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America thinks we need to fix the climate — after we deal with the deficit

by graptorm Posted on February 21, 2013

America thinks we need to fix the climate — after we deal with the deficit

“Americans’ Priorities,” the graph is labelled. Underneath, four issues, and the extent to which Americans feel they require urgent action, as suggested to Pew Research. And so:

The most important issue for Congress to address this year, supported by 70 percent of Americans? The long-term deficit. Least urgent of the four? Climate change. Incorrect, America.

From USA Today:

There is bipartisan agreement on this: Dealing with the budget deficit is urgent.

That’s a change. When Obama took office in 2009, during a cascading financial crisis, Americans put deficit reduction in the middle of a list of policy goals in a Pew poll. Now it has risen near the top. Seven of 10 Americans (including not only 81% of Republicans but also 65% of Democrats) say it is essential for the president and Congress to enact major deficit legislation this year. …

When asked which of four issues was most pressing — the deficit, guns, immigration or climate change — 51% chose the deficit, three times that of any other issue. However, there were some significant differences by race and ethnicity. Hispanics were inclined to choose immigration as the most critical issue; African Americans chose guns.

Here’s the breakdown on the urgency question by political party (compared to “everyone”, which represents the entire pool of respondents).

Even most Democrats don’t see an urgent need for action on climate change — fewer than half say it’s a priority for this year. That’s astonishing.

When Pew asked about specific climate policies, the results were a bit more heartening. (You can read Pew’s summary of the data here.)

For example, people were asked which energy policy is more important: developing alternative energy sources or expanding fossil fuel production. Fifty-four percent of respondents said alternative source development was more important; 34 percent (including a majority of Republicans) said fossil fuel exploration was.

Pew also notes that this is a shift in the recent trend. Support for alternative energy had declined from 2011 to 2012. Now, it’s shot back up.

Pew

In part, it’s a function of strong support among young people — which, of course, also correlates to political party.

Pew’s final climate-related question was whether or not respondents support stricter limits on carbon dioxide pollution from power plants, one of the few things Obama can do unilaterally (even if he’s shown no inclination to do so).

Surprisingly, over 60 percent of respondents favor such action — and Republicans were nearly split, 42 percent in favor compared to 48 percent against.

What does all of this mean? Not a lot. Obama has support to act on developing alternative energy and regulating carbon dioxide emissions — at least until the full weight of opposition and Fox News punditry bears down. If there’s one thing this data suggests, it’s that the views of Americans, typically disinterested in the fine mechanics of government, are shaped by pundits and media focus. There’s absolutely no reason for Americans to consider the deficit more important than gun control or immigration, and especially no reason for them to consider the deficit more urgent than climate change, a problem that grows worse by the minute. But that’s not what is discussed on the news and on news websites. And so that’s not what’s reflected in this poll.

We all know the next step. This poll, blurred by insider priorities, will be held aloft by insiders as proof they were right. And some time, hopefully in the next few years, Obama and Congress will actually take steps to fight climate change.

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

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Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.

by kastijoo8753 Posted on February 15, 2013

Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.

If there were a war on coal — which, sadly, there isn’t — it appears that the tide of battle has turned. Coal is making a comeback.

In an extensive article entitled “Coal Claws Back,” the Rhodium Group, a think tank that assesses global trends, outlined the fuel’s resurgence in the U.S. In short:

While the decline in coal-fired power generation, driven in large part by cheap natural gas, has helped reduce emissions to levels most policymakers and climate diplomats thought impossible absent economy-wide legislation, it looks as though it has just about run its course. Natural gas prices bottomed out in April of last year at $1.82 per MMBTU at Henry Hub, and have since climbed to above $3. While still low relative to the high gas prices that had become the norm before the shale boom took hold, this rebound has been enough to stop the bleeding for coal-fired power. Coal’s share of electricity generation increased from 33% in April to 42% in November, the most recent month for which public data is available, and industry consultancy GenScape estimates that coal’s share stabilized at these levels through January.

The picture is more clear in graph form.

Last summer, we noted that electricity generation from natural gas had nearly matched that from coal. This is one reason our CO2 emissions plummeted recently. But the coal-versus-natural-gas trend hasn’t held. (Note: All of the data used below is from the Energy Information Administration; November 2012 data is the most recently available.)

In October and November, the gap between coal and natural gas increased. Coal clawed back.

One reason is that the price of natural gas used for electricity generation increased. Below, it’s compared to the always-cyclical price of residential natural gas. Since April 2012, the price has risen steadily — up 58 percent by November.

That uptick correlates with the trend away from natural gas in energy production. Higher natural gas price, less incentive to use it to power electricity generation.

And the Rhodium Group suggests that, at least for the next year or two, the cost difference between coal and natural gas will hold steady.

Rhodium Group

Click to embiggen.

The EIA, meanwhile, projects that coal will hold a consistent if smaller share of the generation market for another 30 years, with natural gas and renewables inching up in the percentage of generation. Overall amount of generation, which had fallen in recent years, will start going back up.

EIA

Click to embiggen.

