Category Archives: FF

Bringing Columbia Home – Michael D. Leinbach, Jonathan H. Ward, Robert Crippen & Eileen Collins

by Myrna Posted on April 12, 2019

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Bringing Columbia Home

The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

Michael D. Leinbach, Jonathan H. Ward, Robert Crippen & Eileen Collins

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: January 23, 2018

Publisher: Arcade

Seller: SIMON AND SCHUSTER DIGITAL SALES INC


Timed to release for the 15th Anniversary of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, this is the epic true story of one of the most dramatic, unforgettable adventures of our time. On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated on reentry before the nation’s eyes, and all seven astronauts aboard were lost. Author Mike Leinbach, Launch Director of the space shuttle program at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center was a key leader in the search and recovery effort as NASA, FEMA, the FBI, the US Forest Service, and dozens more federal, state, and local agencies combed an area of rural east Texas the size of Rhode Island for every piece of the shuttle and her crew they could find. Assisted by hundreds of volunteers, it would become the largest ground search operation in US history. This comprehensive account is told in four parts: • Parallel Confusion • Courage, Compassion, and Commitment • Picking Up the Pieces • A Bittersweet Victory For the first time, here is the definitive inside story of the Columbia disaster and recovery and the inspiring message it ultimately holds. In the aftermath of tragedy, people and communities came together to help bring home the remains of the crew and nearly 40 percent of shuttle, an effort that was instrumental in piecing together what happened so the shuttle program could return to flight and complete the International Space Station. Bringing Columbia Home shares the deeply personal stories that emerged as NASA employees looked for lost colleagues and searchers overcame immense physical, logistical, and emotional challenges and worked together to accomplish the impossible. Featuring a foreword and epilogue by astronauts Robert Crippen and Eileen Collins, and dedicated to the astronauts and recovery search persons who lost their lives, this is an incredible, compelling narrative about the best of humanity in the darkest of times and about how a failure at the pinnacle of human achievement became a story of cooperation and hope.

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Bringing Columbia Home – Michael D. Leinbach, Jonathan H. Ward, Robert Crippen & Eileen Collins

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What is your town’s risk of wildfire? New media tool lets you see for yourself

by EmmanueV06 Posted on April 11, 2019

Which California town might be the next to burn? That’s the driving question behind Destined to Burn, the brand new media package produced via a partnership between the AP, Gannet, McClatchy, and others. The project examines how California can prevent wildfire devastation.

Wildfires have always been a risk in drought-prone California. But due to climate change’s drying effects on the soil and vegetation, burns are getting bigger, deadlier, and more expensive for the Golden State. Just last year, the Camp Fire killed almost 90 people and completely leveled the town of Paradise in Northern California. The climate-induced tragedy was 2018’s most expensive natural disaster.

Since then, many communities throughout California have been grappling with how to adapt to this type of threat.

And they may be right to worry. One in 12 homes in the state of California is at high risk from wildfires. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Cal Fire Maps, the Sacramento Bee recently released a search tool, which Californians can use to find out how much of their towns might be in the danger zone.

Based on their analysis, there are more than 75 California towns and cities in which at least 90 percent of residents live in “very high fire hazard severity zones,” as designated by Cal Fire. As part of the Destined to Burn package, The Sacramento Bee highlighted 10 California communities from that list: Shingletown, Nevada City, Colfax, Kings Beach, Pollock Pines, Arnold, Wofford Heights, La Cañada Flintridge, Rancho Palos Verdes, and Harbison Canyon.

In 6 out of these 10 communities, 100 percent of residents live in very high fire hazard zones — at least, according to 2010 census info. In Nevada City, the hometown of Grist’s very own Nathanael Johnson, 3,064 out of 3,068 residents live in high hazard areas. (A number that may leave some wondering: What’s the deal with those four lucky people?)

But aside from their exceptionally high wildfire risk, there isn’t that much that unites the communities on the Bee’s list. Residents of the affluent Rancho Palos Verdes (the most populated city on the list), for instance, don’t seem to be sweating too hard about wildfires. Scott Hale, an assistant fire chief for Los Angeles County, told the Sacramento Bee: “This being a coastal community, we don’t get the type of brush and that kind of fire behavior that you might get in somewhere like Paradise.”

Kings Beach, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, is a popular tourist destination. Because so many of the homes there are vacation rentals, it could be harder to mobilize the local community to push for more fire prevention measures.

In contrast, Nevada City is taking its fire prevention measures seriously. The city launched a Goat Fund Me campaign in December, hoping to raise enough funds to rent brush-clearing ruminants to maintain the city’s lands, a method that has caught on throughout California and beyond. Residents have also taken fire prevention into their own hands, creating citizen-led controlled burn squads and even helping out neighbors who may have trouble clearing dry brush near their homes.

