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Climate change is having a steroidal effect on extreme weather. A summer featuring the hottest July on record in the continental United States punctuated a series of costly and deadly weather events.

This week, we released a new report, “Going to Extremes: Climate Change and the Increasing Risk of Weather Disasters” [PDF]. The report looks at the impacts of 2012’s record-breaking heat on agriculture, wildfires, storms, and water levels. The report found the links between extreme weather and climate to be abundant, robust, and well-documented in peer-reviewed scientific studies.

Here are a few highlights from our report:

• Wildfires: This year, wildfires burned more than 8.6 million acres, an area the size of New Jersey and Connecticut combined.

• Drought: This summer, more than half of the counties in the United States have been designated disaster zones. The 2012 drought is on par with the worst months from the multi-year droughts of the Dust Bowl era.

• Record temperature: August 2012 was the 330th consecutive month with global temperatures above the 20th century average. There has not been a single month cooler than the 20th century global average since February 1985.

• Sea ice melt: Arctic sea ice coverage shrank to a record low 1.32 million square miles, 18 percent below the previous record set in 2007.

For decades, we have been fighting for a cleaner, safer environment — a future where our children and grandchildren never have to worry about the air they breathe or the water they drink.

In this Congress, we have witnessed an all-out assault on the environment and the proliferation of polluter giveaways. While Mitt Romney jokes about the dangers of global warming, his Republican allies in the House have voted more than 300 times to undermine environmental protections during the last 18 months.

Carbon pollution is mixing a deadly cocktail of heat and extreme weather that is costing lives and billions of dollars in damages. Natural disasters in 2011 resulted in the most costly toll in history — $154 billion worth of worldwide losses from floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, and other extreme weather events. But the Republican response to this threat has been to deny the science and block action.

While a strategy of denial and delay may benefit polluters, it’s not what the American people want their Congress to be doing. A recent poll from the Civil Society Institute [PDF] indicated that 81 percent of Americans are concerned about “increased drought” and extreme weather events. Clearly, now is the time for climate action. It’s what the planet needs and it’s what the public wants. We must create a sea change in Congress before we fall victim to sea rise.

Please follow us on Twitter for breaking news and information in the battle against polluters: @MarkeyMemo and @WaxmanClimate.

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Rep. Ed Markey addresses a Union of Concerned Scientists symposium. (Photo by Tim McDonnell.)

In these first days of autumn, temperatures are finally starting to break after the country’s third-hottest summer on record. But meanwhile, most of the country is still locked in terrible drought, rebuilding after wildfires, or drying out after Hurricane Issac. And after endless calls from scientists and signs that the public is shifting on climate change in response to extreme weather, climate-minded Democrats are seeing an opportunity to lampoon House Republicans as climate skeptics in the runup to November’s general election.

Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the legislators behind Congress’ first (and failed) big stab at carbon pricing legislation, yesterday released a study that lays out the case for why global warming is a predictor of more severe and frequent weather disasters. A press release for the study slammed Republicans as responding to extreme weather by taking steps to “deny science and block action,” indicating that House Democrats have embraced climate change as wedge issue.

There’s little that’s groundbreaking in the study, which is built largely around preexisting data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But after this summer’s freakish weather, and with one presidential candidate for whom climate change is a punchline, Markey said he is seeking to gain an acknowledgement in Congress that the weather we now see as extreme is likely to become normal. He’s tried to make this case once before, in the short-lived Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which was killed by House Republicans in 2010.

Despite the overtly political nature of the study’s debut, Markey said his goal is to reprioritize science over politics in the congressional debate about climate change.

“People know that something is not quite right about the weather,” he said. “Science is helping the public connect the dots between global warming and extreme weather.”

For a public — and its elected officials — with notoriously short attention spans, there can be one good thing about extreme weather: In August, a Yale poll found that heat waves, droughts, floods, and the like help people come to grips with the realities of climate change. That message can even hit home for climate skeptics on the right, Columbia University Earth Institute Director Jeffery Sachs said on Monday at a Climate Week NYC event.

“If Romney wins, [climate change] won’t come back until 2016, except for whatever disasters we see before then,” Sachs said.

Jeff Sharp, a spokesman for Democrats in the House Natural Resources Committee, of which Markey is the ranking member, said the goal of the report is to keep the issue on the table at a time when it is largely ignored, particularly by Republicans. A spokesperson for Republican committee member Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) did not return a request for comment.

Extreme weather “is something that Congress used to work on,” Sharp said. “We hope to get Congress focused on it again.”

This story was produced by Mother Jones as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

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Alison with Spot the pig (Photo by Jim Brett.)

At first blush, Alison Gannett’s sacrifices in the name of fighting global climate change don’t seem all that sacrificial. In 2001, the world champion extreme freeskier gave up helicopter skiing. She sold her snowmobile in 2005. Several years ago, she rejected a lucrative contract with Crocs because of the shoe company’s questionable environmental practices. (She kept her contract with the more sustainable Keen Footwear.) Just recently she turned down a photo shoot in the Alps because the flight over the pond was too much for her carbon footprint to bear.

Go ahead, roll your eyes. (Oh muffin…no heliskiing??) Then take note: Gannett walks the walk when it comes to living green. She and her husband grow their own food on an earth-friendly farm, and she’s battled to bring sustainable eats to residents in her rural corner of Colorado. Gannett has also leveraged her personal experience into a business that helps individuals and corporations — including a few of her athletic sponsors — reduce their energy consumption by up to 50 percent.

Hers is a story of how a fun hog became a climate activist in order to protect the thing she loves most: winter.

Gannett delivers roughly 250 keynote addresses each year (many, it should be noted, via Skype — no air travel required). Her talks start with a jaw-dropping slideshow of her exploits shredding some of the world’s most extreme slopes. Then she extolls all things winter. Just when you think she’s going to bro down and brag about bagging some sick peak in Alaska, she drops the hammer.

“I’m here because I want to save our snow,” Gannett says. “And what is snow? Water. And water is one of the most precious and endangered resources.”

Alison jumping cliff in Colorado (Photo by Dave Wright.)

That’s when Gannett shifts into energy wonk mode. Specifically, she talks about how to analyze your (or your organization’s) energy consumption and carbon emissions. Then she offers strategies to reduce carbon footprints and save money.

