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Obama to trucking industry: “No more rampant gas consumption for you!”

by EzraQgnjoy Posted on February 19, 2014

Obama to trucking industry: “No more rampant gas consumption for you!”

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While members of Congress twiddle their thumbs and idly watch the Northeast and Midwest begin to resemble planet Hoth, California dry up into an approximation of Tatooine, and, across the pond, England transform into Dagobah, President Obama continues to push past them and take action against climate change.

That’s the end of the Star Wars references, we swear — please don’t go.

Obama announced on Tuesday that he has ordered new, stricter fuel-efficiency rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions from large trucks. This will build on an earlier set of standards that were developed in 2011 and took effect this year. The new standards, to be drawn up by the EPA and Department of Transportation, are supposed to be finalized by 2016, before Obama leaves office, and then go into effect starting in 2018.

“Improving gas mileage for these trucks is going to drive down our oil imports even further,” Obama said. “That reduces carbon pollution even more, cuts down on businesses’ fuel costs, which should pay off in lower prices for consumers. So it’s not just a win-win; it’s a win-win-win. We got three wins.”

Heavy-duty trucks make up just 4 percent of vehicles on the roads, but they emit 20 percent of CO2 emissions from the transportation sector, the second most polluting sector of the U.S. economy. And big trucks used over 28 billion gallons of gasoline in 2011. Taking these figures into consideration, it’s easy to see how the new rules could have a climate impact. Michelle Robinson of the Union for Concerned Scientists told The New York Times that the new standards could bring down oil consumption by one million barrels per day by 2035.

Obama is also urging Congress to repeal $4 billion worth of federal subsidies currently enjoyed by oil and gas companies each year, while proposing a $200 million tax credit for companies that work to develop vehicles and infrastructure that run on alternative sources of energy.

Obama declined, to our chagrin, to comment on how he’s going to address trucks that will not commit to a lane, trucks with stupid bumper stickers, and truck drivers’ indiscriminate use of both the middle finger and the horn — all issues of equivalent national import.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Obama to trucking industry: “No more rampant gas consumption for you!”

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Obama wants to spend $1 billion on climate adaptation

by Volodyslav7uk Posted on February 17, 2014

Obama wants to spend $1 billion on climate adaptation

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White House

Two farmers show their very parched farm to President Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown.

OK, we get it: The climate deniers in Congress don’t want the country to do anything to rein in greenhouse gas pollution from their favorite filthy industries.

But are they willing, at the very least, to help Americans adapt as the weather turns deadly around them? We will soon know the answer to that question.

President Barack Obama visited California’s Central Valley farming region on Friday to announce disaster relief for the drought–ravaged state. And, while he was there, he announced his vision for $1 billion in climate-adaptation spending.

It’s not clear whether the drought afflicting more than 90 percent of California can be directly blamed on climate change — shifting conditions in the Pacific Ocean and other natural fluctuations may also be responsible. But we do know that droughts like this will continue to occur more frequently as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere. Climate models warn that California will continue to get drier, with the mountain snowpacks that are relied on for year-round water supplies expected to dwindle.

The short-term disaster aid pledged by Obama on Friday included $100 million to help Californian farmers cope with livestock losses, $60 million plus meal assistance for affected Californian families, and $15 million to help farmers in California, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico squeeze more out of every gallon of water.

In the longer term, Obama announced that he wants to establish a “climate resilience fund.” The Washington Post outlines what that means:

Cities across the country are formulating and, in some cases, enacting their own plans to protect against rising water, increased temperatures and more frequent severe weather. …

Obama would spend the $1 billion to “better understand the projected impacts of climate change,” encourage local action to reduce future risk, and fund technology and infrastructure that will be more resilient to climate change, according to briefing documents released by the White House.

Paul Bledsoe, senior fellow on energy and society at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that Democrats and Republicans in Congress “don’t have to agree” on whether the combustion of fossil fuels is causing climate change.

“We just need to agree we have a problem that must be dealt with,” said Bledsoe, who was an Interior Department official under President Bill Clinton.

The climate resilience fund will be part of Obama’s 2015 budget, to be released next month. Don’t expect Republicans in Congress to be too enthusiastic.