The list isn’t exactly intended to predict the next “Paradise.” The data has its limitations — age being one of them. A new census is approaching in 2020, and Cal Fire is currently at work on a new set of fire hazard maps, which will incorporate wind patterns and other important factors. Instead, the tools put together by Gannett, McClatchy, Media News, and the Associated Press, are designed to be used as a resource as communities figure out how to prepare for their unique wildfire risks.

“Our goal with this collaboration is to put a spotlight on policy issues that can and should be raised in the halls of the state Capitol and by local communities,” wrote McClatchy Regional Editor Lauren Gustus of the project. “This is a wicked problem with no easy answers. And the more information we can share about where and how we’re falling short, the quicker we can come together on potential solutions.”

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What is your town’s risk of wildfire? New media tool lets you see for yourself

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Former oil lobbyist David Bernhardt confirmed as Interior secretary. Yay?

by mosheteal7 Posted on April 11, 2019

The Senate confirmed David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist, as Interior secretary on Thursday afternoon in a 56-41 vote. Three Democrats — West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema — crossed party lines to vote in Bernhardt’s favor, along with Angus King, an Independent from Maine.

“I believe Mr. Bernhardt is clearly qualified to serve as secretary,” Manchin, the top Democrat of the Senate committee that oversees the Interior, said during a floor speech. “He knows the Interior Department inside and out and he is well versed on all the issues that come before it.”

The reason Bernhardt knows the department so well? He’s been serving as acting Interior secretary since January when Ryan Zinke, the department’s former head, resigned amid ethics investigations.

Bernhardt’s work as a longtime lobbyist for the oil and gas industry has led to concerns about conflicts of interest. To keep track of all of his recusals for former clients, he carries with him a card listing all of their names, the Washington Post reports. The Interior is entrusted with some 700 million acres of public lands and 1.7 billion acres off the country’s shores, and as the head of the department, there is a high chance that Bernhardt will oversee businesses he once lobbied for.

While Republicans rejoiced the moment, Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, was outraged. “Donald Trump campaigns on cleaning up the swamp and he does exactly the opposite when in office. An oil and gas lobbyist as head of the Department of Interior? My God,” Schumer said during floor remarks on Wednesday. “That’s an example of the swampiness of Washington if there ever was one.”

Speaking of swamps, environmental activists are not having it. Remember the viral video of the “swamp creature” seated behind Bernhardt during one of his confirmation hearings? That was Greenpeace activist Irene Kim, who put on the mask in protest as Bernhardt fielded questions from senators about his previous lobbying.

“David Bernhardt’s ties to Big Oil — the very industry he is tasked w/ regulating — are as deep as an oil well,” Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and cosponsor of the Green New Deal, wrote in a tweet. “Those ties should be disqualifying for anyone nominated to head the Interior. We must stop the pollution of our democracy by Big Oil interests.”

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Former oil lobbyist David Bernhardt confirmed as Interior secretary. Yay?

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Traffic pollution leads to 4 million child asthma cases every year

by PeterWeinstein8 Posted on April 11, 2019

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Four million children develop asthma every year as a result of air pollution from cars and trucks, equivalent to 11,000 new cases a day, a landmark study has found.

Most of the new cases occur in places where pollution levels are already below the World Health Organization limit, suggesting toxic air is even more harmful than thought.

Guardian Graphic / Source: Achakulwisut et al, Lancet Planetary Health

The damage to children’s health is not limited to China and India, where pollution levels are particularly high. In U.K. and U.S. cities, the researchers blame traffic pollution for a quarter of all new childhood asthma cases.

Canada has the third highest rate of new traffic-related asthma cases among the 194 nations analyzed, while Los Angeles and New York City are in the top 10 worst cities out of the 125 assessed. Children are especially vulnerable to toxic air and exposure is also known to leave them with stunted lungs.

The research, published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health, is the first global assessment of the impact of traffic fumes on childhood asthma based on high-resolution pollution data.

“Our findings suggest that millions of new cases of pediatric asthma could be prevented by reducing air pollution,” said Susan Anenberg, a professor at George Washington University. Asthma can cause deadly seizures.

The key pollutant, nitrogen dioxide, is produced largely by diesel vehicles, many of which emit far more than allowed on the road even after the Dieselgate scandal. “Improving access to cleaner forms of transport, like electrified public transport, cycling and walking, would reduce asthma, enhance physical fitness, and cut greenhouse gas emissions,” said Anenberg.

“This landmark study shows the massive global burden of asthma in children caused by traffic pollution,” said Chris Griffiths, professor at Queen Mary University of London and the co-director of the Asthma U.K. Center for Applied Research, who was not part of the research team. “Asthma is only one of the multiple adverse effects of pollution on children’s health. Governments must act now to protect children.”