Some of her solutions you’ve heard before: “LED light bulbs are a slam dunk,” Gannett says. “Now they’re available and affordable at places like Home Depot, and each bulb can save $130, and is 79 percent more efficient than a standard bulb.”

She tells homeowners to call their local utility company for a free blower-door test and infrared scan, and to use the results to do their own caulking and foaming, which reduce the need for energy-intensive air conditioning and heating.

“Alison takes what can be a terribly complex subject and simplifies it in a 75-minute presentation,” says Sam Mix, outdoor marketing manager at Osprey Packs, one of her sponsors. “She makes a convincing case that small, individual actions can make a big difference.”

But don’t expect to hear Gannett encouraging organizations to plaster their roofs with solar panels or buy every employee a Prius. Those are expensive actions that, she argues, don’t always translate into a lower carbon footprint. (She built her own plug-in electric SUV in 2005, but when she ran the numbers, realized the vehicle and its solar charger massively increased her carbon footprint.) And she’s convinced that most people will only change their habits when there’s a financial incentive.

“I want to write a book called I Don’t Give a Shit About Climate Change,” Gannett says. “Companies can be more profitable by reducing waste and reducing energy use. Period.”

In truth, Gannett really, really gives a shit about climate change. It’s that concern that inspired the jet setting pro skier to start the Office for Resource Efficiency in 2004 with the goal of improving energy and resource efficiency in homes and businesses around her then-hometown of Crested Butte, Colo. In 2006, she helped launch a nonprofit called the Save Our Snow Foundation, which consults with large corporations, including Keen and Osprey, on how to reduce resource consumption.

In 2009, after uncovering some ugly truths about industrial organic agriculture — particularly the lax regulations governing the industry and the amount of energy consumed to grow and ship certified organic food to places like Crested Butte — Gannett started an online farmers market called localfarmsfirst.org for farmers within 100 miles of the Gunnison Valley. The next year, she relocated to a rural homestead, where she and her husband grow a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, and meat — all by following an integrated farming model and without using pesticides.

All this has given Gannett even more fodder for her speaking events.

“I can use that as an inspirational platform,” she says. “That’s a lot better than being preachy — that’s just not an effective way to change human behavior.”

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Now that’s a good idea! (Photo by Shutterstock.)

A new insurgent force has joined the climate wars: planet Earth.

This summer, she’s blanketed two-thirds of the country in drought; turned New Mexico and Colorado into blazing infernos; crumbled roads in Alaska and Texas with record-breaking temperatures; and, in biblical fashion, shut down a nuclear plant by clogging cooling pipes with dead fish.

Armed with an arsenal of extreme weather, the earth has taken to the battlefield and single-handedly trounced the climate deniers by convincing an overwhelming number of Americans that climate change is a real and imminent threat. Texas, the axis of Big Oil, experienced one of the largest opinion shifts in the nation, with belief in climate change climbing 13 percentage points from March to July. Even more stunning, 77 percent of Americans now believe the government should limit the amount of carbon dioxide that businesses can emit.

After decades of climate stalemate, the earth roared and people listened. Of course, Americans are fickle — concern about climate change will surely wax and wane. But the Earth’s decision to usher in the climate crisis a century ahead of schedule fundamentally changes the dynamics of the climate wars.

If this summer is any indication, it’s looking like we’re heading into an era shaped less by politicians and more by floods, hurricanes, and droughts. In the wake of each extreme weather event, long-standing political frames and alliances will begin to fracture as distraught — and increasingly angry — voters across the political spectrum demand action. Calls for smaller government, long the rallying cry of conservatives, will resonate less and less with farmers bankrupted by drought, wealthy voters who lose their homes to fire, and shoreline neighborhoods wiped out by hurricanes. Because bad weather is nonpartisan, the age of small government may be over for whole range of constituencies.

And as Americans begin to experience climate change in economic rather than environmental terms, the fossil-fuel industry’s jobs-vs.-environment frame will slowly lose potency. We’ve already seen unemployment spike along the path of storms, state budgets drained by infrastructure repair, and food and electricity prices driven up by drought. As the economic impacts pile up, climate change will emerge as the real “job killer.”

Political elites understand that crisis breeds change. During the financial collapse, Rahm Emanuel famously quipped, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Recall how both parties emerged as socialists overnight, nationalizing huge swaths of the banking sector (while most progressives stood idly by). If the Earth has indeed decided to disrupt politics-as-usual, this is the opportunity for climate activists to step into the breach.

Those concerned about water resources have already begun turning the drought into possibility. In his recent New York Times op-ed entitled “Don’t Waste the Drought,” journalist Charles Fishman writes, “We’re in the worst drought in the United States since the 1950s, and we’re wasting it.” We have an “opportunity to tackle long-ignored water problems and to reimagine how we manage, use and even think about water.”

Climate activists have been slower to respond. Some groups have begun to pivot away from their “don’t talk about climate change” strategy and are now encouraging the public to connect the dots between extreme weather and greenhouse gas emissions, but if we are serious about saving the planet — and its people — we need to be bolder. Here are four modest proposals for organizing in the age of extreme weather:

• Create a rapid-response network: With state budgets shrinking, first responders being laid off, and social services being cut, communities affected by climate change will increasingly be left to fend for themselves. Politically neutral groups — ranging from the Red Cross to the United Way — work to fill the gap by providing emergency services and other relief at the community level. But there is also a long tradition of unions, civil-rights organizations, progressive churches, and left political parties organizing similar relief efforts. The climate movement could create a national network charged with providing direct aid and services in damaged areas. This might include trained teams of activists to coordinate on-the-ground disaster relief, a national database of volunteers categorized by skill and region, and grassroots fundraising tools to raise money from thousands of small donors. But unlike the Red Cross, our strategy is to build political power, not just provide short-term relief. So our disaster plan also needs an organizing plan. On-the-ground local networks of grassroots groups, labor unions, students, and others need to be ready to frame the debate, organize town-hall meetings, knock on doors, and pressure politicians. Our goal is to help people in crisis, but also help them understand that to save their lives and livelihoods, we need to come together to defeat the enemies of the planet.

• Pre-disaster community-labor agreements: In places like California and New York, community-labor agreements have been used to ensure that poor and working-class people benefit from large private and public construction projects, both in terms of targeted hiring requirements and job quality. Extreme weather events require massive rebuilding efforts that could put the unemployed back to work. Before the storms hit, the climate movement needs to team up with labor and community groups to negotiate pre-disaster community-labor project agreements with state and local officials to ensure reconstruction jobs are union jobs and open up new opportunities for low-income people. Beyond job creation, these agreements could include a wide range of community benefits, including investment in affordable housing, green building requirements, and mechanisms for community involvement in development plans.

