Yes. That is correct. Today the majority of Republicans voted against the war funding bill that President Bush wanted and signed into law. I thought I was reading the results incorrectly at first but check it out.

H R 2206 passed today, 221-10, with 3 not voting and President Bush promptly signed it into law. But it was 219 Democrats who voted for the bill and 195 Republicans who opposed. Only 2 Republicans voted for the legislation.

So what gives? The President got the bill he wanted with no timelines for withdrawal included. Are the Republicans now against the continued funding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not long ago the Republican congressional leaders were lambasting the Democrats for not supporting the troops and the military leaders with the funds they needed.

Even today, John McCain and Mitt Romney assailed Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton for voting against the measure in the Senate. (One might ask why Mitt and John did not savage their own Republican House members for also voting against the measure).

So again, what gives? Well the bill includes spending for a number of Democratic domestic priorities and the first increase in the minimum wage in a decade. Minimum wage earners would get a pay increase to $7.25 over the next two years. This increase amounts to a 2.4% increase per year over the 12 year period since 1997 until 2009 when it goes into effect. A 2.4% increase per year is less than the current annual inflation rate and also less than the average yearly inflation rate during the past decade.

I guess the Republicans just couldn’t stomach providing minimum wage earners a basic pay raise that might actually bring their earning potential anywhere close to being able to keep up with inflation.

I have cross-posted this blog entry at the Earth Forum.

Contrary to what most climate change naysayers claim, scientists are mostly a conservative lot. The peer review process can sometimes be brutal. It is often only after significant resistance and repeated attempts and additional substantiation that new research ideas and findings traverse the gauntlet of reviewers and are published in the top scientific journals.

(One of the most important papers in ecology on the trophic-dynamic concept by Raymond Lindeman was originally rejected for publication. Reviewers felt there were insufficient data to support the theoretical model and that theoretical essays were inappropriate for the most important journal in the field.)

Recently, at least three reports have been published that document that recent scientific projections of global warming have likely been conservative.
The reports indicate that climate change models, used by the world’s scientists to make the projections, likely are providing underestimates of both future warming and the global impacts of a warming earth.

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First, new analyses reported in the journal Science, indicate that climate projections published in 2001 by the IPCC were conservative compared to actual warmings observed. The 2001 projections were part of the IPCC Third Assessment Report and modeled changes in key global climate parameters since 1973, compared with a series of differing emissions scenarios. Although published in 2001, the model projections were essentially independent from the observed climate data since 1990.

• As be seen in the figures (right), measured carbon dioxide concentrations between the years 1990 and 2006 followed the model projections almost exactly.
• But measured global mean surface temperature increase (land and ocean combined) between 1990 and 2006 was in the upper range of the various IPCC scenarios.
• However, the actual observed rates of sea-level rise since 1990 were faster than the those projected by models.

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Second, a NASA report suggests that existing climate models may be significantly underestimating future warmings in eastern North America due to limitations in their ability to accurately project future precipitation regimes.To focus on more local scales, the NASA scientists scaled the simulations from a global climate model developed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and coupled the simulations with those of a widely-used weather prediction model.

Coupling the weather prediction model with the global climate model allowed the scientists to assesses details about future climate at a finer geographic scale than global models alone. The coupling provided reliable simulations not only on the amounts of summer precipitation, but also on its frequency and timing. Accurately predicting the timing and frequency of precipitation events is important because daily temperatures are usually higher on rainless days and when precipitation falls less frequently than normal.

Once more accurate information on the timing and frequency of summer rainfall events were incorporated, the simulations projected much higher summer temperatures that had been projected with the global model alone.

The new projections indicate that eastern U.S. summer daily high temperatures that currently average in the low-to-mid-80s (degrees Fahrenheit) will most likely soar into the low-to-mid-90s during typical summers by the 2080s. In extreme seasons — when precipitation falls infrequently — July and August daily high temperatures could average between 100 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit in cities such as Chicago, Washington, and Atlanta.

Image: A computer model projection of average daily maximum temperatures over the eastern United States for July 2085 (left) and July 1993 (right). Areas in violet shading show temperatures of 26°C (79°F); green 30°C (86°F); yellow 34°C (93°F); red 38°C (100°F);dark purple 42°C (108°F). Credit: NASA/GISS

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Third, another new study released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that arctic sea ice is melting at a significantly faster rate than projected by the most advanced computer models.Satellite and other observations showed the Arctic ice cover is retreating more rapidly than estimated by any of the eighteen computer models used by the IPCC in preparing its 2007 assessments.

