Political Climate Articles
Rep. Mack proposes legislation to repeal construction wage act
FORT MYERS - A piece of legislation introduced last week by U.S. Rep Connie Mack, R-Fort Myers, would eliminate minimum compensation provisions for construction workers on public works projects.
Mack is proposing the legislation would stimulate the economy by creating more jobs by repealing the Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act, which requires workers on large, federally-funded projects to be paid a "prevailing wage."
Though the wages set by the government under the act are intended to represent the normal wages of an area, a statement from Mack's office said they often fail to do so. The wage-minimums actually reflect the "inflated pay scale of union workers," the statement said.
"Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements are wrong for our country," Mack said. "Instead of pandering to big labor, Congress should be fostering a competitive environment for businesses to be able to hire more people for more jobs."
Read More...
Artificial Sweeteners Found in German Wastewater
KARLSRUHE, Germany, June 19, 2009 (ENS) - Sewage treatment plants fail to remove artificial sweeteners completely from waste water, according to new research from the Water Technology Center in Karlsruhe, the center of applied water research of the German Gas and Waterworks Association.
The sweeteners were found in waters downstream of the treatment plants and researchers who authored the paper warn that the chemicals may appear in drinking water supplies.
The study demonstrates for the first time, that a number of commonly used artificial sweeteners are present in German waste and surface water.
With their new analytical method that extracts and analyses many chemicals simultaneously, three scientists from the Water Technology Center were able to demonstrate the presence of several artificial sweeteners in waste water.
Their findings were published online Wednesday in Springer's journal "Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry."
Read More...
Coal mining costs Appalachians five times more in early deaths than it provides in economic benefits
The Appalachian region has been supplying American with cheap energy for generations, a duty it has performed with a sense of pride and patriotism. But while electricity from the region's coal has been cheap for the rest of us, the price has been extraordinarily high for the people of the mountains.
That price took on a new dimension this week in a peer-reviewed study (subs. req'd) from the Health Policy Institute at West Virginia University. Researcher Michael Hendryx reports that coal mining costs the region five times more in early deaths than it provides in economic benefits.
Hendryx's sobering calculation is that the coal industry provides about $8 billion annually in jobs, taxes and other economic benefits - but premature deaths attributed to coal mining and its impacts, including local air and water pollution, cost the region $42 billion.
Hendryx qualifies this estimate, saying it's impossible to calculate these numbers with absolute certainty. But even a cursory look at how coal is extracted in Appalachia – largely now through the incredibly destructive practice of mountain top removal - leads reasonable people to conclude that Hendryx is on the right track.
Read More...
Daryl Hannah, scientist among 30 arrested at W.Va. mine protest
SUNDIAL, W.Va. -- More than 30 people -- including actress Daryl Hannah and NASA climate scientist James Hansen -- were arrested Tuesday in the latest protest in a growing civil disobedience campaign against mountaintop removal in Southern West Virginia.
Thirty-one protesters, including former Congressman Ken Hechler, were charged with obstructing officers and impeding traffic after they sat down in the middle of W.Va. 3 outside Massey Energy's Goals Coal preparation plant in Raleigh County.
Protesters dropped their initial plan to enter the Massey operation, and risk arrest for trespassing, when several hundred coal miners, family members and other industry supporters blocked the entrance to the site. One Massey supporter also was arrested and charged with battery during a brief confrontation with protesters, police said.
Read More...
The Congressmen from Coal
Most congresspeople, when they want research, turn to the Congressional Research Service, a organization that dates back to 1914 and prides itself on doing research that is "confidential, authoritative, objective and nonpartisan."
And then there is a group of Republican legislators, organized as the Rural American Solutions Group, who held a telephone press conference to argue that the "Democrats' Energy Tax" -- that's the GOP talking point for climate change legislation -- will "make it more expensive for rural Americans to fertilize the crops, put fuel in the tractor and food on the table."
They unveiled a map showing the state by state impact of cap-and-trade indicating that New York, California, New Jersey and a handful of other states will benefit, but that a vast swath of the south, Midwest and southwest will suffer.
The map, it turns out, came from the National Mining Association.
Read More...
Climate Bill to Cost Average Consumer $175 a Year: CBO
Climate-change legislation would cost the average household $175 a year by 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office, far below the figure commonly used by GOP critics of the House bill.
The CBO said yesterday that the poorest 20 percent of American households would actually receive a $40 benefit in 2020 from the legislation, which would establish a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions, while the richest 20 percent of households would see a net cost of $245 a year. The costs would result from higher prices for carbon-based fuels, offset by a complex series of tax breaks and free allowances, new technologies and behavioral changes, and impacts on corporations and their profits.
