Tag Archives: blue marble

Keystone Light: The Keystone XL Alternative You’ve Never Heard of Is Probably Going to Be Built

by Margurite Axley Posted on August 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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Last week, the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, hit another snag: The State Department’s Office of the Inspector General said that it is investigating a possible conflict-of-interest issue in the project’s environmental impact study. The inspector general is probing whether the company that produced the environmental impact study, Energy Resource Management (ERM), failed to disclose its past working relationship with TransCanada, the company building the pipeline. But while Keystone XL languishes, a rival pipeline plan is speeding through the approval process.

One of TransCanada’s rivals, Enbridge Inc., has quietly been moving ahead with a slightly smaller pipeline project that could be piping 660,000 barrels of crude per day to the gulf by 2015. (The Keystone line would carry 700,000 barrels per day.) For environmentalists hoping that blocking the Keystone pipeline would choke the carbon-intensive development of the Canadian tar sands, the Enbridge Eastern Gulf pipeline would be a disaster.

The 774-mile pipeline would run from Patoka, Illinois, to St. James, Louisiana, alleviating a pipeline bottleneck in the Midwest, where the shale oil from North Dakota’s Bakken formation meets the flow from Alberta’s oil sands, overwhelming the capacity of the current pipelines. And although 200 miles of pipe destined for Keystone XL sits collecting dust in North Dakota with no shipping date in sight, the bulk of the Eastern Gulf project is already built—almost three quarters of it will be repurposed natural gas line. Without the public outcry that has bogged down Keystone, the project has flown along smoothly under the radar.

There’s reason to be concerned: Enbridge was behind the largest overland pipeline spill in US history. In 2010 an Enbridge pipeline loosed more than 1.1 million gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River and its surrounding wetlands. The spill is still being cleaned up, with the bill rising to over $1 billion, and the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there may be as much as 100,000 gallons of oil still lingering on the bottom of the river.

The Eastern Gulf line is only one piece of a larger plan. As Inside Climate News reported earlier this summer, Enbridge is building a 5,000-mile network of pipelines that would far overshadow the potential impact of the Keystone line. And TransCanada has new plans in the works in case President Obama blocks the Keystone project. Earlier this month, the company announced its plan for a new venture that would link eastern and western Canada, providing an outlet for Alberta’s booming oil sands producers. And the Canadian ambassador to the United States has vowed to ship crude to US refineries on trains if the pipelines aren’t approved.

The recent news about the latest hitches for the Keystone XL pipeline may have cheered its opponents. But they’re going to have to start thinking a lot bigger if they want to block further tar sands oil development entirely.

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Keystone Light: The Keystone XL Alternative You’ve Never Heard of Is Probably Going to Be Built

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2012: A Year of Broken Climate Records

by dfonis5 Posted on August 6, 2013

Mother Jones

2012 was the eighth or ninth warmest year on record, depending on which dataset you look at, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual State of the Climate report, released today. That is just one of many extreme statistics identified in the survey, which pulls together the most recent information from hundreds of researchers worldwide on everything from temperature to sea level to Arctic ice. Taken together, the report’s authors say, the data paint an unmistakable picture of a warming planet.

“In 2012, certainly not every variable we looked at broke a record,” Thomas Karl, the director of NOAA’s climate data center, said. “I think what we’ve learned is one has to take a broad look at the climate system.”

The heat map above, from the report, shows how 2012 temperatures compare to the average baseline of 1981-2010. While Alaska, parts of Asia, and elsewhere saw a cooler-than-average year, it was the hottest year on record in the contiguous United States (and, relatedly, an insanely expensive year for natural disasters), and temperatures in the Arctic are increasing twice as fast as the rest of the world. In June, Arctic sea ice minimums reached record lows, and over a two-day period in July more of the Greenland ice sheet was melting at once—97 percent—than ever seen before.

NOAA’s National Climate Data Center

Another landmark was sea level rise: 2012 saw the highest global sea levels ever recorded, the peak of a trend that has seen seas rising just above a tenth of an inch per year over the last two decades. Interestingly, in the last couple years, melting ice (the black line in the graph at right) accounts for twice as much sea level rise as does thermal expansion of warming water (red line). And the sea wasn’t just high, it was hot, too: Heat trapped in the top half-mile of the ocean remained near record highs. At the ocean surface, temperatures were among the 11 warmest on record, despite mostly flatlining since 2000 partly as a result of La Niña conditions that cool the sea.

