Dozens of military veterans and an environmental group that explores the national security dimensions of global warming are running an ad in several South Carolina newspapers that defends Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) work on climate change.

The ad is below:

grahamad

Here’s a map of CO2 released from fossil fuels (with red and yellow marking the biggest pollution points), compiled from 2002 data by the Vulcan Project at Purdue University. It’s a map of emissions, which isn’t quite the same as airborne concentrations, but it gives a sense of where pollution happens:

Here is the map:

Alliance Lttr re Disapproval Resolutions

Without 2009 data on the partisan breakdown we can’t say for sure, but as has been the case in other recent polls, much of the downward shift appears to be among Republicans:

There are two reasons why I haven’t had much sleep the past few nights. The first is about three-and-a-half feet tall, wears diapers, has long eyelashes and a dangerously cute smile. It’s our little boy Sebastian. He’s 18 months old and the poor guy is getting three of his molars at the same time. During the daylight hours, all is good. But when the sun goes down and the moon comes up, the howling begins, and his mom can only nurse for so long. A few back-arching, full-throated roars would jolt anyone awake, but lately I’ve found it particularly difficult to get back to sleep. I’m starting a new job. The mind races. I left my post recently as executive director of Rainforest Action Network to become the next executive director of the Sierra Club. I’ll be the sixth director of the Club in its 118-year history, and I’ll be following people like Carl Pope, Mike McCloskey, David Brower, and Club founder John Muir. Gotta be on my game!

Read more here.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce petitioned U.S. EPA yesterday for reconsideration of the agency’s finding that greenhouse gases “endanger” public health and welfare, a determination that sets the stage for broad climate change regulations.

“The Chamber believes that the right way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere is through bipartisan legislation and comprehensive international agreements,” said the chamber’s chief legal officer and general counsel Steven Law in a statement. “The wrong way is through the EPA’s endangerment finding, which triggers Clean Air Act regulation.”

Here is the petition:

document_gw_01

Congress must set a national renewable-power standard and revamp the electric grid to help the burgeoning U.S. wind-energy industry reach its potential and compete globally, governors from 29 states said.

A jumble of state laws should be replaced by a federal edict, according to a report from the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition, which includes California, Florida and Massachusetts. The plan would help spur development and efficiency, which would create jobs, curb greenhouse-gas emissions and reduce dependency on oil imports, the coalition said.

Here is the report:

GWC 2010 Recommendations _FINAL 3-16-10_

First, some back story.

Last week this National Journal article ($) made me worry:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the lone Republican working with Democrats on both immigration and climate change legislation, might walk away from talks on those issues if Senate Democrats use budget reconciliation to pass changes to their healthcare bill in a deal with the House, according to Graham and a leadership aide….

A Senate GOP aide said it was too early to begin worrying that a deal will be struck on a climate bill that would put a price on industrial carbon emissions. But at the same time, aides said stakeholders should consider the impact reconciliation will have on climate legislation and the possibility that the midterm elections could yield more business-friendly Republicans in Congress.

“They should definitely realize there’s not a lot of good reasons to cut a rash deal at this point,” a Republican aide said. “I think they’re going to have a very hard time convincing any Republicans, particularly with reconciliation hanging over their head. It seems like, to me, from a business perspective, they should consider that.”

But since it was National Journal quoting an anonymous Republican aide, I didn’t place much weight in it. Was that a mistake? Could Senator Graham really take such offense to reconciliation that he would scuttle climate talks over it?

Senator Graham emerged last fall as a leading Republican in negotiations on clean energy and climate legislation. While he wasn’t ready to support the Boxer-Kerry bill on the table, he expressed confidence in “a pathway forward … that makes us more energy independent, creates sound environmental policy, promotes job creation and frees our nation from dependency on foreign oil.” In the months that followed, as he was attacked by South Carolina Republicans over and over again, he continued making the case for clean energy. In early January, responding to being censured by a local county Republican party, he shot back: “I do believe in finding common ground to solve hard problems.” As recently as the end of January he was still “committed to finding a new path forward.”