Source
Fact Sheet: President Obama Leading Administration-wide Drought Response, White House
Obama to propose $1 billion to prepare for climate change, The Washington Post

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

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Obama wants to spend $1 billion on climate adaptation

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New York, California move to ban beauty products containing microbeads

by pwdt8w4 Posted on February 14, 2014

New York, California move to ban beauty products containing microbeads

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Scrubbing dead skin cells off your face and tartar off your teeth trashes the environment if it’s not done right. The right way to do it is with facial scrubs, shampoo, and toothpaste that do not contain microbeads. The microscopic balls of hard plastic flow down drains and pass through wastewater treatment plants, ending up in rivers, lakes, and oceans, where they enter the food chain.

Finding microbead-free products isn’t easy right now — you have to read ingredient lists and steer clear of products that contain “polyethylene” or “polypropylene.” Natural alternatives include ground almonds, oatmeal, and pumice.

But if lawmakers in California and New York get their ways, the microbead-loaded varieties will become nearly impossible to purchase in two of the most populous states in the country.

5 Gyres

A microbead ‘fro on Abe Lincoln.

Late last month, New York Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel (D) got the ball rolling when she introduced A.8652, which would ban the sale of personal care products and cosmetics containing microbeads. On Tuesday, Schimel was one-upped by Assemblyman Robert Sweeney (D), who, with the backing of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) and the nonprofit 5 Gyres, introduced A.8744 — which would ban the sale, manufacture, and distribution of such products.

New York League of Conservation Voters President Marcia Bystryn said Sweeney’s bill would not only help to protect the state’s lakes and waterways, but would also “set an example for other states around the country to address this emerging environmental threat.”

And that it did.

California Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D) introduced AB 1699 on Thursday. The bill would prohibit the sale of most products containing microplastic, though it would permit tiny amounts of the tiny plastics — less than one part per million.

Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive have all made recent commitments to start phasing microbeads out of their products. “We are discontinuing our limited use of micro plastic beads as scrub materials in personal care products as soon as alternatives are qualified,” a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman told the L.A. Times.

The new legislative pressure should help ensure that these corporate giants make good on their pledges to scrub the microplastics out of their cleansing products.


Source
A.G. Schneiderman Proposes First-in-the-Nation Legislation Banning Plastic Microbeads In Commonly Used Cosmetics, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s website
5 Gyres Introduces Legislation With NY Attorney General To Ban The Microbead, 5 Gyres
Bill banning sale of cosmetics containing microbeads to be proposed, L.A. Times

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

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Here’s How Democrats and Republicans Could End Up Agreeing on a Compromise Replacement for Obamacare

by JosefinaDenby Posted on February 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Now that the Coburn-Burr-Hatch health care proposal is on the table, it’s safe to say that the GOP has finally started inching away from its obsession with repealing Obamacare and leaving only a smoking husk in its place. Even if CBH goes nowhere, it’s a sign that at least some Republicans are starting to grapple with the reality that their only option now is to offer up an alternative that’s based on reforming Obamacare, not killing it outright.

So what options are realistically on the table? Andrew Sprung talked with a couple of moderate liberals and one moderate conservative to see how much common ground there might be around a proposal that uses Obamacare as a base but makes substantial changes to it. Here is Yevgeniy Feyman of the Manhattan Institute, our designated conservative:

Feyman enthusiastically embraces CBH as a vehicle for more thoroughgoing reform. Paradoxically, he sees the possibilities for conservative redesign widening, not because supporters of the ACA have been weakened, but because the Tea Party has. The CBH rollout signals that some Republicans at least are ready to deal.

“We’ve seen the hardliners lose a good deal of influence since the shutdown,” Feyman said. “If they don’t gain more seats and influence, I imagine that a bill like this could pass.” Feyman is most excited by the prospect of maintaining subsidies for private insurance but ending the state exchanges’ monopoly of subsidized plans….”In the employer market,” Feyman said, “exchanges are doing a great job directing employees into best locations for care,” providing cost and quality information and incentives to chose the cheapest and best. He would like to see states encourage private exchanges in the individual market, and innovate in other ways, such as providing services that help consumers track their spending or set up HSAs.

