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Climate Progress

UPDATE: In Oklahoma City, It’s So Hot And Dry There’s Mandatory Water Rationing

By Stephen Lacey on Aug 2, 2012 at 2:07 pm

Oklahoma continues to get scorched by extreme heat and drought. The entire state is now in extreme drought, and more than 70% of the state is in severe drought (or worse), up from 50% just a week ago.

According to Gary McManus of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, July was the 23rd month out of the last 28 to come in warmer than statewide averages. Bloomberg reports:

More than 64 temperature records were broken in Oklahoma during a scorching July, and additional ones fell across the state Wednesday on the first day of August, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

The National Weather Service reported that Guthrie, about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City, registered 114 degrees to break the statewide record of 113 degrees, set at Meeker in 1896 and tied in Ralston last year.

The Oklahoman reports:

The January through July statewide average of 63.9 degrees was easily the warmest on record for the first seven months of the year at 4.8 degrees above normal.

It’s not only been extremely hot, but very dry. The May through July statewide average rainfall total of 5.99 inches fell 6.25 inches below normal and ranked as the third-driest period on record, McManus said.

Norman and Watonga have each gone 56 consecutive days with less than a tenth of an inch of rain on any one day, according to the Oklahoma Mesonet weather network.

In some areas of Oklahoma, the drought has been like one solid punch. Since October 2010, areas in the western Oklahoma Panhandle have only had 17 to 20 inches of rainfall, McManus said.

Even as residents swelter in the relentless heat, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe continued his tirade about man-made global warming during a Senate hearing yesterday, saying the science had “collapsed.”

This isn’t the first piece of heat-related irony to hit Inhofe. Last year, the pro-pollution Senator had to cancel his keynote address at the Heartland Institute’s climate denial conference after getting sick from an algae bloom exacerbated by extreme heat and drought. He joked at the time, the “environment strikes back.”

But it’s no joke what we’re doing to the climate and what, as a result, the climate is starting to do to us — and the residents of parched Oklahoma City:

Skyrocketing water use in Oklahoma City during the worst of the ongoing heat wave has prompted officials to implement a mandatory water rationing system until conditions improve….

The rationing also applies to Oklahoma City suburbs that use city water. Utilities spokeswoman Debbie Ragan said cities and other areas affected by the rationing are Blanchard, Canadian County Rural Water District No. 3, Deer Creek Rural Water District, Edmond, El Reno, Moore, Mustang, Newcastle, Norman, Piedmont, Pottawatomie County Rural Water District No. 3, Shawnee, Warr Acres and Yukon.

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Justice

Sore Loser Oklahoma Lawmaker Lashes Out At SCOTUS With Unconstitutional Bill To Nullify Obamacare

By Ian Millhiser on Jul 6, 2012 at 2:10 pm

Nineteenth Century nullificationist Senator John C. Calhoun

In 2010, conservatives tried to block the Affordable Care Act in Congress. They lost, and President Obama signed the landmark legislation into law.

Rather than respect the legitimate act of a democratically elected legislature, health reform’s opponents responded by immediately asking the courts to invalidate what the American people’s representatives brought into being. They lost again — although by a depressingly narrow margin considering how absurd their legal arguments were.

Now that that attempt to subvert democracy has failed, an Oklahoma lawmaker relaunched an even more constitutionally challenged attack on the law:

State Rep. Mike Ritze said Tuesday he plans to reintroduce a bill to “nullify” the individual mandate in the 2010 federal health care legislation in Oklahoma.

“I disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling and believe that state governments were intended to serve as a check on the federal government,” said Ritze, R-Broken Arrow. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is better known as ObamaCare, is an example of federal overreach and my legislation will authorize the state to resist it and ban the enforcement of it.”

Of course, Ritze’s bill violates the express language of the Constitutional, which states that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land . . . anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Yet, while his tactic is clearly unconstitutional, it is not unprecedented. In the 1950s, when Jim Crow lawmakers objected to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, they too claimed the power to simply decree that the Court was wrong and act like they can do whatever they choose.

Health

Oklahoma Students Shown A Movie Comparing Abortion To The Holocaust

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on May 18, 2012 at 5:10 pm

Scene from the movie, "180"

Students at a public Oklahoma high school were given copies of a movie that compares abortion to the Holocaust after a local family asked the principal if they could distribute the DVDs to students, according to a local TV station. The movie begins with images of Hitler and concentration camps before making a comparison between the Holocaust and abortion.

