Political Climate Articles
Global Warming "Undeniable," U.S. Government Report Says
"Global warming is undeniable," and it's happening fast, a new U.S. government report says.
An in-depth analysis of ten climate indicators all point to a marked warming over the past three decades, with the most recent decade being the hottest on record, according to the latest of the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's annual "State of the Climate" reports, which was released Wednesday. Reliable global climate record-keeping began in the 1880s.
The report focused on climate changes measured in 2009 in the context of newly available data on long-term developments.
(See "Heat Wave: 2010 to Be One of Hottest Years on Record.") For instance, surface air temperatures recorded from more than 7,000 weather stations around the world over the past few decades confirm an "unmistakable upward trend," the study says.
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Mis-information Continues
"Michelle has a beach closed down in Spain after taking 40 of her best friends and leasing 60 rooms in a five-star hotel -- paid for by you, because they deserve it -- but you have to pay. You have to pay up." -- Rush Limbaugh, 8/06/10, commenting on First Lady Michelle Obama's vacation to Spain
VERSUS
"[T]he first lady is paying for her own room, food and transportation, and the friends she brought will pay for theirs as well. The government pays for security, and the Secret Service, not the first lady, determines what is needed. ... Mrs. Obama is not traveling with 40 friends, one official said, but with two friends and four of their daughters, as well as a couple of aides and a couple of advance staff members." -- The New York Times, 8/06/10
Right Wing Smears Michelle Obama As A Modern 'Marie Antoinette,' Pushes Lies About Cost Of The Trip
In recent days, right-wing commentators have launched a series of attacks on First Lady Michelle Obama for going on vacation in Spain with her daughter Sasha and a small number of family friends. Some of the most vicious attacks:
- New York Daily News columnist Andrea Tantaros wrote that the "material girl" Michelle Obama is a "modern-day Marie Antoinette," and that the Obamas "seem to fancy themselves more along the lines of international celebrities than actual leaders."
- CNN's Erick Erickson also wondered "How long before the Marie Antoinette comparisons start?"
- American Thinker's Ralph Alter claimed that the "pampered" Michelle Obama has taken "maximum advantage" of her "unlimited expense account as first lady."
- In a post titled "Michelle Obama Kicks It Euro-Style," the blog Newsbusters called Michelle a "petty, selfish woman."
- Mickey Kaus even speculated the trip could be the result of trouble in the Obama's marriage.
Most of the attacks are based on the premise that the First Lady's trip is costing American taxpayers money. Glenn Bleck told listeners that the trip "is costing you $75,000 a day," and Tarantos claimed that Michelle Obama was bringing along "40 of her 'closest friends.'"
Because the right wing has propagated so much misinformation about the size and cost of the First Lady's trip, the Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet published an article setting the record straight today.
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Markey: Deniers of global warming should 'start their own country'
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) suggested a novel use Saturday for a 100-square-mile ice sheet that has broken off Greenland.
"An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country," Markey said in a statement. "So far, 2010 has been the hottest year on record, and scientists agree arctic ice is a canary in a coal mine that provides clear warnings on climate."
Some scientists have attributed the breaking off of the ice sheet to abnormally warm temperatures this year.
Markey, who chairs the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, co-authored the House version of the climate change bill that's currently stalled in the Senate.
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Big Oil profits targeted to kill Spill Bill
The big five oil companies - BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell - reported their second quarter profits during the week of July 26th. To the surprise of almost no one, these companies made a huge combined profit of $21.7 billion this quarter.[1] This is 50 percent more profit compared to the second quarter of 2009. Their total profit in the first half of 2010 is $50 billion - almost double compared to 2009.
Big oil companies are using part of their huge windfall to pressure Congress to defeat measures that would protect public health and the environment. According to lobby reports, these five companies spent nearly $18 million in the second quarter to lobby on efforts to hold them more accountable for the damages from blowouts or disasters like BP's Deepwater Horizon fiasco by removing the $75 million liability cap on damages from oil spills. The American Petroleum Institute, big oil's lobbying arm, leads the charge to block unlimited liability for companies' oil disaster related economic damages.