The whole piece is longish, but worth a read if you want to dive into the details of possible Obamacare compromises. In my mind, the big question that underlies this is: Why should Democrats even think about making a deal? After all, Obamacare is safe at least through 2016, and almost certainly longer. Even in the unlikely event of a Republican sweep in 2016, they’d still have to deal with two things: Democratic filibusters in the Senate and enormous institutional resistance to changing a program that’s been in place for years. Nobody in the health care industry is going to support big changes after spending half a decade massively modifying their businesses to comply with Obamacare.

The answer, probably, is twofold. First, a compromise would represent a peace of sorts and would truly solidify Obamacare’s survival. Second, Democrats might get some things they want. Donald Taylor, for example, wants to see Obamacare and Medicaid expansion accepted in the South:

For Taylor, a lifelong southerner, the imperative to expand health insurance access in the South is personal….“If I were to argue for negotiation from a pro-ACA perspective,” Taylor said, “I’d be most worried about the uneven rollout, with the South left out. I’d look to come up with some way to make the South willing to expand insurance coverage.”

….”Medicaid expansion is not that consequential in California or Massachusetts where eligibility was already extensive pre-ACA, but in North Carolina, you could cover a half million people in a year, and that’s a huge change. You can leverage $4.1 billion in federal money in 2016 alone. It’s painful to watch that deal go begging.”

I’m not especially optimistic about any of this happening anytime soon. Or even anytime not so soon. On the Republican side there’s just too much tea party energy dedicated to the idea that any compromise is a sellout, and on the Democratic side it’s hard to imagine a compromise deal that would provide enough benefits to make up for Republican demands. But it’s not completely out of the question. If you read Sprung’s piece you’ll know enough to make up your own mind.

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Here’s How Democrats and Republicans Could End Up Agreeing on a Compromise Replacement for Obamacare

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Why the EPA Can’t Manage To Block This Gnarly Herbicide

by TammaraMog Posted on February 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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In the February 10 issue of the New Yorker, Rachel Aviv has an outstanding piece on Tyrone Hayes, the University of California-Berkeley biologist whose research found that atrazine, a widely used herbicide, caused extreme sexual-development problems in frogs at very low levels. Aviv’s article follows a superb Hayes profile by Dashka Slater published in Mother Jones in 2012. Aviv’s piece gives some key background on just why it’s so hard for the US Environmental Protection Agency to take action on chemicals like atrazine, which in addition to harming frogs, is also suspected of causing thyroid and ovarian cancers in people at low doses. Here’s the key bit regarding the EPA and its reliance on cost-benefit analyses to determine what chemicals the public can and cannot be exposed to:

In the U.S., lingering scientific questions justify delays in regulatory decisions. Since the mid-seventies, the E.P.A. has issued regulations restricting the use of only five industrial chemicals out of more than eighty thousand in the environment. Industries have a greater role in the American regulatory process—they may sue regulators if there are errors in the scientific record—and cost-benefit analyses are integral to decisions: a monetary value is assigned to disease, impairments, and shortened lives and weighed against the benefits of keeping a chemical in use. Lisa Heinzerling, the senior climate-policy counsel at the E.P.A. in 2009 and the associate administrator of the office of policy in 2009 and 2010, said that cost-benefit models appear “objective and neutral, a way to free ourselves from the chaos of politics.” But the complex algorithms “quietly condone a tremendous amount of risk.” She added that the influence of the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees major regulatory decisions, has deepened in recent years. “A rule will go through years of scientific reviews and cost-benefit analyses, and then at the final stage it doesn’t pass,” she said. “It has a terrible, demoralizing effect on the culture at the E.P.A.”

Hat tip: Kathleen Geier.

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Why the EPA Can’t Manage To Block This Gnarly Herbicide

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Climate change means more wildfires, and that means lots more air pollution

by Bradly62Ea Posted on February 4, 2014

Climate change means more wildfires, and that means lots more air pollution

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CAL FIRE

Wildfires not only jeopardize lives and property. They also cause air pollution — from planet-warming carbon dioxide to health-endangering soot and nitrogen oxides. This pollution can trigger hospital visits. It can also hamper agricultural output, and damage forests and other ecosystems.

This will be a particular problem in California, according to new research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Scientists analyzed future climate and population scenarios for the state and forecast that air pollution from wildfires in California could increase by between 19 and 101 percent by the end of the century. They found that the worst effects will likely be experienced in Northern California, particularly in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and in the Klamath-Siskiyou region at Oregon’s border.

