Recently two research teams, working independently and using different methods, reached an alarming conclusion: The West Antarctic ice sheet is doomed. The sheet’s slide into the ocean, and the resulting sharp rise in sea levels, will probably happen slowly. But it’s irreversible. Even if we took drastic action to limit global warming right now, this particular process of environmental change has reached a point of no return.

Meanwhile, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida – much of whose state is now fated to sink beneath the waves – weighed in on climate change. Some readers may recall that in 2012 Mr. Rubio, asked how old he believed the earth to be, replied ‘I’m not a scientist, man.” This time, however, he confidently declared the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change false, although in a later interview he was unable to cite any sources for his skepticism.

So why would the senator make such a statement? The answer is that like that ice sheet, his party’s intellectual evolution (or maybe more accurately, its devolution) has reached a point of no return, in which allegiance to false doctrines has become a crucial badge of identity.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the power of doctrines […]

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Miami will likely be underwater before the Senate can muster enough votes to meaningfully confront climate change. And probably Tampa and Charleston, too-two other cities that last week’s National Climate Assessment placed at maximum risk from rising sea levels.

Even as studies proliferate on the dangers of a changing climate, the issue’s underlying politics virtually ensure that Congress will remain paralyzed over it indefinitely. That means the U.S. response for the foreseeable future is likely to come through executive-branch actions, such as the regulations on carbon emissions from power plants that the Environmental Protection Agency is due to propose next month. And that means climate change will likely spike as a point of conflict in the 2016 presidential race.

President Obama, from his first days in office, made it clear to intimates that he believed a legislative solution to climate change would provide a more stable, broadly accepted response than executive action. But his experience has highlighted the structural forces that make a legislative agreement so unlikely, especially in the Senate.

Reaching agreement on any issue has become increasingly difficult in a Congress deluged by partisan polarization and money from interest groups. But climate change faces two other headwinds that make the path […]

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It seems like everyday, new research is confirming that the impacts of climate change — heat waves, heavy rains, and flooding – are already being felt in America and around the world, and things stand to get worse. Just this week, TPM reported on new scientific papers concluding that large parts of the enormous West Antarctica ice sheet are melting and falling into the sea, and could lead to eventual rise in global sea levels of 10 feet or more.

Surprisingly, though, Congress – where many House Republicans reject the notion that anthropogenic climate change is happening at all – came together in March to do something. Did they take action to slow climate change or pass new policies to encourage building further away from beaches and floodplains? No. They agreed to roll back previous reforms and reinstate generous federal insurance subsidies for seaside homes.

Thanks to federal subsidies, the price of flood insurance, unlike homeowners’ insurance, does not reflect the real risks involved. Flood insurance subsidies ensure artificially low insurance rates, especially for the highest-risk properties. When big storms hit, taxpayers end up bailing out private owners. It is an expensive program. Today, the National Flood Insurance Program is $24 billion […]

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It’s time to let them go.

Over the past few years, it’s become increasingly clear that as long as far-right crazies and ultra-conservatives in Washington are preaching policies that eat away at the very ideals our nation was built on, the American Dream will remain out of reach for millions of Americans.

So, if we want to have any chance at taking back the American Dream, we should just let those far-right crazies and ultra-conservatives running around Washington and in the red states have their dream of their own country.

Let them secede and start their own far-right Any Rand-inspired paradise.

Cliven Bundy, Louie Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Ted Nugent, Shawn Hannity and the rest of America’s far-right wingers can all move to west Texas, and create a country of their own, free from the “tyrannical” influences of the US government. They can even call this new Ayn Rand-inspired country “Galt’s Gulch.”

They can run around firing off their guns, not paying taxes, and defying authority all they like.

Meanwhile, the rest of us back in America will get back to rebuilding the American Dream that Reaganomics has largely torn apart.

But as Nicholas Kristof points out over at The New York Times, we may have to rename […]

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An Iowa woman jokingly calls it “Satan’s handiwork.” A California mom says she’s broken down in tears. A Pennsylvania parent says it “makes my blood boil.”

What could be so horrible? Grade-school math.

As schools around the U.S. implement national Common Core learning standards, parents trying to help their kids with math homework say that adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing has become as complicated as calculus.

They’re stumped by unfamiliar terms like “rectangular array” and “area model.” They wrestle with division that requires the use of squares, slashes and dots. They rage over impenetrable word problems.

Stacey Jacobson-Francis, 41, of Berkeley, California, said her daughter’s homework requires her to know four different ways to add.

“That is way too much to ask of a first grader,” she said. “She can’t remember them all, and I don’t know them all, so we just do the best that we can.”

Simple arithmetic isn’t so simple anymore, leading to plenty of angst at home. Even celebrities aren’t immune: The comedian Louis C.K. took to Twitter recently to vent about his kids’ convoluted homework, writing that his daughters went from loving math to crying about it.

Adopted by 44 states, the Common Core is a set of English and math standards […]

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