COMMENT:The pretenses of the Tea Party movement continue to melt away. Representing itself as “populist” and opposed to “special interests,” the movement does not endorse policies that benefit the average American. On the contrary, the movement continues to manifest the corporatist agenda conceptualized by Mussolini and realized by the Koch brothers.
“European Polluters Back Tea Party Candidates” by Eric W. Dolan; The Raw Story; 10/25/2010.
It’s not often you can actually say “case closed”, but in this case it’s literally true: climatologist Michael Mann has been cleared of all wrongdoing by the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation.
Did I say “has been cleared”? I meant has been cleared once again, since there have been several investigations into his research and Dr. Mann has been cleared of all charges every single time (like here and here). All of this stemmed from the “ClimateGate” nonsense of the past couple of years, where leaked emails were taken hugely out of context by the press and climate change deniers, and used to smear scientists. Dr. Mann was at the center of the whole manufactured controversy, being the biggest target of the people who want to deny the Earth is warming up.
The European Commission has apologised for decades of an EU fishing policy so disastrous that the next generation of children may never see fish on their dinner plate.
Well, at least once the ice caps melt and the sea levels rise the fishing industry will have a few more square miles of open water to overfish the remaining species. That should help the economy.
Medical reports are indicating that growing numbers of Americans are suffering from Randitis as the economic troubles continue. Symptoms include an array of cognitive impairments affecting memory and reasoning. It’s a troubling report.
Some like to point to cycles when dismissing climate change, brushing off warming as simply being the thing that happens right before cooling. In this view, concern about climate change is akin to the naïve worry that half of schools are performing below average. This is why we need context. We need to know whether an observed change is more like a world premiere or a familiar re-run.
A new paper in Science examines the geologic record for context relating to ocean acidification, a lowering of the pH driven by the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The research group (twenty-one scientists from nearly as many different universities) reviewed the evidence from past known or suspected intervals of ocean acidification. The work provides perspective on the current trend as well as the potential consequences. They find that the current rate of ocean acidification puts us on a track that, if continued, would likely be unprecedented in last 300 million years.
There are several ways acidification events leave their signature in the rock record. The isotopic composition of carbon changes with shifts in the carbon cycle, such as the movement of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Isotopes of boron present in marine shells track ocean water pH. The ratios of other trace elements in marine shells (such as uranium or zinc) to calcium indicate the availability of carbonate ions. (Ocean acidification is not just about pH, but the reduction of carbonate mineral saturation that makes it more difficult for calcifiers to build their shells.) In addition to all this, the fossil record records the extinctions and morphological changes in marine species that occur around catastrophic events in Earth history.
The paper covers the last 300 million years. That’s not just a round number—it’s about as far back as we can confidently go. Because plate tectonics drives oceanic plates back down into the mantle at subduction zones, there is no oceanic crust or sediment older than 180 million years for us to examine.
The first period the researchers looked at was the end of the last ice age, starting around 18,000 years ago. Over a period of about 6,000 years, atmospheric CO2 levels increased by 30 percent, a change of roughly 75 ppm. (For reference, atmospheric CO2 has gone up by about the same amount over the past 50 years.) Over that 6,000 year time period, surface ocean pH dropped by approximately 0.15 units. That comes out to about 0.002 units per century. Our current rate is over 0.1 units per century—two orders of magnitude greater, which lines up well with a model estimate we covered recently.
The last deglaciation did not trigger a mass extinction, but it did cause changes in some species. The shells of planktic foraminfera decreased by 40-50 percent, while those of coccolithophores went down 25 percent.
During the Pliocene warm period, about 3 million years ago, atmospheric CO2 was about the same as today, but pH was only 0.06 to 0.11 units lower than preindustrial conditions. This is because the event played out over 320,000 years or so. We see species migration in the fossil record in response to the warming planet, but not ill effects on calcifiers. This is because ocean acidification depends primarily on the rate of atmospheric CO2 increases, not the absolute concentration.
Next, the researchers turned their focus to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred 56 million years ago. Global temperature increased about 6°C over 20,000 years due to an abrupt release of carbon to the atmosphere (though this was not as abrupt as current emissions). The PETM saw the largest extinction of deep-sea foraminifera of the last 75 million years, and was one of the four biggest coral reef disasters of the last 300 million years.
Finally, we come the big one—The Great Dying. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction (about 252 million years ago) wiped out around 96 percent of marine species. Still, the rate of CO2 released to the atmosphere that drove the dangerous climate change was 10-100 times slower than current emissions.
But but but I was told that CO2 is Life!
Ignoring climate-change: what could possibly go wrong?
Well this is interesting…if humanity’s apparent inability to address climate change might leave you with a general sense that “the sky is falling”, it’s worth noting that new research suggests has some news for you: increasing atmospheric CO2 levels are thinning out and shrinking the upper atmosphere. So yes, the sky is actually falling. But it’s not all bad…since the atmosphere is now shrinking there’s less drag on orbiting satellites so fewer of them will fall to the earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Ok, that actually is bad, but still kind of cool because it means that we’ve managed to create the kind of calamity that will cause the sky to fall while simultaneously causing less stuff to fall into it. That’s almost impressive.
