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No, the Earth Is Not Heading for a “Mini Ice Age”

by EdithHXAZzf Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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

A new study and related press release from the Royal Astronomical Society is making the rounds in recent days, claiming that a new statistical analysis of sunspot cycles shows “solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s” to a level that last occurred during the so-called Little Ice Age, which ended 300 years ago.

Since climate change deniers have a particular fascination with sunspot cycles, this story has predictably been picked up by all manner of conservative news media, with a post in the Telegraph quickly gathering up tens of thousands of shares. The only problem is, it’s a wildly inaccurate reading of the research.

Sunspots have been observed on a regular basis for at least 400 years, and over that period, there’s a weak correlation between the number of sunspots and global temperature—most notably during a drastic downturn in the number of sunspots from about 1645 to 1715. Known as the Maunder minimum, this phenomenon happened about the same time as a decades-long European cold snap known as the Little Ice Age. That connection led to theory that this variability remains the dominant factor in Earth’s climate. Though that idea is still widely circulated, it’s been disproved. In reality, sunspots fluctuate in an 11-year cycle, and the current cycle is the weakest in 100 years—yet 2014 was the planet’s hottest year in recorded history.

If you look closely at the original press release, the study’s author, Valentina Zharkova, never implied a new ice age is imminent—only that we may see a sharp downturn in the number of sunspots. Yes, the sun is a variable star, but its output is remarkably stable. The amount of energy we receive from the sun just doesn’t change fast enough to cause a rapid-onset ice age in just a few decades.

The root of the problem here may be a poorly worded quote in the press release implying an imminent 60 percent decline in solar activity. Yes, numbers of sunspots can vary by that much or even more on an 11-year cycle, but the sun’s output—the total amount of energy we get—is extremely stable and only changes by about 0.1 percent, even in extreme sunspot cycles like the one Zharkova is predicting.

But let’s play devil’s advocate: What if Zharkova is right about the decline in solar activity? There’s still no need to worry (or to become complacent about global warming). Even assuming sunspots are in the process of shutting down, as happened during the Maunder minimum and Little Ice Age, it wouldn’t matter much.

An interesting new study published in June showed that a sharp decline in solar activity to record lows could have a relatively large impact on regional climate over a period of decades. But even the return of a Maunder minimum type slowdown in solar activity—an extreme scenario, by any measure—would slow global warming by only about a half-degree in northern Europe. That’s essentially negligible, on a global scale. A half-degree is within the margin of error of predictions for the continued decline in frost-free days in the United Kingdom, for example. Winter will still be a month shorter, on average, by the end of the century. Past research suggests that an extreme decline in solar activity would lead to a shift of just 0.16 degrees Celsius globally—and even that is erased once a more typical solar cycle resumes in a few decades.

For reference, we’ve already warmed the planet by about 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 thanks to fossil fuels, and, despite all our decades of discussion about the problem, we’re still on pace for a worst-case scenario of between 3 and 4 degrees of warming by century end.

If anything, changes in the oceans—especially the Pacific, our largest ocean—over the last couple of years point to an imminent increase in the rate of global warming. El Niño has already grown to record levels in the Pacific for this time of year, and ocean temperatures in the vast patch of sea from Hawaii to California to Alaska are also without precedent. Similar events have coincided with a 10- to 20-year surge in global temperatures.

No matter what the sun does over the next century, we are not heading in to a new ice age. Why am I so sure about that? It may have something to do with the 110 million tons of carbon dioxide humanity is pumping into the atmosphere every single day. The resulting change to our global climate system is so huge, it overwhelms all natural atmospheric forces, including the sun. There is no other plausible explanation for global warming except us.

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No, the Earth Is Not Heading for a “Mini Ice Age”

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Here’s How GOP Presidential Hopefuls Are Reacting to the Iran Nuclear Deal

by TyroneStClair07 Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Early Tuesday morning, Iran and six world powers announced a landmark agreement aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for lifting international sanctions that have long crippled the country’s economy. The accord, which concluded a tense 18-day summit in Vienna, was met with praise by both U.S. officials and Iranian leaders as ushering in a new era of cooperation between the two historically at-odds nations.

