by Agence France-Presse.
OTTAWA -- A fuel tanker has run aground in Canada's far north, carrying 2.4 million gallons of diesel fuel that risk spilling into the Arctic waters, the Canadian Coast Guard said Thursday.
A Coast Guard spokesman told AFP no leaks from the tanker had yet been detected in the pristine waters.
The ship struck a sandbar in the famed Northwest Passage, southwest of the town of Gjoa Haven in Canada's Nunavut territory, on Wednesday. It was carrying fuel to resupply remote communities in the region.
Authorities and the ship's owner, Woodward's Oil, will attempt to float it off the sandbar, the official said.
Last week, a cruise ship struck an uncharted rock in the same waterway, forcing the evacuation of more than 110 passengers and crew. That crash occurred late Friday as the ship Clipper Adventurer set out from Kugluktuk, Nunavut, for a 12-day voyage through the passage.
None of the tourists onboard were injured, said a spokesman for tour operator Adventure Canada. But it took two days for the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen to arrive at the scene, prompting calls for Canada to beef up its search and rescue capabilities in the far north.
With the acceleration of Arctic ice melt, interest in the region has soared. Shrinking ice has opened up sea navigation, and could give oil rigs improved access to the sea floor.
Canada's claim to the Northwest Passage, however, is disputed by the United States.
Related Links:
Oil slick spreading after rig explosion forced 13 workers into the Gulf
Feds lease prime solar land, but nary a panel is in sight
Oil-platform explosion in the Gulf. Yes, another one.
by Agence France-Presse.
NEW ORLEANS -- A mile-long slick is spreading from an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion forced its 13 rig workers into the water, one of whom was injured, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
The workers told rescue crews that the slick was about 10 feet wide but hoped that no more oil would leak into the sea, Chief Warrant Officer Barry Lane told AFP.
The rig is still ablaze and the blast raises fresh pollution fears as the region struggles to recover from the largest ever maritime oil spill, caused by a similar explosion 20 miles to the east.
An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed out of a deepwater well ruptured after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20 some 52 miles off the coast of Louisiana.
The explosion killed 11 workers and it took nearly three months to stem the flow of oil gushing out of the well some 5,000 feet below the surface.
The Mariner rig was operating in relatively shallow water, about 340 feet, and was not drilling at the time of the explosion, Cassidy said.
There were seven wells producing approximately 1,400 barrels of oil in total in about 12 million cubic feet of gas in total, he said, adding that "the fire appears to have been quite a bit a ways from where the wells are."
Thursday's incident drew immediate condemnation from environmental groups frustrated with lax oversight of the offshore oil and gas industry.
"How many times are we going to gamble with lives, economies, and ecosystems?" John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA Oceans Campaign Director, told AFP. "It's time we learn from our mistakes and go beyond oil."
Helicopters rushed to the scene of the latest blast, some 90 miles south of Vermilion Bay in Louisiana, to fish out workers who apparently jumped into the sea to save themselves.
"All 13 are accounted for and they are all wearing some sort of an immersion suit that protects them from the water," Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer John Edwards told MSNBC.
Nine helicopters had been dispatched to the site, Edwards said, adding the extent of any injuries suffered by the workers was not immediately clear.
"Right now we're focused on search and rescue and then, ultimately, as this thing progresses we're going to be looking into the cause," Edwards added. Four Coast Guard cutters were also en route to the rig.
"We will continue to gather information as we respond, we obviously have response assets ready for deployment, should we receive reports of pollution in the water," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
Gibbs declined to say whether the president believed inspections of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were moving fast enough in the wake of the BP disaster.
"Obviously we've had taken some, we took a series of steps after the BP incident," Gibbs said. "If this situation warrants, we'll certainly update that."
The Coast Guard said in a statement that it received a report from a nearby helicopter pilot at about 10:00 am EST "stating that 13 people were in the water near an oil platform on fire."
"The 13 people in the water were picked up by the OSV Crystal Clear and taken to another platform," the Coast Guard said.
"Coast Guard helicopters are being utilized to transport the rescued to Terrebonne General Hospital."
Mariner did not immediately return requests for comments.
Related Links:
Fuel tanker runs aground in Canadian Arctic
Feds lease prime solar land, but nary a panel is in sight
Oil-platform explosion in the Gulf. Yes, another one.
by Randy Rieland.
Ready for your morning bowl of crazy? Five years ago, Congress set aside millions of acres of public land in the Southwest for the development of solar farms. This was primo real estate for solar, considered one of the best spots in the world. So far not one solar panel has been erected.
Oh, you want us to build something? This discouraging news comes courtesy of the AP's Jason Dearen, whose investigation shows that the understaffed U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) focused almost all its time on approving oil and gas projects and leased the land on a first-come, first-served basis, often to outfits with little or no experience in actually building solar farms. Case in point: Cogentrix Solar Services, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. Cogentrix had zero solar experience, but holds leases on nearly half the Nevada acreage for which applications have been filed. Another sickening stat: In the last five years, the BLM has approved more than 73,000 oil and gas leases on public land, but hasn't given final approval to one solar lease. Not a one. Writes Dearen:
BLM's solar leasing system ended up allowing developers to lay claim to prime sites -- many located in the deserts that span California, Nevada, and Arizona. All developers had to do was fill out an application, pay a fee and file development plans. But many were so vague that it was difficult for BLM to separate the serious projects from the speculative ones.
The oilman cometh: Bad enough that Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (Alaska) primary loss to Joe Miller likely means another Republican climate change denier ranting in the Senate. Another negative ripple effect is that Murkowski's place as ranking Republican on the powerful Senate Energy Committee probably will be taken by North Carolina's Richard Burr. You may remember Burr. He was one of the senators singled out in a League of Conservation Voters video campaign this summer as particularly chummy with Big Oil. A fan of off-shore drilling, Burr has earned a dismal 7 percent voting score from the League. He also ranks eighth in the Senate in terms of receiving oil and gas money -- almost $220,000 in this election cycle alone. For a good cry, look at his track record on climate and energy.
This party's over: Not that it did a lot of good, but the short run of Democrats as the ruling party in Congress looks to be coming to an inglorious end. The latest Gallup Poll of registered voters shows Republicans with a 10 percentage point lead. That just happens to be the largest margin since Gallup started tracking mid-term elections. It gets worse: a USA Today/Gallup Poll released yesterday suggests that when it comes to handling the economy, the top issue for most Americans these days, 49 percent think Republicans would do a better job, compared to 38 percent for Democrats.
A big sucking sound: All of which means, as Grist's Dave Roberts elegantly concludes, things are pretty much going to suck for the next few years, with Republicans staging a boatload of bogus hearings and silly fishing expeditions. Some Republicans are already looking forward to an attitude change on Capitol Hill by which, for instance, members will stop "demonizing" oil companies, to quote Texas Republican Kevin Brady:
This White House and this Congress is demonizing them -- the new drilling moratorium, the new energy taxes -- all of that is costing us tens of thousands of jobs in the middle of what's supposed to be a recovery, but it's a very poor one.
Class dismissed: One thing you can say about Tea Partiers -- they know what they want in a candidate. To help decide on endorsements, a Tea Party group near Sandusky, Ohio asked local candidates whether they agreed or disagreed with position statements on issues ranging from gay marriage to shutting down the Federal Reserve. Global warming also made the hit list. Here's the survey's climate change statement that candidates responded to:
The regulation of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere should be left to God and not government and I oppose all measures of Cap and Trade as well as the teaching of global warming theory in our schools.
With friends like these: It's one thing for Greenpeace to battle with a company drilling for oil in the Arctic. But Facebook? Isn't the site just trying to get everyone on the planet to hold hands? Well, it turns out that the giant social network plans to build a huge data storage center in Oregon. Two-thirds of the power for that operation will come from coal. Not only has Greenpeace cried foul, but it says it has rallied 500,000 people to join Facebook groups that are insisting the data center use only renewable energy.
Air transplants: How bad is the smog in Hong Kong? So bad that a green group is now selling fresh air. For just 25 cents, the Fresh Air Network will sell you a baby-blue canister that comes with a breathing mask and a hit of air. Plus, you have a choice of flavors, like vanilla or beach.
And you don't even get sand in your teeth.
Related Links:
Fuel tanker runs aground in Canadian Arctic
Buy a breath of ‘Fresh Air’ in Hong Kong
Oil slick spreading after rig explosion forced 13 workers into the Gulf
by Jonathan Hiskes.
An offshore oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday morning, injuring one worker, the United States Coast Guard said.
The platform, which was owned by the Houston-based Mariner Energy, was floating in relatively shallow waters 340 feet deep to the west of where a drilling rig leased by BP blew up and sank this spring, killing 11 people and touching off an environmental calamity. All 13 members of the work crew on board Thursday were accounted for, the Coast Guard said, though the injured worker's condition was not immediately known.
It's unclear whether the platform is in danger of sinking or whether the explosion may have set off underwater oil leaks. The platform, 20 miles west of the massive April explosion and leak, wasn't actively producing oil at the time of the accident. More details are, uh, gushing in.
While we're catching up on our fossil-fuel disasters, more than 1,000 barrels of oil spilled in North Dakota this week too. Of course, maybe that's just North Dakota's way of pleading for attention.
As always, Congress may not be up to the task of addressing our oil-dependence, but there are steps you can take to cut your town's dependence on oil. Also, check out what Grist's panel of experts had to say about how, whether, and when we can transition from oil to cleaner, safer sources of energy.
Related Links:
Fuel tanker runs aground in Canadian Arctic
Oil slick spreading after rig explosion forced 13 workers into the Gulf
Feds lease prime solar land, but nary a panel is in sight
by Lisa Hymas.
It's not often that natalism makes the news -- and with guns and bombs and hostages, no less! But population and procreation are in the headlines today thanks to James J. Lee, the eco-wacko who took hostages at the Discovery headquarters building in Silver Spring, Md., before being shot by police.
His list of demands, posted at savetheplanetprotest.com, is a teabagger's wet dream of enviro idiocy. His primary obsession: "stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!"
For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human's lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!
It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It's like a couple are having 30 babies even though it's just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!
Lee seems to have been pushed over the deep end by the kid-glorifying content on TLC, which is owned by Discovery. Its pro-natalist offerings include 19 Kids and Counting, Jon & Kate Plus 8, and Baby Block. Yes, the Duggars and Gosselins could drive one to drink ... but kidnap? C'mon.
"All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions," Lee demands. "In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed." (Might I suggest instead some Sex and the City reruns?)
The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. ... Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race.
Lee is giving us sane and humane enviros and childfree people a bad name. And Ishmael fans too, but they kinda had it coming.
Here's the full manifesto with Lee's demands:
The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:
1.
The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels MUST have daily television
programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael"
pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way
as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's
inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving
birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue
pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order.
Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the
Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all
until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human
civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE
WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!
2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any
more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In
those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and
infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the
direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.
3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There
is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk
about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding
SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions
solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also,
keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no
real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they
claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human
population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the
people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF???
STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!
4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its
disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the
pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is
your obligation. If you think it isn't, then get hell off the planet! Breathe
Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are
they??