More coal use and more electricity produced means more greenhouse gas emissions.

Rhodium Group

Click to embiggen.

Welcome back to the fight, coal. You weren’t missed.

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

Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.

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Will the FDA keep hiding most data on farm antibiotic use?

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 18, 2012

Will the FDA keep hiding most data on farm antibiotic use?

By Susie Cagle

Livestock antibiotics may beef up our meat, but they may also create drug-resistant bugs that could one day kill us. Unfortunately, the FDA doesn’t want to tell us what it knows about how much antibiotic use is happening on American farms.

Animal Equality

Antibiotics bottles on a pig farm.

Tomorrow, the FDA will hold two public meetings on reauthorization of the Animal Drug User Fee Act, which is due to happen in 2013. One question up for discussion: how much antibiotic info should be publicly released under the act. First passed in 2003, ADUFA took money from frustrated drug companies that wanted to speed up their review process and gave it to the feds to hire more reviewers. (Hiring federal drug reviewers with big drug dollars — not sketchy at all!) The 2008 reauthorization of the act added a provision requiring the FDA to release compiled data on livestock drug use. But this is hardly an open government effort, as Maryn McKenna writes at Wired.

[I]n each year, the FDA released only summed amounts, in kilograms, of all the drugs sold, by all the companies, for all livestock species, across all agricultural uses: growth promoters, prevention, and treatment.

The veterinary pharma companies are not getting together, adding up their sales by drug class for the entire year, and delivering the totals to the FDA. The companies report to the agency individually; they report their data by month, not year; and they report how the drugs are administered, in feed, in water, or by injection.

The FDA receives all this data but is not releasing it, presumably for reasons having to do with its initial ADUFA negotiations with agriculture.

The FDA has already compiled some recommendations for the reauthorization. McKenna:

The recommendations do include a number of things that the agency agrees to change on behalf of veterinary-antibiotic manufacturers, such as agreeing to shorter review times for drug applications, and other “enhancements” of its performance. But there is no sign it has responded to any of the requests made by organizations concerned about the off-farm, downstream, human health effects which occur when those antibiotics are used.

If the FDA doesn’t want to take the public’s comments seriously, it might have to taste the public’s wrath. Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Project filed a lawsuit against the FDA for withholding the animal drug data, despite Freedom of Information Act requests. The FDA claims it’s protecting “confidential commercial information,” a.k.a. trade secrets, which kind of tells us everything we need to know about ADUFA in a nutshell gelatin capsule.

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

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The next big U.N. climate report will not include the massive effects of permafrost melt

by Myrna Posted on December 3, 2012

The next big U.N. climate report will not include the massive effects of permafrost melt

ThinkProgress/Schaefer et al

Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm is one of the best there is at breaking down climate science, which is to say that he is one of the best there is at dropping reams of data in your lap that he can demonstrate add up to the apocalypse. Yesterday, when you weren’t looking, he dropped a ton of data in your lap in a post whose title ends in an exclamation point. So, you know. It’s serious.

For a long time, climate scientists have been concerned about the effects of melting permafrost. By way of quick refresher, permafrost is the layer of frozen ground that is a hallmark of the Arctic. Since the region is usually below freezing, the soil stays frozen to varying depth, which has been a boon for development. Rock-solid soil makes it simple to build towns and roads. Until the permafrost starts to melt — which it is — causing some serious problems for those towns and roads.

U.N./Christopher Arp

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

That’s actually the least troubling problem. Of far more concern is methane release. As layers of soil and vegetation that have been frozen solid for centuries thaw, they start to release methane that’s been trapped. And, worse, that vegetation starts to decompose, releasing newly created methane. Methane, as we’ve noted, is far more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, creating a massive negative loop of warming and permafrost thaw and more warming and so on.

What’s the U.N. going to do about the problem? Nothing. As Romm notes, a key U.N. report won’t even acknowledge it exists.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due to release its “Fifth Assessment Report” in stages beginning next fall. It’s meant to be an overview of the science on climate change to guide the global body. But it “will not include the potential effects of the permafrost carbon feedback on global climate,” per a new report that details the permafrost problem. Therefore: Romm went ballistic. With graphs and reports, as is his fashion.

Back in 2005, before the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment, a major study (subs. req’d) led by NCAR climate researcher David Lawrence, found that virtually the entire top 11 feet of permafrost around the globe could disappear by the end of this century. Using the first “fully interactive climate system model” applied to study permafrost, the researchers found that if we tried to stabilize CO2 concentrations in the air at 550 ppm, permafrost would plummet from over 4 million square miles today to 1.5 million.

That matters because the … permamelt contains a staggering 1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere, much of which would be released as methane. Methane is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 to 100 times as potent over 20 years!

Carbon expected to be released into the atmosphere from thawing permafrost.

Translation: The U.N. IPCC’s report won’t take into consideration perhaps the single most important contributor to warming besides consumption of fossil fuels. Meaning that its models over the course of decades and centuries will be wrong. And meaning, therefore, that the undoubtedly grim predictions it outlines will actually be hopelessly optimistic.