Unsurprisingly, the accord was also met with a barrage of criticism from conservatives who had long opposed negotiating with Iran in the first place. They were specifically outraged by President Obama’s vow to veto any congressional legislation attempting to block the deal from being implemented. Upon learning that the negotiations had successfully concluded, GOP presidential hopeful and foreign policy hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham told Bloomberg‘s Josh Rogin the deal was “akin to declaring war” on Israel.

It didn’t take long for others to weigh in. Here is a sampling of the reactions from Republican presidential candidates below:

Conservative pundits also weighed in:

Congress now has 60 days to review the details of the agreement, and the intense rhetoric is likely to escalate.

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Here’s How GOP Presidential Hopefuls Are Reacting to the Iran Nuclear Deal

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The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

by JestineChristia Posted on June 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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The US law enforcement community regards homegrown violent extremists, not radicalized Islamists, as the most severe threat from political violence in the country, according to a new study from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. Released late last week, the report comes amid renewed focus on the problem ever since a 21-year-old avowed white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. There is a growing body of research highlighting the threat from right-wing extremists, but who or what exactly does that term encompass, and how big really is the problem? Mother Jones examined various reports and contacted experts to find out more.

What are “far-right” or “right-wing” extremists?
While there is no uniform definition, these terms loosely encompass individuals or groups associated with white supremacist, antigovernment, sovereign citizen, patriot, militia, or other ideologies that target specific religious, ethnic or other minority groups. (Meanwhile, how to determine which violent attacks constitute an act of terrorism has been a subject of renewed debate.)

The available data on violent attacks perpetrated by right-wing extremists ranges widely, explains Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. Researchers at the US Department of Homeland Security, New America Foundation, Southern Poverty Law Center, University of Maryland, and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point have all compiled data on right-wing extremist violence using varying criteria over different periods of time, most of them going back to the mid 1990s, when the Oklahoma City bombing riveted attention on the problem. (The exception is the University of Maryland’s data, which dates to 1970, during a surge in violent far-left extremism.)

The various studies have all led to the same general conclusion: The threat from homegrown right-wing extremists has grown in recent years. “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” Arie Perliger, the director of terrorism studies at the Combating Terrorism Center, wrote in a 2012 report.

How often do right wing violent extremists attack?
The University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database registered 65 attacks on American soil associated with right-wing ideologies since 9/11, versus 24 attacks by jihadist extremists. The New America Foundation, meanwhile, tallied 48 deaths from attacks by non-jihadist extremists over the same time period—including the Charleston shooting—compared with 26 deaths from attacks by jihadist extremists, including the one at Fort Hood in 2009, in which 13 were killed.

Courtesy of the New York Times

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which compiles data on “all violent attacks that were perpetrated by groups or individuals affiliated with far-right associations,” counted an average of 337 annual attacks by right-wing extremists in the decade after 9/11, including a total of 254 fatalities, or an annual average of about 18 deaths.

Arie Perliger, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Daryl Johnson, a former DHS domestic terrorism intelligence analyst who now heads the consulting firm DT Analytics, says that attacks from far-right extremists “increased dramatically” after 2008. Johnson, who began tracking domestic terrorism while at DHS, estimates that there is currently an average of one plot or attack every 40 to 45 days. “We are in a heightened period right now,” he says.

Johnson’s view is supported by a 2012 report from Perliger at the Combating Terrorism Center: “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” it notes.

How organized are these extremists?
As former Mother Jones staffer Adam Serwer reported in August 2012 when a neo-Nazi carried out a massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the number of American extremist groups has also risen overall in recent years:

How is law enforcement responding?
About three quarters of the 382 state and local law enforcement agencies surveyed by the Triangle Center listed anti-government extremism as a top threat in their jurisdiction, compared with 39 percent that listed violence connected with Al Qaeda or related groups.

In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League documented an upswing in far-right attacks against law enforcement:

Anti-Defamation League

But those numbers should be put into perspective, the report’s authors Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer note, since terrorism of all kinds represents a small fraction of total violent crime in the United States. The number of homicides in the US since 9/11 totaled more than 215,000.

