Fossil Energy
NY Times: "cautious" optimism that #ACES will pass in House
Published June 26, 2009 @ 06:01AM PT
This morning on The Caucus, the DC politics blog of The New York Times:
Democrats on the Hill are cautiously optimistic that the bill will make it through the House, but, as our John Broder found, “senior lawmakers acknowledge that they have not yet lined up the 218 votes needed for passage.”
Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who has helped shepherd the bill to this point, has negotiated with moderate and farm belt Democrats to capture some of their votes. Republicans remain opposed to the bill, labeling it an energy tax for consumers.
Mr. Obama called the energy bill a boon both for the environment and the economy. In his remarks, the president conceded the vote would be tight, “in part because of the misinformation that’s out there that suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and our economic growth.”
Olbermann: "Newt Gingrich, in the pocket of Big Coal"
Published June 24, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
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An advocacy group run by one-time GOP influencer Newt Gingrich has been running ads against the Waxman-Market clean energy and climate bill. Problem is, that group got a quarter of a million dollars last year from coal giant Peabody Energy.
Keith Olbermann nominates Gingrich as one of his "Worst Persons in the World" for June 23, 2009.
[[Some people pillory Al Gore for earning money from investments in clean energy and climate change mitigation even as he advocates for strong GHG caps. If the point is *really* conflict of interest, not opposing climate action, it would be refreshing if they'd skewer Gingrich as well, for speaking out against the Waxman-Markey bill, while profiting from contributions by coal, oil and utility majors to his 527 group.]]
Here's Mr. Gingrich all of 14 months ago, calling for immediate climate action:
[[The Catholic Church opposes the right to choose abortion, but it also opposes the death penalty. That's a consistent stand on "the culture of life," at least.]]
Midwestern House Dems Leaning Against Energy-Climate Bill #ACES
Published June 22, 2009 @ 01:05PM PT
Via Wonk Room:
Conservative Midwest Democrats, includingLeonard Boswell (D-IA), Tim Walz (D-MN), and Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) believe “climate change poses a threat to the planet” but are thinking of voting against the Waxman-Markey climate legislation because the farm lobby and coal-fired utilities have warned them about “potential adverse effects on consumers and businesses.”
House GOP Document Traced Back to Coal Majors
Published June 19, 2009 @ 07:24PM PT
Grist's Kate Sheppard has stuck with the story she broke yesterday, regarding an "anti–climate bill document created by coal lobby." It's being circulated by the House GOP as part of an effort to derail the Waxman-Markey clean energy and climate bill.
The document, a map of the nation, purports to "highlight how the Democrats’ National Energy Tax will make it more expensive for rural Americans to fertilize the crops, put fuel in the tractor and food on the table."
By examining the document's digital properties, Grist has been able to determine a chain of creation and editing extending back to 1998, intersecting with the National Mining Association, a trade group; Peabody Coal, the world's biggest coal producer; and another industry behemoth named Arch Coal. (Arch Coal has denied any involvement in the document.)
NMA doesn't deny involvement in the doc; in fact, as Kate discovered, it's got the same map up on its own web site. But "the fine print at the bottom of the National Mining Association’s version of the PowerPoint document," unlike the map circulating on Capitol Hill, "includes an extra page of data. At the bottom of that page is a note that says the document does not accurately reflect the Waxman-Markey legislation as it currently stands." [Emphasis mine.]
It's certainly not rare that industry associations feed talking points to legislators willing to go to bed with them bat for them.
And this isn't the first time that House GOP legislators and their allies have used ginned-up numbers in opposition the Waxman-Markey bill -- as one-time GOP influencer Newt Gingrich tried to do at an April committee hearing on the bill.
What seems unique this time around is that the ultimate provenance of the talking points wasn't scrubbed away.
Fatalistic Friday: Reality bites. Chu bites back.
Published June 19, 2009 @ 02:00PM PT
This week's installment of Fatalistic Friday is devoted wholly to one tour-de-force item: "The Secretary of Saving the Planet," Rolling Stone's profile of Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu.