Similar to the reports above, the authors of this study concluded that current model projections are providing conservative estimates of future global warming impacts such as the melting of the Arctic ice cap. The findings show that the shrinking of summertime ice is about thirty years ahead of the climate model projections.

The 2007 IPCC report projected that the Arctic would become seasonally ice free sometime between 2050 to well beyond 2100. The new results suggest the Arctic could become ice free in summers even earlier than the year 2050.

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Another argument made by the climate change naysayers against the facts of global warming is that the global climate models are not accurate. Computer simulation models are, by definition, designed as simplified representations of the complex systems they attempt to simulate.Earth processes are extremely complex. Simulation models are developed because an exact replication of all of the multitude of Earth processes is simply out of the scope of our human capacity today. So models are necessarily incorporate simplifications of both processes and scales of the real Earth and its climate and weather systems.

After 30-40 years of development, the global climate models are pretty good. They do a reasonable job of back-projecting known climate trends of the last 30-50 years against real world observed trends.

The naysayers are correct in asserting that the climate models are not 100% accurate. But the lesson of their argument is not what they think it to be. The contrarians argue that since climate models are not 100% accurate, they provide no support to the facts of global warming.

In fact as these reports show, in comparing model projections to real measured trends, the global climate models are doing a good job of projecting the directions of the trends, it is just that the current models have been underestimating the magnitudes and the rapidity in which the Earth is warming and in which the warming is impacting local and global Earth processes.

It is good to know that the United States is ahead of Turkey (the country) in public acceptance of evolution.

At a time of increasing environmental awareness by American citizens, the Bush Administration has included yet more cuts in environmental related funding in its proposed FY2008 budget.

It is time to contact your representatives in Congress and let them know that the environment is a priority and that funding should not be cut.

Here are some highlights from a report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science on proposed cuts in the biological and ecological sciences:

• DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
  The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory’s (SREL) funding from DOE will be exhausted at the end of May 2007 and as a result will likely be forced to close. Funds have been budgeted to complete these tasks, however DOE has not released these funds to SREL. SREL programs are more important than ever, performing environmental evaluation for SRS programs that will process new nuclear materials. For more information see www.savesrel.org

• ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
  The Administration is proposing a $8.8 million cut to the Human Health & Ecosystems Program that would nearly completely eliminate the extramural ecosystem program. Also, a $5.75 million cut is proposed to the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) of which some $800,000 that has funded long-term surface water monitoring in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic for 20 years would be canceled.

• FOREST SERVICE
  A $17 million decrease is proposed for the Forest and Rangeland Research budget despite the fact that fire suppression costs have been increasing.

• NATIONAL OCEANIC & ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATIONThe agency has been essentially flat-funded for the last five years and the budget proposed by the Administration for fiscal year 2008 shows no sign of altering course. The majority of the agency’s research is supported by its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which would stay essentially flat-funded. The National Ocean Service would continue its decrease in funding since fiscal year 2005, while the National Marine Fisheries Service would reflect no real change since fiscal year 2003.

• NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION—EDUCATION & HUMAN RESOURCES
  The Administration proposes that the agency’s core education portfolio grow by 7.5 percent in fiscal year 2008 after remaining flat in 2007. But the Education and Human Resources budget would still lag 19 percent behind its 2004 funding levels despite the fact that the President has stated that science education should be a priority for America to remain competitive.

• USDA NATIONAL RESEARCH INITIATIVE
  The Administration proposes a $10 million cut to the National Research Initiative, the nation’s premier competitive research program for fundamental and applied agriculture research.

One really has to wonder just how far the American “news” media is willing to move away from the Principles of Journalism. In 1997, the Committee of Concerned Journalists of the Project for Excellence in Journalism outlined nine Principles of Journalism (below). Ten years after the formulation of these principles, it appears that every major American television news outlet, including CNN, has abandoned the nine core principles that are supposed to comprise the basis of objective journalism.

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience

As I posted on this blog years ago, an October 2003 report by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the university of Maryland found that “a substantial portion of the (American) public had a number of misperceptions that were demonstrably false, or were at odds with the dominant view in the intelligence community.”