Yep, our goose may be cooked, but at least we’re cooking with gusto. Go Team Humanity!
Plants still able to cope with rising temperatures, study finds.
You could call them early bloomers: In 2010 and 2012, plants in the eastern U.S. produced flowers earlier than at any point in recorded history, a new study says.
This result, according to the research team, has a bit of a literary twist: It comes from data collected by U.S. environmental writers Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold. Thoreau began observing bloom times in Massachusetts in 1852, and Leopold began in Wisconsin in 1935.
So far, plants—at least in the eastern U.S.—are coping.
More soot please! Actually, maybe that’s a bad idea.
TOPEKA — A lobbyist says he did a personal favor to aid the formation of a new group opposing a Kansas green-energy requirement for utilities, fueling criticism that a recent postcard campaign against the rule on behalf of seniors was actually orchestrated by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers’ main political organization and the powerful Kansas Chamber of Commerce.
State Director Jeff Glendening said Wednesday that Americans for Prosperity, the anti-tax, small-government group backed by Charles and David Koch, had nothing to do with postcards sent out opposing the standards. But on Thursday, Glendening told The Wichita Eagle he forgot to mention that he helped link attorney W. Robert Alderson with Virginia Crossland-Macha, the founder of the Kansas Senior Consumer Alliance which sent the postcards.
Glendening said he was not acting in his official capacity as AFP’s state leader.
There’s been no allegation that the group’s formation violated lobbying or campaign finance rules, but questions have been raised about its origin and who was behind the postcard campaign.
A western Kansas legislator who supports the renewable standard accused the Kansas Senior Consumer Alliance of using scare tactics to influence older residents. Rep. Don Hineman, a Dighton Republican, also questioned the new group’s independence.
The Kansas Chamber of Commerce and AFP deny collaborating with the postcards, though they share the same policy view as Crossland-Macha’s organization.
The alliance sent mailers to residents in several House members’ districts last week supporting repeal of the state’s standards, which require utility companies to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. AFP and other groups tried unsuccessfully to convince legislators to repeal the standards before the 2014 session ended early on May 3.
Wind energy proponents say the RPS has helped produce jobs and investment in Kansas and that state studies show the requirement has had a minimal impact on electric rates.
Groups including the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, AFP and American Legislative Exchange Council, are pushing for repeal, saying the RPS produces an unfair advantage for wind energy companies and increases electric rates.
Renewable energy mandates have caused prices of energy to increase by .21 of a penny per killowatt-hour, according to 2014 Kansas Corporation Commission report, meaning the average Kansas household paid about $1.90 more a month because of the renewable portfolio standards.
TOPEKA — The state’s top environmental regulator is considering whether to clear the way again for a new coal-fired power plant in southwest Kansas, but environmentalists contend that Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration is taking short cuts to ensure that the $2.8 billion project is built.
Sunflower Electric Power Corp. needs a pollution-control permit from the state Department of Health and Environment for its proposed 895-megawatt plant outside Holcomb in Finney County, where the Hays-based utility already has another coal-fired plant. It obtained a permit in December 2010, but eight months ago, the Kansas Supreme Court ordered the department to revise it to impose tougher air-quality standards.
Secretary Robert Moser is reviewing a proposed amendment drafted by the department’s staff, and his approval would allow Sunflower to go forward with the project.
But the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, national environmental groups involved in the lawsuit prompting the court decision, argue the department should have started over, rather than amending the old permit. Both groups also want the state to scrap the project and focus on aggressive development of renewable energy.
Department officials declined to discuss the proposed amendment to the Sunflower permit because Moser is still reviewing it. The agency also isn’t saying when Moser will decide.
In a “summary sheet” for the permit amendment prepared earlier this year, the department’s staff said environmental modeling done for Sunflower in 2010 showed its new coal plant would meet even the more rigorous standards demanded by the Supreme Court.
The court told the department to impose a set of hourly limits on nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, rather than the less stringent three-hour limits set by the permit. It also ordered another set of tougher standards for other pollutants, including mercury. In both cases, the Kansas agency wasn’t incorporating rules the EPA had set while the permit was pending.
But the Kansas court declined to invalidate the entire 2010 permit, as the Sierra Club had requested.
Earthjustice and the Sierra Club dispute the department’s assessment that the project would meet the more rigorous environmental standards. The department also received written comments from more than two dozen people across the state, protesting the project.
“This project doesn’t make sense for anyone in Kansas,” Goodin said.
The nonprofit Sunflower supplies wholesale power for about 400,000 homes in southwest Kansas through six electric cooperatives. The new plant would generate enough electricity to supply 537,000 homes, according to one state estimate, but Sunflower would reserve 78 percent of it for Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., a wholesaler supplying 44 cooperatives in its home state of Colorado and Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming.
WASHINGTON — Coal, the former king of American energy, is making a comeback after being left for dead in favor of cleaner-burning natural gas.