Carbon emissions for the year were also their highest ever: In 2012, the world released roughly 9.7 quadrillion grams of carbon into the atmosphere, about one-tenth the weight of every living thing on Earth, pushing the atmospheric concentration higher, at least in some places, than at any time in human history. Other key greenhouse gases, including methane and nitrous oxide, also climbed from the previous year.

Sadly, all these shocking numbers weren’t much of a shocker to the report’s 384 authors from around the globe, NOAA’s Karl said; they merely offer the latest bundle of proof that climate change is happening: “We see ongoing trends continuing.”

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2012: A Year of Broken Climate Records

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Melting Sea Ice Is Stranding Baby Seals

by Larry Daichea Posted on August 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Guardian website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Shrinking sea ice is bad news for the baby harp seal, according to Duke University researchers. Pagophilus groenlandicus relies on stable winter sea ice to provide a safe platform to give birth and nurse its young until the pups can swim, hunt, and fend off predators.

But the Duke team reports in PLOS ONE, the Public Library of Science journal, that in four harp seal breeding regions of the North Atlantic, the winter ice had declined by 6 percent a decade since 1979.

The researchers based the conclusion on satellite images of ice cover, yearly reports of seal strandings along the United States’ northeast coast, and DNA studies of the stranded population. They say that although adult seals seemed to survive the decline in sea ice cover, the young were increasingly at risk.

It wasn’t the weaker or the genetically inferior seals in the population that were most at risk: The hazard for the seal babies seemed to be across the board.

If they couldn’t be protected on a large raft of ice, they were more likely to perish and be washed ashore. In the years when ice cover was most reduced, the stranding rates for young seals rose most sharply.

Harp seals are literally pagophilic or ice-loving. They tend to be born in February and March, and are usually weaned after a fortnight. But the pups stay on the ice until they molt their white fur, and then take to the sea to journey northward to the summer feeding grounds.

If it were the weakest pups that perished, then the DNA samples taken from the beach strandings would differ significantly from those of seals caught accidentally by fishermen. There was no difference. So the decline in sea ice remains the best explanation for the rise in strandings.

“Our findings demonstrate that sea ice cover and demographic factors have a greater influence on harp seal stranding rates than genetic diversity,” said Brianne Soulen, one of the leaders of the study.

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Melting Sea Ice Is Stranding Baby Seals

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This 7-Year-Old Is Banned From Talking About Fracking—Ever

by marekso65 Posted on August 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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When a property owner reaches a settlement with an oil or gas driller, it’s not unusual for the company to demand that the plaintiffs in the case agree to a gag order that bars them from talking about the agreement. But a recent case in Pennsylvania is unusual. That’s because the gag order prohibited the 7- and 10-year-old children of a couple that sued several gas companies not only from talking about their specific settlement, but from mentioning fracking at all. Ever.

Chris and Stephanie Hallowich reached a $750,000 settlement with Range Resources Corporation, Williams Gas/Laurel Mountain Midstream, and Markwest Energy related to health and environmental impacts they say they suffered due to natural gas development operations near their farm in Mount Pleasant, Pa. The family used the money to relocate. But in exchange, they had to agree that they could not comment “in any fashion whatsoever about Marcellus Shale/fracking activities.”

The transcript of an August 2011 court hearing indicates that the agreement is also meant to apply to the couple’s two children. In the transcript, the couple’s lawyer, Peter Villari, asked the couple, repeatedly, if they are clear on this fact:

Mr. Villari: You both understand and accept that as written the settlement agreement may apply to your children’s First Amendment rights as well?

Mrs. Hallowish: Yes.

…

Mr. Villari: And you accept that because you, as adults and as legal guardians and parents of these children, are accepting these terms and conditions because you believe it is in the bet interests of not only them but your family?

Mr. Hallowich: Yes, and health reasons. We needed to do this in order to get them out of this situation.

Later in the transcript, a lawyer for one of the gas companies affirmed this interpretation of the settlement. “I guess our position is it does apply to the whole family,” said James Swetz, the lawyer representing Range Resources in the hearing. “We would certainly enforce it.”