But in late February, the rhetoric took a turn for the worse:

In a private meeting with several environmental leaders on Wednesday, according to participants, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), declared, “Cap-and-trade is dead.”

Then on the March 7th edition of Face the Nation, Graham said (PDF):

We’ve had reconciliation votes but all of them had received bipartisan support, the least was twelve when we did reconciliation with tax cuts. So it is taking a partisan product and making it law.

It isn’t clear whether he was being disingenuous or was just mistaken, but his statement was factually incorrect. Graham was apparently referring to the 2001 tax cuts. But as the Sunlight Foundation has documented, Bush’s 2003 tax cuts were passed through reconciliation on a hyperpartisan 50-50 vote. Whether he was being disingenuous or not, those were harsh words, and they are not encouraging for those of us who have worried all along about the Senator’s ability to negotiate in good-faith.

Graham’s most disturbing comments about reconciliation came on Sunday on ABC’s This Week:

“If they do this, it’s going to poison the well for anything else they would like to achieve this year or thereafter.”

He continued:

“I’ve been working with Lieberman and Kerry, we’ve come a long way on the climate and energy issue,” Graham said. “This is one issue where the president has been great. He’s saying all the right things to give us a chance to become energy independent, clean up the air and create jobs. But when it comes to health care, he’s been tone deaf, he’s been arrogant, and they’re pushing a legislative proposal and a way to do that legislative proposal that’s going to destroy the ability of this country to work together for a very long time. And that’s not necessary.”

Jeromy Symons gets this exactly right:

“Senators shouldn’t squander this opportunity for real energy reform because they are angry on other topics,” he said. “Think where our nation would be if Congress called it quits every time parties fight over one issue. Nothing would ever get done.”

Senator Kerry remains confident in Senator Graham’s interest in proceeding, citing earlier statements the Republican Senator has made. But Senator Graham says a lot of things.

Ezra calls it an empty threat, quipping that “if Graham doesn’t think the well is already poisoned, then I dare him to take a sip from it.” But it isn’t clear to me that Senator Graham is above using this as an excuse to back out of climate negotiations. While talking a relatively good talk most of the time, he’s been working behind the scenes to weaken the legislation as much as possible. And by the looks of things he’s had significant success on that front.

I can’t help but note that Senator Graham initially became interested in climate legislation because of his mentor John McCain. McCain, of course, has long since bailed on climate discussions for plainly political reasons.

Bailing now offers Senator Graham an easy opportunity to accommodate his increasingly anti-science base by pulling the football on the gullible democrats once again.

On Monday Graham warned reporters that the draft legislation he is developing with Senators Kerry and Lieberman may not be public until mid-April. If all goes according to plan, health care reform will be the law of the land by then.

When Democrats pass health care legislation in the next few days, Senator Graham will have a potentially career-defining decision to make. He can take the easy route, the predictable path, by joining Republicans in an orchestrated tantrum and an attempt to completely shut down the government.  Or he can do what he knows is right and continue working for clean energy legislation that will create jobs, reduce pollution and improve our national security. We’re going to find out what Senator Graham is made of very soon.

Update — Digby points out that Graham is negotiating in bad faith on immigration reform as well.

Update 2 — More on GOP hypocrisy on reconciliation from Matt Yglesias and Steve Benen.

Via Framing Science, this Stanford study (PDF) shows that the decline in concern regarding global warming some polls are finding is not entirely accurate.

Here is a video of Professor Krosnick discussing the survey:

Separately, an international survey of 9,000 people in 22 countries had the following findings:

• 83 per cent are concerned by climate change and 80 percent by the level of local air pollution.
• 77 percent are concerned or very concerned about their country’s reliance on other countries providing oil and gas.
• 89 percent think it important or very important to reduce their country’s reliance on fossil fuels.