5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL
immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find
solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to
stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they
stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs
and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO
STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first
world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human
families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans
looking for nonexistant jobs!)
6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International
Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so
that people don't build more housing pollution which destroys the environment
to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding
as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the
destruction of the planet!
7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production
leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about
Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they
get it!!
8. Saving the Planet means saving what's left of the non-human Wildlife by
decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from
breeding any more disgusting human babies! You're the media, you can reach
enough people. It's your resposibility because you reach so many minds!!!
9. Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world
economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they
take the world to another nuclear war.
10. Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on all your channels and on TLC.
Stop Future Weapons shows or replace the dialogue condemning the people behind
these developments so that the shows become exposes rather than advertisements
of Arms sales and development!
11. You're also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing. All these
unemployed people makes me think the US is headed toward more war.
Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are
wrecking what's left of the planet with their false morals and breeding
culture.
For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in
order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new
human's lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human
procreation and farming must cease!
It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not
breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children
represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current
pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child
born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third
World child. It's like a couple are having 30 babies even though it's just one!
If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!
Also, war must be halted. Not because it's morally wrong, but because of the
catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures. FIND
SOLUTIONS JUST LIKE THE BOOK SAYS! Humans are supposed to be inventive. INVENT,
DAMN YOU!!
The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are
causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them
to breed more environmentally harmful humans.
Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now
your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers,
Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks,
Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.
The humans? The planet does not need humans.
You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in
the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging
human growth and procreation. Surely you MUST ALREADY KNOW this!
I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world
their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new
shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the
planet and the remaining wildlife on it.
These are the demands and sayings of Lee.
Bottom line: squirrels, not kids!
Related Links:
Climate change poses big risks to China’s crops and economy, study finds
New rules push oil inspectors to clean up their act
PACE homeowners must pay up before refinancing, Fannie and Freddie say
by Agence France-Presse.
PARIS -- Climate change could reduce key harvests in China by a fifth if the gloomiest scenarios prove true, according to a study on Wednesday.
Publishing in the journal Nature, a team of Chinese scientists say China's climate "has clearly warmed" over the past half century, gaining 2.2 degrees F since 1960.
The hotspots were northeastern China, with a warming trend of 0.65 degrees F per decade, and Inner Mongolia, with a warming of 0.7 degrees F per decade.
Nationally, heat waves have become more common, the number of cold days has fallen sharply, and glaciers that are vital river feeders are in retreat, they say.
The last century was the warmest period since 1600 and the country's seven warmest years have all occurred in the past decade.
Climate extremes included droughts that hit the country in the 1960s, the late 1970s, early 1980s, the 1990s, and in northeastern China in the last decade.
In 1998, floods inundated 52.5 million acres of land, destroyed 5 million homes in the Yangtze basin, and inflicted $20 billion in damage.
Floods this year affected 230 million people, of whom more than 15 million had to be evacuated from their homes, and left more than 4,200 people dead or missing, according to a toll issued on Tuesday.
The paper, lead-authored by Peking University environmental scientist Shilong Piao, warns of problems for China's racing economy in coming decades if climate change bites hard. Accurate prediction, though, is hard, it says.
"China experienced explosive economic growth in recent decades, but with only 7 percent of the world's arable land available to feed 20 percent of the world's population, China's economy may be vulnerable to climate change itself," it warns.
The biggest problem could be water stress, amplified by a growing and increasingly wealthy population.
Water is abundant in southern China but sparse in the country's north, and overall China's per capita water availability is only 25 percent of the world average.
"Many regions lie in transitional zones where water resources, and hence agricultural production, could be affected positively or negatively by changes in climate," the study says.
In the most favorable scenario, grain yields by mid-century could remain stable or benefit from the rise in carbon dioxide levels.
But in the worst scenario, there could be declines of 4 to 14 percent for rice, 2 and 20 percent for wheat, and 0 and 23 percent for corn in cases where these crops are rainfed rather than irrigated.
The comparison is the yields of these crops between 1996 and 2000. Any future improvements in agro-technology in coming decades are not factored in.
"The range of model results is large, implying large uncertainties," cautions the paper.
The many unknowns are reflected by the wide range in predicting warming for China as a whole -- from 1.8 to 9 degrees F by 2100, depending on worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.
Computer simulations for climate impacts have advanced substantially for modelling what will happen worldwide, but lag when it comes to predicting regional effects, especially on rainfall, the paper says.
"To reach a more definitive conclusion, future work must ... develop a better understanding of the managed and unmanaged responses to crops to changes in climate, diseases, pests, and atmospheric constituents."
Related Links:
Discovery hostage taker is a population-obsessed eco-wacko
New rules push oil inspectors to clean up their act
PACE homeowners must pay up before refinancing, Fannie and Freddie say
by Randy Rieland.
Once upon a time in the wonderful world of oil, the crude guys took care of the government guys. They gave them expensive presents. They partied with them. They were a team, a family. Not ... any ... more.
Culture shock: Michael Bromwich, head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy -- the agency formerly known as the infamous Minerals Management Services -- sent an email to his employees laying out new rules for doing business. No more winks and back-scratching, no more revolving door between the regulators and the regulated, and no more inspections on companies where family members or close personal friends work. Oh, and definitely no more sex and drug parties. That sounds righteous and all, but Bromwich's policies have a long legacy to overcome. As Stephen Power, writing in the Wall Street Journal, notes:
Rig workers and agency employees in the Gulf Coast "have often known one another since childhood," according to a report published earlier this year by the Interior Department's inspector general. The same report found that at one agency office in Louisiana, employees accepted sporting-event tickets, lunches, and other gifts earlier this decade from oil and natural-gas companies.
Oh, so it was a teaching moment: BP says that it's learned many lessons from its disastrous summer in the Gulf -- now, there's an understatement. A report BP is delivering to Department of Interior officials today says the company is now much better equipped to deal with deep water accidents. Call me crazy, but wouldn't it make more sense to be equipped to deal with a deep water accident before the deep water accident. Another BP report expected soon makes the oil giant look even worse. According to a version leaked to Bloomberg's Joe Carroll, BP's internal investigation found that company engineers aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig misinterpreted test drilling results in the hours before the well exploded.
It's nature way: Sen. Lisa Murkowski's days as one of Big Oil's best buddies in Alaska are over. The senator from Alaska conceded to her Republican primary opponent Joe Miller last night when it became clear that she wouldn't get nearly enough absentee ballot votes to prevent an embarrassing upset. But the fossil fuel folks are shedding no tears. Miller, who's well ahead of his Democratic opponent in the polls, insists that the science supporting climate change is in "serious question." And if global warming is actually occurring, he sure isn't about to blame humans. Proclaims Miller:
We know the temperature change is part of the process of our existence, but we haven't heard there's a man-made global warming.
Bake it to the limit: Not that Joe Miller's worried, but it seems worth noting that it was 96 degrees F in New York City yesterday, making this officially the hottest summer in the city's recorded history. From June to August, the temperature averaged 77.8 degrees F, breaking the previous high mark set in 1966.
Plastic not-so-fantastic: California's reputation as an environmental trendsetter took a hit yesterday when state legislators rejected a proposed ban on plastic shopping bags. Enviros argued that state residents go through 19 billion plastic bags a year and a big load of them end up as litter. But the American Chemistry Council, which represents plastic bag manufacturers, spent millions to hammer home this year's surefire anti-green message: This will cost jobs! The tactic worked again.
Go with the floes: They haven't even discovered oil off the coast of Greenland yet -- only natural gas deposits -- but already Greenland has become an enviro battlefield. Yesterday, four members of Greenpeace stopped exploratory drilling by the Scottish company Cairn Energy by climbing on its rig and attaching a platform to it. Writing in The Guardian, John Sauven explains why drilling in the Arctic is different than anywhere else.
Anyone who has seen the remarkable images coming from the Arctic over the last few days will know how unusual, dangerous and extreme this business has become. While icebergs the size of football stadiums are towed out of a rig's path, ships equipped with high-pressure water cannons blast smaller chunks into submission. And all the while the clock is ticking. As the winter freeze edges nearer, this frantic exploration company rushes to finish the job before sheet-ice cuts off the region completely.
Take the money and shun: Can banks have a conscience? According to a report by Tom Zeller, Jr. in the New York Times, at least some have become more wary about investing in nasty practices such as mountaintop removal mining. Their concern likely has more to do with avoiding unnecessary risks and legal entanglements. Or maybe they're just trying to greenwash their reputations. Whatever. It's a start. Writes Zeller:
... banking analysts and others suggest that heated debate over climate change, water quality, and other environmental considerations is forcing lenders to take a much harder -- and often uncomfortable -- look at where they extend credit, and to whom.
Some like it bot: In the oil spills of the future -- and there will be some, let's not kid ourselves -- companies may not need to rely on a fleet of civilians using equipment that hasn't been updated in decades. Instead, they can call out the robots. Researchers at MIT have developed a solar-powered robot prototype equipped with nanotechnology. They claim that a small army of the devices, dubbed "Seaswarm," could clean up an area the size of the Gulf of Mexico in a month.
And no one has to worry about getting their life back.
Related Links:
Discovery hostage taker is a population-obsessed eco-wacko
Climate change poses big risks to China’s crops and economy, study finds
Moving beyond oil [TRANSCRIPT]
by Jonathan Hiskes.
More doom-and-gloomery in the battle to save Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), a once-popular finance tool that helped homeowners cut energy waste and add rooftop solar panels: The mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued letters today saying that homeowners must pay off PACE assessments before refinancing their mortgages, if they have sufficient equity.
That doesn't change things for the large majority of PACE programs that were suspended or canceled before launch because of Fannie and Freddie's opposition (backstory here). But it could make life harder for the comparatively few homeowners who have already used local PACE programs to finance energy-efficiency retrofits.
"To mitigate the risk posed by PACE obligations that take lien priority over the mortgage, Fannie Mae is requiring that borrowers with sufficient equity pay off the existing PACE obligation as a condition to obtaining a new mortgage loan," Fannie's guidance states.
Homeowners without enough equity to pay off the lien can refinance with the PACE assessment still in place.
The continued antagonism from Fannie and Freddie isn't surprising; they've stuck to their attack on PACE assessments despite criticism from building contractors, local leaders, governors, members of Congress, and the Obama administration. Last week their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, doubled down on its opposition to PACE by rejecting the possibility of a pilot program that would test whether PACE really threatens lenders, as it alleges.
Todd Woody reports on today's letters at the New York Times' Green blog; Interestingly, he refers to pass assessments as "loans" -- a point of contention between PACE advocates and the mortgage institutions. PACE works by letting homeowners pay for improvements through a surcharge on their property taxes, paid back over 10 to 20 years. Local governments frequently use such tax assessments to fund improvements like schools, sidewalks, and sewer systems. PACE advocates argue that the tool should be considered another such assessment. Fannie and Freddie define PACE as a "loan" program that shouldn't get lien priority over mortgages. They would seem to have the Times on their side.
