Category Archives: Hoffman

For Open Data Day, green hacks and snacks

by RupertxMcmillan Posted on February 23, 2013

For Open Data Day, green hacks and snacks

By Susie Cagle

Civic-minded hacktivists, you best brush off those keyboards and pick out a cute outfit, because tomorrow is International Open Data Day.

Cities around the world will be hosting hackathons to turn government data dumps into useful interactive applications for citizen engagement. Check the map for info on a ‘thon near you.

For this special holiday occasion, San Francisco’s Climate Corporation is hosting EcoHack. “EcoHack is about using technology to improve and better understand our natural environment,” say the event’s organizers. “Based on the hacking model of quick, clever solutions to problems, EcoHack is an opportunity to make a difference while having fun!” Woo, nerds!

EcoHack days held in New York in the past have resulted in some sweet projects, from routing bikes and building pollution sensors to mapping deforestation (fun!).

This year’s crew will be working on mapping community solar projects, visualizing oil spills, and “food’ficiency,” among other worthy data-driven causes. Also there will be pizza, which goes surprisingly well with depressing statistics. Just trust me on this one.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

Twitter

.

Read more:

Business & Technology

,

Living

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

View article: 

For Open Data Day, green hacks and snacks

Posted in Citizen, GE, Hoffman, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on For Open Data Day, green hacks and snacks

Permafrost is even less perma than we thought

by marinavhunt Posted on February 22, 2013

Permafrost is even less perma than we thought

By Susie Cagle

Hey, so, about that layer of long-frozen soil covering almost a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere’s land surface? You know, the stuff that’s started melting and freaking out climate scientists but often isn’t calculated into global warming metrics?

U.N./Christopher Arp

Near Alaska, a chunk of permafrost breaks off into the Arctic Ocean.

Yeah, so, uh, according to a new study published this week in the journal Science, that may be melting way faster than we thought. From Climate Central:

If global average temperature were to rise another 2.5°F (1.5°C), say earth scientist Anton Vaks of Oxford University, and an international team of collaborators, permafrost across much of northern Canada and Siberia could start to weaken and decay. And since climate scientists project at least that much warming by the middle of the 21st century, global warming could begin to accelerate as a result, in what’s known as a feedback mechanism. …

[E]nvironmental scientist Rose Cory, of the University of North Carolina, focused on sites in Alaska where melting permafrost has caused the soil to collapse into sinkholes or landslides. The soil exposed in this way is “baked” by sunlight, and said Cory in a press release, “(it) makes carbon better food for bacteria.”

In fact, she said, exposed organic matter releases about 40 percent more carbon, in the form of CO2 or methane, than soil that stays buried. “What that means,” Cory said, “ is that if all that stored carbon is released, exposed to sunlight and consumed by bacteria, it could double the amount of this potent greenhouse gas going into the environment.”

Permafrost that’s been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years is already starting to melt in the Arctic, not just raising global temps but also razing towns. Y’all up there in the Yukon may consider a move to an ironically warmer area, preferably on high ground. The rest of us will just cower in fear in place.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

Twitter

.

Read more:

Climate & Energy

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

View original article: 

Permafrost is even less perma than we thought

Posted in GE, Hoffman, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Permafrost is even less perma than we thought

How the environmental movement can save the environment

by bloksaggfdflajn Posted on February 22, 2013

How the environmental movement can save the environment

By Philip Bump

The environmental movement’s challenge isn’t energy, it’s power.

Power is what prompts political change. Shifts in power, application of power. Not necessarily power on Capitol Hill, but at least enough power to force Capitol Hill to act. Environmentalists lack the power necessary to effect any major change because there are only a few environmental champions in positions of power in the United States: a few in the private sector, a few in Congress, a very few in the administration, almost no one in the media.

In order to make change, the movement needs to build political power. But instead it’s consumed with building energy in an already-energetic base.

Young people protest during Powershift 2011.

As David Roberts notes here and as I’ve noted before, passion and energy are critical to change. Without passion and a desire to make the status quo snap, nothing happens. But that passion has to exist within the powerful. And right now it doesn’t.