The principal agreed to hand out the anti-abortion film, titled 180, if students obtained parental consent first, but the copies were handed out before parents were notified. One parent told Fox 23 heard about it from her stepdaughter:

“She said that she had seen a DVD in school that basically said that if you have an abortion then you are no better than the Nazis and you will go to hell,” says concerned parent, Marty Angus.

Angus was furious after his stepdaughter came home and told him she had seen it in class.

“She said well, we went to our lockers on break and there was a note that said come pick up your free DVD,” says Angus.

Officials confiscated the movies after realizing how graphic the movie was, but two classrooms saw it first. “I thought it was graphic and a clear violation between church and state and it was just awful to be shown to a high school student,” Marty Angus, whose stepdaughter saw the movie in class, told Fox 23.

The Christian ministry Living Waters produced the movie. When it was released in 2011, the Anti-Defamation League called the fillm “one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years.”

NEWS FLASH

Oklahoma Senate Committee Refused To Confirm Gay Appointee | Virginia is not the only state where Republican legislators refuse job confirmations to appointees just because they’re gay. The Oklahoma Senate Rules Committee refused to give a hearing to Jim Roth, an openly gay Oklahoma City attorney nominated to the Election Board. Sen. Al McAffrey (D), who is also gay, explained, “Senators do not want during election time to vote on a gay person. That is what it comes down to.”

Health

Oklahoma Judge Overturns Law Arbitrarily Restricting Medication Abortions

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on May 14, 2012 at 5:10 pm

A state judge has ruled that the Oklahoma law that severely restricts “the ways in which doctors can treat women with abortion-inducing drugs” is unconstitutional. In his ruling overturning the 2011 law, Judge Donald Worthington wrote that the law violates a woman’s right to privacy and bodily integrity. And Worthington added that the law ignores medical standards, according to RH Reality Check:

Judge Worthington ruled that the bill’s restrictions on medication abortion are unconstitutional because they are “so completely at odds with the standard that governs the practice of medicine that [the bill] can serve no purpose other than to prevent women from obtaining abortions and to punish and discriminate against those women who do.” [...]

The law — which had been temporarily blocked since October — would have banned any off-label use of medications for abortion or treatment of ectopic pregnancy, while explicitly allowing off-label use of the same medication for other purposes. According to the lawsuit, the law not only jeopardizes women’s health by preventing doctors from using safe and effective methods available, but also undermines women’s ability to exercise the full range of their fundamental constitutionally protected reproductive rights.

A judge temporarily blocked the law from going into effect in October. At the time, the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice, a group that challenged the law, noted that 21 percent of all drugs are prescribed for off-label use and that the injunction ensured “women in Oklahoma will continue to be able to access medical care that accounts for scientific evidence, sound medical judgment and advancements in medicine.” Now that the law has been declared unconstitutional, women’s access to medical care in Oklahoma can continue.

Health

Oklahoma Supreme Court: Personhood Is ‘Clearly Unconstitutional’

By Igor Volsky on Apr 30, 2012 at 3:55 pm

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has just struck down a proposed personhood ballot question — which would have granted embryos the rights of people and outlawed all abortions — calling the measure “clearly unconstitutional”:

4. The United States Supreme Court has spoken on this issue. The measure is clearly unconstitutional pursuant to Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). The states are duty bound to follow its interpretation of the law. Twenty years ago, this Court was presented with an initiative which facially conflicted with the Casey decision. This Court held: “The issue of the constitutionality of the initiative petition is governed by the United States Supreme Court’s pronouncement in Casey.”

5. The only course available to this Court is to follow what the United States Supreme Court, the final arbiter of the United States Constitution has decreed. In re Initiative Petition 349, 1992 OK 122, ¶ 8, 838 P.2d 1, 5.

6. The mandate of Casey is as binding on this Court today as it was twenty years ago. Initiative Petition No. 395 conflicts with Casey and is void on its face and it is hereby ordered stricken.

In Casey, the Supreme Court held that states may enact some abortion regulations, but they may not “strike at the right itself” to terminate a pregnancy. A law redefining embryos as people is thus a direct attack on women’s constitutional right to choose.