Related Links:
Want a car that gets good grades? Buy a hybrid
‘Skeptical environmentalist’ Bjørn Lomborg reverses his climate skepticism
With drilling stalled in the Gulf, Big Oil sets its sights on the Arctic
by Randy Rieland.
The federal government doesn't do simple -- which make its latest idea for rating auto fuel efficiency a thing of rare beauty. Simple beauty.
Hummer bummer: Here's how it would work: Cars get graded based on gas mileage. That's it. Electric cars get an A+. Hybrids, like the Prius, get an A-. A Ford F-150 pickup earns a C. And a gas pig like the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, a D. (The feds don't do Fs). Grades would be displayed in a big, honkin' circle at the top of the gas mileage sticker that prospective buyers would see on all showroom vehicles. This is one of two auto sticker updates being considered by the EPA and the Transportation Department. The other is a less dramatic sticker redesign. Naturally, groups like the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers don't like idea of big letter grades slapped on car windows. They say that would place a "value judgment" on the vehicle. Ah, yeah, that's kinda the point.
Ding dong, the witch hunt is dead: Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general, climate change skeptic, and right-wing poster boy, took it on the chops yesterday. For months now, he's been after climate scientist Michael Mann, claiming that Mann committed fraud while he was a University of Virginia professor by manipulating climate data. Several investigations already have cleared Mann of wrongdoing and on Monday, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Paul Peatross, Jr. joined the crowd. He ruled that Cuccinelli never made a case that fraud had been committed. Said the happy Mann:
I'm very pleased that the judge has ruled in our favor. It is a victory not just for me and the university, but for all scientists who live in fear that they may be subject to a politically-motivated witch hunt when their research findings prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests.
Update: Cuccinelli says he won't drop his campaign against Mann and plans to redraft his request for emails and other documents from the University of Virginia.
Better stimulate than never: Last week, the Obama administration gave itself a big pat on the back, claiming that its stimulus package will help double the U.S.'s renewable energy capacity by 2012. Michael Grunwald, writing in Time, chimed in with an amen, describing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as the "most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund." No question the stimulus package throws a lot of money at renewable energy. But AP reporter Frederic Frommer takes a glass-half-empty view. Frommer suggests that the White House over-hyped how much the stimulus money will be able to sustain renewable energy growth, how much it will cut solar energy costs and make electric cars affordable, and how much it will spark a high-speed rail boom.
Hope and mirrors: Unless Congress renews them, stimulus grants for renewable energy projects will run out at the end of the year. So a lot clean energy developers are scrambling to get their projects in under the wire, especially in California, where utilities also are required to get 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by the end of 2010. The state isn't likely to make that goal, but the dual deadlines have brought a solar land rush to the California desert. Last week, the California Energy Commission approved the state's first solar thermal power planet in 20 years, one that will create 250 megawatts of energy using mirrors to capture the sun's heat. An even bigger project promises to become the largest solar plant in the world, with the capacity to produce 1,000 megawatts of energy, enough to power 800,000 homes. Some call the construction of this huge solar plant a watershed moment. As Rhone Resch, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, told Greenwire's Scott Streater:
This project will be the signature project for the industry. It gives the industry a level of credibility that we haven't had to date simply because solar has been small scale. But if projects like this can move forward, it will show the country we do not need to be dependent on toxic energy sources any more, and we can rely on solar to provide a large portion of the country's energy.
Life's an itch: In the realm of climate change consequences, virulent poison ivy might not seem so dire. But for me, well, I get a rash when poison ivy is in the same zip code. So it doesn't make me happy to learn that all the extra carbon dioxide in the air is basically a steroid for the vile weed. Laura Hambleton, writing in the Washington Post, quotes researcher Jacqueline Mohan about her computer model for plant life in 2050. Mohan's model is based on CO2 projections.
Tree seedlings grew 8 to 12 percent more, with more C02. Poison ivy grew 149 percent more. Poison ivy is getting bigger, faster, and nastier.
I itch, therefore I am.
Related Links:
PACE homeowners must pay up before refinancing, Fannie and Freddie say
‘Skeptical environmentalist’ Bjørn Lomborg reverses his climate skepticism
Hearings begin on federal coal ash rules as evidence of damages mounts
by Randy Rieland.
Sure, deepwater drilling is on hold in the Gulf of Mexico, but it's about to go into high gear in the Arctic.
You know the drill: Last week, the Scottish company Cairn Energy announced that it had found natural gas deposits off the coast of Greenland, and right away there was talk of a new oil rush. As much as 20 percent of Earth's untapped oil is thought to be in the Arctic, which is now more accessible than it's ever because -- Irony Alert! -- so much of the polar ice has melted due to global warming caused by fossil fuels.
Within a week or so, Greenland's government will grant licenses to explore along its coast -- Shell, ExxonMobil, and Norway's StatOil are reportedly chomping at the bit. Green groups are girding for an Arctic oil boom. Writing in NewEurope, Kostis Geropoulos quotes Jack Hunter, of Greenpeace's European Union unit:
By drilling for oil in ever more dangerous, difficult to reach places the oil companies are taking us in the wrong direction. If a spill happened there, that pristine area would face an environmental catastrophe.
Gimme the Arctic ... straight up!: Thanks to the polar meltdown, it's now possible to circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean in ice-free waters, and that will probably be the case for at least another month. No, this is not normal. But as Jeff Masters points out in his WunderBlog, it is now. This is the third consecutive year that both the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage in the Arctic are passable, and the trend spells trouble to come:
When the summertime Arctic sea ice starts melting completely a few years or decades hence, the Arctic will warm rapidly, potentially leading to large releases of methane gas stored in permafrost and in undersea "methane ice" deposits. Methane is 20 to 25 times more potent than CO2 at warming the climate, meaning that the fire in Earth's attic will inexorably spread to the rest of the globe.
Money can't buy you love...not even Brad Pitt's: One company that won't be joining the Arctic drilling party is BP, which, for obvious reasons, Greenland sees as a political pariah. Speculation abounds as to whether BP will ever regain its reputation as a company that "lives on the frontiers of the energy industry." BP, meanwhile, is busy trying to prop up any kind of reputation. To make sure we all get the message that it will "make things right" in the Gulf, BP has spent an average of $1 million a week on TV and radio ads since the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April, according to a report by James Quinn in The Telegraph. Oh, and speaking of "make it right," Brad Pitt was the first to coin the phrase -- for his push to rebuild home in New Orleans ravaged Ninth Ward post-Katrina. The actor called BP's appropriation of his slogan "dastardly."
The end (of the end) is near!: It's looking more and more like the current freeze on deepwater drilling in the Gulf won't last its full six months. Last week, a bipartisan think tank concluded that enough safety measures are in place for the moratorium to end before November 30. Now Bill Reilly, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and co-chair of the White House commission investigating the Gulf gusher, agrees that the drilling ban should be lifted sooner rather than later.
They got it bad, and that ain't good: That would be yet another setback for green groups desperately trying to stop the downward spiral of the past year. From the debacle in the Gulf to the disaster in the Senate, where climate change legislation shriveled like fruit left out in the sun. In a front page story in today's Washington Post, David Fahrenthold writes about how enviros are struggling to salvage any kind of victory after overestimating the public's passion for climate change legislation and underestimating Big Oil's clout on Capitol Hill. David DiMartino, a spokesman for Clean Energy Works, told Fahrenthold:
The oil industry has tremendous reach and control in the United States Senate. Our mistake was miscalculating ... how far into the Senate it went.
Better fed than dead: Here's a little ray of sunshine. According to Joel Benenson, pollster for the Obama campaign, a recent survey still shows strong public support (60 percent) for having the federal government control greenhouse gas emissions. A slightly lower percentage of respondents (54 percent) feel confident the EPA can handle the job, and 53 percent oppose the proposal from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) to suspend the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases for two years.
And get this: Brazilian scientist Fernando Galembeck recently told a meeting of the American Chemical Society that he and his team of researchers have made progress in harvesting the electricity in thunderstorms. Galembeck said he was hopeful that one day this "hygroelectricity" could be captured by small rooftop devices.
Hey, it worked for Frankenstein.
Related Links:
‘Skeptical environmentalist’ Bjørn Lomborg reverses his climate skepticism
Hearings begin on federal coal ash rules as evidence of damages mounts
U.N. climate panel needs to ‘fundamentally reform,’ review finds
by Agence France-Presse.
UNITED NATIONS -- A U.N.-ordered review said Monday that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) needed to "fundamentally reform" how it operates after embarrassing errors in a landmark report dented its credibility.
The five-month probe recommended an overhaul of the position of chair of the IPCC, currently held by Rajendra Pachauri, who said he would accept whatever fate member-states decide for him.
The United Nations ordered the review by the InterAcademy Council, made up of 15 leading science academies, after recent political uproar over its landmark 2007 study.
The review found that the IPCC has been "successful overall," but called for changes in its leadership structure, stricter guidelines on source material, and a check on conflicts of interests.
The IPCC released a 938-page study in 2007 pointing to evidence that climate change was already hurting the planet, building momentum for global action to limit carbon emissions that mostly come from burning coal, gas, and oil.
But in the run-up to a highly anticipated climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, the IPCC was rocked by a scandal involving leaked emails, which critics say showed that scientists skewed data.
"I think the errors made did dent the credibility of the process -- there's no question about it," said Harold Shapiro, a former president of Princeton University who led the review.
"Trust is something you have to earn every year," he told reporters. "We think what we recommended will help."
One part of the report said that Himalayan glaciers that provide water to a billion people in Asia could be lost by 2035 -- an assessment later traced to a magazine article.
The IPCC has admitted that the Himalayan glacier reference was wrong, but says its core conclusions about climate change are sound.
In Brussels, European Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said that "after all the fights," the main findings of the 2007 report are "still unchallenged."
"The bottom line, and this report says it, is that overall the IPCC has done a very good job, but there were some minor errors and they were corrected," she told AFP.
The review said the glacier reference showed that the IPCC -- driven by a "confirmation bias" to prove ideas -- did not pay close enough attention to dissenting viewpoints, which should be presented more openly in studies.
"There were a number of reviewers who pointed out that this didn't seem quite right to them and that just was not followed through," Shapiro said.
The U.N. review said that guidelines on source material for the IPCC were "too vague" and called for specific language -- and enforcement -- on what types of literature are unacceptable.
Pachauri, an Indian scientist primarily employed by the TERI think tank, has come under criticism, with some arguing that he had a vested interest by business dealings with carbon-trading companies.
The review recommended creating a more permanent and professional position of IPCC chair, changing the current part-time arrangement. It also said that the chair tenure -- two terms of six years each -- was too long.
"Formal qualifications for the chair and all other bureau members need to be developed, as should a rigorous conflict-of-interest policy to be applied to senior IPCC leadership" and authors, the review said.
Pachauri said after the review was released that he would let member-states decide his future.
Shapiro said that the review was making a "recommendation for the process as a whole" and was not criticizing Pachauri.
"It was not motivated by or in any way connected to Dr. Pachauri or any other leader in IPCC," he said.
The IPCC's study, known formally as the Fourth Assessment Report, helped earn it a Nobel Peace Prize, which it co-shared with former U.S. vice president turned environmental activist Al Gore.
