Political Climate Articles


Misleadership
"George Bush created a lot of jobs."-- RNC Chair Michael Steele, 6/22/10
VERSUS
"The current President Bush, once taking account how long he's been in office, shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records." -- The Wall Street Journal, 1/09/09

Rich nations could increase emissions under pledge loopholes, UN data shows
Analysis seen at Bonn climate talks shows rich nations could use carbon accountancy tricks to increase their emissions by up to 8%
Developing countries were today shocked by new UN data showing that rich nations will be able to increase their carbon emissions by up to 8% if they take advantage of a series of major loopholes in their pledges.
Instead of reducing emissions by a minimum of 30-40% by 2020 and holding temperatures to a rise of 2C - as many campaigners hoped the Copenhagen climate summit in December would achieve - many rich countries would not need to make any domestic cuts to stay within the legal limits of a new global climate deal being negotiated at resumed UN talks in Bonn this week.
The figures, which are far higher than expected, could be achieved by a series of carbon accountancy tricks and devices including:
  • Selling "hot air" or surplus carbon allowances that were created when Soviet economies collapsed in the late 1980s;
  • Using carbon markets to "offset" as much as 30% of rich countries' emission cuts;
  • Setting new rules to calculate emission gains and losses from logging and planting trees.
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    Inhofe: Fiorina 'is supporting' my push to gut the Clean Air Act, agrees climate change is a 'hoax'
    ThinkProgress spoke to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) about Senate GOP nominee Carly Fiorina. I repost the amazing story and video below.
    Today on Capitol Hill, Americans for Prosperity, the corporate front group founded and funded by David Koch of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries, hosted an event to urge the passage of Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK) resolution to gut the Clean Air Act's power to regulate carbon emissions. Several Republican Senators came to the AFP event to encourage support for the resolution, which was drafted by lobbyists from the coal and oil industry.
    After the event, ThinkProgress spoke to one of the speakers, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), about his support for Carly Fiorina (R-CA), the U.S. Senate candidate to emerge from the primary last night. Inhofe gave Fiorina an early endorsement, and his nephew, Fred Davis, created the infamous "demon sheep" ads for Fiorina's campaign.
    Inhofe, who has been described as Washington's "the last flat-earther" for his strident denial of climate change, said Fiorina "is supporting what I am supporting." He elaborated that Fiorina both supports eviscerating the EPA's ability to enforce the Clean Air Act, and that she is supportive of his beliefs "in terms of the whole global warming hoax." He then added that he is "very proud of her":
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    Murkowski said oil drilling blowouts were 'impossible,' begged Big Oil to fight 'red tape'
    This week, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) held a press conference to tout her "Dirty Air Act" resolution that rolls back the Environmental Protection Agency's power to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. As Climate Progress has detailed, Murkowski's bill was drafted in consultation with Jeffrey R. Holmstead and Roger R. Martella Jr - lobbyists for the coal and oil industry. Despite this fact, Murkowski has tried to downplay the influence of big oil on her efforts, claiming only her staff writes her actual amendments, and that she is motivated purely by the fear of "detrimental consequences" of Clean Air Act regulations.
    But Murkowski's own words help to clarify her relationship with the oil industry. In a startling speech given to the Oil and Gas Association Board of Directors on May 7, 2008, Murkowski asked the oil industry to "mobilize all your resources" for a massive campaign to "beat[] back bad legislation and regulations." To combat "the growing hysteria over fossil fuel use," Murkowski suggested that the oil industry "fund a major campaign to open areas of America to environmentally sensitive oil and gas exploration." Murkowski commended the oil industry for "fight[ing] off efforts" to "add more red tape to gain drilling permits" and made clear that although she is facing "considerable and growing opposition" from Alaskan fishermen and whalers, her allegiance is with the oil industry in opening new drilling.
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    The Maine word for "chutzpah" is "Collins"
    Senator votes against oil use reductions the same day she calls for oil use reductions
    The U.S. Senate is a body with many senators who are not always ideologically consistent. Nonetheless, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) set a new standard for "Senatorial Chutzpah" today by announcing her support for Senator Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK) big oil bail out bill the very same day she published an article that says on the BP catastrophe that concludes:
    ... this disaster reaffirms our nation's need for a national energy policy national energy policy. While oil will remain a significant energy source for many years to come, it is long past time to begin the shift to clean, renewable sources.
