Stoopid Party Shenanigans

House Joint Resolution 7, introduced by Rep. Pat Connell (R-Hamilton) passed the Montana House of Representatives by a vote of 52-43 on Friday. This latest crazy bill would demand reparations from the federal government for the effects of climate change on Montana’s water supply.

Because federal wildfire management has caused changes in the quality, quantity and timing of streamflows in Montana, and because “federal policies threaten natural ecosystem processes and habitat, resulting in large burned-over areas that are susceptible to invasive plant species and changes in stream flow and water quality that affect native fish populations”.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:

     That the Governor and the Attorney General are urged to initiate legal action against the federal government to recover damages to Montana water users caused by federal land management policies, as well as wildfire suppression policies in headwater areas.

Yep, that’s right. Because the climate is warming, there are more and larger wildfires, stream runoff now occurs earlier in the spring with less water in the summer and fall, waters are warmer and the quality of the water is diminished, it must be due to the actions of Federal management policies. I don’t suppose it could be that all these things could have a common cause, like, maybe what rational people call global warming or climate change? Oh, what was I thinking. All natural processes have changed since we elected a Muslim President. It probably has something to do with Obama’s drone policy, or a screw-up in Benghazi. None of these things would be happening if we had a real one-percenter in the Whitehouse.

These guys could be done with their work and out of town in two weeks if they didn’t waste so much of their time and my tax money arguing about insane bills like paying your parking tickets with forty lashes from a cat o’ nine tails, allowing juries to make law, stopping reasonable irrigation management, nullifying federal laws, giving voting rights to embryos, etc., etc.  Take a look at the vote tally on this bill if you want to see just who the really crazy people are in the Montana House.

Reality-Based Legislation

House Joint Resolution 10, introduced by Rep. Doug Coffin of Missoula.

Be it resolved: 

     That the 63rd Legislature:

     (1) recognizes that anthropogenic or human-made climate change is scientifically valid and represents scientific fact;

     (2) understands that anthropogenic climate change, manifesting as major changes in weather patterns in North America, including Montana, has the potential to cause major socioeconomic and demographic dislocations in Montana that can be construed as an ecological threat;

     (3) compels state government and its affiliated agencies, with due consideration of Montana’s economic heritage and preservation of employment traditions, to employ, invent, and apply new technologies commensurate with the conservation of resources in a manner that mitigates and adapts to climate change to the best of our ability; and

     (4) suggests that educators include anthropogenic climate change science in their science education curricula.

This legislation goes to a hearing at the Montana House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday (2/13). Let’s support this bill. Yes, it’s a feel-good, do-nothing bill that likely won’t go anywhere, but let’s face it, real science doesn’t make it to the Legislature very often. I think we can send a message to climate deniers and cranks in the legislature and around the state that there are a lot of folks out here living in a reality-based world and we are pretty sick of listening to the crap that substitutes for fact among our elected representatives.

Climate change is real, climate change is happening, and it’s affecting Montana. Stand up and say so for God’s sake! If you have a local House member on the Natural Resources Committee, send them a quick email and let them know that you support real science. Using the Legislature’s Contact Page, it’s simple. If none of your local legislators are on the committee, just whip off a missive to the entire committee and tell them that this bill needs to make it to the floor for a vote putting every legislator on the record.

Water Wacky

State Senator Verdell Jackson (R – HD 5) has never been one to let facts stand in the way of good legislation. A couple of years ago, Verdell said, “he’s spent four years reading about climate change but hasn’t come across “an experiment using the scientific method” that demonstrates that carbon dioxide contributes to it.”

Now, Verdell has bewilderingly taken offense with the Reserved Water Rights Compact between the Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the State of Montana. For a dozen years, the CSKT, the State of Montana and Federal regulators have been working on an agreement to protect the rights of existing water rights holders and address water rights and adjudication on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Since 1996, water rights on the reservation have been tied up due to uncertainties in the existing law. Since that time, there has been no legal way to obtain water rights inside reservation boundaries. Through a series of grueling negotiations over many years, the Compact Commission has worked out a provisional agreement that is fair to all parties. At the last minute, Verdell wants to step in and extend the argument for several more years for no perceptible reason.

In an op-ed in the Kalispell Daily Inter Lake on Jan. 20, Jackson makes several claims that are based entirely on fiction.

To put it simply, this compact will likely make it impossible to obtain any new surface water rights and will restrict wells located close to surface water in Western Montana along with limiting many existing water rights of irrigators. New home sites and large building projects may not get a viable amount of water.