About 16% of the respondents were from the United States.

And yet another Gallup poll shows Republicans as outliers in terms of understanding environmental issues. While Democrats and Independents think the quality of the environment has improved since Barack Obama took office, Republicans aren’t so sure:

Nobel Prize-winning economists and scientists will deliver a letter to the U.S. Senate today, urging lawmakers to require immediate cuts in global warming emissions. The letter was signed by more than 2,000 prominent U.S. economists and climate scientists, including eight Nobel laureates, 32 National Academy of Sciences members, 11 MacArthur “genius award” winners, and three National Medal of Science recipients.

“The nation’s leading scientists and economists have joined together to tell policymakers we agree about the urgency of addressing climate change now,” said James McCarthy, one of the letter’s organizers and a biological oceanography professor at Harvard University. “The bad news is the science of climate change is indisputable. The good news is we can cost-effectively cut the emissions that are causing it.”

Here is the letter:

scientists-and-economists-10

Feingold.Climate _ Energy Letter to Reid.March 12.2010

Industrial emissions account for a third of this country’s greenhouses gases, and freezing the government’s ability to regulate them makes no sense. There is no guarantee that Congress will produce a broad bill. And even if it does, what is the harm in requiring power plants and other industrial facilities to make near-term improvements in efficiency, or switch to less-polluting fuels?

These senators seem to have bought the hype, spun by industry, that the E.P.A. will run amok. This is not the way we read the intentions of the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa Jackson, who has promised that whatever regulations she proposes will be gradual, cost-effective and affect only the largest facilities.

Nor is it the way we read Congress’s responsibility to the country. That is to address the very real danger of climate change, not deny the government the tools it needs — and legally has — to fight it.

The fact that the thinking behind Murkowski and Rockefeller’s efforts comes directly from polluting industries is an important point, and one that can’t be repeated enough as far as I’m concerned.

Here is the National Association of Manufacturers:

The EPA needs to slow down and let Congress handle this issue.

Here is Senator Rockefeller on the day he introduced the Stationary Sources Regulations Delay Act:

This legislation will issue a two year suspension on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources—giving Congress the time it needs to address an issue as complicated and expansive as our energy future. Congress, not the EPA, must be the ideal decision-maker on such a challenging issue.

The Times piece is worth reading in full.

Today the Senate Energy Committee will begin debating a weatherization bill known as Home Star that aims to make American homes more energy efficient, while creating thousands of American jobs in the process. Home Star has the potential to significantly reduce residential energy consumption, saving consumers almost $10 billion over the next ten years, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to the removal of more than 600,000 cars from American highways.

Even more importantly given the state of our economy, the legislation is projected to create 168,000 local jobs in communities all across the country.  That, more than anything else, is what Americans urgent want, particularly the people who have been hardest hit by the tough economic times – poor people and people of color.

While job creation is the consensus number one national priority at the moment, global climate change threatens not only the long-term health of the planet but our economic viability as well. We believe that the solution to both these crucial problems is a clean energy economy that creates million of green jobs that do not harm the planet. Home Star moves us in the right direction. And it is exactly the kind of innovative thinking and leadership that the American people want.

That was evident this week in the results of a survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies which found that African Americans — who as a group were disproportionately impacted by the recession — said they were willing to pay more for clean energy in order to combat global warming.

During the last three weeks of November 2009, The Joint Center, a Washington think tank focused on African American issues, surveyed 500 black adults in each of four states — Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri and South Carolina. By considerable majorities in each state [See Table 6 of Survey], they said global warming was a major or moderate problem and that they were willing to pay an extra $10 each month on their electric bill if it would help fight global warming.

All we need now is leadership. Home Star is a small but significant step in the right direction.

Washington these days is spending a lot of time obsessing over its own gridlock, with each party blaming the other for the lack of action on issues critical to the American people. The completely broken process on health care reform stands as the prime example.

