Photo: Stephen Dann

First, the bad news. As CNN Money reports, peanut butter prices have skyrocketed in a matter of days:

Kraft will raise prices for its Planters brand peanut butter by 40% starting Monday, while ConAgra has instituted increases of more than 20% for its Peter Pan brand that went into effect this month. J.M. Smucker , which makes Jif, will introduce price hikes of around 30% starting Tuesday.

Consumers, meanwhile, are already seeing these increases reflected at grocery stores.

The increased price of a low-cost, healthy staple is another blow to food budgets already spread thin. And that last bit of the story is a kick in the Fluffernutter, isn’t it? Grocery stores paid the old, lower price for the jars on their shelves — but they’ll charge you the new, higher price.

So why the need to raise prices?

While spokespeople for several grocery chains declined to provide specific pricing figures, the peanut industry is clearly under pressure this year after one of the worst harvests in recent memory.

Prices for a ton of runner peanuts, commonly used to make peanut butter, hit nearly $1,200 this month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s up from just $450 per ton a year ago. Overall, the USDA projects that American peanut production will hit 3.6 billion pounds this year, down 13% from last year.

Analysts attribute this drop to the intense heat and drought that hit the southern U.S. this year, as well as to high prices for other crops that led farmers to focus their efforts elsewhere. [Emphasis mine.]

But no mention of global warming fueling those extreme weather events? There’s a major gap in the coverage between new media and old media. While bloggers like Grist’s Jess Zimmerman, ThinkProgress’ Stephen Lacey, and Huffington Post’s Tara Kelly connect the dots between extreme weather and the climate crisis, reporters for traditional media outlets won’t go there, either due to a lack of knowledge of the latest climate science or to a fear of blowback from politically motivated science deniers. A Google News search shows zero traditional media outlets tying the higher peanut butter prices to climate change-related extreme weather — even as the science on climate change loading the dice for extreme weather is clearer than ever.

That’s part of a broader trend. Even with 2011 as the 11th-hottest year on record and America is wracked by historic heat and drought, floods, and fall storms, most journalists remain silent about the climate connection.

I spent Columbus Day in New Hampshire, where heat broke records on three straight days in nearby Portland, Maine, including the Oct. 9 record being shattered by an incredible six degrees. But the forecast predicting the record heat on Manchester’s WMUR-TV didn’t reference global warming. Instead, the hosts strained to avoid any mention of it. “Weird!” one blurted out. “Strange!” shrugged the other.

A full 23 years after James Hansen told Congress [PDF] that human-made carbon pollution was already warming our planet, the public still isn’t being given the facts about our climate reality.

It’s nuts.

Could one of the Gulf of Mexico’s most abundant fish face the same fate as Prince William Sound’s crashed herring population?

A new study [PDF] by a team of researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences raises alarming questions about the lingering effects of the BP oil spill on Gulf killifish. The minnow-like wetlands resident, also known as bull minnow or cacahoe, is a critical part of the Gulf’s food chain and was chosen for study by a team of researchers because of its abundance and sensitivity to any effects of toxic pollution.

The study finds that oil exposure has altered the killifish’s cellular function in ways that are known to be predictive of developmental abnormalities, decreased hatching success, and decreased embryo and larval survival.

“Population-level effects, if they emerge, are going to emerge across several generations, so effects on long-lived species will take longer to emerge than for short lived species,” says lead research Andrew Whitehead of Louisiana State University.

“This study is alarming because similar health effects seen in fish, sea otters, and harlequin ducks following the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska were predictive of population impacts, from decline to outright collapse,” says Dr. Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. “Not only are Gulf killifish an important food source for redfish and speckled trout, but killifish eat mosquitoes, helping to keep the pest population in check.”

The year of the Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska in 1989, the stocks of herring stayed fairly steady. The next year? Still relatively stable, and a lot of people assumed the threat had passed. But four years later, herring stocks collapsed. Fishing licenses, which had been sold from one generation of fishermen to the next and served as a dependable retirement fund, were suddenly worthless. The effects rippled up the food chain as predators like orcas were deprived of a critical food source.

And today?

Two decades after the Exxon Valdez spilled almost 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the herring still have not come back.

Without that cornerstone species, the commercial fishing season now starts two months later, in May instead of March. Oil still wells up in the little pits dug by sea otters as they forage for clams.

So what can we do now?

“Wherever oil continues to be found in the Gulf, it should be removed if doing so won’t cause more environmental harm than good,” says NWF’s Dr. Inkley. “But in addition, Congress must act to protect the Gulf’s people and wildlife by passing comprehensive response legislation. Action is urgently needed, both to improve oil and gas drilling safety regulations so this doesn’t happen again, and to dedicate fines and penalties to Gulf Coast restoration.”