• Develop an alternative economic program: Whether it’s the solar company Sungevity, whose revenues grew by a factor of eight in 2010 and doubled again in 2011, or the just-transition program for coal workers in Washington state, all around the country the climate movement is hard at work turning the promise of a green economy into reality. It’s time to take these experiments and prepare a robust alternative for communities damaged by extreme weather. After Katrina, developers swooped in with their wish lists for new casinos and luxury condos while progressives scrambled to paste together alternatives of their own. In the future, we need to be ready to present storm-torn regions with a full-blown green alternative economic program. Elements of such a program could include green development banks; environmental-restoration jobs programs; new public transportation systems to reorganize metropolitan regions on a more sustainable basis; and new energy systems based on conservation and renewables. At the same time, the climate movement needs its own version of the conservative Koch brothers’ ALEC to prepare model legislation, talking points, and other resources for state and local legislators trying to rebuild their communities.

• Build a broad-based climate movement: Now is our chance to make the climate movement an everybody movement. The upside of the early arrival of the climate crisis is that it will affect every segment of the population, thereby opening up the opportunity for activists to develop new organizing strategies. Many of the constituencies who have had little interest in the environmental movement — ranging from the poor and working class to small business people and veterans — will increasingly have a stake in mitigating climate change as disaster strikes. This means shifting our organizing focus from college campuses and liberal bastions like San Francisco to union halls, low-income neighborhoods, small business associations, and other areas previously ignored by the climate movement.

Maybe the bad weather has arrived just in time. For the last few decades, the possibility of addressing the climate crisis was limited by a political climate governed by polls and election results. But the earth has changed the rules of the game. While politicians debate modest technical fixes, ordinary people left desperate by floods, fires, droughts, and other disasters will increasingly demand action. If the climate movement prepares now, each disaster opens an opportunity to advance new organizing strategies and alternative agendas. Out of crisis we can forge a better future. In an era of extreme weather, what appears unrealistic and radical before a storm may well appear as common-sense reform in its wake.

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Smoking causes cancer. Carbon pollution causes extreme weather.

It really doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

We dump billions of tons of carbon pollution into the atmosphere each year. As a result, the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 40 percent. Excess carbon dioxide traps excess heat in the atmosphere. Excess heat causes extreme heat waves, droughts, and storms.

And that’s what we have been seeing. In June alone, 170 all-time high temperature records were broken or tied in the United States, and more than 24,000 daily high temperature records have been broken so far this year. If the climate weren’t changing, we would expect to see about the same number of record highs and record lows set each year due to random fluctuations. That’s what we were seeing 50 years ago, but during the last decade there were twice as many record highs as record lows. So far this year the ratio has been 10 to 1.

This year’s extreme weather follows last year’s. The last 12 months were the hottest on record for the United States. Texas saw its hottest and driest summer on record in 2011 by a wide margin, and research published this week [PDF] shows that carbon pollution dramatically increased the probability of such extreme heat and drought.

Faced with similar information about the carcinogens in cigarette smoke, the mechanism by which these carcinogens cause genetic mutations, and the statistical relationship between smoking and cancer, the Surgeon General says that smoking causes cancer. Of course that doesn’t mean that every individual case of cancer experienced by a smoker can be definitively attributed to smoking. But the Surgeon General does not feel compelled to say that every time she says that smoking causes cancer. And journalists don’t feel compelled to include that caveat every time they write an article about the health toll of smoking.

The Surgeon General’s warning hasn’t always been this clear. In 1966, when cigarette packages were first required to carry a warning, the package said “Cigarette Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health.” A few years ago a similarly tepid warning may have been appropriate for carbon pollution. Not anymore.

The data are in. It’s time for scientists and journalists to just say it: Carbon pollution causes extreme weather.

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Photo by Tom Woodward.

Things are looking bleak for corn farmers in the Midwest. Drought conditions and above-average temperatures are likely to continue for some time and now even soybeans — corn’s sister commodity — are succumbing to the weather. The economic implications for the entire Midwest — and not just farmers — are dire.

Not that this is entirely unexpected. Experts have been warning commodity farmers for years that a changing climate will lead to exactly these kinds of devastating conditions in the nation’s heartland.

And, yes, I agree with David Roberts, who says it’s time to dispense with “climate disclaimers,” i.e. the “well, gee, we don’t really know” qualifications about the relationship between climate change and these kinds of weather events. After all, as Grist reported recently, the government’s National Climatic Data Center calculated that if the climate weren’t warming, we wouldn’t expect to see another period as hot as the last 13 months have been until the year 124,652. Does anyone really believe that we’re experiencing “100,000-year” warmth? Me neither.

There’s also the effect the heat and drought are having on food prices; Bloomberg Businessweek reports that prices on grocery store shelves are already on the rise:

In May, retail prices of boneless hams, ground beef and cheese in the U.S. were close to all-time highs set earlier this year, while chicken breast jumped more than 12 percent during the first five months of the year, government data show.

“When people look at rising prices for hamburger, butter, eggs and other protein sources from higher corn costs, that’s when more money ends up in the food basket,” said Minneapolis- based Michael Swanson, a senior agricultural economist at Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. farm lender. “We were hoping for a break, and we aren’t going to get it.”

But it’s also worth considering what’s going on in the Midwest in light of today’s markup of the House Agriculture Committee’s draft of the new farm bill. While I reported on the outrageous cuts to food stamps in the House version last week, I didn’t get a chance to review the equally outrageous, effectively unrestricted expansion of crop insurance included in the bill. As the Environmental Working Group summed it up, the committee draft “would give unlimited taxpayer dollars to farmers who are already making record profits and less support to hungry kids who depend on federal assistance for food.”

As it is, the payouts to farmers for the likely crop losses will be enormous. In fact, claims are already starting to roll in. In commodity crop states like Iowa, upwards of 90 percent of the corn and soy crops are covered by insurance — with an additional federal agricultural disaster relief program backstopping the big losses from these kinds of weather events.

