With skis strapped to their feet, the activists maneuvered around racing gates and through the grass and dirt on Aspen Mountain, where snow has mostly melted and the ski season closed weeks ago.

Micah Davis participates in the snowless ski race in Aspen on Saturday. (Image via 350.org)

The snowless ski race was held to demonstrate what the sport’s future could look like if the earth continues to warm.

“I am from New England where they just had one of their shortest winters in history following historic flooding brought on by weather extremes,” said racer Elle Noordzy. “I grew up skiing and in nearly two decades in southern New England I saw the impact of warmer winters, where we used to get feet of snow in a winter to almost none nowadays. And now my first winter in Colorado has again highlighted weather extremes with one of the worst snow years and record-breaking spring temperatures.”

Aspen has become a stage for the climate discussion.

There is buy-in from its business community, government officials and residents who have set goals to try to reduce their own carbon footprints. The Aspen Skiing Co., which helped organize the weekend’s climate-awareness activities along with 350.org, has been a leader in the industry, setting its green standard. As an influential member of the Aspen Chamber Resort Association, the ski company recently rallied other local business leaders who sit on the chamber’s board to drop its affiliation with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to protest the national group’s stance on climate change. Even former Vice President Al Gore’s scatological rant against climate change deniers last year took place in Aspen and drew national attention. And Aspen’s celebrity athletes have gone to the nation’s capitol, lobbying for stricter pollution controls.

“Climate change is already pounding businesses and communities, whether you’re a ski resort, an insurance agency, or a raft business,” said Auden Schendler, the Aspen Skiing Co.’s vice president of sustainability. “But people feel powerless about how to drive change. On Saturday we made a statement elected officials have to listen to, and similar events happened all over the globe.”

To connect the dots between climate change and its impacts, attendees in Aspen wore white clothing to symbolize the missing snow and they formed a “dot” on the ski mountain. Other human “dots” were created in oceans and on land around the world Saturday to spread the climate message.

A recent Yale University poll in the U.S. found that concern about climate change was increasing with more extreme weather and warmer temperatures. According to the research, 82 percent of Americans report that they personally experienced one or more types of extreme weather or a natural disaster in the past year. Meanwhile, nightly news coverage of climate change on the major TV networks decreased 72 percent between 2009 and 2011, according to Media Matters for America.
 
“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the poll, told the New York Times. “People are starting to connect the dots.”
 

A forest decimated by pine beetles.

“We’ve been doing research on the effects of a changing climate to the vegetation on our nation’s forests for over two decades,” he told the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources in Washington, D.C. “When it comes to fire, we’re definitely seeing much longer fire seasons in many parts of the country, another 60 or 70 days longer than what we used to experience.”

The Forest Service is not only dealing with an uptick in the number of wildfires, wind storms, droughts and other extreme weather as a result of climate change. “We’re also seeing much more severe fire behavior than we’ve ever experienced in the past,” Tidwell noted.

The wildfire risk is heightened as beetles make their way through the forests, sucking the life from trees and leaving dead, dried wood in their wake. The expansion of bark beetles “has started to slow a little bit,” he said, but “we’re still seeing about an additional 600,000 acres infested each year, so we’re going to have to continue to maintain this focus for the next few years.”

Sen. Udall

Referencing a new Forest Service report – “Increasing the Pace of Restoration and Job Creation on our National Forests” (pdf) – Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, said that expanding the market for forest products from national forests will require streamlining contracting procedures and federal cooperation with private companies that want to use beetle-kill wood for commercial purposes.

“The private sector is key to dealing with this epidemic,” Udall said.

The federal government already is collaborating with communities and businesses to create wood and biomass supply for forest products, bioenergy production and home construction.

“We have examples all over the country now where these collaborative efforts are coming together,” Tidwell said. “People understand the type of work that needs to be done.”

He said the Forest Service is doing more with less by broadening its National Environmental Policy Act requests to include larger landscapes and by emphasizing agency efficiency and flexibility.

The Forest Service budgets about $100 million each year to mitigate bark beetles in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and South Dakota, he said.

Sen. Franken

U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, expressed frustration that politics are polluting scientific discussions. He said it only makes sense for Congress to begin incorporating the effects of climate change into budgetary decisions.

“To me it is so obvious the costs of climate change that we are already paying, and these are never factored in when we talk about the costs of things like burning more coal or burning dirtier oil,” Franken said. “This debate that has been going on in this country – it saddens me sometimes when what your scientists are telling us is called a hoax. I don’t know if it’s for political gain or to curry favor with big donors who can fund super PACs or what it is, but there is a climate-change-denial culture among some of my colleagues that I find very disturbing.”