Put simply, this entire claim is bunk. The compact does not affect any water rights claims in Western Montana outside the boundaries of the Flathead Reservation. The Compact does not restrict anybody’s wells or surface water rights off the Reservation. On the Flathead Reservation, the Compact would establish a Water Management Board to administer water rights on the Reservation and end the roadblock for new claims that has existed since 1996. The claim that new building projects may not be able to get a “viable amount of water” is just flat-out wrong. In fact, the Compact provides more local control and avoids costly litigation. The Compact provides for additional water from Hungry Horse Reservoir that would be available to the Tribes to lease for future development both on and off the Reservation.

Jackson also claims that the Compact will “give senior water rights to all of Western Montana’s major lakes and rivers to the tribes.” Again, this is complete and utter hokum invented by the Senator. As part of the agreement, the Tribes get a shared interest in a few in-stream flow water rights in Western Montana that already exist and are currently administered by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The agreement establishes NO new surface water rights either on or off the Reservation.

Senator Jackson either doesn’t understand current law, or is trying to be willfully ignorant. Under current law, established by the Hellgate Treaty of 1855 and upheld by numerous courts, the Tribes hold water rights on nearly every stream in Western Montana. They have rarely exercised these rights because of the litigation it would entail, but the courts have consistently recognized that the rights exist. Under this compact, the Tribes are giving up nearly all of those existing rights off of the Reservation in exchange for a more stable system of water rights both for them and for the residents of Montana both on and off of the Reservation.

I’m not sure what agenda Senator Jackson thinks will be furthered by delaying or corrupting this good agreement. I can only speculate that since Jackson has been tied to ultra-right-wing groups like American Tradition Partnership and the American Legislative Exchange Council and likes to push knee-jerk crackpot bills like allowing legislators to carry guns in the Capitol, there is a game plan here that hasn’t yet come to light. The only constituency for this change this late is the game would be trial lawyers who would greatly profit from the resulting flurry of litigation while water-rights holders and water users in Western Montana would take it in the shorts and Montana taxpayers, once again, pony up to foot the bill for another of Verdell’s cockeyed schemes.

Republican Anti-Science Committee

Good Grief! Do you still wonder why Republicans have no credibility with voters? The House Republican Steering Committee just named Wyoming representative Cynthia Lummis as the new chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Yes, THAT Cynthia Lummis. The one who said, “she believes the jury is still out on climate change.” “This subcommittee’s focus on the science of energy development and use is a perfect fit,” she said in a statement.” Where, exactly, in “Science, Space and Technology” does energy development and use fit in?

Lummis takes over the helm from former chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas). “In 2009, [Smith] criticized the media for not airing enough “dissenting opinions” about climate change.” Smith, in turn, replaced Texas Republican Ralph Hall.

“I don’t think we can control what God controls.” [Hall] also said he agrees with Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) that climate scientists are involved in a conspiracy to receive research funding.

This is the very same “Science” committee who gave us Paul Broun (R-Georgia) who used the term “Lies from the pit of Hell” to describe his scientific knowledge about the science behind evolution. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” he said at an appearance at Liberty University. “Bill Nye [The Science Guy] slammed Broun, for his comments about evolution, saying that Broun “is, by any measure, unqualified to make decisions about science, space, and technology.”  And, Nye went on to make the astonishing claim, in response to Broun, that the earth is simply not 9,000 years old.

And, let’s not forget committee member Todd “Legitimate rape” Akin. Oh, and, good ole boy Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.),

Rohrabacher has made a number of scientifically questionable statements, including the idea that an earlier period of global warming may have been caused by “dinosaur flatulence.” Last year, after coming under fire for seeming to suggest that if global warming is real it could be addressed by cutting down trees (when in fact forests reduce global warming by absorbing atmospheric carbon), he issued a statement saying, “I do not believe that CO2 is a cause of global warming.”

And so, the anti-”science” committee marches on under the same old, new leadership, embarrassing our country with a chairman and members who wouldn’t know science even if they weren’t sniffing dinosaur farts.

 

The Real Impact of Montana Coal

It’s mid-December here in Button Valley. We barely have a skiff of snow on the ground and temperatures are in the thirties. Did I mention it’s mid-December? While we are doing okay on precipitation, mainly due to a quite wet spring, we have received only about a third of our normal snowfall. There’s a reason for this, and a reason for why it seems to have become the new normal. That reason is related to changes to the Montana climate due to our unfortunate national addiction to fossil fuels.

This morning there was a news report about a U.M. study, funded by the Chamber of Commerce, on the economic impact of coal mining in the state. The study relates that “expanding the state’s coal mines would significantly impact Montana’s economy.”