Ask your members of Congress to pass Gulf oil disaster response legislation now. 

The Potomac River Generating Station.

The City of Alexandria and GenOn Energy have reached an agreement to permanently close the company’s Potomac River Generating Station, which began operating in 1949. To facilitate the retirement of the plant, the city of Alexandria will release approximately $32 million currently held in escrow, which was set aside to pay for the additional environmental controls at the station as a result of a 2008 agreement between the city and GenOn.

“Today’s announcement is a path forward for both Alexandria and the power company that works for everybody, and truly reflects the interest of both parties,” said Alexandria’s Mayor William D. Euille. “Both the Alexandria City Council and community have worked extremely hard toward this goal, and we are very proud of the final result. This news strengthens Alexandria’s future and opens the door to an enhanced quality of life for our residents.”

Under the terms of the agreement, GenOn has agreed to retire the generating station by October 1, 2012, or, if the plant is needed beyond that date for reliability purposes, as soon as it is no longer needed.

The news comes in the wake of a report that the polluting plant isn’t necessary to meet the D.C. area’s energy needs. And as David Roberts has detailed, the site on the banks of the Potomac River could be reborn as something much better than a crappy old coal plant.

I visited the site in April with the National Wildlife Federation’s Joe Mendelson, using the GenOn facility as an example of a dirty coal plant that could go unregulated in the face of a government shutdown.

Considering how long Alexandria public health and environmental advocates have been fighting to close this dirty coal-fired power plant, and in one of America’s most coal-friendly states, this is a historic victory. A long list of elected officials and conservation groups, from Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) to the Sierra Club, deserve credit.

A fire engine near near Nutrioso, Ariz. Photo: U.S. Forest Service, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests

It’s been a scary spring for wildfires in places like Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Global warming caused by human-made carbon pollution is fueling perfect conditions, with longer fire seasons, drier conditions, and more lightning strikes.

But a search of Google News over the last week shows few reporters are connecting the dots for their readers. I did a search for stories that mentioned both wildfires and climate or global warming. I found very few stories in mainstream news outlets that mentioned climate and wildfires together at all, and the ones that did were just as likely to wrongly downplay the connection as correctly draw the scientifically documented tie. (Note that Google News is a crude tool, not covering every print outlet and including very little of what’s said on TV and radio. If you know a story I missed, please add it in comments.)

First, the outlets that made the right scientific connection between wildfires and global warming:

• ABC News directly connects global warming and extreme weather.
• Public Radio International doesn’t just connect carbon pollution and changes in weather patterns — it asks if enough is being done to prepare communities for future disasters.
• NPR’s Science Friday had as a guest Joel Achenbach, who recently predicted that the 2100s will be the Century of Disasters.
• Reuters asks if the insurance industry can survive the new era.

That’s it. Four stories that accurately connected wildfires and global warming based on the best science available. That’s all I could find.

Now for the stories that mentioned climate and wildfires but failed to correctly connect the dots:

• PBS downplays the link by quoting AccuWeather, which until recently employed climate science denier Joe Bastardi.
• USA Today baldly states its disinterest in delving into any link, saying, ”Never mind the debate over global warming, its possible causes and effects.”
• A New York Times/Greenwire article ignores the evidence supporting a link, instead going into extensive detail on what we don’t know. (Joseph Romm analyzes this article in more depth at Climate Progress.)
• The Arizona Republic makes only a passing reference to the climate link while making the wildfires sound strictly like a forest management issue.

CNN.com didn’t connect climate and wildfires in America that I could see. However, it does have story noting that thanks to global warming, Siberia, once frozen, is now on fire.

What’s so strange about reporters’ reticence is that the connection between global warming and wildfires isn’t controversial in the climate science community. While scientists are always eager to learn more and shine light in every possible corner, the basics are straightforward and established: More heat + more droughts = more wildfires. Don’t believe me? Ask NASA. Or the Environmental Protection Agency.

How established? Amanda Staudt, the National Wildlife Federation’s climate scientist, made this video on the climate-wildfire connection a full three years ago:

So why doesn’t the line get drawn? Polluter-funded front groups and their allies in the media stand ready to attack anyone who reports scientific fact on climate change. For both reporters and the government officials they’re quoting, it takes courage to stand up to that.

Most ironic about the New York Times/Greenwire article: Just last week, the Times‘ Leslie Kaufman wrote this about a recent climate poll:

Scientists at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration [NOAA] drew a relatively high approval rating, with 76 percent of respondents saying they strongly or somewhat trusted them.

Of course, the agency states unequivocally that the earth is warming and that human activity is a leading cause. So if 76 percent of the American public trusts NOAA scientists strongly or somewhat, why don’t more people accept their conclusions?

