Author Archives: rpgf8m1

If These 35,000 Walruses Can’t Convince You Climate Change Is Real, I Don’t Know What to Tell You

by rpgf8m1 Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

AP Photo/NOAA, Corey Accardo

This an image from a NOAA research flight over a remote stretch of Alaska’s north shore on Saturday. It shows approximately 35,000 walruses crowded on a beach, which according to the AP is a record number for this survey program.

Bear in mind that each of the little brown dots in this image can weigh over 4,000 pounds, placing them high in the running to be the world’s biggest climate refugees.

Why are so many walruses “hauled out” on this narrow strip of land? Part of the reason is that there’s not enough sea ice for them to rest on, according to NOAA.

On September 17, Arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent for 2014, which according to federal data is the sixth-lowest coverage since the satellite record began in 1979.

“The massive concentration of walruses onshore—when they should be scattered broadly in ice-covered waters—is just one example of the impacts of climate change on the distribution of marine species in the Arctic,” Margaret Williams, the managing director of WWF’s Arctic program, said in a statement.

If you’ve ever seen these blubbery beasts duke it out, then you know there’s some serious marine mammal mayhem in store. Thanks, climate change!

Source: 

If These 35,000 Walruses Can’t Convince You Climate Change Is Real, I Don’t Know What to Tell You

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For energy efficiency, Americans deserve a big thumbs-up

by rpgf8m1 Posted on October 11, 2013

For energy efficiency, Americans deserve a big thumbs-up

By

Shutterstock

We’re getting there.

America’s population and economy are both growing, yet its energy appetite is falling. That’s because of substantial energy-efficiency gains made in recent decades.

Those gains are helping the country reduce oil imports, save money on power bills, and move toward meeting a goal set by President Obama of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent between 2005 and 2020.

The news is laid out in a Natural Resources Defense Council report cheerily titled America’s (Amazingly) Good Energy News [PDF]:

[O]ver the past 40 years Americans have found so many innovative ways to save energy that we have more than doubled the economic productivity of the oil that runs our vehicles and the natural gas and electricity that runs almost everything else. Factories and businesses are producing substantially more products and value with less energy. …

[B]ecause increasing efficiency is far less costly than adding other energy resources like fossil fuels, this is saving the nation hundreds of billions of dollars annually, helping U.S. workers and companies compete worldwide, and making our country more energy-secure.

America’s energy use peaked in 2007 and has been falling ever since, the report says. Less energy was used by Americans last year than in 1999, despite 25 percent economic growth in the intervening years.

As shown in the following graph from the report, the “lockstep linkage between economic growth and total energy use” that once was normal in America ended in the 1970s:

NRDCClick to embiggen.

Still, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made clear, the U.S. and the rest of the world must do much more if we’re going to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

But the efficiency news is obviously great, so we’ll pause to celebrate it. Hurrah!


Source
America’s (Amazingly) Good Energy News, NRDC

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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For energy efficiency, Americans deserve a big thumbs-up

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48 Ways a Government Shutdown Will Screw You Over

by rpgf8m1 Posted on September 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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The government will shut down at midnight unless President Obama and Congress can agree on a temporary resolution to continue funding federal agencies. (Spoiler: They probably won’t.)

Here’s a quick guide to who and what will be most affected:

Anyone who might get sick: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would lack funding to support its annual flu vaccination program.

Military personnel: Barring last-minute congressional action, members of the armed forces would have their paychecks put on hold while they continue to work.

People who use boats: The Coast Guard will cut back on routine patrols and navigation assistance.

Civilian defense employees: 400,000 Department of Defense employees will be given unpaid vacations.

Family members of fallen soldiers: Death benefits for military families will be delayed.

Gun owners: During the 1990s shutdown, applications for gun permits were delayed due to furloughs at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Trees: Hundreds of US Forest Service workers face furloughs in California during peak forest fire season.

Visa applicants: Furloughs at the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs mean tens of thousands of visa applications are put on hold.

People traveling abroad: A shutdown would cause delays in the processing of passport applications.

Sick people: The National Institutes of Health will not admit new patients unless ordered by the director.

Factory workers: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will halt regular inspections.

Hikers: All 401 National Park Service sites will be closed.

People who make money off tourists: Shuttered national parks are bad news for the hotels, restaurants, and other attractions that feed off them.

Small business loan applicants: The Small Business Administration will furlough 62 percent of its workforce.

Employers: The Department of Homeland Security’s e-Verify program will be offline for the duration of the shutdown.

Fountains: 45 of them will lose water.

People applying for mortgages: The Federal Housing Administration and the USDA won’t guarantee new loans.

Oil and gas exploration: The Bureau of Land Management will stop processing permits for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

Chemical site facility security: Funding for Department of Homeland Security regulatory program ends October 4.

FOIA requests: The Social Security Administration says it won’t respond to Freedom of Information Act Requests during the shutdown.

Docents: All Smithsonian Institution museums in Washington, DC, will be closed.

@CuriosityRover: 98 percent of NASA’s staff will be furloughed, and the agency’s website and live-streams will go dark.

Renewable energy permits: The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will stop all new offshore renewable-energy projects.

Campers: People living (or vacationing) in national parks and forests will have 48 hours to relocate.

Animal voyeurs: Watch the National Zoo’s Panda-cam while you still can.

Native Americans: The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement will suspend oversight of active and abandoned coal mines “primarily in Tennessee and on Indian lands.”

Pesticide regulators: The Environmental Protection Agency will all but shut down at midnight.

Veterans pensions: The Department of Veterans Affairs says it will run out of funding for regular payment checks after a few weeks.

