Image: Cimexus/Flickr

Hot enough for you, America? According to a new study, the answer is a resounding (and somewhat unsettling) yes.

As reported by Treehugger, the latest State of Climate overview from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that the twelve months from May 2011 through April 2012 were the hottest in American recorded history, dating back to the late 1800s (1895 to be exact, according to the Washington Post).

While western states like California and Nevada experienced higher than average temperatures, 22 other states (mostly in the Midwest and the northeastern seaboard) saw record-breaking high temperatures. The average temperature for the lower 48 states during that time was 55.7°F, a full 2.8°F higher than the 20^th century average. Only Washington and Oregon saw near-normal heat over that time period. All other states ranged from “above normal” to “record warmest.”

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

A new study by Climate Central finds that as much as 32 percent of America’s coastal regions could potentially be affected by rising sea levels caused by global warming over coming decades. As reported in the New York Times, up to 3.7 million Americans live within four feet of high tide, where the effects would be the most drastic.

"Sea level rise is not some distant problem that we can just let our children deal with. The risks are imminent and serious," said Ben Strauss, a member of Climate Central and primary author of two papers outlining the research to NJ.com. "Just a small amount of sea level rise, including what we may well see within the next 20 years, can turn yesterday’s manageable flood into tomorrow’s potential disaster."

While Florida is the most vulnerable state, California is among the top five alongside New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana. According to Strauss in the Chicago Tribune, Southern California is particularly susceptible as the area rarely sees storms that rise beyond three feet, and "they'll be seeing water to 4 feet regularly,” resulting in “coastal flooding like they've never seen before."

While Strauss considers “a lot” of rising sea levels as “inevitable,” there are still precautions that can be taken.

“If we reduce our greenhouse emissions rapidly, we can make a big difference,” he stressed to the Chicago Tribune. “But no matter how much we cut, we've already kind of locked ourselves into a future with a lot higher seas."

In the last couple of days, political fires have been spreading across the climate policy landscape, with Peter Gleick and Heartland Institute atop headlines. I don't think this story from Inside Climate News is trying to put them out, exactly. But with a Republican debate tonight, author Katherine Bagley might be offering a roadmap back to substantive discussion. 

Bagley tells the stories of five scientists who identify as Republican who say, in varying ways, to varying degrees, that they've given up on talking to leaders within their political party about their science. 

Kerry Emmanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is one scientist who believes Republican values best align with his own. And not those of Lincoln, or Eisenhower; he's registered GOP right now: 

"No GOP candidates or policymakers want to touch the issue, and those of us trying to educate them are left frustrated," Kerry Emanuel, a registered Republican, told InsideClimate News. "Climate change has become a third rail in politics." 

The story also handily sums up what several of the remaining Republican candidates think about climate change:

Santorum has called global warming "a facade," "a hoax" and an example of the "politicization of science." Both Romney and Newt Gingrich, another candidate for the party's nomination, have stepped away from their previous stances that humans are contributing to global warming...

It's incredibly rare for scientists to tell anyone if they're registered with a political party. (I recently was suprised at a one-man staged reading of a play about Dave Keeling to learn he was a Republican, and I heard that guy speak.) The scientists' stories are worth a read before tonight's debate (I'm skeptical about the back half of the article)...which you can watch on CNN, as per usual. (OH, and listen to on KPCC from 9-11 pm.)

World Economic Forum/Flickr

Oakland-based Pacific Institute water and climate analyst Peter Gleick speaks during the session 'The Politics of Water' at Davos, Switzerland, in 2009.

A northern California-based water expert and climate researcher has admitted his involvement in a political and legal imbroglio concerning leaked documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit think tank that funds research as well as libertarian and conservative advocacy work.

A week ago, political strategy documents and donor lists from Heartland shed more light into the way that group challenges the vast majority of climate scientists whose research points to human involvement in a warming planet. One document lists past individual and corporate donors from whom Heartland apparently intends to extract more money this year and next. 

Oakland-based Peter Gleick, who works at the Pacific Institute, admitted on his HuffPo blog that he obtained these now-leaked documents by misrepresenting himself to Heartland. And today he apologized: 

My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts -- often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated -- to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected.

Heartland Institute has said it's consulting lawyers for possible civil actions against Gleick. New York Times Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin has now written that Gleick's admission "has destroyed his credibility and harmed others." He continues: 

The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the “rational public debate” that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed.

