West Virginia Blue

One of the websites I check regularly is a loyal Democratic progressive state blog called West Virginia Blue (www.wvablue.com/). Obviously, being a Mountain Party member, I don’t agree with them 100 percent, but they’re usually right on the issues.

They’ve got some interesting illustrations at the top of their page today concerning global warming and the greenhouse effect, as well as a blurb about the “2009 State of the Climate Report” from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which says, “The scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.”

Of the ten indicators that NOAA uses to measure climate, from atmospheric temperatures to shrinking polar ice, all ten point to not only a changing climate, but an entirely different set of climatic conditions—a new climate norm, consistently warmer, with more extreme weather events. The prospect of the anti-science crowd moving into the House of Representatives in January fills me with a kind of bemused horror. There are none so blind.

WV Blue also has some interesting comments about our new acting governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, who also remains, due to a constitutional fluke, the president of the WV Senate, and who in that position was the single person most responsible for the fact that we never got to vote in a referendum on changing the Hampshire County government. So perhaps I’m biased in my opinion that, since he gives every indication that he has no intention of supporting a special gubernatorial election in the next two years, the honorable course would be for him to resign his Senate seat. But honor is what I least expect from any politician in these corrupt times, especially from longtime loyal servants of the coal industry. And an enemy of popular sovereignty, to boot.

--Michael Hasty