And because the data on right-wing violence varies so much, “it’s hard to get a true understanding of the threat,” German says, adding that the FBI—whose number one priority is to protect the United States from a terrorist attack—does not publish data on domestic terrorism. “Instead, we rely on these private groups that are doing a public service by compiling and publishing information,” he says. The FBI does collect and publish limited data on hate crimes, which it defines as criminal offenses “against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” But German as well as researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center point out that data relies on voluntary reporting and thus undercounts those numbers.

So what is the government doing about it?
The federal and local governments had ramped up efforts to combat domestic terrorism of all kinds in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. A few months following the 9/11 attacks, FBI official Dale Watson testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that “Right-wing groups continue to represent a serious terrorist threat.” But Johnson, German, and others assert that federal counterterrorism programs since 9/11 have focused overwhelmingly on the perceived threat from Islamic extremism. That includes the Obama administration’s “countering violent extremism” strategy, which “revolves around impeding the radicalization of violent jihadists,” according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.

The attack in Charleston underscored “the failure of the federal government to keep closer tabs” on right-wing extremists, argues Gerald Horne, a historian and civil rights activist at the University of Houston.

But the focus may soon increase. In February, CNN reported that US Homeland Security circulated an intelligence assessment that focused on the domestic terror threat posed by right-wing extremists. Kurzman and Schanzer also point to a handout from a training program sponsored by the US Department of Justice, cautioning that the threat from antigovernment extremism “is real.”

Who and where are the perpetrators of far-right extremist attacks?
According to Perliger’s research at West Point, 54 percent of such attacks since 1990—in which the perpetrators were caught or identified—were carried out by a single individual. About 75 percent of all perpetrators identified were 29 years old or younger.

Perliger also notes that attacks have moved beyond states in the South—the birthplace of groups such as the KKK and the site of major attacks during the 1960s—to places including California, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. “The existence of significant minority groups in the different states appears linked with the level of far-right violence they experience,” Perliger says. In a recent editorial, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees and J. Richard Cohen argued that far-right extremism is gaining ground beyond state boundaries: “Unlike those of the civil rights era, whose main goal was to maintain Jim Crow in the American South, today’s white supremacists don’t see borders; they see a white tribe under attack by people of color across the globe…The days of thinking of domestic terrorism as the work of a few Klansmen or belligerent skinheads are over.”

What factors might explain the latest rise in this kind of extremism?
Experts suggest that several factors may have played into it. Researchers commonly attribute the spike in right-wing attacks, around 2008, to the election of an African-American president. Around the time of Obama’s election, Johnson notes how the white supremacist web forum Stormfront had less than 100,000 registered users. “Today, it is over 300,000,” he says. Scholars have also debated the role that the 2008 financial crisis, a heightening debate over immigration, and other socioeconomic changes may have had. The Combating Terrorism Center’s Perliger points out that past spikes in far-right attacks also corresponded with the passing of landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and firearm restrictions during the 1990s.

Was the Charleston shooting a hate crime or an act of terrorism?
It had the marks of both, according to Horne, German, and others. FBI Director James Comey came under fire for saying the Charleston shooting did not appear to be an act of terrorism based on the available evidence. German adds that Roof’s racist comments about black people, his photos with flags invoking racist ideologies, and the fact that he killed a state senator, make clear that his attack on the church was both targeted and political.

Could the Charleston shooting have been prevented?
Violent attacks by extremists are difficult to predict, but both the government and researchers could be doing a better job of working to understand them, German says. “You have to understand both how the movement works and what parts are dangerous and what parts aren’t, as well as understanding how the particular terrorist activity starts,” he explains, adding that most research on terrorist attacks has fixated on their ideological roots, rather than on their methodologies. “That’s where you’ll see terrorism studies completely lacking, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been thrown into terrorism research. They’re not studying the right things.”

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The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

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Watch President Obama Break Into "Amazing Grace" During His Extraordinary Charleston Eulogy

by RoxannaZiq Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Obama came before a grief-stricken but ebullient crowd in Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday afternoon to eulogize the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was among the nine people gunned down on June 18 in the massacre at the historic Mother Emanuel church. Obama delivered more than a presidential speech—he gave a sermon, a powerful and lively invocation of Pinckney’s life, punctuated by applause, cheers, and notes from the church organ. He drew on the history of pain and survival of the church community that Pinckney led, and situated Pinckney’s life within the broader historical struggle for civil rights for black Americans.

