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In case you missed it, the cybersecurity firm Mandiant just released a bombshell report (pdf) on how more than 150 sophisticated hacking attempts against American corporations and government agencies over the past decade almost certainly originated from a single Shanghai office building controlled by People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The hacking group, dubbed APT1 in the report, launches its attacks from roughly the same address in the city’s Pudong New Area as the one used by the PLA’s Unit 61398, a probable cyberwar division. But the excellent New York Times exclusive on Mandiant’s findings omits some colorful details about the hackers themselves. One of them, for instance, is apparently a Harry Potter fan. Here are profiles of the three Chinese hackers Mandiant outed in its report.
Jack Wang, a.k.a. Wang Dong, a.k.a. Ugly Gorilla
A profile photo used by Ugly Gorilla
Back in 2004, the cyberwarfare expert Zhang Zhaozhong was participating in an online Q&A hosted by the website China Military Online. A retired PLA rear admiral, professor at China’s National Defense University, and strong advocate of the “informationization” of military units, Zhang had written several works on military tech strategy, including “Network Warfare” and “Winning the Information War.” One question for Zhang came from a site user with the handle “Greenfield,” who brought up the United States’ cyberwar capabilities. “Does China have a similar force?” he asked. “Does China have cyber troops?”
Greenfield would soon become one of those troops, according to Mandiant. When he registered for the China Military site, he gave his real name as “Jack Wang” and the email address uglygorilla@163.com—details that would later be associated with the hacker known as Ugly Gorilla. That October, Ugly Gorilla registered the hacker zone HugeSoft.org, a name that, as Bloomberg has reported, “combines two common descriptors of a gorilla, along with sub-domains like ‘tree’ and ‘man.'”
In 2007, Ugly Gorilla authored the first known sample of a widely used family of Chinese malware and brazenly left his signature in the code: “v1.0 No Doubt to Hack You, Writed by UglyGorilla, 06/29/2007.”
DOTA, a.k.a. Rodney, a.k.a. Raith
DOTA may have taken his or her name from the video game “Defense of the Ancients,” commonly abbreviated DotA. The name shows up in dozens of email accounts that DOTA created for social engineering and phishing attacks, according to Mandiant. It appears Mandiant was able to hack some of these accounts, allowing them to get DOTA’s phone number (a mobile phone in Shanghai) and the username of DOTA’s (blank) US-based Facebook account, where DOTA registered as female. Mandiant published a screen-grab of one of DOTA’s Gmail accounts:
DOTA appears to speak fluent English and may be a fan of American and British pop culture. The answers to security questions associated with his or her internet accounts—such as, “Who is your favorite teacher?” or “Who is your best childhood friend?”—are often some variation of “Harry” and “Poter.”
Mandiant linked some of DOTA’s other passwords to a pattern that seems to be associated with Unit 61398, the PLA’s cyberwar division.
Mei Qiang, a.k.a. SuperHard
Similar to Ugly Gorilla, Mei Qiang signs much of his work by embedding his name into the code. His malware is often signed “SuperHard” and his Microsoft hacking tools are altered from “Microsoft corp.” to “superhard corp.”
SuperHard primarily works on tools used by other Chinese hackers; he’s probably employed in APT1’s research and development arm, according to Mandiant. He has also volunteered to write Trojan software for money. Mandiant researchers gained access to some of the hacker’s internet accounts. They believe he (or she) used the email address mei_quiang_82@sohu.com, which, based on Chinese habit, suggests that the user is Mei Quiang, born in 1982. They also traced SuperHard to Shanghai’s Pudong New Area—information that should give US security experts plenty of leads, assuming the hacker hasn’t been fired yet.
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The coal industry, for as much as it whines and frets and fake-cries about how oppressive the government is, gets a pretty sweet deal. We’ve noted before than companies pay 25 cents a ton for coal from public lands and then can turn around and sell it for $35 a ton. (We’ve also mentioned that they often sell that coal to China, meaning we’re subsidizing the world’s largest consumer of coal, but that’s a whole other issue.)
This was reported as eight pounds of coal, probably.