On the one hand, you could argue that this kind of thing is exactly what these programs were designed to do — protect farmers from natural disasters. But as climate scientists are (finally) loudly proclaiming, the climate future is now. Or, as an atmospheric scientist put it to the Associated Press in reference to this summer’s extreme weather, “This is what global warming looks like.”

In other words, the only groups acting like this weather is a fluke are the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), insurance companies, and the owners of big farms. Because even after this year’s losses and the attendant spike in grain prices (in fact, they’re already spiking), the system is designed to encourage farmers to plant as much or more of the same crops next year as they did this year, which already saw the largest planted acreage in over a half century. And thus are we set up for a repeat experience, whether it’s next year, the year after, or a few years down the road.

Tom Philpott at Mother Jones observed that for all Big Ag’s talk of technological solutions for managing extreme weather, research [PDF] shows that the most promising strategies come from organic practices, which focus on building soil health and resiliency.

As Philpott said, “a climate-ready agriculture system will not likely arrive gift-wrapped in the form of a silver-bullet technology from the ag-biotech industry,” but will come to pass because farmers finally turn their backs on the chemically intensive monocropping practices of modern industrial agriculture.

Skeptics can roll their eyes until they fall out of their heads. But it’s impossible to look at the parched fields of Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio with their drought-induced (two-feet-deep!) crevasses, watch the seemingly annual mega-heat waves roll across the plains, and maintain that it’s a good idea to pay out billions of dollars worth of insurance policies just so that farmers can try again next year.

Yet that’s exactly what the new farm bill will encourage commodity farmers to do. It’s understandable that individual farmers would want to chalk this up to a bad year and hope for better weather. But the USDA needs to recognize that the weather patterns which gave rise to the Corn (and Soy) Belt of the Midwest have permanently changed. And farming needs to change with them.

Persistent drought isn’t here to stay in the Midwest (though that is the future for the southwestern U.S. circa 2050) but extreme weather probably is. And it’s awfully hard to move agriculture in the right direction when the USDA — with the enthusiastic endorsement of farm-state representatives in the House and Senate — wants to throw billions upon billions of dollars at farmers to stay a failing course.

Filed under: Climate Change, Farm Bill, Food

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by Stephen Lacey.

Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

Mainstream news outlets spent a lot of time in 2011 covering the record-breaking year for extreme weather in the U.S. But only a few of them spent much time exploring the link between those events and global warming.

So PBS deserves a special mention for a segment that aired last week looking at how global warming is influencing extreme weather events. As Jeff Masters, co-founder of the Weather Underground, explained in the piece: “They all tend to get increased when you have this extra energy in the atmosphere. I call it being on steroids … for the atmosphere.”

Watch the full segment:

And here’s the transcript:

Judy Woodruff: Some of the biggest stories of 2011 involved extreme weather that wreaked havoc in many states and cities. As the year comes to a close, it’s sparking plenty of discussion in the world of science about the causes and meaning of those events.

Hari Sreenivasan explores all that following some background.

Hari Sreenivasan: From snow to floods to tornadoes, it has been a year of record-breaking weather across the U.S. mainland, more, in fact, than any year since modern record-keeping began.

It started in late January with paralyzing blizzards that dumped heavy snow on 22 states. Chicago was buried under nearly two feet of snow, and the Windy City ground to a near standstill.

Raphael Guzman, resident of Chicago: For the past 10 hours, I have traveled 0.9 miles. So, now, when the fire department finally came to see if I wanted to leave my car, I saw the tow truck four cars back, and I was like, I will just wait for it. That was two hours ago.

Man: This is amazing.

HS: Spring brought the start of an especially deadly tornado season, with three of the largest twister outbreaks in American history in just six weeks, killing more than 550 people and causing $25 billion in damage.

More than 300 were killed over three days in late April in Central and Southern states. Tuscaloosa, Ala., was the hardest-hit.

Matt Wilson, resident of Tuscaloosa: It was horrifying. It was coming towards us, so we ran to the back, and got under a metal structure back in the back. And that’s, honestly, what saved us.

HS: Then, in late May, a tornado with winds topping 200 miles an hour leveled the town of Joplin, Mo. It was the single deadliest U.S. tornado since 1947, killing nearly 160 people.

Man: I actually was planning on helping where it was really torn up, but there’s nothing really to help. It’s just flattened. There’s—I don’t know. There’s probably three-quarters of a mile of nothing.

HS: That same storm system brought triple the normal amount of rainfall to the Ohio River Valley. The rain, coupled with snowmelt, caused both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to flood.

In August, Hurricane Irene drenched the Eastern Seaboard. It triggered record flooding in New Jersey, New York State, and Vermont, and cost more than $7 billion.

Woman: Once the water started coming through the front door. I mean I knew things were getting bad. And then the walls started to break and the molding started to pop, and I knew I was really in trouble.

HS: The Southern Plains and Southwest could only hope for some of that rain. Texas suffered through its worst one-year drought, as losses reached $10 billion in crops, livestock, and timber.

The tinder-dry conditions in Texas also fueled wildfires that burned a million acres. The Bastrop fire over Labor Day weekend was the state’s most destructive on record. Overall, it was the hottest summer Texas has ever seen. Wichita Falls had more than 100 consecutive days of 100-degree readings.

Nationwide, more than 6,000 heat records have been broken this year. On average, the U.S. has three or four events every year that are considered major natural disasters. But, this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration counted at least a dozen such events. Based on reports to date, damages are expected to exceed $52 billion.

Weather around the world showed equal extremes. Australia was hit with record flooding, followed by one of its worst tropical cyclones ever. Floodwaters also ravaged parts of Thailand and China, while the Horn of Africa suffered its worst drought in decades.

We have more on this with two experts who watch the impact of weather closely.

Kathryn Sullivan is the deputy director of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an oceanographer and former astronaut. She helps oversee NOAA’s work on weather observation and climate sciences. And Jeff Masters, who’s a meteorologist with the Weather Underground website, he joins us from Ann Arbor, Mich.

So thanks for being here.

Ms. Sullivan, I just rattled off what seemed like an exceptional year of weather, but put this in perspective for us. How rare i

s this?

Kathryn Sullivan: Well, the prior record-breaking year was nine significant events, well above the three to four that are typical. That was 2008.

So, we went a third again in the number of events each of which had greater than a billion dollars, many other events, of course, that just fell below that billion-dollar threshold through the course of that year, quite a remarkable string, quite a remarkable array.