Last weekend, tens of thousands of protestors met on the Mall in Washington, D.C., to demand that the president reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Organizers celebrated the turnout, hailing it as the largest climate rally in history.

That may be, but it’s certainly not the largest environmental rally in history. On the first Earth Day in 1970, an estimated 1 million people rallied just in New York City, and nearly 20 million across the country. In 2000, a large Earth Day rally in D.C. was mirrored throughout the country. While those were more broadly focused on the environment, they likely matched last weekend’s crowd in energy. And large swaths of every such crowd shared a similar message: Take action to protect the Earth. Only the specifics varied.

The environmental movement has been sparking passion in the U.S. for more than 40 years, and calling on the government to act. At one time the government did: President Nixon created the EPA the same year as those first rallies. Change was effected because that passion occurred among the powerful: A broad swath of voters in the 1970s supported improving the environment, Gallup notes; Congress passed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Energy coupled with power made change.

What environmental organizations failed to do was institutionalize that power. Rallies and petitions sparked change, so rallies and petitions remained prominent strategies for decades. That power trickled away as the environment improved and core activists aged and the fossil fuel industry and other polluters increasingly wielded their own power. When the climate crisis burst into national consciousness with An Inconvenient Truth, environmental organizations knew how to file lawsuits against the EPA and hold rallies, but weren’t prepared to deal with the energy of new supporters. 350.org stepped into the vacuum, but without a plan for building political power, it, too, has seen limited success. American voters en masse are a powerful group, but their passion has dissipated.

Rallies like last Sunday’s won’t change that. Consider it from the point of view of a non-activist. Without political power and without powerful champions in the media, rally organizers were able to generate only limited awareness of the event. Democracy Now! covered the rally, but non-activists don’t watch Democracy Now! [Editor’s note: 350.org points out that Sunday’s rally got a fair bit of coverage from the mainstream media.] Had they watched it, they would have seen protestors, mostly young, carrying signs with pictures of the Earth and various slogans. In short: They would have seen little they hadn’t seen before. The rally may have whipped up some passion, but it was almost certainly among the already-passionate.

This is the media’s fault, yes. But the media only covers what it is convinced is important. There are two times the media has given widespread coverage to climate change lately. The first was when Sandy demolished the East Coast; the second, when President Obama raised the topic in his inauguration and State of the Union speeches. In the case of Sandy, we had a (frightening, deadly) aberration from the norm. In the case of Obama, he wields power. The rally last weekend had neither of those qualities. Fifty thousand people from various parts of the country may be a lot of people, but it’s not a lot of political power.

So how can the environmental movement make the passionate powerful — or how can it make the powerful passionate? Sandy prompted Obama to show passion on climate change. As time progresses, other disasters will likely spur other powerful entities to act. But if the goal is to prevent those disasters, there needs to be another strategy.

On Wednesday, Politico outlined political spending by PACs in January. ExxonMobil spent $51,000. BP spent $4,000. A Michigan utility spent $65,500. The National Mining Association spent $26,000. The League of Conservation Voters spent $1,300.

Spending money is not the only way to build political power. But building political power, in the form of building allies in Congress and in statehouses, does require investment. National environmental organizations have massive, inert, largely dispassionate memberships. There’s nascent power in that, but power that is largely uncoupled from energy.

What if environmental organizations pooled resources into a PAC that could target political races? What if those organizations asked their millions of members to get involved in politics? What if the unprecedented shift the Sierra Club took wasn’t its executive director spending an hour at a D.C. police station but was instead an insistence that the time for political apathy had ended? If that happened, if hundreds of thousands of members donated time and money and new bursts of energy to politics? Then we might see change.

Then we might get hard-green members of Congress, holding that body hostage to the demands of the future in the same way that no-tax extremists now hold it hostage to the past. There might be reason for the allies of fossil fuels to fear every other November, as this mega-PAC poured money and local volunteers into primary elections. There might be media coverage of this new entity shaking up American politics, leveraging the assets and passions of Americans to actually effect change.