Patrick Barkey, director of the UM Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said expanding Montana’s existing coal mines and developing new mines would boost jobs, household income and tax revenues across the state.

Now, I realize that these studies are funded by profit from coal mining in the state and the authors are somewhat anxious to produce a product that fits with what their backers want to hear, but it seems to me that they also claim to be economists and academicians and I am always a bit mystified when they fail to investigate the true cost of mining, transporting and burning carbon in their analyses.

It was only earlier this week when thousands of protesters, including many from Montana, traveled to western Washington to protest the building of five new coal terminals on our coast to ship western coal to Asia. These protests were ostensibly about the economic, health and social costs of transporting millions of tons of coal across the country, but of course protesters also were there to remind everyone that there are costs to sending our resources overseas that can’t be counted in jobs, income and tax revenue. There are currently 16 to 23 trains passing through the city of Billings every day. The new coal terminals would increase that number considerably, possibly by eight to ten more trains. The coal trains will add “snarled traffic, emergency response delays, toxic diesel and coal dust emissions, the risks of coal train derailment and toxic spills” all along their route to the coast.

Once the coal arrives at it’s final destination, most likely China, it will be burned in out-of-date, highly-polluting power plants in order to produce cheap products that will be shipped back to the U.S. To get those cheap doodads Montanans will suffer increased incidence of asthma in children and adults, and increase in emphysema and bronchitis, stunted lung development is children, an increase in poisonous mercury in the air we breath, more lung cancer, more heart attacks, more emergency room visits, more strokes as well as an increase in mental retardation and stunted development in our children.

Need we get into the environmental effects? We are already familiar with those here in Button Valley. We now get more of our precipitation as rain, less snow in the winter and lower summer and fall streamflows which means that we see earlier and faster runoff and trouble filling our reservoirs. Our spring freshet now comes, on average, two weeks earlier, our forests are dying due to both insect infestation that is no longer controlled by cold winters and more and larger wildfires. The country at large is seeing more and  larger storms. We see increases in hunger, malnutrition, starvation and famine around the world due to droughts, storms and flooding.

So, like I say, I’m a bit baffled when trained economists see only benefits to strip-mining our coal and fail to even mention the real costs to the people of Montana. Our Coal-Cowboy Governor has said that if we don’t strip and sell Montana coal, China will get it elsewhere.

China will find coal even if the United States won’t deliver it, said Herb Krohn from the United Transportation Union. “All we would do is force (China) to buy dirtier, more-polluting coal,”

These arguments, to me, seem akin to stating that the State of Montana should be selling meth, because if we don’t do it, addicts will just buy it elsewhere. Yes, there are short-term benefits to mining Montana coal, but when you include the longer-term and hidden cost of the toxic assault on our population just burning our rocks for profit doesn’t look nearly so smart. Think about it folks, while we may reap a small profit, our children will pay the ultimate price.

You Decide

The following news/opinion stories all showed up in my RSS reader this morning. Taken together I think they recognize a conundrum being played out in energy-producing states around the country. The first is an opinion piece by a policy analyst for a conservative think tank in Ohio, but similar opinions are showing up in newsprint and electronic media in most western and mid-western states.

Without coal, we lose
“When energy companies doing business in Ohio make profits, nearly everyone wins, and Ohio’s economy grows, which results in job creation and additional tax dollars for all levels of government.”

With Carbon Dioxide Emissions at Record High, Worries on How to Slow Warming
“Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an international goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, established three years ago, is on the verge of becoming unattainable, said researchers affiliated with the Global Carbon Project.”

Long-Term Research Reveals How Climate Change Is Playing out in Real Ecosystems
“Around the world, the effects of global climate change are increasingly evident and difficult to ignore.”

Off The Cliff And Into Deep Water? Cutting Clean Air And Clean Water Programs Could Incur Heavy Costs
“The health cost of power plant pollution is an estimated $100 billion each year, nationwide, when people get sick or die from breathing dirty air. When polluted water makes swimmers sick, the additional public health costs in just two southern California counties has been estimated at $21 to $51 million each year.”

Wyoming – A look into the effects of energy development on fish
“Most anglers are pretty even-keeled and realize the need for alternative energy development. I think most would agree, however, that if that development comes at the cost of our fisheries it’s not worth it. There are ways to mitigate the impact of energy development on our rivers; and studies like Carlin’s are helping to show how best to preserve fisheries while allowing energy development.”

