The Senate hearing on climate science this Wednesday, unsurprisingly enough, appears to have changed little with respect to the politics of climate change on Capitol Hill. Indeed, a significant portion of the discussion was dominated by debate over Dr. John Christy’s particular brand of denialism, a well-trod debate.

Nonetheless, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) was more than surprised when informed by Senator Barbara Boxer that roughly 98 percent of climate scientists, contra Christy, accepted that anthropogenic warming was real and serious — he was outraged:

Sessions: Madam Chairman, I am offended by that, I’m offended by that — I didn’t say anything about the scientists. I said the data shows [sic] it is not warming to the degree that a lot of people predicted, not close to that much…

Boxer: The conclusion that you’re coming to is shared by 1-2 percent of the scientists. You shouldn’t be offended by that. That’s the fact.

Sessions: I don’t believe that’s correct.

Watch it:

Senator Sessions may want to look over this study, which surveyed the publications of 1,372 climate scientists and vindicated Senator Boxer’s view of their conclusions. For that matter, so should Senator James Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the committee who had previously dismissed the study’s findings as irrelevant to the debate on climate change. Though Sessions and Inhofe were the most outspoken Republicans at the hearing, their views are mostly shared by their colleagues on the Environment and Public Works committee.

While these denialists debated the Committee’s Democrats on the role of climate change in fueling the current devastating drought, the best available science suggested that the current troubles are some of the earliest signs of a “dust-bowlification” of the United States as a consequence of global warming.

In the 2012 election cycle, President Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney have been keeping one specific demographic in mind – Latinos.

Many analysts think Hispanic voters are the key to the outcome of the 2012 presidential election, specifically in swing states such as Nevada and Florida. With a population that reached 50.4 million residents in 2010, it is no surprise that strategies have been developed by both parties to get the Latino vote. However, immigration policies should not be the only approach candidates are taking with the Hispanic population.

Today, the Sierra Club in conjunction with NCLR (National Council of La Raza) released an extensive poll conducted by Project New America and Myers Research. The results of the 2012 Latinos and the Environment Survey show an overwhelming belief that Latinos believe in global climate change and want government regulations to protect their air and water –  a combined 92% understand that global warming is either already happening and it will happen in the future.

The Latino community clearly understands that due to fossil fuel production and usage, our nation is going through serious climate changes.

Latino voters are also mostly in agreement with the entire American demographic when it comes to regulations. The report found that 72% Latino voters agree that regulations protect our health by lowering polluting toxins in our air and water. A report released by the Pew Research Center recognized 71% of all Americans believe our government should do “whatever it takes to protect the environment.”

Regulations benefit all of us, but are particularly essential to Latinos.

According to the Center for Disease Control, Hispanics are 165% more likely to live in counties with unhealthy levels of particulate matter than were whites. The report found that 43% of Latino voters say they live or work near a toxic site, such as a refinery, a coal fired power plant, an incinerator, an agricultural field, a major highway, or a factory. This represents a significant increase since 2008, when 34% reported living or working close to a toxic site.

As a result of the environmental injustice occurring in our country, the report states that nearly half of Hispanic voters (47%) report that they or someone in their family has faced asthma as a result of environmental factors.

It seems that the GOP is on the wrong side of this issue if they want to win the Latino vote  as many of them want to not only scale back regulations (some want to just get rid of the EPA), and obstruct any possible solution to the mess we’re making by polluting.

-Matt Kasper

Every hour so far in 2012, the five largest oil corporations have recorded a $14,400,000 profit. And every hour, they received more than $270,000 in federal tax breaks. That adds up to $2.4 billion in subsidies every year for the five largest oil corporations — Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips — all ranked as the top 9 companies in the world.

Even though BP posted an unexpected second-quarter loss, these five companies are on track to meet last year’s record profits. Put these numbers into context, and they are not so “disappointing“: Big Oil profits more in one minute than what 96 percent of American households earn in one year. Even so, Mitt Romney and House Republicans want to double what the five companies receive in federal tax breaks to $12.8 million per day, even though the three publicly owned U.S. companies paid an average tax rate of under 17 percent.

The graphic below illustrates where Big Oil directs these profits and its pollution over the course of a day:

¹ Center for American Progress, 7/30
² Center for American Progress, 7/31
³ EPA
⁴ Wall Street Journal
⁵ Open Secrets

Wigwam Jones, via Flickr

Every year, the United States consumes more than 3 trillion KWh of electricity. This power is generated by coal-fired power plants, nuclear plants, solar panels, hydroelectric damns, wind turbines, geothermal wells, and other sources and it requires water to produce.

As much as 41% of all water used in the United States goes to power plants to produce electricity, making them the single largest water consumer in the nation.

The relationship between water and power generation is complex. (A recent report featured on Climate Progress called “Burning Our Rivers: The Water Footprint of Electricity” takes an in depth look at water usage, particularity in the coal and nuclear sectors.) A whole host of issues can emerge related to the massive water consumption of the energy industry. Many of those issues become exacerbated in particularly hot and dry conditions, much like the ones we are experiencing this summer.