What makes this so much more galling is that the weepy coal companies might not even be paying for all of the coal they’re extracting. From The Hill:
Interior is looking into whether mining firms lowball the value of coal excavated from federal lands to minimize the fees they pay the government. …
Reuters said mining companies are underreporting the price of coal at mine sites — where royalties are assessed — then selling it to marketers that they often times own. Reuters said those intermediaries then ship the coal abroad, where they fetch higher prices.
[Sen. Ron Wyden (R-Ore.)] and Energy Committee ranking member Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) had asked [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar to examine those charges in a January letter. They said the government could ill afford to lose out on any revenues, noting coal royalties amounted to $898 million in 2011.
The National Mining Association suggests that the Reuters report was inaccurate. Of course, the NMA also went out of its way to propagate the “war on coal” nonsense, so it can be ignored.
As part of its investigation, Interior will review a decade of coal sales, largely from the Powder River Basin region in Wyoming and Montana that provides much of the coal exported to Asia. The department is also considering a new system that would assess a royalty on coal companies’ proceeds rather than tons of coal mined.
Or, to crib from bad parents from the 1950s: Coal companies, we’ll give you something to cry about.
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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Have coal companies been ripping Americans off even more than we already knew?
Smog in China.
My wife and I used to have an annoying neighbor. There were various ways in which he was annoying — he would holler every Sunday during the Saints games and would stand outside talking on his cell phone at all hours of the night. But most annoying was the smoking. He’d stand under our bedroom windows and smoke, the smell drifting into our apartment. Of all of his infuriating tendencies, this was the worst.
But at least what wafted into our clothes and lungs while we slept wasn’t toxic smog. That’s the problem Japan is having with its neighbor to the west. From Agence France-Presse:
The suffocating smog that blanketed swathes of China is now hitting parts of Japan, sparking warnings Monday of health fears for the young and the sick.
The environment ministry’s website has been overloaded as worried users log on to try to find out what is coming their way. …
Air pollution over the west of Japan has exceeded government limits over the last few days, with tiny particulate matter a problem, said Atsushi Shimizu of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES).
Prevailing winds from the west bring airborne particles from the Asian mainland, he said.
These particulates are the same sorts of dust and soot that set records two weeks ago in Beijing. They’re deeply unhealthy, leading to asthma, other lung afflictions, and even heart attacks. While the pollution in China has inspired a cottage industry of solutions — canned air, house-sized domes, special face masks — such innovation is likely little consolation to the Japanese.
Nor is China’s pollution likely to stop in Japan. We’ve noted before that perhaps as much as a quarter of particulate pollution in California originates in China. It’s not entirely clear how much of the state’s air pollution, often detected by satellites, ends up at a breathable height. Today NASA is flying over the state’s Central Valley at various altitudes in an effort to determine how much particulate (and other) pollution is at ground level. The planes probably won’t detect China’s most recent pollution, given that it has just reached Japan, but some particulates from across the Pacific can certainly be expected.
A NASA plane flies over Fresno.
There’s actually a straightforward solution to this. I would encourage Japan and California to send a doctor’s note to their landlord (the U.N., I guess?) saying they’re allergic to China’s pollution. And, if that doesn’t work, simply move. It won’t be easy, but trust me, it works.
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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Speaking of air pollution in China, here’s a disconcerting graph from the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
The EIA explains:
Coal consumption in China grew more than 9% in 2011, continuing its upward trend for the 12th consecutive year, according to newly released international data. China’s coal use grew by 325 million tons in 2011, accounting for 87% of the 374 million ton global increase in coal use.
China now uses 47 percent of the world’s coal. It’s an almost unfathomable figure.
The EIA also created this animation of Asian coal growth between 1980 and 2010.
In 2011, China’s per-person carbon footprint neared Europe’s, but was still far behind that of the U.S. As the country consumes more coal, that figure will rise — meaning an exponential increase in carbon dioxide, soot, and other toxic pollutants in the air and atmosphere.
One last bit of bad news, from Financial Times energy reporter Ed Crooks:
We’ll update with some good news if possible. Someday.
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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Almost half of all coal burned in the world is burned in China
Cities aren’t perfectly efficient energy machines, you guys. They’re great, especially when transit and density make it possible for city dwellers to use less energy, but cities still release a lot of waste heat out of tailpipes and chimneys. And all that waste heat has to go somewhere.