But momentum for a post-Kyoto treaty on climate change has since dwindled.
Critics have seized on the "Climategate" scandal to challenge the scientific basis behind climate change.
Environmental group Greenpeace welcomed the review and pointed to severe weather this year -- including Pakistan's massive floods and Russia's worst-ever heat wave -- as evidence of global warming.
"Despite the muckraking and crude attempts to undermine the findings of the IPCC, the scientific consensus is clear, climate change represents a serious threat to the future of the environment and humanity," Greenpeace said.
Related Links:
‘Skeptical environmentalist’ Bjørn Lomborg reverses his climate skepticism
With drilling stalled in the Gulf, Big Oil sets its sights on the Arctic
Fires could cost Russia $300 billion in forest loss
by Agence France-Presse.
MOSCOW -- Russia lost forests with an economic value of at least $300 billion in the wildfires during its worst ever heatwave, environmentalists said on Thursday.
The economic damage amounted to $25,000 dollars per every 2.4 acres, or at least $300 billion, according to estimates based on the market value of timber and the cost of reforestation, said Alexei Zimenko, general director of Moscow-based Biodiversity Conservation Center.
"The figures are completely astronomical," Zimenko told a news conference, adding those did not include several factors, including the loss of wildlife like insects and rare birds and animals.
According to Russian environmentalists, citing data from the Global Fire Monitoring Center, the fires have covered an area of 24.7 million to 30 million acres in Russia since the start of the year.
The government's emergencies ministry says however that nearly 29,500 fires covering a total area of 2.3 million acres have so far been registered in the country this year.
Environmentalists say the authorities have on purpose underreported the scale of the disaster.
"Unfortunately, official data on the scale of wildfires is reduced by a factor of three to 10," several environmental groups, including Zimenko's Biodiversity Conservation Center, WWF Russia, and Greenpeace Russia, said in a statement released at the news conference.
"The colossal damage which the nature inflicts on the territories and the country's economy practically is not taken into account."
While experts say it may take months for the government to tally the damage, several economists said earlier this month the disaster might cost Russia between 0.5 percent and 1.0 percent of gross domestic product, or roughly $7-15 billion.
Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach told reporters this week the drought would cut at least 0.7-0.8 percentage points from 2010 growth, in the first official estimate of the cost of the disaster.
Related Links:
Exclusive: Fannie regulator digs in on clean-energy opposition
Obama turns an even lighter shade of green
Canada bans BPA. Why haven’t we?
by Jonathan Hiskes.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency solidified its opposition to the home-greening program Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) in a letter to members of Congress Thursday, telling them it doesn't see a way to let the program move forward.
FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco rejected the possibility of a PACE pilot program, seen as the last best hope for bringing the suspended finance tool back to life in the near term.
"Discussions have failed to produce concepts that would mitigate the threat to FHFA-regulated institutions or to broader financial markets," DeMarco wrote to PACE-supporting Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), John Sarbanes (D-Md.), and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.). "FHFA, therefore, has determined that its guidance to its regulated entities must remain in place."
The remaining options for saving the popular PACE program are a court battle, legislation, or possibly intervention from the Obama administration. That last option seems remote since the administration has so far refused to put its top people on the case.
Here's the background (borrowed from Grist's previous coverage): PACE works by letting homeowners pay for rooftop solar arrays and energy-saving retrofits through a surcharge on their property tax bills. The cost is paid back over 10 to 20 years. In this way PACE removes high upfront costs and ensures that property owners don't lose out if it they sell -- the new buyer inherits both the home improvements and the tax assessment. The Berkeley-born model creates work for building contractors, cuts carbon pollution, and essentially runs on private capital, since cities and towns that offer PACE fund it through municipal bonds.
Until late spring, PACE was spreading at a steady clip: Twenty-two states had endorsed the model and encouraged municipalities to set up programs. San Francisco had just launched a program and Los Angeles was preparing for one later in the year. The Obama administration backed the model with $150 million in stimulus it funding and an endorsement from the vice president's Middle Class Task Force.
But in May FHFA threw the nation's first programs into confusion by warning lenders to stay away from properties with PACE assessments. The agency objects to the liens that PACE puts on properties, which get paid off ahead of mortgages if a borrower defaults. That adds a theoretical risk into an already jittery credit market.
It's an unfounded fear, since well-designed energy retrofits add to a homeowner's financial security, cutting their utility bills and making them a safer bet for lenders. A report commissioned by a major financial institution last year found that energy-efficient homes had default and delinquency rates 11 percent lower than typical homes. PACE advocates have worked to integrate standards to ensure the quality of retrofits, but that work can't continue with programs stalled out.
DeMarco raised the question of quality standards in his letter this week:
No satisfactory conclusion has been reached to address problems associated with liens created after a mortgage is in place, thereby transferring credit risk to banks, secondary market parties and investors in mortgage-backed securities. Further, consumer protections and appropriate underwriting standards need to be uniform and mandatory to protect homeowners.
... I believe that FHFA has done its utmost to seek constructive alternatives.
PACE advocates in the building trades, local governments, and Congress disagree with his "utmost" assertion.
"Every single issue raised by FHFA was raised previously and resolved, from almost everybody's perspective, with excellent answers," PACE creator Cisco DeVries told Grist last month. "It's clear they didn't want to take 'yes' for an answer."
The chances of a legislative fix this year are slim, given the level of dysfunction in the Senate. Majority Leader Harry Reid said he'd consider pushing a PACE bill if it got a Republican cosponsor, but that hasn't happened yet. In the House, Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) signed on as the first Republican cosponsor of a PACE bill earlier this month.
That raises the question of where the other Republican supporters are, according to Cliff Staton, vice president of marketing at DeVries's company Renewable Funding, which helps towns and counties set up PACE programs.
"PACE has not been a partisan issue at the state and local level," Staton wrote in an email. "... But in DC, everything seems to be partisan.
"Now that one Republican has crossed the line, though, the question for other Republicans becomes: 'Why not co-sponsor?'"
PACE isn't the only innovative financing tool for making green improvement affordable for homeowners. But it has been one of the most effective ones during its three-year life. Now supporters know a little more about their options for saving it.
Related Links:
Fires could cost Russia $300 billion in forest loss
Obama turns an even lighter shade of green
Canada bans BPA. Why haven’t we?
by Randy Rieland.
So what's up with President Obama? He says all the right things about clean energy and global warming. But actions speak louder than words, and in the past six months his green cred has faded fast. He opened up the East Coast and the Gulf to more deepwater drilling -- before the BP leak thwarted the plan, for now at least. He let the climate bill, and then any energy bill, wither like a baked grape in the Senate. Now, his Justice Department has sided with utility companies in a lawsuit that was trying to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.
This is how he rolls?
Hell to the chief: The latest slap comes in a case before the Supreme Court in which eight states and the city of New York sued a group of utility companies for burning fossil fuels. The plaintiffs argued that the resulting greenhouse gases are a "public nuisance" because they contribute to climate change. But Obama's legal team has sided with the utilities, apparently because it wants the EPA, not the courts, to deal with greenhouse gases. That may sound reasonable, but green groups point out there's no guarantee that the EPA, under siege from Republicans, will be able to deliver on Obama's promises. More importantly, the Justice Department's position undercuts any future suits that may try to use nuisance law as a way to attack greenhouse gas pollution. As Matt Pawa, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, told Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard:
It reads like a Bush administration brief. It felt like being stabbed in the back. The Obama administration claims to care about global warming, so why is it opposing an effort to curtail greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired plants?
Lost leader: Obama's backsliding on green issues is that much more galling in light of what's happening elsewhere in the world. Canada is about to put bisphenol-A, or BPA, a common chemical used in plastic water bottles and baby bottles, on its list of toxic substances. The Indian government has committed $6.4 billion to clean energy and energy efficiency programs for more than 700 industries. Even in Russia, hardly a model for anything environmental, President Dmitry Medvedev stopped a highway-building project that was tearing up a forest between Moscow and St. Petersburg. (Of course, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin begged to disagree, insisting that the highway must be built, but still ...)
Can Kevin Bacon still be in the movie? You've heard all the wild ideas. Pump particles into the atmosphere like some non-stop volcano. Launch mirrors into space. Bury massive quantities of greenhouse gas-sucking charcoal in soil all over the Earth. Clever geoengineering to the rescue! Sadly, it ain't so. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, no geoengineering project would be able to cut carbon dioxide levels enough to keep the oceans from rising. Only sharply cutting greenhouse gas emissions will make a real difference, says researcher Svetlana Jevrejeva, who told the BBC's Katia Moskvitch:
Substituting geoengineering for greenhouse emission control would be to burden future generations with enormous risk.
View to a top kill: BP gave us plenty of drama this summer as it stumbled and bumbled its way to plugging its gushing deepwater well. But apparently there was a helluva lot more stress and nastiness behind the scenes, including frustrating failures, culture clashes with government scientists, and even a threat by one engineer to throw another one overboard. Clifford Krauss, Henry Fountain, and John Broder provide some of the story's twists and turns in The New York Times.
And if you want to get a good idea of some of the madness aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig on the April day this debacle started, check out the narrative by Russell Gold and Ben Casselman in the Wall Street Journal.
I see blue people: It was bad enough for BP when Brad Pitt said it made him want to reconsider the death penalty. Now Avatar (and Titanic and Terminator) director James Cameron is piling on. Earlier this summer Cameron called BP engineers "morons." Yesterday, he told the New York Daily News that BP's involvement in controlling the leak was "a bit like having the bank robbers run the video surveillance of the vault." And he didn't stop there, likening BP to the greedy corporation that pillaged Pandora. And furthermore:
[The world is in worse shape] than anything I dreamed up for The Terminator. I should make a new Terminator-like movie where someone travels back in time to warn us before it's too late.
Arnold should be available.
Related Links:
The Jersey Shore’s Snooki and her five eco-snafus
Fires could cost Russia $300 billion in forest loss
Exclusive: Fannie regulator digs in on clean-energy opposition
by Tom Philpott.
Environment Canada -- our northern neighbor's version of the EPA -- has officially declared bisphenol A (BPA) toxic. The ubiquitous chemical, found in the lining of nearly all cans used by the food and beverage industry, will have to be phased out in Canada.
BPA is vile stuff. Here's how Scientific American recently described it: "In recent years dozens of scientists around the globe have linked BPA to myriad health effects in rodents: mammary and prostate cancer, genital defects in males, early onset of puberty in females, obesity, and even behavior problems such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder."
The North American chemical industry is furious with Environment Canada's decision. The American Chemistry Council has vigorously defended BPA during Environment Canada's toxic review, declaring that the agency had "pandered to emotional zealots" by even considering the toxic designation, the Toronto Star reports. The industry group demanded that Environment Canada halt the review process; Environment Canada held firm.
In our political system, the chemical industry has had better luck pushing its agenda.
In January, the FDA took a singularly maddening position on the stuff, as Tom Laskawy reported for Grist. On the one hand, after years of denying mounting evidence that BPA posed serious health risks, the agency declared it had "some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and young children."