    Sen. Murkowski's S. J. Res 26 would block the Environmental Protection Agency from establishing fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for vehicles. The resolution would block efforts to reform our energy policies, and instead maintain the status quo. EPA predicts that if the resolution becomes law, then oil use will increase by nearly one billion barrels from cars and trucks.
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    Why the BP gusher won't be the last tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico
    The first offshore well was drilled in fourteen feet of water off the coast of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana in 1937. In the decades that followed, a dense infrastructure was thrown up to support a booming offshore oil business-which was rapidly moving into ever-greater depths. Some 30,000 to 40,000 miles of underwater pipeline were laid and navigational canals were cut through the wetlands for shipping. Oil industry maps show an astonishingly dense and complex thicket. Most of the pipelines and canals that service the roughly 4,000 active wells in the Gulf were built long before environmental laws were passed and agencies were created to protect the wetlands.
    Just as we have collapsing bridges in our highway system, so, too, we have a decaying infrastructure underwater. It is aging, and as the marsh erodes it uncovers pipelines never built to be exposed to water, let alone saltwater. EDF senior director Paul Harrison describes an open meeting with the federal Council on Environmental Quality, where "an oil industry person got up and said he worries about the vulnerability of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) pipeline."
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    Public support for action on global warming has grown since January
    The Yale Project on Climate Change just released a poll that found growing support for measures to reduce global warming pollution. It interviewed 1,024 people from May 14 to June 1, and compared the results to a similar poll it conducted in January 2010. CAP's Daniel J. Weiss and intern Ariel Powell have the story.
    There was more support or more intense support in the June survey for the following actions.
    * Global warming should be a very high or high "priority for the president and Congress."
    * Corporations and industries should take more steps to reduce global warming.
    * Nearly two-thirds of respondents agreed that the "United States should reduce its greenhouse gas regardless of what other countries do."
    * The U.S. should make a large-scale or medium scale effort, even if it has large or moderate economic costs.
    * There was an 8 percent increase in strongly or somewhat support "regulating CO2."
    * The poll found nearly a one-third increase in strong support for "providing tax rebates for people who purchase energy efficient vehicles or solar panels."
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    Salazar Defends Deepwater Moratorium
    WASHINGTON - Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that a moratorium on new deepwater drilling imposed during one of the largest oil spills in U.S. history was a "pause" and not a stop, countering an outcry from oil-state lawmakers who are warning of harm to the U.S. economy.
    Speaking to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday, Mr. Salazar also said that BP PLC will have to pay the salaries of any oil-services workers who lose their jobs due to the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
    The comments came in response to a question from Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) who said that if a moratorium on new deepwater oil and gas wells "lasts very much longer than a few months, it could potentially wreak economic havoc on this region that exceeds the havoc wreaked by the rig itself."
    Citing oil-services companies that had written to her, Ms. Landrieu asked Mr. Salazar if "the oil-services companies have to either go out of business or take bankruptcy or lay off classes of workers, are you going to ask BP to pick up their salaries and to make them whole?"
    Mr. Salazar replied: "The answer to that is yes, we will."
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    R.I.P. Climate Legislation
    Today probably marks the official death of climate legislation in the United States. Lindsey Graham, the only Republican even nominally favorable toward any kind of carbon pricing plan, has announced that he can't support the Kerry-Lieberman bill because it doesn't allow enough offshore drilling (!), and without Graham there's pretty much zero chance of getting any further Republican support. So the odds of passing climate legislation, already slim, have now dropped to zero. The only option left is a pure energy bill, something that accomplishes very little, and accomplishes that little solely by offering up subsidies to every special interest you can imagine.
    By coincidence, Stanford researcher Jon Krosnick has an op-ed in the New York Times today that suggests this is exactly what the American public wants:
    When respondents were asked if they thought that the earth's temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, 74 percent answered affirmatively. And 75 percent of respondents said that human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred.
    ....Fully 86 percent of our respondents said they wanted the federal government to limit the amount of air pollution that businesses emit, and 76 percent favored government limiting business's emissions of greenhouse gases in particular. Not a majority of 55 or 60 percent - but 76 percent.
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    What the Gulf Disaster Could Tell Us About Sudden Global Warming
    Could the gushing BP well help explain an ancient climate mystery?
    Today, a crew of scientists are setting off for roughly 10 days to take measurements near the gushing well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico-but they're not looking for oil. Oceanographer John Kessler of Texas A&M University, College Station, and his colleagues have been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation for a research cruise on the R/V Cape Hatteras, to measure concentrations of methane gas. Methane makes up about 40% by mass of what's spewing out of the well, according to measurements by BP.
