The habitability of our planet is threatened by fossil-fueled politicians who can’t tell the difference between pollution and energy. After a White House meeting on energy reform this morning, Republican senators rejected President Obama’s call for a price on carbon pollution, repeating the Newt Gingrich lie that it would be a “national energy tax”:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “As long as we take a national energy tax off the table, there’s no reason we can’t have clean energy legislation.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “A cap-and-trade energy tax will not sell at this time. We’ve got to find a path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who refused to attend the meeting: “I wish the president would focus his attention on stopping the spill and cleaning it up instead of trying to use this crisis as an opportunity to push for a new national energy tax.”

These senators know they’re lying when they equate greenhouse gas pollution with “energy.” Their states are being ravaged by our overheated climate system, including the freak flooding of Nashville and Kentucky and the melting of Alaska’s tundra.

Murkowski is being especially disingenuous about finding a “path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.” Right now, American taxpayers are paying the costs of fossil fuel pollution — the destruction of our health, our oceans, and our climate — while corporate polluters like oil disaster giant BP rake in the profits.

The rhetoric of these climate peacocks who put party over planet can’t hide their track record of playing the willing stooge for pollution profiteers.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is giving obstructionist senators a chance to finally take action on climate and clean energy, after they attempted to block the “unelected bureaucracy” of the Environmental Protection Agency from doing so. After holding a “thrilling” climate caucus with his members last week, the Democratic majority leader plans to bring an “impenetrable” comprehensive package of legislation to repair the damage caused by fossil fuels to our economy and our planet.

Earlier this month, 47 senators — every Republican and six Democrats — voted for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) resolution to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific global warming endangerment finding, finalized after years of delay in following a Supreme Court mandate to obey the language of the Clean Air Act.

Twenty-one of Murkowski’s supporters claimed they voted to reject science in order to preserve the “balance of power” between the legislative and executive branch. They said that they had to overturn the EPA’s scientific finding because setting pollution limits should instead be the job of the elected members of Congress. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) even said he voted for Murkowski to “ensure that Congress keeps its responsibility to establish our nation’s environmental regulations.”

Like “deficit peacocks” who pretend to be hawkish on budgets but refuse any real solution, these “climate peacocks” claim to care about science, energy reform, and the environment, but have yet to find solutions to the threat of climate change. Reid is now calling the bluff of these twenty “responsible” senators, who will be proven to be fossil-fueled hypocrites if they fail to support policies that bring the swift reduction of carbon pollution that science demands.

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Last week, 47 senators launched a failed assault on science, supporting Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) resolution to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific finding that greenhouse gas pollution endangers the public health and welfare. The EPA finding was based on decades of science, synthesized during the Bush administration by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. Global Change Program. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the leading denier in the Senate of the threat of climate change, justified his vote for the Murkowski resolution by claiming the science is just a United Nations conspiracy:

We all know now that the IPCC, which is the United Nations, their science has all been debunked. [Americans for Prosperity, 6/9/10]

The Climategate scandal forced open the inner sanctums of the IPCC, and the public finally saw the political science the body had produced. [Senate floor, 6/11/10]

This weekend, catastrophic rainfall devastated Oklahoma with floods, leading “authorities to declare a state of emergency in 59 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties“:

Oklahoma City Micronet (OKCNET) reports that a rainfall observation of 10.21″ in OKC has exceeded the 1-in-500 year rainfall total for a 12 hour period. Moreover, the 9 inches that fell in 6 hours meets the requirements for a 1 in 500 year flood event.

Evacuations are under way in some Oklahoma City neighborhoods, Mayor Mick Cornett said Monday. People there are dealing with vicious flash-flooding and scattered power outages as more thunderstorms head their way. The National Weather Service said almost 10 inches of rain fell between 2 and 11 a.m.

The IPCC report, which Inhofe says is a sham, warned of the coming floods caused by the rise in global temperatures:

Over the 20th century, based on changes in sea surface temperatures, it is estimated that atmospheric water vapour increased by about 5% in the atmosphere over the oceans. Because precipitation comes mainly from weather systems that feed on the water vapour stored in the atmosphere, this has generally increased precipitation intensity and the risk of heavy rain and snow events. Basic theory, climate model simulations and empirical evidence all confirm that warmer climates, owing to increased water vapour, lead to more intense precipitation events even when the total annual precipitation is reduced slightly, and with prospects for even stronger events when the overall precipitation amounts increase. The warmer climate therefore increases risks of both drought − where it is not raining − and floods − where it is − but at different times and/or places.

“Heavy downpours are now twice as frequent as they were a century ago,” the U.S. Global Change report states. “Projected changes in long-term climate and more frequent extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, and heavy rainfall will affect many aspects of life in the Great Plains.”