“[I]ncreases in wildfire emissions due to climate change may have detrimental impacts on air quality and — combined with a growing population — may result in increased population exposure to unhealthy air pollutants,” the scientists write.

California’s current epic drought will likely lead to another year of epic blazes. The region is so tinder-dry that there have already been 400 wildfires in the state this year. “The conditions we are experiencing right now are similar to what we would be seeing in August — that’s how dry it is,” a Cal Fire spokesperson told The Fresno Bee. “Even though the calendar says it’s February and it’s winter, conditions are primed for wildfires.”

And wildfires are forecast to become a more severe problem as the climate continues to change.

Hold your breath, California.


Source
Projected Effects of Climate and Development on California Wildfire Emissions through 2100, Environmental Science & Technology
Calif. firefighters brace for hot year, more than 400 January wildfires, The Fresno Bee / Merced Sun-Star

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

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Screw U: How For-Profit Colleges Rip You Off

by Ilariaujg Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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The folks who walked through Tressie McMillan Cottom’s door at an ITT Technical Institute campus in North Carolina were desperate. They had graduated from struggling high schools in low-income neighborhoods. They’d worked crappy jobs. Many were single mothers determined to make better lives for their children. “We blocked off a corner, and that’s where we would put the car seats and the strollers,” she recalls. “They would bring their babies with them and we’d encourage them to do so, because this is about building motivation and urgency.”

McMillan Cottom now studies education issues at the University of California-Davis’ Center for Poverty Research, but back then her job was to sign up people who’d stopped in for information, often after seeing one of the TV ads in which ITT graduates rave about recession-proof jobs. The idea was to prey on their anxieties—and to close the deal fast. Her title was “enrollment counselor,” but she felt uncomfortable calling herself one, because she quickly realized she couldn’t act in the best interest of the students. “I was told explicitly that we don’t enroll and we don’t admit: We are a sales force.”

After six months at ITT Tech, McMillan Cottom quit. That same day, she called up every one of the students she’d enrolled and gave them the phone number for the local community college.

With 147 campuses and more than 60,000 students nationwide, ITT Educational Services (which operates both ITT Tech and the smaller Daniel Webster College) is one of the largest companies in the burgeoning for-profit college industry, which now enrolls up to 13 percent of higher-education students. ITT is also the most profitable of the big industry players: Its revenue has nearly doubled over the past seven years, closing in on $1.3 billion last year, when CEO Kevin Modany’s compensation topped $8 million.

To achieve those returns, regulators suspect, ITT has been pushing students to take on financial commitments they can’t afford. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking into ITT’s student loan program, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how those loans were issued and sold to investors. (Neither agency would comment about the probes.) The attorneys general of some 30 states have banded together to investigate for-profit colleges; targets include ITT, Corinthian, Kaplan, and the University of Phoenix.

A 2012 investigation led by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) singled out ITT for employing “some of the most disturbing recruiting tactics among the companies examined.” A former ITT recruiter told the Senate education committee that she used and taught a process called the “pain funnel,” in which admissions officers would ask students increasingly probing questions about where their lives were going wrong. Properly used, she said, it would “bring a prospect to their inner child, an emotional place intended to have the prospect say, ‘Yes, I will enroll.'”

For-profit schools recruit heavily in low-income communities, and most students finance their education with a mix of federal Pell grants and federal student loans. But government-backed student loans max out at $12,500 per school year, and tuition at for-profits can go much higher; at ITT Tech it runs up to $25,000. What’s more, for-profit colleges can only receive 90 percent of their revenue from government money. For the remaining 10 percent, they count on veterans—GI Bill money counts as outside funds—as well as scholarships and private loans.

Study Haul

How for-profit schools leave their students high and dry

96% of students at for-profit colleges take out loans. 13% of community college students, 48% of public college students, and 57% of nonprofit private college students do.

For-profit colleges enroll 13% of higher-education students but receive 25% of federal student aid.

The 15 publicly traded for-profit colleges receive more than 85% of their revenue from federal student loans and aid.

42% of students attending for-profit two-year colleges take out private student loans. 5% of students at community colleges and 18% at private not-for-profit two-year colleges do.

1 in 25 borrowers who graduate from college defaults on his or her student loans. But among graduates of two-year for-profit colleges, the rate is 1 in 5.

