The Tim DeChristopher Case

This is a weird story.

Tim DeChristopher is a young environmental activist facing two felony counts which stem from an action he took in December 2008. In short, DeChristopher bid $1.7 million for 22,000 acres of federal land offered for sale at a public auction; a student at the University of Utah at the time, he didn't have the money to pay for his bid, but he took took the action to protect the land from oil and gas drilling and protest the country’s energy policy. He now faces 10 years in prison and a $75,000 fine.

DeChristopher accuses the oil and gas industry of being behind his prosecution. Said DeChristopher in a recent interview:

We were making the case for selective prosecution before the indictment because we had substantial evidence that the oil industry had played a strong role. One of my attorneys got a call from an AP reporter before I was informed what the charges against me were. The journalist told my attorney, these are going to be the charges. The reporter got that information from an oil industry lobbyist. So before I knew or my attorneys knew, the oil industry knew. Why did they know before my attorneys knew?  

And then, there were 25 people in the last 3 years that have won leases without being able to pay for them, who had a profit motive, and none of them have been prosecuted. It seems that they are coming down particularly hard on me.

I really hadn’t heard anything about this case; apparently Robert Redford, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and some other prominent Lefties have come to his defense and are trying to raise awareness.

I’m just a little confused. I’ve never participated in an auction of public land before but don’t you have to show proof of assets or something before signing up? Is there a reason why we don’t require that? DeChristopher said a BLM staffer asked him if he’d like to bid on the auction, which seems strange, and he said it was “easier than signing up on eBay.”

There’s a web page set up to support DeChristopher, called Bidder70. A march and rally to support DeChristopher have been scheduled for the day his trial begins, Feb. 28 in Salt Lake City.

I’m sure our media will ignore this story as they do so much else that’s really important. It always amazes me how we have a 24/7 TV news media and yet I'm continually reading about news which never hits their radar. It seems if it doesn't involve tricorn hats or crazy-eyed Michelle Bachmann, they're just not interested.

Grumpy

Man I hate this weather. It snowed last night ... AGAIN!! I’m so OVER it, already. I left Southern California for this? God.

This is Nashville and we don’t get this kind of snow. At least, we haven’t in the 26 years I’ve lived here. Cripes. But this is two winters in a row, now. Apparently we’ve hit some kind of milestone. I mean, shit. If I’m going to have to deal with snow and ice every damn winter I might as well live somewhere that also gives me universal healthcare and a strong social safety net. Oh, and a population that appreciates professional hockey! I mean, Jesus. This fucking sucks.

I hate this because I know it means the hellacious summer we experienced last year (which prompted this grumpy dog-days-of-August post ) is going to return as well. And don’t think we’ve seen the last of the flooding, either. We are Nashville! We’re gonna get wet! Oh, we might not get another weather penis, but I predict this spring will see some pretty hellacious rainstorms. Just a guess. Hey, better stock up on those pumps and Shop-Vacs now, folks. Thank me later.

This is one reason I laugh when our idiot legislators decide the road to riches for Tennessee is to lure retirees. I mean, I have nothing against retirees -- I aspire to be one some day, after all -- but this isn’t the first time someone decided what Tennessee needs to do is compete with Florida and Arizona for the retiree market. Yessiree, resource-sucking seniors are just dying to get a load of this sucky climate: snow and ice in the winter, unbearable heat and humidity in the summer. Basically this place is livable four months out of the year. If you're looking for the ideal place to spend your sunset years, this ain't it.

So with everyone snarking about how Al Gore is fat and all, I'm reminded of the hissy fits this Hollywood blockbuster spawned a few years ago. It actually suggested, in a Hollywood blockbuster way, that global warming could cause extreme winters! Crazy, I know! But true! Might be something to add to the Netflix queue since it's too damn cold to leave the house.

I, Too, Demand My Constitutional Right To A Syndicated Radio Show & Other Thoughts

Constitutional scholar Sarah Palin tells Dr. Laura to not retreat, reload!

Which should make today a fun one on the internets.