    The purpose of the cruise is twofold, Kessler says. How much oil has entered the gulf is the question on everyone's minds. (Oceanographer David Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara, also on the cruise, thinks measuring the methane could give a better estimate of oil flow than video or satellite imagery.)
    But the burst well has also become an unlikely scientific windfall for Kessler, who studies natural methane seeps and their link to rapid climate change. Scientists think sudden, violent outflows of the gas from the sea floor might have spiked the planet's temperature about 55 million years ago, and they think the gulf spill affords them the unique opportunity to study an analog in real time.
    Samples of ancient carbon deposits from this era show a marked increase in concentrations of carbon-12 relative to its heavier isotope carbon-13, indicating a lot of lighter carbon might have been suddenly released at the time.
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    BP (BOYCOTT PETROLEUM)
    After the Valdez spill I boycotted Exxon for years. It made me feel better, but the company continued to thrive without my gasoline purchases. Yet the company, now ExxonMobil, is still tainted from the spill more than 20 years ago.
    The damage from a boycott to BP as a global corporation may be minimal, at least in the short run. It's more likely that a local business owner would be hurt from reduced sales, than the massive company itself. The local BP filling station is a franchise, owned and operated by someone who could be, well, your neighbor. BP exited the retail gasoline business two years ago.
    In the long run BP will have the same taint that Exxon has, with or without a boycott. People will remember the messed up Gulf of Mexico for decades.
    Gavan Fitzsimons, Professor of marketing and psychology at Duke University, says boycotting BP offers an immediate psychological boost to consumers and a long term impact to the company.
    From a psychological standpoint, "Consumers have goals that they want to satisfy. I'm hungry, so I eat. I'd like to seem cool, so I buy the latest tech gadget. But when a consumer has a goal to achieve vengeance against a misperforming company, they can be hard to satisfy. Boycotts provide that opportunity and -- at least for a short while as one drives past the BP station on the way to stop at Shell -- lets the consumer take some comfort in temporarily satisfying a goal," says Fitzsimons
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    After taking $96K from oil and gas firms, Toomey pushes for more offshore drilling.
    Despite the massive devastation caused by BP's oil gusher, a growing number of Republicans have called for an immediate increase in offshore drilling, opposing President Obama's moratorium on new wells until an investigation of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is complete. Pennsylvania Republican Senate nominee Pat Toomey joined the club Friday.
    The other Republicans calling for more drilling now hail from coastal states with economic interests in offshore drilling. Pennsylvania has no ocean coastline, but Toomey has a personal financial interest in drilling. The oil and gas industry has given Toomey nearly $50,000 for his Senate campaign this year, and he has taken over $96,000 from them over his entire career.
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    Will BP go bankrupt?
    Matt Simmons told Fortune this week BP has "about a month before they declare Chapter 11." He is a smart guy - a peakist who has run a successful boutique energy investment bank for three decades.
    On the other hand, the oil giant has very, very, very deep pockets. The PBS Newshour had a good show on this yesterday:
    JUDY WOODRUFF: Byron King, back to BP itself. What is its ability to handle claims? How far can it go? How deep are its pockets?
    BYRON KING: Well, just getting to the dividend issue, BP, on an annual basis, pays out over $10 billion of dividend money every year.
    Now, as - as we have discussed earlier, a lot of that money is going to British pensioners and to U.S. pension funds as well. If - if they simply eliminated the dividend, they would have a $10 billion-a-year war chest to clean things up. And then, also, BP has another $25 billion or so per year that it's doing in capital investment around the world in other oil provinces and other energy developments.
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    What's Really In BP's Oil Spill Dispersants?
    As the BP leak has dumped thousands of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico each day-and the responses of the oil firm and the Obama administration have been questioned-one critical issue has been the use of dispersants, especially the main dispersants deployed by BP: Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527. The Obama administration and members of Congress have raised concerns about the substances, which are supposedly more toxic than available alternatives.
    This week the EPA, with no fanfare, posted on its website the chemical components of these two dispersants. Here's the list:
    Chemical Name
    1,2-Propanediol
    Ethanol, 2-butoxy-
    Butanedioic acid, 2-sulfo-, 1,4-bis(2-ethylhexyl) ester, sodium salt (1:1)
    Sorbitan, mono-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate
    Sorbitan, mono-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate, poly(oxy-1,2-ethanediyl) derivs.
