near Mundra, India. The team documented the glaring social and environmental violations being committed by the Tata Power Company which is building the plant. Dutta heard first-hand from local fishing villagers and salt-pan workers how the Mundra plant has contaminated their land and waters and threatened their livelihoods, even forcing some to abandon their ancestral homes.

In February, a group of anti-wind activists gathered in Washington, DC. Their goal: establish a coordinated, nation-wide program of “wind warriors” who could be dispatched to fight the industry anywhere, anytime.

The organization would combine efforts and create “what should appear as a ‘groundswell’ among grass roots” to counter legislation supporting wind energy on the federal, state and local levels.

The leader of the group was John Droz, Jr, a long-time wind opponent and a senior fellow at the ultra-conservative American Tradition Institute. ATI calls itself an “environmental” think tank. The organization, known best for suing climate scientist Michael Mann, is devoted to spreading doubt about climate change, opposing state-level renewable energy targets, and stripping away environmental regulations.

The ATI is so extreme that it was denounced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for contributing to an “environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas.”

According to a memo just obtained by the Checks and Balances Project and reviewed by Climate Progress, Droz has also been focused on crafting a fake grassroots campaign to fight renewable energy projects — specifically wind — in legislatures, zoning boards and town halls across the country.

In a poorly timed suggestion, Droz contemplates joining with the Heartland Institute (because there is “substantial commonality”) and launching a fake billboard campaign to derail wind developers. What could go wrong with that?

The memo shows that Droz brought together these wind opponents from all over the country last year to “cause subversion in message of [the wind] industry so that it effectively becomes so bad no one wants to admit they are for it.”

The minimum national PR campaign goal is to constructively influence national and state wind energy policies. A broader possible goal is to constructively influence national and state energy and environmental policies.

The goal will be realized by coordination of a focused message along many channels and with multiple voices. The intent is to target three audiences with consistent messaging to create the change.  Public opinion must begin to change in what should appear as a “groundswell” among grass roots.

By “constructively influence” the authors really mean “disrupt” any piece of legislation supporting wind energy — and likely other forms of renewable energy as collateral damage.

The document, authored by Illinois anti-wind attorney Rich Porter and edited by Droz, outlines in great detail how a national PR campaign would function. The American Tradition Institute says Droz acted alone in crafting the plan, according to the Guardian.

The group’s campaign efforts would include outreach to a who’s who of conservative media outlets and think tanks already working to discredit renewable energy: Fox News, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Heartland Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Americans for Prosperity.

The memo outlines more than 20 ideas for undertaking a national campaign, including teaching anti-wind curriculum in schools and creating “dummy” companies to trip up wind developers attempting to build projects. Below is a list of some of their ideas:

• Youth Outreach will create program for public school coordination as well as college coordination. This will include community activity and participation with sponsorships for science fairs, school activity etc. with preset parameters that cause students to steer away from wind because they discover it doesn’t meet the criteria we set up (poster contest, essays etc).
• Setup a dummy business that will go into communities considering wind development, proposing to build 400 foot billboards.
• Create a “think-tank” subgroup to produce and disseminate white paper reports and scientific quotes and papers that back-up the message.
• Employ a well-known spokesman with star credibility. (Find one to volunteer?)
• Create counter-intelligence branch (responsible for communicating current industry tactics and strategies as feedback to this organization)
• Write expose book on the industry, showing government waste, harm to communities and other negative impacts on people and the environment.
• A team investigates links to any organization supporting wind in order to expose that support.

The release of this memo follows public statements from highly-influential conservative groups like ALEC and Americans for Tax Reform about their plans to eliminate targets for renewable energy in states around the country. The Droz anti-wind plan is more proof that these organizations are stepping up their political campaigns against the industry.

We have posted the memo here.

The GOP’s plan to blame Obama’s policies for rising gasoline prices has run into one small bump in the road. Gasoline prices have dropped $0.15 a gallon in the past month, to $3.79 per gallon this week, down from its peak of $3.94 in early April, according to The Energy Information Administration.

The public understands Obama isn’t to blame for high gasoline prices, as recent polls make clear. Even the Wall Street Journal and Cato Institute agree: “It’s not Obama’s fault that crude oil prices have increased.”

After all, U.S. oil production has been soaring under this Administration, as the chart shows.

The facts didn’t stop the former leader of the House GOP, Newt Gingrich, from blaming the price runup in the past 3 years on Obama: “All of this gigantic increase came from his policies.” Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), said in March that Mr. Obama should be held “fully responsible for what the American public is paying for gasoline.”

As the AP reported today, “Gasoline prices probably will not set any records this summer, thanks to a recent drop in the price of oil.” Of course, peak oil and rising demand in the developing word will keep prices rising over the longer term, and instability in the MidEast and elsewhere will always cause price spikes. But Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, said, ”If I were betting in Vegas whether or not gas will be higher or lower on July 4th, I would say lower.”

E&E Daily explains in its story, “Falling prices complicate GOP push for regulatory rollbacks” (subs. req’d), efforts by the House GOP to use high gasoline prices to push their pro-pollution agenda have now stalled, and not just because the Senate opposes that effort.