Meanwhile, as the nation focuses on the circus sideshow, Nashville is preparing for a repeat of its floods of three and a half months ago. Hopefully we won’t be looking at our fourth 100-year flood in 40 years. Climate change, much? The New York Times connects the dots (although some of us did that a few months ago):

Dr. Meehl, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told me in an interview that the “fairly small” average warming in the earth’s temperature, about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution, can be expected to lead to “much more noticeable changes in the extremes” of heat and cold.

“Physically, you’d expect to see more record heat events and fewer record cold events,” he said. “That’s what we are seeing.”
For those intimidated by scientific papers, a simpler write-up on the issue can be found here. And Dr. Meehl is also on YouTube talking about the findings of his research.

Here’s the video:



Conservatives who deny climate change are a lot like Sarah Palin discussing the Constitution: they do it with very little real understanding of the subject matter, lots of false assumptions and politically-motivated finger pointing, and a hefty dose of oil industry backing. They don’t need to prove anything, just sow enough doubt in peoples’ minds that it undermines any real effort to change anything so we can keep sucking on the bones of dead dinosaurs.

Hmm ... maybe the Constitution really does guarantee me a right to a nationally-syndicated radio show! In which case, my first program can be about climate change.

Media FAIL

Turns out “Climategate” was a manufactured controversy and the media regrets the error:

But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of “falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information” in February. In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its central claim—namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40 percent of the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was “unsubstantiated.” The Times also admitted that it had totally twisted the remarks of one forest expert to make it sound as if he agreed that the IPCC had screwed up, when he said no such thing.

Of course, we'll still hear about “Climategate” in Bill Kristol columns and Fox News reports for years and years to come. Because the point was to discredit scientists, not get at any truth or fact. That's the point of these smears, isn't it?

Meanwhile, it turns out that ACORN has also been cleared:

A preliminary report from the General Accounting Office has cleared ACORN of allegations that it misused millions of federal dollars over a four-year span.

According to the report, nine federal agencies gave the community group more than $40 million in eight housing-related grants from 2005 to 2009. There were no problems with seven of the eight grants, and ACORN supplied correct documentation for the eighth after it was notified the paperwork was missing. The GAO said it found no evidence of fraud or misuse of federal dollars.

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said the report "does nothing more than add to the growing list of government entities who have vindicated us," according to The Hill. ACORN has vigorously disputed charges that surfaced after a video sting by conservative activists showed low-level ACORN staffers giving tax advice regarding a prostitution ring. The group also faced charges from conservative media of voter fraud after the 2008 election.

[...]

A December 2009 report commissioned by the House Judiciary Committee found ACORN violated no federal regulations. That study, conducted by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, also found that ACORN correctly used all federal dollars it received and did not improperly register any voters during the 2008 presidential election. An investigation by the California attorney general reached the same conclusion. An independent investigator hired by ACORN also cleared the organization of wrongdoing.

ACORN is now suing to get its federal funding restored. Really, they should sue Andrew Breitbart and his minions for slander. (Incidentally, back in May, the New York Times issued a correction for its erroneous reporting on the James O’Keefe/ACORN affair.)

Again, it doesn't matter: ACORN will forever be synonymous with something unsavory in peoples' minds, and none of our gutless Democrats have the spine to go to bat for a bunch of community organizers who helped a bunch of poor people with their legal troubles. I mean, who gives a shit, right?

So with two right-wing smears down the toilet (and let’s not forget the whole “Saddam had WMDs” thing), all we can hope is that our establishment media has learned a lesson here. It's looking doubtful. Recent events indicate the “liberal” media runs for the fainting couches when the right wing tells them to. (More here.)

Connecting The Dots

Someone has to. Guess it might as well be me.

Nashville, January 2010:



Nashville, May 2010:



It’s not just Nashville. One month ago, floods decimated New England. I don’t remember hearing about those floods in the news, either. But YouTube is full of shocking videos, like this one from Mystic, Connecticut and this one of a Rhode Island shopping mall under two feet of water. A friend who lives out there writes:

One of the worst things we had for weeks was the stench and everyone getting sick from bacteria in the air. Take care of yourself.

