Tag Archives: infrastructure

How To Make Natural Gas More Climate-Friendly

by Myrna Posted on March 7, 2014

We have the technology to clean up fracking, but we can’t trust industry to use it voluntarily. LonnyG/Thinkstock This is a story about natural gas leakage, and we’re not talking about what happens after your grandfather says, “Pull my finger!” Recent reports in journals such as Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have carried some depressingnews: Natural gas, the “bridge fuel” touted by President Obama for its lower CO2 emissions and domestic abundance, may not actually be better for the climate than coal. Natural gas is mostly methane, which is half as carbon intensive as coal when it’s burned, but when it’s released directly into the atmosphere, it’s 86 times worse for the climate than CO2 over a 20-year time frame. Rampant methane leakage in the fracking process and from pipelines raises natural gas’s total greenhouse gas emissions; the studies estimate that more than 2 percent of gas in the U.S. may escape through leaks. It doesn’t have to be this way. The technology already exists to dramatically reduce methane leakage for a reasonable price. Environmental groups have put out reports outlining how. They could serve as a template for the oil and gas industry to follow voluntarily, or for the EPA to require under the Clean Air Act. Read the rest at Grist. View post:  How To Make Natural Gas More Climate-Friendly ; ;Related ArticlesCitizen Scientists: Now You Can Link the UK Winter Deluge To Climate ChangeHere Are 5 Infuriating Examples of Facts Making People DumberA World of Water, Seen From Space ;

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How To Make Natural Gas More Climate-Friendly

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Here’s What People Are Saying About the Big Keystone XL Report

by KennethCovingto Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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The end is in sight for the tumultuous public debate over the Keystone XL pipeline. On Friday, the State Department released its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for TransCanada Corporation’s controversial pipeline project—and concluded that approving the pipeline to carry oil from Alberta’s tar sands would have little impact on climate change.

The environmental assessment is one of the last major reports awaited by President Obama before he decides whether or not to approve construction of the pipeline. In his June speech on climate change, Obama said he would sanction the pipeline “only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” The pipeline requires State Department review because it crosses the international border between the US and Canada.

Obama’s final decision is still weeks away. But reactions to the report are already plentiful—here’s a sampling.

A statement from 350.org, the environmental organization founded by climate change activist Bill McKibben, reads, in part, “The President has already laid out a climate test for Keystone XL, that it can’t significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions. It’s clear that Keystone XL fails that test…the pipeline would pose an astronomical cost to our climate and a huge risk to families along the pipeline route. Keystone XL will fuel the climate crisis, which means more drought, more fires, more extreme weather events, and a more cost to our economy and the environment.”

Larry Schweiger, the president of the National Wildlife Federation, tells the Washington Post:

Regardless of what the EIS says, the Canadians have admitted that the amount of carbon they’re going to be releasing from the tar sands will increase Canada’s total emissions by 38 percent by 2030 instead of reducing emissions when all the science says that’s what we need to do in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Cindy Schild, senior manager for refining and oil sands policy at the American Petroleum Institute, told Bloomberg News, “If they can’t show this project is in our national interest, what is? The only thing left is for the president to decide that this project is in our national interest.”

Brian Straessle, a spokesman for API, added, “The president has had five years of inaction on the Keystone XL pipeline. If 2014 is really his ‘year of action,’ he should start by approving Keystone.”

In a statement, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international program director, said, “This is far from over. Next we must address whether the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be in America’s national interest. To that question, there is only one answer: No. The evidence is overwhelming that this project would significantly worsen carbon pollution, endanger our farms, our homes and our fresh water, create few jobs and transport dirty tar sands to the Gulf for export.”

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Here’s What People Are Saying About the Big Keystone XL Report

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6 Things Obama Can Do on Climate Without Congress

by BobbyYrhvpdup Posted on January 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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When President Obama takes the stage this evening for his annual State of the Union address, a likely theme will be how the Oval Office can work toward its goals on everything from income inequality to the federal debt without relying on an obstinate, unproductive Congress. In his speech last year, Obama threatened to sidestep the legislative branch on actions to mitigate climate change, specifically, if Congress failed to provide its own solutions. This year, environmentalists are hoping to hear more details on what that plan could entail.

