Bush to Country: Choke on My Exhaust Fumes

Haze obscures a view in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. (By David A. Fahrenthold -- The Washington Post)

More environmental madness from The Worst President Ever. Hopefully President Obama can roll back this cock-eyed plan quickly.

WaPo: EPA Moves to Ease Air Rules for Parks
Regional Administrators Decry Decision

The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing new air-quality rules that would make it easier to build coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other major polluters near national parks and wilderness areas, even though half of the EPA's 10 regional administrators formally dissented from the decision and four others criticized the move in writing.

Documents obtained by The Washington Post show that the administration's push to weaken Clean Air Act protections for "Class 1 areas" nationwide has sparked fierce resistance from senior agency officials. All but two of the regional administrators objecting to the proposed rule are political appointees.

[]

"The administration's staunch commitment to coal is so deep that they're willing to sacrifice our national parks on the way out the door," [Mark Wentzler of the National Parks Conservation Association] said.

If the EPA adopts the rule change, Wenzler added, his group plans to file a petition for reconsideration with the agency, which would allow the incoming Obama administration to reverse the policy. If the new rule is enacted, the association estimates it would ease the way for the construction of at least two dozen coal-fired utilities within 186 miles of 10 national parks.

John McCain (R-Hess Oil)

John McCain's Bushit Express continues, lubricated by Big Oil money.

After he reversed his position on offshore oil drilling, "executives" at Hess Oil gave him $285,000 in contributions.

I say "executives" in quotes, because one of the contributors was a Hess Oil office manager and her husband, am Amtrak worker. Both gave $28,500 to the RNC's committee to elect McCain President. Two people who have never given to a political campaign before this year give McCain $57,000! The couple rent their home in Flushing Queens, and the median annual income in their neighborhood is basically what they gave John McCain, so I doubt they're flush with cash.

The LA Times is now reporting that the massive fundraiser took place just before McCain flipped in Big Oil's favor, but it doesn't really matter. He's in the tank of Big Oil.

Obama, on the other hand, released his energy plan yesterday, and among many proposals, it contains this laudable goal: 1,000,000 plug-in hybrid cars -- 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015.

The choice is clear. Vote for McCain, vote for Big Oil and Global Warming. Vote for Obama, vote to decrease energy use and save the planet.

Another Chunk of Ward Ice Shelf Disappears

Toronto Star: BOB WEBER/THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO
Canadian Ranger Samson Ejanqiaq looks along one of the gaping new cracks in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest left in the Arctic, in April 2008.

BBC: Canadian Arctic sheds ice chunk
A large chunk of an Arctic ice shelf has broken free of the northern Canadian coast, scientists say.

Nearly 20 sq km (eight sq miles) of ice from the Ward Hunt shelf has split away from Ellesmere Island, according to satellite pictures.

It is thought to be the biggest piece of ice shed in the region since 60 sq km of the nearby Ayles ice shelf broke away in 2005.

Scientists say further splitting could occur during the Arctic summer melt.

Globe & Mail (CAN): Huge chunk snaps off storied Arctic ice shelf
Break marks latest in erosion that has whittled 9,000 square kilometres down to 1,000 over past century

Toronto Star: Ice break ominous, Arctic scientist says
North's ancient shelves `are retreating and they are not coming back,' researcher warns

Just For Laughs

Arizona Tea

I think we'll have to start calling McCain "Jed" or "Jethro" when he talks about drilling.

hat tip to Climate Progress.

Surprise, Surprise

I am shocked, shocked, to find out that Darth Cheney is running U.S. energy policy into the dark, oily ground.

truthout: Report Links Cheney Office, Oil Giant [ExxonMovil] to Global Warming Policy Shift

[P]ressure from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, ExxonMobil and others in the oil industry led the Bush administration to change course [and decide not to use the Clean Air Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions].

Read Liberally

wikipedia: Pear, still-life by Keaton Cooper

Have you heard about Postville, Iowa? The story came out because of this essay (pdf file) by Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D., who was employed by ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) as an interpreter at the raid of Agriprocessors, Inc., in Postville. ICE went in and charged hundreds of hard-working undocumented workers with the "crime" of working without the proper papers, and forced them into jail for months before they are deported. Jail time we taxpayers will pay for. Formerly such individuals would just be deported immediately. ICE is just trying to justify the enormous amounts of money we have pumped into our ridiculous Homeland Security agency. And of course ICE didn't go after the owners who are making money by destroying formerly middle class jobs and making illegal immigrants into the peasants of today.