On the other, the agency has essentially claimed it is unable to ban it from use. "Today there exist hundreds of different formulations for BPA-containing epoxy linings, which have varying characteristics," and food companies aren't obligated to declare which ones they're using, the agency complained in its January statement. "If FDA were to decide to revoke one or more approved uses, FDA would need to undertake what could be a lengthy process of rulemaking to accomplish this goal," the agency declared, referring to itself in the third person.
In other words, the poison has been distilled into so many forms that it would take a lot of work to keep it out of food processing. And rather than initiate that process, FDA chose to sit on its hands -- meaning that the food industry still knowingly exposes millions of people every day to a chemical the FDA acknowledges is harmful.
Laskawy aptly read the report as "a bureaucratic cry for help" -- FDA decision makers' acknowledgement that, in the face of chemical-industry pressure, "they really [don't] have the authority to ban BPA or even to meaningfully restrict its use." He concluded: "It seems that only Congress can provide the antidote."
The U.S. Senate to the rescue? Not so much. Earlier this month, a ban on BPA was removed from the Senate's food safety bill under industry pressure. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) vowed to add an amendment to a compromise bill that would ban BPA, negotiations on the bill stalled.
In the wake of the massive salmonella-tainted egg recall, the Senate will probably have to act on food safety legislation when it returns in September. Let's hope Canada's action on BPA gives our elected officials the spine they need to stand up to the chemical industry.
Related Links:
Fires could cost Russia $300 billion in forest loss
Exclusive: Fannie regulator digs in on clean-energy opposition
Obama turns an even lighter shade of green
by Jonathan Hiskes.
If you read everything that bloggers declared a "must read," you'd have time for little else. I'll just say that if you want a lucid tour of the Obama administration's work to remake the country's energy and transportation landscape, it's tough to beat Michael Grunwald's new TIME piece "How the Stimulus is Changing America."
Most coverage of the stimulus -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- looks at the "recovery" portion -- the goal of saving and creating jobs. Grunwald looks into the 16 percent of funds marked for "reinvestment" -- the long-term projects of confronting climate change, cutting oil addiction, building a 21st century economy (and also modernizing health care and education):
Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's effusive Recovery Act point man, "Now the fun stuff starts!" The "fun stuff," about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. "This is a chance to do something big, man!" Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME.
For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet.
There's very little in the story about who likes the $787 billion stimulus, who doesn't, and how political consultants are using it in the midterm elections. Instead Grunwald reports on what the stimulus is actually doing (what a novel concept).
The $8 billion for high-speed passenger rail is the the boldest federal transportation initiative since the interstate highways, Grunwald notes. Investment in advanced batteries for electric cars will bring the number of U.S. factories from two to 30.
"Any one of those programs would have been a revolution in its own right," he writes.
But should the government be picking winners and losers? I've harped enough lately about how that's a bogus question unless you consider how the government already subsidizes winners in energy (oil and coal) and transporation (automobiles).
Grunwald takes a look the administration's plan for keeping waste out of the stimulus:
Every contract and lobbying contact is posted at Recovery.gov, with quarterly data detailing where the money went. A Recovery Board was created to scrutinize every dollar, with help from every major agency's independent watchdog. And Biden has promised state and local officials answers to all stimulus questions within 24 hours. It's a test-drive for a new approach to government: more transparent, more focused on results than compliance, not just bigger but better. Biden himself always saw the Recovery Act as a test--not only of the new Administration but of federal spending itself. He knew high-profile screwups could be fatal, stoking antigovernment anger about bureaucrats and two-car funerals. So he spends hours checking in, buttering up and banging heads to keep the stimulus on track, harassing Cabinet secretaries, governors and mayors about unspent broadband funds, weatherization delays and fishy projects. He has blocked some 260 skate parks, picnic tables and highway beautifications that flunked his what-would-your-mom-think test. ...
So far, despite furor over cash it supposedly funneled to contraception (deleted from the bill) and phantom congressional districts (simply typos), the earmark-free Recovery Act has produced surprisingly few scandals. Prosecutors are investigating a few fraud allegations, and critics have found some goofy expenditures, like $51,500 for water-safety-mascot costumes or a $50,000 arts grant to a kinky-film house. But those are minor warts, given that unprecedented scrutiny. Biden knows it's early - "I ain't saying mission accomplished!" - but he calls waste and fraud "the dogs that haven't barked."
The Recovery Act's deeper reform has been its focus on intense competition for grants instead of everybody-wins formulas, forcing public officials to consider not only whether applicants have submitted the required traffic studies and small-business hiring plans but also whether their projects make sense. Already staffed by top technologists from MIT, Duke and Intel, ARPA-E [the administration's in-house venture capital arm] recruited 4,500 outside experts to winnow 3,700 applications down to 37 first-round grants. "We've taken the best and brightest from the tech world and created a venture fund--except we're looking for returns for the country," Majumdar says. These change agents didn't uproot their lives to fill out forms in triplicate and shovel money by formula. They want to reinvent the economy, not just stimulate it. Sadoway, the MIT battery scientist, is tired of reporting how many jobs he's created in his lab: "If this works, I'll create a million jobs!"
Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic adds a comment:
Skeptics may roll their eyes at this, but they shouldn't. Mike, whom I know well, is a famously skeptical journalist who has won a slew of awards for his tough coverage of government agencies. (Just ask the Army Corps of Engineers.) If he is enthusiastic about the Recovery Act, then you should be, too.
For a skeptical but fair take, see Derek Thompson at The Atlantic, who asks "Why Wasn't the Stimulus All About Job Creation?"
Related Links:
Fires could cost Russia $300 billion in forest loss
Exclusive: Fannie regulator digs in on clean-energy opposition
Obama turns an even lighter shade of green
by Randy Rieland.
Scientists get no respect.
That became obvious once again yesterday at the latest hearing of the White House's commission investigating the Gulf gusher. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was asked if the White House consulted her agency last spring before the president announced he was opening up thousands of acres along the East and Gulf coasts to off-shore drilling. Nobody asked her, said Lubchenko. But surely someone talked to Nancy Sutley, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, right? Wrong -- again.
These oversights -- overslights? -- seemed to vex Bob Graham, former Florida senator and co-chair of the commission:
There isn't a culture, and this crosses administrations, that naturally reaches out to the scientists for their participation, therefore it would be appropriate to ask that Congress change the process.
No doubt they'll get right on it.
Details, details: The media doesn't do right by science either. That's the take from Christopher Reddy, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. He was part of the team that last week confirmed the presence of the huge plume of oily droplets floating underwater in the Gulf. But, as Reddy writes on the CNN website, all journalists wanted to talk about was whether the discovery proved the White House's estimate on the oil remaining in the Gulf was wrong.
Science does not work that way. It is incremental. It is not a house of cards where one dissenting view leads to a complete collapse. Rather, science is more like a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece is added. Occasionally a wrong piece may be placed, but eventually science will correct it. Both the corrections and the completion of any scientific puzzle take time.
The crack of gloom: Remember when all those Republicans and Gulf Coast Democrats were predicting the drilling moratorium in the Gulf would lead to economic Armageddon? Flash back to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) in June: "On the heels of a global financial meltdown that has already left millions of Americans jobless, the economic losses that will be inflicted by the moratorium are nothing short of staggering." Actually, it's been more flinch than stagger. Unemployment claims related to the moratorium have been in the hundreds, not thousands. And only two of the 33 deepwater rigs have left. John Broder and Clifford Krauss, writing in the New York Times, explain why:
Oil companies used the enforced suspension to service and upgrade their drilling equipment, keeping shipyards and service companies busy. Drilling firms have kept most of their workers, knowing that if they let them go it will be hard to field experienced teams when the moratorium is lifted.
Devil in the deep, blue sea: Also, the notion that the Gulf disaster would slow deep sea drilling around the world: that prediction hasn't quite panned out either. There's talk of tougher regulations, mainly in Brazil and Angola, but not much is expected to happen, certainly not until investigators know what caused the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The sad truth is that countries have come to depend on deepwater drilling. Nearly half the oil and gas reserves added in the past four years have come from deep beneath the sea.
But the BP leak has made at least one big name skittish: BP. Natural gas was just discovered off the coast of Greenland, sparking hype about a new oil rush. But our least favorite oil giant is staying away. To go, one source told The Guardian, would have been "political madness."
The dirt talker: Political pundits are still trying to figure out how Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), blew the big lead that polls suggested she had over Tea Party challenger Joe Miller. He leads by about 1,500 votes with about 8,000 absentee ballots still to be counted. The latest speculation is that Murkowski lost her edge by choosing not to go down and dirty with a negative ad campaign in the last few weeks. Miller, meanwhile, suffered no such moral pangs. As Jeanne Devon writes in the Huffington Post:
Every available moment of air time on TV and radio was overtaken by Miller ads -- Murkowski is a liberal! Murkowski is part of a political dynasty. She's entitled. She says one thing and does another. She's sold out for political power in D.C. She's a liberal, and also by the way, she's a liberal.
Miller was backed by Sarah Palin who, as always, tweeted her feelings:
Keeping fingers crossed, powder dry, prayers upward.
Toke it to the limit: And here's an idea that may guarantee success for the electric car. A group of Canadian companies is designing an electric car made of hemp. That's right, straight from the cannabis plant. Technically, the body of the compact, called the Kestrel, will consist of an impact-resistant material produced from mats of hemp. The car will reach a top speed of 55 miles per hour and go as far as 100 miles on a charge. Hopefully, the glove compartment will be filled with Doritos.
Related Links:
The Climate Post: Primaries move GOP to the right (on climate)
Eco-amnesia costs the U.S. $20 billion a year
Food prices soar in Russia after drought
by Agence France-Presse.
MOSCOW -- Prices of basic foodstuffs like buckwheat and flour have soared in Russia over the past month as the effects of its worst ever drought hit supplies, statistics showed Wednesday.
Inflation in Russia was 0.2 percent for the week of August 17-23, considerably higher than the figure before the drought and the third week in a row that prices have risen by this amount, the state statistics office said.
Most alarmingly, the price of Russian staple buckwheat -- enjoyed by generations for breakfast or as an accompaniment to meat -- rose a very sharp 8.6 percent in the space of the week.
Flour prices rose 3.3 percent, while milk was up 1.3 percent. The price of bread, a crucial component of the Russian diet which is consumed with almost every meal, increased 0.9 percent.
The drought, caused by the hottest summer in Russia on record, destroyed one quarter of the country's crops and prompted the government to slap a highly controversial ban on grain exports to protect domestic supplies.
But consumers have already seen buckwheat and other goods disappearing from the shelves as demand outstrips supply, stoking inflation.
The government, nervous of the price rises causing social discontent, has already warned that it will clamp down on any merchants seeking to profit from the situation unfairly.
The federal anti-monopoly service said it has strengthened its controls on food markets and opened 25 probes into suspected cases of price abuse in August alone.
It said bread prices could rise by up to 15 percent by the beginning of September while milk in some regions had already gone up by 18 percent.
Before the drought, Russia was the world's number three exporter of wheat and its ban on grain exports drove global wheat prices to two year highs.
The government said Tuesday that inflation this year would now be higher than the previous estimate of 6-7 percent due to the drought.
