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It’s only June, and Arctic sea ice already hit a new low

by InesDowling3 Posted on July 9, 2016

It’s only June, and Arctic sea ice already hit a new low

By on Jul 9, 2016 7:08 amShare

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

The summer sea-ice cover over the Arctic raced towards oblivion in June, crashing through previous records to reach a new all-time low.

The Arctic sea-ice extent was a staggering 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) below the previous record for June, set in 2010. And it was 1.36 million square kilometers (525,000 square miles) below the 1981-2010 long-term average, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

That means a vast expanse of ice — an area about twice the size of Texas — has vanished over the past 30 years, and the rate of that retreat has accelerated.

Aside from March, each month in 2016 has set a grim new low for sea-ice cover, after a record warm winter.

NSIDC

January and February obliterated global temperature records, setting up conditions for the further retreat of the Arctic summer ice cover, scientists have warned.

Researchers did not go so far as to predict a new low for the entire 2016 season. But they said the ice pack over the Beaufort Sea was studded with newer, thinner ice, which is more vulnerable to melting. Ice cover along the Alaska coast was very thin, less than 0.5 meters (1.6 feet).

The loss of the reflective white ice cover in the polar regions exposes more of the absorptive dark ocean to solar heat, causing the water to warm up. This goes on to raise air temperatures, and melt more ice — reinforcing the warming trend.

Scientists have warned the extra heat is the equivalent of 20 years of carbon emissions.

From mid-June onwards, ice cover disappeared at an average rate of 74,000 square kilometers (29,000 square miles) a day, about 70 percent faster than the typical rate of ice loss, the NSIDC said.

Sea ice loss in the first half of the month proceeded at a lower pace, only 37,000 square kilometers (14,000 square miles) a day.

The overall Arctic sea-ice cover during June averaged 10.60 million square kilometers (4.09 million square miles), the lowest in the satellite record for the month, according to the NSIDC.

There was more open water than average in the Kara and Barents seas as well as in the Beaufort Sea, despite below average temperatures, the NSIDC said.

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It’s only June, and Arctic sea ice already hit a new low

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Here’s the Next Big Story on Climate Change

by LaraKiek280 Posted on June 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last December, the climate summit in Paris offered journalists an unprecedented opportunity to reframe the global warming story. Climate reporting used to rest on the tacit understanding that the problem is overwhelming and intractable. That no longer rings true. While we have a better understanding than ever of the potential calamity in store, we finally have a clear vision of a path forward—and momentum for actually getting there.

To that end, Paris was a turning point for me personally, too: It was the end of the beginning of my career as an environmental journalist. This week I’m leaving Mother Jones after five years covering climate and other green stories. Paris underscored that it’s past time for me to look beyond the borders of the United States. That’s why, this fall, I’m going to undertake a Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship. For at least nine months, I’ll move between Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria to document how climate change is affecting food security.

I see agriculture in Africa as one of the most important yet underreported stories about climate change today. It’s a fascinating intersection of science, politics, technology, culture, and all the other things that make climate such a rich vein of reporting. At that intersection, the scale of the challenge posed by global warming is matched only by the scale of opportunity to innovate and adapt. There are countless stories waiting to be told, featuring a brilliant and diverse cast of scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, farmers, families, and more.

East Africa is already the hungriest place on Earth: One in every three people live without sufficient access to nutritious food, according to the United Nations. Crop yields in the region are the lowest on the planet. African farms have one-tenth the productivity of Western farms on average, and sub-Saharan Africa is the only place on the planet where per capita food production is actually falling.

Now, climate change threatens to compound those problems by raising temperatures and disrupting the seasonal rains on which many farmers depend. An index produced by the University of Notre Dame ranks 180 of the world’s countries based on their vulnerability to climate change impacts (No. 1, New Zealand, is the least vulnerable; the United State is ranked No. 11). The best-ranked mainland African country is South Africa, down at No. 84; Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda rank at No. 147, No. 154, and No. 160, respectively. In other words, these are among the places that will be hit hardest by climate change. More often than not, the agricultural sector will experience some of the worst impacts. Emerging research indicates that climate change could drive down yields of staples such as rice, wheat, and maize 20 percent by 2050. Worsening and widespread drought could shorten the growing season in some places by up to 40 percent.