This is not a quick strategy. It would be a deliberate, forceful tool for establishing a bulwark within the American political infrastructure. It would force the sort of conflict that needs to be forced — not between greens outside the White House gates and the Democratic president within, but between well-funded activists and the favored congressmembers of fossil fuel companies. It would require environmental organizations to put the environment over their own best interests, which is never easy for any institution.

But what activists are doing is what activists have always done, and it isn’t working. The question isn’t whether the Keystone XL pipeline is blocked, it’s whether the established power structure in the United States is willing to combat climate change. Even if the answer to the first is yes, the answer to the second is clearly no. That’s the problem that needs to be fixed.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Read the article: 

How the environmental movement can save the environment

Posted in GE, Hoffman, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How the environmental movement can save the environment

USDA says crops will do better but food prices will do worse

by oks23po Posted on February 22, 2013

USDA says crops will do better but food prices will do worse

By Susie Cagle

It’s more cold comfort for drought-stricken farmers this week, and I don’t mean the snow.

USDA chief economist Joe Glauber was all sunshine this Thursday in announcing that normal spring weather is expected to improve corn and soybean yields by huge percentages over last year’s tiny drought-stricken crops. Bigger yields mean tinier prices — Glauber said corn would be down about a third from last year, soy would drop more than a quarter, and wheat would be down about 11 percent.

From the South Dakota Argus Leader:

The recovery should send prices for most oilseeds and grains sharply lower, providing a much-needed reprieve for livestock, dairy and poultry producers struggling with high feed costs, and relief down the road for consumers who have paid more for food at their local grocery store. …

“The critical factor that people will be following is weather,” Glauber said at the department’s annual outlook forum. “While the outlook for 2013 remains bright, there are many uncertainties.”

Way to bury the lede, Glauber. No matter how many times Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says “American agriculture is quite resilient,” there still remains the fact that American agriculture is also in crisis, and forecasters are expecting more hot and dry weather this year.

And even though industrial prices are dropping, the savings won’t trickle down to consumers for at least quite some time — the USDA anticipates food prices will rise this year between 3 and 4 percent.

Richard Volpe, an economist with USDA’s Economic Research Service, said the evidence of last year’s drought is just now starting to really have an effect on consumer prices at the retail level, resulting in higher costs for everything from meat to corn syrup.

Dammit, if it were only meat and corn syrup and not also everything in between…

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

Twitter

.

Read more:

Food

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Link:  

USDA says crops will do better but food prices will do worse

Posted in GE, Hoffman, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on USDA says crops will do better but food prices will do worse

Tar Sands Blockaders tell their own story in a new documentary

by BayalaHillesland628 Posted on February 22, 2013

Tar Sands Blockaders tell their own story in a new documentary

By Susie Cagle

If this past Sunday’s Forward on Climate rally showed a lot of love for President Obama, it showed even more for the nonviolent direct action going down in East Texas. Throughout the day, activists blockading construction of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline received big support from even the most law-abiding demonstrators.

But though their civil disobedience might seem mainstream within the climate movement, the blockaders are taking some seriously big risks out there, and a new documentary shows just how big. The nearly hour-long film by Garrett Graham was produced in collaboration with the blockaders and includes footage they shot themselves, from some places where journalists might fear to tread lest, you know, pepper-spray, choke-holds, etc.

You can watch the whole thing right here:

And if President Obama approves the northern leg of the pipeline and construction moves forward? Well, this sign from Sunday’s rally might be prescient:

resistkxl

Pretty straightforward on climate action, eh?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

Twitter

.

Read more:

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Original article:

Tar Sands Blockaders tell their own story in a new documentary

Posted in GE, Hoffman, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tar Sands Blockaders tell their own story in a new documentary

Pipeline companies will get a $7 billion tax break through 2016

by nension Posted on February 22, 2013

Pipeline companies will get a $7 billion tax break through 2016

By Philip Bump

There are people in Washington, D.C., right now scratching their heads and writing memos and trying to figure out how on earth we might possibly avoid budgetary doomsday, the sequestration that will lop some $1.2 trillion out of the federal budget over the next decade. Again, this is only happening because Congress tried to threaten itself. It’s like you threatening to rob yourself by holding a gun to your head and then trying to figure out how to keep from being robbed.