Students who attended for-profit schools account for 47% of all student loan defaults.

Sources: Sen. Harkin, Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, Education Sector

Whatever the source of the funds, the schools’ focus is on boosting enrollment. A former ITT financial-aid counselor named Jennifer (she asked us not to use her last name) recalls that prospects were “browbeaten and hassled into signing forms on their first visit to the school because it was all slam, bam, thank you ma’am.” The moment students enrolled, Jennifer would check their federal loan and grant eligibility to see how much money they qualified for. After students maxed out their federal grants and loans, there was typically an outstanding tuition balance of several thousand dollars. Jennifer says she was given weekly reports detailing how much money students on her roster owed. She would pull them from class and present them with a stark choice: get kicked out of school or make a payment on the spot. For years, ITT even ran a (now discontinued) in-house private loan program, known as PEAKS, in partnership with Connecticut-based Liberty Bank, with interest rates reaching 14.75 percent. (Federal student loans top out at 6.8 percent.)

Jennifer, who had previously worked at the University of Alabama, says she felt like a collection agent. “My supervisors and my campus president were breathing down my neck, and I was threatened that I was going to be fired if I didn’t do this,” she says. Yet she knew that students would have little means to get out from under the debt they were signing up for. Roughly half of ITT Tech students dropped out during the period covered by the Harkin report, and the job prospects for those who did graduate were hardly stellar. Even though a for-profit degree “costs a lot more,” Harkin told Dan Rather Reports, “in the job market it’s worth less than a degree from, say, a community college.”

Jennifer says the career services office at her campus wasn’t much help; students told her they were simply given a printout from Monster.com. (ITT says its career counselors connect students with a range of job services and also help them write résumés, find leads, and arrange interviews.) By the time she was laid off, Jennifer believed the college “left students in worse situations than they were to begin with.”

It’s not just whistleblowers who are complaining about ITT. There’s an entire website, myittexperience.com, dedicated to stories from disappointed alumni. That’s how we found Margie Donaldson, a 38-year-old who says her dream has always been to get a college degree and work in corporate America: “Especially being a little black girl in the city of Detroit, a degree was everything to me.”

Donaldson was making nearly $80,000 packing parts at Chrysler when the company, struggling to survive the recession, offered her a buyout. She decided to use it to get the college degree that she never finished 13 years before. Five years later, she is $75,000 in debt and can’t find a full-time job despite her B.A. in criminal justice from ITT. She’s applied for more than 200 positions but says 95 percent of the applications went nowhere because her degree is not regionally accredited, so employers don’t see it as legitimate. Nor can she use her credits toward a degree at another school. Working part time as an anger management counselor, she brings in about $1,400 a month, but there are no health benefits, and with three kids ages 7, 14, and 18, she can barely make ends meet. She has been able to defer her federal student loans, but the more than $20,000 in private loans she took out via ITT can’t be put off, so she’s in default with 14.75 percent interest—a detail she says her ITT financial-aid adviser never explained to her—and $150 in late fees tacked on to her balance each month. Donaldson says she has tried to work out an affordable payment plan, but the PEAKS servicers won’t agree until she pays an outstanding balance of more than $3,500—more than double her monthly income. “It puts me and my family, and other families, I’m sure, in a very tough situation financially,” she says.

Donaldson says she didn’t understand how different ITT was from a public college. If she had attended one of Michigan’s 40-plus state and community colleges, her tuition would have been roughly one-third of what it was at ITT. Now, she says, all that time and money feels wasted: “It’s almost like I’m like a paycheck away from going back to where I grew up.”

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Screw U: How For-Profit Colleges Rip You Off

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Snow’s Melting in Alaska and Pelting the South. What’s Going On?

by LaurieBPKC Posted on January 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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This article originally appeared at Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Earlier this month, squeals of delight (and/or searing pain) gripped much of the country as we were collectively introduced to the wonders of the polar vortex. But now the novelty’s over, and for the second time this month, an extreme weather pattern is sending Arctic weather toward the Deep South.

An uncommonly sharp kink in the jet stream is partly responsible for plunging more than half of the United States into the freeze. Meanwhile, (and for the same reason), Alaska is toasty warm. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Satellite image shows the “Arctic blanket.” NOAA/NASA GOES Project.