    Sorbitan, tri-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate, poly(oxy-1,2-ethanediyl) derivs
    2-Propanol, 1-(2-butoxy-1-methylethoxy)-
    Distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated light
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    Dick Cheney's Last Laugh
    Dick Cheney hasn't made much time for television appearances lately. But in the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon unleashed a torrent of oil on the Gulf of Mexico, his name has been creeping back into the press. "The truth is that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney administration wanted: full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies that are supposed to be overseeing the industry," liberal commentator Arianna Huffington said on ABC's This Week last Sunday. Cheney's daughter, Liz, was on hand to defend her father. "Arianna, I don't know what planet you live on," she shot back. "What you are saying has no relationship to the truth, no relationship to the facts."
    The reality is a lot more complicated than that. Many of the policy and regulatory failures that laid the groundwork for the BP catastrophe can be traced back to the Bush-Cheney era. But so far, this question has received relatively little attention-mostly because the task force that developed the former administration's energy policy operated in extreme secrecy. Did the task force's decisions play a role in the BP spill? And could the Gulf disaster finally provoke new scrutiny of the task force's clandestine workings?
    The energy task force was created days after onetime oilman George W. Bush took office in 2001, and was headed by Cheney, a former CEO at Halliburton, one of the world's largest providers of oilfield products and services. For months, the task force solicited input on US energy policy. On May 16, 2001, the group issued its final report, which was submitted to Congress in June. But the participants and details of the discussions were kept tightly under wraps.
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    Lindsey Graham Said What About Climate Change?
    On Tuesday, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham told reporters that he would vote against the climate bill he helped author. Now he's going one step further. Graham, one of the few Republicans who claimed to care about climate change, now says global warming is no big deal.
    Graham appeared on Wednesday at a press conference with Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), who was rolling out his own energy bill, a measure that relies heavily on expanding nuclear power and raising fuel economy standards without putting a cap on carbon dioxide emissions. Yesterday, Graham said he didn't think any energy bill could get 60 votes this year because oil drilling has become too controversial. Today he decided, at the last minute, to back Lugar's bill.
    Reporters asked Graham several times about why he was supporting Lugar's bill, when just a few months ago he had argued that the Senate shouldn't pass a "half-assed" bill that lacked hard restrictions on carbon emissions. Graham replied that he now doesn't think pricing carbon is that important. "The science about global warming has changed," he noted, offhandedly. "I think they've oversold this stuff, quite frankly. I think they've been alarmist and the science is in question," Graham told reporters. "The whole movement has taken a giant step backward."
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    In 2008, BP Touted New Tech To Measure Oil Flow
    For seven weeks, BP has insisted that measuring exactly how much oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is a daunting-perhaps impossible-task. The depth of the well, and the volume of natural gas emitting from it, has made the flow rate "very, very difficult to estimate," BP has said, while its chief operating officer has emphasized the "huge amount of uncertainty" surrounding the question. But back in 2008, the company was singing a very different tune. In an in-house magazine, BP bragged about sophisticated technology it had developed to measure precisely the flow of oil and gas through pipelines.
    The August 2008 issue of Frontiers, BP's technology and innovation magazine, includes a lengthy feature, titled "Listening to the Flow." The article boasts of the company's "expertise [in] flow measurement." Determining how much oil and gas is flowing out of a pipeline is "tricky to do," the article says. It explains that BP had developed a technology called sonar-based flow metering, in which the flow of hydrocarbons is measured using sonar sensors placed inside a pipe. This technology is "proving its worth in the company's operations around the world," the article says, noting that BP "has pioneered the introduction of a new and very useful tool into the wider oil industry."
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    Canada can't wait on U.S. for climate policy
    Canada has a long way to go to catch up to leading European nations in the bioenergy sector, according to industry experts.
    Leaders from Canada's bioenergy sector addressed attendees at the 2010 Bioenergy Conference and Exhibition in Prince George on Wednesday.
    Canadian Bioenergy Association executive director Doug Bradley said Canada needs a national climate change policy and can't wait for the U.S. to develop one first.
    "We can't wait any longer, we need a federal policy," Bradley said.
    In Canada natural resources are a provincial responsibility, so each province has different policies on bioenergy. In addition, Canada has no legally-binding emission targets - just goals.
    The European Union 2020 objectives are legally binding, meaning countries which fail to meet their reduction targets must purchase carbon offsets to make up the difference.
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    Ottawa called on to protect infrastructure vulnerable to climate change
    Ottawa has solicited a study on how some of the 1,000 small craft harbours that are critical to the fishing industry could be affected by rising sea levels, storm surges and a loss of shorefast ice - all linked to climate change.