For years coal has been losing market share as the American fracking boom created a flood of cheap and abundant natural gas. But natural gas prices have edged upward, and the frigid winter created unprecedented energy demands. Power plants have increasingly been turning to coal as the solution.
There’s serious doubt whether the resurgence in coal can last in America with stricter environmental rules coming. But the global outlook for coal is bright, and U.S. coal producers hope to take advantage by increasing exports to other countries hungry for cheap energy. The International Energy Agency believes coal will be the No. 1 fuel for meeting the worldwide increase in energy demand.
Van der Hoeven added, though, that she wanted to emphasize that coal burning in its current form is “simply unsustainable” for the world’s climate.
In a blow to President Barack Obama’s pledge to be a leader in the fight against global warming, American carbon dioxide emissions rose an estimated 2 percent last year _ after falling by 12 percent over the previous seven years. The federal Energy Information Administration attributes the rise in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions largely to the country using more coal than it used to.
Coal burning increased in the United States nearly 4 percent last year, and this year should see an even bigger spike, according to the Energy Information Administration.
“There is a resurgence, and it is quite a strong one,” said James Stevenson, the director of North American coal analysis for the global energy consulting firm IHS.
Coal’s renewed popularity is a result of natural gas prices more than doubling over the past two years in response to a tighter market.
Those prices allow cheap coal to compete. The use of natural gas for power generation dropped in 2013 for the first time in five years as a result.
The Arctic blasts of this year’s winter also pushed power plants to turn to coal in order to meet the nation’s record-setting heating requirements.
“The main benefactor of this extreme cold and extreme low in natural gas inventory is coal,” said Bob Yu, an analyst for Bentek Energy.
Coal is set for more growth this year because of the price of natural gas and the ramp-up of coal generation, according to Yu and other analysts.
Coal from western Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana is on the rise, with 50 percent more production than a decade ago, according to the energy pricing and information service Platts. Coal from Montana and Wyoming is also managing to make more inroads in the market.
IHS analyst Stevenson is skeptical that coal’s comeback in America can last, and he expects a slow decline in U.S. consumption to take hold.
Other nations will hunger for American coal, though. Coal use has been growing in Europe, where natural gas prices are far higher than in the United States.
The United States is exporting nearly twice as much coal as it did four years ago, with big costumers in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany.
Stevenson said there is also potential for a growth in U.S. coal in South Korea, with its fast-growing economy, and in Japan, which wants to move away from nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 leak of radioactive material from Fukushima. He expects coal terminals to be built in the Pacific Northwest to ship coal mined from the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming to Asia.
That’s right: the International Energy Agency expects coal use to the continue rising globally while also acknowledging that coal burning is simply unsustainable for the world’s climate. When life seems like a poorly chosen Smithsonian Exhibit, it’s probably just a matter of time before you’re history.
WASHINGTON — The European Union is pressing the Obama administration to expand U.S. fracking, offshore oil drilling and natural gas exploration under the terms of a secret negotiation text obtained by The Huffington Post.
The controversial document is an early draft of energy policies that EU negotiators hope to see adopted under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) trade deal, which is currently being negotiated. The text was shared with American officials in September. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative declined to comment on the document.
Environmental groups fear the broad language proposed for the deal would eliminate key restrictions on the export of crude oil and natural gas, fossil fuels that contribute to climate change. The document marks the first major bone of contention in the EU deal, amid an outcry from environmentalists over leaked terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a separate pact that the U.S. and 11 Pacific nations are also negotiating.
By encouraging more crude oil and natural gas exports to the EU — a massive economic force that uses a tremendous amount of global energy — the proposal could spur more domestic oil and gas drilling and discourage the development of green energy in the EU, dealing a significant blow to efforts to avert climate change. Some environmental and citizens groups also object to the fracking process itself — in which a high-pressure mixture of chemicals, water, and sand is injected into rock formations to release natural gas — because of concerns that it might affect groundwater supplies.
The U.S. banned crude oil exports in 1975, and imposes a host of restrictions on the export of natural gas for both economic and national security reasons. But the president can issue special licenses to exempt some crude oil exports from the ban, and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said this month that he wants to consider relaxing it.
There has also been an increasing push to loosen constraints on natural gas exports from the U.S. to Europe, particularly as the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine has grown, highlighting Europe’s dependency on Russian energy. Although burning natural gas produces lower emissions than oil or coal, the energy-intensive storage and shipping process — liquefying the gas and then sending it in fuel-burning vessels — eliminates many of its advantages. And critics of gas say that increasing exports would only increase reliance on fossil fuels, rather than speeding the transition to renewables. It would also likely increase energy prices in the U.S., although the effects of the deal would not come to fruition for several years.
Free trade agreements frequently bind all of their participants to a specific regulatory regime, hindering the deployment of future regulations in response to new problems. Trade pacts are enforced by international courts, which can issue economic sanctions against countries that violate the deals. The proposed EU language would run counter to existing environmental standards that limit the development of the fossil fuel industry.