According to a new study published in Nature Climate Change, that waste heat is disrupting the jet stream and warming up other parts of the world, thawing winters across northern Asia, eastern China, the Northeast U.S., and southern Canada. From Reuters:
That is different from what has long been known as the urban-heat island effect, where city buildings, roads and sidewalks hold on to the day’s warmth and make the urban area hotter than the surrounding countryside.
Instead, the researchers wrote, the excess heat given off by burning fossil fuels appears to change air circulation patterns and then hitch a ride on air and ocean currents, including the jet stream. …
[S]tudy author Aixue Hu of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado said in a statement that the excess heat generated by this burning in cities could change atmospheric patterns to raise or lower temperatures far afield.
Researchers say this is a “partial story” of where waste heat goes, but all that wandering heat adds up to, they say, a global temperature increase of about 0.02 degrees. I still love you, cities, but it wouldn’t hurt us to put on a sweater and take the bus, right?
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Waste heat from cities can heat up other parts of the planet
Yesterday, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., issued a major blow to efforts to curb air pollution. A lower court last year struck down the EPA’s cross-state air pollution rule, and the appeals court declined to reconsider the case. The rule aimed to reduce air pollution that travels from one state to another, a situation that limits the ability of the polluted state to take action against polluters.
The problem is perhaps best illustrated by what’s now happening in China. Today in Beijing, the air quality is “unhealthy,” according to the automatic sensor atop the U.S. embassy. Two weeks ago, it was five times worse, drawing the world’s attention to a problem that had become literally visible in the Chinese capital. This is what the air looked like two days ago, on Wednesday, as the country’s legislature held its annual meeting.
The mayor of Beijing attempted to explain that his city has made progress. From Xinhua:
At the first session of the 14th Beijing Municipal People’s Congress on Tuesday, acting mayor Wang Anshun said in a work report that the density of major pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, has dropped by an average of 29 percent over the past five years.
The high percentage stirred debate among deputies on Wednesday, as the current smog could make residents suspicious over the truthfulness of the figure. Some deputies even advised deleting the reference from the report to avoid disputes from the public.
Wang’s data on pollution levels may be questionable, but there is an argument that he could make effectively: It’s not all Beijing’s fault.
Why is the air in Beijing so bad? The video below, shared by The Atlantic‘s James Fallows, outlines the broad problems. Fallows sets the stage:
This broadcast is part of a weekly series on events in China, run by Fons Tuinstra, whom I knew in Beijing. The main guest is Richard Brubaker, who lives in Shanghai and teaches at a well known business school there. The topic is the recent spate of historically bad air-pollution readings in many Chinese cities, especially Beijing. …
Very matter-of-factly Brubaker lays out the basic realities of China’s environmental/economic/social/political conundrum:
that its pollution and other environmental strains are the direct result of rapidly bringing hundreds of millions of peasants into urban, electrified, motorized life;
that China’s economic and political stability depends on continuing to bring hundreds of millions more people off the farm and into the cities;
that China’s practices and standards in city planning, transport, architecture, etc are still so inefficient enough that, even with its all-out clean-up efforts, its growth is disproportionately polluting. In Europe, North America, Japan, etc each 1% increase in GDP means an increase of less than 1% in energy and resource use, emissions, etc. For China, each 1% increment means an increase of more than 1% in environmental burden.
The Atlantic Cities blog notes that short-term actions taken by the city of Beijing — reducing the number of older vehicles that contribute to ozone and soot pollution, limiting manufacturing — may not be as important in addressing the problem as its push to improve fuel efficiency. From its post:
Beijing’s adoption of a higher fuel standard will reduce emissions immediately by effectively banning heavy-polluting vehicles from the road. But even more critically, it marks the first in a series of incremental reforms that would dramatically improve air quality in the long term as Beijing’s scrappage policy forces people to replace their cars over time.
“You’d see maybe a 15 percent emissions reduction from simply getting those trucks off the road. And then the more stringent [tailpipe] standards that reduce particulates by 80 percent,” says David Vance Wagner, senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation.
