Climate Change

The New York Times carried an article Monday about how Gov. Pawlenty’s take on climate change is “evolving.” He has become less the gung-ho environmental partner to Democrats at the state Capitol and peers across the Midwest and more a non-responsive and even glib antagonist to progress on energy issues. Says one unnamed Wisconsin official: “Pawlenty [...]

“Bachmann Watch,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s new Web site for fact-checking Rep. Michele Bachmann, corrects some of the Sixth District congresswoman’s recent misstatements, including her refuted claim that Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan would raise household energy costs by $3,100 per year and her assertion, which turns out to be false, that she refused [...]

Rep. Michele Bachmann spent part of Earth Day arguing against a carbon “cap and tax” because carbon dioxide is a “natural byproduct of nature.” It’s “portrayed as harmful, but there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas… It is a harmless gas… And yet we’re [...]

During a radio show on Saturday, Rep. Michele Bachmann described herself as a “foreign correspondent on enemy lines” in Washington, D.C. The Republican congresswoman went on to tell WWTC-AM:
I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a [...]

The director of NASA’s Goddard Institute has asked Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to oppose the Big Stone II coal-fired plant at the source of the Minnesota River. Dr. James Hansen is a renowned climatologist who was born, raised and educated in Iowa. Hansen advocates for the use of alternatives to coal in order to reduce [...]

Here’s for all the cynics out there: Michael Pollan, author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” argues in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine why seemingly small, individual steps to save the planet are worth taking:
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As a rookie home brewer, I wasn’t happy to see this headline from MSNBC: “Beer lovers beware of global warming; Growing malting barley is gonna get tougher, expert warns.” Regional droughts and flooding have already spiked the price of hops. Now, news that barley will likely be in shorter supply as a big grower, Australia, [...]

Stephen Colbert has an ongoing joke in which he describes bears as the single greatest threat to America today. The bit might have made a good keynote address earlier this month at the Heartland Institute’s “International Conference on Climate Change” in New York. The gathering brought together global warming skeptics and deniers from around the [...]

MPR’s Tom Robertson reports on Minnesota’s dwindling moose population, which wildlife biologists believe may be affected by climate change. This story line is likely to turn up again and again. Most species are adapted to live within a defined range of temperatures. As the planet warms, many plants and animals lack the instincts or ability [...]

Democratic New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will be fighting for his political life following an allegation he met with a high-priced prostitute last month at a Washington, D.C., hotel. As the state’s attorney general, Spitzer earned a reputation for tough prosecution of Wall Street crimes. As governor, though, he’s been out front on climate change [...]