Problems arise when water levels are too low to satisfy thirsty power plants due to drought. Heat can create situations in which water from natural sources like rivers and lakes is too hot to cool vital power plant components or is too hot after cooling to be discharged back in to the water system.

Such situations happen frequently at the Brown’s Ferry plant in Alabama. In three of the last five years, the plant has had to cut power generation in order to ensure it doesn’t flood the Tennessee River ecosystem with overheated water, thus raising the price of electricity for local consumers.

In 2006, during a heat wave that pales in comparison to this year’s, the Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota, in the northern part of the Mississippi River,  had to drastically cut production because the river’s water was too hot to serve as a viable coolant.

Issues like those at Prairie Island and Brown’s Ferry are prevalent now and will only become bigger going forward.

A move away from water-gobbling power sources like coal and nuclear would help alleviate the pains of the Energy-Water Collision. Solar and wind power, in addition to being renewable and  greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions free, are also relatively water free — even solar thermal can be (see “The secret to low-water-use, high-efficiency concentrating solar power“).

With proper investment, these energy sources hold enormous potential and promise for the future.

The infographic below, created by the Union Of Concerned Scientists, is a great representation of the Energy-Water Collision and what we can do about it:

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Captain Kimo, via Flickr

by Stephanie Hanson Damassa and Noreen Nielsen, CAP

The brutal summer of 2012 is what climate change looks like. It’s only the beginning of August, and yet nearly every corner of the United States has suffered through extreme weather such as oppressive heat waves, damaging storms, and devastating droughts and wildfires. 2011 saw the most billion-dollar disasters on record in the United States, and 2012 may be similarly as costly. Insurance claims from wildfires in Colorado have already reached nearly $500 million, and experts fear costs from the current drought may reach tens of billions of dollars.

Unfortunately, this rise in extreme weather isn’t just a coincidence. Like steroids to a baseball player, climate change fuels extreme weather. Scientific organizations like the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and more all point to industrial pollution as the cause of climate change.  Some key facts on recent extreme weather and climate change:

• More than 25,000 new record highs have been set this year alone across the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
• The current drought, the worst in a generation, covers more than half of the continental United States.
• January-June 2012 was the warmest first half of any year on record in the contiguous United States.
• Extremely hot summers around the world, like the one we’re experiencing right now in the United States, are now 40 times more frequent than they were 40 years ago.
• Extreme downpours in the United States are now happening 30 percent more often than in the mid-twentieth century.
• In 2011 alone, the United States experienced 14 weather disasters totaling over $50 billion in damage.
• During the last 10 years, the United States has experienced twice as many record highs as record lows. By 2050, scientists project that record highs will outnumber record lows by 20 to 1.
• Each new decade since the 1970s has been hotter than the last, with 2000-2010 the hottest on record so far.
• 4 out of 5 Americans now live in counties where recent natural disasters have occurred, with twice as many people living in a county where an official disaster was declared last year compared to 2001.

Stephanie Hanson Damassa, Climate Nexus and  Noreen Nielsen, Center for American Progress

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Call it Jurassic Park or Dinosaur Train: Mitt Romney’s team of energy and economic advisers, like his energy plan, is dominated by fossil fuels.

Romney’s energy team relies on the expertise of lobbyists, coal and oil industry insiders, several of whom crafted the polluter agenda of the George W. Bush administration, a trend Politico described as, “Bush-era energy policy wonks … finding a new home with Mitt Romney.”

Romney has made expanding oil and gas drilling and coal exploration central to his campaign, and he’s elevated the Keystone XL pipeline to his top day one priority if elected. The pipeline illustrates where Romney’s priorities lie: while it would boost oil companies’ profits, consumers will only deal with the environmental effects and even higher gas prices.

At times, Romney adheres to the “oil above all” philosophy more than his team, some of whom advocate for clean energy and climate change solutions. These ideas, embraced by many Republicans, have gone unheard by candidate. Since the primaries, Romney has only doubled down on his anti-clean energy campaign, announcing his opposition to the wind production tax credit, which supports tens of thousands of jobs. He has no problem, however, doubling what the most profitable oil corporations already receive in tax breaks, a boon to his oil billionaire chief energy adviser and the oil lobbyist rumored to be Romney’s pick for chief of staff.

Harold Hamm

Romney’s chief energy adviser is oil-shale billionaire Harold Hamm, who heads Continental Resources, the corporation with the most drilling acreage in North Dakota. Hamm secured his $8 billion fortune and place as 78th richest person in the world through the oil and gas industry, hence he’s emerged as an unsurprisingly strong advocate for more tax loopholes for the oil industry. Hamm stands to personally benefit from Romney’s Day One priorities: the  Keystone XL pipeline, which will carry Continental’s oil to Gulf Coast refineries, and hurting consumers by potentially raising the price of gas by as much as 20 cents a gallon in the Midwest. In testimonies to Congress and the North Dakota legislature, Hamm has argued for preserving $4 billion worth of oil subsidies, called a windfalls profits tax a “dumb idea,” and advocated against drilling oversight.

