Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘wonk room’

SNOWPOCALYPSE Strikes Austin, Texas

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 23, 2010 |

Holy *%$&! its snowing in Austin, Texas! What do I do? Can I still drive? Do I have to go to work? Should I put on big boots and go buy as much bottled water and creamed corn as I can fit into a stolen borrowed shopping cart? Or just jump on the global warming denier train ASAP?

Terrified victims of SNOWMAGGEDON tremble in fear outside the Public Citizen office

That’s right folks, those fluffy flaky beauties may be lovely to our amazed southern eyes, but to climate deniers they are cold hard proof that global warming is fake. Because its cold outside, so how can the globe possibly be warming?!?! Hah! “Fact” your way out of that truthiness!

***Sigh*** Some folks have a lot of fun busting up climate deniers, but I just don’t have the stomach for it. Far from laughing in glee at those fools who can’t tell the difference between “weather” and “climate”, it just makes me sad. So I’ll let the president do my dirty work for me.  Check out this video of Obama addressing the crowd at a town hall meeting in Nevada.  He actually does  a really good job of explaining the science of “global boiling”, as Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room notes:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPwHnU5ObPY]

…we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody’s like-a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, “See, look at that. There’s all this snow on the ground, you know, this doesn’t mean anything.” I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer. It means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver which supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow. The idea is that as the planet as a whole gets warmer, you start seeing changing weather patterns and that creates more violent storm systems, more unpredictable weather. So any single place might end up being warmer. Another place might end up being a little bit cooler. There might end up being more precipitation in the air…

So there you have it, folks. Global warming doesn’t mean it is simply getting hotter. It doesn’t mean there will never be snow again. It means that global temperatures overall are going up, and that’s going to make weather all over the place get a little wonky.  Like stronger hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, extreme drought in south Texas, or even snow right here in Austin.

###

By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

Read Full Post »

Texas State Climatologist Disagrees with Gov Perry, AG Abbott, and Ag Comm Staples on climate science

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 18, 2010 |

You may have seen the political bloviating earlier this week when Governor Perry announced he would sue the EPA over their endangerment finding on CO2.   Or that Attorney General Greg Abbott signed on, as did Agricultural Commissioner Todd Staples, who all ended up calling the science behind climate change flawed, saying:

The state’s legal action indicates EPA’s Endangerment Finding is legally unsupported because the agency outsourced its scientific assessment to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been discredited by evidence of key scientists’ lack of objectivity, coordinated efforts to hide flaws in their research, attempts to keep contravening evidence out of IPCC reports and violation of freedom of information laws.

You may have also seen our response.  If you’re a regular reader here, I hope so!

Perry, Abbott, and Staples claim that the science is flawed on climate change, citing recent controversy surrounding the IPCC (a-hem, that’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gentlemen. Maybe the legal brief should be thrown out due to citation of a ficticious panel? We’ll call it INTERNATL-PANELGATE! We’ve really got ’em now!).  Too bad the controversy hasn’t affected the main thrust of the underlying science, only some of the claims. Too bad the conclusions of the IPCC have also been independently adopted and verified by the US National Academy of Sciences and the collected opinions of 13 US Gov’t agencies (like those liberals at the CIA and the USDA), collectively put together in the US Global Change Research Program. Despite its problems, the main conclusions of the IPCC’s report, that temperatures were increasing and climate was changing due to greenhouse gas emissions, remains intact.

Too bad Perry, Abbott, and Staples (or maybe more accurately Larry, Moe, and Shemp?) didn’t seek the advice of…oh, actual scientists, like maybe the Texas state climatologist?  Didn’t know we had a climatologist?  (Maybe Governor Perry didn’t either?) Well, we do, and before you dismiss him as some granola-chewing-Austin-based-hippie-liberal, he’s actually anything but.

Meet Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, of the Texas A&M Department of Atmospheric Sciences, appointed to the position of State Climatologist by noted liberal and hater of greenhouse gases George W. Bush. (hope you caught the irony there).

In a sweeping interview with Brad Johnson’s Wonk Room blog, he fired back against Perry’s allegations that the endangerment finding is flawed:  “Anthropogenic increases of greenhouse gas concentrations clearly present a danger to the public welfare, and I agree with the EPA’s findings in that sense.”