But while all of this is happening, something else is going on in Our Nation’s Capital™: Pipeline companies are getting an even larger tax break than expected. From Bloomberg:

A tax break used by oil and gas pipeline companies such as Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (KMP) will cost the U.S. government $7 billion through 2016, about four times more than previously estimated, Congress’s tax scorekeepers said this month.

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation quadrupled its cost estimate for exempting the fast-growing “master limited partnerships” from corporate income tax in the year ended in September to $1.2 billion from $300 million. The annual cost will rise to $1.6 billion by fiscal 2016, the committee said.

$7 billion. $1.6 billion a year. Tack on the estimated $4 billion in tax breaks the oil industry receives each year, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Some people, new to American politics, think this pipeline tax break will become a political target. If it does, it will only be a target for as long as it takes for the American Petroleum Institute to do some overwrought hand-wringing about job creation. Then it will be ignored once again.

After all, with sequestration threatening to devastate funding for education, public safety, public health, child care programs, worker training, and the military, D.C.’s best minds are already occupied with problem-solving. And they’ll get the job done, no need to worry. In short order, they’ll figure out how to avoid those cuts to the military. That thief won’t steal all their money.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Link to article – 

Pipeline companies will get a $7 billion tax break through 2016

Posted in GE, Hoffman, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pipeline companies will get a $7 billion tax break through 2016

Environmental, conservative, media organizations rank our lovable Congress

by N0bodyh56 Posted on February 22, 2013

Environmental, conservative, media organizations rank our lovable Congress

By Philip Bump

This place.

It is awards season, everyone! For cool people (well, cooler people than me) that means it’s time for the distribution of Grammys and Emmys and Oscars and Whatevers. For other people, it’s awards and accolades strewn upon Capitol Hill, meaning the various ratings of members of Congress by media entities and advocacy organizations.

It is, as I have analogized previously, like the trophies given out at the end of a season to kids in a youth basketball league, except some of the awards come from the coaches and others come from fawning parents. Like youth basketball awards, these accolades will sit on shelves in the corners of rooms for a few years and eventually be thrown out.

Anyway, here they are.

The League of Conservation Voters

Every year, the LCV ranks how members of the House and Senate vote on issues related to the environment. How did those august bodies fare this year, LCV?

From an environmental perspective, the best that can be said about the second session of the 112th Congress is that it is over. Indeed, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives continued its war on the environment, public health, and clean energy throughout 2012, cementing its record as the most anti-environmental House in our nation’s history. …

The good news is that while the U.S. House voted against the environment with alarming frequency, both the U.S. Senate and the Obama administration stood firm against the vast majority of these attacks. There are 14 Senate votes included in the 2012 Scorecard, many of which served as a sharp rebuke of the House’s polluter-driven agenda.

Very, very surprising, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The LCV also made little maps, so you can see which states hate the Earth the most. Here’s the House, which really hates the Earth a lot.

LCV

And the Senate, which hates it a little less.

LCV

You can see at the bottom there the average vote for each body: The House voted the right way on environmentally important legislation 42 percent of the time; the Senate did 56 percent. Nice work, everyone. You can also see how that compares to other congresses in this graph.

LCV

The terrible House has gotten terribler recently which, again, is completely unsurprising.

But no one cares how each team did. People want to know about the players. Who was the most environmentally friendly member of the House? Was it Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio)? Was it Rep. Paul Ryan (R-VP)? No, it was not either of those guys! Eight House members had perfect scores: Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Woolsey (D-Calif.), Stark (D-Calif.), Honda (D-Calif.), Capps (D-Calif.), Polis (D-Col.), Quigley (D-Ill.), Markey (D-Mass.). Nice work, everyone. Here is a small trophy to put in your district office.

Here’s the full scorecard [PDF], which should be used for betting purposes.

