The panel found that human activity is almost certainly behind most temperature increases in recent decades. Link – Climate Panel Cites Near Certainty on Warming ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth Blog: Could Climate Campaigners’ Focus on Current Events be Counterproductive?Leaked Report: Scientists Now 95 Percent Certain That Humans Are Causing Global WarmingBare Trees Are a Lingering Sign of Hurricane Sandy’s High Toll ;
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As environmentalists stress current events in calling for action on greenhouse gases, some scientists see a different path toward public engagement. Original source: Dot Earth Blog: Could Climate Campaigners’ Focus on Current Events be Counterproductive? ; ;Related ArticlesClimate Panel Cites Near Certainty on WarmingCould Climate Campaigners’ Focus on Current Events be Counterproductive?Economic Scene: Coming Full Circle in Energy, to Nuclear ;
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Dot Earth Blog: Could Climate Campaigners’ Focus on Current Events be Counterproductive?
The offer was withdrawn after only $13 million was collected for a proposed $3.6 billion fund to protect nearly 4,000 square miles of rain forest. Continue reading: Plan to Ban Oil Drilling in Amazon Is Dropped ; ;Related ArticlesThe Texas Tribune: Businesses Back Greenhouse Gas Emissions LawThe Energy Rush: Foreseeing Trouble in Exporting Natural GasDot Earth Blog: ‘Liberated Carbon, It’ll Turn Your Night to Day’ ;
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Is this spy a cop or a private investigator? Either way, watch out.
What do you get when you mix America’s national security apparatus with TransCanada’s determination to build a tar-sands pipeline between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico?
A whole lot of arrests.
Earth Island Journal profiles the infiltration of peaceful Keystone protest groups by police and investigators — and in so doing paints a troubling picture of a government security force working in league with TransCanada:
On the morning of March 22 activists had planned to block the gates at the company’s strategic oil reserves in Cushing, Oklahoma as part of the larger protest movement against TransCanada’s tar sands pipeline. But when they showed up in the early morning hours and began unloading equipment from their vehicles they were confronted by police officers. Stefan Warner, an organizer with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, says some of the vehicles en route to the protest site were pulled over even before they had reached Cushing. He estimates that roughly 50 people would have participated— either risking arrest or providing support. The act of nonviolent civil disobedience, weeks in the planning, was called off.
“For a small sleepy Oklahoma town to be saturated with police officers on a pre-dawn weekday leaves only one reasonable conclusion,” says Ron Seifert, an organizer with an affiliated group called Tar Sands Blockade. “They were there on purpose, expecting something to happen.”
Seifert is exactly right. According to documents obtained by Earth Island Journal, investigators from the Bryan County Sherriff’s Department had been spying on a Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance training camp that took place from March 18 to March 22 and which brought together local landowners, Indigenous communities, and environmental groups opposed to the pipeline. …
The infiltration of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance action camp and pre-emption of the Cushing protest is part of a larger pattern of government surveillance of tar sands protesters. According to other documents obtained by Earth Island Journal under an Open Records Act request, Department of Homeland Security staff has been keeping close tabs on pipeline opponents — and routinely sharing that information with TransCanada, and vice versa. …
The new documents also provide an interesting glimpse into the revolving door between state law enforcement agencies and the private sector, especially in areas where fracking and pipeline construction have become big business. One of the individuals providing information to the Texas Department of Homeland Security’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division is currently the Security Manager at Anadarko Petroleum, one of the world’s largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies. In 2011, at a natural gas industry stakeholder relations conference, a spokesperson for Anadarko compared the anti-drilling movement to an “insurgency” and suggested that attendees download the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual.
The article, which includes scanned excerpts from documents the magazine obtained, is worth reading in full. For even more on the topic, read Earth Island Journal’s in-depth article from earlier this year: “We’re Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists.”
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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Almost 87 percent of the Western U.S. is in a drought, the Los Angeles Times reports today in a big, gloomy article with big, gloomy pictures. New Mexico is 100 percent droughty. Here are just a few of the ways that sucks.
1. The Rio Grande is so dry that it’s been dubbed the Rio Sand. Satellite photos show reservoirs drying up too.
2. People in parts of New Mexico are having to take drastic measures to get water. “Residents of some towns subsist on trucked-in water,” the L.A. Times reports, “and others are drilling deep wells costing $100,000 or more to sink and still more to operate.”
3. Water wars are flaring up and states are getting litigious. Also from the Times: “Texas has filed suit, arguing that groundwater pumping in New Mexico is reducing Texas’ share of the Rio Grande. Oklahoma has successfully fended off a legal challenge from Texas over water from the Red River.”
4. Wild critters are in trouble. Wildlife managers in New Mexico are bringing water to elk herds so they don’t die of thirst. Some conservationists think those managers should also bring food to bears so the bears don’t lumber into human settlements while desperately seeking sustenance.
5. Trees are taking a beating. Thousands of trees in Albuquerque have died of thirst.
6. Swimming holes are becoming dirt holes. A trio of Texas state agencies is inviting the public to share photos of the drought, and one recurring subject is swimming signs in front of waterless landscapes, like this one.