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Chamber of Commerce Goes After Climate Dissenters In Its Ranks
A new split over climate policy is brewing within the ranks of the US Chamber of Commerce as a breakaway group of local chambers is getting ready to publicly split with the business lobby's hardline stance against climate legislation. The new climate coalition, known as the Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE), will press Congress to take stronger action on climate and energy issues. It has already signed up about a dozen chambers and will officially launch later this year.
The US Chamber is already working behind the scenes to discredit the new group. After it caught wind of the effort last month, it fired off a letter to local chamber leaders, discouraging them from joining CICE, which it claimed was "established by the Natural Resources Defense Council." The letter, written by US Chamber board member Winthrop Hallett, the president of Alabama's Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, states that the new group's "indirect purpose appears to be undermining the U.S. Chamber's and the business community's leadership on" climate issues.
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Rand Paul: Mine safety regulations aren't needed since "no one will apply" for jobs at dangerous mines
Kentucky's extremist GOP Senate candidate, Rand Paul, has said, "I believe business should be left alone from government." That even extends to his state's own accident prone mines, as TP reports:
In April, two miners were killed at the Dotiki Mine in Western Kentucky after the mine's roof collapsed. The non-union mine had been cited for 840 safety violations by federal inspectors since 2009, and the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing issued 31 orders to close sections of the mine or to shut down equipment during the same period. But when asked about the incident, Kentucky's Republican Senate candidate, Rand Paul, said "maybe sometimes accidents happen." And as it turns out, Paul doesn't believe that the federal government has any responsibility at all to set safety standards to protect mine workers:
"The bottom line is: I'm not an expert, so don't give me the power in Washington to be making rules," Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April's deadly mining explosion in West Virginia…"You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You'd try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don't, I'm thinking that no one will apply for those jobs."
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Ten Fights on Global Warming Now That the Senate Will Do Nothing
Legislation to explicitly fight global warming is dead -- weakened and then killed in the Senate. Environmental groups fought hard to push the bill. A majority of Americans and a majority of senators wanted to do something serious. Not this year. Sen. Harry Reid announced last week that he could not find 60 votes for what had already become a weak, compromised piece of legislation, so no vote would be held. Oil and gas companies and their friends in the Senate- all the Republicans and a number of key Democrats such as Sen. Rockefeller of West Virginia, Sen. Lincoln of Arkansas, and Sen. Conrad of North Dakota -- got their wish. No action on global warming.
We know the planet is heating rapidly and that the consequences, already visible, will get much worse for every year we postpone action to slow, and then radically reduce, greenhouse gas emissions. At CREDO, we are enthusiastic proponents of tough action on global warming but had decidedly mixed feelings about all the compromises, backroom deals, special incentives, and loopholes that worked their way into the Kerry-Lieberman attempt to get to 60 votes.
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Methane Monitors Weren't Disabled, Massey Says
Massey Energy Co. said methane monitors weren't disabled in a key section of the coal mine where 29 workers were killed in an April 5 explosion.
Federal investigators and a grand jury investigating the accident are looking into tampering of safety devices, including methane monitors that are designed to shut machinery down if dangerous levels of gas are reached.
Massey officials, including CEO Don Blankenship, met with family members for several hours at a Charleston, W.Va., hotel Monday to explain progress of the company's own investigation into the accident at the Upper Big Branch Mine, the worst mining disaster in 40 years. During that session, the company said the monitors weren't disabled.
Several former Massey miners have recently said they witnessed methane monitors being disabled at the mine. The monitors are a focus of the investigations because high levels of methane are believed to have led to the explosion.
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There is a Way Forward From Here
The U.S. Senate has rejected taking action on a significant climate or energy bill this year. Heads are hanging in despair, moans of anguish are rising, and arguments are breaking out about who is to blame.
Earth Not Waiting. While Washington has failed to act, the Earth is showing accelerating strains from our continued dumping of warming pollutants to the atmosphere.
The latest alarming news: the phytoplanton that produce 50% of all the Earth's oxygen and form the base of the ocean's entire food chain are now dying off. World temperature records continue to be set monthly in this hottest of all years and hottest of decades on record. Panicked scientists are frantically warning "the urgent need to act cannot be overstated".