Digby reminds us that Jimmy Carter was right. The Republicans jumped all over him 30 years ago for daring to say we need to break our dependence on foreign oil and conserve. And look where we are now. In 1979 the average price of a gallon of gas was $.86 cents. When Bush took office, it was $1.44. Today the average price is $4.12. And Bush wants to drill more as a solution. Moron. There isn't enough oil offshore to affect the price of oil one bit.

You could call the Bush era The Squander Years. What hasn't he done wrong? It's a very short list.

All those bailouts of Wall Street firms? They love capitalism until they've bankrupted their companies, then they love socialism. Why are we bailing out these crooks and letting them keep their ill-gotten gains?

The Bushies are making another end-run against reproductive rights. They're trying to change rules so all health organizations that receive federal funds must hire workers even if they oppose birth control. (so a hospital couldn't fire a nurse or a pharmacist who refused to tell teenage patients about birth control, for example.) Tristero at Hullabaloo explains it all, with a NSFW headline that is entirely accurate.

For you haiku and limerick buffs, check out firedoglake's Ted Stevens Poetry Contest!

My entries:

Ted Toobz in winter
Free renovations cause fall
Contemplates prison

Ted’s twilight years
Marred by thoughts
Of maximum security retirement plan

Ted Stevens regrets
His bridge to nowhere
No Toobz in jail for Ted.

My favorite, submitted by Ripley:

Toobz abandon Ted
Indictments fall like snowflakes
Midnight sun has set

50-50 Chance of NO ICE at the North Pole This Summer

Does water have to lap at the front steps of the Capital Building before Congress takes action? (Obviously we can forget C+ Augustus, who wouldn't know climate change if it knocked him off his bicycle.)

Independent (uk): Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole
Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change

Independent (uk): Peter Wadhams: Every time I visit the Arctic, the ice gets thinner

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: June 20, 2008

National Geographic: Kiribati Beach House
Photograph by George Steinmetz/CORBIS

A tiny group of Pacific coral islands, the Republic of Kirabati, with a population of less than a hundred thousand, will be submerged under the ocean in 50 to 100 years as a result of rising ocean waters. Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, population 150,000,000 -- One Hundred and Fifty Million Human Beings -- will be completely underwater by the end of this century, according to NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen.

And those estimates may be accelerated, as data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than it did last year. An example of the chaos that this will bring is in Iceland, where two polar bears were shot in the past two weeks when they showed up hundreds of miles from their habitat.

And what are the Bush Administration and their rubber stamps in Congress doing to address global warming? Nothing. No, take that back, less than nothing. Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to cut greenhouse emissions last week. The United States taxpayers are being forced to pay to build permanent bases in Iraq, which are surely to provide security for the oil companies (Exxon, Total, BP and Shell) which have just been awarded no-bid contracts to exploit the Iraqi oil fields. The Oilman-In-Chief sent thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to their deaths for the bottom line of Exxon.

Which of his crimes will Bush pay for? The torture he personally authorized? (though he is now trying to blame it on the soldiers, we know that it was the Bush Administration's official policy, memorialized in legal memos and West Wing meetings.) Maj. General Antonio Taguba writes this week that the Bush Administration committed war crimes, and recommends prosection. The Democratic Sheeple Party is unlikely to do so; we let everyone involved in Iran-Contra go, too.

By failing to prosecute the war criminals who perpetrated Iran-Contra, we populated the Project for a New American Century and all the other right wing "think tanks" with all those unindicted co-conspirators, who spent years conspiring on their next nefarious plan: to get us to attack Iraq. As Digby says: When you let Republicans get away with murder, they will do it again.

Some days reading the news is nihilistic. I'm going to take the weekend off from political blogging & regain my equilibrium.

It's Now or Never

A heavy haze could be seen in Beijing in August 2007. Two recent reports call for a heightened global effort to reduce carbon emissions. (By Greg Baker -- Associated Press)

WaPo: Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger, New Studies Say

Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.

[]

Schmittner, lead author of a Feb. 14 article in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, said his modeling indicates that if global emissions continue on a "business as usual" path for the rest of the century, the Earth will warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. If emissions do not drop to zero until 2300, he calculated, the temperature rise at that point would be more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

Chilling News

Global warming is real. Are the politicians listening? At least the story is on page one of the Washington Post.

WaPo: Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica
Sheets Melting in an Area Once Thought to Be Unaffected by Global Warming

Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates.