US Geological Survey researchers: The agency would stop most new scientific research and water analysis.

Disability payments: Although the VA will continue to provide medical care, disability payments may also be disrupted after a few weeks.

Winery permits: Couldn’t they take the wine coolers instead?

Ponies: The Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro adoption programs would cease.

Infectious disease surveillance: The CDC will be unable to track outbreaks and monitor infectious diseases at a local level.

People on food assistance: The USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) will stop making payments on October 1.

Food inspections: The Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration warned of “inability to investigate alleged violations” due to a lack of funding; food imports will also go unexpected.

Automobile recall inspectors: “Routine defects and recall information from manufacturers and consumers would not be reviewed,” according to the Department of Transportation.

Food and drug safety research: The Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, will furlough 52 percent of its staff.

ARPA-E: The Department of Energy’s cutting-edge research arm—and one of the crowning legacies of the stimulus—will shut down, putting projects such as “squirtable batteries” on hold.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: The agency could furlough more than 92 percent of its employees next week, with much of the remaining staff handling inspections.

People without heat: If the shutdown persists, it could affect the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which funds heating assistance programs.

Consumers: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will furlough 652 of its 680 employees and maintain only a “bare minimum level of oversight and surveillance” to stop fraudulent practices.

People trying to pay taxes: The Internal Revenue Service will shutter its tax hotline, and stop processing tax payments.

College students: Cutbacks at the Department of Education could slow Pell grant and student-loan payments.

Economists: The Bureau of Economic Analysis will cut back on its data collection.

Welfare recipients: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families—welfare—runs out of funding on October 1, although individual states may pick up the tab.

Head Start: The child development program, already hammered by the effects of sequestration, will stop doling out new grants on October 1.

Air monitoring: A 94 percent reduction in staff won’t leave the EPA much room to enforce its new carbon regulations.

Golf: Courses at National Park Service sites will close for the shutdown. So at least we have that going for us.

Link:  

48 Ways a Government Shutdown Will Screw You Over

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Big biz fights Obama admin’s calculations on carbon costs

by rpgf8m1 Posted on September 12, 2013

Big biz fights Obama admin’s calculations on carbon costs

By

The White House

Is he pondering the social cost of carbon?

Big business doesn’t like the way the Obama administration tallies the costs of carbon pollution. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, America’s Natural Gas Alliance, and other industry groups are fighting the federal government’s latest “social cost of carbon” calculations.

The social cost of carbon is an attempt to quantify the climate-related costs of fossil-fuel burning — costs associated with floods, falling farmland productivity, and climate-related illnesses. The social cost of carbon was raised by the Obama administration in May, from $23.80 per ton to $38.

The change would help justify federal policies that more aggressively rein in carbon pollution. And that’s not something that groups representing America’s biggest and dirtiest companies want.

“The SCC [social cost of carbon] estimates are the product of an opaque process and any pretensions to their supposed accuracy (and therefore usefulness in policy making) are unsupportable,” the groups wrote in a letter to the Office of Management and Budget, petitioning it to abandon the recent calculations.

And opponents are doing more than sending a letter. From Fuel Fix:

The move dovetails with action on Capitol Hill, as the House voted in July to block the EPA from using the social cost of carbon to evaluate the merits of potential energy-related regulations, unless specifically authorized by Congress. A House subcommittee also held a hearing exploring the issue.

American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard said the decisions about the costs of greenhouse gas emissions belong in the hands of elected officials, not bureaucrats.

Right, because a Congress full of climate deniers that can’t even pass basic spending bills should be charged with tallying complicated pollution impacts and calculating the economic repercussions of global warming. Thanks for the suggestion.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Big biz fights Obama admin’s calculations on carbon costs

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The Great Bubble Era Was Caused by Financial Deregulation, Not Easy Money

by rpgf8m1 Posted on August 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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Paul Krugman has an interesting post up today asking why we’ve had so many bubbles over the past few decades:

The answer you hear from a lot of people is that it’s all caused by excessively easy money. But let’s think about the longer-term history for a bit. Here’s long-term U.S. interest rates since the early 1950s.

What follows is a chart showing that 10-year treasury maturities went up from 1950-80 and then went down from 1980-2013. But it was pretty symmetrical: rates didn’t fall below their 50s/60s level until the mid-aughts. Historically speaking, the two eras were about the same, so easy money doesn’t seem like much of an explanation.

But isn’t it actually even more striking than that? Shouldn’t we look at real interest rates?1 Here’s a rough look at real 10-year maturities since 1950:

Real long-term interest rates during the past 30 years have been consistently higher than in the 50s and 60s. It wasn’t until 2008 that they fell noticeably below their 1950-1970 average. And yet, as Krugman says:

The whole era since around 1985 has been one of successive bubbles. There was a huge commercial real estate bubble (pdf) in the 80s, closely tied up with the S&L crisis; a bubble in capital flows to Asia in the mid 90s; the dotcom bubble; the housing bubble; and now, it seems, the BRIC bubble. There was nothing comparable in the 50s and 60s.

And don’t forget the Nordic property bubble of the early 90s. That’s a lot of bubbles. So if it wasn’t easy money, what was it? Krugman again:

So what was different? The answer seems obvious: financial deregulation, including capital account liberalization. Banks were set free — and went wild, again and again.

I’ll buy that up to a point. It’s not as if financial regulation can prevent bubbles entirely, but it can tame them. For the past 30 years, they’ve been running wild because we haven’t done anything to stop them. Maybe we should start.

1This is a real question. I’m actually not sure. I’m posting this partly in the hopes that if I’m wrong, someone will explain why.

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The Great Bubble Era Was Caused by Financial Deregulation, Not Easy Money

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