Something to look forward to, Nashville.

Drought and floods in India and China have resulted in a global cotton shortage, folks. That means no more cheap $10 T-shirts at WalMart and CostCo, not to mention a shortage of canvas tarps, cotton for industrial use and medical supplies.

It has contributed to the tensions between India and Pakistan. India has halted export of its cotton, forcing two-thirds of Pakistan’s yarn mills to close.

Farmers in Hawaii are cutting back production as much as 40% because of severe drought.

And as I mentioned last winter, there was massive drought in the Southern Hemisphere, causing severe crop loss.

We are 7 billion strong on this planet. Our thirst for oil has led us to interfere in the governments of foreign lands, even wage wars to access oil. Little surprise some people resort to desperate acts of terrorism.

We drill for oil in more extreme, dangerous places. Just one accident has destroyed a major food industry in this country. I doubt there will be much recovery of the shrimp and oyster beds in the Gulf. It’s not just the oil; the chemical dispersants they are using to contain the spill have unknown risks:

Chemical dispersants carry complex environmental trade-offs: helping to keep oil from reaching sensitive wetlands while exposing other sea life to toxic substances. The concoction works like dish soap to separate oil and water, but the exact chemical composition is protected as a trade secret.

Sure. Because where the public health and the continued existence of a major food source are concerned, what’s really important is protecting Dow Chemical’s (or whomever’s) copyright.

Someone in Washington needs to connect these dots. There is a clear and concrete line connecting our fossil fuel addiction, our resource wars, the pollution we are pumping into the atmosphere, our growing population, and the extremes of weather we’ve experienced. And by “we” I do mean that globally. We all cause the problem and we all suffer the consequenes.

We’re all in this together. We all share the same planet.

The cost of our inaction will be more floods, more drought, more political instability and more terrorism. We can get off this hamster wheel now, or we can keep running and running, expecting to get somewhere but not moving one inch. It's all very plain and obvious to me. I can't believe it isn't obvious to anyone else.

It's all connected, people.

Weird Crap I Read

I think listening to Karl Lagerfeld on climate science must be akin to listening to Glenn Beck on theological matters.

It’s Not All About You Though, Is It?

Atrios has suggested that a lot of the right-wing global warming stupidity which surfaces every time it snows--gasp! In WINTER!--is really just about pissing off liberals; they know better, Atrios claims, they just want to poke a stick at the icky DFH.

I dunno. I do think that’s where a lot of Sarah Palin’s “how’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya” rhetoric comes from. It’s not about making a point or being a leader or having ideas, it’s about directing anger at a politically expedient target. People are besieged on a variety of economic fronts, their kids are having to deal with crap they never had to worry about at that age, our major systems and institutions have all failed, yada yada. Easy to point at the DFH and say it’s all their fault.

But on the climate change thing, I really think ends up being about narcissism. Hey, says Sean Hannity, it’s cold in MY yard so therefore it must mean Al Gore is FAT! Ha ha! Seriously, these folks have such tunnel vision, they can't think beyond their little circle of sycophants, let alone stop to consider why it's called global climate change.

You know, never mind that Vancouver is experiencing record warm temperatures and lack of snow, just in time for the Olympic Winter Games.

Or that record heat and drought in Australia is causing massive crop loss--this after last January’s heat wave which claimed 37 lives. Meanwhile, a heatwave in Brazil has killed 32 people, and over in South Africa, folks are also suffering under oppressive, record heat.

Of course, it’s summer in most of those places (well, not Vancouver ...) which is why we DFH’s always say: there’s a difference between weather and climate. And all of these bizarre weather patterns, from wild and wooly winter in Washington, D.C., to searing drought in the Southern Hemisphere, confirm that things are changing.

The World Meteorological Organization reported at the end of 2009:

This year above-normal temperatures were recorded in most parts of the continents. Only North America (United States and Canada) experienced conditions that were cooler than average. Given the current figures, large parts of southern Asia and central Africa are likely to have the warmest year on record.

