Dallas Trees' E-News of the Day, June 29 - It's About Choices

"Climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." - Mouth of Inhofe

There is plenty of bitterness going around between the partisans who have chosen to make climate change a 'political' division and an attacking post. It has some on the Left wanting to fight back. I can't say I can blame them. For instance, House GOP members repeatedly came out with the usual language of 'hoax' and 'tyranny' to dispute the climate change bill. However, they could not counter climate change itself with anything but outdated and disproven political jargon and - at best - half-truths. The ignorance of the GOP leadership and their 'Mouths of Sauron" have shown that they will do whatever it takes to seek a short-term political advantage, but at the ultimate cost of the American people for generations to come.

Now they also seek to turn a so-called "buried" study by a long-time EPA economist that appears to be challenging some of the US's climate change research and turning it into a conspiracy and criminal investigation. Inhofe calls for criminal investigation into why EPA 'suppressed' a global warming denier. - The Wonk Room. The issue will come down to the fact that people will believe what they want to believe and choose to follow ignorance and rhetoric (and money) or to be enlightened by facts.

We all have choices to make and I hope each choice you make will be made by advancing learning of the facts (whichever information you believe) and not by listening to partisan rancor.

CLIMATE PROGRESS
Nobelist Krugman calls climate science denial by House conservatives "a form of treason - treason against the planet."

"Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking — if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided — they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.
But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, werepeople who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.
Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.
Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause."


ENERGY AND GLOBAL WARMING NEWS OF THE DAY - JUNE 29

Tackling climate change by saving forests.

US EPA
FACT SHEET: Coal Combustion Residues (CCR) - Surface Impoundments with high hazard potential ratings.

DALLAS OBSERVER (UNFAIR PARK BLOG)
Environmentalists plenty steamed about possible nominee to head EPA's Dallas office.

ENERGY BULLETIN
PEAK OIL REVIEW - JUNE 29
"Crude prices gyrated within a dollar or two of $70 a barrel last week as weaker equity prices and sluggish economies trumped unrest in lran and damaging insurgent attacks in Nigeria. There seems to be a growing sentiment that hints of an economic recovery someday have already been priced into the oil market, which has doubled in the last six months, and that it will take either evidence of substantially increased demand or serious reductions in supply before the market goes higher."


Prices and Supplies - June 29
"In the last 37 years, the US has suffered six recessions. From the beginning, oil played a central role.

...In every case when oil consumption breeched 4% of GDP, the US has suffered a recession, and indeed, the current US recession began within two months of oil hitting the 4% threshold, that is, when oil reached $80/bbl."

Food and Agriculture - June 29

THE OIL DRUM
THE OIL INTENSITY OF FOOD
"In short, with higher energy prices and a limited supply of fossil fuels, the modern food system that evolved when oil was cheap will not survive as it is now structured."


DrumBeat - June 29

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS NETWORK
Dams are thwarting Louisiana marsh restoration, study says.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
The Arctic thaw could make global warming worse.
"Whether a total or more moderate release is in store is still anyone’s guess. But pound for pound, methane in the atmosphere traps 25 times more of the sun’s heat than CO₂ does. Consequently, even a modest thaw of the perennially frozen soil that lies under these ephemeral lakes and caps the dry land around them could trigger a vicious cycle: warming releases methane and creates lakes, which thaw permafrost and liberate more gas, which intensifies warming, which creates more lakes, and so on. Some Arctic lakes are growing larger, and researchers are eyeing them suspiciously as a reason why global methane concentrations shot up in 2007 and have stayed high ever since. Other signs indicate that permafrost thawing on the Arctic seafloor may be loosening the cap on large pockets of methane stored deeper down."


DOCUTICKER
Dr. Coburn releases report criticizing Congress' infrastructure priorities

EUREKALERT GOODY BAG
Water should be a human right.

Three reasons are outlined for why access to clean water should be declared a basic human right. Firstly, access to clean water can substantially reduce the global burden disease caused by water-borne infections. Millions of people are affected each year by a range of water-borne diseases including diarrhea, which is responsible for 1.8 million potentially preventable deaths per year, mostly among children under the age of five. Secondly, the privatization of water—as witnessed in Bolivia, Ghana and other countries—has not effectively served the poor, who suffer the most from lack of access to clean water. As Maude Barlow, senior advisor on water issues to the president of the General Assembly of the UN, has argued, "high water rates, cut-offs to the poor, reduced services, broken promises and pollution have been the legacy of privatization."

Thirdly, the prospect of global water scarcity—exacerbated by climate change, industrial pollution, and population growth—means that no country is immune to a water crisis. The United States is facing the greatest water shortages of its history, and in Australia severe drought has caused dangerous water shortages in the Murray-Darling river basin, which provides the bulk of its food supply.

Seasonal hunger devastating and under-recognized.
Bapu Vaitla (Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA), Stephen Devereux (Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK), and Samuel Hauenstein Swan (Action Against Hunger UK) describe how currently nearly seven out of every ten hungry people in the world, or about six hundred million, are either members of small farm households or landless rural laborers. Many of these six hundred million people live in areas where water or temperature constraints allow only one crop harvest per year, say the authors. Their poverty is driven by seasonal cycles, worsening especially in the preharvest months. During this "hunger season" period, household food stocks from the last harvest begin to run out; while low production levels, inadequate storage facilities, and accumulated debt all combine to force families to sell or consume their agricultural production well before the new harvest.


Ozone depletes oil seed rape productivity.

New crops needed for new climate.

Global food security in a changing climate depends on the nutritional value and yield of staple food crops. Researchers at Monash University in Victoria, Australia have found an increase in toxic compounds, a decrease in protein content and a decreased yield in plants grown under high CO₂ and drought conditions.

The research, to be presented by Dr Ros Gleadow on 29 June 2009 at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting in Glasgow, has shown that the concentration of cyanogenic glycosides, which break down to release toxic hydrogen cyanide, increased in plants in elevated CO₂. This was compounded by the fact that protein content decreased, making the plants overall more toxic as the ability of herbivores to break down cyanide depends largely on the ingestion of sufficient quantities of protein.

Data have also shown that cassava, a staple food crop in tropical and subtropical regions due to its tolerance of arid conditions, may experience yield reductions in high CO₂. Combined with an increase in cyanogenic glycosides, this has major implications for the types of crops that can be grown in the future if CO₂ levels continue to rise: "We need to be preparing for the predicted reduction in nutritional value of many plants in the coming century by developing and growing different cultivars which, for cassava in particular, may not be easy' says Dr Gleadow.

Picture from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.