Guardian Graphic / Source: Achakulwisut et al, Lancet Planetary Health

The new study combined detailed NO2 pollution data with asthma incidence rates and population numbers. Many large studies have already shown a strong link between traffic pollution and childhood asthma and that pollution causes damaging inflammation. This data on risks was used to calculate the number of new cases around the world.

“From the weight of evidence, there is likely a strong causal relationship between traffic pollution and childhood asthma incidence,” said Ploy Achakulwisut, also at George Washington University and the lead author of the new study. “So we can be confident that traffic pollution has a significant effect on childhood asthma incidence.”

The epidemiological evidence for NO2 being the key pollutant is the strongest. However, researchers cannot rule out that other pollutants also pumped out by vehicles, such as tiny particles, are also a factor as it is not possible to experiment directly on people.

“Childhood asthma has reached global epidemic proportions,” said Rajen Naidoo, professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, and not involved in the study. It indicates that 1 in 8 of all new cases is due to traffic pollution. “An important outcome from this study is the evidence that the existing WHO standards are not protective against childhood asthma.”

The country with the highest national rate of childhood asthma attributed to traffic pollution is South Korea, with almost a third of all new cases blamed on vehicles. Japan and Belgium are in the top 10, along with six Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia.

Due to their high populations and pollution levels, the top three countries for the total number of new children getting asthma each year are China (760,000), India (350,000), and the U.S. (240,000). The scientists said their research may underestimate the true levels in many poorer nations where asthma often goes undiagnosed.

“While it is important for parents to try to reduce individual exposure, maybe by avoiding highly congested roads as much as possible, not everyone can do this,” said Achakulwisut. “So it is important to call for policy initiatives to tackle pollution at city, state and national levels.”

“The good news is that a transition to zero-emission vehicles is already underway,” she said. Some countries and cities are pledging to phase out internal combustion engines and policies such as London’s new ultra-low emission zone are being rolled out. “But this transition needs to become global, and it needs to happen faster. Each year of delay jeopardizes the health of millions of children worldwide.”

Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: “We used to think the only real danger roads posed to children was the threat of a car accident. However, now we can see there’s an equally deadly risk: breathing in air pollution. Rightly, there’s been a huge effort to reduce road accidents and we need to see an equal commitment to reducing toxic air.”

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Traffic pollution leads to 4 million child asthma cases every year

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An easy, cost-effective way to address climate change? Massive reforestation.

by Philome19D Posted on April 11, 2019

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As the implications of climate change become starker and the world faces up to a biodiversity crisis that threatens humanity’s existence, a group of campaigners from across the world are saying there is one clear way to get us out of this mess, but that governments are ignoring it.

In an open letter published in the British newspaper, The Guardian, the group tells governments that the best and cheapest way to avert a climate catastrophe is to heal nature by restoring and replanting degraded forests and by better conserving the natural world.

“Defending the living world and defending the climate are, in many cases, one and the same. This potential has so far been largely overlooked,” say the 23 signatories to the letter.

“We call on governments to support natural climate solutions with an urgent program of research, funding, and political commitment,” they added.

Vast amounts of carbon can be removed from the air and stored by restoring ecosystems razed by palm oil plantations, cattle ranching and timber, and fish production, the letter says. The 23 signatories include the  teenage school climate strike activist Greta Thunburg, authors Margaret Atwood, Naomi Klein, and Philip Pullman, U.S. climate scientist Michael Mann, and environmental campaigner Bill McKibben.

“The world faces two existential crises, developing with terrifying speed: climate breakdown and ecological breakdown. Neither is being addressed with the urgency needed to prevent our life-support systems from spiralling into collapse,” say the signatories.

They call for the defense, restoration and reestablishment of forests, peatlands, mangroves, salt marshes, natural seabeds, and other crucial ecosystems, to remove and store large amounts of carbon from the air. The protection and restoration of these ecosystems can help minimize a sixth great extinction, they say.

The group says that nearly a third of the greenhouse gas reductions needed to hold temperatures to a 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) rise can be provided by the restoration of natural habitats. But natural solutions are calculated to have attracted just a small fraction of the funding so far committed, according to journalist and author George Monbiot, one of the signatories.

Technology alone cannot solve climate change, Monbiot wrote in The Guardian. Much of the technology proposed to capture carbon is expensive and could pose problems at scale. The cheapest and surest approach, he wrote, is to restore natural forests and allow native trees to repopulate deforested land.

Regenerating and conserving nature to address climate change is expected to be a central recommendation of next month’s landmark study of the state of the natural world, compiled by hundreds of scientists. The United Nations-backed report is expected to confirm that nature is in rapid decline in many regions, with ecosystems on the point of collapse.