But to Hannity, Inhofe, Beck and the rest, only what happens in North America matters.

That's just so typical of conservatives, isn't it? Conservative ideology is all about IGMY-ism (I Got Mine, Y’all) -- it denies everyone else a shot at healthcare, jobs, clean air, clean water, a decent education for their kids. It's a drawbridge mentality: as long as they and theirs are OK, forget about letting anyone else into the party.

So I think Atrios is being too generous in regard to conservatives like Hannity and Limbaugh. It's not about pissing off liberals, it's about a "world" view that can't see past its own nose.

[UPDATE]:

As usual, I write something, schedule it to post the next morning, shut down the computer, then watch The Daily Show say what I was thinking a thousand times better than I ever could. For your viewing pleasure:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Unusually Large Snowstorm
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Climate Change With Purty Pitchers

Our friend the cephalopod has a great post up about climate change. It’s got lots of graphics and graphs and I don’t think it required any hacking into computers to retrieve, either.

Honestly, the whole “climate gate” thing amuses me greatly. Some tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who believe climate change is a giant hoax cooked up by eeevul lie-brul scientists and tree huggers basically stole some e-mail communications and then went on a fishing expedition looking for evidence to support their crackpot theory.

In other words: the exact opposite of the scientific method. Scientists do not cook up a hypothesis and then go out and find evidence to support that hypothesis, ignoring all contrary data. Any good investigator knows that’s a surefire way to get a false view of the world. What scientists do is test their hypotheses, and make their conclusions available to review by their peers. The hypothesis is modified as the data dictates. Hypotheses that do not stand up to this rigorous testing are revised.

This particular "e-mail-gate" hypothesis has been debunked a hundred times already (here's a wonderful video that explains it all very simply). Basically, a lay person eavesdropping on a scientific discussion may be unfamiliar with certain terminology used in the scientific community. But cherry-picking certain quotes and statements because they appear inflammatory, with the express intent of deluding the lay public, is highly irresponsible.

I wonder who would be behind such a plan. I’m thinking .... thinking .....

Of course, it’s mere speculation on my part. We are still compiling a complete body of evidence.

So when a business group like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received millions of dollars in funding from ExxonMobil, decides to file suit to see e-mails from NASA climate scientists, let me be the first to say: No. You show us your private e-mails, so we can manipulate, extrapolate, cherry-pick, and exaggerate, and maybe we’ll talk.

China Does Climate Change Turnabout

Conventional wisdom holds that China, now the world’s largest contributor of greenhouse gases, is also the biggest foot-dragger on climate change, refusing to place a cap on its greenhouse gas emmissions. (In fact, it seems this is a popular talking point among anti climate-change legislation folks.)

That seems to be changing, according to today’s Washington Post:

Yet, in visible and less visible ways, China has begun to address its emissions problem. The steps are driven in part by the parochial concern that climate change could worsen the flooding that plagues the country's low-lying coastal regions, including Shanghai, and cause water shortages in western areas as glaciers in the Himalayas melt away.

But China has also begun to see energy efficiency and renewable energy as ingredients for the type of modern economy it wants to build, in part because it would make the nation's energy sources more secure.

"We think this is a new business for us, not a burden," said Gan Zhongxue, who left a job as a top U.S. scientist for the giant ABB Group to head up research and development at ENN, the Langfang company that made its fortune as the dominant natural gas distributor in 80 Chinese cities.

This makes sense, and is the argument we tree-hugging liberals have been making in the U.S. for years. It’s just good business. God hasn’t made dinosaurs in a few million years; oil is finite. We’re running out, the world is going to need a new energy source, so why not be leaders of the new energy economy instead of holding on to the past?

According to the Post, China’s government has taken steps to address climate change that put the American government to shame:

Still, China has taken significant steps in the past five years. It removed subsidies for motor fuel, which now costs more than it does in the United States; its fuel-efficiency standard for new urban vehicles is 36.7 miles per gallon, a level the United States will not reach for seven years. It has set high efficiency standards for new coal plants; the United States has none. It has set new energy-efficiency standards for buildings. It has targeted its 1,000 top emitters of greenhouse gases to boost energy efficiency by 20 percent. And it has shut down many older, inefficient industrial boilers and power plants.

