In previously unreported remarks, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), the top candidate for the chairmanship of the House energy committee, questioned the science of manmade global warming and called for Congressional hearings to investigate climate scientists. On January 14, 2010, Upton participated in a panel challenging the scientific consensus that fossil pollution is destabilizing the climate, arranged by Detroit News in conjunction with the 2010 North American International Auto Show. Moderated by global warming denier and right-wing radio host Frank Beckmann, “Are Green Auto Rules Based On Flawed Science?” also featured industry deniers Pat Michaels and Myron Ebell. When asked if “the emails from East Anglia University that seem to show a pattern of concealment at the least, deception at the extreme” should “affect climate policy here in the United States,” Upton claimed that there is “no real science” that supports climate policy and then called for Climategate hearings:

All of the steps Americans were going to take, businesses and individuals, the added costs that we were going to incur — Consumers Energy told us just because of cap-and-trade, energy costs would rise in Michigan by almost 40 percent by 2020. Are any of those incurred costs actually going to impact the rising temperature of debate? The answer was no. No matter what we did between now and 2050, it, it, there was no real science to verify that it would reduce the temperature rise that some predicted. And that’s why we do need hearings.

Watch it:

In fact, the threat of global warming pollution has been understood since the 1950s. The Environmental Protection Agency has found that the enactment of U.S. climate legislation would greatly impact rising temperatures, reducing the risk of warming by 2 C from 99 percent to 25 percent, and the risk of 4 C warming from 32 percent to practically zero. That is why the National Academies of Science recommended in May that the United States “act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Upton is just one of several top House Republicans who have called for a witch hunt against practicing climate scientists. After Upton’s remarks in January, the scientists have been repeatedly exonerated of the unfounded charges of conspiracy and corruption laid against them by the right wing. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), in line to take over the oversight committee, has repeatedly called for hearings, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) hopes to use the global warming committee to investigate scientists. Upton’s challenger, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), also wants to launch McCarthyite show trials on climate science.

Upton enjoys a reputation as a “moderate on environmental issues,” but he has become as extreme as the rest of his Tea Party colleagues on global warming and other environmental rules.

The Wonk Room previously reported that Upton was “the only candidate to take over the House Committee on Energy and Commerce who doesn’t explicitly question the science of manmade global warming.” We regret the error.

“Democrats’ day of reckoning comes for climate vote,” writes the Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn and Robin Bravender. “House Democrats who voted for the 2009 bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions – dubbed cap-and-tax by GOP opponents – had a terrible night.”

In fact, Democrats who voted against clean energy were more than three times as likely to lose their seats than those who voted for it:

— Out of the 211 Democrats who voted for ACES, only 41 either lost or retired and saw their seats go Republican. Thus 81 percent of Democrats voting for the climate bill won their races.

– Of the 44 Democrats who voted against ACES, 28 lost, retired and lost the seat to Republicans, or in the case of Parker Griffith, flipped parties and lost the Republican primary. That means 64 percent of Democrats voting against the climate bill lost their seat.

– Of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill, only one was punished by the voters — Rep. Mike Castle (DE-AL), who lost his U.S. Senate primary to eventual loser Christine O’Donnell. Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA-45), Dave Reichert (WA-8), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Chris Smith (NJ-4), and Leonard Lance (NJ-7) were re-elected. Rep. Mark Kirk (IL-10) was elected to the U.S. Senate and Rep. John McHugh (NY-23) became Secretary of the Army.

By contrast, the fight against big oil’s Proposition 23 to kill California’s climate legislation buoyed Democrats Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Barbara Boxer to victory, helping to activate a broad coalition of progressive voters to come to the polls.

Tonight, the Center for American Progress Action Fund is screening the documentary (Astro)Turf Wars. Following the screening, the ThinkProgress Wonk Room will host a panel with director Taki Oldham, Americans for Prosperity’s Phil Kerpen, and Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. The panel will be streamed live here.

The pollution-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) claims not to question the science of global warming, arguing that its massive Astroturfing campaign against climate policy hinges purely on economic arguments. However, footage from the new documentary (Astro)Turf Wars reveals that AFP officials in fact are radical climate science deniers, promoting untenable conspiracy theories to challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus that fossil fuel pollution is dangerously warming the planet.