The National Journal and some conservative group

Remember how this article was about awards season? Yes, it’s still about that.

The Huffington Post runs down (in both senses) these other accolades.

Every year, the National Journal determines the ideological standouts from within the Democratic and Republican caucuses in the House and Senate. It takes the “roll-call votes in the second session of the 112th Congress,” and sorts through them until it has identified the ones that put the ideological differences between the parties in the sharpest relief. The Journal checks who voted for what on those occasions, subjects those votes to statistical analysis, assigns weights “based on the degree to which it correlated with other votes in the same issue area,” and factors in the various absences and abstentions. Finally, they cut the head off the duck and watch the duck’s dying torso stagger around a Ouija board while listening to Enya. Ha, just kidding, I made up the part that actually sounds like it might have been fun!

At any rate, after all is said and done, the Journal arrives at results. And so, without further ado, your 2012 winners:

– Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) is the most conservative senator.

– Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tied for the most liberal senator.

– Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) is the most conservative member of the House (like you couldn’t have guessed that).

– And a whole mess of Democratic representatives have tied for the most liberal member of the House. They are Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), Pete Stark (D-Calif.), Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), John Olver (D-Mass.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), John Lewis (D-Ga.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Mike Honda (D-Calif.), Donna Edwards (D-Md.), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), and I promise you that is it.

And some conservative group gave awards!

Those who score 100 percent on the [that group’s] scale get recognized as a “Defender of Liberty.” This year, the senators earning that distinction are: Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).

The similarly honored House members are Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Diane Black (R-Tenn.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Dan Burton (R-Ind.), Mike Conaway (R-Texas), Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), John Fleming (R-La.), Bill Flores (R-Texas), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Tom Graves (R-Ga.), Wally Herger (R-Calif.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Jeff Landry (R-La.), Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), Pete Olson (R-Texas), Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Tom Price (R-Ga.), Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), Ed Royce (R-Calif.), Steve Scalise (R-La.), David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.), Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.).

The LCV rankings for the senators were 35. In sum. Cumulatively. I didn’t bother to add up those for the House, but it was probably the same grand total.

My personal rankings

Everyone got a 100 percent and a pizza party.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

View original post here – 

Environmental, conservative, media organizations rank our lovable Congress

Posted in GE, Hoffman, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Environmental, conservative, media organizations rank our lovable Congress

Louisiana may see the highest-rising seas in the world

by LeannqOsborn Posted on February 22, 2013

Louisiana may see the highest-rising seas in the world

By Philip Bump

As Hurricane Katrina approached, many Americans for the first time learned about New Orleans’ precarious, below-sea-level orientation. The city is described as “bowl-like,” rimmed by levees and natural structures that might not hold back surging storm water — and might make drying out nearly impossible. It turned out that the analogy was imperfect. New Orleans is more like a TV dinner tray, and only the Ninth Ward ended up flooded.

After Katrina, anyway — a category 3 storm when it hit. But as sea levels continue to rise, and warming promises bigger storms, New Orleans’ complete submersion may be inevitable. From The Lens:

Stunning new data not yet publicly released shows Louisiana losing its battle with rising seas much more quickly than even the most pessimistic studies have predicted to date. …

Southeast Louisiana — with an average elevation just three feet above sea level — has long been considered one of the landscapes most threatened by global warming. That’s because the delta it’s built on — starved of river sediment and sliced by canals — is sinking at the same time that oceans are rising. The combination of those two forces is called relative sea-level rise, and its impact can be dramatic.

Scientists have come up with four scenarios of sea-level rise, ranging from .2 meters (8 inches) to 2 meters (about 6.5 feet). They’re using the mid-range figure, about 4.5 feet, to make local projections of relative sea-level rise.

For example, tide-gauge measurements at Grand Isle, about 50 miles south of New Orleans, have shown an average annual sea-level rise over the past few decades of 9.24 millimeters (about one-third of an inch) while those at Key West, which has very little subsidence, read only 2.24 millimeters.