[...]

Smaller details are getting attention, too. Xie said forcing supermarkets to charge for plastic bags reduced the use of the bags by two-thirds, saving the equivalent of about 30,000 barrels of oil a day.

Last week, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said the efforts are starting to pay off. The agency lowered its estimate of future Chinese greenhouse gas emissions.

This should set off alarm bells here in the States: if a behemoth like China is transitioning its economy toward a green future, we’d better scramble to catch up or we will be left behind.

Make no mistake, China has a long way to go. I suffer no delusions in that regard. But we can no longer hide our head in the sand and justify our own polluting ways by saying “China’s worse!”

More Lies, Damn Lies: Climate Change Edition

[UPDATE]:

Via Proud Socialist in comments, Bonner is indeed a serial offender. More at Talking Points Memo.

--------------------------------

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. They have no shame whatsoever:

As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman’s office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.



The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.



“They stole our name. They stole our logo. They created a position title and made up the name of someone to fill it. They forged a letter and sent it to our congressman without our authorization,” said Tim Freilich, who sits on the executive committee of Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit network that tackles issues related to Charlottesville’s Hispanic community. “It’s this type of activity that undermines Americans’ faith in democracy.”

Isn’t there a fucking law against this?

Grist obtained copies of the climate change letters which I’ve linked to here and here.

There’s more:

The letters came from the Washington lobby firm Bonner & Associates, which offers “Strategic Grassroots / Grasstops support to help you win.” It hasn’t yet come to light who hired the firm to do this possibly illegal work. Another set of forged letters claimed to represent a local chapter of the NAACP.

Bonner & Associates is a notorious astroturf outfit. Look what they did when PhRMA hired them to scuttle Maryland legislation to lower prescription drug costs:

Donna J. Stanley, director of Associated Black Charities, was ready to mobilize for political battle after she received a fax marked "urgent" this week.

The fax told her she needed to sign an attached petition "today" to prevent 600,000 of Maryland's poor and disabled from losing access to affordable prescription drugs. The fax, sent to dozens of community leaders, had the markings of a grass-roots effort, including grammatical errors and a handwritten cover letter.

But the appeal was actually generated by a sophisticated Washington lobbying firm trying to defeat several bills before the General Assembly supported by advocates for the poor.

In short, Bonner & Associates is a serial offender. They routinely forge letters, claiming to be from Hispanic and African American organizations or other advocacy groups, saying they oppose xyz legislation, and send them to members of Congress and others.

In short, they lie. They misrepresent, falsify, and lie.

I’m not a lobbyist nor do I know any, but I have a question: don’t you people have a code of ethics against this kind of behavior? No, I'm not kidding. Quit laughing. Seriously, if you don't have a code of ethics, maybe you'd like Congress to develop one for you.

There has been a huge uproar about this, prompting Bonner to blame a temp. Right. In light of their history, let me be the first to call bullshit. Must be the same “overzealous staffer” who was responsible for all the GOP fuckups during the Bush administration.

I’d like to know who hired Bonner & Associates. This is lower than low. There is no bottom for these people, no “too low.” And Congressman Ed Markey says his Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming plans to launch an investigation into the affair.

I will just remind Bonner and whomever hired them that karma’s a bitch and she will make her displeasure known.

Al Gore Is Still Fat

By now everyone has weighed in on Nate Silver’s challenge to global warming skeptics. So I guess it's my turn.

It just goes without saying that if there’s a week of unusually cool weather, the flat-earthers use this as proof that global warming doesn’t exist. Or, as our own Glen Dean likes to say,

You would have to be an idiot to actually believe that man has any effect on the climate.

One man, perhaps. But there are more than six billion of us right now. Personally, I think you have to be an idiot to actually believe that more than six billion human beings wouldn’t affect the climate.