Some of the major goals of climate policy wonks, like putting a price on carbon pollution, can’t happen without the help of Congress, but that doesn’t mean the president’s hands are completely tied; last week, the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University released a report co-authored by former Colorado governor Bill Ritter that details 200 climate actions Obama could take without Congress.

So what options does the president have? Here are a few ideas:

1. Continue the crackdown on coal pollution: This month the Environmental Protection Agency released a new draft of rules that would strictly curtail emissions of carbon dioxide from new coal-fired power plants; a second set of rules that would apply to existing plants is expected later this year. Slashing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which account for roughly a third of country’s total GHG emissions, is a major pillar of the president’s climate platform, even though a lengthy review process and probable legal challenges from the coal industry mean the rules aren’t likely to take effect before the end of his term. But in the absence of a national price on carbon or other legislation, regulations like this are the most significant way the president can promote a transition away from our dirtiest power sources.

2. Fix fracking: Today, regulations for natural gas drilling companies are mainly applied by states, but the president has an opportunity to influence the industry’s practices when it shows up to drill on federal land. The Colorado State report calls on the Bureau of Land Management to apply stringent rules for fracking on public land, like full disclosure of what’s in the fracking chemical cocktail, zero tolerance for methane leaks from wells and pipes (a major, unregulated source of highly potent greenhouse gases), and more efficienct water-use practices. The president also needs to set a more concrete timeline for how long fracking, often described as a “bridge” fuel between coal and renewables, will continue to be a major source of domestic energy, said Bill Becker, the report’s co-author and executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

“We recognize that natural gas is a logical transition fuel,” Becker added. “But we think that should be happening a lot faster than it’s happening now.”

Somehow, Becker said, the president needs to reconcile his “all of the above” energy plan with his stated goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020; working with the fracking industry to cut methane leaks is a great place to start.

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6 Things Obama Can Do on Climate Without Congress

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What Do We Know About the Chemical That Just Spilled in West Virginia?

by h7paisjnha Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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The chemical that leaked yesterday into a West Virginia river “hasn’t been studied very well,” says Deborah Blum, a New York Times science columnist who specializes in reporting on chemistry.

A state of emergency was declared for nine West Virginia counties yesterday after a chemical called 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol spilled into the Elk River. The chemical is “used to wash coal of impurities,” according to the Times.

The chemical leaked from a holding tank owned by a company called Freedom Industries, according to West Virginia American Water, a water company operating in the region. At present, the nine counties are under a “do not use” advisory from West Virginia American Water, and residents there do not know when they will be able to turn on their taps.

A rush on bottled water subsequently ensued, as documented in this tweet from a local news anchor:

Undoubtedly much more information will emerge on 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol and how dangerous it is (or isn’t) in water. But to start things off we turned to Blum, who was just a guest on our Inquiring Minds podcast.

“We know methanol is toxic, we know that methylcyclohexane is moderately toxic, but I haven’t seen a full analysis of the entire formula,” says Blum. “Still, I think we can assume there’s nothing here that we’d want to drink or like to see in our rivers.” However, given that it is in the Elk River it will be “very diluted,” she added, and likely will ultimately be broken down and digested by microbes. In the meantime, Blum praised authorities’ cautionary approach.

The fact that relatively little is known about the compound, says Blum, represents “another reminder that we have way too may poorly researched compounds in the toxic registry and we desperately need to update our creaking regulations regarding industrial materials.”

For our recent podcast with Deborah Blum, you can listen here:

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What Do We Know About the Chemical That Just Spilled in West Virginia?

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5 Unanswered Questions About Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal

by GemmaHornung Posted on January 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, emails and text messages surrendered by a friend and former political appointee of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie revealed that Christie’s inner circle masterminded a massive September traffic jam in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as political retribution against the city’s Democratic mayor. The messages show gleeful Christie aides gloating that their plan had wreaked so much havoc. One text message read, “Is it wrong that I’m smiling?”