According to the PIPA study, which consumers of the mainstream “news” media who were polled showed the highest frequency of misperceptions regarding events related to the Iraq war? The chart shows that the inappropriately named “Fox News” clearly won the misperception contest. But you know until now, I had not paid that much attention how closely behind Fox all the other television news outlets and even the print media were in their race to promote misperceptions and to abandon the nine principles of journalism.

But now it seems that CNN has upped “the ante” in the race to be the most disingenuous television news outlet in America.

On May 2, 2007, CNN aired a disinformation program on global warming hosted by Glen Beck entitled Exposed: The Climate of Fear. Beck seems to be CNN’s answer to the ratings grabber and Ad hominen attack specialist Bill O’Reilly.

A new study from Indiana University found that Bill O’Reilly calls “a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.” The study shows that O’Reilly frequently employs multiple propagandist techniques that have been documented to have been in popular since after the end of World War I.

The May 2 CNN program brings back on to the stage a cadre of the well-known climate change deniers (many of whom are funded by Exxon Mobil and other industry powerhouses) as well as their tired arguments which have been thoroughly debated and debunked by scientists and the few remaining American news outlets that actually attempt to uphold the Principles of Journalism.

CNN promoted the program as being a vehicle to present the “other side of the climate debate that you don’t hear anywhere.” But in fact the program is rife with techniques that the climate deniers have been using ad naseum for decades including Ad hominen attacks on the deniers’ preferred high profile target, former Vice President Al Gore.

From Glen Beck, the man

• who claimed that the movie Happy Feet was a propaganda tool designed by a Hollywood director to indoctrinate children from being able to think for themselves about issues including global warming, and
• who uses the same name-calling techniques as does Bill O’Reilly,

one could not have expected anything more in this “television special” that purported to look “for answers and solutions about why Earth is warming and what man can do about it.”

But from CNN and Time Warner, outfits that claim to be “The Most Trusted Name in News” and offer “socially responsible programming” whose “actions must be guided by the highest standards of ethics”, one could and should expect a tremendous amount more.

It is time for American citizens to insist that CNN and many of the other once great and trusted American news media outlets change the direction of their race. To now move away from disingenuity and the promotion of misperception and distasteful discourse in the obvious quest for greater ratings. And to now move back to the objective Principles of Journalism.

Well, if you read the reports that Exxon Mobil was softening its stance on climate change, you can forget those false pronouncements right now.

Exxon Mobil has launched the latest salvo in its multi-million dollar, decades long disinformation campaign on climate change.

Exxon Mobil backed front groups, American Enterprise Institute and Pacific Research Institute have released a new “report” and film called “An Inconvenient Fiction“.

Before you read the report or watch the film, you should make yourself aware of the following.

These American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) are known “conservative think tanks” with strong industry ties to big oil and big tobacco. These groups have worked for decades to produce “white papers” and “reports” that provide alternate realties to valid scientific and economic findings.

The report’s authors are Stephen F. Hayward a “Scholar” at AEI and Amy L. Kaleita a “Public Policy Fellow” Environmental Studies at PRI.

AEI, PRI, and their fellow industry front groups have worked hard to convince Americans that, among other things, nicotine is not addictive and that cigarettes can cause no harm.

In my opinion, what the organizations have accomplished over the decades in their disinformation campaigns is nothing less than criminal.

The Union of Concerned Scientists report “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air” documents how Exxon Mobil has funneled over $16 Million during the last decade to such groups to provide disinformation on climate science.

According tho the UCS report, American Enterprise Institute has received at least $1,625,000 of funding from Exxon Mobil’s disinformation campaign and Lee R. Raymond, retired chair and CEO of ExxonMobil, is vice chairman of AEI’s Board of Trustees.

Also according to the UCS report, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy has received at least $355,000 from ExxonMobil’s disinformation campaign. PRI’s largest donation from Exxon Mobil since 1998 is $100,000 in 2004 (up from $45,000 for ach of the two previous years). Exxon Mobil allocated half of this grant for “climate change and environmental quality research.”

AEI also had no problem this February in sending letters to scientists offering them up to $10,000 to critique findings from the recently released report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climtae Change.

Remember the famous quote that was attributed to “Deep Throat” in the film “All the Presidents Men.”

“Follow the money.”

A book soon to be released will provide more information on this long-term campaign to deceive and confuse the American public is Chris Mooney’s: Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.