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While Congress has been busy creating political theater with what increasingly appears to be a manufactured crisis, the Global Carbon Project reminds us what a real crisis looks like. With the project’s facilitation, a group of scientists from the USA, UK, France and Australia came together to estimate the carbon dioxide emissions from 2007.

Their results have just been released, and they reveal that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the production of cement have increased far beyond what the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change thought possible. The GCP report states,

“The actual emissions growth rate for 2000-2007 exceeded the highest forecast growth rates for the decade 2000-2010 in the emissions scenarios of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (IPCC-SRES). This makes current trends in emissions higher than the worst case IPCC-SRES scenario.”

That 700 billion dollars headed to Wall Street would be better spent creating a sustainable, clean energy infrastructure manufactured right here in the USA. That effort would create huge numbers of jobs, and restore our nation’s manufacturing capabilities - and could help our economy recover from the failures of the marketeers in the big investment firms.

Which team do you think ought to be entrusted with the effort to bring our emissions down? The ticket with the vice presidential candidate who only realized two weeks ago that human beings have anything to do with climate change?

Some might feel unconcerned at the recent research suggesting that global warming will lead to increased hurricane intensity in the years to come. “After all,” they might think, “I don’t live on the Gulf Coast or anywhere near the Atlantic, so what’s the problem?”

Well, I don’t live in those places either. I live in central Ohio, for Pete’s sake. Nonetheless we got hit by the winds of Hurricane Ike yesterday, and they’re telling us that we will be out of power for 4 days. The impact of climate will reach far.

Just a few hours ago, the news came out about the breakup of a 19 square mile ice sheet along the coast of Baffin Island in the North American arctic. The ice sheet, as it wrests free of land, is likely to melt, unable to be reconstituted in the warmer polar climate that has developed at an increasing pace. It’s one more huge chunk of ice that will be replaced by open water, and a lot more material contributing to rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities all over the world.

The global warming that’s causing this catastrophe has itself been fueled by the burning of fossil fuels. Yet, how did the Republicans meeting tonight react to the news of the great ice breakup? They promised more of the same. They pushed for the burning of yet more fossil fuels.

The delegates to the Republican National Convention joined together in one voice tonight to chant “Drill baby, drill!”

Those Republicans are getting ready to drill America even deeper into the hole of dependence on fossil fuels. Will American voters follow them down, or will they have the wisdom to leave the Republicans and their delusional chants in the depths and begin the long climb up and out?

Over the last few years, I’ve learned that bets that underestimate the American people tend to pay off. Sadly, I’m beginning to think that the voters in the USA are in the mood to follow the Republicans even deeper into the darkness.

In the last few years, the American public has come to recognize that global warming is a very serious problem, and that human disregard for the environment, through actions like cutting down forests and burning fossil fuels, is responsible for the growing climate crisis. Even most Republicans have given up their denial and now admit that we have to make serious changes to our environment and energy policy to reduce the impact of the effects of global warming that are now upon us.

Not Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin wants to drag the Republican Party back into the past, and she wants to keep America running on the same old dirty fossil fuel economy that was developed back in the last century.

Sarah Palin still doesn’t admit that human beings are responsible in any way for global warming. She thinks that burning fossil fuels is just fine for the climate.

What’s more, Sarah Palin doesn’t even admit what’s happening in her own back yard, in Alaska. For the second year in a row, ice in the Arctic Ocean is reaching record low levels - a melt off of tremendous proportions that even global warming experts didn’t think would occur until the end of this century. Glaciers are disintegrating, and ice floes are disappearing at an historically unprecedented rate, causing sea levels to rise, and threatening human coastal communities…

…and polar bears. Polar bears hunt on the ice, and if they don’t have ice to hunt on, they don’t get enough to eat. Their hunger makes it more difficult for them to breed, and for adults to survive. Loss of weight among polar bears has been documented, and other arctic marine mammals, such as walrus and ringed seals are in serious trouble as well.

That’s why, after years of illegal delay, the Bush Administration was finally forced to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act earlier this year. However, as Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has filed suit in order to force the polar bear back off the list of threatened animals protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Sarah Palin insists that there isn’t any problem. Science contradicts Palin, but she doesn’t seem interested in what scientific experts have to say on the matter. Sarah Palin thinks that she knows better. That’s the same arrogant attitude of George W. Bush that has led America into disaster.