The messages came from David Wildstein, who was Christie’s high school buddy and, until he resigned due to suspicions about his involvement with the bridge scandal, the director of interstate capital projects for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Wildstein divulged the messages in response to a subpoena from a panel of New Jersey lawmakers investigating the scandal.

Wildstein is testifying under oath this afternoon about the documents before the New Jersey Assembly’s Committee on Public Works, Infrastructure, and Independent Authorities. Here are five questions lawmakers should put to him:

Is there any evidence that the “traffic study” ever existed?
As suspicions about the Fort Lee traffic jam grew, Christie and his staff said repeatedly that the governor believed a Port Authority traffic study had caused the whole mess.

In his Thursday press conference, Christie maintained that the bridge scandal may have had its roots in a legitimate traffic study, saying, “I don’t know if this was a traffic study that morphed into a political vendetta or a political vendetta that morphed into a traffic study.”

Why does Christie still think his top Port Authority aide was in the dark about this scandal?
On Thursday, Christie also expressed his confidence that David Samson, the Port Authority chairman, played no role in causing Fort Lee’s traffic disaster, saying:

Samson put out a statement yesterday that he had no knowledge of this. I interviewed him yesterday. He was one of my interviews. I am convinced that he had absolutely no knowledge of this, that this was executed at the operational level and never brought to the attention of the Port Authority board of commissioners…And so I sat and met for two hours yesterday with Mr. Samson—General Samson—and again, I’m confident that he had no knowledge of this, based upon our conversations and his review of the information.

Yet messages released on Wednesday make it clear Samson was involved in plans to close Fort Lee’s access lanes on the day of the traffic jam. When New York officials at the Port Authority reopened the lanes, reducing the traffic jam, Wildstein wrote to Kelly, “We are appropriately going nuts. Samson helping us to retaliate.”

Did Christie learn about the bridge plot in his mystery meeting with the Port Authority chairman?
During a text message conversation in which a Christie aide and a Port Authority official planned the lane closures, the pair also tried to plan a meeting between Christie and Samson.

Naturally, some have speculated that the subject of the meeting was the Fort Lee lane closures—which would explode Christie’s claims that he wasn’t aware of plans to close Fort Lee’s access lanes.

What did the traffic jam’s planners think would happen in case of an emergency?
The architects of the Fort Lee traffic jam appear to have considered its potential public safety consequences. In one text message conversation that was sent once the lanes were closed, Port Authority appointee Wildstein waved away the Fort Lee mayor’s complaints about school buses getting stuck in traffic by noting, “Bottom line is he didn’t say safety.”

But officials in Fort Lee, including two members of the borough council and the chief of police, later reported that the traffic jam had slowed down emergency responders—including police who were searching for a missing child. So what was the plan in case of an emergency?

Are there other instances in which the Port Authority and Christie staffers wielded their power for political reasons?
At his Wednesday press conference, Christie claimed he knew nothing about the lane closures that brought Fort Lee to a standstill. So it wasn’t surprising that Christie denied knowing anything about other instances in which his appointees in his administration or at the Port Authority might’ve used their positions to enact political retribution.

The messages Wildstein surrendered illustrate a close relationship with the Christie administration. If any other Fort Lee-like incidents took place, he would know.

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5 Unanswered Questions About Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal

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Will San Francisco’s Plan to Charge Tech Buses $1.5 Million Satisfy Activists?

by jiigy3e Posted on January 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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On two separate days last month, buses carrying employees of major tech companies were blockaded by Bay Area activists. First, a bus bound for Google’s headquarters was stopped at 24th & Valencia in the Mission district of San Francisco. Activists from the anti-gentrification and eviction group Heart of the City boarded the bus and held a sign in front of it which read Warning: Illegal Use of Public Infrastructure. Meanwhile, union organizer Max Alper posed as a Google employee and shouted at the protestors (his real identity was later revealed.

The bus was one of hundreds in the San Francisco Bay Area that provide an estimated 35,000 boardings per day for private companies, who use the city’s MUNI bus stations as pick up and drop off points, free of charge.

A few weeks later, another round of blockades occurred throughout San Francisco and Oakland. Buses bound for Apple, in addition to buses bound for Google, were blockaded. This time signs read “Eviction Free San Francisco“, “Fuck Off Google” and so on. A Google bus window in Oakland was shattered during its blockade.