Chu, a physicist, was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before joining the Obama administration. He is a clean energy visionary, as reporter Jeff Goodell makes clear right at the top of the piece:
Chu envisions a world powered almost entirely by the sun, with photovoltaic cells painted on the surface of buildings, deserts covered with solar panels, and superconducting transmission lines crisscrossing the country. Cars would be powered by smart batteries and genetically engineered biofuels. You might see a few next-generation nukes, as well as fields of wind turbines, but the one thing you won't see in Chu's perfect world is much oil, gas or coal. Chu is an unabashed crusader for the renewable future, a man whose most basic assumption about energy is that the age of fossil fuels is coming to a close.
This description alone should tell any astute observer what Chu is up against, and perhaps make some wonder if he's just going to spin his wheels in Washington, DC. But Chu's scientist enthusiasm for transformative projects, promising discoveries and new technologies, which is chased by a big dose of Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial thinking, is not bracketed by naiveté about our failure thus far to take sufficient, significant action to curb the causes of global warming.
At an MIT reception in May, Goodell writes, Chu is asked for his views on using geoengineering to mitigate the worst climate change, if current efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions don't pan out. This section is worth excerpting at length:
If Chu were a conventional politician, he would dismiss geoengineering as a sci-fi fantasy and move on. Not only is the whole idea anathema to environmentalists, it suggests that we are not going to cut pollution fast enough to stave off disaster. Thisis a particularly delicate topic right now, as Congress wrangles over climate legislation that sets specific targets for carbon emissions. Today, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is roughly 385 parts per million. Most climate scientists agree that the threshold for irreversible climate change is 450 parts per million. If we go much above that, we risk melting the polar ice sheets, turning the oceans into acid baths and causing extreme droughts.
Chu is certainly aware of all this. But instead of evading the question, he takes it a step further. "The fact is, we're not going to level out at 450 ppm," he says. "We're going to go over 450 ppm. So what will we do? I'm not in favor of deploying geoengineering. But thinking about it is OK." For a moment, the room goes quiet. In effect, the United States secretary of energy has just told an elite group of scientists and politicians that, no matter what happens with climate legislation this summer in Congress, no matter what China does or does not do, no matter what targets are set at climate negotiations in Copenhagen later this year, our future as a species is likely a grim one.
Chu has uttered the politically unthinkable: that his own administration’s efforts to halt global warming might not be enough to avert a catastrophe. John Holdren, President Obama’s chief science adviser, would never be so frank. (“I’m not going to talk about targets,” he tells me, before noting that he has said on previous occasions that he “hopes and expects” we can hold the line at 450 ppm.)
Senate Confirms Interior Dept.'s Top Legal Officer
Published June 17, 2009 @ 08:11PM PT
After two months of delays brought on by Republican Senators, tonight the Senate voted to confirm Hilary Tompkins, President Barack Obama's pick to the post of Solicitor of the Department of the Interior.
Ms. Tompkins, a Navajo, is the first Native American and only the second woman to be nominated to Interior solicitor. In the role, she'll be key to ensuring that the Department of the Interior operates to both legal and high ethical standards, follows federal law, and deals fairly with requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Office of the Solicitor is the top legal advisor within the agency. Opinions from the Office of the Solicitor direct the agency's policies on applying the Endangered Species Act, how fossil energy leases (both on public lands and offshore) and claims are administered, and more.
Although the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held hearing on Tompkins’ nomination on April 23, her appointment was held up for two months by procedural holds requested by Republican Senators.
A hold requested by Sens. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was lifted about two weeks ago, but another hold was requested anonymously by a GOP senator.
According to the National Journal, Bennett requested a hold "because he want[ed] [Interior Secretary] Salazar to clarify the administration's position on an agreement reached in 2003 between Utah and Interior, where the department agreed to stop designating land as wilderness study areas. Tompkins as solicitor would have to defend that agreement, which resulted from a lawsuit Utah filed against the federal government in 1996."