Protecting and restoring natural forests is seen as vital. Trees suck carbon dioxide from the air and store it. Nearly one-quarter of all the emissions reductions pledged by countries in the 2015 Paris agreement could come from tree planting and restoration. The U.N. has challenged countries to restore 865 million acres of farm and forest land by 2030 — an area bigger than India. And countries are responding.

Initiative 20×20, an international effort, hopes to restore 49 million acres by 2020 in Latin America and the Caribbean. And the multicountry African Forest Landscape Restoration initiative intends to restore 247 million acres of degraded forests in Africa by 2030.

Pakistan has just planted 1 billion trees. China plans to create forests totaling the size of Ireland. And in Africa, Ethiopia, Niger, Mali are among countries that strongly back the reforestation of degraded land.

But there’s a snag. A new paper in the scientific journal, Nature, suggests that 45 percent of the land area that nations have so far pledged to allocate for carbon drawdown is being used to for commercial plantations.

There’s a huge difference between restoring natural forests and planting trees for commercial use, for example the large-scale monoculture of oil palms to provide us with the palm oil so ubiquitous in snacks and cosmetics. The latter are less efficient at carbon storage, and in fact release carbon emissions by replacing peatland, as well as being detrimental to wildlife.

These natural solutions also go beyond trees. They include the restoration of peatlands, salt marsh and seagrass. They also mean the protection and recovery of animals like rhinos in Africa, which act as a natural protection against devastating wildfires, and wolves in North America, which some studies suggest could protect forests by controlling populations of animals that feed on plants and trees.

Still, Monbiot cautions: “We don’t want natural climate solutions to be used as a substitute for the rapid and comprehensive decarbonization of our economies. The science tells us both are needed.”

“But,” he continues, “what this thrilling field of study shows is that protecting and rewilding the world’s living systems is not just an aesthetically pleasing thing to do. It is an essential survival strategy.”

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An easy, cost-effective way to address climate change? Massive reforestation.

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Trump signs executive orders fast-tracking the pipeline approval process

by VaniaMalizia Posted on April 10, 2019

When Donald Trump was campaigning to become president in 2016, he promised to speed up the government review process for “private sector energy infrastructure projects.” On Wednesday, he made good on that pledge by signing two executive orders that would put pipelines on the fast track to success.

In addition to shortening the review process for infrastructure projects, the orders are aimed at limiting states’ power to pause construction and giving the president the final word on permits for cross-border projects, among other things.

“We’re gonna make it easier for you,” Trump said at a press conference on Wednesday. “You know about delays? Where it takes you 20 years to get a permit? Those days are gone.”

To date, oil companies have had a hard time selling their new, big pipeline projects in the court of public opinion. They’ve had an even harder time pushing those projects through the court of … courts. Pipeline company TransCanada, for instance, has been waiting a whole decade to build the northern leg of its Keystone XL extension.

Trump seems willing to go to any lengths necessary to get the job done. Months after a district court judge demanded the government conduct a more thorough environmental review of the potential impacts of the Keystone XL project last November, Trump issued a presidential permit aimed at allowing TransCanada to sidestep the courts.

He announced his new executive orders at an engineer training center in Crosby, Texas, a town near Houston that is still grappling with the fallout from a deadly chemical fire last week. “Smoke from the fires has barely cleared, but President Donald Trump shows no shame in using Texas’ petrochemical corridor as a prop for his misguided and dangerous proposals,” said Stephanie Thomas, an organizer at health and safety group Public Citizen, in a press release.

One of the orders looks to curtail environmental reviews for pipelines nationwide. “It will now take no more than 60 days,” Trump said. “And the president, not the bureaucracy, will have sole authority to make the final decision when we get caught up in problems.”

The other allows the Environmental Protection Agency to limit state powers to pause pipeline construction on the grounds of the Clean Water Act. Previously, regulators in states like New York have halted construction that they argue jeopardizes water resources protected under the act.

“New York is hurting the country because they’re not allowing us to get these pipelines through,” Trump said in the press conference. “They also have a lot of energy under their feet and they refuse to get it,” he said, likely referring to the natural gas trapped in Marcellus shale under the state.

According to the Wall Street Journal, that same executive order also deals with investments, directing the Department of Labor to “scrutinize whether retirement funds that pursue environmental or socially progressive investment strategies are fulfilling their duty to maximize shareholder value.” In other words, Trump is prompting the department to take a magnifying glass to divestment. New York recently moved to divest its multi-billion dollar pension from fossil fuels.

Needless to say, oil and gas companies are pretty enthused about these orders. “Politically-motivated delays and pipeline bottlenecks in the Permian Basin and around the United States are hindering growth, so we appreciate the Administration’s work to bring clarity and certainty to the pipeline construction permitting process,” the Texas Oil and Gas Association said in a press release.