The blockades exemplified the San Francisco Bay Area’s rising income disparity and eviction rates, caused largely by the influx of technology companies.

So yesterday, when news broke that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was announcing a new series of proposed regulations for these tech buses, it appeared to be a win for area activists and organizers. Among the requirements for the mayor’s plan: shuttle providers would pay a daily fee based on the number of stops they make, plus they would have to yield to Muni buses and avoid steep and narrow streets.

But SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose told Mother Jones the recent blockades did not have any effect on the timing of the mayor’s announcement. And in fact, he says data gathering for the new policy began as early as 2011.

Plus, activists are not likely to find comfort in the mayor’s financial estimates for the pilot program. Due to California’s 1996 ballot measure Proposition 218, the new proposed fees are limited to the cost of providing the new policy. So Mayor Lee expects the permit fees to generate about $1.5 million over the first 18 months, and the new fees will reportedly cost shuttle operators only $1 per day per stop. Activists were demanding the industry pay $271 for each “illegal usage of a bus zone“, which they estimated would total around $1 billion in fines.

The mayor’s proposal must be approved by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors, which will vote on the proposal January 21. Final plans would be approved by public hearing in late Spring.

Read the full press release here.

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Will San Francisco’s Plan to Charge Tech Buses $1.5 Million Satisfy Activists?

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Did ’60 Minutes’ Drop The Ball Again?

by JuliaPage Posted on January 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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

A recent “60 Minutes” segment is drawing sharp criticism for its pessimistic take on the green technology sector, which questioned whether clean tech has become a “dirty word.”

“The Cleantech Crash,” which aired Jan. 5 and can be watched above, argues that renewable energy and other types of clean technology are a dying industry. Critics have called the segment a “hit job,” a “debacle,” an “about face” and even “Dumb & Dumber Part 3.”

One of the biggest issues with the segment, critics charge, is that it conflated the Silicon Valley clean tech venture capital scene with the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program for renewable energy.

Climate Progress’ Joe Romm contends that CBS missed the point by focusing on the failure rate of private-sector startups and “failed to understand that the successes more than pay for the failures.” It’s worth noting that as many as three-quarters of all venture-backed businesses fail, the Wall Street Journal explained in 2012. Only three in 10 startups in the clean tech sector yield favorable returns for investors, according to a 2004 estimate.

The New York Times recently profiled the US solar industry in a front-page story, noting that companies are benefitting from a “solar power craze that is sweeping Wall Street.” Despite the recent US oil and gas boom, the country “has more than doubled electricity generation from wind and solar” in the past four years, notes the San Jose Mercury News’ Dana Hull.

“If 60 Minutes had taken just two minutes to call us, they could have gotten some of their facts straight,” Ken John, a vice president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, told the Washington Examiner. “In truth, America’s solar energy industry just closed the books on a record-shattering year in 2013.”

The “60 Minutes” segment also focused on the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, which has funneled billions of dollars into low-carbon and clean-energy projects since the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The goal of the program “is not to make money,” Romm notes, but to accelerate the deployment of clean energy technology, while dropping prices and creating jobs.

Jonathan Silver, the former head of the DOE’s loan guarantee program, testified before Congress in 2012 that the portion of grants given to ventures that later failed “represents less than 3% of the total portfolio.” He told Fortune in June that the program “has been a significant success.” “Markets will always have difficulty deploying innovative technologies at scale,” he explained. “Fundamentally, a program like this is necessary to address that market failure.”

Despite the successes of the program and analyses showing its cost-effectiveness for taxpayers, Sunday’s segment focused on two notable failures—automaker Fisker and solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. While interviewing former Energy Department undersecretary Steven Koonin, “60 Minutes” host Lesley Stahl rattled off seven other failures of the DOE program before declaring, “I’m exhausted.” Their focus on those outliers in the DOE program, however, was “both stale and overblown,” GigaOM’s Katie Fehrenbacher argues.

