Political Climate Articles
Groton urged to plan now for more powerful storms to come
Town task force on climate change holds 2nd hearing
Groton - Becoming a more energy efficient, bicycle and pedestrian friendly town is one way Groton can respond to the challenges of climate change, local officials and residents told the panel tasked with developing a climate change plan for the town.
Another way, said George Bradner of the state Insurance Department, is to get residents and emergency planning officials to do more to prepare for hurricanes and more intense and frequent storms climate scientists say are inevitable as carbon dioxide levels increase, and sea levels and global average temperatures continue to rise.
"One of the things I would like to see is communities along the shoreline getting ready and taking seriously what's going to happen," said Bradner, insurance director of the department's Property and Casualty Division. "We know it's going to happen, but if people are prepared they'll be able to get back in their homes more quickly, and they won't be living in a FEMA trailer on their property."
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State suspends clean-energy program
The Patrick administration is in full retreat on a key piece of its ambitious clean-energy strategy for Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources has indefinitely suspended a new program - which was supposed to have started yesterday - that would have required increased use of biofuels in heating oil and diesel to help reduce carbon pollution.
The state cited "unreasonable costs" and the lack of proper biofuel supplies for the suspension of the controversial program.
The Patrick administration is in full retreat on a key piece of its ambitious clean-energy strategy for Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources has indefinitely suspended a new program - which was supposed to have started yesterday - that would have required increased use of biofuels in heating oil and diesel to help reduce carbon pollution.
The state cited "unreasonable costs" and the lack of proper biofuel supplies for the suspension of the controversial program.
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Advocacy group: Errors 'riddle' Cuccinelli claim on UVa climate papers
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's latest court filing in his effort to compel the University of Virginia to turn over docu ments related to the research activities of a climate change expert is "riddled with inaccuracies," a nonprofit science advocacy group said Thursday.
An analysis of Cuccinelli's filing con ducted by the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists discovered at least three significant errors that the group says undercut the attorney general's justification for investigating former UVa climatology researcher Michael Mann.
Cuccinelli's court filing, which was written by Deputy Attorney General Wesley G. Russell Jr., cites the so called "climategate" scandal, in which e mails between climate change researchers including Mann were leaked from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain and posted online. Some skeptics believe the climate gate e-mails show researchers were manipulating climate change data, whereas others point out that several investigations in the United States and England have found no evidence of data manipulation.
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Moynihan, as Nixon aide, warned of global warming
Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon's inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago.
Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the administration, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public's attention.
There is widespread agreement that carbon dioxide content will rise 25 percent by 2000, Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo.
"This could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit," he wrote. "This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter."
Moynihan was Nixon's counselor for urban affairs from January 1969 - when Nixon began his presidency - to December 1970. He later served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before New York voters elected him to the Senate.
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More on Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli
Richmond, Va. -- Complicating the debate over the need for action on climate change is a challenge to the science.
Days after taking office, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a legal challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that global warming poses a threat to people. A dozen other states have since joined the lawsuit.
The attorney general contends that research that EPA used to formulate the endangerment finding was unverifiable and flawed.
Cuccinelli also took the unusual step of demanding the records of former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann, whose grant-funded research at U.Va. as used to help formulate the EPA finding.
Cuccinelli says he is investigating the possibility that Mann defrauded Virginia taxpayers when he sought four federal research grants and one state grant, totaling $466,000 while working at U.Va. from 1999 to 2005.
U.Va. is fighting Cuccinelli's demand, calling it legally flawed and a threat to academic freedom. Mann, now at Penn State, has called the probe an attempt to smear his reputation.
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Valero helps bankroll bid to suspend emission targets
BENICIA -- The efforts of two Texas oil companies, one being Valero, to thwart the state's greenhouse gas reduction law has sparked concern among city officials wishing to make Benicia stand out as a green city.
The issue underscores the contradictory relationship between the refinery and the city. Valero Energy Corp. bankrolls many city environmental initiatives, but remains the city's biggest air polluter. Ninety-four percent of the Benicia's greenhouse gas emissions come from commercial and industrial sources, and the refinery is the biggest source.