President Obama’s budget requests $4.86 billion for the Forest Service, an increase of less than one-half of one percent over the 2012 appropriated level. The restoration of lands impacted by beetles, disease, fire, urban sprawl and warming temperatures are heavily emphasized.

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“We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit,” Santorum told an audience at the Colorado School of Mines where he was a guest speaker Monday at the Colorado Energy Summit.

“We are the intelligent beings that know how to manage things and through the course of science and discovery if we can be better stewards of this environment, then we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped create,” Santorum said to applause from the conservative crowd.

The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania argued that science has been hijacked by politicians on the left, and that climate change is “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life,” Santorum said.

Rick Santorum speaking in Golden. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

Gingrich, speaking an hour before Santorum at the Colorado Energy Summit, said he regretted a TV commercial he shot with Democrat Nancy Pelosi that addressed climate change. He called it “the dumbest single thing I’ve done in five or six years. … It was stupid.” He said part of his Pelosi hangover is tied to his diminishing confidence in climate science. Asked by a man in the audience whether he believes human activities can cause climate change, Gingrich pleaded ignorance.

“I believe we don’t know. I am an amateur paleontologist. The planet has changed its temperature a number of times,” Gingrich rambled. “… If you look at the Antarctic today, you’ll figure it [must've been] a lot warmer when the dinosaurs were there. So what I’ve said in the past is I’m happy to take prudent measures that aren’t very expensive. So if we can find relatively inexpensive, safe nuclear power, I’m for it. The fact that Iowa produces 20 percent of its electricity from wind is fine. There’s a lot of things you can do with the margin. What I would not do is I would not turn the power over to bureaucracy to run the entire country. I have always opposed cap and trade …”

Newt Gingrich at the Colorado School of Mines on Monday. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

Oil and gas, he said, is “so central” to the nation’s future energy portfolio.

“Environmentalists,” Gingrich added, “have been infiltrated over the last 40 years by people on the left who are against business and against local control and they use the environment as an excuse.”

Santorum, meanwhile, claimed “there is a war on fossil fuels in this country by [the Obama] administration.” Like Gingrich, the native Pennsylvanian vowed to open up more public lands to oil and gas drilling. Don’t worry, he promised, Yellowstone would be left alone. But there is a lot of Bureau of Land Management and other federal land that Santorum said would be better served by the oil and gas industry, ranching or other human uses. He cringed every time he mentioned the Endangered Species Act and blamed it for hurting business. Santorum told the story of how the Endangered Species Act is preventing the harvesting of a forest with profitable wood in his home state.

“We have the Endangered Species Act, which has prevented us from timbering all sorts of acreage there,” he said. “It’s bankrupted the school district and the like because of the government’s inability to allow for us to care for our resources. A forest in my opinion is like a garden and you’ve got to care for it. If you don’t care for it, you leave it to nature and nature will do what it does: boom and bust.”

Stressing the importance for the country to provide cheap energy to its citizens, Santorum blamed the recession not on sub-prime mortgages or the derivatives market but on spiking fuel prices.

“We went into a recession in 2008. People forget why. They thought it was a housing bubble. The housing bubble was caused because of a dramatic spike in energy prices that caused the housing bubble to burst,” Santorum told the audience. “People had to pay so much money to air condition and heat their homes or pay for gasoline that they couldn’t pay their mortgage.”

The nation’s energy policy is a key talking point this election season.

“This is the most anti-American energy administration we have ever had,” Gingrich said. “… You have the highest cost of gasoline in American history. And I think that if you’re an editorial writer at the New York Times and you live in a high-rise in Manhattan and you ride the subway to work, it may not occur to you that for most Americans a high price of gasoline is a real problem.”

Gingrich called Obama’s “all-of-the-above” energy plan “very dangerous and very destructive.” He claimed the need for the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act underscores the EPA’s overreach.

GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney was also in Colorado on Monday, giving speeches in Grand Junction and Centennial. He is scheduled to speak in Loveland on Tuesday morning. Romney, also a proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, looks primed for a big win in Colorado. He leads Republican voters in the state with 40 percent to 26 percent for Rick Santorum, 18 percent for Newt Gingrich, and 12 percent for Ron Paul, according to Public Policy Polling. Paul was in Colorado last week.