While the overall loss is a tiny fraction of the miles-deep ice that covers much of Antarctica, scientists said the new finding is important because the continent holds about 90 percent of Earth's ice, and until now, large-scale ice loss there had been limited to the peninsula that juts out toward the tip of South America. In addition, researchers found that the rate of ice loss in the affected areas has accelerated over the past 10 years -- as it has on most glaciers and ice sheets around the world.

"Without doubt, Antarctica as a whole is now losing ice yearly, and each year it's losing more," said Eric Rignot, lead author of a paper published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking despite land temperatures for the continent remaining essentially unchanged, except for the fast-warming peninsula.

The cause, Rignot said, may be changes in the flow of the warmer water of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that circles much of the continent. Because of changed wind patterns and less-well-understood dynamics of the submerged current, its water is coming closer to land in some sectors and melting the edges of glaciers deep underwater.

"Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes," said Rignot, a senior scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We believe it is related to global climate forcing."

Rignot said the tonnage of yearly ice loss in Antarctica is approaching that of Greenland, where ice sheets are known to be melting rapidly in some parts and where ancient glaciers have been in retreat. He said the change in Antarctica could become considerably more dramatic because the continent's western shelf, an expanse of ice and snow roughly the size of Texas, is largely below sea level and has broad and flat expanses of ice that could move quickly. Much of Greenland's ice flows through relatively narrow valleys in mountainous terrain, which slows its motion.

The new finding comes days after the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the group's next report should look at the "frightening" possibility that ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could melt rapidly at the same time.

"Both Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheet are huge bodies of ice and snow, which are sitting on land," said Rajendra Pachauri, chief of the IPCC, the United Nations' scientific advisory group. "If, through a process of melting, they collapse and are submerged in the sea, then we really are talking about sea-level rises of several meters." (A meter is about a yard.) Last year, the IPCC tentatively estimated that sea levels would rise by eight inches to two feet by the end of the century, assuming no melting in West Antarctica.

Greenland Ice Sheet Air Temps Have Risen 7 Degrees F --- Since 1991

Melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet (greenfacts.org)

The response of the Bush Administration to these alarming facts? The Republican representative at the UN climate talks in Bali is Larry 'I am not gay, there is no global warming' Craig (R-Wide Stance). Perfect. The man lives in Denial. In the real world, we are terrified as the weather becomes more extreme every year.

Reuters: Greenland ice sheet melting at record rate

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The Greenland ice sheet melted at a record rate this year, the largest ever since satellite measurements began in 1979, a top climate scientist reported on Monday.

"The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps, or a layer of water more than one-half mile (800 meters) deep covering Washington DC," said Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

[]

In recent years, melting has started earlier in the year than normal. Air temperatures on the ice sheet have risen by about 7 degrees F (3.9 degrees C) since 1991, mostly because of the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the scientists said in research presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

This is in keeping with persistently gloomy news about the state of the Arctic this year. In October, a U.S. government "report card" found less ice, hotter air and dying wildlife.

In May, a U.S. expert at the National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado found that Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than expected and is now about 30 years ahead of predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We're Melting

WaPo: At the Poles, Melting Occurring at Alarming Rate

For scientists, global warming is a disaster movie, its opening scenes set at the poles of Earth. The epic already has started. And it's not fiction.

The scenes are playing, at the start, in slow motion: The relentless grip of the Arctic Ocean that defied man for centuries is melting away. The sea ice reaches only half as far as it did 50 years ago. In the summer of 2006, it shrank to a record low; this summer the ice pulled back even more, by an area nearly the size of Alaska. Where explorer Robert Peary just 102 years ago saw "a great white disk stretching away apparently infinitely" from Ellesmere Island, there is often nothing now but open water. Glaciers race into the sea from the island of Greenland, beginning an inevitable rise in the oceans.

Animals are on the move. Polar bears, kings of the Arctic, now search for ice on which to hunt and bear young. Seals, walrus and fish adapted to the cold are retreating north. New species -- salmon, crabs, even crows -- are coming from the south. The Inuit, who have lived on the frozen land for millennia, are seeing their houses sink into once-frozen mud, and their hunting trails on the ice are pocked with sinkholes.

"It affects everyone," said Carin Ashjian, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute scientist who spent early September with native Inupiats in Barrow, the northernmost town of Alaska. "The only ice I saw this year was in my cup at the cafeteria."

At the South Pole, ancient ice shelves have abruptly crumbled. The air over the western Antarctic peninsula has warmed by nearly 6 degrees since 1950. The sea there is heating as well, further melting edges of the ice cap. Green grass and beech trees are taking root on the ice fringes.