Read More...
Why does the New York Times hate science?
Why does anyone who cares about science quote Roger Pielke, Jr. on scientific matters? We've already seen one major NYT reporter tarnish his reputation by relying on Roger Pielke Jr.'s anti-scientific – and anti-scientist - disinformation.
Pielke has launched what is both the lamest and the most intellectually dishonest attack in his career - on a few innocuous sentences in the terrific new NOAA-led report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. This attack has been pimped by Swift-boat smearer Morano and Tierney. Pielke has one primary mission in his professional career - other than working with his colleagues at The Breakthrough Institute (TBI) to spread disinformation aimed at stopping any serious climate action, of course - and that is to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather.
Read More...
Nobelist Krugman takes on the "fantasists" of the "burn-baby-burn crowd"
Nobel prize-winning NYT columnist Paul Krugman has been doing some terrific writing on the economics of climate action (see Climate action "now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump" by giving "businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities" and "Krugman strongly endorses Waxman-Markey").
Now he writes on Friday's important CBO study, which found a "cost to households of Waxman-Markey in 2020 at $22 billion - which, given a projected population of 335 million, comes to 18 cents a day. [We've been using the household figure of 48 cents a day.] He ends his column titled, "Climate change fantasies":
The point is that we need to be clear about who are the realists and who are the fantasists here. The realists are actually the climate activists, who understand that if you give people in a market economy the right incentives they will make big changes in their energy use and environmental impact. The fantasists are the burn-baby-burn crowd who hate the idea of using government for good, and therefore insist that doing the right thing is economically impossible.
Read More...
A Sea Change in China's Attitude Toward Carbon Capture
When European and Chinese scientists first agreed to collaborate on capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and storing it underground, China's entire carbon capture and sequestration "team" was composed of two Tsinghua University graduate students.
Less than five years later, the landscape is markedly different. China's first near-zero-emissions coal plant won state approval this month -- an apparent formality, since construction already is far under way. Two other pilots are in the works, including one in inner Mongolia that could be the largest sequestration project in the world. Conferences on carbon capture in China now routinely feature high-level government and industry leaders.
Read More...
GOP nuke plan to cost consumers up to $4 trillion; 98% of green product claims may be greenwash
I (Tom Friedman) detailed the escalating costs of nuclear power in my May 2008 report, "The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power," which noted a "reasonable estimate for levelized cost range … is 12 to 17 cents per kilowatt hour lifetime, and 1.7 times that number [20 to 29 cents per kilowatt-hour] in first year of commercial operation." On December 31, Time noted that nuclear plants' capital costs are "out of control," concludingm "Most efficiency improvements have been priced at 1 to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, while new nuclear energy is on track to cost 15 to 20 cents per kilowatt-hour. And no nuclear plant has ever been completed on budget."
Then a January 2009 study for CP put the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at from 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour - triple current U.S. electricity rates (see "The staggering cost of new nuclear power"). Now we have:
New reactors could increase consumer costs by $4 trillion - report
Read More...
Saving the planet from global warming warming
Environmental experts are worried that Earth's global average surface temperature is nearing the tipping-point, which exposes humanity to serious physical, environmental, socio-economic and health consequences.
RECENT reports indicate that the excess of modern men is fast exposing the planet to grave dangers. In fact, latest statistics indicate that the average temperature of the atmosphere near the Earth's surface has risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past century. Eleven of the 12 hottest years on record occurred between 1995 and 2006. The scientific consensus is that global temperatures could rise between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees above 1980-1999 levels by the end of the 21st century. The exact amount depends on the levels of future greenhouse gas emissions, according to experts. While they insist that all these combine to threaten human existence and survival on Earth, they called for a concerted effort to steady the tides and save the planet from imminent free fall.
Read More...
Hybrid Vehicles That Are Even More Efficient
ScienceDaily (June 23, 2009) - One of the controllable causes of global warming is carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from burning fossil fuels. This process is precisely what enables most cars to function by means of combustion engines. In recent years, some companies in the automobile sector have brought out models that combine a standard combustion engine with an electric one. These are known as hybrids, and they produce less pollution. In his final thesis, Toni Font, who recently graduated from the ETSEIB, proposed a way to make these vehicles more efficient.
Read More...
U.S. automakers ignored fuel-efficiency research - UM study
"It is standard practice to discount consumer research. It was only applied to safety and quality issues," said Walter McManus, director of the automotive analysis division for the institute and co-author of the study.
He said that people abandoned American-made vehicles in favor of fuel-efficient Japanese models, leading to the downturn of all three automakers.
"The reaction to fuel prices was way beyond what anyone would have ever predicted," McManus said.
Read More...
Study finds record smog levels during Beijing Olympics
Athletes at the Beijing games last summer faced air pollution at double and triple the levels found at other recent Olympic cities, according to a joint American-Chinese study released earlier this month.
"Considering the massive efforts by China to reduce air pollution in and around Beijing during the Olympics, this was the largest scale atmospheric pollution experiment ever conducted," said Staci Simonich, an associate professor of environmental and molecular toxicology at Oregon State University, which worked on the study with Peiking University.
The amount of particulate air pollution in Beijing was roughly one-third higher than what was reported by Chinese officials, according to the study, which also found that the pollution exceeded the level of what's considered safe by the World Health Organization roughly 81 percent of the time.(GreenWire subscription req.)
Justices Say Waste Can Be Dumped in Lake
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Clean Water Act does not prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from allowing mining waste to be dumped into rivers, streams and other waters.
In a 6-to-3 decision that drew fierce criticism from environmentalists, the court said the Corps of Engineers had the authority to grant Coeur Alaska Inc., a gold mining company, permission to dump the waste known as slurry into Lower Slate Lake, north of Juneau.
"We conclude that the corps was the appropriate agency to issue the permit and that the permit is lawful," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.
The corps permit, issued in 2005, said that 4.5 million tons of waste from the Kensington mine could be dumped into the lake even though it would obliterate life in its waters. The corps found that disposing of it there was less environmentally damaging than other options.
Read More...
Clear majority of Americans approve of Obama's handling of global warming
On the eve of the vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, expected Friday (or early Saturday), the Washington Post-ABC News just released a poll that found strong support among Americans for action to reduce global warming pollution. Despite conservative loud and misleading opposition to the bill, a global warming reduction plan has widespread public support.
The poll respondents also gave President Obama high marks for his efforts to address this problem. President Obama's net ratings on this issue - net 28% approve - is his second strongest issue after international affairs. He has a higher approval rating on global warming than on health care or the economy, among other issues.
Read More...
House GOP repeat in unison the petroleum industry falsehood that CBO finds the Waxman-Markey bill would raise gasoline prices $0.77 / gal.
If you are listening to the House floor debate over the "rule" that will set the terms of the debate for Waxman-Markey, then you've heard pretty much every Republican repeat the claim that the Congressional Budget Office found that W-M would add $.77 a gallon to the price of gasoline in the next decade.
That charge is false. It comes from the American Petroleum Institute.
Read More...
Baltimore drivers to test 'near-enough perfect' electric fleet
The speed at which the world embraces the electric car rests in its ability to build a better battery.
Several U.S. companies hope to race ahead of foreign rivals by using federal loans and grants to commercialize electric cars and lighter, longer-lasting batteries. But a Canadian company might get there first.
Mississauga, Ontario-based Electrovaya Inc. yesterday unveiled the Maya 300, a plug-in electric car that can get up to 120 miles on a charge of its lithium-ion battery. The Maya 300 charges in about eight hours, plugs into a regular household outlet and will be available to consumers within a year, promised Electrovaya Chairman and CEO Sankar Das Gupta, who unveiled a four-door version of the vehicle at the city's Inner Harbor.
Read More...
Rep. Broun receives applause on the House floor for calling global warming a 'hoax'
During the floor debate this morning over the historic American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) received a round of applause from GOP colleagues when he claimed that man-made global warming is a "hoax" with "no scientific consensus." Broun, citing misleading statistics, also claimed that the bill would hurt the poor and "kill jobs:"
BROUN: Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus. … And who's going to be hurt most [by ACES] the poor, the people on limited income…the people who can least afford to have their energy taxes raised by MIT says $3100 per family. … This bill must be defeated. We need to be good stewards of our environment, but this is not it, it's a hoax!
Read More...
Rep. Rob Bishop says passage of clean energy bill will be as tragic as the death of Michael Jackson
Yesterday on Fox Business, anchor David Asman hosted a round table dedicated to smearing the Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation. The discussion, including Fox Business' Cody Willard and the Heritage Foundation's David Kreutzer, lacked a single proponent of the bill. Concluding the segment, Asman asked Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) - an opponent not just of clean energy legislation, but of green jobs in general - if the bill would pass the House. He responded with a morbid comparison:
ASMAN: Congressman Bishop is there any chance at all that this thing won't pass tomorrow?
BISHOP: Well there's hope, we'll see if - I mean you guys covered a national tragedy today, let's hope we don't give you a tragedy tomorrow as well.
Read More...