7. Some desperate farmers in New Mexico have resorted to selling their water to fracking companies so they can afford to pay their bills. As Joe Romm writes at Climate Progress, “The worse news is that many of them are actually pumping the water out of the aquifer to do so. The worst news of all is that once the frackers get through tainting it with their witches’ brew of chemicals, that water often becomes unrecoverable — and then we have the possibility the used fracking water will end up contaminating even more of the groundwater.”
Is climate change to blame for all the droughtiness? The L.A. Times:
The question many here are grappling with is whether the changes are a permanent result of climate change or part of cyclical weather cycle. …
Nonetheless, most long-term plans put together by cattle ranchers, farmers and land managers include the probability that the drought is here to stay.
John Clayshulte, a third-generation rancher and farmer near Las Cruces, removed all his cattle from his federal grazing allotment. “There’s just not any sense putting cows on there. There’s not enough for them to eat,” he said.
“It’s all changed. This used to be shortgrass prairies. We’ve ruined it and it’s never going to come back.”
Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.
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Proceeds of the lunch, priced at $250 to $2,500, will benefit the Republican Jim Inhofe, who calls climate change a ‘hoax’. CSIS: Center for Strategic & International Studies/Flickr Google, which prides itself on building a “better web that is better for the environment”, is hosting a fundraiser for the most notorious climate change denier in Congress, it has emerged. The lunch, at the company’s Washington office, will benefit the Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe, who has made a career of dismissing climate change as a “hoax” on the Senate floor. Proceeds of the 11 July lunch, priced at $250 to $2,500, will also go to the national Republican Senatorial Committee. It’s the second show of support from Google for the anti-climate cause in recent weeks. Last month, the Washington Post reported that the internet company had donated $50,000 for a fundraising dinner for the ultra-conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute – topping the contributions even of the Koch oil billionaires. To keep reading, click here. Link to article: Google Hosts Fundraiser for Climate Change Denying US Senator ; ;Related ArticlesThe Southwest’s Forests May Never Recover from MegafiresDangerous Global Warming Could be Reversed, Say ScientistsIllinois Town Bans Stripping Because of Fracking ;
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Google Hosts Fundraiser for Climate Change Denying US Senator
Get used to it.
As if the increased threat of catastrophic weather events weren’t enough, climate change also has to mess with us in ways less apocalyptic but arguably more frustrating on a daily basis. Like by making our allergies way worse.
More CO2 in the atmosphere stimulates plant growth and pollen production, and as a result, allergy doctors across the country are reporting increases in patient visits — new ones who have never before experienced symptoms as well as longtime sufferers getting more miserable each year.
Quest Diagnostics, which tests for allergies, reported a 15 percent increase in ragweed allergies from 2005 to 2009, according to USA Today. Scientists are straightforward about the climate connection:
“The link between rising carbon dioxide and pollen is pretty clear,” says Lewis Ziska, a weed ecologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a top researcher in the field.
His lab tests show that pollen production rises along with carbon dioxide. It doubled from 5 grams to 10 grams per plant when CO2 in the atmosphere rose from 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1900 to 370 ppm in 2000. He expects it could double again, to 20 grams, by 2075 if carbon emissions continue to climb. The world’s CO2 concentration is about 400 ppm.
Not only is pollen more prevalent, but longer growing seasons mean allergens stay around for more of the year. And some scientists see pollen counts doubling much sooner than 2075. The Louisville, Ky., Courier-Journal reports:
A federal plant physiologist says tree pollen is emerging roughly two weeks sooner in the spring, and ragweed pollen is lingering two to four weeks longer in the fall.
In fact, pollen counts are expected to more than double by 2040, according to a study presented at a meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology last fall.
“The more pollution, the more global warming, we’re definitely seeing higher pollen counts,” said Dr. David Pallares of Louisville Allergy and Asthma. “Over the last decade, there has been a progressive increase in pollen counts compared with in the past.”
Pollen prevalence has always varied between different regions of the country (fewer people suffer from allergies to ragweed in the Pacific Northwest and Southeast, for example). The lengthening of the allergy season varies by region, too. From 1995 to 2009, USA Today reports, ragweed season increased by only one day in Oklahoma City, compared to 16 days in Minneapolis and 27 days in Saskatoon, Canada.
In addition to climate change, researchers say chemical exposure or clean-freakiness could be to blame for the rise in allergies (kids who aren’t exposed to enough germs, thanks to a parental hygiene obsession, don’t develop the proper immune responses and can overreact to harmless allergens). There’s a lot left to study to figure out what we could expect in coming decades, but this area of research already lacks resources — pollen-counting stations, which only exist in 32 states, receive no federal funding, and instead rely on volunteers trained by the private American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology to keep operating.
Don’t think being lucky enough not to suffer from allergies means you have nothing to worry about: The swelling ranks of people who do will raise healthcare costs for everyone.
Just another fun twist to life in the 21st century! Thanks, climate change.
Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.
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Nothing to sneeze at: Climate change is making your allergies worse
The Koch brothers.