But it was Obama’s rendition of “Amazing Grace”—begun a cappella by the president in a moment of quiet pause near the end, and soon joined by the church band and the entire audience—that will surely be the most remembered part of this extraordinary presidential address. (The song starts around the 35:20 mark.)

Taking the stage after a series of passionate eulogies and moving gospel numbers at a packed arena at the College of Charleston, Obama called Pinckney “a man who believed in things not seen, a man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered” and was “wise beyond his years.”

“Rev. Pinckney embodied a politics that was never mean, nor small,” Obama said, to regular vocal agreement from the crowd. “He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas along, but by seeking out your ideas.” Pinckney, Obama said, “embodied that our Christian faith demands deeds, not just prayer.”

“Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church,” the president continued, going on to detail the history of the struggles faced by black churches—what he called “hush harbors,” “rest stops,” and “bunkers” along the turbulent path to freedom, desegregation, and beyond. “A foundation stone for liberty and justice for all,” he said. “That’s what the church meant.” He was met with more than one standing ovation.

In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre, Obama has spoken forcefully both about race and gun violence. As the eulogy crescendoed, he all but merged the two subjects. First, he said, “None of us can or should expect a transformation of race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says, ‘We have to have a conversation about race.'” He then said emphatically, “We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. We don’t need more talk.”

After the applause subsided, he turned to guns. “None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy—it will not,” he said, acknowledging that worthwhile policy arguments will go on. “There are good people on both sides of these debates.” Obama continued:

But it would be a betrayal of everything Rev. Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on—to go back to business as usual. That’s what we so often do, to avoid the uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change. That’s how we lose our way again.

The president appeared with first lady Michelle Obama, alongside Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden. House Speaker John Boehner was also in attendance (the White House confirmed to CBS News reporter Mark Knoller that it had been Boehner’s first time aboard Air Force One with Obama).

The eulogy in Charleston capped an extraordinary two days for Obama in which he hailed two landmark Supreme Court decisions. The first, handed down Thursday, saved a key part of his signature health care law. The second, on Friday morning, cleared the path for marriage equality across America. Then the president strode onto a stage to inspire a grieving community, and nation, using words and song like no president had before.

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Watch President Obama Break Into "Amazing Grace" During His Extraordinary Charleston Eulogy

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The Forgotten Pentagon Papers Conspirator

by LorenzaDarwin Posted on June 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

The witness reported men being hung by the feet or the thumbs, waterboarded, given electric shocks to the genitals, and suffering from extended solitary confinement in what he said were indescribably inhumane conditions. It’s the sort of description that might have come right out of the executive summary of the Senate torture report released last December. In this case, however, the testimony was not about a “black site” somewhere in the Greater Middle East, nor was it a description from Abu Ghraib, nor in fact from this century at all.

The testimony came from Vietnam; the year was 1968; the witness was Anthony J. Russo, one of the first Americans to report on the systematic torture of enemy combatants by CIA operatives and other US agents in that long-gone war. The acts Russo described became commonplace in the news post-9/11 and he would prove to be an early example of what also became commonplace in our century: a whistleblower who found himself on the wrong side of the law and so was prosecuted for releasing the secret truth about the acts of our government.

Determined to shine a light on what he called “the truth held prisoner,” Russo blew the whistle on American torture policy in Vietnam and on an intelligence debacle at the center of Vietnam decision-making that helped turn that war into the nightmare it was. Neither of his revelations saw the light of day in his own time or ours and while Daniel Ellsberg, his compatriot and companion in revelation, remains a major figure for his role in releasing the Pentagon Papers, Russo is a forgotten man.

That’s too bad. He shouldn’t be forgotten. His is, unfortunately, a story of our times as well as his.

The CIA Interrogation Center, Saigon
Before him sat the enemy. VC. Vietcong. He was slender, a decade older than the 28-year-old American, and cautious in his initial responses. The American offered him a cigarette. “Smoke?”