Much of Alabama is currently under a “civil emergency” due to snow and ice. Interstates have been shut down, and traffic in Atlanta has slowed to a crawl. It’s almost like people there don’t know what to do anymore when winter arrives. #sneauxmageddon is already shutting down New Orleans, and nearly a foot of snow is on tap for the Carolinas by Wednesday morning. The bread and milk purveyors at Piggly Wiggly must be loving this, assuming they’ll be able to keep stores open.

Wind chills have already dipped below freezing all the way south to the Mexican border, and more than a half-inch of ice could cause widespread power outages from Mobile, Ala. across the Florida panhandle.

How’d we get to this point? Here’s the science.

A good measure of the magnitude of jet stream irregularity is the Arctic Oscillation, an indicator of short-term climate variability that, roughly speaking, tracks the strength of the jet stream. In extreme cases, like this week, the circumpolar jet stream—which typically locks the coldest of the cold air up by the North Pole where it belongs—can slow down and spill Arctic frigidity southward. The current Arctic Oscillation is even more negative than during the first polar vortex cold snap, earlier this month.

Research hints that this type of pattern can be triggered by the recent massive loss in Arctic sea ice due to the effects of human-induced climate change. One recent studywhich attempted to explain this counterintuitive “Warm Arctic—Cold Continents” phenomenon during similar patterns in the 2009-‘10 and 2010-‘11 winters called it “a major challenge” to understand, though the pattern is “consistent with continued loss of sea ice over the next 40 years.” Bottom line: Something weird is going on, but scientists are still trying to nail down exactly what it is.

In preparation for Tuesday’s polar weather, meteorologists have started a massive crash course in winter weather safety, lest millions of poor wayward souls abandon all hope for any shred of common decency (think: cats and dogs living together).

One such meteorological hero, Nate Johnson of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C., sent out this helpful tip via Facebook:

“Best advice: By dinnertime tonight, be where you want to be (with whatever you need to have) through at least Thursday.”

Back in the day, cold weather wasn’t so rare down South. Earlier this month, Climate Central did an excellent survey of the dwindling frequency of extreme cold weather across the country, which even got picked up in an xkcd Web comic.

Chart by Climate Central.

Which brings us back to Alaska, where it’s currently more than a dozen degrees warmer than New Orleans. On Monday, Seward, Alaska hit 61 degrees and broke its daily record high by more than 20 degrees. Webcams across the southern part of the state showed snow melting down to bare ground over the weekend, with all-time January record high temperatures crushed and warm rain falling over the dwindling snowpack. As a result, the snow melted so fast that it triggered massive avalanches, cutting off the town of Valdez. A nearly unbelievable helicopter video went viral, showing the extent of the snow slide.

In comparison, Tuesday night’s snow dumping probably won’t even break the currentdaily record in Raleigh, where the biggest ever snowfall on Jan. 28 was 7.5 inches way back in 1899.

The current extreme warmth in Alaska is more typical of April and is essentially being stolen from California by the abnormally persistent jet stream that has dominated the winter so far.

Alaskans, break out the T-shirts, and Southerners, hunker down. Looking forward for the next week or two, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.

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Snow’s Melting in Alaska and Pelting the South. What’s Going On?

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Rice paddies providing respite for birds in drought-ravaged California

by torrie199 Posted on January 29, 2014

Rice paddies providing respite for birds in drought-ravaged California

By

Bob White

Water is in dangerously short supply in California, and most of the state’s wetlands have disappeared. So where are all those migratory birds traveling the congested Pacific Flyway supposed to stop for a rest and a feed?

Here come rice farmers to the rescue.

Rice farms are sometimes criticized for using a lot of water. But much of that water is released back into rivers and streams after the growing season. And it is the temporary layer of funky water that makes these fields, found the world over, potential habitat for wildlife.

Experiments led by University of California at Davis researchers have found that salmon fry raised in inundated rice fields grow faster and stronger than their cousins maturing in faster-flowing rivers. The muddy fields also resemble wetlands where birds naturally congregate.