But, to the point of the video, the problem lies mostly outside of Beijing. As Atlantic Cities notes, “the city is sandwiched between smog-spewing neighboring provinces.” The urbanization elsewhere in the country is contributing heavily to Beijing’s air problems. And to other cities. Here was Shanghai yesterday:
What China’s national leaders should have worked on this week was a system for containing pollution across the country, perhaps the only way to reduce the problem in large cities. Local leaders are reluctant to implement controls on pollution that might affect production and urbanization, effects of the economic boom that the nation has enjoyed at varying levels for years.
Pollution in American cities pales in comparison to what Beijing is experiencing, in part because of our environmental protections. But our political problem is largely the same: One region of the U.S. breathes pollution created somewhere else. Our attempt to fix the problem stepped outside of politics and into the courts. It failed.
And here’s the kicker. Chinese pollution doesn’t only affect China. A study released in 2008 suggested that high levels of the air pollution in California originated in — you guessed it — China. Solving that issue, pollution between entirely different political systems, is a whole other problem altogether.
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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Beijing’s air is dirty for the same reason yours might be: polluting neighbors
The World Economic Forum worries about climate change. Here is the organization’s page on the issue, including its “CEO Climate Policy Recommendations.” (For example: “‘Environmentally effective and economically efficient’ framework proposed to succeed Kyoto Accord.” Get on that, U.N.!) This week, WEF’s CEO friends are at the Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which we’ve mentioned.
Which made us wonder: How much did getting all of those CEOs and government leaders and baseball players together itself contribute to climate change?
The answer is: quite a bit. But before we get to the actual number, here’s how we got it. Earlier this week, the business site Quartz got its hands on the complete attendee list for this year’s Davos gathering. Quartz parsed the data about 15 different ways (go play with the sorting tool!) and, when we asked, were happy to share the data with us. (The Forum has an updated list [PDF], but Quartz’ data is more than enough for our purposes.)
Getting to Davos isn’t easy. The picture above shows the town itself, small boxes at the base of various Alps and foothills. There’s no airport. The only ways in are by train, car, or — for the elite of the elite — helicopter. The closest major airport is in Zurich, about a three-hour train ride away. For the smallest possible carbon footprint, then, someone from the United States would fly to Zurich and take the train in. (This is what I did, in 2009.) Seems modest. Until you realize that over 700 people came from the United States to attend the Annual Meeting — not including World Economic Forum staff or support staff.
We took Quartz’ data on the originating country of each of the 2,500-plus listed attendees, and estimated the flight distance between that country’s capital (for the sake of convenience) and Zurich. To calculate carbon dioxide production, we used a figure of .21 kilograms per passenger per kilometer for the flight, and 22 kilograms for a three-hour train trip, per person. To be extra generous, we didn’t include people actually from Switzerland.
Here’s what those flights looked like, as the crow flies. The width of a line represents the number of people from each country that attended Davos. (Every line except the United States is to scale. The United States had two-and-a-half times the next largest contingent, so it would have skewed everything.)
And now, the numbers. The 2,630 attendees cumulatively travelled over 550,000 kilometers by plane; in doing so, they generated 2.47 million kilograms of carbon dioxide. 2,470 metric tons. Add in train travel — 57,860 more kilograms — and the total footprint for those jetting in to Davos is 2,520 metric tons of carbon dioxide. The data, by country:
In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t an earth-shattering (earth-boiling?) amount of carbon dioxide. It’s the equivalent of a year’s production by 350 people from China (or 146 Americans). But again: This is only travel to the site, only including attendees. There’s a whole coterie of staff and drivers and media who don’t figure into this number.
As we noted yesterday, the Forum this week released a report reinforcing the urgent need to reduce fossil fuel use, presumably even 2,500 tons of it. So we’ll grant it an exemption for the carbon pollution the gathering itself creates. After all, getting people together to discuss important world issues certainly takes precedence. When these people leave Davos — doubling the total emissions to over 5,000 tons of CO2 — they’ll at least be bringing back some of what they learned to their home countries.
Incidentally, if you’re at Davos, you still have time to get to the forum “Life Lessons from Jazz — Improvisation as a Way of Life.” If you’re pressed for time, borrow someone’s town car.