Gleick doesn't just do climate change. As a water analyst, he's been an influential and vocal participant in the Golden State's debates over at least two live issues I can think of. The more regional of the two, though still a signficant one, is Cadiz: an effort to pump groundwater from an aquifer in the eastern Mojave Desert and sell it to local water agencies. Gleick's assessment: "This is cut-and-run water management: take a non-renewable resource that will last a short time, turn it for a profit, and leave a degraded landscape, mimicking the classic boom-and-bust cycles that characterized much of the mining industry in the western U.S. in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries."

The second of the two is an $11 billion-plus water bond on which Californians may vote later this year. Gleick co-authored one of the only, if not the only, comprehensive (and critical) assessments concerning what the water bond might do.

It seems worth pointing out that none of this raises questions about research Gleick has done, just the way he's behaved by fraudulently obtaining documents Heartland wanted to keep confidential. But if Gleick has to step down, take a leave of absence from the Pacific Institute, or otherwise divert his attention from California's water issues, regardless of what you think of his views, that could change the tone of statewide debates on these matters. And it dries up one wellspring of information for the policymakers, legislative analysts and legislators with whom he regularly communicated.

So will this compromise Gleick's credibility in his other realm of expertise, California water policy? It's hard to imagine any answer besides yes.

So I saw this trailer the other day for a new film from radio host Phil Valentine about global warming: An Inconsistent Truth.

The blurb from the film's site seems to indicate that a carbon conspiracy may be afoot: "Many people believe in man-made global warming but they don’t know why. This is one of the most important issues of our day yet the average American knows so very little about what’s really going on. Is that by design? Who stands to make billions off cap-and-trade legislation? Why do those who raise their voices the loudest lead the most wasteful lifestyles? Is carbon dioxide really a pollutant or is it a harmless gas that’s essential to life here on Earth?"

What's interesting to me is that Newt Gingrich is in the trailer. He says in a quick clip, "This has been a very effective opportunity to get your tax money to pay for his car company." (I can't find the comment in a Nexis search, but I'm going to make a clue-like guess that it was Mr. Gingrich outside a hearing about Tesla talking about Department of Energy grants.) The star of the film is this guy Phil Valentine. A guy named Shayne Edwards directed; he runs a digital media company in Tennessee that makes a lot of electronic press kits.. 

Valentine has an A to Z of his philosophy on his website in which J stands for "Junk science is behind the global warming scare." He believes he shares values about global warming with Gingrich, who himself  shares top "billing" with several climate scientists who have become part of the political debate: John Christy, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer. Interestingly, those scientists don't all share the same views: Christy argues that the cause of global warming is not known; Singer & Spencer argue that natural processes are predominantly responsible.

In 2007, Gingrich was all about global warming. Appearing with Senator John Kerry, Gingrich said the evidence is sufficient that we should "move towards most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading." 

Gingrich says there has to be a green conservatism. He seems to be "The environment has been a powerful emotional tool for bigger government and higher taxes." Perhaps as part of that green conservatism push, he also appeared that same year in an ad with Nancy Pelosi (watch it all the way through for the nervous grimace smiles!): 

And if you set the Wayback Machine all the way back to 1989, you'll find Newt Gingrich co-sponsoring a bill that would have established as a national goal, first, "that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere be reduced from 1988 levels by at least 20 percent by the year 2000 through a mix of Federal and State energy policies" and second, that we take part in an international agreement about climate. 

You'd be forgiven for not knowing anything about this evolution of thought if you went to Gingrich's website:

Through his entire career, Newt has supported pro-market, pro-entrepreneur, innovative solutions to our environmental challenges, which he believes are superior to the liberal pro-bureaucracy, pro-tax, pro-regulation approach to the environment. 

Newt believes that conservatives cannot be absent from the conversation about the environment and instead that conservatives must offer and explain why conservative solutions are better. […]

Newt will continue to oppose the Democrats’ destructive cap-and-trade and carbon tax proposals, continue to support expanded domestic oil and gas drilling, and continue to fight for a fundamental replacement of the job-killing Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency.

These days, Gingrich dismisses the Pelosi ad as the single dumbest thing he's ever done. But what he really believes about global warming, whether he shares Valentine's conspiracy-minded views of junk science, or whether he is intrigued by the minority views in climatology shared by the scientists in the film, is kind of unclear. The people who could ask that question best are probably on the campaign trail. 

“I don’t know whether global warming is occurring,” Gingrich said earlier this winter. “The vast majority of National Academy of Sciences says it is, a minority says it is not. Science is not actually voted on. Science is a function of truth.”

The film An Inconsistent Truth opens this Friday in Nashville. No idea whether more cities will get it. I'm always interested to see the politicization of this kind of science in an election year, though.