Environment groups? Not so much. “From the Dirty Water Rule to rolling back protections against toxic pollutants from power plants, this is now the next step in the Trump administration’s all-out assault on our clean water,” the League of Conservation Voters said in a statement.

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Trump signs executive orders fast-tracking the pipeline approval process

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The Weather Channel’s new climate change video is … really intense

by SonGodson3899 Posted on April 10, 2019

“The Arctic — the fastest warming area on Earth,” Weather Channel meteorologist Jen Carfagno narrates in a new video as the camera speeds you under an iceberg arch, through the spray from a breaching whale, and past ice-capped peaks so realistic you can almost feel the Arctic chill. “Changes here are drastic, undeniable, and all too real.”

It’s the latest in a Weather Channel video series that uses immersive mixed reality technology to help you visualize extreme weather up close. The first video went viral last September, when meteorologist Erika Navarro was virtually transported from the studio to a flooded neighborhood street in North Carolina to demonstrate storm-surge projections for Hurricane Florence in person.

“For 30 years, weather presentation has been very consistent,” Michael Potts, the vice president of design at the Weather Channel, told New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. “Usually it’s a person in front of a map. We wanted to engage the audience more and find a way to go deeper into the science of weather.”

And, in this latest video, they do. Instead of regurgitating statistics or presenting another doomsday scenario, the video portrays global warming in a gripping yet realistic way, transporting you from a rooftop above flooded city streets to a rocky coast in front of a collapsing iceberg. Carfagno takes you from 1851 to 2100, visiting Charleston, South Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; and Greenland’s famous Jakobshavn Glacier — all in the span of under two minutes. How’s that for high-speed time travel?

Using an immersive graphics technique popular in video games to produce the clip, the Weather Channel hopes to turn climate change into a vivid experience for viewers.

“By engaging our senses of sight and sounds — and our tendency to focus on things that move — they earn our full attention, and are experienced more like real lived experience than like book learning,” Edward Maibach, director of George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication, told the Verge.

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The Weather Channel’s new climate change video is … really intense

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Is Bolsonaro the Trump of the Tropics or is Trump the Bolsonaro of the States?

by AndraAntoine Posted on April 10, 2019

A document released earlier this week revealed that the Brazilian government is considering axing its current Environment Council and replacing it with political appointees from far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, also known as the “Trump of the Tropics.” The current Environment Council, known as CONAMA, is the policymaking body tasked with protecting 60 percent of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.

CONAMA has nearly 100 members from all levels of government and society. Supporters of the plan say CONAMA is a “confusing” body that “acts emotionally, without due technique, being subjected to ideological interference.

“This is a profoundly ironic statement coming from members of the Bolsonaro regime,” Christian Poirier, a program director with the nonprofit Amazon Watch, told Grist. “The very same contention can be made about their form of government, which is deeply confusing, emotional, and ideological.”

It’s been just over a hundred days since Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, known as the “Trump of the Tropics,” took office. As a candidate, Bolsonaro often questioned the reality of climate change and claimed environmental protections restrained Brazil’s economic growth by holding back mining and agriculture. Since he’s been in power, he’s spent the bulk of his time weakening environmental restrictions, prioritizing industry interests, and cracking down on environmental activists. In other words, he’s not exactly the kind of guy environmentalists are keen to make more political appointments related to Amazonian protections.

“Bolsonaro’s environmental policy can be Orwellian to the extreme,” Poirer said.

Bolsonaro is well on his way to following through with his promises to rip up protected areas in the Amazon and gut other areas protected for Indigenous communities. The deforestation numbers from his first two months in office are already concerning. According to Instituto Socioambiental, a Brazilian advocacy group, there has been a 54 percent rise in deforestation in the Amazon-Xingu basin since Bolsonaro took power — the equivalent of 170,000 trees found a day. (Given that January and February are high rainfall months, it’s difficult to determine the full extent of the damage at this time.)

One of Bolsonaro’s first acts as president was to strip the country’s National Indian Foundation of much of its authority to demarcate and declare protected territory for Indigenous reserves. That authority has instead shifted to the Ministry of Agriculture, run by Bolsonaro appointee Ricardo Salles, who has called climate change “secondary” and says that agribusiness is “under threat.”

Bolsonaro has promised that he will not “give the Indians another inch of land.” And his rhetoric hasn’t stopped there — he took a particular interest in MST aka The Landless Worker’s Movement, a group that advocates for small landholders and subsistence farmers, referring to them as terrorists. “These red outlaws will be banished from our homeland,” Bolsonaro said in an address last November. “It will be a clean up the likes of which has never been seen in Brazilian history.”

Brazil is known as the deadliest place in the world for environmental defenders, many of whom are a part of indigenous communities.