To CBS’ credit, it has been a rocky road for some venture capitalists in the clean technology sector, Fehrenbacher notes. There was a bubble, but “only in the venture capital, Silicon Valley ecosystem,” she explains. “60 Minutes” did itself a disservice by combining the “totally separate and different” stories of venture capital and federal support for green technology. One problem, according to Fehrenbacher is that clean tech is a “convoluted term,” that “can mean many things, and isn’t all that helpful as an organizing group.” The segment makes reference to the “general cleantech area,” while discussing biofuels, solar panels, electric vehicles, and other widely divergent industries.

Critics have also noted that the words “climate change,” “global warming,” “greenhouse gas emissions” or “carbon dioxide” were never uttered in the “60 Minutes” segment.

UPDATE 1:40 p.m.: “Simply put, 60 Minutes is flat wrong on the facts,” US Department of Energy spokesman Bill Gibbons said in an emailed statement. “The clean energy economy in America is real and we are increasingly competitive in this rapidly-expanding global industry. This is a race we can, must and will win.”

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Did ’60 Minutes’ Drop The Ball Again?

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CHART: How Much Do Exxon and Google Charge Themselves for Climate Pollution?

by AlfredoMoffet Posted on December 11, 2013

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The world’s biggest polluters know a price on carbon isn’t far off. Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk Most experts agree that slowing climate change is going to have to involve some kind of price on carbon dioxide pollution. Although the last attempt to pass a federal carbon price in the US failed in 2009, some of the world’s most-polluting companies haven’t let down their guard. A report last week from the nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project found that 29 companies that operate or are headquartered in the US are planning for the future by using their own internal carbon price. So how much do these companies think carbon pollution is worth? Not every company released a specific number, but we plotted those that did on the chart above. As you can see, there’s quite a broad range, with the price officially recommended by the Obama White House ($37 per metric ton of carbon) falling north of the middle. For comparison, we also included the current prices in British Columbia (which levies a flat tax) and the European Union (which operates a carbon credit-trading market). An oversupply of credits on the EU market has recently driven the price to record lows, below where most economists believe it can be effective in curbing emissions. But a decision yesterday by the European Parliament to slash the number of available credits is expected to drive the price up 35 percent over the next year. For most companies, the purpose of adding a hypothetical carbon tax to their balance sheets is to prepare for what could become a significant expense in the future. This is especially true for energy companies that produce large amounts of carbon pollution and would therefore be hit hardest by a carbon price; ExxonMobil, with the highest reported internal price, is the world’s second-biggest corporate carbon polluter, while non-energy companies like Walt Disney and Microsoft reported lower internal prices. Zoe Tcholak-Antitch, a spokesperson for CDP North America and its former director, said working on the assumption of a high carbon price is “a very prudent approach” for big energy producers, because it builds a degree of flexibility into their budgets. “ExxonMobil invests billions of dollars in energy projects which take decades to plan and execute,” company spokesperson Alan Jeffers said in a statement. “For the purposes of our business planning we assume that governments will continue to gradually adopt a wide variety of more stringent policies to help stem greenhouse gas emissions.” In other words, the company isn’t actually shelling out $60 for each ton of carbon it emits, but the bottom line ExxonMobil brass see in revenue projections for the future accounts for the price as if it was. That way, if and when a price is set, the company’s balance sheet will be prepared to absorb even a relatively high new cost. And “if the market chooses a lower price, it makes it that much easier” to accommodate, Tcholak-Antitch said. For at least one of the companies, there wasn’t much of a choice: Xcel Energy, an electric and natural gas utility, was ordered by the Colorado state utility commission to include a carbon price in a recent proposal for future electricity infrastructure investments. The idea, Xcel spokesperson Mark Stutz said, was to compare the future cost-effectiveness of different sources of energy, including coal, natural gas, wind, and solar; if carbon pricing tomorrow were to make coal all but unaffordable to burn, it might be a better use of ratepayer money today to build a wind farm instead. Although in fact, the company’s analysis found solar and wind to be a better bargain than coal and gas even without a carbon price. Companies outside the energy sector are playing along, too: The Walt Disney Company reported that its internal carbon price was a product of its policy of purchasing carbon offsets and charging those costs back to its own divisions based on their energy consumption; having a concrete price helps those divisions decide what kinds of sustainability efforts will be most cost-effective. Wells Fargo told CDP that its internal carbon price helps the bank determine how likely it is that clients from carbon-intensive sectors, like energy, will be able to repay loans. And Delta Air Lines said it considers the EU carbon price in setting routes into Europe, and weighs an undisclosed internal price when considering airplane purchases. The difficulty for US-based companies, CDP’s Tcholak-Antitch said, is that the lack of a clear signal from the US government makes it hard to know exactly where to pin the price, which explains the wide range seen in the graph above. “Some may be setting a very low price just so that they have something that isn’t zero,” she said. Since the private sector loves little more than long-term stability, she said, that’s all the more reason for US policymakers to reopen the debate.