"Inflation risks as a result of the drought have grown considerably," said Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach.
Inflation in Russia, which reached levels that caused panic in the 1990s, has been on a steady decline in the last years, allowing the central bank to cut interest rates during the global economic crisis.
The agriculture ministry Wednesday confirmed that the harvest so far this year at around the halfway point was a third lower than levels a year earlier.
Farmers had harvested 41.5 million tons of grain, compared with 60.5 million tons, it said.
Russia has warned that its grain harvest this year will be just 60-65 million tons, compared to 97 million tons in 2009. Last year, Russia exported 21.4 million tons of grain abroad.
"The most acute problem is with buckwheat because last year's stock is not big and the forecasts are bad," said Mikhail Susov, corporate relations director of the X-5 Retail Group which owns the large Perekrestok supermarket chain.
"We have seen the wholesale price for buckwheat rise 40-60 percent. For milk there is a shortage of 25 percent. Suppliers have warned that this risks lasting until the end of the year," he said, according to Russian news agencies.
Related Links:
Running bike-sharing networks through smartphones
In Alaska, climate change skeptic leads GOP race for Senate
Why our railways suck (in two graphs)
by Jonathan Hiskes.
It's August and it's gorgeous outside, at least where I live. I suggest you learn a little about innovations in bike-sharing, then go outside and play.
Shareable.net reports on Ryan Rzepecki's Social Bicycles System:
Instead of relying on kiosks and docking stations to connect users to bikes, cyclists use their smartphones to locate, check out, and lock bikes -- everything is portable, wireless, decentralized, and self-contained. The tech is stored in a small "lock box" attached to the rear wheel, which connects the bike to a central server. Users create an account with SoBi, find a bike through a call or smartphone app, and receive a code which they can use to unlock the bicycle from an ordinary rack. They can just enter their account info directly into the lock box; they use the same pin code every time, "just like with a bank card."
A few advantages: You don't need docking stations, a la B-cycle systems. The bikes can theoretically be a lot cheaper than the $3,500 (!) cycles in the world's first citywide network in Paris. And, as with any of the fast-spreading bike-sharing networks, you get mobility without needing a car.
Rzepecki is planning on a 20-bike test deployment in New York next month. Of course this may all be part of a U.N. conspiracy. It is in New York, after all.
Rzepecki talks about his work:
The Social Bicycle System from Ryan Rzepecki on Vimeo.
Related Links:
Food prices soar in Russia after drought
In Alaska, climate change skeptic leads GOP race for Senate
Why our railways suck (in two graphs)
by Randy Rieland.
Just what the Senate needs: another climate change denier. Joe Miller's potential upset of Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska's Republican primary could mean another diehard climate skeptic in the mix.
Not that Murkowski is a hero of enviros. She's been doing her darnedest to stifle the EPA on the public health dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, hardly a surprise given the fact that Big Oil has sent almost $500,000 her way since she joined the Senate in 2002. But at least Murkowski acknowledges the human role in heating up the planet.
Miller, a Tea Partier backed by Sarah Palin, holds fast to the notion that it's nature's way:
I think it's undeniable, that anyone who has looked at the natural record of the Earth can see significant cyclical changes well before the industrial age, so we know the temperature change is part of the process of our existence, and frankly, you're probably aware in the '70s there were real concerns about global cooling.
Here's more on his take.
Twist and doubt: At least Sen. John McCain won handily in Arizona's Republican primary. Yes, this is good news. McCain did a world-class flip flop on cap-and-trade this past year. But his opponent J.D. Hayworth, another Tea Partier, proudly "rejects phony climate change data." Expect more deniers in the fall campaigns. Susana Martinez, the Republican candidate for governor in New Mexico, says scientists still haven't proven that climate change is manmade. All three Republican congressional candidates in the state agree with her. The same goes for every one of the six Republican Senate candidates in New Hampshire.
Meal of fortune: So it turns out that the Gulf of Mexico may be saved not by skimmers or dispersants or even Kevin Costner, but by oil-scarfing bacteria. A new study suggests that voracious microbes are chowing down on oil droplets, thus doing their part to shrink the giant petro plume under the sea. But other scientists caution that it will take awhile to see how all this microbial munching plays out. As Robert Lee Hotz writes in the Wall Street Journal:
The remaining oil from the spill, hidden at depths or driven far afield by currents, is a moving target, making follow-up studies difficult. It may be years before all the technical findings can be assembled into a coherent mosaic. "This is science on the fly," said Ron Atlas, a microbiologist at the University of Louisville and a former president of the American Society for Microbiology.
Partners in slime: One group that can't take any credit for protecting the Gulf is the federal agency charged with doing just that -- the infamous Minerals Management Services, now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy. Its twisted tale of bedding down in oh-so-many ways with Big Oil is well known, but Juliet Eilperin and Scott Higham, writing in the Washington Post, lay out the agency's sad devolution from regulator to "partner":
Top officials and front-line workers routinely referred to the companies under their watch as "clients," "customers," and especially "partners." As the relationship became more intertwined, regulatory intensity subsided. MMS officials waived hundreds of environmental reviews and did not aggressively pursue companies for equipment failures. They also participated in studies financed and dominated by industry, more as collaborator than regulator.
Lords of the lies: It's always a good idea to know the enemy, so meet the Koch brothers -- Charles and David -- whose wealth is reputed to rank behind only Bill Gates and Warren Buffet among America's billionaires. The Koch bros bankroll the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the group that's been a major force behind the Tea Party movement. They also have a long history of throwing millions of dollars into think tanks and foundations that rant against government regulation of business. They especially hate environmental regulations, which makes sense because their company, Koch Industries, has been named one of the top ten air polluters in the U.S. Jane Mayer, writing in the New Yorker, puts the secretive brothers in the spotlight. Here's a taste:
Greenpeace issued a report identifying their company as "a kingpin of climate science denial." The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change ...
Hell on wheels: China's been getting some good press, including from Grist, for closing down polluting factories and investing hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy. Now it's time for a trip to the dark side. It's eased recently, but a monster traffic jam clogged a four-lane highway leading into Beijing for nine days -- not miles, mind you, days. Road construction was partly to blame for the snarl. But the chief culprit was huge number of trucks hauling coal from mines in inner Mongolia to booming cities along the Chinese coast.
In China these days, there is no road less traveled.
Related Links:
Eco-amnesia costs the U.S. $20 billion a year
Food prices soar in Russia after drought
Running bike-sharing networks through smartphones
by Jonathan Hiskes.
The New Jersey-New York-Philadelphia Amtrak mess that left commuters stranded this week just goes to show you that widespread passenger rails will never be a viable competitor to America's highway system. Transit just isn't as reliable. People prefer to drive.
Except not. Roadways didn't automatically sprout up everywhere. Driving isn't more convenient by nature. We chose to make it that way, thanks in no small part to the automobile and sprawl lobbies. When you look at federal capital investment in highways versus transit over the last half century, the difference is staggering:
Cumulative spending (everything since 1956, when the Federal-Aid Highway Act was passed) is even more nutso:
Governments at all levels have invested nine times more capital funds in highways than in transit since 1956, according to a report from the Federation of State Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG).
Imagine how much better our rail system could be if we started evening out that funding. That's what Ray LaHood's Transportation Department is, gradually, doing.
Related Links:
Wonder why climate bills stall in the Senate? Follow the money
Gloom alert: Fossil fuels and climate change still suck
Mystery island, magical bikes, and 8 other green stories to keep you in the loop
by Randy Rieland.
Let's review. We just lived through the worst accidental oil leak in history. And we're at the tail end of a summer of cataclysmic weather that top climate scientists tell us is a taste of the globally-warmed future. Yet the United States Senate failed even to pass a climate bill so tepid that it qualified as what a Republican (South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham) once would have described as "half-assed."
How does this happen? The Center for Responsive Politics offers a whopper of a clue. It reports that during the first six months of this year alone, Big Oil spent $75 million lobbying Congress. The report also points out that last year, when green groups retaliated and spent a record $22.4 million on their own lobbying, they still were outspent 7 to 1 by fossil fuel lobbies. The Center's Open Secrets Blog has all the dirty details as part of a weeklong series on how Big Oil fuels Washington.
Target practice: For BP, the Gulf oil leak has been the gift that keeps on giving -- and not in a good way. At yesterday's hearing in Houston on the Deepwater Horizon explosion, federal investigators nailed the oil giant for not addressing hundreds of maintenance problems on the rig. BP's erstwhile partners pointed one finger after another at their beleaguered colleague. Even Brad Pitt unloaded on BP, saying:
I was never for the death penalty before; I am willing to look at it again.
Dirty business: If you think clean coal is an oxymoron you've got plenty of company. Turns out a lot of utility companies don't buy the concept either. According to AP reporter Matthew Brown, 30 old-fashioned dirty coal plants have been built since 2008, or are under construction:
The expansion, the industry's largest in two decades, represents an acknowledgment that highly touted "clean coal" technology is still a long way from becoming a reality and underscores a renewed confidence among utilities that proposals to regulate carbon emissions will fail.
Waiting to inhale: And while we're on the subject of the air we'd rather not breathe, the EPA is postponing the announcement of tougher smog regulations at least until late October. More likely the agency will stay mum on smog until after the November elections, because any announcement would provide ammo for Republicans who have been accusing the federal government of running amok. Even November would be way too soon for some on Capitol Hill. Why rush asked a group of seven senators in a written complaint to EPA chief Lisa Jackson earlier this month? New smog regulations can wait until 2013.
We take it all back: Feels like you could use a little positive spin right about now, so how's this? Bob Marshall, in the New Orleans Times Picayune, reports that some enviros think the BP gusher in the Gulf may actually save more Louisiana wetlands than it destroyed:
... three months of daily newscasts have dramatically increased national awareness of the state's real coastal disaster, and the billions in fines BP is expected to pay could bankroll critical projects Congress had refused to fund.
Whine and punishment: And here's another little pick-you-up. During a visit to a remote research base in the Russian Arctic, Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, suggested that too much has been made of man's role in global warming, pointing out that climate change helped kill off woolly mammoths long before the age of human industrialization. German scientist Inken Preuss set him straight:
Climate change has never happened like now and man is making a huge impact.
He got told.
Related Links:
Why our railways suck (in two graphs)
Are the floods in Pakistan and the wildfires in Russia related? [AUDIO]
Gloom alert: Fossil fuels and climate change still suck
by Randy Rieland.
Oil and water don't mix. But oil, climate change, and politics? You just can't tease those three apart.
The investigation into the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon well continues today with a hearing in Houston amidst a swirl of bad energy. There's sniping between Transocean, the owner of the ill-fated rig, and BP. Government scientists are saying they never signed off on the government's lowball estimate of the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf. And it turns out the Obama administration knew that its deepwater drilling moratorium could mean the loss of 23,000 jobs, at least temporarily anyway. Speaking of, there's no sign the controversial moratorium will be lifted any time soon. Ken Salazar himself, head of the Interior Department, defended the moratorium in the Houston Chronicle yesterday:
We are requiring companies that want to drill to prove they are prepared to deal with catastrophic blowouts and oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon. BP's failed attempts to contain its blowout -- from the "containment dome" to the "top hat" -- exposed its lack of preparedness for a disaster. The previous administration exempted operators from addressing worst-case scenarios in their exploration plans, but we have closed that loophole. The oil and gas industry's inadequate preparedness is also one of the reasons the current deepwater drilling pause is so important: We need to put effective strategies in place for containing blowouts and responding to major spills.