Chris Hallowich noted in the transcript that it would be difficult to make sure that their kids don’t “say one of the illegal words” when they’re on the playground, for example. Which makes you wonder what exactly is on this list of “illegal words” that Hallowich and his kids are no longer allowed to utter.

A Range Resources spokesperson, however, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this week that they don’t actually think that:

Matt Pitzarella, a Range Resources spokesman, said Wednesday that the comments by Mr. Swetz are “not something we agree with” and added “we don’t believe the Hallowich settlement applies to children.” He also said that Range has entered into no other nondisclosure agreements that bar children from speaking.

It was the Post-Gazette that finally got the court to release the transcript in the first place. The paper’s reporters were barred from the settlement hearing and had to go to court to get the records unsealed. The paper just now got the transcript, but it still hasn’t obtained a copy of the actual settlement agreement, even though it was supposed to be contained in the court record.

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This 7-Year-Old Is Banned From Talking About Fracking—Ever

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Check Out this Natural Gas-Powered Airplane

by BerndHugg Posted on August 1, 2013

Mother Jones

This story first appeared in Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Aviat Aircraft has introduced the first airplane able to run on both standard aviation fuel and compressed natural gas. The airplane is the first to fly on CNG, opening the door to use a cheaper and cleaner alternative to gasoline.

Alternative fuels have been a pressing issue in general aviation, with many small airplanes still burning low-lead fuel, something the car industry phased out decades ago. But aside from the environmental benefits, the reduced cost of CNG can also help make flying small aircraft less expensive, and the test airplane that debuted in Oshkosh is the first step in realizing its potential.

“One aspect we’re particularly excited about is the opportunity to dramatically reduce the cost of learning to fly,” said Greg Herrick, an aircraft owner who spearheaded the idea to convert an airplane to operate on CNG. “If a flight school installs a simple CNG refueling station they can cut the cost for the student’s fuel, perhaps by thousands of dollars.” That’s not an insignificant sum when you consider the cost of getting a pilot’s license can run near five figures.

Herrick owns an Aviat Husky, a popular small aircraft aimed at pilots who like to fly in and out of grass runways and other atypical airports. While the cost savings is an added benefit, CNG will dramatically reduce the pollutants emitted by smaller airplanes that are now burning the typical aviation gasoline known as 100 low lead.

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Check Out this Natural Gas-Powered Airplane

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Global Warming Could Cause 50 Percent Increase in Violent Conflict

by Raisacjayv Posted on August 1, 2013

Mother Jones

This week the exiled head of the Syrian opposition movement said he would meet representatives of President Bashar al-Assad in Geneva, a promising turn for a conflict that has left 100,000 dead, including many civilians, since spring 2011. It has been a long, bitter battle, but for many Syrians one root of the violence stretches back to several years before al-Assad’s troops began picking off anti-government protestors. Beginning in 2006, a prolonged, severe drought decimated farmland, spiked food prices, and forced millions of Syrians into poverty—helping to spark the unrest that eventually exploded into civil war.

The Syrian conflict is just one recent example of the connection between climate and conflict, a field that is increasingly piquing the interest of criminologists, economists, historians, and political scientists. Studies have begun to crop up in leading journals examining this connection in everything from the collapse of the Mayan civilization to modern police training in the Netherlands. A survey published today in Science takes a first-ever 30,000-foot view of this research, looking for trends that tie these examples together through fresh analysis of raw data from 60 quantitative studies. It offers evidence that unusually high temperatures could lead to tens of thousands more cases of “interpersonal” violence—murder, rape, assault, etc.—and more than a 50 percent increase in “intergroup” violence, i.e. war, in some places.

“This is what keeps me awake at night,” lead author Solomon Hsiang, an environmental policy post-doc at Princeton, said. “The linkage between human conflict and climate changes was really pervasive.”

Any cop could tell you that hot days can make people snap—last summer veteran police boss William Bratton argued that a warm winter contributed to a rash of murders in Chicago. But Hsiang and his colleagues wanted to see how this pattern held up across the globe, at different times and with different kinds of conflict, to gauge just how much the climate can lead to violence.