Which is worth a few exclamation points.

Source

IPCC’s Planned Obsolescence: Fifth Assessment Report Will Ignore Crucial Permafrost Carbon Feedback!, ThinkProgress

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

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Renewable energy consumption is expected to keep rising in the U.S. — sort of

by Myrna Posted on December 3, 2012

Renewable energy consumption is expected to keep rising in the U.S. — sort of

The U.S. Energy Information Administration has what seems, at first blush, like bad news. Renewable energy consumption in the U.S. is expected to drop 2.6 percent this year. Here’s a graph of the dip. (Note: Both the 2012 and 2013 values are estimates.)

Click to embiggen.

But buried in the data is the explanation: The drop is only due to hydropower “[beginning] to return to its long-term average.” Take out hydropower, and you have a 4.2 percent increase.

Click to embiggen.

But there’s another caveat. The estimates are based on two assumptions.

The first is that the wind production tax credit (PTC) is renewed. This is a pretty big “if.” The tax credit, you may remember, is a bolster that allows the wind industry to compete in the rigged production game with fossil fuels. Fossil fuel companies are eager to see the PTC expire as it’s slated to at the end of the month, with one Koch-allied group pushing hard on the issue. If the PTC isn’t renewed, it’s safe to assume that the projections above will prove to be far too optimistic.

That said, there is some good wind news today. The New York Times notes that the government is holding another offshore auction next year — but this time, for wind energy. How much is generated by that auction — in terms of money and electricity — depends on what happens on Capitol Hill by the 31st.

The other caveat in those EIA projections is that solar continues to grow at about 30 percent a year. The solar industry (whose own PTC is expiring at the end of 2013) isn’t sitting on its hands. Over the weekend, the Times reported on how the industry is taking a page from Tupperware in selling its panels.

Environmentalists, government officials and sales representatives have been trying to get Americans to go solar for decades, with limited success. Despite the long push, solar power still represents less than 1 percent of electricity generated in the United States. Home solar panel setups, which typically run $25,000 or more, are considered by many consumers to be the province of the rich or idealistic.

So now solar companies are adhering to a path blazed by Tupperware decades ago, figuring that the best sales people are often enthusiastic customers willing to share their experiences with friends and neighbors — and perhaps earn a referral fee on any sales that result.

It’s a smart strategy: As we’ve noted before, peer pressure shows a demonstrable effect on solar panel adoption.

And, finally, some context. Here’s the breakdown of energy consumption between renewables, nuclear, and fossil fuels.

A 4 percent increase in renewable consumption is better than a decrease. But it will take a whole lot of solar-ware parties before we’re actually making a real dent in our greenhouse gas emissions.

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

Renewable energy consumption is expected to keep rising in the U.S. — sort of

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Soon-to-retire weather satellites played key role in predicting Sandy’s path

by Myrna Posted on November 21, 2012

Soon-to-retire weather satellites played key role in predicting Sandy’s path

Last month, shortly before Sandy ripped apart the shorelines of New Jersey and Long Island, we noted the possibly imminent budget-related retirement of government satellites that help forecasters refine weather data. As the article we cited then asked:

All this week, forecasters have been relying on … satellite observations for almost all of the data needed to narrow down what were at first widely divergent computer models of what Hurricane Sandy would do next: explode against the coast, or veer away into the open ocean?

Now we know just how much reliance forecasters placed on satellites. Without them, predictions that Sandy would veer sharply to the west — the path that brought it to New York — would not have been made as early as they were.

weather.com

This early projection of Sandy’s path had it sliding harmlessly along the coast.

From the Capital Weather Gang:

The European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasting (ECMWF), widely praised for the superior predictions of its model during superstorm Sandy, conducted an interesting experiment: how would its 5-day model simulation for the devastating storm [have] performed without any polar-orbiting satellite data?

The answer is astonishing: Rather than correctly simulating Sandy’s hard left turn into northern mid-Atlantic coast, an ECMWF model run without polar satellite data would have kept Sandy harmlessly out to sea.

It’s impossible to know at what point forecasters would have predicted the last-minute veer, seen in the video below at about the 17-second mark. Even with that data, broad agreement that such a turn was expected didn’t happen until Oct. 25 – four days before the storm hit. Each of those four days allowed authorities to prepare for its arrival, however many gaps in that preparation existed.

A caveat.

[T]he potential “gap” in polar satellite coverage expected is just that — a gap, stressed Capital Weather Gang’s Steve Tracton, an expert in numerical weather prediction. Data would still stream in from other satellites. Since the ECMWF excluded all polar-orbiting satellite data in its experiment, it cannot be seen as a realistic representation of a possible decline in forecast quality from the loss of a single satellite Tracton emphasized.

Nonetheless, predicting where massive storms are headed is an instance in which a surfeit of information can only be a good thing. It is not the sort of scenario in which we should settle for just enough.

And with climate change promising more large storms like this, the need has quite literally never been greater.

Source

Without polar satellites, forecast for Superstorm Sandy would have suffered European analysis finds, Capital Weather Gang

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