Indigenous groups are, naturally, concerned. Dinamã Tuxá, Coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples, told Amazon Watch, “[Bolsonaro’s] discourse gives those who live around indigenous lands the right to practice violence without any sort of accountability. Those who invade indigenous lands and kill our people will be esteemed. He represents an institutionalization of genocide in Brazil.”

During the Fourth Session of the United Nations Environmental Assembly in Nairobi, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said Brazil could neither support nor sign environmental agreements that went against the country’s agribusiness sector. Salles claimed Brazil’s carbon emissions have fallen by about 72 percent since 2004, but failed to mention that that decline stopped in 2012.

It’s no surprise Bolsonaro’s appointees are pushing for industry interests. Bolsonaro is backed by some of the most powerful political players in Brazil: the ruralista bloc. The ruralistas are a political group linked to agribusiness and contend that environmental regulations in the country are too stringent, instead proposing agribusiness should be allowed to expand unrestricted.

Bolsonaro’s time in office has gotten a fair bit of U.S. coverage, with many stories focusing on the danger he and his administration poses to the Amazon rainforest, one of the world’s biggest carbon sinks. But lest Americans get too greener-than-thou, it’s important to note just how much Bolsonaro’s actions have drawn inspiration from our own Commander-in-Chief.

President Trump has signed several executive orders to reduce the size of national monuments and protected areas (some of which are considered sacred lands by indigenous groups) in order to allow for industry to open them up to oil and gas drilling and rake in the profits. Before taking office, Trump described the Environmental Protection Agency as a “disgrace” that should largely be dismantled. Moreover, former EPA head Scott Pruitt was an oil and gas industry man who has drawn parallels to Brazil’s Ricardo Salles, a convicted environmental criminal running the Brazilian Environmental Ministry. One of Pruitt’s appointees, Tony Cox, recently recommended the EPA dismiss the vast majority of evidence air pollution is bad for human health as it reassesses its national air quality standards.

There’s little doubt the two anti-environmental world leaders are fans of each other. When Bolsonaro threatened to jettison the Paris Climate Agreement, he was following Trump’s lead (though some speculate Bolsonaro has since backtracked from this promise). And yes, Bolsonaro has been a guest at Trump’s White House.

So, is Bolsonaro the Trump of the Tropics or is Trump the Bolsonaro of the States?

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Is Bolsonaro the Trump of the Tropics or is Trump the Bolsonaro of the States?

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Just how bad for you is breathing in air pollution? Well, it depends whom you ask.

by HalinaB96qaetmh Posted on April 10, 2019

Ask almost any scientist how bad air pollution is for people, and the answer is likely, pretty darn bad. Last week, a global report published by the Health Effects Institute found that breathing dirty air shortens the average expected lifespan of a child born today’s by 20 months, compared to how long they would live in the absence of air pollution. Robert O’Keefe, Vice President of the Institute, said in a statement that the research is part of “a growing worldwide consensus – among the World Health Organization, World Bank, International Energy Agency and others – that air pollution poses a major global public health challenge.”

But if you listen to Tony Cox, chair of the Chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and appointee of former Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, you’ll hear a completely different message. During a public meeting in late March, Cox said he is “actually appalled” with what he considers a limited body of evidence that links particulate matter in the air with premature death.

Not surprisingly, Cox’s statements have landed him in hot water with prominent scientists and public health advocates who say he could wind up undermining decades of work to clean up America’s air since Cox’s committee has been charged with advising the Environmental Protection Agency on its air quality standards.

The EPA is in the midst of reassessing its national air quality standards, which it does every five years to ensure that it is reviewing the latest scientific evidence available. It recently submitted a 1,800-page ‘Integrated Science Assessment’ compiling research on the health impacts of particulate matter pollution to the Chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which is independent of the EPA but influential in their final decision. That committee will give its recommendations on whether to strengthen or adjust existing federal standards.

Under the Trump administration, the Chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee has undergone somewhat of a scientific makeunder. For one, the committee is much smaller than it has been in the past, once boasting 28 members and now staffed only by its minimum of seven. Environmental organizations contend that former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and other members of Trump’s administration appointed largely pro-fossil fuel industry members, including Cox — who has previously worked as a consultant for the American Petroleum Institute and the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association. The EPA also disbanded a Particulate Matter Review Panel that previously weighed in Integrated Science Assessment alongside Cox’s committee.

As head of the committee advising the EPA on air quality, Cox has recommended that the agency only consider studies that make a causal link between air pollution and health outcomes through a scientific approach called manipulative causality — essentially a way of determining a potential hazard’s effect on health by looking at what happens when exposure stops. But limiting the scientific evidence under consideration to one methodology versus what scientists call a “weight of evidence approach” would exclude the vast body of research on air pollution.