Antarctica's signature Adelie penguins are moving inland, seeking the cold of their ancestors, replaced by chinstrap and Gentoo penguins, which prefer open water. Krill, the massive smorgasbord for a food chain reaching to the whales, are disappearing from traditional spawning grounds.

They Hate Us For Our High MPG

I'm proud to say I drive a Prius. What does Robert Samuelson drive? He's not telling.
I want to know what Robert Samuelson drives. He insults me and all other Prius owners with his column today, calling us "show-offs" who aren't serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Hey, message to you, moron, I can't change the government's CAFE standards. I can only change my own, and now I get 48 MPG instead of 28 MPG. That's not some theoretical goal. That's my mileage today.

He also derides Prius owners for buying the Prius instead of Honda's Civic hybrid, which gets 10 miles per gallon less for the same price. That's not style, bonehead, that's performance. Why pay the same for less?

I bet he drives some big gas-guzzling SUV.

Robert Samuelson, WaPo: Prius Politics

My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a "hippie car," and he has a point. Not that Prius drivers are hippies. Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But, like hippies, they're making a loud lifestyle statement: We're saving the planet; what are you doing?

This helps explain why the Prius so outsells the rival Honda Civic Hybrid. Both have similar base prices, about $22,000, and fuel economy (Prius, 60 miles per gallon city/51 highway; Civic, 49 mpg city/51 highway). But Prius sales in the first half of 2007 totaled 94,503, nearly equal to all of 2006. Civic sales were only 17,141, up 7.4 percent from 2006. The Prius's advantage is its distinct design, which announces its owners as environmentally virtuous. It's a fashion statement. Meanwhile, the Civic hybrid can't be distinguished by appearance from the polluting, gas-guzzling mob.

The Prius is, I think, a parable for the broader politics of global warming. Prius politics is mostly about showing off, not curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Politicians pander to "green" constituents who want to feel good about themselves. Grandiose goals are declared. But measures to achieve them are deferred -- or don't exist.

[]

Deep reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases might someday occur if both plug-in hybrid vehicles and underground storage of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants become commercially viable. Meanwhile, Prius politics is a delusional exercise in public relations that, while not helping the environment, might hurt the economy.

US Leads The World in Greenhouse Gas Production

That's not a #1 we should aspire to.

Click on the full US map to see what countries or country your state equals in the production of greenhouse gases.

The map is from The Sightline Institute. I'd like to find out what the population comparison between Massachusetts and Algeria is, but they have it on a Microsoft Excel file, and I don't have half an hour to give Microsoft a bunch of personal information for them to lose just to download a free trial.

sightline.org: The Nation States of Climate Change

[T]he 2003 population of the US -- less than 300 million -- has the same climate impact as the more than 1.5 billion people represented by the other countries listed on the map.

hat tip to Gristmill

'The Earth todays stands in imminent peril'

Terrifying article. Is anyone in power listening?

The Independent (uk): The Earth today stands in imminent peril
and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The unnatural "forcing" of the climate as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatens to generate a "flip" in the climate that could "spark a cataclysm" in the massive ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, the scientists write.

Dramatic flips in the climate have occurred in the past but none has happened since the development of complex human societies and civilisation, which are unlikely to survive the same sort of environmental changes if they occurred now.

"Civilisation developed, and constructed extensive infrastructure, during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12,000 years in duration. That period is about to end," the scientists warn. Humanity cannot afford to burn the Earth's remaining underground reserves of fossil fuel. "To do so would guarantee dramatic climate change, yielding a different planet from the one on which civilisation developed and for which extensive physical infrastructure has been built," they say.

Dr Hansen said we have about 10 years to put into effect the draconian measures needed to curb CO2 emissions quickly enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperature. Otherwise, the extra heat could trigger the rapid melting of polar ice sheets, made far worse by the "albedo flip" - when the sunlight reflected by white ice is suddenly absorbed as ice melts to become the dark surface of open water.

The glaciers and ice sheets of Greenland in the northern hemisphere, and the western Antarctic ice sheet in the south, both show signs of the rapid changes predicted with rising temperatures."

Independent (uk): Climate change brings early spring in the Arctic

The Arctic spring is coming two weeks ahead of time compared to a decade ago, with birds, butterflies, flowers and small animals all appearing earlier in the year as a result of climate change.

A study of a range of animals and plants living in the high Arctic has revealed that many of them are responding to the earlier spring by flowering or laying their eggs significantly ahead of their normal times of the year.