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Global Warming Could Cause 50 Percent Increase in Violent Conflict

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Richard M. Daley Wants To Make Your City More Sustainable

by dig1iti43 Posted on July 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared in National Journal and The Atlantic Cities and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Richard M. Daley, who served six terms as mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011, was one of the first big-city mayors to focus on sustainable development. Some of his projects, such as the development of Millennium Park, flourished. Others are more likely to be remembered as flops—Chicago taxpayers may lose money on a solar-power deal Daley negotiated, and his administration spent millions of dollars on recycling initiatives that went nowhere.

Two years after leaving office, the longtime mayor is using his hard-won experience to head up a new company—launched by his investment firm, Tur Partners—that will help cities pursue money-saving infrastructure investments. Cities that agree to join The Sustainability Exchange, or TSE, will get a free analysis of their assets and potential projects, and will share information with other member cities. TSE will alert vendors when a city is planning a request for a proposal. And because the company is low-profit instead of nonprofit, when a city or region decides to go ahead with a project, TSE will take a cut of the savings the city realizes over time.

Five cities have already signed up to join the fledgling exchange, including South Bend, Indiana; Parma, Ohio; and New Orleans. National Journal‘s Sophie Quinton recently spoke with Daley and Lori Healey, his former chief of staff and now TSE vice chairwoman, about how their idea is taking shape.

Why is there a need for something like The Sustainability Exchange?

Daley: Everybody has problems with infrastructure. Whether it’s a port, rail, water, lighting, waste—this is part of the sustainability effort that we’re looking at. We’re looking at working with groups of cities to identify the project, raise the capital from the private sector as well as the public, and document the results.

Healey: Most cities are not New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. They don’t have either the technical or financial resources to plan out and implement these kinds of projects. The Sustainability Exchange creates a platform that allows cities to come together to access national expertise in these areas—at no cost to them—with the goal of executing a transaction in a much compressed time frame.

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Richard M. Daley Wants To Make Your City More Sustainable

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North Carolina Legislators Also Did a Lot of Environmental Damage This Year

by Peggy Mason Posted on July 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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The news might have flown under the national radar, what with all the motorcycle safety laws that actually deal with abortion and horrible voter ID bill action that’s been happening in the North Carolina this summer, but the state’s environmental laws were another casualty of this legislative session.

First, the legislature passed a law tossing out all the members of the state’s Environmental Management Commission and nearly all of the members of the Coastal Resources Commission (which was better than the original law, which would have fired a bunch of other people as well). And before wrapping up last week, the legislature also approved a one-year moratorium on localities passing their own environmental rules. That bill is now sitting on Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk awaiting approval.

The Charlotte Observer has a wrap up of all the environmental malfeasance that went down in this legislative session. Among other things, one bill that’s still awaiting McCrory’s signature “prohibits local governments, for a year, from passing environmental rules that state or federal governments also address.” That could be a big problem, the Observer reports:

But Robin Smith, a former assistant N.C. secretary of the environment who writes an environmental law blog, said restricting local rules could backfire. State rules often require that local ordinances be adopted, she said, and local conditions sometimes demand local rules.
“It is difficult to predict how big a problem the moratorium would be given the very different circumstances in cities and counties across the state, but it seems an unnecessary gamble,” she wrote last week.

Dan Crawford, director of governmental relations for the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, tells Mother Jones that they’re now lobbying hard to get McCrory to veto the bill. “Federal guidelines are meant to be a floor, not a ceiling,” he said.

Crawford said this was the worst he’s seen in 15 years of lobbying on environmental issues. “I can’t think of a time where it’s been any worse,” he said. “We were in the bull’s eye.”

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North Carolina Legislators Also Did a Lot of Environmental Damage This Year

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Huge Majority Thinks Arctic Warming Will Mess With the Weather

by Dean Golan Posted on July 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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From Superstorm Sandy to wildfires, droughts, and freakout temperatures, weather extremes have been hitting the United States hard. And simultaneously, a new scientific theory has emerged to explain much of this weather weirdness: Climate change is warming the Arctic more than the mid-latitudes, leading to a loopy jet stream and, in turn, all manner of weather extremes, including both heat waves and also excessive cold.

What’s striking is that even as scientists continue to debate this idea, the public seems to buy into it. Or at least, that’s the upshot of a new study in the International Journal of Climatology, reporting on a series of surveys of residents of the state of New Hampshire (whom, the paper notes, are pretty representative of Americans as a whole when it comes to their views on climate change). From Fall 2012 through Spring 2013, 1,500 Granite Staters were asked the following question: “If the Arctic region becomes warmer in the future, do you think that will have major effects, minor effects or no effects on the weather where you live?”