This is but one day in an on-going argument that is playing out across the country. What does this mean for the Treasure State? Yes, Montana will continue to develop our natural resources. Our economy was built on the resource extraction, but we all need to remember that these resources are finite need to be developed for the benefit of all of the people in Montana and all of the people in our country. The need for alternative, less polluting, energy development must be given equal weight alongside the development of existing natural resources. Mining coal, or drilling for natural gas has consequences that can far outweigh their short-term effects on local economies. As we move forward, we need to keep in mind that we have no choice but to wean ourselves from technologies that kill our people and our environment. We will continue to mine our coal resources and remove our oil and gas from the earth for the near future, but as we do that we need to take into account all of the consequences, not just the monetary rewards or the short-term profit motive.

Please help with this important work

The good folks over at Conservation Hawks are up against a deadline. They need to raise $2,000 this week to match a grant from the Cinnabar Foundation to produce a couple of climate change videos for anglers and hunters. Check out their plea below and please help out if you are able.

Friends,

We need your help.  As Conservation Hawks supporters, you understand how important it is to educate other sportsmen about climate change, and how vital it is to create a groundswell of public support for strong climate & energy legislation.  It’s the only way we’re going to save our hunting and fishing for future generations, and it’s the best chance we have for passing on a healthy natural world to our kids & grandkids.
Unfortunately, we’re up against the wall.  We have to raise enough money to produce two educational climate videos, one for hunters and one for anglers, and we have to raise those funds this week.  Please visit the Conservation Hawks website and donate as much as you can afford to give, whether that’s $5, $25 or $250.  We’re all in this together and with your help, we can offer future generations of sportsmen a fighting chance.  Our world may be warming, but hard work and dedication can help change our political climate, slow our fossil fuel emissions and defend our sporting heritage.

Please visit the Conservation Hawks website and make your tax-deductible donation.
Todd Tanner
Chairman, Conservation Hawks

Denny believes in fairy tales

Dennis Rehberg believes that, “Clean coal is a perfect example of how Montana can lead the way into energy independence.” The only problem is that “clean coal” doesn’t exist and never will. Coal is the dirtiest form of energy on the planet. In a recent peer-reviewed study by Duke University, the researchers found that we have done a fairly good job of regulating coal-fired power plants to keep their pollutants out of the air. The problem is, those pollutants don’t just go away. They end up in the solid or slurry coal ash, produced and stored by the plants. Communities near coal mines and coal-burning power plants see much higher levels of pollution-caused health problems.

“Among the problems identified in children and infants in these communities are impaired growth and neurological development, high blood levels of heavy metals, higher prevalences of any birth defects and a greater chance of being of low birth weight, which is a risk factor for future obesity, diabetes and heart disease,”

The worst example in Montana, and in the interior west, is the coal-fired plant at Colstrip, Montana. In 2011, the EPA ranked the Colstrip plant as the worst mercury polluter in the nation. In 2009, Colstrip emitted 1,490 pounds of toxic mercury into the atmosphere out of total emissions of 1,726 pounds statewide. A 2004 study estimated that the Colstrip steam-generating plant is annually responsible for;

• 31 early deaths.
• 48 added heart attacks.
• 530 asthma attacks.
• 22 hospital admissions.
• 19 cases of chronic bronchitis.

Coal ash is stored in antiquated slurry ponds at the plant which have been leaking toxins into the ground water around Colstrip for decades. 57 Colstrip residents filed suit against PPL due to a plume of toxic chemicals that polluted their drinking-water sources and made folks mysteriously sick for years. The suit resulted in a $25 million settlement in 2008. In another part of the suit that was recently in the news, a 2010 settlement is being challenged in the Montana Supreme Court for pollution of groundwater on two local ranches. Extraction wells have been installed around the leaking ponds and the groundwater is captured and the contaminated water is evaporated off to form a thick paste. The paste is then put back in the same leaky ponds, but is considered less likely to seep out.

So, while Congressman Rehberg continues to believe that we will be able to “Advance our technology so we are able to produce more with less in a manner that doesn’t negatively impact our environment.” He’s just wrong. That toxic waste won’t magically go away,

…the contaminants don’t just disappear. They remain, trapped but largely untreated, in concentrated solid form as coal ash or in liquid form as scrubber wastewater and ash-transport slurries. And they’re accumulating in the lakes and rivers into which the plants directly discharge these wastes.

It’s not helpful when our elected congressman votes

• to bar EPA from enforcing greenhouse gas regulations.
• to not enforce limits on CO2 emissions.
• against tax credits for renewable sources of energy.
• against tax incentives for energy conservation.
• against raising CAFE standards and incentives for alternate fuels.
• to open more of our public lands to drilling for oil.

