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Lake politics: With health care done, is climate right for a fight?

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Health care won’t be the only divisive political issue to consume Congress and the nation’s attention this year – at least not if 22 Democratic senators led by New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall have their way. Half of the Great Lakes Democratic contingent were among signatories of a letter requesting that Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) take up climate change legislation this year “with a renewed focus on jobs and reduced dependence on foreign oil.” The Great Lakes senators included Roland Burris (Ill.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken (Minn.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Arlen Specter and Robert Casey (Penn.). The House passed its version of climate legislation last summer. But the Senate’s job got that much more difficult when the Democrats lost their super-majority with the election of Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.).

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Wisconsin leads in anticipating climate change

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There’s a lot of talk about stopping climate change. But the climate is already changing and even the most ambitious mitigation plans still predict some warming.

Some forward thinkers in Wisconsin are helping brace the state for what’s ahead.

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Researchers study how climate change chases fish from streams

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Facing an inhospitable habitat, fish have to move or die, says Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University. “Some of the fish live in aquatic systems that are completely compartmentalized – they’re dammed off,” he says. “So they can’t move.”

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Cleaner river = global warming?

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – Chicago is the only major U.S. city that doesn’t disinfect its sewage, and the agency that treats its wastewater has a new reason for opposing the idea: It’s bad for the environment. Engineers with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago recently completed an in-house study of its carbon footprint at the request of the elected board of commissioners. Going beyond the assignment, they also decided to look at how the footprint would change if it had to kill bacteria in sewage before pouring it into the Chicago River. More

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Global warming battle could create 129,000 Mich. jobs

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(MI) The Detroit News – Michigan could gain a significant economic boost and thousands of new jobs by reducing emissions of gases that cause climate change, according to an analysis released Monday. The report by the Center for Climate Strategies said a plan devised last year for battling global warming. More

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Look to objective facts with climate tax

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – Sooner or later, Mother Nature is going to pick sides. Temperatures will rise, fall or remain relatively stable. Ocean levels either will rise precipitously, swamping coastal areas worldwide, or they won’t. Changing weather patterns will render vast swaths of currently arable land uninhabitable, or not. Alarmists like Al Gore and denialists like Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe may not live long enough to know which of their long-range climate forecasts was closer to the mark, but their great-grandchildren will know with some certainty.

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Michigan students in Copenhagen for climate conference

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(MI) Bay City Times – Four Alma College students, including one from Saginaw Township, are attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference which begins today in Copenhagen, Denmark. The students, Adam Ellsworth, Ben Roberts of Saginaw Township, Samantha LaChance and Renee Willoughby, are there along with faculty members Murray Borrello and Micheal Vickery. More

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For all the ‘global cooling’ people out there …

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(MI) The Mudpuppy – Almost every time there’s a post on Mlive about climate change or global warming, one or more people usually chime in about “global cooling.” The Associated Press also has heard the talk about global cooling, it seems, and has done some checking. Not true, folks. More

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Copenhagen climate-change talks will produce only disappointment

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(ON) The Globe and Mail – The Rubik’s cube of international negotiations opens in six weeks in Copenhagen. Anyone who had hoped for a comprehensive world deal on lowering greenhouse-gas emissions and therefore reducing the threats from climate change will be disappointed. Something might emerge from Copenhagen, but it won’t be a binding international treaty. Competing interests within and among countries are enormous, the domestic pressures against serious measures are great (including in Canada.) More

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Analysts: Great Lakes senators will protect industry rather than lead on climate change

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By Andrew Norman
Oct. 26, 2009

Political liabilities and the absence of key committee posts mean that senators from Great Lakes states are unlikely to play major roles in climate change legislation. But the region’s members will influence the bill by defending specific industries, according to political analysts. “The folks will not be major players,” said Richard Hula, chair of the political science department at Michigan State University. Instead, they will form a loose coalition to resist anything that further dampens the manufacturing sector.