Grist List

Wall Street Journal uses infrastructure as excuse to tell Tea Party to shove it

If you thought the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal couldn't possibly become any more backward or retrograde, the good news is, you're right! Today, the editors of the only newspaper opinion section to occasionally defeat Fox News in terms of sheer mendacity finally turned the corner and found a reason to break with the Tea Party notion that government should just go away already, so the country can turn into Somalia or Pakistan as quickly as possible.

The surprisingly powerful op-ed, written by Ed Rendell (Democrat, former governor of Pennsylvania) and Scott Smith (Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz.), advances the notion that transportation is the one thing our government should be spending money on, even in this economic climate.

How we know we're causing global warming, in one handy graphic

There is a set of phenomena we would see happening if human-emitted greenhouse gases were causing climate change. There is a set of phenomena that are happening. THEY ARE THE SAME PHENOMENA. That is all. (But if that's not enough for you, Skeptical Science has more.)

Meet the new water toxins, same as the old water toxins

Assuming it doesn't get cockblocked by industry or shut down by Michele Bachmann, the EPA is going to start regulating some gross stuff that hangs out in your water -- not because these are new toxins, but because they're finally being allowed to do something about the old ones. Forbes has a rundown on what you've been drinking, and how to stop drinking it anymore.

Congress doesn't believe global warming is a security threat

Climate change will shift the equation of global power and craziness, and the intelligence community is trying to place for those situations. But Congress isn't interested in that. Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard gives this example:

In 2008, [Thomas] Fingar, [former chairman of the National Intelligence Council] now a fellow at Stanford University, took the lead in drafting the first national intelligence assessment on the security challenges presented by climate change. It found that global warming will further destabilize already-volatile parts of the world and should be considered in national security planning. But congressional Republicans dismissed the report as "a waste of resources."

Sing along to this awesomely cheesy theme song for energy wasters

The musical "Seein' the Light" was written in 1978, but nothing has really changed: People still deny there's a fuel or climate crisis, and they still put on their Serious Thespian black turtlenecks and sing about it. The guy singing is kind of super-intense — he regularly goes 20 seconds or more between blinks — […]

Critical List: Energy panel supports fracking disclosure; Walmart's move to wind power

An Energy Department panel wants to require natural gas companies to disclose what chemicals they're using in hydrofracking projects.

Green groups have an idea for how to cut the country's debt: stop subsidies to oil and gas companies.

But (of course!) most of the members of the Super Congress are opposed to regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.

Colbert: 'I say the science isn't in on thermodynamics'

The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive Stephen Colbert, bless him, never met an idiotic pronouncement he didn't climb inside and wear like a bear costume. So he had a field day with "the heat index is a liberal conspiracy" and "SpongeBob is indoctrinating children."

Right-wing pundits: 'People believe our falsehoods, so we win!'

I guess it's no surprise that conservative pundits think climate science is about deliberately misleading people for political point-scoring. That's what their agenda is, so why should anyone else's be different? After a recent poll showed that 69 percent of Americans believe it's at least "somewhat likely" that "some scientists" may have falsified climate data, the right-wing media response amounted to "Hey, that's our lie! Look how well it's doing! We rule!"

Coal-fired power plants close down rather than clean up their emissions

As a result of the EPA's new rules mandating lower toxic emissions, coal-fired power plants are closing their doors. The coal industry is complaining that the new rules are too expensive, will hike electricity rates, and cost jobs. The EPA has these facts on its side, though, according to Business Insider: