Political Climate Articles
Gulf coast scientists: 'oil is bad for everything'
Gulf Coast marine scientists agree that the unfolding oil disaster could mean devastation beyond human comprehension. Wonk Room's Brad Johnson has the story in this repost.
In an exclusive interview with the Wonk Room, a team of scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, MS, discussed the ecological impacts of a three-month blowout from the BP-Halliburton Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig, described as the expected timeline for "ultimate relief" of the leak by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. None of the scientists even wanted to attempt to imagine the coming devastation, because, as ichthyologist Jeff Hoffmayer said, "oil is bad for everything" that lives in the ocean. If the leak continues for three months, about 100 million gallons of oil will have flooded into the Gulf during the peak spawning season of the region and the start of the hurricane season. Dr. Bill Hawkins, director of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, summarized the scenario starkly:
All bets are off.
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Right-wing attendees at Heritage event applaud the idea that Obama is a 'domestic enemy.'
This morning, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) delivered a national security screed at the Heritage Foundation, a DC-based conservative think tank. Politicizing the recent failed terror attack in NYC, Cantor said, "America is at risk of slipping into the type of false sense of security which prevailed before that September morning." He attacked Obama for "apolog[izing] on behalf of America" and for being "naïve." Cantor's hyperbolic address stirred the passions of the crowd. One attendee at the Heritage event asked Cantor why Obama should not be considered a "domestic enemy":
QUESTION: My question is – and this is something I personally don't understand – if it's a naïve question then I apologize: in light of what Obama has done to leave us vulnerable, to cut defense spending, to make us vulnerable to outside enemies, and to slight our allies, how (pause) – what would he have to do differently to be defined as a domestic enemy? (applause)
CANTOR: Listen, let me respond very forthright to that: you know, no one thinks the President is a domestic enemy. (boos)
After the anonymous attendee asked his question, the crowd applauded and laughed. Cantor even smiled before responding to the question. Because he refused to call Obama a "domestic enemy," many in the crowd treated Cantor to a smattering of boos. Watch it:
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Byrd calls for re-examination of state's relationship with coal
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Sen. Robert C. Byrd on Wednesday called for a reconsideration of West Virginia's relationship with coal mining, saying the industry can't be allowed to dominate the state's politics while causing needless deaths and environmental damage.
"Coal brings much needed jobs and revenue to our economy," the West Virginia Democrat wrote in a new commentary. "But the industry has a larger footprint, including inherent responsibilities that must be acknowledged by the industry."
Byrd issued the piece in response to the nation's worst coal-mining disaster in 40 years, the April 5 explosion that killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County.
"As we seek to understand how and why the Upper Big Branch disaster occurred, we might also re-examine conventional wisdom about the future of the coal industry in our state," Byrd said.
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Washington Post Teams with Dirty Coal Front Group ACCCE on PostPolitics.com Launch
The Washington Post this week launched a new politics homepage, PostPolitics.com, with a helping hand from the dirty coal industry.
According to the press release announcing the launch,
"The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is the Washington Post's exclusive launch sponsor of PostPolitics.com."
While PostPolitics.com itself is an exciting new tool for fans of political news, it is unfortunate that the Post had to partner with coal polluters to fund the launch.
So far, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is sure getting some bang for however many bucks it is shelling out. Go visit the PostPolitics.com homepage right now and admire the massive "Clean Coal" banner ads at the top and right side, featuring ACCCE's poster miner Shane Evans, a mine dispatcher at Arch Coal's Thunder Basin Coal Company. (Finally, the coal industry has taken to featuring an actual miner in its ads, after learning a tough lesson last year when Adfero's "FACES of Coal" ad campaign was discovered to be full of iStockPhoto images of actors.)
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Republicans won't be nudged into cutting home energy
It was hailed as a breakthrough in the fight to cut carbon emissions. In 2007, researchers found that heavy electricity users cut their consumption after being told that they used more energy than their neighbours. Almost a million US households have since received similar feedback and have cut electricity use by an average of 2.5 per cent.
But a new study has identified a wrinkle in the plan: the feedback only seems to work with liberals. Conservatives tend to ignore it. Some even respond by using more energy.
The findings come from a study of over 80,000 Californian households, just under half of which received feedback on energy use. Overall, the technique worked: households who got the feedback cut electricity by around 2 per cent, say Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn at the University of California, Los Angeles.
But important difference emerged when Costa and Kahn looked at the political leanings of those in the survey. Homeowners who identified themselves as Republicans cut energy use by just 0.4 per cent on average. And those Republicans who showed no practical interest in environmental causes – people who did not donate to environmental groups and did not choose to pay extra for renewable energy – even increased electricity use by 0.75 per cent.
Act of defiance
Wesley Schultz at California State University in San Marcos, one of the researchers behind the 2007 finding, is not surprised by the result. He says that some Republicans have a negative view of the environmental movement and so might want to distance themselves from a green-themed campaign. Using more electricity could be an act of defiance, whether conscious or subconscious.
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Conservative Talk Show Host Brian Sussman Adds 'Climategate' to His List of Favorite Conspiracy Theories
The book "Climategate: A Meteorologist Exposes the Myth of Global Warming" is the newest bang on the Climategate drum. It is written by none other than Brian Sussman, the California TV personality whose conspiracy theories also include 'birther' arguments and the discovery of the real Noah's Ark.
The conservative media has fallen into a rut of chanting 'climategate, climategate, climategate' every time global warming is mentioned. If conservative mojo is demonstrated by how loudly one can say it, Brian Sussman just announced his candidacy for denier-in-chief.
Sussman's book, released on Earth Day 2010, is based on the over-arching theory that the entire environmental movement is a farce. The back cover reads: "For many decades, communists, socialists and the global elite have tossed a dizzying array of predicaments into American culture; that carbon dioxide emissions generated by mankind are ruining the planet, is their greatest assertion yet."
According to Sussman, Earth Day is a socialist plot, DDT is harmless, Rachel Carson was wrong, and Al Gore doesn't even believe in global warming. Indeed, he thinks practically every environmental issue can be explained away as part of this theory. The book includes such gems as explaining how installing smart-meters that help the grid save energy is really just helping Big Brother become a reality.
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China First-Quarter Energy Use Per Unit of GDP Rises
May 6 (Bloomberg) -- China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, used 3.2 percent more energy per unit of gross domestic product in the first quarter, adding to pressure to cut consumption for the rest of 2010, Premier Wen Jiabao said.
"Rapid growth" in industries including power generation, steel, nonferrous metals, construction materials, petroleum and chemicals increased China's consumption of energy, Wen said in a statement published on the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's website today.
China cut energy use per unit of GDP by 14.38 percent between 2006 and 2009, and plans to reduce consumption by 20 percent in the five years to 2010. The economy expanded 11.9 percent in the first quarter, the fastest pace in almost three years, boosting consumption of electricity, oil and coal.
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Saudi-funded Fox News rejects ad by veterans group arguing against Middle East oil dependence
Last week, progressive veterans organization VoteVets.org released an ad arguing that "a clean energy climate plan would cut our dependence on foreign oil in half and cut oil profits for hostile nations." The ad asserts that "every day, Iran gets $100 million richer selling oil around the world and peddling hate." TP has the story.
While CNN and MSNBC have aired the ad, Fox News is refusing to do so. Politico reports Fox apparently found the ad "too confusing." Watch the "confusing" ad:
There is nothing confusing about the ad. VoteVets' assertion that hostile nations profit off our oil dependence is based on a Wonk Room analysis that finds, under the a strong carbon cap regime which restrains U.S. appetite for oil, Iran would lose $1.8 trillion worth of oil revenues over the next forty years — or, over $100 million a day. "If the world moves away from oil dependence, Iran's regime will no longer be able to rely on petrodollars to stay afloat," Brad Johnson writes in pretty simple terms.
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ODU professors balk at Cuccinelli's climate request
Nineteen Old Dominion University professors on Friday joined a rising tide of opposition to state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's request for documents involving a former climate-change researcher at the University of Virginia.
In a statement, they said Cuccinelli's actions "echo some of the worst offenses of the McCarthy era," referring to Joseph McCarthy, a U.S. senator from Wisconsin who sought to uncover Communists in the '50s.
The attorney general, they wrote, should "cease and desist from this and further 'witch hunts' driven by partisan political agendas that waste valuable state resources in a difficult economy."
Cuccinelli last month sought documents relating to research in global warming conducted by Michael Mann, who was at U.Va. from 1999 to 2005 and now teaches at Penn State. The request indicated that Cuccinelli's office is investigating whether Mann committed fraud.
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Climate scientists decry 'political assaults'
SAN FRANCISCO -- In an unusually strong attack on politically powerful deniers of global warming, 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including 32 from Northern California, have charged that opponents are using "McCarthy-like tactics" against legitimate climate scientists.
The letter condemning "political assaults" on climate researchers was published Friday in the journal Science, and was sent earlier to the White House Office of Science and Technology, where John Holdren, its director, is President Obama's science adviser.
Members of the Academy of Sciences, who are frequently called upon to advise the federal government and its agencies on scientific questions, normally debate controversial issues sedately. But with the global warming debate becoming increasingly politically charged, the scientists struck back.
"We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular," they said in their letter. "We call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action and the outright lies being spread about them."
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WashPost: University of Virginia should fight AG Cuccinelli's faulty investigation of Michael Mann
We knew Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) had declared war on reality. Now he has declared war on the freedom of academic inquiry as well. We hope that Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) and the University of Virginia have the spine to repudiate Mr. Cuccinelli's abuse of the legal code. If they do not, the quality of Virginia's universities will suffer for years to come.