This isn’t just a matter of putting food on the table. Agricultural productivity also lies at the root of broader economic development, since farming is Africa’s No. 1 form of employment. So, even when hunger isn’t an issue, per se, lost agricultural productivity can stymie rural communities’ efforts to get the money they need for roads, schools, clinics, and other necessities. “We only produce enough to eat,” lamented Amelia Tonito, a farmer I met recently in Mozambique. “We’d like to produce enough to eat and to sell.” More food means more money in more pockets; the process of alleviating poverty starts on farms.

The story goes beyond money. Hunger, increased water scarcity, and mass migrations sparked by natural-resource depletion can amplify the risk of conflict. Al-Shabaab in Kenya and Boko Haram in Nigeria have both drawn strength from drought-related hunger.

This is also a story about new applications for technology at the dawn of Africa’s digital age. It’s a story about gender—most African farmers are women—and the struggle to empower marginalized sectors of society. It’s about globalization and the growth of corporate power, as large-scale land investors from Wall Street to Dubai to Shanghai see a potential windfall in turning East and West Africa into a global breadbasket. Such interventions could boost rural economies—or disenfranchise small-scale farmers and further degrade the landscape.

Of course, all the data points I’ve just mentioned are only that: cold, lifeless data. They work as an entry point for those of us who are thousands of miles away from Africa. But they don’t tell a story, and they won’t lead to action. They won’t help Amelia Tonito improve her income. My hope is my coverage of this story will help provide the depth of understanding that is a prerequisite for holding public and corporate officials accountable, so that the aspirations of the Paris Agreement can start to come to fruition.

I’ve loved my time at Mother Jones and I’m truly at a loss to express my gratitude to my editors for the experiences they have afforded me. I’ve seen the devastating impacts of global warming, from the vanishing Louisiana coastline to the smoldering wreckage of Breezy Point, Queens, after Hurricane Sandy. And I’ve seen the cost of our fossil fuel addiction, from the dystopian fracking fields of North Dakota to Germany’s yawning open-pit coal mines. But I’ve also seen the fortitude of the young Arizonans who spent weeks sweating in the woods to protect their community from wildfires. And I’ve seen the compassion of a caretaker who, in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, stayed with her elderly patient on the top floor of a Lower East Side high-rise with no electricity or running water.

Encounters like these are what draw me to climate change as a beat. The story is just getting started.

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Here’s the Next Big Story on Climate Change

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Now Clinton and Sanders Are Fighting Over the Democratic Platform

by HelaineNqb Posted on June 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee has written a stronger climate change section than the platform had in 2012, but it also rejected a series of more ambitious climate and energy amendments on Friday. That’s raised the ire of Bernie Sanders and his appointees to the drafting committee, like climate activist and author Bill McKibben.

The first draft of the platform, voted on by the 15-member drafting committee, is now complete, though it hasn’t been made publicly available. On July 8 and 9, in Orlando, the full 187-member platform committee will meet and debate further changes before approving and sending its draft on to the party convention, to be held in Philadelphia the last week of July.

Sanders slammed Hillary Clinton’s committee appointees for blocking progressive provisions and pledged to continue fighting for changes to the document. “Despite the growing crisis of climate change, Clinton’s delegates voted against a tax on carbon, against a ban on fracking,” said Sanders in a statement on Sunday. “We intend to do everything we can to rally support for our amendments in Orlando and if we fail there to take the fight to the floor of the convention in Philadelphia.”

How did the platform become a big deal this time?