I came aboard NOAA as the deputy administrator early in May, and the preceding month of April, in one month alone, we had record-breaking flood, wildfire, tornado outbreaks, just all within one single month. It was certainly unprecedented in my experience.

HS: And, Jeff Masters, you’ve said in your blog that you have never seen a year like this. What else stands out to you?

Jeff Masters: In one year, we had three of the most remarkable extreme weather events in history of the U.S.

I mean, we talk about the Dust Bowl summer of 1936. Well, this summer pretty much matched that for temperature, almost the hottest summer in U.S. history. We also talk about the great 1974 tornado outbreak. Well, we had an outbreak that more than doubled the total of tornadoes we had during that iconic outbreak. And, also, we talk about the great 1927 flood on the Mississippi River. Well, the flood heights were even higher than that flood this year.

So, it just boggles my mind that we had three extreme weather events that matched those events in U.S. history.

HS: So, Jeff, how do we tie this in with any particular cause? We can’t say that a temperature warming or a global temperature increase causes a tornado or this hurricane. But what can we say? What does the data show us?

JM: That weather has natural extremes.

We all know that you can have extreme years and not very extreme years. Certainly, this year was a very naturally extreme year. But I argue that when you have a naturally extreme year occurring within the context of global warming, okay, now you’ve put more heat in the atmosphere. That means you have more energy to power stronger storms and more energy also to give you more intense heat waves and droughts.

So, in particular, we look at heat waves, droughts, and flooding events. They all tend to get increased when you have this extra energy in the atmosphere. I call it being on steroids kind of for the atmosphere.

HS: Explain that, being on steroids. What do you mean?

JM: Well, normally, you have the everyday ups and downs of the weather, but if you pack a little bit of extra punch in there, it’s like a baseball hitter who’s on steroids.

You expect to see a big home-run total maybe from this slugger, but if you add a little bit of extra oomph to his swing by putting him on steroids, now we can have an unprecedented season, a 70 home-run season. And that’s the way I look at this year.

We had an unprecedented weather year that I don’t think would have happened unless we had had an extra bit of energy in the atmosphere due to climate change and global warming.

HS: Kathryn, you were in Joplin yourself. What are some of the longer-term impacts, some of the costs that we’re not seeing here as we just total up the dollar signs?

KS: It is a really sobering and heart-wrenching experience to be on the ground in some of those tornado-ravaged areas.

The casualties, of course, the injuries and loss of life take precedence over everything. But the scale—the scale of the damage and the pervasiveness of it really just boggle my mind. The figure I heard that day out in Joplin was there were 1,800 acres of debris. And debris hardly begins to describe it. Things that had been businesses and homes and a large first-class hospital were little more than toothpicks.

Fabulous large trees with trunk diameters up to 18 to 24 inches were maybe 10- or 12-foot-tall stubs with not a shred of bark left on them, just amazing, the power and fury that had ripped through that community in such a really brief period of time.

So, you think about rebuilding a house, but, you know, first to clear some portion of 1,800 acres of debris, it’s just a massive undertaking, then to deal with the administrative mechanics of whatever you might have, insurance and a builder. And for it to be that pervasive over that large of a swathe of a community just means it’s all going to take such a long time to come back.

Small businesses affected, larger, major stores affected with major building damage, firehouses, schools, and then one of the primary hospitals all destroyed. So the fabric of the community is really affected in an experience like this. And that also makes it harder for the community itself and its citizens to rebound, so a very long train of consequences well beyond the media moments that we tend to pay attention to.

HS: Jeff, also, what sorts of economic or geopolitical consequences do you see when we have natural disasters like drought in different parts of the world?

JM: Drought is my No. 1 concern for climate change because drought affects food prices.

We had a terrific drought in Russia last year that caused them to shut off their exports of wheat. Now global food prices spiked thereafter, and it’s thought that the Arab spring revolts that happened this year were due in part to the fact that food prices were so high due to the Russian drought. Those food prices were the highest we have seen since the early 1990s.

Had we had a drought of that magnitude this year in the U.S., there would have been very severe consequences for the global economy, the global food supply, and there would have been a large amount of political unrest, much higher than we saw, I think.

HS: Kathryn, briefly, what kind of changes are you making at NOAA when it comes to modeling, and what are cities trying to do to plan for the possibility of more extreme weather?

KS: Well, we always are working to advance the technology we use to observe the atmosphere in countless ways, as well as the computing infrastructure that runs the forecast models that give us our everyday three-, five-, seven-day outlook.

In addition, this season really has focused our attention even further, along with our partners in the private sector such as Jeff and his colleagues and emergency managers, on the really human part of the warning process. From the forecast information that NOAA puts out for everyone to work with, from there to the signal that triggers someone to take a response, how can we do better on that?

What combination of communication improvements or better understanding how people are accessing information these days, of how people make high-impact decisions, almost the social science side of completing the full warning process certainly will have heightened attention from us in the years ahead.

HS: Alright, Kathryn Sullivan from NOAA, Jeff Masters from Weather Underground, thank you both for being here.

KS: It was a pleasure.

Related Links:

Top 10 states ravaged by extreme weather in 2011

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by Climate Central.

By many measures, 2011 was the most extreme weather year for the United States since reliable record-keeping began in the 19th
century—and the costs have been enormous. According to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2011 set a record for the most billion-dollar disasters in a single year. There were 12, breaking the old record of nine set in
2009. The aggregate damage from these 12 events totals at least $52
billion, NOAA found.

Severe weather across much of the nation has raised the question of whether global warming has already begun to
influence shorter-term weather patterns, raising the specter of even
more extreme years to come as global temperatures continue to rise.

According to climate studies, the short answer is yes: The new climate environment created by global warming is making some
extreme events, particularly heat waves and heavy rain, more likely to
occur and more intense when they do. Climate models have more difficulty
predicting how climate change may be influencing other types of
extremes, such as severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, but a warming
climate provides more fuel to these events in the form of increased
water vapor and heat in the atmosphere.

Throughout 2011, searing
heat waves, parching drought, deadly tornadoes, blizzards, and floods
cost billions of dollars in damage, affected millions of lives, and
killed more than a thousand people across the United States.

Climate Central examined extreme weather events from coast to coast to determine the 10
states that were clobbered the worst. Texas tops that list, with a
costly—and deadly—combination of intense drought, a punishing heat
wave, the worst wildfires in state history, and plenty of tornadoes.
Rounding out the top 10 were Alabama, Missouri, North Carolina,
Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Jersey.