“We’re not arguing the science of climate change,” Steve Lonegan, AFP-New Jersey state director told Taki Oldham, (Astro)Turf Wars’ filmmaker, last year, at an AFP “Hot Air Tour” event challenging climate legislation. “What we’re saying is the price tag put on it is so destructive as to be reckless and irresponsible.” However, when Oldham asked Lonegan about the science, the AFP official launched into a denier tirade:

The science is not finished, the debate is not over, as the left who support this legislation would tell you. It is quite far from over. There is some very doubtful science into whether or not manmade global warming is causing significant climate change, or whether that climate change is bad or not.

Oldham also attended AFP’s annual summit in October 2009, where the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell, also funded by Koch, told AFP members that global warming is “phony”:

First I want to talk about global warming for a minute. Here’s the last 30 years. You’ll see for the last ten years we haven’t had any global warming. I think that shows the models are phony.

Watch it:

Ebell spoke at a panel moderated by AFP’s vice president of policy, Phil Kerpen, which also included radical climate conspiracy theorist Phelim McAleer and Koch front-group lifer Daniel Simmons.

When the Wonk Room noted that numerous Republican candidates who question climate science are also signatories of the AFP “No Climate Tax” pledge, AFP argued that “our pledge has nothing to do with science,” complaining, “Why can’t Think Progress approach this issue with intellectual honesty, instead of distorting our sincere efforts to fight government growth as some sort of scientific position?”

“We’ve strived to encourage an intellectually honest debate on the scientific basis for claims of harm from greenhouse gases,” Koch Industries spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia claimed in March, 2010.

Lonegan and Ebell’s denial of climate science is, in fact, the default policy position of AFP and Koch Industries:

– “The scientific establishment has dropped the ball. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” said Peggy Venable, AFP’s State Director for Texas, in 2009. “On the contrary it makes crops and forests grow faster. We exhale carbon dioxide.”

– AFP’s website flatly claims that the fact that global warming could cause an eventual 7-meter sea level rise is a “falsehood.”

– “Endangerment of public health and welfare is not ‘reasonably anticipated,’” AFP argued in an April 15, 2009 letter challenging the EPA’s endangerment finding.

– Koch Industries’ official position on climate policy explicitly questions the science of manmade global warming, arguing it may be “simply part of the earth’s natural cycle” and claiming that “the past 10 years or so of data” indicate “we have emerged from a warming cycle and are now entering a cooling cycle.”

A Wonk Room analysis finds that there are six key Senate races for climate action, in which a strong vote for climate runs a serious risk of being replaced by a global warming denier. Of the 37 U.S. Senate races this fall, 36 involve Republican candidates who are global warming deniers or oppose climate action (Vermont’s Len Britton is a possible exception). Hard-right Tea Party challenger Christine O’Donnell knocked out climate activist Mike Castle (R-DE) last night, leaving a GOP slate of conspiracy theorists and know-nothings angling for the United States’ highest legislative body. The pivotal climate races this November (with the 538.com estimated likelihood of a Republican pickup) are:

(91%) PA: Joe Sestak v. Pat Toomey
(74%) CO: Michael Bennet v. Ken Buck
(54%) WA: Patty Murray v. Dino Rossi
(46%) NV: Harry Reid v. Sharron Angle
(42%) CA: Barbara Boxer v. Carly Fiorina
(36%) WI: Russ Feingold v. Ron Johnson

An examination of the races is below: Read more

Our guest blogger is Richard W. Caperton, Policy Analyst with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress.

Nuclear reactor developers have a compelling reason to support a cap on carbon pollution: the effects of climate change could make it to impossible to run nuclear reactors. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has drastically reduced power generation at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant this summer:

The Tennessee Valley Authority has lost nearly $50 million in power generation from its biggest nuclear plant because the Tennessee River in Alabama is too hot.