Jonathan Samet, the former chair of the Chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, explained to Grist that using the weight of evidence method has been the practice for policy decisions for half a century. “This is the kind of approach used to decide that smoking causes lung cancer or that smoking causes heart disease,” Samet said.“These are constructs that are broad and holistic and have long been in place,” he said.

Samet compared manipulative causality to waiting to see whether a smoker’s health improves once they quit the habit. The approach can be prohibitively time-consuming, and it’s just one way of assessing the broad health implications of a potential toxin. And importantly for the EPA’s upcoming air quality decision, there aren’t many studies published already that fall within this framework.

In a scathing article published last week in the journal Science, research director Gretchen Goldman of the Center for Science and Democracy and the Union of Concerned Scientists and Harvard biostatistician Francesca Dominici wrote that “a requirement of manipulative causation fails to recognize the full depth and robustness of existing approaches in epidemiology, statistics, and causal inference and the degree to which they deal with confounding factors.”

A separate statement by the Union of Concerned Scientists contended that if the EPA adopts Cox’s recommendation via the Chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee for limiting studies to the much narrower approach, “It will be virtually impossible to prove particle pollution harms public health, despite the vast array of studies that show otherwise.”

In an email to Grist, a spokesperson for the EPA wrote that “Administrator Wheeler thanks the CASAC for all their efforts and will take all the CASAC advice under consideration.”

Vijay Limaye is a fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council who previously worked at the EPA and helped write the Integrated Science Assessment that Cox’s committee is now scrutinizing. Limaye says the vast majority of the evidence it considers, as well as the research compiled in this week’s State of the Global Air, would be “pushed to the side” under Cox’s approach. “It would basically rob the EPA of a number of tools it’s already been using to characterize the harmful effects of air pollutants.”

The Chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee will finalize its particulate matter review of the EPA’s assessment in the coming weeks.

Continued: 

Just how bad for you is breathing in air pollution? Well, it depends whom you ask.

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Republicans attack Puerto Rico’s plan to go 100 percent renewable: ‘It’s just unrealistic’

by RosellaSchmid Posted on April 10, 2019

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Republicans on Tuesday pilloried Puerto Rico’s plan to stop burning imported fossil fuels to generate electricity, calling the proposal senseless and opening a new front in an increasingly bitter partisan battle over the storm-ravaged island’s struggle to recover.

At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, GOP lawmakers dismissed the Puerto Rican legislature’s vote last month to approve an ambitious bill mandating 100 percent renewable power by 2050 as “political interference” and accused the territory’s legislators of squandering an opportunity to reap the spoils of the American fracking boom.

“It’s just unrealistic,” Utah Repbulican representative Rob Bishop said. “Yet there’s still legislation.”

The nine-term congressman, who’s received more from the oil and gas industry than any other donor since taking office, last month became the chief antagonist of Democrats’ Green New Deal resolution, which outlines the first climate proposal scientists say is on the scale of what’s needed to combat the global warming crisis. Bishop falsely claimed the Green New Deal banned hamburgers, and performatively gobbled one at a news conference. Later, he suggested the Green New Deal was tantamount to “genocide.”

Yet, on Tuesday, he blamed Puerto Rico lawmakers for playing politics with the state-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.

“PREPA has been hamstrung by political demands,” he said. “One of the problems of PREPA in the past is political interference when your primary goal is [to] provide abundant and affordable energy.”

At least 13 states have passed or are considering plans that set 100 percent clean-electricity targets, according to a report last month by the consultancy EQ Research. But Puerto Rico’s circumstance is unique. In September 2017, hurricanes Irma and Maria shredded the island’s aging electrical grid, leaving millions without power in the second-longest blackout in world history.

Puerto Rico imports oil and gas for more than 80 percent of its electricity needs, saddling ratepayers with prices roughly twice the American average and a toxic legacy of pollution. Renewables made up just 2 percent of the electricity mix as of two years ago.

To some, the disaster, widely seen as a glimpse of what’s to come as climate change worsens, presented an opportunity to equip Puerto Rico to harvest its plentiful sun and wind for power. But Republicans instead proposed a shock-doctrine approach that promised to make Puerto Rico a reliable market for U.S.-produced gas and oil.

At a November 2017 hearing before the same committee, Colorado Republican representative Doug Lamborn asked at the time “which environmental regulation waivers” were required to jump-start efforts to import more natural gas to Puerto Rico. Last July, Republican representative Tom McClintock  of California wondered why anyone would consider wind and solar favorable options for Puerto Rico at all.

He doubled down on those queries on Tuesday.

“They’re intermittent,” McClintock said. “They require reliable generators that are running at ready status so that if a cloud passes over or the wind drops off, they can instantly come on.”