Outside of Washington however, the only concern is the ragged state of the job market and what is being done to fix it. Congress needs to pass a comprehensive jobs bill in order to further stimulate the economy, and that bill needs to include provisions that direct both investments and hiring to the people and communities where they are most needed. As we continue to debate the size and shape of such a jobs bill, Home Star is a good first step that can quickly generate jobs, many of them in low-income neighborhoods, and boost appliance sales.

Home Star, and the larger question of job creation, gives Washington a chance to break out of the current cycle of gridlock, recrimination and failure and do something for the American people at a time when we urgently need the government to be aggressively working on our most urgent interests.

Home Star will help three million American families retrofit their homes to make them more energy efficient, and will save those consumers as much as $9.5 billion over ten years. The program dedicates $200 million to provide access to low-interest financing for homeowners to weatherize their homes or buy new, more energy efficient appliances.

In addition, the majority of the goods used for home weatherization are made in the U.S., and as a result the program will also boost domestic production in the building materials manufacturing sector. This sector is operating at less than 60 percent of capacity today, with an unemployment rate of almost 25 percent.

The country needs the economic jolt that Home Star can provide and Congress needs to rise to the occasion and pass it as soon as possible. If it gets to the President’s desk he is sure to sign it. Last week in Georgia he laid out the stakes around Home Star: “We know it will make our economy less dependent on fossil fuels, helping to protect the planet for future generations,” he said. “But I want to emphasize that Home Star will also create business and spur hiring up and down the economy.”

We are for that.

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the CEO of Green For All

Multiple updates at bottom of post.

Newly released Gallup polling seems to show a sharp drop in the percentage of Americans who know about, are concerned about and understand the threat of global warming.

The piece leads with a graph showing a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans who think the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated:

When I saw this I immediately assumed the increase was due to the changing opinions of Republicans, and did not reflect a general trend within the broader population. As Joseph Romm has demonstrated, the GOP’s understanding of climate science has been on a steady decline for years. More evidence of this here and here.

In the piece, Gallup notes that “evidence from last year showed that the issue of global warming was becoming heavily partisan in nature, and it may be that the continuing doubts about global warming put forth by conservatives and others are having an effect.” I’ll say.

Gallup has provided EnviroKnow with the full cross-tabs, which are available below. To illustrate the fact that the shifts shown in the poll are largely partisan in nature, I’ve produced a series of graphs based on the cross-tabs.

The fact that an equal number of Republicans (31%) believe that the effects of climate change have already begun as believe the effects will never happen is an excellent display of the schizophrenia of the Republican position on the issue.

Reasonable people can disagree on policy solutions for dealing with problems we face as a society. But the Republican party is playing a different game entirely. Republicans and conservative thought-leaders — at the behest of the corporate polluters who bankroll their campaigns — have made a conscious decision to deny the science in order to advance their political agenda. Put simply, they seem to think they are entitled to their own facts. Unfortunately for them, and ultimately for the rest of us as well, physics doesn’t give a damn about politics.

Here are the full cross-tabs:

100311_Global_Warming_byParty

Late Update: Gallup runs a piece with a similar angle to this one:

Americans are less likely than now (50%) they were two years ago (61%) to believe the effects of global warming are already occurring. This shift is most evident among political conservatives, 30% of whom believe the effects are already happening, down from 50% two years ago. There has been essentially no change in liberals’ views over this time.

Kate Sheppard isn’t worried:

I’m not going to get too bent out of shape about this new poll, as Americans have been confused about climate for a quite a while, and at the same time, they’ve grown more supportive of efforts to address it.

Aaron Weiner weighs in:

How do we account for these rapid shifts in opinion? The most obvious explanation is that environmental concerns have grown much more politicized in recent years, and particularly in the past year. What was once a broad moral and scientific issue is now a centerpiece of the Democrats’ legislative agenda. The percentage of Americans expressing a belief in man-made climate change now correlates loosely with the level of support for the president, while the percentage expressing skepticism is in line with opposition to Democrats in Washington.