Browns Ferry is located on the Tennessee River in Alabama and uses river water for cooling. To protect wildlife in the river, TVA is not allowed to raise the river’s temperature above 90 degrees. But this year’s record heat have already raised the river temperature to near 90, so TVA can only use small amounts of water, which limits how much power they can produce. In fact, the air temperature has stayed below 90 only three days since June 9, far above the historical norm. In the 1990s, the TVA decided not to build extra cooling towers because they “estimated that the chance of exceeding the 90-degree temperature limit in the Tennessee River was very rare.”

This situation also gives us a stark reminder of how climate change will take money out of consumers’ pockets. TVA has had to buy more expensive power to make up for the lost production at Browns Ferry. They then pass this new cost onto consumers in the form of a fuel cost adjustment. The new fuel cost adjustment will increase consumer bills by $1 to $3. So, if your utility buys its power from TVA, that’s a $3 loss next month due to warming.

Fortunately, a comprehensive climate bill can fix this problem. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that climate legislation would significantly lower the risk of catastrophic climate change. Now we also know that the nuclear industry’s future depends on putting a cap on carbon.

Every piece of proposed energy legislation we saw this year included incentives for building new nuclear reactors, including loan guarantees, production tax credits, accelerated depreciation rules, and changes to permitting. These would all certainly be helpful, but they ignore the biggest incentive for the nuclear industry: putting a cap on carbon emissions.

Currently, coal-fired generation is less expensive than nuclear power, which adds to the risk of investing in new nuclear reactors. Putting a cap on carbon, however, would make coal-fired power more expensive than nuclear power, making it much more likely that an investment in a nuclear reactor will make money.

This dynamic is at play in Maryland, where Constellation Energy has applied for a loan guarantee for a new reactor from the Department of Energy. According to the Baltimore Sun, Constellation’s project is now at risk, whether or not they get a loan guarantee. Project chairman Michael J. Wallace told the Sun, “When we get the DOE loan guarantee, that certainly is a major step forward for us. We then need to go through calculations on all the other variables to see whether this project can go forward on an economically sound basis. And we have to continue to do that over the next several months.”

That is, a loan guarantee is certainly valuable, and is a critical ingredient in the project moving forward, but it won’t ultimately determine the project’s profitability. The project will sink or swim because nuclear power can compete with coal, which will only happen with a cap on carbon.

In a telling exchange with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, long-time polluter apologist Pat Michaels conceded that the real challenge of solving manmade global warming is simply the “political acceptability” of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels as climate catastrophes grow. Michaels, aptly introduced as “a scientist who now works for the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank that strongly opposes caps to carbon dioxide,” has promoted global warming denial for decades, funded by a network of oil and coal companies and their ideological allies. With calm questioning, Zakaria exposed Michaels’ position as political “stand-pattism” as the world burns:

ZAKARIA: You hear all this. Doesn’t it worry you? I mean, I understand your position, which is you know, we don’t have a substitute for fossil fuels right now. But surely that isn’t an argument for stand-pattism. Don’t you want to do something about this?

MICHAELS: What I worry about more is the concept of opportunity cost. We had legislation, again, that went through the House last summer, which would have cost a lot and been futile. And when you take that away or when the government favors certain technologies and politicizes technologies, you’re doing worse than nothing. You’re actually impairing your ability to respond in the long run. And that’s my major concern along this issue —

ZAKARIA: But if you were to have a carbon tax, if you were to have a gas tax —

MICHAELS: You can put in the carbon tax.

ZAKARIA: No, but you would reduce the consumption — that which you tax you get less of. That which you subsidize you get more of. This is a pretty simple law of economics, right?

MICHAELS: Right.

ZAKARIA: So if you were were to put it in, you would get reduced CO2 emissions and the government would get some money which you may not think it would spend wisely but it has the potential of spending wisely. Why would you be opposed to that?

MICHAELS: The problem is one of magnitude and political acceptability thereof. When we had gasoline of $4 a gallon, we reduced our consumption a grand total of four percent. If you’re really serious about atmospheric carbon dioxide, you’ve got to reduce it about 80 percent. How high does that tax have to be to be 80%? How do you do that in a political republic? It’s very, very difficult. And I guarantee you that —

ZAKARIA: But is the answer therefore to do nothing?

MICHAELS: No.