Climate
Central’s analysis factored the death toll in each state, damage costs,
the disruption caused to daily life, and how unusual the events were
compared with what transpires in an average year.

1. Texas

Texas
was hit by eight of the nation’s billion dollar disasters—the most
of any state in the country. Of the eight, the three most devastating
were drought, heat, and wildfires. The drought still grips the state,
and it is the most intense one-year drought on record. Unlike past dry
periods, the damage to the state has been aggravated by record-breaking
heat. Groundwater levels in much of the state have fallen to their
lowest levels in more than 60 years, according to observations from NASA
satellites.

The heat during the summer of 2011 was relentless,
with many cities smashing records for the longest stretch of 100-degree
days, including Dallas with a record 70 straight days with 100-degree
heat, and San Angelo with a whopping 98 days above 100. July 2011 was
the hottest month ever recorded statewide, and Amarillo, Texas, reached
111 degrees F on June 26, an all-time record high for that location where
records date back to 1892.

The combination of drought and unusually hot conditions during this summer helped fuel massive
wildfires, and the 2011 wildfire season was the worst in Texas’ history,
with about 4 million acres burned from November 2010 through November
2011, causing $750 million in damage and killing 10 people, including
four firefighters.

Lake and reservoir levels have fallen so low that they are revealing entire towns flooded decades ago at the bottom of lakes and reservoirs. Ranchers have been forced to sell off large portions of
their herds early, which is likely to raise beef prices by reducing
future beef supplies.

2. Alabama

Alabama was ground
zero for the largest tornado outbreak in American history, when more
than 100 twisters gouged paths across the state in late April, killing
240 people.

Some of the most intense tornadoes flattened heavily populated areas. One twister, shown nationally on
live TV, tore through downtown Tuscaloosa and went on to destroy parts
of Birmingham. Another monster EF-5 twister, with winds stronger than
200 mph, tracked across northern Alabama, killing 78 people, becoming
one of the deadliest single tornadoes in modern American history.

According
to the Storm Prediction Center, Alabama saw the most tornadoes of any
state this year, with 170. The staggering death toll and damage these
storms caused led to a wave of Alabama state pride, with the mantra “We are Alabama” spreading throughout social media networks in the storms’ wake.

3. Missouri

Missouri was the site of America’s worst tornado disaster since 1950, when a massive tornado, nearly a mile wide, wiped large portions of the city of Joplin off the map on May 22. With winds greater than
200 mph, that tornado killed nearly 160 people, making it the seventh
deadliest in U.S. history.

Tornadoes were just one prong of the
deadly onslaught of extreme weather in Missouri, as a combination of
heavy spring rains and upstream snowmelt sent the Missouri and
Mississippi Rivers surging over their banks. According to NOAA, in an
average year, the Missouri River channels 24.8 million acre feet of
water. This year, it carried 24.3 million acre feet in May and June
alone. When the Army Corps of Engineers essentially blew up the levees
to save the small town of Cairo, Ill., floodwaters inundated around
130,000 acres of Missouri farmland.

4. North Carolina

April
2011 was the most active tornado month in U.S. history with 753
tornadoes. North Carolina was among the states worst hit. On April 16,
multiple tornadoes ripped through Raleigh and nearby towns, leaving a
trail of destruction behind them. Thirty-eight people died in a two-day
April tornado outbreak that spread through 10 states; 22 were in North
Carolina.

North Carolina was also one of the first states walloped
by Hurricane Irene in August. With its immense 450-mile span, the storm
battered the North Carolina coast with rain and driving 60-80 mph winds
for nearly 12 hours. Half a million people lost power during
the storm, and the gusting winds generated waves high enough to
demolish piers and damage homes along the coastline. All told, the cost
to North Carolina from tornadoes and Irene is estimated at $3.2 billion.

5. Oklahoma

In
2011, Oklahomans suffered through a brutal combination of severe drought
and intense heat, the likes of which have not been seen since the
infamous Dust Bowl era of the 1930s. The Sooner State had the hottest
summer of any state in U.S. history, narrowly beating neighboring Texas,
and eclipsing a record that dated to 1934. Oklahoma’s average day and
nighttime temperature during July was a scorching 88.9 degrees F, the warmest in any state during any month on record.

For
an idea of how hot it was in Oklahoma last summer, consider this: In
Grandfield, the temperature reached or exceeded 100 degrees on a
record-setting 97 days from mid-April to Sept. 1.

On top of
record heat, last February, the state froze its way through the coldest
temperature on record: -31 degrees F, and the state’s heaviest 24-hour snowfall on record, when 27 inches fell in the town of Spavinaw.

And if that wasn’t enough, Oklahomans also struggled with other weather hazards, including the largest hailstone in state history, some of which measured half a foot in diameter.

6. Tennessee

The
good news for Tennessee this year was that the drought that plagued
states to the southwest—Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas—didn’t make it
up this far. But for the Volunteer State, a little more drought might
have been a good thing. On April 30, Nashville was drenched with more
than six inches of rain, followed the next day by more than seven inches—
the third heaviest and worst single-day rainfall, and the worst two-day rainfall,
in the city’s history. It was even worse in Camden and Brownsville,
Tenn., with more than 17 inches of rain over the same period. By May
2, it was already the rainiest May on record.

Not surprisingly,
the record rains led to massive flooding on the Cumberland, Harpeth, and
Duck rivers, killing 23 people. The estimated property damage in
Nashville alone topped $1.5 billion.

Deadly as they were, the
floods weren’t the only lethal weather to strike Tennessee during the
spring. Just a week or so before the deluge came, the state was hit with
an EF-5 tornado—the most powerful rating there is—smashing through
Apison, killing 13. It was part of a wider outbreak that killed more than 300 people across the southeast. When you add in
the heat wave that blasted most of the eastern half of the U.S. in July,
the total damage from weather and climate-related disasters added up to
nearly $4 billion.

7. Kansas

The massive heat wave
and drought that devastated Texas and Oklahoma didn’t hit Kansas quite
as hard, but it was bad enough to help push the Jayhawk State into the
top 10 this year. By midsummer, much of the southwestern part of the
state was suffering under “exceptional drought” conditions—it ended
up being the ninth driest year ever recorded—and by year’s end, there
was still no relief in sight. Wichita had more 100-degree-plus days
than any year on record, beating out even the Dust Bowl summer of 1936.