Check out this video shot at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden on Monday of Rick Santorum discussing his views on public lands, domestic energy and his problems with public education:

Here, Newt Gingrich discusses U.S. energy policy in Golden where he says, “If you want to measure what our goal is, it is to ensure that no American president ever again bows to a Saudi king …”

Biodilloversity

“The school brought in this company to push liberalism and radical environmentalism,” wrote Paul Gallagher, a Gypsum resident whose niece attends Eagle Valley High School. “My sister and I sat through this almost one-hour of garbage and heard the presentation about ‘climate change,’ a lack of snow in Colorado due to global warming, ‘glaciers melting,’ ‘polar bears’ disappearing, how cow ‘flatulence’ contributes to the problem, how we all should ‘walk or bike somewhere if less than five miles away,’ buy ‘local farmers markets’ produce, the importance of ‘recycling,’ ‘doomsday’ is approaching without taking action, etc. It was very concerning.”

The presentation by Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) aims to increase awareness of global climate change – sometimes using Winter X Games athletes such as Gretchen Bleiler and Seth Wescott.

A record December drought in Colorado’s high country underscored evidence of increasing warming in the Rocky Mountain West – a situation that has led to a widespread mountain pine bark beetle epidemic and mounting susceptibility to massive wildfires. It also took a toll on the state’s ski industry earlier this season.

“Climate science denial has been a really hot topic recently and we’ve faced our fair share of skeptics when trying to book presentations and during their delivery,” acknowledged Kara Muraki, program manager for Alliance for Climate Education. “The science behind our presentation is based entirely on the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report, and we believe that if students have the opportunity to learn the conclusions of 98 percent of the world’s leading climate scientists – no matter what else they hear — it will help to reverse the recent increase in public skepticism about global warming.”

Based on his email, Gallagher won’t be helping to reverse the trend any time soon:

“At the end of the assembly, kids were asked to come onstage if they had an interest in starting a ‘climate change’ group at their school,” he wrote. “I would say two-thirds of the kids went onstage. Not good. I would say brainwashing, scare tactics, lies and peer pressure made them feel obligated to get involved onstage.”

Even the U.S. Department of Defense is preparing for significant military interventions resulting from climate change, including “violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics.”

The Houston Chronicle broke the story last week, when Harvey Rice reported the “long-awaited” study was being held up by the oceanography professor’s concerns over edits by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which had commissioned the study:

“I don’t think there is any question but that their motive is to tone this thing down as it relates to global (climate) change,” Anderson said. “It’s not about the science. It’s all politics.”

The article has several references to climate change but does not say it is caused by humans. However, other references to the impact people have had on the environment were deleted by TCEQ.

TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow gave no reason for the deletions in an e-mail response, saying only that the agency disagreed with information in the article.

“It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it,” she said.

The TCEQ commissioners are appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, and include noted climate-change skeptic Bryan Shaw.

The Texas Observer’s Forrest Wilder, who has covered complaints about the TCEQ for years, called it a “straight-up hatchet job,” and “a new low for the highly-politicized agency,” and wrote that simply following the “track changes” feature in Microsoft Word showed TCEQ employees simply snipping out references to global climate change.

Wednesday, the Chronicle reports Anderson has refused to sign off on the report, forcing TCEQ to abandon the study.

“I’m willing to live with not having it published,” Anderson told the paper. “I refuse to have it published with their deletions.”

According to the Chronicle, Anderson’s colleagues backed him in the conflict with the agency:

Two scientists at the Houston Advanced Research Center backed Anderson. The center has a contract with TCEQ, valued at less than $100,000, to publish The State of the Bay.

Research Center Vice President Jim Lester and scientist Lisa Gonzalez, co-editors for the project, had informed TCEQ they did not want their names associated with the TCEQ version, fearing it would hurt their credibility as scientists.

In Mother Jones last week, Anderson told reporter Kate Sheppard that whether or not the report got out, Texas is going to face dramatic changes to its coastline like those already happening next door:

“Sea level doesn’t just go up in Louisiana. We’re the next in line,” he says. “We are in fact starting to see many of the changes that Louisiana was seeing 20 years ago, yet we still have a state government that refuses to accept this is happening.”

As the planet heats up, forests die. Pine beetles–formerly killed during harsh winters, thrive, turning much of Colorado a dirty brown. As forest die, they trap less carbon dioxide, causing the earth to get warmer still.

In Colorado and southern Wyoming alone, more than four million acres of forest are already under siege by beetles.