Anthony Russo liked to befriend his subjects, finding that sharing a cigarette or a beer and congenial conversation could improve an interview’s results.

This man’s all right, Russo thought—unlike the one he had interviewed when he first arrived in Saigon. That prisoner had sat before him, quivering in fear, pleading for his life. “Are you going to kill me?” the distraught man had said repeatedly, his thumbs red and bulbous from being strung up.

Torture was not something Russo had anticipated when he took the job. A civilian with a rank equivalent to major working for the RAND Corporation, he had arrived in the South Vietnamese capital on February 22, 1965, and was briefed on his mission. Russo was to meet the enemy face-to-face and figure out what made them tick. On that first day, he could hear General Richard Stilwell, chief of staff of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), barking orders from the next room: “You get every goddamn plane in the air that you can!”

Russo thought the war would be over in a few weeks, months at worst.

Instead of the limited conflict he expected, years slipped by. Bombs fell, villages were decimated, the fabric of Vietnamese life assaulted. Russo persisted with his interviews of Vietcong prisoners, witnessing the after-effects of torture in nearly every instance.

It’s hard to pinpoint just when the shift occurred in the young man who came to Southeast Asia to “promote democracy.” But as one tour of duty extended to two, contact with the enemy changed not their hearts and minds, but his. On the eve of the 1968 Tet Offensive, he returned to the United States intent on challenging the war, a chance he would get, helping his friend and RAND co-worker Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers.

That secret history of US decision-making in Vietnam, a massive compilation of internal government memoranda and analyses, had been quietly commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967 to assess what had gone wrong in Vietnam. Ellsberg leaked the Papers to the press in mid-1971, setting off a political firestorm and First Amendment crisis. He would be indicted on charges of espionage, conspiracy, and theft of government property, and would face a maximum penalty of 115 years in prison. Charges were also brought against Russo, who was suspected of complicity, after he refused to testify before a grand jury. He was jailed for 47 days for contempt and faced a possible sentence of 35 years in prison if convicted.

Ellsberg’s leak led to a Supreme Court decision on prior restraint, a landmark First Amendment case. Though all the charges were ultimately dropped, the leak and its aftermath had major political fallout, contributing to the demise of the presidency of Richard Nixon and forming a dramatic chapter on the path to US defeat in Vietnam.

Ellsberg became a twentieth-century hero, applauded in print and film, his name nearly synonymous with the Pentagon Papers, but Russo, the young accomplice who goaded Ellsberg to go public, has been nearly forgotten. Yet he was, according to Ellsberg, the first person to document the systematic torture of enemy combatants in Vietnam. If no one knows this, it’s because his report on the subject remains buried in the vaults of the RAND Corporation, the think tank that did research for the Pentagon in Vietnam. Similarly, while the use of unprecedented airpower against the civilian populations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia inspired international calls for war crimes trials in the 1970s, Russo’s exposure of the fabrication of data that propped up that air war remains but a footnote in Vietnam War historiography, unknown to all but a handful of academics.

He has remained “the other conspirator.” Ellsberg later conceded that he probably wouldn’t have thought of releasing the Papers if Russo hadn’t prodded him to “put that out” and helped copy them in a series of all-night sessions. But Russo would take a backseat to Ellsberg, who had snuck the massive set of documents out of RAND headquarters and released them to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and 18 other news organizations.

The two of them would become the antiwar movement’s odd couple. Ellsberg was articulate, suave, and fashionable; Russo opted for hippie attire, long hair, and impossibly bushy sideburns, a style of dress that fit with his growing political radicalism. Russo and his attorney, Leonard Weinglass, devised a bold—some said reckless—defense strategy focused on using expert witness testimony to put the US prosecution of the war on trial. Weinglass would emerge as a star attorney on the case, even—in the opinion of some observers—eclipsing Ellsberg’s senior lawyer, Leonard Boudin. But his client kept getting into trouble: scrawling a wiseacre comment on evidence before the court, handing a prosecution witness a press release that accused him of war crimes, peppering his statements to the press with movement jargon. In the end, Russo’s leftwing antics would help marginalize him and bury the story he had to tell.