To be fair, Dr. N-G also specifically added a caveat to his comments, “Just to be clear, I do not “utterly dismiss” the Texas petition. I have contributed to pointing out errors in the IPCC reports in my own blog, and it is appropriate for the State of Texas to inquire how much of the IPCC findings will ultimately be called into question. Nor would my considered scientific opinion constitute adequate independent grounds for an EPA finding.”

Wow.  A reasonable climatologist, but one who supports the broad scientific consensus.  What scientific consensus is that, you ask?  Well, as a result of this interview, Dr. Andy Dessler (who we have long been a fan of here at TexasVox) and the entire A&M Dept of Atmo Sciences released the following statement:

Dr. Andrew Dessler, a climatologist at Texas A&M University and author of The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change, tells the Wonk Room in an email interview that the entire Department of Atmospheric Sciences agrees with the IPCC:

“I, along with all of the other faculty in the department, agree with the main conclusions of the IPCC.”In 2007, the Texas A&M Department of Atmospheric Sciences issued a statement that global warming from emissions of greenhouse gases risks “serious adverse impacts on our environment and society” — the key basis for the EPA’s endangerment finding:

1. It is virtually certain that the climate is warming, and that it has warmed by about 0.7 deg. C over the last 100 years.
2. It is very likely that humans are responsible for most of the recent warming.
3. If we do nothing to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, future warming will likely be at least two degrees Celsius over the next century.
4. Such a climate change brings with it a risk of serious adverse impacts on our environment and society.When asked if the latest attacks on the IPCC affect their stance, Dr. Dessler responded that “the Department stands by its statement. You can quote me on that.”

You can read the entire interview here.  But, when it comes to this one right here, it’s Science 1 – Perry, Abbott and Staples 0.

Or maybe no one is keeping score, and we just chalk this up as more election year posturing?

###

By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

Read Full Post »

Copen-update

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2009 |

Its already getting tough to keep tabs on everything happening in Copenhagen, so for now I’ll just share what I’ve been reading.  Here’s today’s Copen-digest:

###

By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, cleaner cars, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

Read Full Post »

America Realizes: “Coal makes no sense in this day and age”

Posted in Coal, tagged , , , , , on February 5, 2009 |

Originally posted by Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room. Copied here whole sale:

The coal industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get out the message of “clean coal,” through front groups like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, campaign contributions, and an army of lobbyists. But the devastating December 22, 2008 coal ash slurry spill of the Kingston Fossil Plant in rural Tennessee broke through the cacophony of clean coal carolers. This ThinkProgress Wonk Room video is a stark reminder that in reality, coal isn’t clean.

Watch it:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4-HQrunDaE]

This week alone, the news of progress away from dirty coal has reached a fever pitch:

Monday: A new report shows high levels of arsenic and other toxins in rivers downstream of the Kingston coal ash spill. “TVA says no drinking water standards were violated, but tests done by the nonpartisan, nonprofit group Environmental Integrity Project say otherwise.”

A Montana electric utility decided to “scrap its plans for a $900 million coal-fired power plant east of Great Falls and turn instead to renewable energy to meet the needs of its 65,000 Montana customers.”

Tuesday: In Pettus, West Virginia, five Coal River Mountain activists were arrested and charged with trespassing after locking themselves to a bulldozer and a backhoe at a Massey Energy mountaintop-removal mine site — that could instead be a wind farm.

250 people in the towns of Prenter and Seth, West Virginia “with orange and black water in their taps, tubs and toilets are suing eight coal companies they believe poisoned their wells by pumping mine wastes into former underground mines.”

Saying, “Coal makes no sense in this day and age,” Georgia Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D) introduced legislation to “limit then ban” coal from mountain-top removal and “place a moratorium on new coal-plant construction in the state.”

In her State of the State address, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) called for “a near-moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and a major reduction in reliance on coal for electricity generation over the next decade.”

Green Inc.’s Tom Zeller Jr. notes, “The coal industry — which suffers from an image problem to begin with — has had a particularly rough few days.”

Read Full Post »