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CHART: How Much Do Exxon and Google Charge Themselves for Climate Pollution?

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CHART: How Much Do Exxon and Google Charge Themselves for Climate Pollution?

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Arizona utility scores tiniest possible victory in war on solar

by GeoffreyBlaine Posted on November 15, 2013

Arizona utility scores tiniest possible victory in war on solar

By

David Crummey

Arizona Public Service Co. isn’t very happy that so many of its customers have solar panels. It wants to sell electricity to them, not the other way around. So it has been campaigning to convince regulators to impose new rules that would make it more expensive for customers to maintain solar arrays on their roofs.

Currently, under a net-metering program, the utility must buy excess power produced by customers’ rooftop solar panels. It’s been proposing that it should pay a lot less for that power — $50 to $100 less a month.

On Thursday, following two days of hearings, regulators at the Arizona Corporation Commission voted 3-t0-2 to reject the utility company’s bid. Instead, they imposed a fee on new net-metering customers that will work out to about $5 a month. Current net-metering customers are exempt from the new fee. 

Bloomberg reports:

Arizona is one of 43 states that require utilities to buy solar power from customers with rooftop solar systems. This lowers consumers’ monthly power bills and reduces revenue for the power companies. The decision at a hearing yesterday in Phoenix validates APS’s position that the arrangement is unfair because it shifts some of the costs of maintaining the grid to consumers who don’t have photovoltaic panels.

Arizona Public Service — and other electric utilities around the country — argue that solar-generating customers aren’t paying their fair share of upkeep for the power grid and other infrastructure.

Solar companies like SolarCity and Sunrun and environmental groups like the Sierra Club argue that imposing additional costs on solar-panel owners will slow the adoption of renewable energy. 

For now, Arizona Public Service scored only a small victory. Solar supporters aren’t happy about the fee increase, but they’re breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t 10 times bigger.

“The commission’s decision was being watched by utilities nationwide,” reports the Associated Press. “Utilities in other states have been pushing similar arguments and seeking the same sorts of rate increases.”

You can be sure debate over this issue will continue to rage across the country.


Source
Arizona Regulators Impose Power-Grid Fees for Solar Roofs, Bloomberg

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

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The Supertyphoon and the Warming Globe

by Myrna Posted on November 12, 2013

Did climate change turn Haiyan into a monster? Fragile Oasis/Flickr Yesterday, the supertyphoon Haiyan made landfall in Vietnam and China. Reports are still coming in, but many are confirmed dead and there are certainly many more injured. There’s considerable damage to property, infrastructure, and so on. Luckily — if that word is even appropriate here — the storm had weakened considerably before hitting those countries. It was at its full and fearsome strength when it came across the Philippines last week, and the devastation there is almost beyond imaging. There are certainly thousands dead, with some estimates as high as 10,000. Over a half million people have been displaced, and millions more affected in one way or another. Humanitarian aid is pouring in, a bright spot in this dark moment. In situations like this, it’s common to ask why these things can happen, how these things can happen, and even to call them “an act of God.” To keep reading, click here. Originally posted here: The Supertyphoon and the Warming Globe Related Articles Philippines Urges Action to Resolve Climate Talks Deadlock After Typhoon Haiyan How Online Mapmakers Are Helping the Red Cross Save Lives in the Philippines MAP: Is Your State Ready for Climate Disasters?

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The Supertyphoon and the Warming Globe

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