NOAA wrote about “Climate Enhanced Wildfires” … in 1998. But here we are 13 years later and The New York Times is still reporting to the controversy on the climate-wildfires link. Is it any wonder some Americans are still uncertain?

To learn more about the connection between global warming and extreme weather, visit the National Wildlife Federation.

The Mississippi River flooding part of downtown Memphis.Photo: Chris Wieland

“All extreme weather events are now subject to human influence,” said Peter Gleick, a climate and water scientist and the president of the Pacific Institute, at a Capitol Hill briefing on Monday organized by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). “We are loading the dice and painting higher numbers on them.”

Forecasters expected the Mississippi River to top out in Memphis on Monday night just inches below the record level:

The Mississippi River, the largest U.S. river system, is forecast to crest today in Memphis, Tennessee, just below its 74-year-old record, as a bulge of water moves south toward the riverside refineries in Louisiana.

The river is forecast to reach 48 feet in Memphis at 7 p.m., compared with the old mark of 48.7 feet, according to a revised National Weather Service forecast. …

The Mississippi threatens 3,075 buildings, including 949 homes and 12 apartment complexes, in Tennessee’s Shelby County, which includes Memphis, the Memphis/Shelby County Emergency Management Agency said yesterday. Exxon Mobil Corp. shut its Memphis fuel terminal on April 29, Kevin Allexon, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Flooding like the Mississippi River is seeing in 2011 used to be considered extremely unusual. But thanks to the climate crisis, floods are becoming more frequent and more severe over much of the Mississippi River basin — so much so that the old way of measuring things is tragically outdated:

Problems with the [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] probabilities are exemplified by recent flooding at Hannibal, Missouri. The record stage set in 1993 exceeded the calculated 500-year level, whereas 2008 was a 200-year event. In addition, 2001 suffered a 50- to 100-year flood, 1986 and 1996 experienced 25- to 50-year floods, and five more years had 10-to 25-year floods. Are these calculated recurrence intervals reasonable, or is it more likely that the dice, in effect, are loaded?

Dr. Gleick told the AMS briefing that increasing temperatures aren’t necessarily leading to more frequent rainfall events. But the climate crisis IS leading to more intense rainfall events. We’re seeing the same number of storms, but the ones we do see are more likely to be the kind that cause severe flooding.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, that’s pushing our flood control system to the breaking point:

The heavy strains on the system and concerns that floods are getting more frequent and damaging are sparking a re-examination of flood control. In years past, the call likely would have gone out for higher levees and more so-called gray infrastructure — concrete and cement structures to keep the Mississippi inside its banks. Now some flood experts, along with some states, are saying that trying to control the river won’t do the job.

What can we do instead? Take advantage of ecosystems that absorb water instead of deflecting it downstream:

A study by the state of Illinois found that fully exploiting the water-absorption capacity of one such tract near Peoria would reduce flooding in the city by a few inches and affect flood levels as many as 80 miles downstream, [the Nature Conservancy's Michael] Reuter said.

Right now, Congress hasn’t shown a willingness to change our policies to reflect our losing battle with nature. Congress still hasn’t acted to restore coastal Louisiana wetlands, a critical buffer against global warming-fueled hurricanes. And misguided budget cutters have even gone so far as to slash funding for weather forecasting satellites — replacements for the aging satellites that saved lives by predicting this year’s Mississippi River floods.

Batteries make up as much as 20% of the weight of the 100 pounds of gear a Marine infantryman typically carries. A Marine uses four times as much fuel as his counterpart did in the early 1990s—due to, among other things, laptops and other electronic gear that use electricity pumped out by portable generators.

Some 30% of all fuel trucked into Afghanistan—at great risk—goes to power those generators, at a time when roadside bombs remain the most dangerous weapon faced by allied troops.

While the U.S. military has been seriously studying renewable energy since at least 2001, the impetus for change was the high casualty rate on fuel convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Mabus told Congress last year that one U.S. servicemember is wounded or killed for every 24 fuel convoys.

When portable solar panels take the place of fossil fuels, lives are saved in several ways:

• Fewer fuel convoys mean fewer chances of deadly attacks
• Lighter packs make for more mobile Marines
• Freed-up power & space allows Marines to carry more protective gear

One of the keys has been that the Marines aren’t sitting around for a pie-in-the-sky breakthrough – they’re taking a pragmatic approach and applying solutions as they come online. “The Marine commandant made it clear—he’d rather have an 80% solution today than a 100% solution somewhere down the road,” Col. Bob Charette told the WSJ.