It’s a cycle that may be starting to spin out of control, reports today’s New York Times.

From The New York Times:

Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.

From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.

The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.

Scientists say the future habitability of the Earth might well depend on the answer. For, while a majority of the world’s people now live in cities, they depend more than ever on forests, in a way that few of them understand.

The Times reports that scientists have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to prevent catastrophic global deforestation, but that funds and political will are lacking.

“Like any other scheme to improve the human condition, it’s quite precarious because it is so grand in its ambitions,” said William Boyd, a University of Colorado law professor working to salvage the plan.

Boyd is involved in several global initiatives to combat deforestation and global warming.

Natural gas may be a cleaner-burning energy source than coal, but making the switch isn’t likely to slow global warming any time soon, according to a new study in the journal Climatic Change.

Reducing coal use may cut down on carbon dioxide, but its affect on the earth’s warming trend isn’t quite so simple, according to Tom Wigley, a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Among other considerations, methane leaks from gas production and in transmission lines could negate the climate benefit until well into the 22nd Century:

When gas replaces coal there is additional warming out to 2,050 with an assumed leakage rate of 0%, and out to 2,140 if the leakage rate is as high as 10%. The overall effects on global-mean temperature over the 21st century, however, are small.

Just how much methane currently leaks during transmission — or would leak during a massive push to burn more gas — is still an open question. So is methane’s affect on climate change compared to carbon dioxide — a Cornell University study released earlier this year suggested methane was far worse for the climate than old estimates from the U.S. Environmental Protestion Agency had suggested. The American Petroleum Institute, among other industry groups, was highly critical of that method.

In the new study, Wigley uses a more conservative model for methane’s impact on climate change than the Cornell researchers. But the switch from coal to gas — dropping our coal use by 50 percent by 2050, he suggests — would come with a couple of planet-warming chemical side-effects.

For one, somewhat paradoxically, the sulfur dioxide released from burning coal has a cooling effect that’d be lost in a switch to natural gas.

Just how much methane escapes into the atmosphere before being burned is another, less certain, variable, Wigley writes. “Unless leakage rates for new methane can be kept below 2%, substituting gas for coal is not an effective means for reducing the magnitude of future climate change,” he writes in his conclusion. (You can read the study here.)

A study commissioned by the City of Fort Worth suggested improvements in pipe connections to limit methane leakage have been targeted as the prime targets for improving the natural gas industry’s affect on air quality.

As the Los Angeles Times reports today, Wigler considered a range of methane leak rates. Even in a perfect scenario, he found, the switch from coal wouldn’t do much to slow climate change for decades:

Even assuming there is no leakage — unlikely, most would agree — the switch analyzed by Wigley would still add to Earth’s overall average temperature through about 2050. After that, temperatures would fall, but only by a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. If a substantial amount of methane leaks, the warming trend will last until 2140, he found.

Bear in mind, the most widely reviewed studies predict a global average temperature rise of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 under current fossil-fuel consumption rates.

“Relying more on natural gas would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, but it would do little to help solve the climate problem,” said Wigley, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia. “It would be many decades before it would slow down global warming at all, and even then it would just be making a difference around the edges.”

Even before tonight’s jobs speech, conservation groups in Colorado and across the Rocky Mountain West say it’s clear President Barack Obama has chosen polluting industry jobs over other employment sectors, demoralizing the environmental base ahead of the 2012 campaign.

Last week’s decision by the Obama administration to shelve tougher EPA smog standards, coming hard on the heels of the State Department’s nod to the Keystone XL pipeline, has many mainstream environmentalists wondering if young, green voters will turn out for Obama next year the way they did in 2008.

“[The smog decision’s] a huge mistake politically, and I don’t understand it at all,” Dr. Brian Moench, president of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, told the Colorado Independent. “Unless they’re calculating that by doing this they will capture campaign funds from the polluting industry that would have gone to the Republicans, and I don’t even see that as a possibility.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Mary Tuma)

As Republican in Congress, including members of Colorado’s delegation, call for even more regulatory rollbacks for the oil and gas industry to create jobs, polls on the ground in Colorado show voters don’t want to improve the economy at the expense of the environment.

And a new report from Headwaters Economics analyzing federal labor statistics (pdf) finds that the oil and gas industry is doing just fine in the current regulatory environment.

“During this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the energy industry has boomed, adding roughly 10,000 jobs a month, and drilling activity is approaching a 30-year high,” according to the report. “This activity already has increased so quickly this year that the sector is starting to fear shortages of skilled labor and machinery.”

