Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

The NYT reports on Obama’s 244-188 win:

Without a single Republican vote, President Obama won House approval on Thursday for an $819 billion economic recovery plan….

As a piece of legislation, the two-year package is among the biggest in history, reflecting a broad view in Congress that urgent fiscal help is needed for an economy in crisis, and at a time when the Federal Reserve has already cut interest rates almost to zero….

All but 11 Democrats voted for the plan and 177 Republicans voted against it.

If the House R’s won’t vote for the only stimulus on the table during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it’s hard to see how they are going to vote for a serious bill addressing the climate problem, whose existence they don’t even acknowledge and opposition to which they see as a political winner (see The conservative stagnation, Part 12: Cap & trade bill will return GOP to power “in 2010″).

So be it (see “Q: Does a cap & trade bill have to be bipartisan?“).

Once again, the office of Sen. James Inhofe (Denier-OK) has put out a press release riddled with misstatements, this one attacking the nation’s top climate scientist James Hansen.

Their last release was notable for the outright lies and distortions by Inhofe and his top staffer, Marc Morano (see Scientist: “Our conclusions were misinterpreted” by Inhofe, CO2 — but not the sun — “is significantly correlated” with temperature since 1850 and Inhofe recycles long-debunked denier talking points — will the media be fooled (again)?)

Now they are making stuff up about Hansen, claiming the Bush Administration did not try to muzzle him, when they clearly did, as the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee documented in a December 2007 report. Somehow I think that report, which is based on “over 27,000 pages of documents from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Commerce Department,” two investigative hearings, and the depositions and interviews of key officials is a tad more credible than the words of some former NASA engineer.

It is absurd for Inhofe to have a blaring headline that “Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor” says Hansen “was never muzzled,” when this guy does not appear to have been Hansen’s supervisor (he “did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,” an authority possessed by every supervisor I ever had in government — see also NASA’s Gavin Schmidt here) — and in any case, had a position above Hansen only from 1982-1994, a full decade before the muzzling occurred!

I don’t want to waste a lot of time debunking pathological make-stuff-uppers like Inhofe and Morano, but let me point out one representative lie. The Morano post blares:

NYT’s Revkin chides Hansen for promoting sea level claims that are not ‘even physically possible’

But let’s go the link and see what Revkin actually wrote.

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Stopped EPA from blocking California’s effort to regulate tailpipe GHG emissions. Check!

Stopped a new coal plant. Check!

The next “stop” on the Obama Climate Action Train is the “endangerment finding” so the EPA can finally put a stop on greenhouse gases.

In Massachusetts [vs. EPA], the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases (GHGs) are “pollutants” under the Clean Air Act; that EPA must determine whether GHGs emitted from new motor vehicles do or do not endanger public health or welfare, or supply a reason for not making this determination; and that, if EPA makes an “endangerment finding,” it must issue regulations.

The key question: Can elevated levels of GHG concentrations be reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare? Does the Pope buy papal indulgences carbon offsets?

This is not a tough call for a President who just said: “climate change, which, if left unchecked, could result in violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe.” And for 1,000 years! Indeed, he campaigned on this very issue (see the October 16 post, “Obama to declare CO2 a dangerous pollutant“).

In an email to EPA employees, Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote of “five priorities that will receive my personal attention” — the first of which is “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions”:

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Think Progress reports:

Kathie Olsen — a global warming denying Bush official at the National Science Foundation — has entrenched herself into the agency prior to the arrival of the Obama administration. A congressional investigation said Olsen’s action “raises serious questions concerning whether a high-level Bush White House science appointee is trying to ‘burrow in‘ at the agency.”

The whole sad story, from Talking Points Memo, is below:

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