No reasons for the subsequent anonymous hold request were ever disclosed, according to the office of Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mex.), who chaired the Tompkins hearing. But it seems to be part of a pattern on the part of the GOP, and not based on the merits of the nominee: Sen. Bennett also held up the confirmation of David Hayes to be Interior deputy secretary, according to the National Journal, "because he want[ed] more answers regarding why the administration canceled oil and gas leases in Utah" -- leases rushed into auction in the waning days of the Bush administration.
Interior this month released a report extremely critical of how those leases were auctioned. The Bureau of Land Management, part of the Interior Department, did not give the National Park Service notice that it had expanded the lease sale from 79, suggested in August 2008, to 241 parcels announced in November 2009. The new leases added without notice included some parcels close to Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park and Dinosaur National Monument.
However, according to a recent article in The Chicago Tribune, "Under pressure from Republican lawmakers, the Obama administration is considering whether to reinstate more than a third of the 77 controversial oil- and gas-drilling leases."
From Maple Syrup to Snow Pack, Global Warming Happening Here and Now
Published June 16, 2009 @ 09:02PM PT
Heavy rains are becoming more intense and frequent all over the country, although annual rainfall is decreasing in the Southwest. Both make it more difficult to manage water supplies for crops and communities.
Winter snow pack is decreasing, and melting off earlier in the year, in the West and Pacific Northwest. This is putting stress on fish that depend upon cold, ample stream and river flows for spawning; making hydroelectric power generation more difficult; and imperils fresh water supplies for people and agriculture.
Warmer winter temperatures have pushed the nexus of winter maple syrup production northward, from Vermont into Canada.
A new report released today by the federal government's affirms that the effects of global warming are being felt across the United States, affecting us in all sorts of everyday ways that may seem unconnected, but add up to big shifts in our quality and way of life.
As for how the impacts of global warming will intensify in coming years, there's a lot that's uncertain, because we don't know if human-caused emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases will rise or be reduced. Although no experts are saying that things will change for the better, they're united in recommending that sooner we cut human-propelled greenhouse gas pollution (from burning fossil fuels, industrial-scale agriculture, deforestation, and other causes), the better our chances of blunting global warming's worst impacts.
This report is a synthesis of research that's been developed and reviewed over the past decade in different sectors of the scientific community, and so contains no new science. But in taking a tight focus on how global warming is already changing the US (rather than taking a global view), researchers hope it will bring the situation -- and the need to act right away -- home to Americans, who generally feel that climate change is a problem happening in far off lands, in the far off future.
“What we would want to have people take away is that climate change is happening now, and it’s actually beginning to affect our lives,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a principal author of the report. “It’s not just happening in the Arctic regions, but it’s beginning to show up in our own backyards.” (The New York Times)
In the Northeast, where I live, the annual average temperature has increased by 2°F since 1970; winter temperatures have risen twice as much. (Which is perhaps why my snowshoes have gathered dust in the basement for most of the past several winters.) And more:
Warming has resulted in many other climate-related changes including more frequent very hot days, a longer growing season, an increase in heavy downpours, less winter precipitation falling as snow and more as rain, reduced snowpack, earlier break-up of winter ice on lakes and rivers, earlier spring snowmelt resulting in earlier peak river flows, rising sea surface temperatures, and rising sea level.
These trends are projected to continue, with more dramatic changes under higher emissions scenarios compared to lower emissions scenarios. Some of the extensive climate-related changes projected for the region could significantly alter the region’s economy, landscape, character, and quality of life.
Living in a coastal metropolis, I can look forward to higher ocean levels impairing, if not destroying, the local sewage system, unless New York City takes a cue from Boston Harbor’s Deer Island sewage plant, which has been raised to avoid destructive impacts from future sea-level rise. We're already having more heat waves, and can expect more and worse flooding of low-lying areas of the city, and changing offshore ocean currents that in turn effect nearer-shore ecosystems (among other changes).
Experts from 13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes, overseen by the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy, contributed to the report, online at globalchange.gov.
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Image credit: National Weather Service