Sarah Palin denies the climate crisis affecting polar bears for the same reason George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have: Sarah Palin is in the pocket of Big Oil.

Big oil companies want to go drilling for oil in polar bear habitat. That offshore oil drilling would not bring us any gasoline for years, and would only save Americans a few pennies at the pump, but the oil corporations would make huge profits from the additional drilling.

Sarah Palin thinks that what’s good for big oil is good for America. We have seen under George W. Bush that Palin’s idea of what’s good for America is just plain wrong.

The problems that are placing polar bears in danger are the same problems that place Americans, and people around the world in danger. Already, there are wars being fought, such as the conflict in Darfur, because of climate change. Already the American Southwest is dealing with droughts, the American West is facing wildfires on a scale that has never been seen before. Our fisheries are dwindling, our natural resources are endangered.

The climate crisis has begun, and Sarah Palin is not qualified to deal with it. Yet, as a Vice President under the most elderly President in American history, the chances are very good that Sarah Palin would become President herself.

She just isn’t up to the job. The problem with Palin isn’t just inexperience. Sarah Palin also has demonstrated that she is willing to put oil company profits above the good of the American people. Our nation has suffered eight years under that style of failed leadership. We cannot repeat that mistake. Sarah Palin must not become Vice President.

We’re in the same boat with the polar bears. We will suffer the same neglect under Sarah Palin that the polar bears will suffer. As animals, polar bears don’t have a political voice. So, it’s up to us for to speak for the polar bears. That’s why we’re created this t-shirt for the 2008 election: Polar bears against Palin. (Made in the USA, no sweatshop labor involved)

Sarah Palin, the inexperienced small town Alaska politician who has been awkwardly thrust into the place of the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party, has already unsettled many people through her assertion that biological evolution does not take place, and her attempt to push Creationism in public schools. Now it seems that Palin’s attitudes against science are much broader than just a belief in religion would support.

Sarah Palin is among those who have spent years denying that global warming exists. Even now that the proof for climate change is overwhelming, Palin still asserts that human activity has nothing to do with it. She says,

“A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

Why would Sarah Palin deny that global warming is a result of human industrial activity, in spite of the strong science that finds a connection? As much as it is about right wing ideology, it is also about economic convenience. Sarah Palin’s husband works for the oil industry. Sarah Palin has been employed by Big Oil herself.

The politicians of Alaska, Sarah Palin among them, depend upon money from oil companies to prop them up. Big oil opposes action to confront global warming, and so, on their behalf, Sarah Palin opposes action on global warming. Alaska is the Texas of the north, and we all know what it’s been like to have a Texan in the White House. Sarah Palin is in the pocket of Big Oil, and she would keep the White House a House of Oil.

Thanks to A Change in the Wind for bringing this disturbing news about Sarah Palin’s anti-science agenda to our attention.

Plane Stupid is plain genius. Last month, a member of the UK activist group glued himself to the Prime Minister inside 10 Downing Street with the message, “You only have two possible legacies before you leave office: as the first prime minister to take climate change seriously, or the last one not to.”

Today, members of the group took part in a surprise protest at Gatwick Airport. The target of the protest was “short haul” flights - brief airplane flights that consume huge amounts of energy, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, in order to take passengers a short distance that could be easily covered by more efficient forms of transportation, such as train.

The message of Plane Stupid, that frequent air travel has become a grave threat to the natural environment and to human civilization alike, is even more relevant in the US than in the UK. The group’s tactics for successfully grabbing attention through dramatic action are something we Americans would do well to emulate.

The push to give oil corporations the power to drill for oil on offshore rigs has been rhetorically successful, even though the project can never be successful in lowering gasoline prices or significantly increasing the supply of energy available to Americans.

The success has come in the form of distraction. Just a couple of months ago, Americans were focused on energy conservation and reform of the nation’s energy infrastructure to make it more sustainable. Now, that responsible approach has been forgotten, with a new approach determined to keep American going on the same old track of gimme more gas.

A couple of months ago, the impact of burning fossil fuels on climate was at the forefront. The goal was to reduce gasoline consumption. Now, Republicans, right wing Democrats and the oil companies have shifted the debate to suit their drill more to burn more agenda.