Jack Gerard

Jack Gerard is a “longtime supporter” and family friend to Mitt Romney who also happens to be the top oil lobbyist in the country, as president of the oil lobby American Petroleum Institute. API has waged a multi-million-dollar campaign this election cycle to defeat Obama, in order to enact the oil industry’s wish list, and Gerard is even rumored to be on the list for chief-of-staff in a Romney administration. If API’s top priorities are any indication, a Romney administration would throw open public lands to drilling, dangerously scale back oversight and safety regulations, and allow limitless pollution. Months ago, when Obama called for an end to $4 billion in oil industry tax breaks, Gerard’s backlash ranged from calling this act “discriminatory” to sheer denial, claiming the “industry receives not one subsidy.”

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steffofsd, via Flickr

A round-up of the top climate and energy news.

The planet may be getting hotter, but Washington’s debate on climate change isn’t heating up. Amid a summer marked by droughts, wildfires, record temperatures and freak storms, Congress is squeezing in just one hearing on the changing climate before it dashes out for a hot August recess. [Politico]

And that hearing, set for Wednesday, is unlikely to be a show-stopper: No federal officials will testify, and no big-name witnesses will appear — none of the elements that could help this gathering compete for an Olympics-mad public’s attention.

It’s a reminder of how much things have changed for Democrats in Congress since their hopes for passing a major cap-and-trade bill died in 2010, reducing the entire climate issue to second-tier status. Now, Republicans are eager to argue, Democrats are reluctant to even talk about the issue in an election year.

“The Obama administration wants to stay silent about global warming,” said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Republicans, citing the roster of witnesses for Wednesday’s hearing as evidence….

And some environmentalists say the White House hasn’t lived up to expectations on the topic either. Obama promised Rolling Stone in April that the climate would hold a prominent place on the campaign trail, but so far it hasn’t.

“I’m very disappointed that the president after the Rolling Stone interview has done nothing to inject climate change into the presidential campaign,” said Clinton-era Energy Department official Joe Romm, who blogs for the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg thing,” Romm told POLITICO. “Obviously, if the political leadership of the country doesn’t talk about the problem, … the public isn’t going to care a lot about the problem. Because Obama has not talked about it in two years nor has anyone in the senior leadership of the Democratic Party.”

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by Elisa Wood, via Renewable Energy World

Energy books tend to be either jargon-filled tomes or hand-wringing, end-of-the-world, please-just-shoot-me-now reprimands. So it was a relief to see that Brian Keane avoids both of these worn-out roads in his new book, “Green is Good: Save Money, Make Money, and Help Your Community Profit from Clean Energy.”

Keane expertly tells the clean energy story with humor and anecdotes likely to capture readers who want to learn more about energy efficiency and renewables, but have found few credible, consumer-friendly vehicles that teach them. I’ve never before seen solar power compared to Tony Bennett: not a rock star, like say, micro-hydropower, but “older, more reliable and almost certain to give a top notch performance every time.”

For those who know Keane, this engaging writing comes as little surprise. As president of SmartPower, a non-profit marketing firm, he’s the guy at energy conferences who can hold people’s attention — even during the low-blood sugar late-afternoon sessions — with his insight into how we think and behave as energy consumers.

Keane’s been in the thick of it for several years, working to sell the idea of green to sometimes skeptical politicians and an often snoring public. He takes us inside some of his intrepid efforts. The book provides an account, for example, of how he convinced two very different Connecticut mayors (think blue blood versus blue collar) to engage in a competition to see which city could get the most people to sign up for renewable energy. The mayors agreed to participate in the duel even under the terms that the loser would wear a t-shirt saying, “I wish I were the mayor of [name of losing city.]”

We get a clear picture of where we are today as energy consumers versus where we were 40 years ago in Keane’s comparison of his drafty 12-member childhood home in Massachusetts to his present energy efficient six-member Virginia house. You would think the smaller family, alone, would mean less energy use (“fewer bodies mean fewer eyeballs staring into the open refrigerator”). But no. Even with better insulation and Energy Star appliances, our homes now consume a lot more juice.  Or here is another factoid from the book that puts our electricity appetite in perspective: College dorm rooms have more plug-in potential than the entire White House during Woodrow Wilson’s World War I presidency.

The book does not preach environmental religion; quite the contrary. Keane focuses on the relationship between green energy and capitalism. He advocates bringing “basic marketing principles to what often seems a holy cause.” In fact, Keane says “true believers” actually deter acceptance of clean energy by perpetuating the notion that going green requires adopting an alternative lifestyle (“wear hemp, eat only organic…”).

The title plays to the infamous line “Greed is Good” made by Gordon Gekko, the Michael Douglas character in the movie Wall Street. Keane portrays green as the flip side of Gekko’s destructive manipulation of capitalism; he takes us to a place where economic advantage and public good align. Rather than destroying the planet, here is where energy improves the environment using the good old-fashion profit motive. “Green is Good” offers an economic message that even Gekko might buy.

Published by Lyons Press, “Green is Good” is set for release in early October, and is now available for pre-purchase.

Elisa Wood is a writer for Renewable Energy World and RealEnergyWriters.com. This piece was originally published at Renewable Energy World and was reprinted with permission.