It’s an argument President Donald Trump routinely deploys, albeit in less sophisticated terms, to deride renewables. But renewables are typically paired with battery systems that store excess solar or wind power for use when the sky is dark or the air is still. Solar panels paired with batteries provided oases of electricity during Puerto Rico’s monthslong blackout. Indeed, the 100 percent renewables bill exempts energy storage systems from sales tax and eliminates rules that barred Puerto Ricans from installing battery units without permission from PREPA.

Yet batteries barely came up at the hearing, except when one lawmaker pointed out that the technology can be expensive.

The hearing came amid a renewed fight over Puerto Rican disaster relief. Trump repeatedly threatened to cut funding to the battered island, which is still struggling to rebuild as federal aid trickles in slowly. Last week, the president falsely claimed Puerto Rico received $91 billion in relief. In reality, of the $41 billion approved to aid Puerto Rico, only about $11 billion has flowed from federal coffers. Another $50 billion is expected to be delivered, but over a period the Associated Press said “could span decades.”

The Senate failed last week to advance two separate aid bills as Democrats demanded additional funding for Puerto Rico to which Republican leaders said Trump would never agree. Negotiations broke down Tuesday as Congress headed for a two-week recess.

Disaster funding hasn’t halted the natural gas industry’s progress. Last July, the Department of Energy proposed easing shipping rules for liquefied natural gas. By reclassifying tankers as “small scale,” the ships could circumvent more robust federal environmental reviews, according to a report by the watchdog site The Real News.

“The finalization of this rule will expedite the permitting of certain small-scale exports of natural gas,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in a press release at the time. “The so-called ‘small-scale rule’ will further unleash American energy by reducing the regulatory burden on American businesses while also providing significant benefits to our trading partners in the Caribbean, Central America and South America.”

There have been hiccups. In December, Texas-based Excelerate Energy abandoned plans to build a $400 million natural gas terminal on the southern shore of Puerto Rico.

But last month, New York-based New Fortress Energy signed a five-year deal with PREPA to supply natural gas to the utility’s power plant in San Juan. On Tuesday morning, the U.S. Energy Information Administration published its latest figures showing Puerto Rico’s liquefied natural gas imports bounced back to pre-storm levels as of late 2018.

Energy Department electricity chief Bruce Walker, a Trump appointee, testified Tuesday that attempting to rebuild Puerto Rico with non-fossil sources after the storm would have slowed the recovery.

“There are some significant engineering concerns,” he said. “It’s not technically possible today to convert that island to 100 percent renewable.”

PREPA CEO José Ortiz Vázquez agreed, but said the debate was over how heavily to invest in imported gas to carry the island through to its eventual goal of 100 percent clean electricity.

“Some groups favor going straight up with maximum capacity of renewables and keep burning natural gas to get us through to 2050, while other groups have a different opinion, where we should make a big bet now on natural gas and slowly work on the renewable issue,” he said.

Asked how long it would take to convert Puerto Rico’s entire electricity supply, a panel of experts in the second half of the hearing offered answers ranging from “within a decade” to 25 years to “well before the 2050 deadline,” if implemented “under a well-managed, professional system.”

There is a real disagreement over the feasibility of going 100 percent renewable on the national level. A paper published in 2017 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argued a better plan was to aim for 80 percent renewables by the middle of the century, with nuclear plants and fossil fuel stations equipped with carbon capture and storage technology making up the rest. But studies released in 2015 made the case that the rapid strides in clean energy made it practical and financially sound to completely transition all 50 states and 139 countries to 100 percent renewable starting immediately.

Yet profits are at the heart of Puerto Rico’s dispute. Last year, the Puerto Rican legislature approved a plan to privatize PREPA. It’s a controversial decision that some say will help the bankrupt utility to dig itself out of debt and make the improvements it needs to lower electricity prices. But others fear a PREPA beholden to investors will lock in high rates and transfer control of a public good into the hands of the rich, establishing yet another way the downtrodden U.S. colony generates wealth for those back on the mainland.

“It’s not possible for PREPA to immediately convert to 100 percent renewable energy. There will be a transition period. We recognize that,” said Democratic representative Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, who presided over Tuesday’s hearing as committee chairman. “But there are concerns that the current plan to focus on natural gas instead of maximizing and doing promotion around solar generation will lock us into an infrastructure that will soon be dated, an infrastructure that will be dependent on importation. Am I correct?”

Marla Pérez Lugo, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, said the question captured “the essence of the problem.”

“We’re still thinking that what’s good for PREPA is good for Puerto Rico,” she said. “And that is not necessarily so.”

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Republicans attack Puerto Rico’s plan to go 100 percent renewable: ‘It’s just unrealistic’

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