The Nature Conservancy is taking advantage of the wildlife-nurturing potential of rice paddies, partnering with growers to provide “pop-up” habitat for migratory birds. Here’s KQED’s Quest with the details:

Winter is always a busy bird season at Douglas Thomas’s rice farm in Olivehurst, California, about 40 miles north of Sacramento. …

The birds come here because Thomas keeps his rice fields flooded in December and January. The water decomposes the rice straw leftover from last year’s harvest.

Normally, at the end of January, “we would let our water go and start trying to dry our fields out because the lake that’s in front of us has to be dry enough to drive a tractor in it and then we’ve got to seed it,” he says.

But not this year. Thomas is leaving water on his fields a little longer as part of an experimental project with The Nature Conservancy, designed to provide extra habitat for the birds when they need it most. …

The group is paying farmers to create about 10,000 acres of these temporary wetlands in February and March. The bidding process is secret, but bids came in both above and below $45 per acre, the payments some farmers get from federal conservation programs.

The approach is particularly valuable in California’s Central Valley. About 95 percent of wetland habitat has been lost during the past two centuries in the once wildlife-rich landscape, replaced by earthen levees constructed alongside rivers to protect farms and homes from natural flooding.


Source
Precision Conservation, The Nature Conservancy
During Drought, Pop-Up Wetlands Give Birds a Break, KQED Quest

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

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Rice paddies providing respite for birds in drought-ravaged California

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Key enviro law suspended in California under drought emergency

by ConnorWattersto Posted on January 23, 2014

Key enviro law suspended in California under drought emergency

By

Christopher “cricket” Hynes

When California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) declared a drought emergency last week, his administration slipped a bit of legalese into the declaration that has some environmentalists worried.

It states that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) will not apply to efforts by state agencies to “make water immediately available.”

CEQA, a landmark 1970s environmental statute, requires environmental analyses for major projects, which leads to delays as the studies are conducted and fought over, and as proposals for reducing environmental harm are debated. Brown, who hates the law, once remarked, “I‘ve never seen a CEQA exemption that I don’t like.”

The drought declaration says the limited suspension of CEQA will help “streamline water transfers and exchanges between water users” and help the state change limits on how much water can be diverted from reservoirs and from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta.

That’s important because the Delta, a stressed waterway and estuary that flows from melting snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to San Francisco Bay and into the Pacific Ocean, is at the center of a decades-old fight between farmers on one side and fishermen and environmentalists on the other. Farming corporations that own desert-like land in California’s Central Valley fight tooth-and-nail to be allowed to draw more water from the Delta, which would boost their nut, fruit, and vegetable harvests. Fishermen, who rely on the ecosystem for salmon, and environmentalists fight tooth-and-nail to prevent that from happening.

The drought is ravaging California just as Brown is preparing to ask voters to approve a multi-billion-dollar overhaul of the state’s water system. His plan would, among other things, dig a controversial water tunnel that could be used to boost the amount of water that’s diverted from the Delta for use on Central Valley farms.

So environmentalists are understandably suspicious about Brown’s move to suspend CEQA for water projects during the drought.

“This is, of course, a back-door attempt to sneak through the change of place approval needed to build the peripheral tunnel project, which will divert more water from the Delta,” Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity told Grist. “If the governor was serious about addressing the drought, he would turn off the taps that water lawns in the desert and irrigate luxury crops on selenium-tainted lands in the San Joaquin Valley before killing salmon and smelt.”

Here’s the language from the drought declaration that has some environmentalists worried:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT: …

5. The Water Board will immediately consider petitions requesting consolidation of the places of use of the State Water Project and Federal Central Valley Project [in the Delta], which would streamline water transfers and exchanges between water users within the areas of these two major water projects.

6. The Department of Water Resources and the Water Board will accelerate funding for water supply enhancement projects that can break ground this year and will explore if any existing unspent funds can be repurposed to enable near-term water conservation projects. …

9. The Department of Water Resources and the Water Board will take actions necessary to make water immediately available, and, for purposes of carrying out directives 5 and 8, Water Code section 13247 and Division 13 (commencing with section 21000) of the Public Resources Code [CEQA] and regulations adopted pursuant to that Division are suspended on the basis that strict compliance with them will prevent, hinder, or delay the mitigation of the effects of the emergency. Department of Water Resources and the Water Board shall maintain on their websites a list of the activities or approvals for which these provisions are suspended.

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

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Key enviro law suspended in California under drought emergency

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