Billionaire oil moguls Charles and David Koch have had a pernicious effect on climate and energy policy, a host of other progressive issues, and American democracy itself, as we’ve reported many times before. But a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University reveals even more about how the Koch brothers have undermined climate action.
Since 2008, the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity has been urging candidates and politicians to sign its “No Climate Tax Pledge.” In 2010, we noted that many Republican House and Senate candidates had signed it, and in 2011, that at least one GOP presidential candidate had.
But it turns out the pledge has been far more widespread and influential than most people realized. From the Investigative Reporting Workshop:
A quarter of senators and more than one-third of representatives have signed a little-known pledge — backed by the Kochs — not to spend any money to fight climate change without an equivalent amount of tax cuts.
They are among 411 current office-holders and politicians, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Virginia Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli II, Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, three members of the Railroad Commission of Texas, the Oklahoma schools superintendent, the Idaho state treasurer and three justices of the peace in Arkansas who have signed the “No Climate Tax Pledge.” …
While the pledge began with a marginal following, an energized turnout of conservative voters in the 2010 election swept 85 freshman Republicans into the House. Of those 85 Republicans, 76 signed the Koch pledge as candidates. And 57 of those 76 received campaign contributions from Koch Industries’ political action committee.
With the support of these newly elected Republicans, from 2011 to 2013, Congress passed increasingly smaller budgets for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), attempted to strip the agency of varying regulatory powers and discouraged policies to address climate change across multiple federal agencies, according to the Workshop’s analysis.
The New Yorker has more on the workshop’s investigation:
The investigative study tracks the political influence wielded by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have harnessed part of the fortune generated by their company, Koch Industries, the second largest private corporation in the country, to further their conservative libertarian activism. Charles Lewis, the Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop explained that the I.R.W., a non-profit news organization attached to American University, spent two years focussing on Koch Industries because, “There is no other corporation in the U.S. today, in my view, that is as unabashedly, bare-knuckle aggressive across the board about its own self-interest, in the political process, in the nonprofit-policy-advocacy realm, even increasingly in academia and the broader public marketplace of ideas.” Formerly head of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, Lewis has focussed for years on the way money affects American politics. “The Kochs’ influence, without a doubt, is growing,” he believes. A spokeswoman for the Kochs declined to comment.
In its multi-part report, “The Koch Club,” written by Lewis, Eric Holmberg, Alexia Campbell, and Lydia Beyoud, the Workshop found that between 2007 and 2011 the Kochs donated $41.2 million to ninety tax-exempt organizations promoting the ultra-libertarian policies that the brothers favor—policies that are often highly advantageous to their corporate interests. In addition, during this same period they gave $30.5 million to two hundred and twenty-one colleges and universities, often to fund academic programs advocating their worldview. Among the positions embraced by the Kochs are fewer government regulations on business, lower taxes, and skepticism about the causes and impact of climate change.
The study recounts that the Kochs have influenced the congressional climate-change debate in other ways, too, which include funding an array of nonprofit groups whose experts have testified in Congress questioning the cause, the severity, and the necessity of, acting on climate change.
The investigation makes it clear that, in today’s America, money talks — and the climate bakes.
Here’s the pledge in its entirety, short but deadly:
Click to embiggen.
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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How the Koch brothers screwed over the climate even more than you know
Despite what deniers claim, the volume of ice is going down, down, down.<!–more–> It’s no surprise to regular readers I am quite concerned about climate change. My concern on this issue is two-fold: one consists of the actual global consequences of the reality of global warming, and the other is the blatant manipulation of that reality by those who would deny it. These two issues overlap mightily when it comes to Arctic sea ice. The ice around the North Pole is going away, and it’s doing so with alarming rapidity. I don’t mean the yearly cycle of melt in the summer and freeze in the winter, though that plays into this; I mean the long-term trend of declining amounts of ice. There are two ways to categorize the amount of ice: by measuring the extent (essentially the area of the ocean covered by ice, though in detail it’s a little more complicated) or using volume, which includes the thickness of the ice. Either way, though, the ice is dwindling away. That is a fact. Of course, facts are malleable things when it comes to the deniosphere. One popular denier claim is that Arctic sea ice extent is higher in recent years than it was in 1989, therefore claims of it melting away are false. Click to read the full story at our partner Slate. Link: The Arctic Ice “Death Spiral” ; ;Related ArticlesWould Hillary and Norgay Recognize Mount Everest?A Floating Wind Tower Is Launched in MaineGrindelwald Journal: In Swiss Alps, Glacial Melting Unglues Mountains ;
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Even before the horrific events in Oklahoma last week, reading Lee Sandlin’s “Storm Kings” would have banished any notion that it would be a lot of fun to see a tornado up close. Excerpt from: Books: ‘Storm Kings’ Review – Where Tornadoes Dug In, So Did They ; ;Related ArticlesIsraeli Electric Car Company Files for LiquidationDot Earth Blog: The Case for a Profit Motive in Conserving the EnvironmentFood Companies Seeking Ingredients That Aren’t Gene-Altered ;
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Books: ‘Storm Kings’ Review – Where Tornadoes Dug In, So Did They
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