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Why 2 million (promised) green jobs couldn't sell a climate bill
From the early days of the Obama administration, environmentalists believed that they had found the message to carry them to victory in what promised to be a grueling debate over energy and climate policy. It was this: At a time of soaring unemployment, a climate bill would create thousands or millions of new "clean energy" jobs.
Climate activists spent 18 months and millions of dollars pushing that message, contending that legislation to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change would spur investments and create jobs in solar, wind and other alternatives to fossil fuels.
But those arguments lost out in the Senate to competing forces -- most glaringly, warnings that emissions limits would push electric rates higher, killing jobs and stunting growth that depends on cheap oil, coal and natural gas.
Activists, along with some economists and business leaders, say the outcome stands as a stark example of the challenges in reshaping and revitalizing the United States economy.
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Colorado Tea Party candidate Dan Maes: Bike-sharing is a "well-disguised" effort aimed at "converting Denver into a United Nations community."
Three months ago, Denver Mayor and Colorado gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper (D) helped start an ambitious bike share program that has already attracted 14,000 memberships and been a big success. As TP reports, one of Hickenlooper's opponents in the Governor's race sees something sinister lurking behind the mayor's policies:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are "converting Denver into a United Nations community."
"This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed," Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial.
Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor's efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes "that's exactly the attitude they want you to have."
"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms," Maes said.
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Department of Energy Offers $17 Million Conditional Commitment to Improve Reliability of New York State's Electrical Grid
First Battery-Based Energy Storage System Project to Be Selected by DOE for a Conditional Loan Guarantee Commitment
Washington D.C. --- Energy Secretary Steven Chu today offered AES Energy Storage, LLC a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee for $17.1 million to support the construction of a 20 megawatt (MW) energy storage system using advanced lithium-ion batteries. The AES project, located in Johnson City, New York, will help provide a more stable and efficient electrical grid for the state's high-voltage transmission network.
"Effective energy storage systems are crucial to harnessing the power of renewable energy and getting it onto the grid," said Secretary Chu. "Projects like these are helping us to meet the President's goal of doubling our renewable energy generating capacity by 2012."
"This loan guarantee will allow for renewable energy sources like solar and wind to play a greater role in the Southern Tier," said Congressman Maurice Hinchey. "It will also make the area's electrical grid more efficient and reliable, helping to cut energy costs over the long run. It represents another step forward in our efforts to take control of our energy future."
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Climate deal loopholes 'make farce' of rich nations' pledges
New research reveals carbon emissions from rich nations could actually rise under loopholes in the proposed UN climate deal
Rich countries have been put on the back foot after new research showed that current pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions could be wiped out by gaping loopholes in the UN climate change treaty put forward in Copenhagen last year.
Developing countries have argued strongly for minimum 40% emission cuts from industrialised nations by 2020. But new analysis from the Stockholm Environment Institute and Third World Network (TWN), released at the latest UN climate talks in Bonn, showed that current pledges amounted to only 12-18% reductions below 1990 levels without loopholes. When all loopholes were taken into account, emissions could be allowed to rise by 9%.
The research factored in four separate loopholes that are known to exist, but which countries have so far failed to address in the negotiations. These include land use and forestry credits, carbon offset credits gained from UN Clean Development Mechanism schemes, surplus carbon allowances accumulated by former Soviet countries and international aviation and shipping emissions, which are not currently included in emission reduction schemes proposed by countries.
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George Shultz challenges CA to lead on clean energy, defeat Proposition 23: Losing "would be a catastrophe."
Former Secretary of State and Treasury: "There's a climate problem connected with the burning of fossil fuels.... The basic facts are pretty clear."
Former U.S. secretary of State George P. Shultz believes it's crucial to fight global warming to protect national security.
Global warming is created by burning fossil fuel, he says, and payments for foreign oil sometimes wind up financing terrorism.
And Shultz, who's also a former Treasury secretary, thinks the nation suffers an "economic vulnerability" because of its oil addiction….
The L.A. Times article notes that "the man who set up the Environmental Protection Agency four decades ago," also added:
There's a climate problem connected with the burning of fossil fuels…. The basic facts are pretty clear.