Yes, it’s been a gorgeous weekend throughout pretty much the entire country. We’ve got our windows open and the A/C off in the house right now -- proof that Al Gore is fat, global warming is a hoax, and there’s a cabal of environmentalists with the gleam of one-world government in their eyes who have turned scientists around the world into their minions.

You know, as Glenn Greenwald Tweeted earlier today,

Many obituaries in my morning paper: proof that world population is decreasing

Hah.

Nate Silver’s post got a lot of attention because he threw down the gauntlet, with real money involved (and as of my last look, no one has taken his bet--not even Sen. Inhofe, who has all that Big Oil money to play with.)

But the point of Silver’s post is that one cold weekend does not make for science. Folks like Hinderaker and Drudge who scream “Al Gore is fat!” every time the temperatures dip below normal are silent when we have early hot spells, like the one that hit Nashville this April. It was so hot during the Country Music Marathon this year that the women’s winner vomited several times after finishing the race, and one runner died.

But I’m not going to say that is proof of global warming’s existence any more than a cool July proves it isn’t real. For that I’m going to look at the changes in my garden over the past few years, the work of real scientists looking at global warming over the past 30 years, and some real number crunching from statisticians like Nate Silver.

And I'll repeat what I've said before, which is that even if you don't believe global warming is real, you cannot deny that:

•  air pollution is responsible for diseases like asthma;
• coal power destroys our environment and has resulted in disasters like what happened in Kingston, TN, last December;
• dependence on foreign oil has made our country vulnerable to the whims of unstable foreign regimes and forced us to compromise our moral authority as we do business with regimes like Saudi Arabia who practice intolerance.

With all that going for it, I can't imagine why anyone would stick to the old way of doing things. You know, there's a reason they call it fossil fuels. It's for dinosaurs.

Message To Obama

Dear President Obama:


Love, Greenpeace

Monday Is Mission Accomplished Day

Not that fake Misison Accomplished Day either, the one where President Bush strutted around an aircraft carrier. No, Monday is the day ExxonMobil, Chevron and the rest have been waiting for:

BAGHDAD — When Iraq puts development rights to some of its largest oil fields up for auction to foreign companies on Monday, the bidding will be a watershed moment, representing the first chance for petroleum giants like ExxonMobil to tap into the resources of a country they were kicked out of almost 40 years ago.

[...]

The oil companies are also somewhat disgruntled, being forced to compete for 20-year service contracts and not the more lucrative production sharing agreements they would prefer. Such agreements would allow them to share directly in the profits from oil production, rather than getting fixed fees.

In other words, they wanted something akin to the deal the Americans wrote for them exactly one year ago:

In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.

That deal was withdrawn as it stoked outrage not only among Americans but in Iraq as well. As I wrote at the time, it was a little fishy that the contracts were awarded to the very same companies Saddam Hussein had kicked out of the country when he took power in the 1970s. You can’t really talk about “the central front in the war on terror” and “breeding Democracy in the Middle East” and all that other hogwash when you’re literally writing the contracts restoring foreign oil companies to their former status before the dictator you just deposed took power. At the time, the New York Times called it

a twist of corporate history for some of the world’s largest companies, [that] all four oil majors that had lost their concessions in Iraq are now back.

Oh, liberal media! You are adorable! A mere twist of corporate history, the turn of the karmic wheel. Just luck!

Sheesh.

Anyway, as Bill Maher said at last night’s Ryman show, “if you’re going to invade a country for oil, at least get some damn oil!” So, Mission Accomplished.

That said, I do not want to hear any more whining from conservatives about the recently-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka, “cap-and-trade” or the Climate Bill) as being a job crushing, tax-increasing boondoggle.

Don’t you even start with me about this being a “carbon tax” -- what do you think the Iraq War has been? The one that cost $700 billion in direct costs, is estimated to cost $1 trillion before all’s said and done, has killed thousands of Americans, wounded thousands more, destroyed our credibility on the world stage, and divided the country, all to maintain the status quo of an oil-based economy. How long will we be paying that bill, do you think?