The Think Tank
It all started in a nondescript midcentury building on Main Street in sunny Santa Monica, California. There, the RAND Corporation, a quasi-private think tank with a cozy relationship with the Air Force and Washington power brokers, dreamed up study projects for the Department of Defense.

RAND, an acronym for “research and development,” was launched in 1946 as a private research arm of the Army Air Forces, whose successor, the Air Force, would remain its primary financial backer and client for years to come. The think tank’s work ranged from weapons development to advanced strategic thinking on how to wage—or avert—nuclear war. RAND theorists would set the parameters for strategic defense thinking for decades, with the likes of Herman Kahn, once dubbed the “heavyweight of the megadeath intellectuals”; Thomas Schelling, Nobel laureate in economics for his work on game theory and the originator of “tacit bargaining”; and Albert Wohlstetter, the godfather of RAND’s nuclear strategists who devised the concepts of “second strike,” “fail safe,” and what he called the “delicate balance of terror” (aka “deterrence”).

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The Forgotten Pentagon Papers Conspirator

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Jessica Williams Expertly Trolls Gay Marriage Opponents With Tribute to "Hate Class of 2015"

by DrusillJnb Posted on May 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Though divided in oral arguments, in the coming weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to rule in favor of gay marriage in the landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges. This could signal the death knell for same-sex marriage opponents, who may soon be forced to accept a new gay-friendly law of the land.

Realizing it may be her last chance to rub elbows with the “Hate Class of 2015,” The Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams recently met up with opponents outside the Supreme Court to bid a fond farewell—a “wrong side of history” yearbook signing and A-plus trolling included.

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Jessica Williams Expertly Trolls Gay Marriage Opponents With Tribute to "Hate Class of 2015"

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Oklahoma scientists pressured to downplay link between earthquakes and fracking

by TraceeZerangue Posted on March 4, 2015

Oklahoma scientists pressured to downplay link between earthquakes and fracking

By on 4 Mar 2015 4:01 pmcommentsShare

Oklahoma has been experiencing an earthquake boom in recent years. In 2014, the state had 585 quakes of at least magnitude 3. Up through 2008, it averaged only three quakes of that strength each year. Something odd is happening.

But scientists at the Oklahoma Geological Survey have downplayed a possible connection between increasing fracking in the state and the increasing number of tremors. Even as other states (Ohio, for example) quickly put two and two together and shut down some drilling operations that were to blame, OGS scientists said that more research was needed before their state took similar steps.

Now, though, emails obtained by EnergyWire reporter Mike Soraghan reveal that the University of Oklahoma and its oil industry funders were putting pressure on OGS scientists to downplay the connection between earthquakes and the injection of fracking wastewater underground. In 2013, a preliminary OGS report noted possible correlation between the two, and OGS signed on to a statement by the U.S. Geological Survey that also noted such linkages. Soon after, OGS’s seismologist, Austin Holland, was summoned to meetings with the president of the university, where OGS is housed, and with executives of oil company Continental Resources. Continental CEO Harold Hamm was a major university funder, while the university president David Boren serves on Continental’s board, for which he earned $272,700 in cash and stock in 2013. From EnergyWire:

“I have been asked to have ‘coffee’ with President Boren and Harold Hamm Wednesday,” [Holland] wrote in an Nov. 18, 2013, email to a co-worker.

The significance was not lost on his colleague, OGS Public Information Coordinator Connie Smith.

“Gosh,” Smith responded. “I guess that’s better than having Kool-Aid with them. I guess.”

A meeting with such powerful figures in the state would be intimidating for a state employee such as Holland, said state Rep. Jason Murphey of Guthrie.

“Wow. That’s a lot of pressure,” said Murphey, a Republican whose district has been rattled by numerous quakes. “That just sends chills up your spine if you’re from Oklahoma.”

Oklahoma geologist Bob Jackman, who has tried to get the word out about the connection between fracking and the quakes, recalls Holland saying last year that he couldn’t do the same. According to Jackman, Holland, when pressed, blurted out, “You don’t understand — Harold Hamm and others will not allow me to say certain things.”

Holland says Jackman misremembered the conversation. Holland publicly denies being pressured by the university or industry.