Watch it:

Zakaria also got Michaels to admit that about “40 percent” of his funding comes from the oil companies whose profits are based on free pollution.

Of course, there’s no secret about what kind of economic policy would be needed to end our dependence on fossil fuels over the coming decades. The rest of the industrialized world has policies that put a gradually increasing price on carbon pollution, redirecting investment in the free market to cleaner alternatives. Michaels’ claim that the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House of Representatives last year “would have cost a lot and been futile” is, of course, false. The legislation would have improved the economic security of working families, reduced the deficit, and spurred billions of dollars of investment in clean American jobs instead of deadly oil and coal — while making an international agreement to limit global warming pollution a reality.

Michaels was interviewed this morning with climate scientist Gavin Schmidt and economist Jeffrey Sachs, who plainly described the “catastrophic planet” we are creating by burning billions of tons of fossil fuels every year. Schmidt remained “a little optimistic that the forces of delay will eventually be put aside” and that we can “demonstrate that societies are smarter than just allowing business as usual to carry on.” “If we do this sensibly,” Sachs said, “we can do this at low cost, save the planet, and save the economy.”

Sachs agreed with Michaels that the challenge requires political will. He concluded that is “what we hired the President of the United States for,” but that “we’re still waiting to hear from the administration”:

If we end up with a different planet where people cannot grow food, where people cannot eat given where they’re living right now, we have a catastrophe. And the ironic point is the combination of the technologies we have already in hand and those that are close on the horizon, if we do this sensibly, we can do this at low cost, save the planet, and save the economy. But we need a strategy and a plan. That’s what we hired the President of the United States for also. That’s what we’re still waiting to hear from the administration. If we get it, I bet the American people will rally to it.

It remains to be seen whether President Barack Obama will live up to this civilizational challenge, or if he will continue to let the Pat Michaels of the world rule the political discourse.

Transcript: Read more

Democrats recently elected to the U.S. Senate have pressed their colleagues to ambitiously address climate and energy reform, and are frustrated by the lack of action. In a series of interviews with the Wonk Room at Netroots Nation, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) described the challenges of confronting climate pollution in the sclerotic legislative body, brought to a practical standstill by minority obstruction. They each discussed how the “new class” of 22 Democratic senators elected in the 2006 and 2008 waves (with independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont) have pressed for greater “political clarity” on climate by “rattling all the cages” in the Senate, alongside senior leaders such as Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).

Questioned by the Wonk Room why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) shied away from introducing a comprehensive climate bill for full Senate consideration as energy crises pile up during the hottest summer ever recorded, the senators noted the ability of Republicans to thwart the will of the majority through the abuse of parliamentary procedures. They recognized Reid’s decision to try for quick action with a limited package in what little time is left during this Congress. However, they relished the chance to debate the promise of a green economy before the November elections, seeing the issue as a political winner:

CARDIN: I think we need political clarity. I wasn’t so concerned about having a vote before August. But we needed the clarity of the bill.

FRANKEN: If you want to rev up people, and say Democrats believe in this — one of the gaps they’re talking about is the enthusiasm gap. So maybe, politically, that is the right way to go. I think that Harry tends to want to get half a loaf or a third of a loaf rather than no loaf at all. This bill could be considered a first step. A lot of that is strategic, in terms of positioning yourself for the election. I was sort of of the school that we should go for pricing carbon, and if we lose, we lose. But that’s not what we did.

UDALL: Our two classes — the class of 2006 and the class of 2008 — I think have a real passion for all of the things you talked about and a desire to do something. We’re rattling all the cages in the committees we’re on, doing the things that we can do. But there is kind of an institutional thing going on there that slows everything down. There’s no doubt about that.

MERKLEY: This generational factor is why, if we can create a course that at least puts us on the right track for the next six to eight years, we will have with each subsequent election more and more folks coming in — based on what I hear at the university level, and graduate school level, and based on the difference between our class and the several classes ahead of us — there is just a growing commitment and passion to fighting this fight on climate and energy.