Drama over the party platform is atypical. Usually the document is just a quietly produced, platitudinous summation of the presidential nominee’s policy vision. But if Sanders gets some of the changes he’s still pushing for, this year’s platform could look very different from the last one, adopted four years ago under a moderate incumbent president with a mixed record on environmental issues.

Sanders’ campaign is dedicated to pushing American politics leftward, so he and his team have been focused on influencing the platform. After making a stronger-than-expected primary showing, Sanders asked for seven appointments to the 15-person drafting committee. The party gave him five, Clinton got six, and the remaining four were appointed by party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Now that Sanders has lost the fight for the nomination, he and his supporters see the platform as their chief vehicle for having a lasting impact on the party’s direction.

Sanders and Clinton each appointed a climate expert to the drafting committee. Sanders chose McKibben, cofounder of climate action group 350.org (and a member of Grist’s board of directors). Clinton picked Carol Browner, who served as President Obama’s climate czar from 2009 to 2011.

Sanders’ other appointees were all progressives, of course. Clinton and Wasserman Schultz also chose fairly left-leaning slates. In analyzing the appointees, The Nation‘s John Nichols concluded that “the drafting committee has a progressive majority.” That led climate hawks to hope that some of the more aggressive proposals from the Sanders’ camp might pass. But that’s not how things have played out so far.

What they agreed on

The drafting committee members did come together on some critical climate-related decisions. The biggest and most important shift from the 2012 platform was dropping the call for “all-of-the-above” energy development, which reflected the priorities of Obama’s first term. The members also unanimously agreed to call for fully switching to clean energy by 2050.

The draft platform echoes the Paris Agreement in aiming to keep global warming below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) over pre-industrial levels, with the hope of staying below 1.5 C (2.7 F) if possible. It calls for a Department of Justice investigation into fossil fuel companies (read: ExxonMobil) accused of misleading the public about climate science. It backs elimination of fossil fuel subsidies in the tax code and extension of support for renewable energy development, such as the wind production tax credit.

Browner told Grist that the language supporting renewables was written in from the beginning and never even required an amendment. “There was a lot of stuff where there was common ground that was embedded in the conversation,” she said.

And some amendments proposed by McKibben on Friday were passed unanimously, such as a noncontroversial call for more bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and a statement of opposition to electric utilities’ efforts to quash solar energy. As Browner put it, “The draft has everybody’s fingerprints.”

What they fought over—or, what the Sanders team lost

But while Sanders and progressive climate activists see the current draft platform as a modest step in the right direction, they are far from satisfied. The platform document sets strong big-picture goals for curbing climate change and boosting clean energy, but doesn’t include specific policies that would actually help meet those goals.

“In the draft, everyone agreed that there should be 100 percent clean energy by 2050, but every measure I put forward to actually get us there went down by the same 7-6 vote, with all the Clinton people voting in a bloc against,” said McKibben. Only one non-Sanders appointee, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who was chosen by Wasserman Schultz, crossed over to vote with the Sanders bloc on the controversial climate change amendments. One committee member was absent, and the chair did not vote.

The half-dozen McKibben amendments that went down to defeat included calls for:

a carbon tax,
a fracking ban,
a ban on fossil fuel extraction on public lands,
elimination of support through international lending institutions for fossil fuel projects abroad,
a declaration that eminent domain should not be used to take private land for fossil fuel infrastructure projects, and
a “climate test” for future domestic energy projects, which would reject ones that contribute to climate change—like the test Obama ultimately used to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.

Only one of those was replaced with compromise language: The Clinton side offered and passed an amendment endorsing a gradual phaseout of fossil fuel extraction on public lands.

Climate Hawks Vote, a political action committee that endorsed Sanders, issued a statement praising the Exxon investigation amendment but also warning, “We’re fighting not just the Republicans, but also the incrementalists within the Democratic Party.”