    The call for proposals from the Department of Fisheries says the government has long been criticized for failing to prepare for changing conditions that could damage wharfs, fisheries infrastructure and coastal habitats.
    "Climate change is an issue which will have implications in all five Small Craft Harbour regions," states the document, which was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
    "Increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather and related natural hazards will impact critical infrastructure."
    The Small Craft Harbours vulnerability study, budgeted at $50,000, identifies areas that research has suggested could feel the greatest fallout from warming temperatures.
    In Atlantic Canada, Nova Scotia could face particular threat with its 7,600 kilometres of coastline and rising sea levels.
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    America Over a Barrel: Reducing Our Oil Dependence
    Our dependence on oil is not sustainable. The United States has only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we use one-quarter of the oil produced annually. One in five barrels of U.S. oil comes from countries that the State Department considers to be "dangerous or unstable." The BP oil disaster is a tragic reminder of the human, economic, public health, and environmental costs of oil dependence. And growing worldwide oil demand-led by China-will put additional upward pressure on oil prices. The United States needs comprehensive clean energy and climate reform that would decrease our dependence on this expensive and unstable commodity.
    Please join Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and a panel of experts to discuss the national security, economic, public health, and environmental consequences of our dependence on oil.
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    EPA modeling shows American Power Act brings economic and climate benefits
    Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) released analysis yesterday of their American Power Act, or APA, by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's analysis definitively demonstrates that we can reduce our carbon pollution and jumpstart the clean energy economy at a very small net cost to American consumers. This analysis is also consistent with several other studies showing that the American Power Act would create jobs, reduce consumer energy prices, and help the United States lead the world toward stabilizing carbon emissions at safe levels by 2050. CAP's Richard Caperton and Andrew Light have the analysis in this repost. If you are interested in the study on the costs of inaction, see "clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill creates $1.5 trillion in benefits."
    The EPA concluded that the APA would be affordable for American families if it is enacted. The average family will have to spend less on energy if this important legislation passes, primarily because of increases in energy efficiency mandated and stimulated by the legislation. EPA projects that passing the APA would reduce Americans' annual energy expenditures by 10 percent by 2020.
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    Seeing Past the BP Spill
    We've gotten a few inquiries lately about why we aren't devoting a lot more discussion to the BP Spill. After all, isn't this the "worst environmental disaster in American history?" Shouldn't a site whose purpose is to explore solutions to planetary problems be all over the planet's most visible current problem?
    In a word, no. The decision not to cover the BP Spill has been fairly straightforward for us: we don't do problems, unless we're covering them in order to explain how a solution could work, or unless a new analysis of a problem is so telling that it changes the way we understand how it could be solved. The BP Spill is huge, but not particularly unique.
    The BP Spill will almost certainly go down as the decade's most visible industrial accident. The BP corporate leaders involved ought probably to go to jail. The wetlands and beaches of the Gulf of Mexico will suffer horrible environmental degradation. Local people will suffer the loss of their ways of life and of places they love, as well as health effects. The impact on the marine life of the Gulf is as yet unknowable.
    Yet, while the BP Spill is the biggest single oil spill we here in America have experienced, in terms of overall impact, it's just a drop in our pollution bucket. Thousands of major spills happen around the world each year. Even in terms of oil spilled in North America, this disaster is small compared to business as usual: more than 90% of all the oil spilled in North America comes from oil leaked from cars (or poured down drains) finding its way to the sea, according to a landmark 2002 report; in the Puget Sound region alone, more oil is leaked from cars and home use every two years than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez.
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    Will the New Climate Bill Damage U.S. Energy Security?
    Few groups have been more strident in their opposition to cap-and-trade legislation than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Last year, four prominent members of the powerful business lobby, including Exelon Corp. and Pacific Gas & Electric, quit on account of its obstructionist approach to climate policy. When some activists announced, in a prank press conference, that the chamber would throw its weight behind an ambitious climate bill, the group responded with a lawsuit.
    In arguing against cap-and-trade, the chamber has repeatedly advanced the notion that such legislation would harm U.S. energy security in some fashion or another. So last month, when the chamber's Institute for 21st Century Energy announced that it had created a comprehensive new index of "Energy Security Risk"-a tool designed "to track shifts in U.S. energy security over time and assess potential impacts of new policies"-we wondered whether its calculations might be applied to the most recent energy and climate change policy proposals. In other words, what would the chamber's own definition of energy security say about the cap-and-trade bills the group so consistently opposes?