Other scientists at OGS weren’t happy to see the agency downplay the link between one oil and gas project, called the Hunton dewatering, and an earthquake swarm near Oklahoma City. One wrote to a family member, “I am dismayed at our seismic people about this issue and believe they couldn’t track a bunny through fresh snow!”

Even the USGS picked up on something fishy when Holland suggested alternative hypotheses to explain earthquakes instead of linking them to fracking processes. A science adviser with the federal agency wrote to Holland saying one alternative theory was “unlikely” and “could be very distracting from the larger issue of earthquake safety in Oklahoma … and the role that wastewater injection may be playing.”

In July 2014, Holland told Bloomberg that if a link between fracking and the quakes were to be discovered, he’d have to advise the state to shut some drilling operations down. “If my research takes me to the point where we determine the safest thing to do is to shut down injection — and consequently production — in large portions of the state, then that’s what we have to do,” he said. “That’s for the politicians and the regulators to work out.”

The research is there, even if UO President David Boren or Continental CEO Harold Hamm aren’t pleased about it. Let’s see what those politicians and regulators do next.

Source:
Okla. agency linked quakes to oil in 2010, but kept mum amid industry pressure

, EnergyWire.

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Oklahoma scientists pressured to downplay link between earthquakes and fracking

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Even Europe isn’t doing enough to meet its climate goals

by ToshaMuirz Posted on March 3, 2015

Even Europe isn’t doing enough to meet its climate goals

By on 3 Mar 2015commentsShare

Europe isn’t doing enough to fight climate change, according to a report out today from the European Environment Agency — and that’s bad news for all of the less ambitious nations out there.

While the European Union is on track to meet its 2020 climate goals, it’s not in a good position to continue on after that to meet its 2050 goals, the report found. The E.U. is also falling short on many other sustainability goals. From Reuters:

The Copenhagen-based EEA said Europe — backed by some of the toughest environmental legislation in the world — had improved air and water quality, cut greenhouse gas emissions and raised waste recycling in recent years.

“Despite these gains, Europe still faces a range of persistent and growing environmental challenges,” including global warming, chemical pollution and extinctions of species of animals and plants, the report said.

Europe is not on track to realise by 2050 its vision of “living well, within the limits of our planet”, as agreed in 2013, it added.

The report indicated that most Europeans were using more than four hectares (10 acres) of the planet’s resources each year — more than double what it rated a sustainable ecological footprint.

The E.U. aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95 percent by 2050. The report concludes that “although full implementation of existing policies will be essential, neither the environmental policies currently in place, nor economic and technology-driven efficiency gains, will be sufficient to achieve Europe’s 2050 vision.”

Of particular challenge to Europe is transportation, which accounts for a quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions. The E.U. hopes to cut that figure by 60 percent, but it isn’t making enough progress toward that goal.

This all comes a week after the European Commission released its vision for a U.N. climate pact to be hammered out in Paris in December. But though the E.U. was first to outline its ambitions for the hoped-for pact — something other countries have yet to formally do — its plan drew criticism for not doing enough to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, and for being too vague. “This does not look like a 2C compatible agreement,” Nick Mabey of the European nonprofit Third Generation Environmentalism told Responding to Climate Change. “It’s only a starting point but it’s a pretty poor starting point … Europe has a better story to tell.”

Both bits of news are particularly notable bummers because Europe has been leading the charge for sustainability and has gone further than other major polluters like the U.S., China, and India in factoring climate mitigation into economic planning. If even the E.U. is falling far short, that doesn’t bode well for global efforts to fight off climate catastrophe.

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Even Europe isn’t doing enough to meet its climate goals

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The windmill could get a snazzy green facelift, thanks to Dutch architects

by AbbieBenes Posted on February 24, 2015

Reinventing the wheel

The windmill could get a snazzy green facelift, thanks to Dutch architects

By on 24 Feb 2015commentsShare

The Netherlands just keeps one-upping the rest of the world. Recently, a Dutch construction firm installed a solar panel bike lane and then engineers went ahead and made another bike path glow-in-the-dark. Not that we’re keeping score or anything.

Now, the Dutch Windwheel Corporation has plans to build a 570-foot structure in Rotterdam that would be equal parts architectural marvel and green-tech wünderkind. Basically, the project would turn the nation’s iconic windmill into a high-tech real-estate development.