The Clinton campaign says its reluctance to accept some of McKibben’s amendments reflects legitimate concerns about the policy implications, not mere political calculation. Not all experts agree that a carbon tax is the most effective way to reduce emissions, for example. Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board had pointed out in her testimony to the committee a week earlier that a carbon tax does not guarantee emissions reductions, while direct regulation, such as Obama’s Clean Power Plan, does. Clinton supporters rejected a blanket prohibition on lending for foreign fossil fuel development projects on the grounds that the US relationship with any given developing country may have competing priorities, and they opposed the climate test for energy projects because they worried it could prevent necessary projects like transmission lines for electricity that may be partly generated from dirty sources.

There are also obvious political concerns about some of these proposals. A carbon tax, for example, would have no chance of passage in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, but a call for such a tax would hand Donald Trump a potentially effective new weapon, letting him claim that Democrats want to raise energy prices.

It’s unlikely that Sanders’ supporters will be able to change many platform planks in Orlando or Philly. Essentially, they are calling for Sanders’ platform to become the party’s platform. But Sanders lost the primary race, and it stands to reason that the party platform would reflect the views of the candidate who won.

And that candidate has to consider not just the best climate policies in the abstract, but the ones that will help her win in November. “We’re going be facing a group of climate science deniers in Congress,” says Browner. “So what some of us are looking at is, How do we get a president elected and use the tools of government to continue to make real advances?”

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Now Clinton and Sanders Are Fighting Over the Democratic Platform

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Now Tesla Wants to Buy a Solar Company

by Eldon9341hrlsbq Posted on June 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Elon Musk—future Mars settler, founder of Tesla—stepped into the solar business earlier this week with Tesla Motor’s $2.5 billion bid to buy SolarCity, the top home solar company in America.

Shareholders from both companies still have to approve the deal. And if they do, Tesla promises the results will be awesome. Musk says that he never wanted Tesla to be just a carmaker. Buying SolarCity will turn Tesla into a company that will sell you an electric car and the power to charge it. “This would start with the car that you drive and the energy that you use to charge it, and would extend to how everything else in your home or business is powered,” Tesla wrote in its company blog.

Then Wall Street frowned. The day after the announcement, Tesla’s stock slumped 10 percent, and Morgan Stanley cut its rating on Tesla’s shares.

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So what gives? Does Wall Street not have the vision to get with Musk? Is the most futuristic car company in America about to drive off a cliff?

Here are a few ways of looking at it:

This whole thing is really a family drama.

Lyndon Rive, SolarCity’s co-founder and CEO, is Musk’s cousin. Is there some kind of family power struggle taking place? According to Eric Weishoff, founder of Greentech Media, Rive “didn’t sound happy enough for a man that just got $77 million dollars wealthier.” And why should Tesla buy Solar City when the two companies have been collaborating on batteries for half a decade now?

Tesla’s stock is sinking because Wall Street doesn’t get Silicon Valley.

Tesla was born in the startup culture of Silicon Valley, where it’s all about taking bold stands and getting big or going home. In Silicon Valley, companies eat other companies for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late-night snack.

Worriers, however, have good reason to wonder why Tesla wants to get into the solar business so badly when it has 375,000 pre-ordered Tesla Model 3s that it’s supposed to be making. There’s the also the example of Sun Edison, an actual energy company that went bankrupt after a massive company-buying spree.

This smushing together could actually work, because, you know, synergy!

Tesla’s current clientele is, to put it mildly, loaded. Three-quarters of Model S buyers make more than $100,000 a year. It’s entirely possible that they are exactly the kind of people who might wander into a showroom, order a car, and impulse-purchase an entire solar installation to go along with it.

Solar City sells 100,000 solar installations a year to a wide demographic. If the price of the Tesla Model 3 manages to drop from the current sticker price of $35,000 and keep dropping, it’s imaginable that SolarCity’s current customers could be persuaded to choose a Tesla for their next car.

What we really need are lots of little Teslas, not a bigger Tesla

It’s been clear for a long time that Musk is a crazy dreamer of the Steve Jobs variety. But building a big company, even a really cool big company, cannot get America to low-carbon car heaven alone. The Big Three automakers—GM, Ford, and Chrysler — arose out of a Cambrian stew of automotive experimentation in the workshops of Detroit. Many have made the point (including me) that three still wasn’t enough to create the kind of competition that the American automotive industry needed to avoid getting its ass kicked by automakers in Germany and Japan.