More on this from Kate Mackenzie at Financial Times and Brian Merchant at Treehugger.

A mostly Republican group of 20 state and territorial governors is urging Congress to block EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

A letter Wednesday from the governors – 18 Republicans and two Democrats – to House and Senate leaders alleges that planned EPA rules to limit heat-trapping emissions would harm their state economies.

“We feel compelled to guard against a regulatory approach that would increase the cost of electricity and gasoline prices, manufactured products, and ultimately harm the competitiveness of the U.S. economy,” states the letter to Democratic and GOP leadership.

The letter is below:

govsletter

“I might. I’m looking at it. I think it’s a reasonable thing to do,” the North Dakota Democrat told reporters this morning after speaking at an energy efficiency conference on the Hill.

Senator Rockefeller’s legislation can be viewed here.

The target of this ad is the Obama administration’s effort to remove $36 billion in loopholes and subsidies for the oil industry. As it turns out, the “Americans” presented in the ad are stock photos from Getty Images

The ad is below, and you can see the stock images Brad pulled from Getty at The Wonk Room.

In a March 5 letter to Kerry – who is playing a leading role in Senate climate negotiations – Levin calls for a delay of at least 10 years before industrial plants face regulations. Levin argues that a further delay should be provided “if important trade provisions to assure a level playing field are not included and fully implemented.”

Levin also argues for a national standard for emissions from cars and trucks that would prevent states from adopting different rules.

Here is the letter:

levin

Here is the analysis:

Jobs_Analysis_0309

On March 5, the state Senate approved a measure to increase Colorado’s renewable energy standard (RES) to 30% by 2020, and on March 8th, the House finalized the bill, sending it to Gov. Bill Ritter for his signature.

The legislation confirms Colorado’s leadership in nurturing the development of clean, renewable energy just six years after voters approved the state’s first RES – 10% by 2015. In 2006 the state legislature doubled the RES to 20% by 2020, and with enactment of the latest measure only California will have a set a more ambitious state requirement than Colorado, 33% by 2020.

Here is the legislation:

1001_rer

That is accurate, but it doesn’t get at the most striking data.  The most important finding in the survey is the fact that clean energy and mass transit investments are vastly more popular than nuclear investments and offshore drilling.

Here is how Pew presents the data (Figure 1):

As a mini-case study on how informational graphics can add significant meaning to this sort of data, I’ve created a few simple charts.

This chart (Figure 2) shows the approval and disapproval numbers for the four policy options:

And this chart (Figure 3) shows the net approval numbers for the four policy options:

Presenting the information in text only format, as Pew chose to do in Figure 1, leaves the reader to their own devices to identify the most compelling data.  While the data is technically accurate, it fails to bring the meaning of the data to the forefront.  Pew’s accompanying analysis of the polling data also somehow fails to identify the massive gap in net approval for the policies they surveyed.

Creating a simple chart (Figure 2) based on the data itself adds significant value to the presentation of the data, especially for the casual reader.  The reader can tell at a glance that clean energy investments are significantly more popular than polluting energy sources, and that unpopularity follows the opposite pattern.

Going one step further and doing simple arithmetic to determine the net approval for each of the policies in the survey, as I’ve done with Figure 3, brings the most striking data to the forefront.  The fact that more than 50% of Americans support a variety of policies to produce-more or consume-less energy is not, in itself, especially meaningful.  But the fact that the net approval for some of these policies is 40-60%, while it is barely 10% for others, is fairly compelling.

Naomi Oreskes’ upcoming book, Merchants of Doubt, explains “the troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda.”

The prolific UC San Diego professor discusses the history of both our understanding of human-caused global warming and the anti-science disinformation campaign in this terrific talk from last week.