On average, the breeding and flowering seasons in the Arctic have shifted by 14.5 days but some species of mosquitoes have begun laying their eggs 30 days earlier than in the mid 1990s, Toke Hoye, of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said.

"Our study confirms what many people already think, that the seasons are changing and it is not just one or two warm years but a trend seen over a decade," Dr Hoye said. "This is the most extensive study of its kind in the Arctic in terms of the number and variety of species and the replication of the observations."

Environment 5, Bush Administration 4

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gases, pursuant to its statutory authority to regulate pollutants. Hurrah!

Already the decision has had ramifications, as today EPA reopened the state of California's petition for an exemption from the Clean Air Act so that it can reduce tailpipe emissions by 25%. The petition has been sitting in limbo for two years.

Massachusetts et al v. Envivonmental Protection Agency et al, No. 05-1120 (pdf file)

For the environment:

John Paul Stevens, writing for the Court [appointed by Gerald Ford]
Stephen G. Breyer [appointed by Bill Clinton]
Ruth Bader Ginsburg [appointed by Bill Clinton]
Anthony M. Kennedy [appointed by Ronald Reagan]
David H. Souter [appointed by George H.W. Bush]

For the Bush Administration:
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the dissent [appointed by George W. Bush]
Samuel A. Alito Jr. [appointed by George W. Bush]
Antonin Scalia [appointed by Ronald Reagan]
Clarence Thomas [appointed by George H.W. Bush]

The decision begins,

"A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species--the most important species--of a "greenhouse gas."

WaPo: High Court Faults EPA Inaction on Emissions
Critics of Bush Stance on Warming Claim Victory

The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration yesterday for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, siding with environmentalists in the court's first examination of the phenomenon of global warming.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by improperly declining to regulate new-vehicle emissions standards to control the pollutants that scientists say contribute to global warming.

WaPo: The Case of the Term Goes Against the White House

The Global Warming Train Is A-Coming

Upsala Glacier, then and now
Even faster than scientists originally predicted, unfortunately. As President English-as-a-Second-Language would say, scientists have apparently misunderestimated global warmings' effects, due to a flaw in the models for climate change. This means current estimates are too low, by as much as 78%.

Guardian (uk): Global warming predictions are underestimated say scientists

Climate change models have dramatically underestimated the extent to which global warming will raise temperatures, scientists warned yesterday.

[]

The flaw came to light during a study of the effects of global surface temperatures on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Scientists have long known that greenhouse gases raise temperatures by insulating the planet. But a less well known mechanism is that the warmer the planet gets, the more carbon dioxide is released naturally by soil and oceans. The result is a mechanism where atmospheric carbon dioxide creates warming that causes even more carbon dioxide to be released.

Peter Cox, scientific director for climate change at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorset, with researchers from the US and the Netherlands, used ice cores from the Antarctic to study carbon dioxide levels trapped during a period called the Little Ice Age, from 1550 to 1850. They found carbon dioxide increased rapidly with warming, as soils decomposed faster and oceans lost more of the gas.

Because scientists have been unable to quantify the effect before, it has not been included in many climate models. But when it is taken into account, it lead to carbon dioxide levels that boosted temperatures by between 15 and 78%.

BBC: Global warming risk 'much higher'

Pay No Attention To That Science In the Corner!

Thus spake President Dumbass:

ThinkProgress: Bush ‘Doubts’ He’ll See Gore Movie; Wants To ‘Set Aside’ Global Warming Science

QUESTION: Will you see Al Gore’s new movie?

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: Doubt it.

(LAUGHTER)

But I will say this about the environmental debate: that my answer to the energy question also is an answer to how you deal with, you know, the greenhouse gas issue. And that is new technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars, which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment.

And in my judgment, we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects, and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and, at the same time, protect the environment.

And then he got into his motorcade of 10 MPG limousines and SUVs and drove off to his next dog-and-pony show.

Trashing Good Science

Krugman has a must read in the Times today. Here's a link to the whole piece, via Economist's View:

Paul Krugman: Enemy of the Planet

Lee Raymond, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, was paid $686 million over 13 years. But that's not a reason to single him out for special excoriation. Executive compensation is out of control in corporate America as a whole, and unlike other grossly overpaid business leaders, Mr. Raymond can at least claim to have made money for his stockholders.

There's a better reason to excoriate Mr. Raymond: for the sake of his company's bottom line, and perhaps his own personal enrichment, he turned Exxon Mobil into an enemy of the planet.