This sale — if it goes through — might lead to great things. But what the world really needs are many Teslas, enough to create a large ecosystem of entrepreneurs working on cars, batteries, and solar. We need this a lot more than we need to buy solar panels from a car company.

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Now Tesla Wants to Buy a Solar Company

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Antarctica’s CO2 Levels Are Now the Highest in 4 Million Years

by ShelaNBIqryv Posted on June 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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Oof. We just passed yet another climate change milestone, and it’s a particularly troubling one. Carbon dioxide levels in Antarctica recently hit 400 parts per million, according to an announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday. It’s the first time in 4 million years that the region has reached such levels.

Carbon dioxide—a heat-trapping gas produced by burning fossil fuels—is the primary driver of global warming. Carbon dioxide levels have been on the rise all over the world, but because Antarctica is so remote, the pollutant has accumulated more slowly there. Antarctic CO2 concentrations first surpassed the 400 ppm mark on May 23, according to measurements taken at the South Pole Observatory.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

“The far southern hemisphere was the last place on earth where CO2 had not yet reached this mark,” Pieter Tans, the lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, said in a statement. “Global CO2 levels will not return to values below 400 ppm in our lifetimes, and almost certainly for much longer.”

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Antarctica’s CO2 Levels Are Now the Highest in 4 Million Years

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Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

by NicoleIrons Posted on May 12, 2016

Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

By on May 12, 2016 12:57 pmShare

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

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday released the final version of new federal rules intended to curb emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas. Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, had previously been unregulated. There’s a mounting pile of evidence suggesting that as the United States relies increasingly on gas to produce electricity, methane emissions are much higher than most people expected them to be.

That’s a problem for the fight against climate change. Methane emissions are far lower than carbon dioxide emissions, and methane survives in the atmosphere for a relatively short period of time. But methane is far more effective at trapping heat than CO2 is, which makes it a significant near-term warming threat. As I reported in a deep dive on methane yesterday:

When unburned methane leaks into the atmosphere, it can help cause dramatic warming in a relatively short period of time. Methane emissions have long been a missing piece in the country’s patchwork climate policy …

The natural gas system produces methane emissions at nearly every step of the process, from the well itself to the pipe that carries gas into your home. Around two-thirds of those emissions are “intentional,” meaning they occur during normal use of equipment. For example, some pneumatic gauges use the pressure of natural gas to flip on or off and emit tiny puffs of methane when they do so. The other one-third comes from so-called “fugitive” emissions, aka leaks, that happen when a piece of equipment cracks or otherwise fails.

The lack of regulations on methane was one reason why President Barack Obama’s climate strategy, which hinges on swapping the country’s coal consumption for natural gas, has been frowned upon by some environmentalists. Even today’s regulations are just partial solution, since they only apply to new and modified natural gas infrastructure, not systems that already exist. And by some analysts’ reckoning, more than 70 percent of gas-sector methane emissions from now until 2025 will come from sources that already exist.

Still, the regulation announced today achieves one of the final remaining big items on Obama’s climate checklist. It aims to reduce gas-sector methane emissions 40-45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 by tightening the allowed emissions from pumps, compressors, wells, and other infrastructure; requiring more frequent surveys for leaks; and implementing a data-gathering survey that will give officials and companies a better understanding of just how much methane leakage there really is. The EPA expects the regulations to cost $530 million by 2025, but produce $690 million in environmental benefits.

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Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

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Watch a NASA Scientist and a Yellow Puppet Explore Greenland’s Melting Glaciers

by CerysGollan Posted on April 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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For a sign that Josh Willis isn’t your typical NASA scientist, let’s start with the name of his major new climate study: Oceans Melting Greenland. That’s “OMG,” if your mind isn’t the sort to instantly elide everything into texting lingo.