Yet, Benicia, like a handful of other cities, has adopted its own greenhouse-gas reduction targets -- more ambitious than the state's -- and developed plans to meet those goals.
But that could become tougher if California voters pass the so-called "California Jobs Initiative" in November, city officials say.
Since January, Valero has contributed more than $1 million to the campaign committee supporting the measure, which would suspend implementation of the state's controversial global warming law, AB 32.
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Dutch assessment of IPCC:
"Overall the summary conclusions are considered well founded and none were found to contain any significant errors."
Dutch foresee much higher sea-level-rise risk than IPCC -- and urge IPCC to "to pay attention to ‘worst-case scenarios'. "
Our findings do not contradict the main conclusions of the IPCC on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability related to climate change. There is ample observational evidence of natural systems being influenced by climate change on regional levels. The negative impacts under unmitigated climate change in the future pose substantial risks to most parts of the world, with risks increasing at higher global average temperatures.
The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) examined the Regional Chapters in the Working Group II portion of the 2007 Fourth Assessment. Full 100 page report is here; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comment is here.
Overall, as the BBC headline makes clear, "Dutch review backs UN climate science report." So, naturally, the Wall Street Journal headline on the report was, "Dutch Review Raises Concerns About Climate Report."
Also, there is an effort to spin this report as showing the IPCC has some sort of a bias toward reporting negative impacts. In fact the overwhelming majority of research since the IPCC has found that the IPCC has consistently underestimated many key current and future impacts, particularly sea level rise (and carbon-cycle feedbacks).The Dutch do find a bunch of "very small" errors and one or two medium-sized mistakes, but note:
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Review of questioned IPCC report says conclusions 'well-founded'
Dutch government finds minor inaccuracies in contested paper, but reasserts that 'climate change poses "substantial risks" to most parts of the world'
The first major independent review of criticisms of the global assessment of climate change led by the United Nations declared today that it found "no errors that would undermine the main conclusions" of the panel of international scientists that climate change will have serious consequences around the world.
However the Dutch panel of experts claims it found 12 errors - from a criticism of the number of people in Africa at risk of water shortages to mistakes in references or typing. It also suggested the summary version of the report had portrayed an over-dramatic picture by putting the emphasis on negative impacts of climate change, and it failed to explain some of the threats were not only driven by climate change.
Among several recommendations, it said the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, paid for by governments including the UK and Netherlands, should in future pay researchers to review the report in more detail.
The report was officially welcomed by the IPCC and scientists who worked on the last assessment report, published in 2007, however only a small number of the "errors" have been corrected. The remaining errors were not accepted by the scientists, said Professor Martin Parry, who was co-chair of the section of the report that was under scrutiny.
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Dow Chemical Standing Apart From Industry on Cap and Trade
As the climate bill sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) headed for a showdown in the House last year, critics warned that the energy-intensive U.S. chemical industry would be among the primary victims of a cap-and-trade carbon regime.
Now, with time running out on climate legislation in the Senate, officials of Dow Chemical Co., the largest American chemical company, continue to call for a bill that would set a price on carbon emissions.
"We just see it differently" than others in industry, said Peter Molinaro, Dow's vice president for federal and state government affairs. "We start with the premise that you can't solve the climate problems without chemistry. That's what we do, and that is on the plus side."
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Why America needs to free itself from oil
For two years in a row, I celebrated Independence Day in the oppressive heat of Iraq along with fellow soldiers. A few nonalcoholic beers and some locally grown watermelon were our replacement for hot dogs and potato salad.
This year, as Americans across the nation celebrate July Fourth with barbecues and fireworks, those most responsible for defending our independence, the military, will continue to fight two wars. And it is a shame that we will let yet another July Fourth pass us by without making substantial progress toward ending our unnecessary dependence on oil, a dependence that is funding the bullets that our enemies fire at our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is for that reason, and many more, that the fight for energy independence is being fought here at home, a struggle I hope more Americans will join in support of those who are fighting abroad.