"So we have a three-pronged set of problems" created by greenhouse gases, he says. "Security, economic and environmental."
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Eight House Republicans, After Carrying Climate Effort Last Year, Fend Off Attacks
A tiny knot of outliers -- eight Republicans -- left the House floor last summer facing threats of electoral ambush, "heartache" from constituents, and an online wanted poster declaring them turncoats.
The challenges came. But the lawmakers are still around, more than a year after breaking ranks with 96 percent of their caucus to provide the deciding votes for a mega-bill that would make carbon dioxide a tradable commodity. They voted for cap and trade.
Some of the eight members weathered a backlash from Tea Party primary challengers this summer. One, meanwhile, is favored to capture the vice president's remaining Senate term, while another is tangling with the White House in a close race to take President Obama's former seat in the same chamber.
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Cutting Japanese Carbon Dioxide Emissions
ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2010) - Last year, heat-pump technology from SINTEF and NTNU cut Japan's CO2 emissions by 1.1 million tonnes, the equivalent of a reduction of more than 2.5% of Norway's own emissions. The savings are about the same as we would gain by permanently parking around half a million modern private cars. The source of these "green" savings is climate-friendly heating of ordinary tapwater.
From gas burners to heat pumps
In Japan, most people use gas burners to heat the water in immersion heaters. In the shadow of our domestic climate debate, however, some two million Japanese households and companies, with a little help from Norway, have started to heat their water in a greener way.
The key to the change is heat pumps based on technology that originated in pioneering work done at SINTEF and NTNU.
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Tesoro is recruiting other Big Oil companies, including BP, to repeal California climate and clean energy laws
Working with veteran tobacco lobbyists in Sacramento, Texan oil companies are orchestrating a campaign to roll back California's landmark clean energy climate change law, AB 32. So far, the largest donations have came from San Antonio-based Valero, which has ponied up over $1 million for the effort, and refining giant Tesoro, also based in San Antonio, contributing $525,000. Today, the Sacramento Bee reports that state Democrats are asking Attorney General Eric Holder to open an investigation into these donations.
In public, the repeal AB 32 campaign - given the Orwellian moniker "California Jobs Initiative" - says it is about helping low income people, small businesses, and improving the California economy. But behind closed doors, it's about boosting already sky high oil company profits. According to Valero's 10-Q corporate disclosure forms, the company views compliance with AB 32 as a risk to their bottom line.
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Obama Gets a Menu of Climate Actions He Can Take Without Congress
President Obama could invoke strong climate policies, like gasoline carbon limits, without congressional input before world leaders convene this fall to negotiate an international global warming treaty, a research group says in a plan provided to the administration.
The report (pdf) lists a host of quick-start recommendations, some of them controversial, that can be implemented with executive orders, bypassing the cumbersome legislative process that sank Senate efforts to price carbon this summer, according to members of the privately funded Presidential Climate Action Project.
"What we're saying is Congress has decided not to act, but [Obama] can do so," former Sen. Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat and a co-chairman of the group, said on a conference call yesterday.
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Deepwater Horizon: A scientist at the centre of the spill
On 12 May, Vernon Asper was cruising through the Gulf of Mexico, just a few kilometres south of where the Macondo well was gushing tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Asper, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi near Diamondhead, wasn't there to see the carnival of response ships and drilling rigs at the site, or to look for oil slicks on the surface. He and his colleagues were hunting for something more elusive - an answer to what might be happening to the unseen oil and natural gas billowing into the bottom of the Gulf.
As the first group of academic scientists on the scene, having arrived less than two weeks after the well blowout, Asper (pictured) and his team knew that valuable information about the spill was being lost and that they were the only ones in a position to capture the disappearing data. The researchers, funded by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), lowered a constellation of instruments into the Gulf that would beam up data in real time to their ship, the RV Pelican. A fluorometer scanned the water with a narrow beam of light that would cause any dissolved oil to fluoresce at a telltale wavelength. A transmissometer measured how particles or cloudiness in the water blocked the transmission of light. And another sensor gauged levels of dissolved oxygen.