Willis, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, likes to inject a little humor into the science of climate change, taking to the stage and to YouTube in the hopes of spurring his audience to action. On this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, he’s joined by special guest “Dick Dangerfield,” the swashbuckling NASA pilot who stars in Willis’ new comedy web series, “The Adventures of Dick Dangerfield.” Oh, and Dick is also a puppet. You can watch the first episode above.

Willis and Dangerfield talk with co-host Kishore Hari about NASA’s mission to study Greenland’s melting ice and its massive climate-altering potential. “Greenland contains enough ice to raise sea levels 20 feet if it all melted,” Willis says. “The big question is how fast it’s going to melt.”

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Most research takes a top-down approach to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, Willis says, examining the flow of water as it melts off the surface of the glaciers. But due to changing ocean temperatures, the ice around the island’s edges is disappearing even more quickly than it is at the center. That’s partly due to Greenland’s unique geography; the massive glaciers “literally have a toe in the water,” he explains. They flow directly into deep ocean water that is saltier and warmer than the water near the surface. The deeper water, which is typically a few degrees Celsius above the melting point, nibbles away more ice in the warm months than can be replenished over the winter, causing the glaciers to gradually recede.

Greenland’s glaciers run directly into the ocean, plunging into warmer, saltier water beneath the surface that’s melting them from below. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech

But the exact mechanisms for this process remain poorly understood, Willis says. Scientists with the OMG project measure the heights of glaciers each year using airborne radar. They also torpedo sensors into the surrounding ocean to record temperature and salinity. In the interactions between the glacial ice and ocean water, the scientists are looking for signs of a runaway melting process similar to what has been feared in western Antarctica, where climate models suggest rapid melting could contribute to more than three feet of sea level rise by 2100.

Beyond sea level rise, scientists worry that an influx of cold freshwater from Greenland’s melting ice could itself alter the climate, bringing changes to the Atlantic currents that regulate the weather conditions of surrounding landmasses. Some regions could see an uptick in extreme weather, Willis says, while others could see extra sea level rise. But we’re unlikely to know the precise effects until we observe them happening.

But for all the gloomy uncertainty, Willis says he tries to remain optimistic about the future of Greenland’s ice. Though some melting and sea level rise is inevitable, there’s still time to avoid the biggest consequences, he says. “The question is, do you want to get hit in the head with a pingpong ball or a bowling ball?”

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow, like us on Facebook, and check out show notes and other cool stuff on Tumblr.

Image: Josef Hanus/Shutterstock

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Watch a NASA Scientist and a Yellow Puppet Explore Greenland’s Melting Glaciers

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Rising Seas Could Deluge US Coastal Cities Sooner Than We Thought

by KimberlyDing062 Posted on April 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Boston and other coastal cities may want to batten down the hatches. A new study from climate scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Pennsylvania State University warns estimates of future sea level rise may be significantly underestimated. The real picture 100 to 500 years from now, they claim, will be ugly for US coastal cities from New York to Miami, which could be underwater or at risk of flooding. Boston, for example, could see about 5 feet of sea level rise in the next 100 years, according to the researchers.

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Rising Seas Could Deluge US Coastal Cities Sooner Than We Thought

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The Feds Just Issued an Earthshaking Report About Fracking

by KiraMaitland Posted on March 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Oklahomans have always had to deal with tornadoes, wildfires, and ice storms. But now residents of the Sooner State are facing a new threat: damaging earthquakes.

For the first time, the US Geological Survey has included “human-induced” earthquakes in its seismic hazard forecast. These man-made tremors are most often attributed to the injection wells in which oil and gas companies dispose of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” The USGS seismologists estimate that some 7 million people in the central and eastern United States now live in areas at risk of a damaging earthquake.

More Mother Jones coverage of fracking


Fracking’s Latest Scandal? Earthquake Swarms


How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World


Why Coal Is (Still) Worse Than Fracking and Cow Burps


Clinton and Sanders Want to Restrict Fracking. Will That Make Global Warming Worse?