[]

So how have corporate interests responded? In the early years, when the science was still somewhat in doubt, many companies from the oil industry, the auto industry and other sectors were members of a group called the Global Climate Coalition, whose de facto purpose was to oppose curbs on greenhouse gases. But as the scientific evidence became clearer, many members — including oil companies like BP and Shell — left the organization and conceded the need to do something about global warming.

Exxon, headed by Mr. Raymond, chose a different course of action: it decided to fight the science.

A leaked memo from a 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, in which Exxon (which hadn't yet merged with Mobil) was a participant, describes a strategy of providing "logistical and moral support" to climate change dissenters, "thereby raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.' " And that's just what Exxon Mobil has done: lavish grants have supported a sort of alternative intellectual universe of global warming skeptics.

[]

Has Exxon Mobil's war on climate science actually changed policy for the worse? Maybe not. Although most governments have done little to curb greenhouse gases, and the Bush administration has done nothing, it's not clear that policies would have been any better even if Exxon Mobil had acted more responsibly.

But the fact is that whatever small chance there was of action to limit global warming became even smaller because Exxon Mobil chose to protect its profits by trashing good science. And that, not the paycheck, is the real scandal of Mr. Raymond's reign as Exxon Mobil's chief executive.

Previous post: Another Billionaire for Bush (April 14, 2006)

"[T]he serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming [] is the real deal"

The photograph taken in 1928, above, shows how the Upsala Glacier, part of the South American Andes in Argentina, used to look. The ice on the Upsala Glacier today, shown in 2004 below, is retreating at least 180 ft. per year

Time Magazine's cover story this week (I had to watch an ad to get access to the article; it's time well spent):

Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever... More And More Land Is Being Devastated By Drought... Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities... By Any Measure, Earth Is At ... The Tipping Point
The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame. Why the crisis hit so soon--and what we can do about it


Some of the side articles are very good, also:

Feeling The Heat
Global warming is already disrupting the biological world, pushing many species to the brink of extinction and turning others into runaway pests. But the worst is yet to come

What troubles scientists especially is that if we are only in the early stages of warming, all these lost and endangered animals might be just the first of many to go. One study estimates that more than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by the year 2050.

The Climate Crusaders
They saw which way the wind was blowing and set out to save the world

How It Affects Your Health
Expect more risk of heatstrokes, asthma, allergies and infectious disease


Vicious Cycles

The debate over whether Earth is warming up is over. Now we're learning that climate disruptions feed off one another in accelerating spirals of destruction. Scientists fear we may be approaching the point of no return THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT Without the greenhouse effect, life on Earth would not be possible. Energy from the sun is absorbed by the planet and radiated back out as heat. Atmospheric gases like carbon dioxide trap that heat and keep it from leaking into space. That's what keeps us warm at night.

But as humans pour ever increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, more of the sun's heat gets trapped, and the planet gets a fever BURNING FOSSIL FUELS RELEASES CARBON FUELING THE FIRE The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is climbing fast. Most of it comes from burning fuels for energy--gasoline in cars or coal for electricity, for example. The U.S., with less than 5% of the world's population, produces one-quarter of all greenhouse gases BURNING FORESTS REDUCES OXYGEN AND INCREASES DROUGHT SPREADING THE PAIN Deforestation, through clear-cutting or burning, sows havoc far beyond the affected area. The fires release still more carbon into the atmosphere, fewer plants survive to convert CO2 into oxygen, and scorched soil absorbs more heat and retains less water, increasing droughts •Plants take in CO2 •Fires release carbon •Less carbon absorbed •Soil dries out RISING TEMPERATURES MELT POLAR ICE AND PERMAFROST THAWING OUT The North Pole may be seasonally ice free by 2050. Melting permafrost will release vast amounts of trapped carbon into the air LESS ICE MEANS MORE HEAT WHICH MEANS LESS ICE SPEEDING UP Ice reflects nearly all the sun's energy that hits it. As the planet's ice melts, more of that energy is absorbed by Earth--which further raises the temperature. That, in turn, makes the remaining ice melt quicker •20% reflected by vegetation and dark soil •10% reflected by ocean water •90% reflected by ice MELTING ICE RAISES SEA LEVELS INUNDATING LOW COASTAL AREAS WASHING ASHORE The ice at the North Pole is floating, so as it melts, the sea level won't change much. But the massive ice sheets over Antarctica and Greenland are another story. If both melted completely, sea levels could rise nearly 220 ft. (72 m). That's a worst-case scenario. But the melting is accelerating, and sea levels are projected to rise gradually, threatening low-lying communities.