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) also voted to reverse the scientific finding that global warming pollution endangers the public. That day, catastrophic floods from freak rainfall washed out an Arkansas campground, killing twenty:

Crews on Monday found the body of a young girl who was the 20th victim of a flash flood that devastated a popular Arkansas campground, but they continued searching because it wasn’t clear whether the girl was the last person reported missing.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and and Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) also voted to reverse the scientific finding that global warming pollution endangers the public. This weekend, extreme rain caused record flooding throughout Nebraska, washing out bridges and damaging crops:

Two streams have broken long-standing records: The North Loup at Taylor reached its highest flow since the Geological Survey began recording water measurements there 73 years ago, and the Elkhorn at Ewing reached its highest peak for both water level and flow since recording began 62 years ago. The Geological Survey said that 30 percent of the long-term stream gages in the state were at record highs for June 13. Storm totals at some locations in the central and northeast exceeded 12 inches.

Sixty Nebraska counties may request disaster assistance following recent storms that caused flooding and damage across the state. 44 counties have requested assistance from the State. The State of Nebraska is working with emergency management officials throughout the state to respond to areas affected by the storms.

These senators are denying the threat of manmade global warming at the bidding of industrial polluters, because, as Lincoln said, “it is up to Congress to decide when a regulatory policy endangers the economy and threatens jobs in both traditional and new energy sectors.” I just wonder how much destruction our destabilized climate has to cause before these senators recognize the real threat our nation faces.

The Senate is now debating Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) resolution to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific finding, mandated by the Supreme Court, that manmade greenhouse gases endanger the American public. This is nothing less than a crass political attempt to defuse an existential threat by pretending it does not exist. Industrial polluters have been promoting the idea that there is a global conspiracy by the world’s scientific organizations to deceive the public about the threat of global warming. Unfortunately, the threat of manmade climate change is all too real.

I have prepared this infographic to help remind people on whose side the Senators voting for Murkowski’s “Dirty Air Act” are (click to enlarge):

Senators like Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Ben Nelson (D-NE) are siding with radical polluter-fueled snake oil instead of the scientific institutions that provide the intellectual framework for modern civilization.

The Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to set standards for plants, cars, and factories that emit greenhouse gas pollution. Because global warming is by definition a global problem, there is support for scrapping individual source standards for a national cap-and-trade system that limits the collective pollution, instead of local emissions. However, new scientific research by Mark Z. Jacobson, finds that carbon dioxide pollution is a two-fold killer — causing not just global warming but also forming “domes” that trap other pollutants in urban areas:

Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone as well as particles in urban air.

Jacobson’s study, “Enhancement of Local Air Pollution by Urban CO2 Domes,” published in Environmental Science & Technology, estimates that “reducing local CO2 may reduce 300-1000 premature air pollution mortalities/yr in the U.S. and 50-100/yr in California, even if CO2 in adjacent regions is not controlled.” The deaths represent a small fraction of the population who are suffering increased respiratory problems from carbon domes.

Right-wing polluters have launched a multi-pronged assault on Clean Air Act regulation of global warming pollution, including petitions by state legislatures, lawsuits from governors and industry trade groups, resolutions in Congress, and propaganda campaigns by Astroturf groups. Despite the growing damage of climate change, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson has weakened and delayed implementation of global warming rules to be phased in from 2011 to 2016, decades after the United States ratified the Rio Treaty in 1992.

Left unclear in the rumors about the proposed Kerry-Graham-Lieberman climate legislation is whether it will preempt existing Clean Air Act rules. Considering that over forty senators, including three Democrats — Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) — support Sen. Lisa Murkowski‘s (R-AK) Dirty Air Act resolution to nullify the EPA’s scientific endangerment finding entirely, and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) wants to suspend Clean Air Act enforcement until 2012, it appears that minds will have to be changed if the Clean Air Act is to be protected in climate legislation. With luck, senators will pay more attention to the health and welfare of their constituents than to the size of their corporate campaign contributions.

As Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) work to craft comprehensive climate legislation that can overcome a fossil-fueled filibuster, swing vote Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is trying to dig the carbon hole deeper. Before climate policy had a chance of becoming reality, Murkowski claimed to recognize that global warming from fossil fuels is destroying Alaska. Now, she has continued down that path by demanding that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is “one of the must-haves“:

I’m still saying ANWR is one of the must-haves. You want to have me sit down at the table and talk about what a strong domestic production piece is, you have to be willing to talk to me about ANWR. Pretty simple.

Murkowski is increasingly sounding like an oil industry lobbyist, leading the effort to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing the Clean Air Act with respect to greenhouse pollution. Murkowski’s Dirty Air Act resolution is a blatant rejection of science and safety on behalf of her fossil industry contributors. This week, she praised Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-WV) two-year Clean Air Act moratorium, saying she is “hopeful that this bill will draw additional support and advance quickly.”

Only in the United States Senate could you find someone demand that a climate bill involve drilling in one of the last pristine places on earth. Murkowski is working to unleash the only two imminent threats to the remote and unique Arctic Refuge — global warming and oil drilling. Murkowski, it seems, is willing to destroy her state in order to save it.