For decades coastal planners used that Grand Isle gauge as the benchmark for the worst case of local sea-level rise because it was one of the highest in the world. But as surveying crews began using more advanced instruments, they made a troubling discovery.

Readings at a distance inland were even worse than at Grand Isle. “For example,” Osborne said, “we have rates of 11.2 millimeters along the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain — the metro New Orleans area. And inside the city we have places with almost [a half-inch] per year.

The Lens article includes this graph from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

The Lens/NOAA

Click to embiggen.

Orleans parish, the one expected to be 85.3 percent under sea level by 2100, is home to the city of New Orleans.

Of course, as noted above, New Orleans is also more than half below sea level already. It’s like taking one of those cafeteria trays with the separate triangular sections and pushing it down into a bathtub. The more you push — or the more the water in the tub rises — the more it encroaches around the rim, surface tension holding it back. Eventually, as happened in 2005, it will give.

The only way to prevent that from happening is to build a larger lip around the outside, requiring a generous outlay of money and a great deal of urgency.

[NOAA’s Tim Osborne said,] “Based on the frequency of storms over the last century, we know we can expect 30 to 40 hurricanes or tropical storms to hit this area by the end of this century. Think of Isaac — not of Katrina — and add up the cost of that kind of destruction 30 or 40 times.

“During Isaac, Louisiana [Highway] 1 to Grand Isle was almost impassable. It will be impassable in a few decades unless something is done. Look at what happened to Plaquemines Parish from Category 1 Isaac. More and worse will happen in the next few decades.”

Osborne stressed the new figures mean the state’s Master Plan should be adjusted to meet the larger, faster-approaching threat.

“People are already questioning the wisdom of spending huge sums to protect Louisiana,” he said. “The state needs to make sure they’re proposing plans that will last more than a few decades, that they aren’t asking for billions to build things that might be ineffective before they are even finished being built.”

In 2009, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) openly opposed efforts to curb climate change. By 2100, of course, he’ll no longer be in office and his name will likely be forgotten. After all, can you name the governor of Atlantis?

Source

New research: Louisiana coast faces highest rate of sea-level rise worldwide, The Lens

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Continue at source: 

Louisiana may see the highest-rising seas in the world

Posted in GE, Hoffman, LG, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Louisiana may see the highest-rising seas in the world

Meet Ernest Moniz, who may or may not be the next secretary of energy

by LeannqOsborn Posted on February 22, 2013

Meet Ernest Moniz, who may or may not be the next secretary of energy

By Philip Bump

Everyone is excited about rumors that President Obama will name Ernest Moniz to run the Department of Energy. Reactions range from “Who is Ernest Moniz?” to “What happened to the other guy?” to “Who was the other guy?”

Well, we are here to answer those questions! (The first one, anyway; we’ve answered the other two before.) Since you live a fast-paced lifestyle, always on the go, we’ve broken it up into bite-sized pieces, one bit of info at a time. You are welcome in advance.

Who is Ernest Moniz?

Well, he might be the next secretary of energy — if Obama nominates him and if the Senate approves him. It is possible that in two months time he will be of very little interest to you, having not been confirmed. Or he will be of very little interest to you because he was confirmed, but you, like most Americans, are fairly indifferent to the office of secretary of energy.

But you knew that. So here’s who he is, as articulated by Reuters, which appears to have been first with rumors of his imminent nomination.

Moniz, a former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, is director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative, a research group that gets funding from industry heavyweights including BP, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco for academic work on projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.

Ha ha. Sounds great! We will come back to this part, obviously.

At MIT, Moniz led intensive studies about the future of coal, nuclear energy and natural gas, and he helped attract funding and research momentum to energy projects on campus.

People familiar with Moniz’s work said, if chosen, he would bring his own energy and pragmatism to the job. …

Moniz earned kudos for a pragmatic approach toward using research to find ways to reduce carbon pollution from fossil fuels and transition to cleaner forms of energy.

We’ll come back to this, too.

What does he look like?

Well, he looks like this:

MIT

But more evocatively, he kind of looks like a Founding Father who teaches high-school English in New Hampshire.