Here’s the stunning result: 60 percent of respondents answered “major effects,” and another 29 percent answered “minor effects”—leaving just 11 percent saying “no effects” or professing that they did not know. Overall, then, 89 percent of these New Hampshire respondents thought changes in the Arctic would reverberate far beyond that region, and would affect their weather in the mid-latitudes. “Research on an Arctic/weather connection is new, but it seems to be reaching the public,” says Lawrence Hamilton, co-author of the study and a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire.

The study contained two additional noteworthy findings. First, in a reprisal of the notorious “smart idiot” effect, Democrats and Republicans polarized over the issue of the Arctic’s influence on weather, and that polarization got worse with increasing levels of education. Thus, highly educated New Hampshire Republicans—GOPers with postgraduate degrees—were the least likely political group to accept the idea of an Arctic influence on their weather. Democrats with postgraduate degrees were just the opposite—they were the most likely to accept it.

Perhaps still more interesting, belief in an Arctic influence on the weather depended on…the weather. In the study, the researchers compared respondents’ answers with the temperature on the day in which they were surveyed, and the temperature on the preceding day. They found that belief in an Arctic-weather connection increased with both abnormal heat and also abnormal cold:

Belief in an Arctic influence on weather varies with…the weather. Lawrence Hamilton

One upshot of the research? That President Obama’s new climate communication strategy—focused on talking about the weather, rather than talking about “green jobs”—gains some more empirical support in its favor. “Our results indicate some degree of public acceptance for scientists’ global perspective in which Arctic change has consequences far outside the Arctic, and for studies showing that changing probabilities of extreme weather events are a key aspect of climate change,” says Hamilton.

In other words: It’s the weather, stupid. People get it—and so, it seems, do politicians.

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Huge Majority Thinks Arctic Warming Will Mess With the Weather

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House Republicans Stand Up For the Ceiling Fan Lobby

by Gaberilla Eve Posted on July 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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House Republicans are incensed about new energy efficiency standards for ceiling fans. “We’ve already seen the federal government stretch their regulatory tentacles into our homes and determine what kind of light bulbs we have to use,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in a speech earlier this month. “Now they’re coming after our ceiling fans.”

“It is a sad state of affairs when even our ceiling fans aren’t safe from this administration,” she continued. “Enough is enough.”

The Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office (EERE) released a framework for updating rules on ceiling fans in March. The 101-page document is full of discussion points about how exactly to define “ceiling fan,” whether fans that are merely “decorative” should qualify for regulation, and how the DOE should go about testing the efficiency of fans. It’s hardly a Marxist takeover of your home air circulation system; it’s only the first step in a three-year process to write new rules that will include several drafts and public comment periods.

But Blackburn and colleague Todd Roika (R-Ind.) say they’re waging a “fight to save our ceiling fans” from the big, scary Obama administration. Their effort has been covered by a number of outlets, including NPR and The Hill, and it led to a House vote of approval for an appropriations measure that blocked funding for the DOE to enforce fan standards.

But what Blackburn doesn’t mention is that she voted for the 2005 Energy Bill that kicked off the rule-making process for ceiling fans. And that bill was signed into law by noted radical environmentalist George W. Bush.

“She was for standards before she was against them,” said Marianne DiMascio of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. “This bill was bipartisan effort.”

Asked for comment about the 2005 vote, Blackburn’s office sent a statement indicating that she would support efficiency standards—as long as they didn’t inconvenience the industry too much. “I support increased efficiency in American households but only as technology and innovation becomes readily available that can be supported and is needed by a consumer driven market. The ceiling fan industry already faces regulations that were codified in 2005,” said Blackburn in a statement. “Additional regulations, like those that were discussed in the Department of Energy’s rulemaking framework document, most likely will have an adverse impact by pricing consumers out of the ceiling fan market which in return would decrease household energy efficiency as consumers turn to less efficient methods to cool and light their homes.”

It probably doesn’t help that the largest fan company in the US, Hunter Fan Company, is based in Blackburn’s home state of Tennessee and is against improving efficiency standards, as Roll Call reported. Roika’s state is home to another large fan maker, Fanimation Inc.

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House Republicans Stand Up For the Ceiling Fan Lobby

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