With a few exceptions, the Washington Post's editorial page has not been friendly to climate science. So it's refreshing to see the paper take on the chilling McCarthyite witchhunt that Cuccinelli has launched again the much-vindicated climate scientist Michael Mann:
In his ongoing campaign to wish away human-induced climate change, Mr. Cuccinelli has targeted Michael Mann, a climate scientist who used to teach at the University of Virginia, investigating him for allegedly defrauding taxpayers by obtaining grants from the commonwealth to conduct research on global temperatures. The attorney general is demanding that the university turn over astonishingly vast numbers of e-mails and other documents relating to Mr. Mann, including all correspondence with a long list of other reputable scientists.
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255 National Academy of Sciences members, including 11 Nobel laureates, defend climate science integrity
"There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend."
Tomorrow the journal Science publishes a remarkable Lead Letter supporting the accuracy of climate science. The must-read statement, "Climate Change and the Integrity of Science," is signed by 255 of the world's leading scientists. It begins:
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular.
The lead signer, Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick, notes in a HuffPost piece:
It is hard to get 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to agree on pretty much anything, making the import of this letter even more substantial.
The letter underscores our deep understanding of human-caused climate change and helps illuminate how science works. It deserves to be widely read in its entirety:
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La. fishing community faces crippling impacts as oil reaches coast (Special Report, 05/07/2010)
The fishing and oil industries off the coast of Southern Louisiana have operated in the same waters for decades without incident. Now, as the crude oil from last month's BP oil spill hits the coast, the balance is being threatened and industries are in danger. This E&ETV Special Report explores the impact of the oil spill on coastline communities and industries.
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FL panhandle GOP no longer supports 'drill baby drill'
Florida Panhandle politicians who had been ardent offshore drilling advocates are changing their tune as the BP oil disaster begins harming their constituents. Wonk Room's Brad Johnson has the story in this repost.
The Senate-energy-committee-approved ACELA (S. 1462) would lift the moratorium on drilling in the Pensacola and Destin areas, just off the coast of the Florida Panhandle.
Florida Panhandle politicians who had been ardent offshore drilling advocates are changing their tune as the BP oil disaster begins harming their constituents. State Representative Greg Evers (R-FL-1) and State Senator Don Gaetz (R-FL-4) joined Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (R-FL) at a press conference at the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce yesterday. Before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, both Gaetz and Evers advocated drilling near the Florida shoreline. Now that "a lot of businesses are already feeling the pinch," however, Evers says the white beaches of Escambia County "must be protected at all costs," and Gaetz says that the "many" economic losses coming from this oil spill mean "these are the worst of times":
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Jeff Masters: Weather turning bad for Louisiana
But oil unlikely to enter Loop Current anytime soon
The oil slick from the April 20 explosion and blowout of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon is moving little, thanks to the light winds of 10 knots or less that have affected the northern Gulf of Mexico over the past few days….
On Sunday, the winds will begin increasing and shifting to the southeast. The latest run of the GFS model shows that this will be a week-long period of southeast winds, with wind speeds at times reaching 20 – 25 knots. These winds will threaten to bring oil to a large portion of the Louisiana coast, including regions of the central Louisiana coast west of the mouth of the Mississippi River. The Mississippi and Alabama coasts will also be at risk next week, but the risk to the Florida Panhandle is lower.
The Gulf's run of good weather appears to be coming to an end, according to meteorologist Jeff Masters writing on his WunderBlog. But early reports that the spill would soon be entrained in the Loop Current (part of the Gulf Stream) and hit the Keys appear to be untrue:
Long-range prospects for oil to enter the Loop Current
A major concern with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is the possibility for the oil to move southwards and become entrained into the mighty Gulf of Mexico Loop
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Oil NO, INNOVATION YES.
Electrically-driven cars, as disruptive as they are to big oil, are on their way nonetheless and to some extent will actually help another one of the entrenched energy industries – coal – at least for a time. Most of the US grid is powered by coal, thus cars plugged into it will be coal powered. However, many buyers of plug-in vehicles will certainly have another idea on their minds: the possibility that their electric cars, trucks or SUVs can be charged with home-brewed renewable electricity. There's a new innovative product coming to stores this summer that could help realize that possibility.
Any wind turbine would be able to charge an electric vehicle, but a new design from WindTronics stands out as a radical redesign of conventional technology. As soon as this August, Ace Hardware, a US retail home supply and hardware chain, will be the first of 300 domestic and international dealers to offer the company's Honeywell Wind Turbine.
The small, 6 foot diameter, 2.2 kilowatt turbine appears to be technologically unique in the business. Instead of generating power at its hub, like conventional wind turbines, the Honeywell turbine generates power at its blade tips where rotational speed is the greatest.
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Fisheries Expert Daniel Pauly on the Gulf Spill's Impact
The Gulf of Mexico, which supplies as much as a third of America's domestically caught seafood, is at risk of becoming a giant "no fishing" zone after the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform disaster. Eminent marine biologist Daniel Pauly has long been a proponent of marine protected zones, which restrict fishing and other underwater activities so that sea life may grow large, breed, and regenerate from its current depleted condition.
The French-born fisheries expert and professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia spoke with OnEarth about the expected impacts of the BP oil spill, the damage it will likely cause to ocean life, and the hope that this disaster could provide an opportunity for rebirth. Read the full interview or watch and listen above.
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