    To find out, we ran the numbers on the clean energy and climate change bill unveiled by Sens. Kerry and Lieberman last month. We found that, according to the chamber's own definition of energy security risk, the bill would help America, nearly across the board.
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    Faith-Based Group Accuses Graham of 'Flip-Flopping' on Energy Bill
    A left-leaning advocacy group is running an advertising campaign accusing Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) of "flip-flopping" on comprehensive energy and climate legislation after backing away from a bill he co-sponsored earlier this year.
    The American Values Network will launch advertisements in the Washington, D.C., area today, accusing Graham of backing away from a comprehensive bill in favor of the type of energy and climate approach he has previously characterized as "half-assed."
    Graham helped author a cap-and-trade climate bill with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), but he backed away from those negotiations in April over an unrelated political battle involving immigration. He has since added new reasons keeping him from the bargaining table, including the lack of interest in expanding offshore oil drilling in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
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    Gulf Oil Spill: Mississippi River Hydrology May Help Reduce Oil Onshore
    ScienceDaily (June 17, 2010) - The Gulf of Mexico: what role will the Mississippi River play in oil washing ashore and into delta wetlands? One of the spill's greatest environmental threats is to Louisiana's wetlands, scientists believe. But there may be good news ahead.
    Scientists affiliated with the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center headquartered at the University of Minnesota, are using long-term field plots in Louisiana's Wax Lake Delta to measure the baseline conditions of, and track the effects of the oil spill on, coastal Louisiana wetlands. Robert Twilley and Guerry Holm of Louisiana State University (LSU) are investigating the degree to which two delta wetland characteristics may help mitigate oil contamination. Fresh water head, as it's called, the slope of the water's surface from a river delta to the sea, and residence time of river-mouth wetlands, the time it takes water to move through a wetland at a river's mouth, are important to understanding how delta wetlands will respond to the oil spill, say the researchers.
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    Patriots Act: Operation Free
    We sent them into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. What they saw there has sparked their next mission -- to end our dependence on fossil fuels.
    Ten years ago, Robin Eckstein was a college student in Appleton, Wisconsin, struggling to pay her bills with bartending and waitressing jobs. Her credit card debt was mounting. Out of the blue, a National Guard recruiter e-mailed her, offering a free college education in exchange for her military service. She enlisted, and reported for active duty in October 2000. Three years later, she was driving supply trucks across the Iraqi desert.
    Eckstein, 33, has been out of the U.S. Army for three years now, but on this frigid Tuesday morning in late March, she finds herself pulling transport duty once more, this time driving a big, blue biodiesel-fueled bus across the state of Ohio, from Columbus to Cincinnati. She is ferrying veterans like herself: Matt Victoriano, an ex-Marine; Rafael Noboa Rivera, a former Army sergeant; and Nick Anderson, a former Army specialist. The foursome is making its way through the Midwest as part of Operation Free, a campaign to promote clean energy organized by a progressive leadership institute called the Truman National Security Project. Operation Free, now in its second year, includes dozens of vets who have logged more than 25,000 miles traveling across 23 states, stopping at union halls, factories, statehouses, and radio stations and making appearances on nightly news programs.
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    The Gulf Spill: Hitting Bottom in Our Addiction to Oil
    Simple Steps editorial director had a phone chat recently with Dr. Sarah B. Warren, a psychologist and addiction specialist, who offers an interesting perspective on the calamity in the Gulf of Mexico, and whether we can be moved to confront and take action to overcome our quenchless thirst for oil.
    Simple Steps: Dr. Warren, you are a psychologist with 20 years experience helping individuals conquer addiction and deal with its lasting repercussions. The calamitous oil spill in the Gulf brings into sharp relief America's addiction to dirty fuels. What parallels can you draw between our collective behavior as regards oil and addictions that may be more familiar to us, such as smoking, drinking, drug use or gambling?
    Dr. Warren: Addiction is ugly. By contrast, recovery is work, but tremendously rewarding not just for alcoholics but for the families.
    The spill in the Gulf is no aberration. It's a consequence of our habit. Our appetite -like any addict's- does not diminish as oil reserves dwindle. Alcoholics do desperate things like drink grain alcohol. So oil companies venture into deeper waters, beyond the limits of responsibility, to keep giving us the fix we demand. This kind of drilling costs human lives, the lives of other living creatures, takes a toll on the health of residents, and destroys the livelihoods of those who depend on a healthy ocean. A parallel process is underway with coal and tar sands as we resort to more desperate and risky measures to feed our addiction to fossil fuels.