NEWS FLASH

Another Conservative State Fails To Pass ‘Personhood’ Legislation | A proposed “personhood” measure, which would have granted embryos full rights as people starting at the moment of conception, failed without coming up for a vote in the Oklahoma House yesterday, killing the bill for this legislative session. The state Senate passed the bill 34-8 in February, and it was expected to be approved by the Republican-majority House. State Rep. Randy Terrill (R) blamed the House speaker for throwing Republicans “under the bus” and not bringing the bill up for a vote. If it had passed, abortion would have been outlawed, with no exception for cases of incest or rape, but the bill did state that it would not ban in vitro fertilization or contraception. So far this year, legislators in Mississippi and Virginia have also failed to pass similar “personhood” laws.

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Apr 20, 2012 at 10:16 am

Climate Progress

Government Saves Countless Lives From Tornadoes In Koch And Inhofe Country

By Climate Guest Blogger on Apr 16, 2012 at 4:15 pm

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:

Justice

Oklahoma State Senator Justifies Need For ‘Open Carry’ Gun Law Due To Threat From Wild Turkeys

By Faiz Shakir on Apr 13, 2012 at 9:50 am

In Oklahoma, state lawmakers are poised to enact an “open carry” law which would allow residents with a permit to display their guns in grocery stores, libraries, and anywhere else in public. The measure is expected to be passed by the legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Mary Fallin.

Oklahoma law currently requires that people must generally conceal their handguns. In 2010, then-Gov. Brad Henry (D) vetoed an open carry bill because state police expressed concern that it would make it hard for them “to distinguish criminals from law-abiding citizens.” Keith Barenberg, the president of the Oklahoma State Troopers Association, maintains his concern: “Law-enforcement officers will be that much more jumpy and nervous if they see a gun.” And such confrontations could lead to loss of innocent life. As Norman McNickle, president of the Oklahoma Association of Police Chiefs, put it: “How does the first arriving officers know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are? It makes their job exponentially harder.”

Proponents of the “open carry” legislation, like Tim Gillespie, director of the Oklahoma 2nd Amendment Association, claim the measure is necessary because “we live in a dangerous world.” So dangerous, according to Republican state Senator Ralph Shortey, that people need the open display of guns to help fend off attacks from wild turkeys:

During committee discussions, Shortey argued that he shouldn’t be required to pay fees and get a license to carry a weapon. Here’s how he justified that:

“I was in oil and gas,” Shortey said. “I was out on a lease at one time and I got attacked by a turkey. Wait until you get attacked by a turkey. You will know the fear that a turkey can invoke in a person. And so I beat it with a club. That was all I could do.

“I wish that I had a gun with me,” he said. “And I started carrying a gun in my truck after that without a license because I didn’t want to get attacked by a mountain lion. Turkeys are bad enough.”

The Tulsa World opined, “Open-carry is needed to protect us from enraged turkeys? Seriously?” The editoral joked, “Maybe Oklahoma’s stand your ground law covers turkey attacks.”

Sen. Shortey is full of “asinine” ideas. As ThinkProgress noted earlier this year, Shortey introduced a ludicrous and unnecessary bill that would prohibit the manufacturing and sale of food “which contains aborted human fetuses.” He also has proposed legislation to “abolish the state Court of Criminal Appeals and…to eliminate the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s power to review the constitutionality of laws.”

NEWS FLASH

Oklahoma Church Welcomes Gays, Speaks Out Against ‘The Cobbler Passages’ Condemning Homosexuality | The Edmond Trinity Christian Church in Oklahoma is opening its doors to members of the gay and lesbian community, after its congregation voted unanimously “to become an Open and Affirming congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)” recognized by the Gay Lesbian and Affirming Disciples (GLAD) Alliance. Rev. Don Heath distanced himself from Christians who use certain biblical Scriptures he called “the clobber passages” to condemn homosexuality, noting that “the Bible was written by man and some passages ‘reflect the prejudice of the time’ and not necessarily the inspired Word of God.” “It’s a congregational effort rather than a hierarchy saying this is the way it has to be,” he said. 100 of the more than 3,600 Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) congregations in the U.S. and Canada are now considered Open and Affirming congregations “and several hundred more are in the process of becoming formally recognized as such.”

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