Deep Inside the Wild World of China’s Fracking Boom

“By including human-induced events, our assessment of earthquake hazards has significantly increased in parts of the US,” said Mark Petersen, who leads the agency’s National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, in a statement.

The risk is most acute in parts of central Oklahoma and southern Kansas, the epicenter of a fracking boom. According to the new report, the chances of a damaging earthquake (defined as level 6 or greater on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale) in these areas now range from 5 percent to 12 percent in the next year. Level 6 is considered the threshold at which earthquakes become more than a matter of a few smashed dishes and jolted nerves, causing structural damage in the form of cracked walls and chipped plaster.

However, the researchers say damaging tremors linked to injection wells are unlikely to pack the punch of the strongest earthquakes on the West Coast. The largest earthquake ever in Oklahoma was a magnitude 5.6 on the Richter scale in 2011 centered near the town of Prague, about 40 miles east of Oklahoma City. (A level six MMI corresponds to roughly 5.0 on the Richter scale.) Located near several active injection wells, the trembler injured two people and destroyed more than a dozen homes.

The 2016 seismic risk assessment focused on human-induced and natural earthquakes in the eastern and central United States. The risk of natural quakes in the West is given for comparison. USGS

Other hubs of human-induced seismicity identified in the USGS report include the Dallas area, which has seen more than 180 earthquakes since 2008; central Arkansas; and the Raton Basin along the New Mexico-Colorado border. An additional area of natural earthquake activity visible on the map lies along the New Madrid fault west of Nashville.

Typically, the USGS releases hazard forecasts with a 50-year outlook. They are used as guidance for local building codes and engineering design strategies in quake-prone areas. But the new report looks just one year ahead, a decision the researchers say is due to the highly variable risk of human-induced earthquakes from year to year.

In the past six years, that danger has spiked. From 1973 to 2008, the central United States saw an average of 24 earthquakes each year with a magnitude of 3.0 or greater (earthquakes weaker than that are not typically felt). The rate increased steadily between 2009 and 2015, averaging 318 earthquakes per year and reaching 1,010 in 2015. The tremors haven’t abated this year, the USGS says; through mid-March, there have been 226 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or larger in the central United States.

Still, it’s possible the earthquake risk could diminish with similar speed, the researchers note, given that unlike tectonic plates, industrial practices can be regulated. In an interview with the Oklahoman, Tom Robins, the state’s deputy energy secretary, noted that recent efforts to rein in wastewater injection are not yet reflected in the USGS data. That includes a call from regulators earlier this month for a 40 percent reduction in wastewater injection volume.

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The Feds Just Issued an Earthshaking Report About Fracking

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Hillary Clinton Really Regrets Saying She’d Put Coal Miners Out of Work

by KimberlCaperton Posted on March 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last weekend, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton made an unexpectedly strong statement about her intentions for coal country. As I reported:

Speaking in Ohio about her plans to revitalize coal country, Clinton said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.” That comment was immediately preceded by a promise to invest in the clean-energy economy in those places, and immediately followed by a pledge to “make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people.” But it’s not hard to guess which comment will end up as a sound bite in attack ads in coal states during the general election.

Unsurprisingly, the comment was quickly condemned by lawmakers from coal country. In response, Clinton sent a letter to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D), to “clarify” what she meant. In the letter, she says that her comment about lost coal jobs was intended to describe an existing downward spiral in the coal industry, rather than a promise to intentionally put coal miners out of work through her policy decisions. You can read the letter below. It’s a helpful bit of context, but I doubt it will be enough to keep Donald Trump, or whoever her general election opponent turns out to be, from using the soundbite against her.

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Letter-to-Senator-Manchin (PDF)

Letter-to-Senator-Manchin (Text)

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Hillary Clinton Really Regrets Saying She’d Put Coal Miners Out of Work

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