Suck it up: At the end of a summer whose brutal weather put climate change back on the front burner comes still more disturbing climate news. Two University of Montana scientists find that since the turn of this century, plants are sucking up less of the planet's CO2. Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running had actually expected to find just the opposite; that because global warming has extended growing seasons, plants would be absorbing even more carbon dioxide. Instead, they're absorbing less. Zhao and Running blame droughts and the general dessication of the southern hemisphere. Said Zhao:
We don't know what will happen in the future. But many models estimate that ... droughts will become more frequent. So based on that, we expect the future will be gloomy.
Coal ... the other black teat: Don't expect any climate relief either, according to Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies. Writing in The Guardian, Gros says our jonesin' for coal will make climate change a done deal:
The U.S. experience has wider implications. If it proved impossible to introduce a moderate carbon tax in a rich economy, it is certain that no commitment will be forthcoming for the next generation from China, which remains much poorer and depends even more on indigenous coal than the U.S. And, after China, India looms as the next emerging coal-based industrial superpower.
It's the economy, stupid: Aside from its negative effects on global agriculture and health, how bad is climate change for business? Well, Russia's saying its summer of heat waves and fires could end up costing the country $15 billion. Pakistan's economy was sinking even before flood water covered 20 percent of the country, but the recent deluge sure doesn't help. It says something that the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission now requires companies to disclose any potential risks from global warming to investors. Rebecca Lefton and Richard Caperton, go deeper on the subject at the Center for American Progress website.
They hunt witches, don't they? Not that any of this climate change fallout matters to Virginia's attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, who's still doing all he can to keep Climategate alive. His vendetta against climate scientist Michael Mann was on full display in a Virginia courtroom Friday. A Cuccinelli minion repeated his boss's claim that Mann manipulated data while he was a University of Virginia professor -- and state employee -- and that this behavior amounted to fraud. Cuccinelli wants the university to hand over every climate-related email Mann wrote during his tenure there. University lawyers pointed out that not one, but several investigations have cleared Mann of any wrongdoing. They also brought up the little matter of academic freedom. The judge said he'd rule by the end of the month.
California schemin': It's going to start getting really ugly in the battle to save California Assembly Bill 32, the state's cutting-edge law limiting greenhouse gases. We already know that two of the state's biggest polluters, Texas-based Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp., have been bankrolling the campaign for Proposition 23, which would put the emissions law on ice. Now Lee Fang, writing in the Wonk Room, says the mother of all climate change deniers -- Koch Industries -- is working with Prop 23 proponents behind the scenes. A coalition of clean energy investors and environmentalists is firing back with its own TV ads. According to Bloomberg's Mark Chediak and Simon Lomax, the clean tech opposition has a war chest of $5.5 million, with more on the way.
You vote with that mouth? No surprise then that Nichol Allen, writing in The Atlantic, picked the California governor's race as one of five campaigns this fall where climate change could actually make a difference. Democrat Jerry Brown rails against Proposition 23 almost every chance he gets; Republican Meg Whitman says she'll suspend the cap-and-trade component of the greenhouse gas law her first day in office. Allen also suggests watching the Senate race in Pennsylvania between Democrat Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey. Sestak is one of those unlucky Democrats who's getting beaten up for supporting the House's cap-and-trade bill last year. Another potential cap-and-trade victim is Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher (D), a buddy of Big Coal who nevertheless voted for cap-and-trade as a way to keep the EPA from setting emission standards. In fact, cap-and-trade is now such a dirty word that even some House Democrats are following the Republican lead and calling it "Nancy Pelosi's energy tax."
A clean break: Remember when Obama was committing $150 billion in federal money for clean energy R&D? Those were the days, eh? Jesse Jenkins, of the Breakthrough Institute, noticed last week that all mention of that pledge is gone from the White House website. Seeing that the money was supposed to come from revenue generated through a nonexistent cap-and-trade system, no reason to keep that big ol' empty promise hanging out there. But now comes a report on the uptick in renewable energy use in Europe -- up more than 8 percent last year, while coal use dropped 9 percent -- and word that the Japanese government is working on a major stimulus package built around clean energy technologies.
Welcome to the rear view mirror.
Related Links:
Mystery island, magical bikes, and 8 other green stories to keep you in the loop
Utilities can meet EPA standards without threatening reliability
by Randy Rieland.
What a week. While scientists testifying on Capitol Hill trashed the government's estimates on how much oil lingers in the Gulf, sound-sensitive munchers everywhere trashed the new compostable Sun Chips bag because it's louder than a New York subway train. Really. But here's some under-the-radar items that will provide even more snappy repartee fodder for your weekend social soirees:
The wheel deal: Hybrid bikes may soon be getting a lot cooler. Using a principle from Formula 1 racing, a team from MIT's SENSEable Cities Lab is moving forward with an invention they call the Copenhagen Wheel. It's a device that uses a battery to capture the kinetic energy created whenever you apply the brakes. It then uses that energy to give you a needed surge, say, when you're pedaling uphill. But the Copenhagen Wheel does more than provide a power boost. Sensors and a Bluetooth connection can tell you, through your iPhone, your speed and distance and even the pollution levels, if you really want to know. Named in honor of the bike-friendly city, the Copenhagen Wheel won the American round of the 2010 James Dyson Award given to top design engineers. The next phase of the competition is next week. David Teeghman shares the details and a video at Discovery News.Bermuda Triangle alert!: You know that "island" of tiny bits of plastic drifting in the Atlantic? The one that stretches from Virginia to Cuba? Well, for 22 years, students working with the Sea Education Association have been dragging fine mesh nets through the Atlantic and analyzing the plastic they captured. A study of that data has led to a startling conclusion -- although a lot more plastic has undoubtedly wound up in the ocean during the past two decades, the island has not grown. Several theories have been floated, but no one has a good answer. Emily Sohn lays out the mystery at Discovery News.
Et tu, Mr. Potato Head?: In a world where everyone talks a good green game, ClimateCounts.org lets us know who's blowing smoke when it comes to their commitment to sustainability. ClimateCounts' latest rankings are out, and while almost 60 percent of the 47 firms rated improved their scores from the last report, most were only marginally better. The rankings show the good guys -- pharmaceutical firms, believe it or not -- and the bad -- toy companies continue to underachieve. Get the lowdown from ClimateBiz.
The simple sun: Finally, solar goes plug and play. A Seattle outfit named Clarian Power has created a portable, DIY solar power generator called the Sunfish. It's relatively cheap -- about $800 per panel -- and, in theory at least, as simple as operating a toaster. Find a sunny spot, plug the Sunfish into an outdoor outlet and, if it lives up to the hype, solar power will start flowing into your electrical system. No electrician required. Get the background from Jim Witkin at the New York Times Green blog.
Battery will get you somewhere: If anything can put the brakes on electric car sales, it's the cost of batteries. By itself, a battery pack can add $10,000 to the sticker price. But MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang says he has a concept for a kind of hybrid battery that could cut that cost by as much as 85 percent. If he's right, Chiang could bring the price of electric cars icloser to what it costs for their gas guzzling cousins. Kevin Bullis tells the story at MIT Technology Review.
Film ‘er up: The concept of solar paint isn't new, but a Norwegian firm hopes to take it to the next level. Ensol has patented a spray-on solar film which is composed of metal nanoparticles instead of the standard silicon-based solar cells. Finally, after oh so many years, we can truly empower our windows. Get more from Ben Coxworth at Gizmag.
Start spreadin' the news: Here's a sight you probably didn't expect to see any time soon: wind turbines in New York Harbor. By 2013, five wind towers more than 280 feet tall could be spinning away on the west wide of the harbor, right on the border between the New Jersey's towns of Bayonne and Jersey City. The electricity would be used to operate the Port Authority's container port there and any excess would go back into the power grid. Find out more from Patrick McGeehan at the New York Times.
The trash in the town goes round and round: There are ways to get rid of city trash and then there's Luke Clayden's way. The Cypriot architect envisions a skyscraper bio-recycling plant. It would work like this: Anything that could become trash -- boxes, cans, papers -- would, during production, be laced with tiny seeds. The articles are eventually hauled off to one of Clayden's tall recycling facilities, which double as vertical farms, where they are used to grow trees and crops, which are then replanted in the city. Yuka Yuneda, writing for Inhabit, shares Clayden's circular vision.
As green as it gets: Sure, you can go green. But now you can go San Francisco green. The city by the bay has published an online list of more than 1,000 products that qualified for a seal of approval from its Department of the Environment. The list not only clues you in to the greenest light bulbs and paint. The city even shares its wisdom on the most eco-friendly ways to get rid of graffiti. GreenBiz has the story.
What are the odds? Yes, there really is a Green Chamber of Commerce. Its first chapter launched in San Francisco. But now the Green Chamber is branching out to, of all places, the great energy-sucking metropolis of Las Vegas. Will we see an LED takeover of the Strip? Wind turbines in the Bellagio fountain? To borrow a phrase from Sinatra, if it can make it there, it can make it anywhere. Scott Cooney, writing for Triple Pundit, has more.
Related Links:
Giant underwater plume in Gulf challenges optimism
Scientists keep raising estimates of how much oil is still in the Gulf
by Agence France-Presse.
WASHINGTON -- Experts said Thursday they have mapped a 22-mile-long underwater plume of oil that spewed from BP's ruptured Gulf of Mexico well, seeming to challenge U.S. government assertions that most of the oil has disappeared.
The oily underwater cloud measured two kilometers wide and 200 meters (650 feet) thick and was drifting through the Gulf at a depth of at least 2,952 feet, according to the paper by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) marine biologists, published in the journal Science.
The plume was not dissipating as rapidly as experts had expected, the researchers said, despite widespread use of dispersants, which the government has insisted have been vital to the breakdown of vast amounts of oil.
The observations were made in late June, several weeks before the ruptured wellhead was capped, and about two months after an explosion sank the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, triggering the largest ever maritime oil spill.
The new report raises questions about U.S. government estimates, which are based on the belief that natural processes are rapidly dissipating the toxic crude. The authors said deep-sea microbes were degrading the plume only slowly and predicted the oil would endure for some time.
"We've shown conclusively not only that a plume exists, but also defined its origin and near-field structure," said lead author Richard Camilli.
The oil already "is persisting for longer periods than we would have expected," he added. "Many people speculated that the sub-surface oil droplets were being easily downgraded. Well, we didn't find that. We found that it was still there."
U.S. and BP officials earlier this month proclaimed that about three-quarters of the oil that gushed into the Gulf had been cleaned up or dispersed through natural processes.
Around 4.9 million barrels of oil are believed to have spewed from the fractured wellhead before it was capped last month. U.S. officials say that of that amount, 800,000 barrels were contained and funneled up to ships on the surface.