Here’s Smithsonian with the science:

The Wind Wheel’s design, made of two massive rings and an underwater foundation, plans to incorporate other green technologies, including solar panels, rainwater capture and biogas creation. The biogas will be created from the collected waste of residents of the 72 apartments and 160 hotel rooms that are planned for the inner ring.

The outer ring is set to house 40 cabins that move along a rail like a roller coaster, giving tourists a view of the city and the surrounding countryside, much like the London Eye or Las Vegas’ High Roller, which became the world’s tallest observation wheel when it opened in 2014. The cabins have glass “smart walls” that project information — the current weather, for example, and the heights and architects of buildings — onto the panorama. A restaurant and shops are also planned within the proposed structure.

Another plus: The wind wheel would also be a hub for new green technology businesses and an opportunity to create more jobs in the country.

Sounds sweet, right?

Well, here’s the catch: The technology needed to complete the project is still in the works. More from Smithsonian:

While aspects of the Wind Wheel’s design seem futuristic, the technology will have several years to advance before final construction gets underway. Duzan Boepel, the project’s principal architect, says that the Wind Wheel is still in its beginning phases. … He says if they prove that the wheel’s bladeless turbine tech can be scaled up for use in the Wind Wheel, the building may be finished by 2025.

Yeah, we will all be dreaming about this for the next decade. And yes, the Netherlands could win another batch of green points.

Source:
This Dutch Wind Wheel Is Part Green Tech Showcase, Part Architectural Attraction

, Smithsonian.

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The windmill could get a snazzy green facelift, thanks to Dutch architects

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, global climate change, Landmark, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, Smith's, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The windmill could get a snazzy green facelift, thanks to Dutch architects

All the best science experiments involve dynamite

by ColetteUKM Posted on February 19, 2015

All the best science experiments involve dynamite

By on 18 Feb 2015commentsShare

Picture a scientist. Good. Now make that scientist a geologist who studies tectonic plate movement. Are you picturing a total badass? Well, you should be, because from 20th century Arctic expeditions to modern day explosives, badassery abounds in the study of plate tectonics.

Let’s start with Alfred Wegener, the German scientist who first proposed the concept of continental drift way back at the start of the 20th century. Yesterday, the New York Times published this beautiful cartoon about Wegener’s work:

To recap: Wegener flew around in hot air balloons to study the atmosphere, hunted seals, fended off polar bears, traveled around on dogsleds, rigged up scientific equipment to box kites, and — perhaps most impressively — endured wicked backlash from the scientific community for what was then a radical new concept. (Lest you forget, this all happened in the early 1900s, which makes these expeditions about a thousand times more impressive.)

Okay. I promised you explosives.

While continental drift is now common knowledge, scientists still don’t entirely understand how the continents move, which is why some of them recently decided to detonate a bunch of dynamite 50 m below the ocean floor off the coast of New Zealand.

No, this was not the move of a bunch of mad scientists, but an attempt to create some harmless seismic waves. Seismic waves like those generated by earthquakes have long been a useful tool for geologists to explore the earth’s underbelly because they pass through (or bounce off of) different surfaces differently. By measuring how these waves travel, scientists can effectively see the different layers of whatever the waves are moving through.

The problem is, seismic waves from earthquakes are too big to get a very precise picture. Seismic waves generated with carefully placed explosives, on the other hand, provide a much more fine-grained view of whatever they’re traveling through.

And so, equipped with plenty of dynamite and hundreds of seismometers, this international crew of researchers continued the tradition of badassery in their field and blew up the ocean (they didn’t really, but it sounds cool when I say it like that). More importantly, the team came away with some valuable new information about how the plate under New Zealand moves around. Turns out, there’s a thin, lubricating layer of rock between the plate and the mantle that allows for some slippage. Scientists have suspected layers like this to exist under other plates, so this is further evidence that this may be a common feature of tectonic plates around the world.

Our big takeaway? Scientists should probably use dynamite more often.

Source:
Geophysicists blast their way to the bottom of tectonic plates

, Physics World.

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All the best science experiments involve dynamite

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