But there is also a sense that House Republicans have less of a case to make with prices lower and expected to avoid the record highs that were feared earlier this spring….

“What, you think we’re going to have a press conference now to congratulate the administration for decreasing gas prices?” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) quipped during a brief interview yesterday.

Simpson, who runs the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees EPA and the Department of Interior, added “And as gas prices fall, obviously you’re not going to say as much, but it’s still an issue.”

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) sponsored a bill to delay EPA air quality rules until  a study was completed on how they would impact gasoline prices, said:

“Let me just say this, there are a lot more points to be made to set up a contrast with President Obama than just gasoline prices. So we can remove gasoline prices, and I think we would have a lot of issues to talk about.”

This means the House GOP can move on to another phony issue.

by Kaid Benfield, via NRDC’s Switchboard

The headline in Tuesday’s USA Today was shocking: “Obesity could affect 42% of Americans by 2030.”  That is nearly triple the rate experienced just three decades ago, according to an article written by Nanci Hellmich. At current rates, eleven percent of Americans could be “severely obese, roughly 100 or more pounds over a healthy weight.”

The findings come from a Duke University study presented at a meeting hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and to be published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The consequences for our health (and, for that matter, our economy) are quite serious.  Earlier this year I recently reported data on Type 2 diabetes, for example, which is obesity-related and has been rising at the same rate as body weight in the US for the last few decades.  Diabetes is the leading cause of nontraumatic amputations, eye disease, and kidney disease, and is a major factor in the development of cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in diabetes patients.

My fear is that we pay insufficient attention to this disturbing trend because, like global warming, it has become more pronounced gradually and tends not to have sudden and dramatic consequences.  We get used to it.  But, unlike global warming, the environmental factors associated with the rise in obesity have not attracted the attention of the environmental community to any great degree.

As Dick Jackson — one of the country’s top environmental health experts — has been telling us for years, this needs to change.  There are all sorts of causes of the obesity epidemic, including of course poor nutrition.  But the downturn in physical activity because of the way we have designed our cities and suburbs — for driving more than walking — is also a significant factor.  There are studies showing that transit use is associated with reduced body weight, as is is the presence of shops and services within walking distance of the home.

And now there’s more.  Nate Berg, writing for The Atlantic Cities, reported yesterday that a new study of automobile commuters has found that, the longer the commute, the more likely one is to have reduced fitness, increased weight, high cholesterol, and elevated blood pressure:

“The activity of driving to work should be better thought of as inactivity, and all that time sitting on your butt is slowly eating away at your cardiovascular health – and probably adding to your waistline. Those who have farther to travel tend to see worse results according to the study, which will be published in the June issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“The study tracked 4,297 people who lived and worked in 11 counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth or Austin, Texas, metropolitan areas, and compared their commuting distances with various medical health indicators, including cardiorespiratory fitness, body mass index, and metabolic risk variables like waist circumference. The longer the commute, the greater the likelihood these health indicators measure up on the fat and sick side of the scale. The researchers also found that people who drove longer distances reported doing less physical activity overall.”

Berg reports further that these associations were found even when the researchers controlled for individual characteristics such as personal physical activity habits and level of fitness.

Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are health problems, to be sure.  But they are environmental problems as well.  We know how to locate and design our communities so that we don’t need to drive so much and have more opportunities for walking in our daily routines.  The basic principles of smart growth point us in the right direction.  What we need to understand better is that following these principles — which, incidentally, the market supports — is important not just to reduce emissions and conserve land.  It can also save lives.

Kaid Benfield is Director of Sustainable Communities at NRDC. He writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog’s home page. This piece was originally published at NRDC’s Switchboard and was re-printed with permission.

A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post other links below.

Solar power became the most-installed energy source in Europe last year for the first time as subsidies drove investment to records, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association said. [Bloomberg]

Microsoft has pledged to make all of its data centers, software development labs and any other direct operations carbon neutral, starting in fiscal 2013. [Washington Post]

The water that comes out of taps in New York City runs downhill 125 miles from the Catskill Mountains, every last drop the product of 19th-century genius and scheming that made the modern metropolis possible. Now comes a new proposition for what is arguably the world’s greatest urban water system: people are trying to figure out if, on its way to your shower, the water can also drive turbines and make electricity. [New York Times]

One popular climate record that shows a slower atmospheric warming trend than other studies contains a data calibration problem, and when the problem is corrected the results fall in line with other records and climate models, according to a new University of Washington study. [Environmental Protection]

President Obama is urging Congress to extend tax breaks for wind power projects that are slated to expire at year’s end and expand stimulus-law tax incentives for manufacturing green energy components. [The Hill]

Canada will probably not meet its already-diminished greenhouse gas reduction targets, the country’s environment commissioner warned on Tuesday in a report to Parliament. [New York Times]

The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) launched its latest Report Card yesterday at the World Fisheries Congress in Edinburgh, looking at the impact of climate change on the marine environment. [The Fish Site]

The government has approved plans for the largest onshore windfarm in England and Wales. With 76 turbines, the Pen Y Cymoedd development is expected to produce 299 megawatts (MW) of energy by 2016, enough to power 206,000 homes a year. [Guardian]