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Stop the Sand Berms, Scientists Plead
In an open letter to Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral overseeing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill response, almost two dozen coastal scientists from Louisiana and around the country have urged the federal government to halt the construction of sand berms in the gulf, calling the project ineffective in the fight against the oil and a waste of resources that could have heavy environmental consequences.
"As BP appears close to shutting off the flow of oil, we believe that it is also time to shut off the flow of funding and permitting for the large-scale re-engineering of the Gulf Coast," the letter states. "If this is not done, environmental damage resulting from ill-conceived, poorly reviewed coastal engineering may become an additional and unnecessary byproduct of the spill."
Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has made construction of the sand berms his signature initiative in the fight against the oil spill. The state currently has a federal permit to build 40 miles of berms - which are essentially artificial islands - with a commitment of $360 million in funding from BP. The state is seeking permits for an additional 60 miles of berm.
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Exporting Pollution
America has been getting rid of its industrial base and as a result pollution will tend to decrease in America. Where does it all go? Other countries should know the bitter lessons of pollution should they not? Maybe yes and maybe no. Industry has gone to many other nations including China especially in the last decade. According to the People's Republic of China's own evaluation, two-thirds of the 338 cities for which air quality data are available are considered polluted. Respiratory, cancer and heart diseases related to air pollution are the leading cause of death in China. Meanwhile in Tehran, which is one of the most polluted cities of the world, there is a similar situation. Air pollution in the Iranian city of Tehran is not new. Ever since 1950 population and automobile ownership has risen dramatically.
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Granholm: Limbaugh's attacks on American-made electric vehicles are 'un-American'
Last Friday, President Obama visited General Motors and Chrysler plants in Detroit, MI to resoundingly reaffirm the administration's decision last year "to rescue the ailing auto industry." While visiting the GM plant, the President test drove Chevrolet's highly touted electric car, the Volt. In anticipation of Obama's visit to Detroit, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh launched a campaign to deride Chevrolet's electric vehicle, attacking "everything from the federal bailout of Chevy's parent General Motors Corp. to the supposed superiority complex of people who would buy electric or hybrid cars."
At a Center for American Progress event yesterday entitled "Securing Michigan's Clean Energy Future," Think Progress spoke with Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-MI) about Limbaugh's high-handed criticisms of the Chevy Volt. Granholm - a passionate advocate of clean energy as an avenue of job growth and economic revitalization - said Limbaugh's claims are "just un-American." She also pointed out that the Volt is a "'good' new story" and GM has successfully paid back its loans to the public:
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Governor Granholm: Federal Government must act to create clean energy jobs
New unemployment numbers out today show no improvement in the job market. Although the July unemployment rate held steady at 9.5%, the economy lost 131,000 jobs last month, more than twice as many as economists expected. Overall, it's been a very poor summer for job growth, making the Senate's failure to pass job-growing climate and clean energy legislation that much more disappointing.
Industrial states have largely bourn the brunt of the country's job high unemployment rate. Michigan, the "automobile capital of the world," has faired the worst. The state's unemployment rate sat at 13.2% in June, the lowest rate in a year. Employment numbers shrank every year over the past decade; personal income fell in 2009 for the first time in thirty years; and manufacturing jobs number almost half what they did in the late 1990s.
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Global boiling fuels disasters in nuclear nations
Masters: "The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010 continues.... Thousands of deaths, severe fires, and the threat of radioactive contamination"
Prior to this year, the hottest temperature in Moscow's history was 37.2°C (99°F), set in August 1920. The Moscow Observatory has now matched or exceeded this 1920 all-time record five times in the past eleven days, including today….
... soil moisture in some portions of European Russia has dropped to levels one would expect only once every 500 years.
That's meteorologist Jeff Masters writing about "One of the most remarkable weather events of my lifetime." The impact of the decline in soil moisture, along with the epic heat and fires, has been devastating, causing Russia to ban wheat exports. Coupled with extreme weather around the globe, it has helped nearly double wheat prices since June.
Sharp and long-lasting declines in soil moisture over much of the planet's habited landmass are a major prediction of climate science, something I've called "DUST-BOWL-IFICATION" (since readers pointed out to me that many deserts really aren't so bad). Here's what the recent scientific literature says we face in the second half of the century if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path:
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