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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World leaders emitted 2.5 million kilograms of CO2 getting to Davos
Over the past few years, farmland values have ballooned nationwide. In California, that rise has not only changed the economics of Central Valley farming, but the crops themselves.
A weak dollar has pushed up demand for exports of California’s goods to Asia, especially almonds, pistachios, and walnuts. In 2011, almonds beat out California’s iconic grapes as the state’s second top commodity, at $3.9 billion a year. Nut-growing farmland value has grown 15 to 20 percent over the last two years, and it’s still consistently selling for 10-20 percent above asking price.
In the economically troubled Central Valley, this is the kind of market that makes short-sighted investors drool and long-view economists wince. From the Associated Press:
Investors both foreign and domestic have taken notice, buying up farmland and driving up agricultural land values in a region with some of the highest residential foreclosure rates.
California’s almond industry, which grows about 80 percent of the global almond supply and 100 percent of the domestic supply, saw the most dramatic growth powered by strong demand from new money-spending middle classes in India and China. The growth has prompted a rush for almond-growing land and pushed almond land values through the roof …
Revenues for almonds and walnuts increased by 30 percent between 2010 and 2011, and revenues for grapes rose by 20 percent, according to the USDA. California’s agricultural exports during that time grew by more than $3 billion …
In Fresno County, almond land was valued at up to $18,000 per acre in 2012, and pistachio land at up to $25,000 per acre. That’s higher than citrus, grape, or tree fruit land — and much higher than the $7,200 average per acre farm real estate value in California last year, according to the USDA.
This farm boom is happening at the same time that California state is trying to figure out how to snag all the farmland it needs to turn into high-speed train tracks. The more lucrative the farming and the more expensive the land, the dirtier the fight over high-speed rail is likely to get. If California ends up using its power of eminent domain on these fancy farms, things could get truly nutty.
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As our friends at 350.org like to remind us, climate change really comes down to math. Put x amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, see y degrees of warming. Our goal — meaning, our goal as an evolved, aware species that would rather not be plagued by droughts and megastorms and constant flooding and armed conflict — is to reduce how much carbon dioxide we’re putting into the atmosphere each year instead of continually increasing the amount.
We’re not good at this. And time is running very low: We either need massive, quick action or it’s too late.
Given that this particular year is nearing its end, we decided to figure out how the math for 2012 stacked up. Did we, on balance, change our ways so that our net greenhouse gas emissions declined, or did we yet again increase how much we’re polluting? Are we running in the positive or the negative or what?
Well: Scorecard! Getcher scorecard!
The minus column
Things that reduced climate change
• Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline — for now.
President Obama’s move in January to postpone the contentious pipeline wasn’t the final word, and it may end up having been more important politically than environmentally. But the rejection has prompted tar-sands companies to reconsider producing tar-sands oil at all, which is good news for the climate, given how much more greenhouse gas such fuel produces. Obama could still OK the pipeline, but it doesn’t make much sense for him to.
Effect on climate pollution: -2
Methodology for this: I picked a number between -10 (leads to reduction in pollution; good) and 10 (increases it; bad). Want to fight about it?
• Australia implemented a carbon tax.
It’s fairly modest, to be sure, and highly contentious, but still counts as one of the year’s strongest efforts to curtail climate change pollution. (If that provides any insight into how this scorecard is going to go.)
Effect on climate pollution: -4
• The EPA announced its pollution standards for new power plants, including for greenhouse gases.
The rule, which goes fully into effect for power plants built after 2016, will curtail carbon dioxide emissions significantly — also providing an incentive for new power plants to move to cleaner fuel sources. (See below.) This was one of the biggest, most subtle victories in the climate fight in 2012 — and, just this week, a court halted industry attempts to block the EPA from regulating much-dirtier existing plants.
Effect on climate pollution: -3
• The EPA also announced a new, higher fuel-efficiency standard for cars and trucks.
The 54.5 miles-per-gallon standard will be mandatory by 2025 — an improvement that could drop oil consumption by 12 billion barrels.
Effect on climate pollution: -5
• California auctioned carbon allowances as the first step in its cap-and-trade program.