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    'Too young not to work but too old to work'
    Age discrimination plagues long-term unemployed
    Last week, thousands of Americans who have exhausted their unemployment insurance - the 99ers, named after the maximum number of weeks of state and federal benefits - sent letters and petitions to Washington as part of a futile campaign to convince the Senate to pass a bolstered version of the jobs bill, now stalled and being pared back. There were many common themes in their stories, but one of the more surprising was age.
    One woman from Warren County, New Jersey, wrote: "I am (or was) a legal secretary with several years of experience (30+ years). ... I have applied to jobs that are more than one-half less than what I was earning. I search for a job each and every day. … Where do people in my age bracket go? Too young not to work but too old to work?"
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    Oil Spills Are a Grim Routine in the Niger Delta
    The New York Times reminded us today that while the oil spill in the Gulf is an acute shock to Americans, oil spills have become a way of life in the Niger delta. The area has "has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless." Much of the Niger delta is dead as a result.
    Once, the Niger delta fed the entire coast. It was rich with shellfish, mollusks, and fish. Now, most of that is gone. Fisherman can no longer make a living, and children swim in oily swamps. Nearly 11 million gallons of oil a year have spilled into the delta's wetlands; in comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons of oil.
    According to The Independent in 2006, "7,000sq km of the continent's remaining 9,000sq km of mangrove and scientists believe some 60 per cent of West Africa's fish stocks breed in the rivers and swamps along the coast." Think about that, and then consider that over 6,800 spills were recorded between 1976 and 2001.
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    An Energy-Saving Air Conditioner
    Keeping air cool in homes and offices this summer will be expensive--about 5 percent of the energy used in the United States each year goes to running air conditioners. But researchers at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO, have come up with a new air-conditioner design that they say will dramatically increase efficiency and eliminate gases that contribute to global warming.
    "The technology we have today is nearly a hundred years old," says Eric Kozubal, a senior engineer at NREL. Kozubal and colleagues have come up with an air conditioner that combines evaporative cooling with a water-absorbing material to provide cool, dry air while using up to 90 percent less energy. The desiccant-enhanced evaporative, or DEVap, air conditioner is meant to addresses the old complaint, "It's not the heat; it's the humidity," more efficiently.
    Evaporative cooling--blowing air across a wet surface to promote evaporation--has long been used in so-called swamp coolers. A method called indirect evaporative cooling improves on this design, dividing air into two streams, which separated by a polymer membrane. Water is passed through one airstream, making it cooler and wetter; the cool air cools the membrane, which in turn cools the air on the other side without adding water.
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    New Process Is Promising for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars
    ScienceDaily (June 18, 2010) - A new process for storing and generating hydrogen to run fuel cells in cars has been invented by chemical engineers at Purdue University.
    The process, given the name hydrothermolysis, uses a powdered chemical called ammonia borane, which has one of the highest hydrogen contents of all solid materials, said Arvind Varma, R. Games Slayter Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and head of the School of Chemical Engineering.
    "This is the first process to provide exceptionally high hydrogen yield values at near the fuel-cell operating temperatures without using a catalyst, making it promising for hydrogen-powered vehicles," he said. "We have a proof of concept."
    The new process combines hydrolysis and thermolysis, two hydrogen-generating processes that are not practical by themselves for vehicle applications.
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    Highly Efficient Solar Cells Could Result from Quantum Dot Research
    ScienceDaily (June 18, 2010) - Conventional solar cell efficiency could be increased from the current limit of 30 percent to more than 60 percent, suggests new research on semiconductor nanocrystals, or quantum dots, led by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at The University of Texas at Austin.
    Zhu and his colleagues report their results in this week's Science.
    The scientists have discovered a method to capture the higher energy sunlight that is lost as heat in conventional solar cells.
    The maximum efficiency of the silicon solar cell in use today is about 31 percent. That's because much of the energy from sunlight hitting a solar cell is too high to be turned into usable electricity. That energy, in the form of so-called "hot electrons," is lost as heat.
    If the higher energy sunlight, or more specifically the hot electrons, could be captured, solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency could be increased theoretically to as high as 66 percent.
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    Sen. Landrieu (D LA) on BP Disaster:
    Oil's "time has come and is moving past us, and the transition to clean renewable energy is one our country has to begin immediately."