Coal is not clean and cannot be made clean. Coal will continue to kill people around the globe and change our environment until we make a serious commitment to changing the way we make our energy. We will continue to use coal for many decades, but we must do so responsibly and in recognition of the hazards that burning carbon inflicts on everybody. Rehberg talks a good game, but magical thinking and “clean coal” won’t get us out of this mess.

 

Are you scared yet?

If I were to take a poll and ask which Montana politician is most like our scary, black, socialist, Muslim President, which names would spring to mind? Well, if you are the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, evidently you would instantly jump to a young, female, white, Montana native, mother of four, candidate for HD8 who has never held public office.

At least that’s the feeling I got from a recent campaign mailer calling Obama and MacLean “Two Peas in a Pod.” and repeatedly using the hated “Liberal” epithet. Two weeks before the election and the Republican Party feels the need to use racially-tinged, false rhetoric against a candidate who really doesn’t have much chance of winning. Why does the Republican Party feel the need to try to frighten voters and  tie our local politics to the President? Because it works. People who are scared tend to vote Republican and what better way to alarm voters than to claim a voting record that doesn’t exist and ties to that “black guy” from Chicago.

For me it’s a very simple choice. Her opponent, Steve Lavin voted with his Republican colleagues for House Bill 309 in the last legislative session. The failed HB309 would have decimated your fishing access to Montana streams and turned over thousands of miles of our streams to private control. It would declare many of your favorite fishing stretches private land with no public access and Steve Lavin thinks that’s a great idea.

MacLean has a very simple stance as outlined on her website;

I will stand up for Montanan’s constitutional right to access rivers, streams and public lands. I will also advocate for policies that keep our water clean, our open spaces protected, and our habitats improved for hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation.

MacLean is also not willing to jump on the conservative bandwagon to gut our management of fish and wildlife and turn it over to private interests;

I believe the legislature needs to support the important work of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife management activity. This department is made up of experienced professionals whose work and expertise should be counted on for the development of effective wildlife management policies.

You decide, will you be voting against the scary black guy in a race that has zero national significance, or will you be voting to actually improve the Treasure State and deny scare tactics?

Dennis Rehberg: The Greatest Hoax

In a rare glimpse into the truth behind Dennis Rehberg’s senate campaign, Denny shared a microphone with notorious climate-change denier Senator James Inhofe in Billings on Monday. Inhofe is touring the country to promote his pro-coal agenda and his book calling climate change “The Greatest Hoax”. In Montana, Inhofe is acting as “the high pope of denial anointing candidates with the black mark of coal dust.”

Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee famously,

repeated his frequent claim that human influenced climate change is impossible because “God’s still up there.” Inhofe cited Genesis 8:22 to claim that it is “outrageous” and arrogant for people to believe human beings are “able to change what He is doing in the climate.”

While Inhofe travels the country proclaiming the evangelic mantra of “clean coal” and the denial of science, his home state of “Oklahoma – recently suffered its hottest summer on record, with July 2011 “becoming the hottest month for any state on record,” and heat-related damages to the state’s agricultural economy coming in at roughly $2 billion.”

The denialist pair repeated the Rehberg mantra that the Corette power plant near Billings was forced to close due to oppressive EPA regulations. However, earlier this month, David Hoffman, PPL spokesman, said that

“the Corette plant has been off line “a substantial period of time” this year because of the oversupply of power in the Northwest markets, including power from wind energy, and a flat or lower demand for electricity.” “The price for electricity is also low because natural gas is so cheap, Hoffman said.”

With profits of more than $1.5 billion in 2011 for Corette plant owner PPL, upgrading the plant would not have been a problem.

With both our Presidential candidates totally ignoring the reality of global warming during the campaign, the door is opened for climate denialists like Rehberg and Inhofe to promote their fantastical views of how our environment works. The reality for coal-fired power plants has been the closure of more than 200 plants across the country due to the glut of natural gas and attendant low prices.

…drillers punched so many holes and extracted so much gas through hydraulic fracturing that they have driven the price of natural gas to near-record lows. And because of the intricate financial deals and leasing arrangements that many of them struck during the boom, they were unable to pull their foot off the accelerator fast enough to avoid a crash in the price of natural gas, which is down more than 60 percent since the summer of 2008.

Following his Montana back-slapping stop for Rehberg, Inhofe will be campaigning in Missouri next week for “legitimate rape” candidate and true coal believer, Todd Akin. Nuff said…