Fatalistic Friday: Let the Bush-Cheney hangover begin

Enviro Disfunction: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has added the assessment and control of toxic chemicals by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to its list of federal programs, policies, and operations at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, or in need of broad-based transformation. Overall, EPA has finished only nine assessments of the risks posed by toxic chemicals, in the past three years. At the end of 2007, most of the 70 ongoing assessments had been underway for more than five years. Also added to the High Risk List: The regulatory system governing U.S. financial institutions and markets; the Food and Drug Administration's oversight of medical products. (ENS Newswire)

We're gonna find out what it's all about: OMB Watch and the Center for American Progress have jointly issued a report, After Midnight, that details Bush administration "midnight regulations" and options for rolling them back. "...rules that took effect in the previous week governed the reclassification of hazardous waste as fuel, allowing it to be burned, and the opening of two million acres of western land to leasing for oil shale development. Last Thursday, a regulation also came into effect allowing federal representatives to approve projects without considering global warming, and without consulting biological health experts about the effect on endangered species."
(Business Green)

They Call Me Snow Miser: Happily, the Obama administration immediately put a freeze on all new and pending regulations implemented by the Bush administration in its last days. (The Christian Science Monitor)

Public Concern on Global Warming Low: One wants to know a lot more about age groups broke down in this data, but: "According to the survey of 1,503 adults, global warming, on its own, ranks last out of 20 surveyed issues. Here’s the list from top to bottom, with the economy listed as a top priority by 85 percent of those polled and global warming 30 percent: the economy, jobs, terrorism, Social Security, education, energy, Medicare, health care, deficit reduction, health insurance, helping the poor, crime, moral decline, military, tax cuts, environment, immigration, lobbyists, trade policy, global warming." (DotEarth -- The New York Times)

Global Warming Doubles Death Rate of Forests: "The death rate of the most stable and resilient forests in western North America has doubled during the past few decades as the climate has warmed...[suggesting] future landscapes will be thinner, sparser and far more susceptible to widespread diebacks. The new data from a team of 11 scientists provide more evidence that climate change is having a broad and significant impact, independent of other human activities such as logging and development. And while the study focused on Western North America, scientists say the global temperature rise is likely affecting all the world's forests -- from the Northern boreal to the Eastern hardwoods to the tropics -- to some degree." (Daily Climate)

"These are gonna be Sagebrush Rebellion states burning from the climate crisis. The feds are gonna lack money to put those forest fires out. You can extinguish living forests, but dead, bone-dry forests? It's not possible. I wonder who they're gonna blame? FEMA, I reckon." (Beyond the Beyond)

Antarctica Is, Indeed, Melting: Newly published research -- involving the most comprehensive temperature profile ever compiled -- shows that the entire content of Antartica has been warming for the past half-century, "at the same rate as the rest of the planet," said study co-author Michael Mann of Penn State University. "This finding, detailed in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Nature, has implications for estimating ice melt and sea level rise from the continent, which is almost entirely covered by ice that averages about a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick. The revelation also undermines the common use of Antarctica as an argument against global warming by contrarians, Mann said." (FOXNews.com) [[!!!]]]

US Carbon Emissions 20% Even Greater Than We Thought: "... the U.S. economy has offshored 20.7% of our CO2 emissions to the rest of the world at the same time the United States has offshored production, services, and jobs.
If the U.S. is no longer generating a significant amount of our CO2 emissions, that means that the official carbon intensity of the Untied States (0.52 metric tons per thousand dollars) is actually much higher." (Scholars and Rogues) [[Great catch, if dismaying.]]

Image: Cyclone Fanele over Madagascar, Jan. 20, 2009. "Madagascar was plagued by two tropical cyclones in mid-January 2009. Cyclone Eric brushed the northeast coast on January 19, killing at least one person and leaving nearly a thousand homeless, according to news reports. Two days later, Cyclone Fanele made landfall on the southwest coast, bringing winds of nearly 210 kilometers per hour (130 miles per hour) and heavy rains." Source: NASA Earth Observatory