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Turn Off the Oil Subsidy Spigot
Eliminating oil subsidies will have little if any effect on consumer prices, explains CAP's Sima J. Gandhi in this cross-post.
Three weeks ago, the Senate rejected a proposal to eliminate about $35 billion in tax subsidies to oil companies as millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed using these funds to reduce the deficit and fund state energy efficiency programs. The Sanders plan to close these loopholes lost by a vote of 35-61, with every Republican voting against it.
The vote to preserve outdated subsidies that make rich oil companies richer while creating little benefit to the taxpayers who foot the bill was a victory for the oil industry and its lobbyists. They hailed the "vote to preserve a domestic manufacturing industry that is critical to our nation's energy security and to the nascent economic recovery," in the words of Charles T. Drevna, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.
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Video: Climate Change and National Security
Our favorite climate de-crocker, Peter Sinclair has a new video:
Senior military leaders announce support for climate bill — 33 generals, admirals: "Climate change is making the world a more dangerous place" and "threatening America's security
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Five-year moratorium would halt Martha's Vineyard lobstering
Because of declining lobster stocks in southern New England, the American Lobster Technical Committee (TC) of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has recommended a five-year moratorium on harvesting lobsters south of Cape Cod. If enacted, the moratorium would put Vineyard lobstermen out of business until 2016.
There will be a public hearing in Warwick, R.I., on July 22. According to Dan McKiernan, deputy director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, the meeting will discuss the scientists' projections of lobster stocks and have a conversation about what is fair to the fishermen. At its summer meeting on August 2 in Alexandria, Va., the full ASMFC will discuss and possibly act on the moratorium recommendation. According to Chilmark selectman and Menemsha Fisheries Development board member Warren Doty, there will be an amendment offered that contains five alternate and less draconian actions to preserve the southern New England lobster fishery.
The reasons for the TC's moratorium recommendation are cited in a 24-page report (Report) showing that the lobster harvest in southern New England peaked in 1997, reached an all-time low in 2003, and remained low through 2007. Studies of lobster larvae and infant lobsters in the last two years show low abundance of the species here (less than 25 percent of levels in the 1984-2003 period), at the same time that there has been record high abundance in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank. Lobster stocks in Massachusetts Bay are also low, but not as low as south of Cape Cod.
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Europe wields axe against illegal timber
The European Union on Wednesday barred the import and sale of illegally harvested timber in a bid to fight climate change and deforestation from the Amazon to Asia.
The European Parliament voted 644-25 to outlaw illegal timber or products made from such wood, which makes up around one-fifth of all timber imports into the European Union, and punish unscrupulous dealers.
"With this, we are sending a signal to the world that the EU will no longer serve as a market for illegally harvested timber," said European Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik.
Green member of the European Parliament Satu Hassi, who negotiated a deal with the 27 EU member states, called the legislation an "internationally important breakthrough."
The European Council must now formally approve the ban and it will take two years for the rules to take effect, as governments must draw up their own penalties to impose on lawbreakers.
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CBO says climate bill would cut deficit by $19B
WASHINGTON - Congressional budget experts say a climate and energy bill now stalled in the Senate would reduce the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade.
The report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was the second positive analysis of the bill by a government agency in a month, but is likely to carry more weight than a similar report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The CBO is the entity responsible for providing Congress with nonpartisan analyses of economic and budget issues, and lawmakers rely on it for guidance.
The CBO report was immediately hailed by the bill's sponsors, who are struggling to move the climate measure through a divided Congress. Lawmakers have quietly begun considering a more modest approach that would target the electricity sector, in case the more sweeping measure fails.
"There is no more room for excuses - this must be our year to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation and begin to send a price signal on carbon," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the bill's chief author.
Many senators have told him and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., the bill's co-sponsor, that they flatly oppose legislation that adds even a penny to the federal deficit, Kerry said. "So we hope they look anew at this initiative which reduces it," he said.
In its report Wednesday, the CBO said the energy bill would increase federal revenues by about $751 billion from 2011 to 2020, mostly though the sale of carbon credits in so-called a cap-and-trade plan to be applied to utilities and other sectors of the economy.
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