Even though the first auction itself didn’t go that well, that the largest state will begin regulating carbon pollution on Jan. 1, 2013, is important, and could — slowly — further reduce output of CO2 in the U.S.
Effect on climate pollution: -2
Speaking of:
• The U.S.’s CO2 output declined.
Over the summer, the country hit a 20-year low in carbon dioxide emissions. We continue to lead the world in that decline. This is thanks in large part to the still-slow economy, which has meant that domestic power generation has stayed relatively flat. But the most important news on the power generation front, and one of the biggest contributors to the drop in CO2 emissions is …
Effect on climate pollution: -5
• Natural gas use is spiking.
For the first time ever, use of natural gas for electricity production matched that of coal in the U.S. And since natural gas burns so much cleaner than coal, it’s meant much less pollution, particularly of greenhouse gases. Any number of power plants are switching from using coal as a fuel to using gas.
Effect on climate pollution: -4
• Coal use in the U.S. is tanking, and everyone hates it.
Not everyone, I guess, but lots of people all over the world. Finland, for example, announced plans to go coal-free by 2025.
In America, a number of coal facilities and coal companies announced bankruptcies. Existing coal plants, ones not covered under the EPA rule mentioned above, became hard for owners to sell as it became clear that they would need massive upgrades to meet pollution standards. Energy companies indicated plans to move away from coal; two notoriously dirty plants near Chicago were scheduled for closure.
All of this could have a significant effect on domestic carbon pollution over the long term.
Effect on climate pollution: -5
• Efforts to export coal overseas hit a snag.
The coal industry’s effort to build West Coast ports to ship coal to Asia met strong resistance, and one such plan was cancelled entirely. Preventing export terminals will mean that it’s harder to bring American coal to market — and, therefore, to consumption.
Effect on climate pollution: -1
• China and the E.U. are working together on an emissions strategy.
China will develop an emissions trading scheme with the E.U.’s help, potentially then linking its carbon market to Europe’s. The bigger the market, the more efficient — and the more likely that we can curb carbon emissions more broadly.
Effect on climate pollution: -2
• The U.S. invests in an effort to target small-scale emissions across the world.
The innovative program, announced in March, targets pollutants like black carbon and methane by providing improvements on existing tools already in broad use. Think: cleaner cookstoves.
Effect on climate pollution: -1
• U.S. government agencies are working on climate solutions.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cited the program above and other State Department efforts in a speech earlier this year about how climate and energy are security issues — a speech that was something of a going-away address. It remains to be seen how her likely successor will stand deal with the issue.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military continued a push to use less oil. This is more of a strategic push than one focused on climate change, but who are we to complain?
Effect on climate pollution: -2
• Renewable energy use continued to grow.
Studies suggesting that renewable energy could provide most of the world’s power in the not-too-distant future were bolstered by how quickly that market grew. On a macro level, global investment grew 25 percent in the second quarter of the year. Domestically, solar in particular continued to grow dramatically.
Effect on climate pollution: -2
• American public opinion on climate issues began to shift back toward action.
Thanks in part to the myriad, immediate examples of a changing climate — Sandy and ice melt and drought and the hottest year ever — people increasingly suggested that maybe the government should do something about it. Which, of course, is a key first step to something actually happening.
Effect on climate pollution: 0 (You’ll see why shortly.)
Which brings us to …
The plus column
Things that increased climate change
• The United Nations did nothing.
Fifty thousand people met in Rio; who-knows-how-many traveled to Qatar. And that all resulted in a vague promise to maybe do something in 2013. The U.N.’s ability to mandate change is certainly limited, but that it didn’t mandate any at an enormously critical time is not just incompetent, it’s immoral.
Oh, also? The big U.N. climate report due in 2013 was leaked early. But more importantly, it won’t address permafrost melt, one of the biggest negative feedbacks in the warming cycle. Meaning that if the U.N. ever actually does take action, it will be taking action on overly optimistic information.
Effect on climate pollution: 8
• The presidential campaign was all about how great coal is.
As the U.S. decided who it wanted to lead the country for the next four years, the options with which it was presented failed to suggest that they’d lead on the critical issue of climate. Both Romney and Obama French-kissed the coal industry for an extended period of time, which was as ugly as that image makes it sound.