Congressmen Jim Cooper and Bart Gordon get my thanks for voting to pass the climate bill, though other so-called “Democrats” in Tennessee didn’t have the courage (yes, Lincoln Davis and John Tanner, I’m looking at you. For shame!)

Lamar Alexander voted for the Iraq War, the bloodiest carbon tax this country has ever enacted. Bob Corker has indicated he at least understands the issues of climate change but he’s trying to prove his conservative bonafides, so I don’t hold out much hope for him supporting a bill that has generated ire from the tea-bag crowd. But he’s been known to surprise me.

All of which means to say: when we're talking about energy policy, let's not forget what the Iraq War was about.

House GOP Circulates Anti-Climate Bill Document Written By Coal Company CEO

[UPDATE]:

ThinkProgress has more.

----------------------------

Wow, you know it’s bad when you’re so deeply in bed with the country’s largest coal company that you forget to take the CEO’s name off of a PowerPoint presentation you’re circulating:

House Republicans are circulating a PowerPoint document that purports to show the regional breakdown of costs for energy consumers under the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill. The header: “Most States Lose Under the Pending Climate Bill.”

The catch? It appears to have been authored by the coal giant Peabody Energy.

[...]

A line at the bottom of the document reads, “Based on Energy Information Administration (EIA) and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data”—but there’s no indication of the particular studies used. (The CBO numbers likely come from a report that the CBO itself says is not about Waxman-Markey and almost certainly overstates costs, since it only quantified costs, not benefits.)

Dig a little deeper by looking at the “properties” of the PowerPoint document and you learn that it was produced by Peabody Energy—with CEO Greg Boyce listed as the “author” and communications services manager Chris Taylor listed as the “manager.” Yes, the world’s biggest coal producer is literally writing Republican talking points. Oops!

Oh, oops indeed.

Meanwhile, the Democrats aren’t getting off scott-free, either. My e-mail in-box has been flooded with calls to remove a “Trojan Horse” inserted in the climate bill:

Unfortunately, members of the House who answer to the worst polluters have succeeded in including a Trojan Horse at the heart of the legislation - a prohibition on Obama's EPA being able to use the Clean Air Act to take additional action on CO2.

This little known, almost secret provision actually guarantees that the United States will fall short of doing what the scientists tell us must happen - a reduction of 80% of CO2 emissions from their 1990 level.

The coal and oil lobbies are spending every last ounce of energy and creativity to hold onto their old business model, instead of working towards a clean future. Isn’t that the same short-sighted thinking that kept GM making gas-guzzling SUV’s for the American market while manufacturing fuel efficient cars for overseas buyers? They kept saying Americans wouldn’t buy the cars Europeans were buying. Once again: Ooops.

And I don’t get these global warming deniers who refuse to believe that climate change is caused by human activity. That’s asinine but fine, if you want to believe that, go ahead. That still doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop polluting our air, blowing up Appalachian mountains, dumping billions of gallons of toxic coal ash sludge on rural communities, and giving our children increasing levels of asthma and the like when there’s a cleaner alternative. The excuse that “those green companies are just trying to make money” is pretty stupid, too: I thought making money was the engine that drove our economy?

The Best Global Warming Denial Money Can Buy

Global warming denier Marc Morano, former spokesman for global warming denier/wackadoodle Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, has gone into the global warming denial business fulltime:

Now, with Congress debating legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Morano is hoping to have an even greater impact. He has left his job with Mr. Inhofe to start his own Web site, ClimateDepot.com.

The site, scheduled to debut this week, will be a “one-stop shop” for anyone following climate change, Mr. Morano says. He will post research he thinks the public should see, as well as reported video segments and ratings of environmental journalists.

Wow, that’s great. Morano, as the article says, has been very successful pushing misinformation, exaggerations, and outright lies about climate science. Now he’ll get to do it fulltime.

Just in time for a pitched battle in Congress over carbon cap-and-trade. How conveeeeeenient. Or, not:

Mr. Morano’s new Web site is being financed by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit in Washington that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues.