As
of May, the state had seen unusually few tornadoes, but that didn’t
last: powerful thunderstorms, tornadoes, and punishing hail swept the
state in June, July, and August. To top it all off, a 5.6-intensity
earthquake struck on Nov. 5. The quake didn’t cause much damage, but
combined agricultural losses from the heat and drought topped $4
billion.

8. Connecticut

Snowstorms aren’t usually news
in Connecticut—but 2011 was hardly usual. Hartford was buried under
a record-setting 57 inches of snow in January, making it the all-time
snowiest month in state history. Then, nearly two months before the next
winter began, Connecticut was blasted by the worst October snowstorm in
200 years. The heavy wet snow, which cost the state more than $500
million, sent trees and tree limbs falling onto power lines, leaving
more than 700,000 people without heat or lights. In the worst power failure in state history, many didn’t get their electricity back for more than a week.

In August, tropical storm Irene pummeled the state with heavy rains and gale-force winds that caused devastating floods and turned the lights out on more than 650,000 people. Some areas were pounded with as much as eight inches of rain in just 24 hours.

9. Vermont

Just
as most of the Northeast thought they had escaped the worst of Irene’s
wrath, the super-saturated tropical storm ravaged Vermont. The furious
rains battered more than 2,000 roads spanning 500 miles in the state,
paralyzing commerce, stranding people, and demolishing thousands of homes
and businesses. More than 175 roads were completely destroyed and have
only been rebuilt months later in what has been described as a model of
fast-paced recovery from a disaster.

This all came after one of the snowiest winters on record,
which produced record snowmelt. In May, heavy rain and all that melting
snow drove Lake Champlain to its highest level on record, flooding
several nearby towns. Record-setting rains helped set the stage for Irene’s damage by saturating the ground and
putting streams and rivers at unusually high levels when the storm
arrived.

Vermont officials say the total damage costs from Irene will be between $175 and $250 million.

10. New Jersey

Hurricane
Irene roared into New Jersey to become one of the state’s deadliest and
costliest storms, as well as the state’s wettest storm in more than a
century. Tropical downpours sent rivers and streams overflowing, with
nine rivers rising to their highest level ever. The flooding closed 300
roads and highways and interrupted train service for days.

The bill for hurricane damage in New Jersey stands at $1.4 billion already, and at least seven people died during the storm. Then, two weeks later, a second round of drenching
rain—the remains of Tropical Storm Lee—swept across the state,
triggering even more flooding. All told, it was the wettest August and
September New Jersey has seen in 117 years.

Just as the Garden
State began to dry out, a freak autumn snowstorm hit over the Halloween
weekend. The wet, heavy snow stuck to leaves that hadn’t fallen from the
trees. The result: falling branches that blocked roads and downed power
lines, leaving half a million people without electricity, some of them
for a week.

Related Links:

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by World Resources Institute.

Cross-posted from World Resources Institute.

The world must brace for more
extreme weather. That is the clear message from a new report that finds climate
change is likely to bring more record-breaking temperatures, heat waves, and
heavy downpours. The much-anticipated Special Report on Managing the Risks
of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX)—the summary of which was released today by the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC)—provides new evidence that links extreme weather
events and climate change.

According to the summary for policymakers, the SREX report concludes that climate change will likely lead to
global increases in extreme weather, along with heightened risks to livelihoods,
human health, and infrastructure, both today and in the future. It also
describes the costs—in terms of lives lost and economic damages—that have
already occurred, plus those that will likely result from this phenomenon, and
the societal implications of a warmer world, in which yesterday’s extreme
conditions become the new norm.

Below we provide five key takeaways
from the report summary:

1. Extreme weather is on the rise
around the world.

The report concludes that several
types of extreme weather have become more intense or more frequent during the
past half-century.1 Specifically, the SREX finds that: 

In the case of temperatures, warm days and nights have
become more frequent, and cold days and nights less so.2
Areas of the world with a significant increase in the number
of heavy downpours exceeded the areas of the world where the opposite is true.3
With “medium confidence,” some areas of the world have
experienced more intense and longer droughts.
The global trend of rising sea levels has led to an increase
in the occurrence of extreme coastal high water,4 from tidal or other high water
events.

2. Extreme weather and climate disasters are deadly and expensive, and
losses are increasing.

Given the recent flooding in
Thailand, the drought in the Horn of Africa, and the flooding of the
Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, it should come as no surprise to learn that
such events are costly—both in terms of lives lost and economic damages. The
SREX finds that losses from weather and climate disasters are indeed rising,
with the increase largely due to increased exposure, with more people and
infrastructure in harm’s way. Developing countries are particularly affected,
with the greatest fatality rates (according to the report, during the period
from 1970 to 2008, over 95 percent of deaths from natural disasters occurred in
developing countries) and economic losses as a proportion of gross domestic
product.

3. A warming world will likely be a
more extreme world.

The extreme weather events unfolding
around the world in recent years are only a harbinger of what is to come. For
example, the report finds it is virtually certain5 that the frequency and
magnitude of extreme high temperatures will increase, with warm spells,
including heat waves, very likely6 increasing in length, frequency, and/or
intensity over most land areas. And it is not just temperature extremes that
will change. Heavy precipitation events will likely7 increase in frequency,
climate projections imply possible changes in floods, and there is medium
confidence that droughts will intensify in some seasons and areas.

4. Greenhouse-gas pollution is
likely driving some of these trends.

Not only is extreme weather on the
rise, but humans are likely driving some of these trends. The report finds it
likely that rising greenhouse-gas pollution in the atmosphere has led to the
observed rise in extreme high temperatures and to the rise in extreme coastal
high water.8 Additionally, report authors attached “medium confidence” to the
conclusion that humans have contributed to a global intensification of extreme
precipitation. Though remarkable, these findings are not surprising, because
they are consistent with what scientists have considered to be likely outcomes
in a warmer world.

5. Adaptation and disaster risk
management can enhance resilience in a changing climate; differences in
vulnerability and exposure must be considered in the design of such initiatives.