Nowhere is this rhetorical victory for petroleum politics more evident in the nation’s Katrinamnesia. Americans have forgotten the immense destruction of offshore oil rigs that took place with Hurricane Katrina just a few years ago. According to the Minerals Management Service in the Bush Administration’s own Department of the Interior, 113 offshore oil platforms were completely destroyed by hurricanes Katrina and Rita (Thanks to Sky Truth for pointing the way to that information). Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil were spilled as a result of that offshore destruction. In total, 6.5 million gallons of crude oil associated with offshore drilling were spilled as a result of the hurricane.

Put more offshore oil drilling platforms along more of America’s coastline, and the risk of platform destruction and massive oil spills from large hurricanes, year in and year out, becomes much, much larger. Hurricane Katrina should have taught Americans once and for all that offshore oil drilling is an unreliable source of energy.

Unfortunately, Katrinamnesia has clouded that lesson. America seems to have forgotten that, thanks to a dependence on offshore drilling and associated coastal refineries, gasoline prices rose between three and four dollars in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

The plan to expand offshore drilling is a plan to repeat that disaster.

Rowan has noted, with some angst, the passing of a bill to create a coin to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the National Aeronautic and Space Adminsitration (NASA). Well, it seems that a lot was going on 50 years ago.

Another commemorative piece of legislation, H.RES.1067, introduced by Representative Joe Courtney, marks the 50th anniversary of the USS Nautilus, a submarine that was the first ocean-going craft to cross the North Pole.

An irony that was not noted in H.RES.1067 is that this year, a boat might be able to cross the North Pole without going beneath the ice. The North Pole is expected to become ice-free for the first time in historical memory.

Today’s update by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) describes “a continuation of dramatic sea ice loss.” How dramatic? Well, some models suggest that the loss will be less dramatic than what occurred last year. Other models suggest that the loss of ice will be more dramatic. We’ll have to wait and see.

Photographs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that the melt at the North Pole has already begun, however. The following picture was taken just a few hours ago. The water it shows is coming from melt that’s taking place from the top. How long before it reaches all the way down to the water below? I’ll keep an eye on the melt’s expansion.

In the meantime, here’s a movie of the North Pole - created by NOAA from a series of photographs taken by another camera at the North Pole between April and June 4th. Sorry, no Santa Claus.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica is larger in area than the state of Connecticut. Until the 1990s, it was stable. In recent years it has shown signs of instability during the summers. Now, in the middle of the Antarctic winter, it shows signs of cracking. Scientists say it is getting ready to disintegrate. Watch the slide show of changes to the Wilkins Ice Shelf just over the past two months. Then wonder what is coming next.

Santa Claus better get a really good wet suit, and children can expect to get only bath toys this Christmas. The International Polar Foundation reports that the geographic North Pole is likely to become ice free this summer.

The winter put on a thicker layer of ice this year than we started out 2007 with, but that ice has already been melted away to comparable levels from 2007 - meaning that melting has been faster than last year.

More sources for finding out about trends in Arctic sea ice:

International Polar Year
Smithsonian Institution Online Arctic Exhibition
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Arctic Theme Page
NOAA Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch Page for Sea Ice

That last site is on an old-fashioned html page that says it’s last been updated in 2001, but it links to up-to-date data showing images of the extent of Arctic sea ice.

It’s an economic opportunity that a 5 year-old would understand, which explains why the Republicans in Congress can’t seem to understand it. Their level of economic understanding seems trapped at the 3 year-old stage of “No! I don’t want to! I don’t like it! Never! No!”

The price of gasoline in America is over 4 dollars per gallon and surging on even higher. Greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles are ruining the quality of life and threatening America’s economy.

The obvious solution: Find more efficient, affordable, cleaner means of transportation, like passenger trains using up-to-date technology and expanded lines to more locations. That’s what the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act will do.

This legislation has great timing, coming right when it’s being reported that Americans are climbing all aboard Amtrak in surging numbers. In business, that kind of behavior is regarded as a screaming sign of a market with great potential for development.

Yet, the Republicans just don’t get it. 186 House Republicans tried to block the bill from even being considered for passage yesterday. Today, over 100 Republicans actually voted against giving Americans exactly what they are clamoring for: Relief from high gasoline prices, an alternative to traffic-clogged, smog ridden cities, and a measure to deal with the increasingly evident present crisis of climate change. These Republicans actually voted against the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act.