Craig Rucker, a co-founder of the organization, said the committee got about a third of its money from other foundations. But Mr. Rucker would not identify them or say how much his foundation would pay Mr. Morano. (Mr. Morano says it will be more than the $134,000 he earned annually in the Senate.)

Public tax filings for 2003-7 — the last five years for which documents are available — show that the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ExxonMobil Foundation and from foundations associated with the billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime financer of conservative causes best known for its efforts to have President Bill Clinton impeached. Mr. Rucker said Exxon had not contributed anything last year.

A quick check of CFACT’s Wiki listing shows the group also received $60,000 from Chevron from 1994-1998, $25,000 from the DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund in 1997, and a paltry $500 from Ford Motor Co. Fund in 1996.

Good to know.

One Blade Shy Of A Sharp Knife

Over at TennesseeFree our old friend Serr8 got hoodwinked by a fake-petition drive campaign. It’s the oldest trick in the book, like when the Democratic Party “invited” me to be part of their “leadership team” but it’s really just another fundraising request.

Here’s the headline:

31,000 Scientists sign a petition urging the U.S. Government to rightly ignore the Global Warmalism cult inspired by that fool Albert Gore

Here are the highlights: The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine claims it got 31,000 bonafide scientists to sign its petition saying global warming is fake, don’t sign Kyoto, etc.

Now here are the facts: the petition is not credibile. It’s been bopping around for 10 years. When it first appeared in 1998, Perry Mason, John Grisham and Spice Girl Geri Halliwell were on the list of signees:

Asked about the pop singer, Robinson said he was duped. The returned petition, one of thousands of mailings he sent out, identified her as having a degree in microbiology and living in Boston. "It's fake," he said.

"When we're getting thousands of signatures there's no way of filtering out a fake," Robinson, 56, said in a telephone interview from Oregon.

Uh, yeah. Thanks for making my point.

Well it’s 10 years later and guess what. According to Wiki a new, albeit identical, petition hit mailboxes last fall. But “Perry S. Mason PhD” is still on the list of signees. So is “Anne Frank.” Plus some dubiously-named folks like “Mack Hunt.”

Anyone with a lick of sense would know that this thing doesn’t pass the sniff test. But let’s give Serr8 the benefit of the doubt, shall we? Pretend this petition isn’t 10 years old and an obvious fake.

You can see a copy of it here. It was mass-mailed to bazillions of people and the signees self-selected, which explains why even the petitioner admits there is no way to verify the identity of the signees--or if they are indeed “scientists.”

But I checked some of them out. The OISM helpfully lists all of the signees on its website, and it seems they’ve stretched the definition of “scientist” to absurd heights. Nearly half of them have just a Bachelors degree. Well, good for you if you made it through undergrad with degree in hand, but that doesn’t make you a scientist. Hell, I have a Bachelors degree--in Environmental Science, I might add. I could have signed this petition, but I didn’t, because I’m not a moron.

But let’s look at who did sign, shall we? Let’s start with the A’s: There are 10 veterinarians and 51 MDs. There’s a dentist named Joseph E. Adducci and an intellectual property expert named Sol Aisenberg. Not exactly experts in climate science.

Tennessee is well represented. James E. Vath, former owner of Praecis Pharmaceuticals (before selling to GlaxoSmithKline) supposedly signed. Dr. Nichola Tsambassis, a pediatric internist in Clarksville, is allegedly a signee. I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t take a pediatrician’s advice on climate change any more than I’d take a sick kid to Lelan Statom for medical treatment. Just sayin’.

There are some real scientists on the list and I’ve contacted a couple of them. I’ll let you know if anyone writes me back.

So basically what we have is 31,000 people (we think, I'm still not convinced that Mack Hunt is a real person), who say they have college degrees who signed a petition denying global warming. This is not a shocker.

It says nothing about global warming, the human influence on global warming, any scientific debate on global warming or the consensus in the scientific community that global climate change is caused by human activity.

But it says a lot about the gullibility of certain conservatives on the blogosphere.