Despite its very troubling
conclusions, the report also details measures that can be taken to manage risks
associated with extreme events. These include risk sharing and transfer
mechanisms (e.g., insurance and reinsurance) and “low regret” measures that
have co-benefits beyond addressing climate change (e.g., ecosystem restoration,
building code enforcement, improved education). While incremental action can
help reduce risks, more transformative changes to governance, values, and
technological systems will also be required. In designing such interventions,
differences in vulnerability and exposure must be considered, as impacts will
not play out on a level playing field. A cyclone hitting Australia will not
have the same impacts as a cyclone of similar magnitude hitting Bangladesh.

Tomorrow’s world will be a different
one. Governments around the world must get serious about reducing greenhouse-gas emissions—both quickly and steeply—if we are to have a fighting chance
for maintaining a more stable climate. The upcoming U.N. climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, provide a critical opportunity for leadership on increasing the ambition of
mitigation and finance commitments. Changes in extremes also place a premium on
disaster risk management and adaptation initiatives that increase the
resilience of those affected. Governments around the world are already acting
to move from disaster relief to disaster preparedness, providing innovative examples that
can be scaled up.

We have introduced five specific
takeaways, but the most important message is this: We can no longer ignore the
link between climate change and extreme weather events.

The time for decisive action to reduce emissions, advance adaptation, and move
toward a better future climate is now.

Footnotes:

1. It
should be noted that available weather and climate data are almost always more
limited than research scientists would want them to be, both in terms of their
coverage over time and spatial areas across the globe. This is particularly
true for studies that focus on extreme weather events, which are very rare
occurrences, by definition. This helps to explain why the science has
heretofore been somewhat inconclusive on the issues of extreme weather
addressed in the SREX, making the findings of this report all the more
remarkable. 

2. The
report determines that available evidence supports this conclusion at the
90 to 100 percent probability level. 

3. The
report determines that available evidence supports this conclusion at the
66 to 100 percent probability level. 

4. The
report determines that available evidence supports this conclusion at the
66 to 100 percent probability level. 

5. 99 to 100 percent
probability assigned to the likelihood of the outcome. 

6. 90 to 100 percent
probability assigned to the likelihood of the outcome. 

7. 66 to 100 percent
probability assigned to the likelihood of the outcome. 

8. The
report determines that available evidence supports this conclusion at the
66 to 100 percent probability level. 

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by John Walke.

Cross-posted from Natural Resources Defense Council.

Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected an extreme agenda
disguised as a jobs and transportation bill. This unsuccessful effort
was founded on the absurd notion that more pollution would mean more
jobs, and that what the country really needs is more of the congressional
paralysis and obstructionism that already wearies and disgusts
Americans.

This week, the Senate will vote again on repealing life-saving pollution standards—this time a Tea Party-backed attack on the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) that
keeps out-of-state smog and soot pollution from fouling the air of
neighboring communities. Once again, the dirty air champions are going
to talk about jobs, but the public already knows what the Senate
affirmed last week—dirty air and dirty water are not a jobs plan.

Last week’s failed legislation was Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-Utah) Long-Term Surface Extension Act of 2011 [PDF]—a witch’s brew of Tea Party House Republican bromides about job creation that in reality were just poisonous attempts to:

kill health safeguards against mercury and toxic pollution from cement plants, incinerators, and industrial boilers;

quietly pass Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) truly radical REINS Act [PDF], which would allow just one chamber of Congress to block law enforcement of existing statutory safeguards, from clean air and
clean water protections, to food safety standards, to Wall Street reform;
and

just as quietly pass the insidious Regulatory Time-Out Act of 2011,
which would indiscriminately and nonsensically block the most
significant health and environmental safeguards, financial
responsibility reforms, and the like for one year, notwithstanding how
much damage and destruction to the American people or economy would
result from blocking those safeguards.

This week, Paul plans more of the same, with a resolution
under the Congressional Review Act to void EPA’s CSAPR. These standards will clean up dangerous smog and soot
pollution from the oldest, dirtiest coal-burning power plants in the
eastern half of the United States, saving lives and creating jobs by
cleaning up pollution.

EPA has projected that these clean air standards will prevent every year [PDF]:

up to 34,000 premature deaths;
15,000 nonfatal heart attacks;
400,000 cases of asthma attacks; and
1.8 million days when people miss work or school.

Moreover, these health safeguards will deliver up to $280 billion in
annual benefits to the American people, compared to $2.4 billion in
compliance costs to polluting coal-burning power plants, yielding
benefits that outweigh costs by an astonishing 116 to 1. Many
politicians and industry lobbyists claim to support benefit-cost
analysis; how much would health benefits to Americans have to outweigh
polluter compliance costs before Paul and his resolution’s
co-sponsors would support clean air safeguards? 200 to 1? 500 to 1?

Further proof for this extreme agenda is shown by the zealous
irresponsibility of Paul’s chosen weapon, a Congressional Review
Act vote that repeals not only the CSAPR, but also prohibits EPA from adopting “substantially similar” health protections.

The Congressional Review Act is a nuclear bomb with radioactive
spillover consequences: It voids not just the targeted safeguards, like
CSAPR, but also prohibits EPA from adopting similar protections, such
as a substitute for the Bush administration’s 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule. A federal court overturned [PDF] this rule in 2008. CSAPR responds to the court order to reduce
smog and soot pollution from power plants in a more protective manner
that complies with the Clean Air Act.

If a Congressional Review Act vote abolished CSAPR and blocked EPA
from reissuing a similar rule, this would make it extremely unlikely
that EPA could even reissue clean air standards achieving the same
emissions reductions as the weaker Clean Air Interstate Rule; the two
rules are substantially similar in numerous respects, including the
problems they target; the states, polluters, and pollutants covered; the
rules’ underlying modeling and rationale; the legal authority and
regulatory structure; etc. The result would be millions more tons of smog
and soot pollution from dirty power plants.

All of this explains why Paul’s extreme pollution agenda
already is attracting bipartisan opposition from more moderate and
responsible members, with five or more Republican senators expected to
oppose the CRA resolution.

The White House’s Heather Zichal, deputy assistant to the president
for energy and climate change, has authored an eloquent and ringing endorsement of the cross-state rule. One hopes this important backing represents
the prelude to a White House statement of administration policy (SAP)
recommending a presidential veto of Paul’s resolution, adding to the
laudable record of SAPs opposing House dirty air attacks this year.

The greater question remains, however: When will congressional
obstructionists finally abandon their stalling and ideological
pollution plans in favor of getting down to the business of moving the
country forward to a healthy and clean energy future?

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