    In all the criticism of Obama's too-weak energy speech last week, not enough attention was paid to a statement that oil-state Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) made. Here is the final paragraph :
    "Finally, the President called on America to begin a transition to cleaner, renewable energy. As people all across our nation watch the oil pouring into the Gulf, they are asking 'isn't there a better way?' The answer is yes, there is a better way, and we must begin to lay that foundation now. Oil has paid tremendous dividends to our country. It helped us win World War II, it helped create an industrial revolution and it built the greatest middle class the world has ever seen. But, it's time has come and is moving past us, and the transition to clean renewable energy is one our country has to begin immediately."
    Pretty surprising from a politician whose first reaction to the disaster was to "call for expanding oil drilling."
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    Sunday Times retracts and apologizes for shameful and bogus Amazon story smearing IPCC
    Exclusive comments from Prof. Simon Lewis whose official complaint led to this too-rare victory of science over disinformation
    "I welcome the Sunday Times' apology for failing to accurately report my views and retract the Amazon story. As several experts told them - their story was baseless. What I find shocking about this whole episode is that an article read out [loud] and agreed with me was then switched at the last minute to one that fit with the Times' editorial line that the IPCC contained a number of serious mistakes, but actually ignored the scientific facts."
    That is tropical forest researcher Simon Lewis in an email to me this morning after the Sunday Times finally retracted their bogus story and issued this too-rare apology (emphasis added):
    The article "UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim" (News, Jan 31) stated that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had included an "unsubstantiated claim" that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall. The IPCC had referenced the claim to a report prepared for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by Andrew Rowell and Peter Moore, whom the article described as "green campaigners" with "little scientific expertise." The article also stated that the authors' research had been based on a scientific paper that dealt with the impact of human activity rather than climate change.
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    An ounce of prevention is worth 100 million gallons of cure
    From the beginning of this disaster, our response was doomed to be inadequate (see 20-year Coast Guard veteran: "With a spill of this magnitude and complexity, there is no such thing as an effective response"). Guest blogger Shirley Siluk Gregory, who lives on Florida's Gulf coast, shares her thoughts on lessons learned.
    While there's not much most of us can do to stop BP's Gulf oil gusher or clean the crude from the water, marshes and coasts, there are actions we can take to help avoid similar disasters like this in the future.
    The reason we're facing this horrific Gulf spill is because deep under water - and then farther deep underground - is where the oil is these days. The easy-to-get, and relatively inexpensive, oil was tapped out long ago. What we're left with now are the Macondos (5,000 feet below the ocean's surface, 18,000 feet into the bedrock) and the Tibers (4,130 feet underwater and another 35,056 feet into rock), along with the difficult-to-extract, energy-intensive and pricy oil sands in places like Alberta, Canada. Even wells in the Middle East - Saudi Arabia in particular - no longer produce as freely or easily as they once did.
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    Fracking Tales: Stories From the Frontlines of Gas Drilling
    Since we launched, we've been reporting on the environmental threats of drilling [1] in natural gas reserves around the country. (Here's a good primer [2] on the process of hydraulic fracking that is used to release the gas.) The potential risks of hydro-facking have been gaining attention, and we wanted to point to two on-the-ground stories that have recently come out.
    This month's Vanity Fair has a long piece, "A Colossal Fracking Mess [3]," on the human and environmental effects of the drilling. It follows Dimock, a town in northeastern Pennsylvania, where residents are fighting the hydraulic fracking that they say has contaminated the town's aquifer. The story reports that the water supply is so harmful that the town is "now known as the place where, over the past two years, people's water started turning brown and making them sick, one woman's water well spontaneously combusted, and horses and pets mysteriously began to lose their hair." We reported on Dimock [4] multiple [5] times [6] last [7] year [8]. Our lead reporter on gas drilling, Abrahm Lustgarten, wrote that Dimock was "ground zero for drilling the Marcellus Shale, a prized deposit of natural gas that is increasingly touted as one of the country's most abundant and cleanest alternatives to oil."
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    Judge who ruled against offshore drilling moratorium invests in oil industry.
    Today, Judge Martin Feldman, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, sided with a drilling company which had argued that the Obama administration's blanket, 6-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was illegal. The drilling company, Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, LA, claimed financial distress from the imposition of the moratorium. In the ruling handed down this afternoon, Judge Feldman agreed, writing that the administration made an "arbitrary and capricious" decision that would have an "immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country." Like many judges presiding in the Gulf region, Feldman owns lots of energy stocks, including Transocean, Halliburton, and two of BP's largest U.S. private shareholders - BlackRock (7.1%) and JP Morgan Chase (28.3%). Here's a list of Feldman's income in 2008 (amounts listed unless under $1,000):
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