In Colorado, where former Gov. Bill Ritter’s “New Energy Economy” focused on conservation and renewables has in some ways been the sole economic bright spot, observers say that the White House has shown some environmental leadership, but ultimately not nearly enough.

Starting with the climate bill …

Colorado Conservation Voters Executive Director Pete Maysmith cited as a positive Obama’s much tougher CAFE (gas mileage) standards for automakers. Others point to a long list of disappointments dating back to the failure in 2009 of a comprehensive climate bill, saying the administration has basically given back any gains from increased vehicle mileage.

“Since the climate bill in particular or moving forward from there, there has been this clear indication that all too often actions to better protect our air and water and address climate change are not the top priority of this administration and are at risk of being jettisoned away,” Maysmith said.

In an interview with the Colorado Independent on energy topics last spring, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi placed blame on both the Senate and environmentalists for the failure of the Waxman-Markey climate bill that narrowly cleared the House.

“The House passes a bill; the Senate passes a bill. That’s the way it works,” Pelosi said. “They can do something different. It wasn’t theology for us. We always thought there’d be something less coming in from the Senate; we didn’t think there’d be nothing.”

And she added environmentalists should have lobbied the Senate harder. Now those groups are dejected by the missed opportunity that may have set the tone for future setbacks.

“I’ve been very clear to the [conservation] community,” Pelosi said, “They really had to work the Senate a lot harder than they did.”

‘The alternative is much worse’

But while environmentalists may be disaffected by the latest Obama administration actions, front-running Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said during Wednesday night’s GOP primary debate that “the science is not settled on [human-caused climate change]. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet, to me, is just nonsense.”

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman was the only GOP candidate Wednesday night who said Republicans can’t win in 2012 by denying the body of scientific evidence.

“[Perry’s] an environmental clown, so the alternative [to Obama] is much worse,” Utah physician Moench said of the president’s recent decisions. “But it’s going to affect people’s willingness to try and work at the grassroots level, to donate. It will affect turnout to a certain degree and it’s certainly going to have an effect on turnout for younger voters who traditionally are more in tune with environmental concerns.”

Maysmith said the smog ruling in particular appeared to be more of a political decision than an economic one.

“I’d call it a political decision that indicated some lack of willingness to stand by one’s principles in the face of shout radio and the right-wing tea partiers in Congress, and that is a bit mystifying and certainly frustrating,” Maysmith said.

He added it’s ironic that at a time when the Republican Party is regrettably swinging more and more to the right, denying science and becoming increasingly shrill, the White House isn’t standing up for common-sense environmental policy.

“For people who care about our air and our water, many of them are going to look at someone like candidate Perry and think, ‘No way, that’s not an option,’” Maysmith said. “At that exact moment they’re going to look at some of these decisions coming out of the White House and they’re going to inevitably be deeply disappointed in them. And it will have the effect in some instances of depressing energy and enthusiasm for the 2012 campaign.”

Follow David O. Williams on Twitter. ]]> http://coloradoindependent.com/98813/green-voter-anger-at-obama-could-open-door-for-environmental-clown-perry-observers-say/feed 6 http://coloradoindependent.com/98607/as-texas-blazes-roar-udall-says-colorado-not-yet-out-of-wildfire-woods http://coloradoindependent.com/98607/as-texas-blazes-roar-udall-says-colorado-not-yet-out-of-wildfire-woods#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:00:39 +0000 David O. Williams http://coloradoindependent.com/?p=98607 Despite the recent round of wet weather in Colorado – including some snow above 12,000 feet – Colorado politicians and fire officials warned fall can be one of the most active seasons for wildfires. ]]>

Despite the recent round of wet weather in Colorado – including some snow above 12,000 feet – Colorado politicians and fire officials warned fall can be one of the most active seasons for wildfires.

“We shouldn’t let the recent cool weather fool us; fall wildfire season is upon us again, and this year’s extremely dry weather — particularly in drought-stricken southern Colorado — means it’s important to be especially vigilant,” Colorado U.S. Sen. Mark Udall said Tuesday in a release commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Fourmile Canyon Fire near Boulder.

Charred school buses in the wake of Boulder County's Fourmile Canyon Fire (Photo by Eric Peter Abramson, area resident).

“After touring the site last year, I was struck by the fire’s intensity and the heartbreaking loss of property,” Udall said Tuesday. “My thoughts are with the victims of the fire, many of whom are still struggling to recover.”