The media didn’t hold the candidates to account on the topic either, with one debate moderator even dismissing the issue as unimportant.
Effect on climate pollution: 2
• The House of Representatives continues to be run by scientifically illiterate jerks.
Over the past two years, the House voted 223 times to help the fossil fuel industry and its other polluting friends while simultaneously either ignoring efforts to reduce carbon pollution or working hard to oppose environmental regulations. That won’t change in 2013; the incoming chair of the House Science Committee is an overt climate-change denier.
The Senate isn’t immune to criticism. It blocked U.S. participation in an E.U. plan to regulate airline emissions.
Effect on climate pollution: 4
• Coal use may be dying in the U.S., but overseas, business is booming.
A recent report from the International Energy Administration suggested that by 2017, coal would pass oil as an energy source. By that year, the world will be producing another 3.4 billion tons of CO2 from coal alone over what we’re producing now. Why? Well, the World Resources Institute suggests that the world has 1,200 new coal plants in the pipeline.
A lot of that coal they’ll burn is coming from the U.S. Our mountaintop-removal and conventional mining, heavily subsidized by the government, is heading to China and Europe.
Effect on climate pollution: 7
• The melting Arctic was a bad sign — and a huge creator of greenhouse gas.
In September, the Arctic saw the lowest amount of ice coverage in its history. (Compare this year’s ice with 1984.) That melt means less white stuff on top of the world. And less white stuff (like, literally, white things) means less heat from the sun is reflected back into space. The effect of that loss of ice and snow is potentially equivalent to 20 years of CO2 emissions.
The warmer temperatures also mean permafrost thaw — releasing trapped methane and allowing the decomposition of vegetation, which itself produces even more methane. Methane, you may remember, is 20 times more effective at trapping heat than is CO2.
Effect on climate pollution: 5
• China continued to be the world’s largest source of CO2 pollution …
While the country’s per-person emissions are still lower than the U.S.’s, China generates more CO2 than any other country.
Effect on climate pollution: 3
• … But the world is doing its best to keep up.
A report on 2010 emissions suggested that global CO2 output that year was 6.7 percent higher than in 2009. This is because of things like the new global enthusiasm for air conditioning, which will obviously only continue as temperatures keep rising.
Effect on climate pollution: 2
• The United States is churning out record levels of oil and gas.
The fracking boom has resulted in massive production of oil, particularly in North Dakota. Production in September hit a 14-year high; there’s some evidence that, within the decade, the U.S. could be the world’s largest oil producer. The U.S. is producing so much oil that producers are reversing the direction of pipelines, to ship fuel to ports instead of from them.
Effect on climate pollution: 4
• Obama gave the thumbs-up to a key stretch of the Keystone pipeline.
That stretch of pipeline being built in Texas that’s causing all the brouhaha? It was OK’d by President Obama. When it’s complete, tar-sands producers in Canada will have a pipeline running all the way to the Gulf Coast — albeit not one capable of shunting along as much dilbit as Keystone XL would. This means more oil consumption, more exports, more use of dirty, carbon-intensive fuel.
Effect on climate pollution: 2
• The wind industry in the United States may come to a halt next year.
Congress’ failure to renew a key tax credit — and the wind industry’s baffling inability to get it renewed — may put a big dent in U.S. renewable energy use over the long term.
Effect on climate pollution: 1
• Shell got approval to drill oil wells in the Arctic.
Happily, the company was too inept to actually get anything out. The Shell permit was just part of the administration’s “all of the above” approach, which includes doing anything that offshore drilling companies want.
Effect on climate pollution: 1
• Americans are fickle and pessimistic.
Remember up above when we counted public opinion as a good sign for the climate? That doesn’t mean that we’ll get anything done.
Only one-third of Americans think tackling climate change is important. Their passion for making change on the issue is low, meaning that politicians rarely have to take notice. And fewer Americans feel like what they do on climate matters.
Effect on climate pollution: 2
The tally
So, let’s punch all of this totally objective data into our Climate Calculator™ … Done. Climate change won 2012, -37 to 41.
Um. Better luck next year.
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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