Watch Udall, Merkley, and Franken discuss their efforts to bring new passion to the climate and energy fight:

The Democrats described by Sen. Cardin as the “new class” overwhelmingly support strong green economy legislation, unlike the older generation peppered with climate peacocks. In fact, according to Politico, every one of the 12 Democrats elected in 2008 would vote for cloture on comprehensive climate and energy reform. Of the ten Democrats elected in 2006, only Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) make polluter-friendly arguments against clean energy reform.

“This is going to be a generational battle,” Merkley explained. “We’re going to have keep working and pushing because even our most optimistic bill has fairly weak goals for 2020. We’re going to have to be a lot more aggressive between 2020 and 2050 if we’re going to address carbon dioxide.”

“We can’t give up,” Cardin said during his interview, “because the stakes are too high for our country.”

As Washington, D.C. wilts in the global heat wave gripping the planet, the Democratic leadership in the Senate has abandoned the effort to cap global warming pollution for the foreseeable future, unwilling to test a Republican filibuster. Instead of testing the hypocrisy of climate peacocks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will instead attempt to pass a limited bill with new energy incentives and oil reduction policies next week. The decision was formally made at a meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus today. After the meeting, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), whose efforts to craft comprehensive climate legislation had foundered, focused on the challenge of overcoming a filibuster:

But we’ve always known from day one, that in order to pass comprehensive energy/climate legislation, you’ve got to reach 60 votes, and to reach those 60 votes, you’ve got have some Republicans. And as we stand here today, we do not have one Republican. I think that it’s possible to get there.

Although the top legislative body in the United States of America is yet again failing to defend our nation, the existential threat of global warming continues to worsen, and the coal and oil companies responsible for the pollution continue to reap profits from their rape of the earth. It is the ninth day of the latest 90-plus heat wave to hit Washington DC, part of the global heat wave caused by greenhouse gas pollution. Former vice president Al Gore responded to today’s announcement with a cold reminder of the actual realities the Senate is unable to face:

The need to solve the climate crisis and transition to clean energy has never been more clear. The oil is still washing up on the shores of the Gulf Coast and we’ve just experienced the hottest six months on record. Our troops are fighting and dying in the Middle East and our economy is still struggling to produce jobs. I continue to urge the President to provide leadership on this issue and urge the Senate to make this issue a priority for the remainder of this Congress. Ultimately — and sooner rather than later–these issues simply must be dealt with. Our national security, our economic recovery and the future of the United States of America — and indeed the future of human civilization on this Earth — depends on our country taking leadership. And that, in turn, depends on the United States Senate acting. The truth about the climate crisis—inconvenient as ever—must be faced.

As negotiations on a stripped-down bill to limit global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants reach the final hour, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is sympathizing with the utility industry’s attempt to suspend Clean Air Act rules on pollutants that kill tens of thousands of Americans a year. At a meeting with environmentalists, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers “led the call for regulatory relief on a number of existing Clean Air Act programs dealing with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury, including a new EPA rule proposed last week that deals with interstate pollution.” However, thirty-one environmental and health organizations sent a letter to senators last week calling such rollbacks “simply unacceptable.” Center for American Progress senior fellow Van Jones called it a “literal poison pill.” Today, Lieberman made the ironic claim that polluters “just want a breather” from clean air rules:

That’s a tough one. They frame it in a different way. They just want a breather. And not an eternal pre-emption. These are all topics of negotiation. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Lieberman’s partner in developing a Senate climate bill, last Thursday said there was a little room for negotiation, but opposed any “rollback.” “If we put those requirements into a different form so that we are still adhering to them, that is a different issue and those are two different choices,” Kerry said. “But there is not going to be a rollback of current requirements.”

Other Democrats don’t find this one of the acceptable “topics of negotiation.” “I’d not want to see any weakening of the authority they have today,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said last week. “It’s been a major tool for cleaning up our air.”

The environmental and public health community — including NAACP and Green For All, Public Citizen and the American Lung Association, the Environmental Defense Fund and Environment America, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists — are united in their opposition, saying that “delaying the cleanup of these plants threatens the health of millions of Americans.” “I’m sure people throw everything on the table,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski. “But we’ve made it damn clear … that there are no trade-offs of any regulation of any [conventional] pollutants.”