Gov. John Hickenlooper also warned that the state is still susceptible to devastating wildfires this time of year. Colorado’s Front Range just experienced one of the hottest and driest Augusts on record.

“The Fourmile Canyon Fire in Boulder County, which started on Labor Day last year, is a haunting reminder of the impacts wildfires can have on our natural resources and communities,” Hickenlooper said.

Meanwhile, Texas firefighters are still struggling to cope with the worst wildfires in that state’s history. According to ABC News, more than 1,000 homes have been destroyed and four people have died as winds from Tropical Storm Lee whipped up massive walls of flames over the weekend.

Despite the ongoing disaster, Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s aides told ABC he will participate in tonight’s Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

Scientists warn that extreme drought conditions and weather events will become more common as the planet continues to warm, but Perry has emerged as the GOP frontrunner for the 2012 nomination by casting doubt on global climate change science.

Perry on Tuesday also took a jab at the Obama administration’s response to the fires in his state, meanwhile failing to mention the draconian cuts he and Texas state lawmakers have made to funding for state firefighting.

Follow David O. Williams on Twitter. ]]> http://coloradoindependent.com/98607/as-texas-blazes-roar-udall-says-colorado-not-yet-out-of-wildfire-woods/feed 0 http://coloradoindependent.com/96208/something-stinks-in-the-climate-change-debate http://coloradoindependent.com/96208/something-stinks-in-the-climate-change-debate#comments Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:24:47 +0000 Troy Hooper http://coloradoindependent.com/?p=96208 No wonder global warming has Al Gore so hot under the collar. His harangue against climate change deniers induced a frenzy of conservative chest-pounding last week wherein Fox News and the usual suspects swore his scatological sermon must be a symptom of dementia. They went on to spew the same misleading memes the ex-vice president decried in Aspen.]]>

No wonder global warming has Al Gore so hot under the collar.

His harangue against climate change deniers induced a frenzy of conservative chest-pounding last week wherein Fox News and the usual suspects swore his scatological sermon must be a symptom of dementia. They went on to spew the same misleading memes the ex-vice president decried in Aspen.

Science, however, is on Gore’s side.

Last month was the fourth-warmest July on record in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, noting that the nation remains in severe drought. NOAA found only seven of the lower 48 states did not experience elevated temperatures in July.

Another report NOAA recently released concluded that almost 60 percent of the U.S. shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico is considered “very vulnerable” to sea level rise. Along the coast between Houston, Texas, and Mobile, Ala., an estimated 2,400 miles of major roadway and 246 miles of freight rail lines are at risk of permanent flooding within 50 to 100 years if relative sea level rises 4 feet, according to NOAA.

Beyond the borders, arctic ice continues to slide into the sea. The average extent of arctic sea ice in July reached the lowest level for the month since record-keeping began in 1979 and it is 81,000 square miles below the previous low for the month set in 2007, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports.

Still, not everyone is buying it.

A Rasmussen Reports poll taken July 29-30 showed that 57 percent of respondents believe there is significant disagreement within the scientific community on global warming, up five points from late 2009. Only one in four believes scientists agree on global warming. The other 18 percent aren’t sure. Rasmussen polls are known for their conservative slant.

“The notion that there’s a significant debate about this fundamental view of climate science is just wrong,” Houston Chronicle science reporter Eric Berger wrote last week in reference to the Rasmussen poll. “If you disbelieve me, you should get out and speak with a lot of climate scientists. I have.”

Berger writes that “there are indeed some scientists who don’t buy into the climate models, but there are very few active, publishing scientists who do not believe elevated levels in greenhouse gases from human activities are primarily responsible for rising temperatures during the last century.”

The studies climate change naysayers cite actually do blame the earth’s altering climate on those Gore blasted with barnyard epithets: sunspots and volcanoes; or, they claim, the earth isn’t really warming.

One of the central rallying points for deniers recently has been a report put out by Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Using data from NASA, he concluded the Earth is more efficient in releasing energy than most models used to forecast climate change have led the public to believe.

“He’s taken an incorrect model, he’s tweaked it to match observations, but the conclusions you get from that are not correct,” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, told LiveScience.com when asked about Spencer’s new study. “It makes the skeptics feel good, it irritates the mainstream climate science community, but by this point, the debate over climate policy has nothing to do with science. It’s essentially a debate over the role of government.”

But, as Gore warned, before you step into democratic debate, be prepared to scrape it off your shoe.