And it’s not just U.S. troops being helped by renewable energy. The photo here shows Cpl. David T. Bernabe, a combat engineer with Brigade Headquarters Group, Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan, installing a solar-powered water purification system. The water purification system can filter 60 gallons of water per minute, providing clean, safe drinking water in an arid region where water that’s available is often contaminated with bacteria.

For more, see Jess Zimmerman’s January post on the military’s push towards renewable energy.

Photo: Ben W

A default could set up a seizure by bondholders and would leave the garages’ future in question. The property, which covers some 21 acres, was part of parkland taken over to make way for the current incarnation of Yankee Stadium.

The potential irony has some in the community seething.

“Our community loves its parks, and we could always use more,” said Pastor Wenzell Jackson, chairman of Bronx Community Board 4, which includes the stadium and the surrounding area. “Now there’s just empty parking garages that are not benefiting the community.”

Of course some parking is needed at a stadium. But why not build just a handful of spaces and let the market drive the rest? If there’s really a screaming need for parking, a private developer will build a lot or existing lots will adjust to offer game-day parking.

Instead, at both Nationals Park and new Yankee Stadium, massive empty lots waste prime real estate, block views, and send millions in development dollars down the drain.

You don’t have to been on Big Oil’s payroll to be on National Public Radio’s (NPR) clean energy panel, but it sure helps!

I got a chance to watch the taping of this week’s Intelligence Squared debate on clean energy, to air on NPR. The debate’s sponsors sent up red flags right away:

• The American Clean Skies Foundation, a natural gas industry front group
• The Rosenkrantz Foundation, which in part funds the Cato Institute, cofounded by legendary polluter Charles Koch
• The Ohrstrom Foundation, chaired by Gerry Ohrstrom, who Sourcewatch reports is also the director of several organizations that fight regulations on polluters

Then there were the panelists. On the side of clean energy was former Gov. Bill Ritter (D-Colo.), who’s conservative on some issues but a bold leader on clean energy and conservation. So far so good. But then came Kassia Yanosek, founder of Tana Energy Capital LLC. On the one hand, Yanosek has extensive experience in clean energy investment … on the other, she used to work for BP and Bechtel, and Tana’s investment interests include coal, oil, and gas. Not so good.

On the side of dirty energy was Robert Bryce, employed by the Manhattan Institute, which has moved on from denying the dangers of cigarette smoke and is now denying the dangers of coal and oil. It’s funded in part by … you guessed it, the Koch brothers. On its board: Robert Rosenkrantz, of panel sponsor The Rosenkrantz Foundation. Feeling icky yet?

But wait, there’s more! The other dirty energy panelist was Steven Hayward, who according to Sourcewatch has built an entire career spanning more than 30 years working almost exclusively for polluter front groups. His stops include the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and now the Pacific Research Institute — all either founded, funded or both by the Kochtopus.

Of course, both dirty energy panelists were introduced by host John Donvan as working for their innocuous-sounding front groups. Not a word about the polluters and anti-tax billionaires who pay them to be their own real-life version of Thank You for Smoking tobacco shill Nick Naylor.

With such an unbalanced panel and a host who was either oblivious or looking the other way, it’s not surprising the debate featured no mention of:

• The massive economic costs of inaction on climate change
• The huge public health costs of climate change
• The increased costs of national security in a world of climate instability

In a debate that doesn’t even consider those massive impacts of climate change & incentives to switch to clean energy, who loses?

Got a mirror?

In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the “veracity of climate change data” and ordering the network’s journalists to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question.”

The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was “on track to be the warmest [decade] on record.” [...]

Sammon’s orders for Fox journalists to cast doubt on climate science came amid the network’s relentless promotion of the fabricated “Climategate” scandal, which revolved around misrepresentations of emails sent to and from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.

As National Wildlife Federation President & CEO Larry Schweiger wrote in his book Last Chance, “Walter Cronkite’s journalistic values are gone, and Glenn Beck’s are in.”

As Grist readers know, the more scientists investigate global warming, the more convinced they are that current manmade global warming is unprecedented in magnitude, speed & cause. Learn more about global warming’s impact on people, wildlife & America’s natural resources at NWF.org/Climate.

Also this week — updates on tar sands, heat waves & a climate denier’s flip-flop. Watch this week’s NWF Climate Capsule! (Don’t worry if you haven’t seen Inception yet, no spoilers. In fact, if you watch the Capsule, you’ll probably be even more confused about what Inception is all about.)

If you like the Capsule, please help us spread the word using the “share” buttons at the top of this post. You can also subscribe:

• Go to the NWF Climate Capsule archive on YouTube & click the yellow “subscribe” button in the upper right corner

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Got climate questions? Any global warming denier arguments you’d like to hear Dirty sock puppet? Email us!

Cross-posted from NWF’s Wildlife Promise