Don’t ever let a claim that Republicans have a good sense of business go unanswered again. Answer back with this glaring example of birdbrained business balderdash. The Republicans are so wrapped up in their 20th Century hatred of Amtrak that they can’t see the economic reality that has developed in front of their very eyes.

Two pieces of news from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today reveal the terrible vulnerability of pinnipeds in American waters. First there came the official declaration that the Caribbean monk seal is extinct. You may not think of the Caribbean Sea as a place where seals would live, but that’s because people hunted the Caribbean monk seal without mercy until no more could be found.

The other news from NOAA, not as widely reported, is that a toxin created by algal blooms has been determined to cause significant harm to sea lions. Domoic acid is created by algae, which is eaten by small fish that are in turn eaten by sea lions. Even when sea lions are exposed to domoic acid in small does while in the womb, they develop epileptic seizures and other severe neurological problems later in life as a consequence.

What causes algal blooms? To a large extent, we do. We make fertilizers that then enter coastal waters and feed large algal blooms. NOAA, explaining how algal blooms are triggered in the Great Lakes, reports that the problem “is largely due to poor farming practices such as high use of fertilizers and presence of livestock near water supplies, as well as effluent and run-off from towns and cities near waterways”.

Take note: Almost all runoff eventually reaches the sea. If you use Chemlawn or similar services to make your grass look good for the neighbors, your decision is likely affecting animals like sea lions by contributing to algal blooms.

In addition to making toxins that cripple sea lion brains, these algal blooms often create immense dead zones as they decompose, depriving ocean waters in huge areas of the oxygen that marine animals need to survive.

Sea lions and the Caribbean monk seal aren’t the only pinnipeds in the coastal waters of the USA to have suffered. At the end of last month, ringed, bearded and spotted seals were recommended for protection under the Endangered Species Act. I explained the trouble that ribbon seals are having because of global warming a couple months ago. Ringed seals, bearded seals and spotted seals are having the same problems.

Under the direction of President George W. Bush, the National Marine Fisheries Service has already failed to meet the legal requirements in responding to petitions to protect the ribbon seal. We can expect the same illegal neglect from the Bush Administration for the ringed seals, bearded seals and spotted seals.

Pinnipeds in American waters are suffering from a combination of pollution, habitat degradation due to climate change, and politically-motivated antipathy toward wildlife. These threats are not beyond our control. We can reduce pollution. We can slow down climate change. We can replace anti-wildlife attitudes with appreciation and the political wisdom to recognize that humans cannot prosper while the marine ecosystems of the earth are falling apart.

Of all the states in the USA, Texas has been among the most reluctant to accept the reality of climate change. One more little piece of evidence for climate change finally came to the surface in Texas on Friday - or, more accurately, the surface came to it.

24 years ago, 2 men in a small airplane went missing. No one ever found them or their airplane, until Friday, when two teenagers in a canoe came across the wreckage in Lake Meredith, in northern Texas.

The teenagers could find the airplane, when nobody else had been able to for years and years and years, because there has been one very important change in Lake Meredith over the last 24 years: It has shrunk because an increasing lack of rain in the area - just the sort of climatic change associated with global warming that scientists have been predicting for the lower Midwest and Southwest United States for years.

Lake Meredith is currently at just 8 percent of its previous size.

Blabbery blabbery blabbery goes the corporate press about the new book by George W. Bush’s former Press Secretary Scott McClellan. I honestly don’t understand what the big deal is about the book. In it, McClellan only admits to what we independent liberal writers were trying to get the corporate press to investigate way back in 2002 and 2003. Five years later, this is news? And McClellan’s given credit for breaking it?

If you want a hot report, get one that looks ahead to problems of the future, rather than belatedly getting the news of years past correct. Get the Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3 from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

I know, the report does not have a glamorous name. That importance of the subject matter more than makes up for that. The report summarizes the latest government estimates of the impacts of global warming in the United States in terms of land, water, agriculture and biodiversity.

This is what government scientists are able to publish under the political censorship of the Bush White House, mind you, so it may be on the conservative side. Nonetheless, it’s an important summary of the challenges the United States will soon be facing.

Instead of indulging in another Republican windbag’s attempt to detach himself from the sinking ship of George W. Bush, we can work to keep the rest of our nation afloat.