Has he ever been in any movies?

No. According to IMDB, he’s only ever been on Frontline. Put those autograph books away!

What’s his actual, non-summarized background?

Here’s part of his bio at MIT:

Professor Moniz received a Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in physics from Boston College, a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Athens, the University of Erlangen-Nurenburg, and Michigan State University. He was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Saclay, France, and at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Moniz is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Humboldt Foundation, and the American Physical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received the 1998 Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award for vision and leadership in advancing scientific simulation and, in 2008, the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios III for contributions to development of research, technology and education in Cyprus and the wider region.

(Honestly, “the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios III” sounds made up.)

I would like to hear him in his own words, please.

Fine. Here you go, via Switch Energy Project, as pointed out to us by D. Ray Long.

How do environmental groups feel about his possible nomination?

A charitable way to describe how they feel would be: mixed.

As noted above, his program at MIT receives a lot of money from fossil fuel interests. And Moniz has been unabashed in his advocacy of the use of natural gas as a “bridge” fuel and even for some expansion of nuclear power. (You can read his thoughts on the latter here.)

The Hill has a small collection of quotes from disaffected greens, but the better overview comes from Inside Climate News, which has a good article on Moniz’s background. It starts with his thoughts on natural gas.

In December, while speaking at the University of Texas at Austin, Moniz warned that while natural gas could reduce carbon emissions by displacing coal-fired electricity, its increasing use could also slow growth in the clean energy sector.

“When it comes to carbon, [natural] gas is part of our solution at least for some time,” said Moniz, who served as undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration. “And we should take advantage of the time to innovate and bring down the cost of renewables. The worst thing w[ould] be is to get time and not use it. And that I’m afraid is where we are.”

This isn’t incorrect, mind you — natural gas has spurred a drop in carbon emissions and is certainly going to be part of the mix. But it’s not something that most environmental organizations are currently championing, especially given the process usually used to extract that gas: fracking.

Moniz has accepted fracking as a necessary-but-unnecessarily-polluting evil. In 2011, Moniz presented a report from his MIT group to the Senate, saying:

“Regulation of shale (and other oil and gas) activity is generally controlled at the state level, meaning that acceptable practices can vary between shale plays,” Moniz wrote in his prepared testimony. “The MIT study recommends that in order to minimize environmental impacts, current best practice regulation and oversight should be applied uniformly to all shales.”

Moniz didn’t elaborate on how to standardize regulations and oversight …

“Prior to carrying out our analysis, we had an open mind as to whether natural gas would indeed be a ‘bridge’ to a low-carbon future,” he told the committee. “In broad terms, we find that, given the large amounts of natural gas available in the U.S. at moderate cost … natural gas can indeed play an important role over the next couple of decades (together with demand management) in economically advancing a clean energy system.”

At the same time, however, the report projected that natural gas will “eventually become too carbon intensive” and should be phased out around 2050.

Moniz’s record also demonstrates commitment to renewable energy development.

As a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, he helped write a 2010 report that recommended a federal investment of $16 billion per year for clean energy innovation — about triple the 2010 investment. Some of that money could come from the private sector, the report said. For example, “we use about 200 billion gallons of transportation fuel annually, so a two cents per gallon charge would … generate about $4 billion per year.” It said the same amount of money could be raised by charging a fee for the electricity used nationwide — a suggestion Moniz reiterated at the Texas conference.

Expect this to come up during confirmation hearings.

So, will he be confirmed by the Senate?

Well, given the drawn-out, ridiculous path Republican Chuck Hagel has been forced to crawl in his bid to be secretary of defense, God only knows. Granted, defense is a more high-profile Cabinet position, but it seems clear that his nomination happened under the belief that confirmation would be easier than it has been.

And, of course, Moniz would first have to be nominated.

OK. So, will he be nominated?

As before: God only knows. Well, God and Obama.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Link:

Meet Ernest Moniz, who may or may not be the next secretary of energy

Posted in GE, Hoffman, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Meet Ernest Moniz, who may or may not be the next secretary of energy