The leak not only threatened livelihoods of fishermen and tourism businesses along the U.S. Gulf coast, but also stoked fears of long-term ecological damage.
On August 4, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the "vast majority" of oil had been evaporated, removed by cleanup teams or was dispersing naturally. The remaining 26 percent -- or about 1.3 million barrels of oil -- was classified as "residual oil" and "is either on or just below the surface as residue and weathered tar balls, has washed ashore or been collected from the shore, or is buried in sand and sediments," NOAA said.
The Woods Hole team used a robotic submarine equipped with an underwater mass spectrometer to detect and analyze the plume, making repeated horizontal sweeps to ascertain its size and chemical composition.
They followed the "neutrally buoyant" cloud as it migrated slowly, at 0.17 miles per hour, southwest of the leaking well.
The plume was then tracked for a distance of about 22 miles before the approach of Hurricane Alex forced the scientists to turn back.
The spectrometer found petroleum hydrocarbons at concentrations of more than 50 micrograms per liter, a level that meant the samples had no smell of oil and were clear. The impacts on biodiversity remain uncertain, though.
"The plume was not a river of Hershey's Syrup," said Christopher Reddy, a marine biochemist. "But that's not to say it isn't harmful for the environment."
The damaged well was capped on July 15. Earlier this month, BP engineers plugged the site with heavy drilling fluid and then sealed it with cement.
The company aims to permanently seal the well in the second week of September, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
Related Links:
Scientists keep raising estimates of how much oil is still in the Gulf
BP well kill delayed until second week of September
Americans don’t know jack about saving energy
by Randy Rieland.
We're making progress. The big question about the BP leak is no longer the lame "Where's the oil?" Now it's "How much oil is still out there?" The answer? Well, pick a number.
Crude math: Today, we have a new estimate, this one from Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer from Florida State University. He told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that only 10 percent of the oil that gushed out of the Deepwater Horizon well was "actually removed from the ocean." MacDonald's assessment is even more pessimistic than the estimate a team of Georgia scientists offered earlier this week. And it's wildly at odds with what the feds have been saying -- that as much as 75 percent of the oil is gone. MacDonald points out that the government's calculations included the 800,000 barrels that were captured and never actually leaked into the sea. In his testimony [PDF] the middle-aged MacDonald also said:
Judging from past spills in the Gulf, this material will remain potentially harmful for decades. I expect the hydrocarbon imprint of the BP discharge will be detectable in the marine environment for the rest of my life. The oil is not gone and is not going away anytime soon.
Another expert witness at the hearing, Lisa Suatoni, senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the feds also have some explaining to do on exactly how they're testing the seafood coming out of the Gulf:
Much of the data on contamination in Gulf seafood are not publicly available, so scientists cannot independently review the findings. NOAA has released data on less than 100 samples out of thousands that they say they have, and only on finfish, not shrimp.
Oil's well that ends well: The good news for the Obama administration is that out of sight is out of mind for the American public. The latest AP-GfK poll [PDF] finds that 60 percent of the people surveyed last week think the BP leak is extremely or very important, down from 87 percent in mid-June. The poll also suggests that support for off-shore drilling is climbing again -- now at 48 percent compared to 45 percent in June. Even BP's stock is on the rise -- about one-third of those surveyed actually say the oil giant is doing a good job. That's twice as many fans as two months ago.
But Barack Obama doesn't want people to forget everything about the BP leak. He'd especially like voters to remember Rep. Joe Barton's (R-Texas) apology to BP earlier this summer. Which is why the president keeps bringing it up when he's out stumping for endangered Democratic candidates.
Another politician playing up images of oily water is California Sen. Barbara Boxer. As Maeve Reston points out in the Los Angeles Times, Boxer's been pounding Carly Fiorina, her Republican rival, for Fiorina's support of off-shore drilling, and reminding constituents about the environmental and economic consequences of a similar spill along the California coast.
Just our luck: The summer of living dangerously goes on, with more violent storms and landslides in China. Andrew Revkin, in his Dot Earth blog, shares this different and disturbing take on the extreme weather from Steven Sherwood, a climate scientist in Sydney, Australia:
The "loading the dice" analogy is becoming popular but it misses something very important: climate change also allows unprecedented (in human history) things to happen. It is more like painting an extra spot on each face of one of the dice ... This increases the odds of rolling 11 or 12, but also makes it possible to roll 13. What happens then?
Bill McKibben, writing in The Guardian, weighs in on the stunningly tepid political response to the havoc this summer's unprecedented weather is wreaking around the world:
... but this is no longer an environmental battle. As this summer demonstrates, if you're concerned about development, climate change is issue No 1 (how much development is going to go on in Pakistan, now that its bridges are all gone?). If you're concerned about war and peace, climate change is issue No 1 (when Russia stops sending grain to Egypt and Nigeria, and when wheat prices start to rise, what do you think comes next?). If you're concerned about the future, then climate change is issue No 1 -- because this summer is a tiny taste of what the future is all about.
Does green beer count? Okay, so it won't impress high school seniors as much as making the Top Party Schools list, but let's give it up for the colleges that made the Sierra Club's list of America's Greenest Campuses. Greenest of all is, aptly named, Green Mountain College in Vermont. The school gets power and heat from biomass and biogas and plans to be carbon-neutral by next year. Rounding out the top five are Pennsylvania's Dickinson College, Evergreen State College in Washington, the University of Washington, and Stanford.
Of course, everything changes once we can harness the incredible power of beer pong.
Related Links:
The U.S.-China three legged race
The Climate Post: Climate skepticism, floods, and apple pie
Giant underwater plume in Gulf challenges optimism
by Agence France-Presse.
WASHINGTON -- BP aims to permanently seal the ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well in the second week of September, a U.S. official said Thursday, as pressure concerns further delayed final "bottom kill" operations.
"We should be looking somewhere in the week after Labor Day," U.S. spill chief Thad Allen told CNN.
The ruptured Macondo well was capped on July 15, and earlier this month BP engineers performed a "static kill" that plugged it with heavy drilling fluid and then sealed it with cement.
However, there is an area behind the well and the outer well bore called the annulus which must still be sealed off from the reservoir miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
A relief well has been drilled and is poised to intercept the stricken well, but experts are concerned that drilling into the annulus could lead to pressure problems at the top of the well.
After days of tests, Allen told CNN they had agreed the best course of action is to replace the giant blowout preventer valve with a new one. Allen said BP would start by "flushing out the current blowout preventer."
"Then [we will] actually move to put a new blowout preventer on, and then do the 'bottom kill.' This will ensure that we can withstand any pressures that may be generated," he said.
Allen and BP had originally pointed to mid-August as the target date for shutting down the Macondo well once and for all, although Allen had until Thursday declined to give a new timeline as that deadline passed.
Two storms in the Gulf -- one in late July and another in mid-August -- delayed by several days the drilling of the relief well.
Allen vowed to finish the job, telling MSNBC television, "We're making sure that we put a stake in the heart of this monster."
"We've been working a week and a half with BP on a way forward," he continued, "and I have been equivocating on the timeline for a good reason, because we needed to take concrete steps to kill this well."
The spill began after an April 20 explosion on the offshore Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which killed 11 workers. The BP-leased rig sank two days later, causing a pipe to rupture and oil to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Some 4.1 million barrels of oil spewed into the water before BP could fully cap the ruptured well 5,000 feet below the surface and 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana.
Hundreds of miles of fragile coastal wetlands and once-pristine beaches stretching from Texas to Florida were sullied and the region's multi-billion dollar fishing and tourism industries were crippled.
Related Links:
Giant underwater plume in Gulf challenges optimism
Scientists keep raising estimates of how much oil is still in the Gulf
Americans don’t know jack about saving energy
by Jonathan Hiskes.
Breaking: Americans don't know squat about how to save energy. A new survey quizzed people on what steps make the biggest difference in cutting energy use and found loads of confusion.
Participants greatly overrated low-impact moves like flipping off light switches and unplugging phone chargers. They underrated potential high-impact changes like weatherizing homes, buying high-performing appliances, driving higher-mileage vehicles, and switching from centralized A/C to room air conditioners.
Twelve percent hurt themselves by trying to disconnect their light switches when not in use. OK, not really, but the actual results were nearly as crazy. About 2.8 percent of those responding said they could save energy by sleeping or relaxing more, as Felicity Barringer notes. That compares with 2.1 percent who said they could do so by insulating their homes (which is waaaay more effective).
"Participants estimated that line-drying clothes saves more energy than changing the washer's settings (the reverse is true) and estimated that a central air-conditioner uses only 1.3 times the energy of a room air-conditioner (in fact, it uses 3.5 times as much)," wrote the researchers from Columbia University's Earth Institute.
As David Roberts is fond of noting, behavioral changes wield great potential for cutting energy use. But that would require people to have a basic level of energy literacy -- and the new survey suggests that Americans don't.
The theme of the confusion was that participants tended to name steps that involved doing less or using less of things -- turning off lights, turning down thermostats -- rather than solutions that allow them to get the same amount of light and heat through less energy (via insulation and LED bulbs). That gets at a key difference between conservation and efficiency. The first means using less; the second means getting the same results through more intelligent use of resources. Both have a place, but it's a problem if people understand all of efficiency as "sacrifice." A home retrofit that cuts $500 off your heating bills for the year isn't a sacrifice -- it's a financial and environmental win.
See, this is the sexiest topic in the world! I don't understand why more people don't spend their free time reading briefs from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
Related Links:
Mother Earth not invited to housing summit
Living in ‘the latest Hollywood global disaster movie’
Scientists say figures on spilled oil in Gulf too low
by Jonathan Hiskes.
No surprise here, but Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner & co. gave no mention to sustainability at Tuesday's summit on housing and what to do about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. No talk of location-efficient mortgages, which make the costs of transport in a particular neighborhood a consideration in lending. No talk of energy-efficient mortgages, which recognize that leaky homes cost more to heat and cool than well-sealed ones. No love for Transit Score, Abogo, or other apps that shine light on the financial benefits of living in walkable, transit-connected places.
The summit focused on the question of what to do with Fannie and Freddie, which have already required more than $150 in taxpayer bailouts. I'll let others tangle with that dilemma (Zachary Goldfarb has a recap at The Washington Post).
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan came the closest to reminding everyone that the housing crises takes place within larger contexts, but he didn't quite get to the whole ecological emergency thing.
Housing finance runs through the core of our entire economy -- for better and for worse. Our residential housing market is one of the largest sectors in our economy, making housing finance important not just to housing, but to the American economy as a whole -- and, indeed, to the global economy.
... When you choose a home, you don't just choose a home. You choose a community -- schools for your children, public safety, and access to jobs.
You also choose a location that may or may not require a ton of driving to take care of daily needs. Donovan has had some promising things to say in the past about New Urbanism and why the government should stop subsidizing sprawl. It would have been helpful to make that part of the conversation on the future of Fannie and Freddie.
Related Links:
Living in ‘the latest Hollywood global disaster movie’
Scientists say figures on spilled oil in Gulf too low
Enviros and Big Oil take their battle on the road
by Jonathan Hiskes.
Save your $10 and skip the movie theater this summer. "The litany of weather incidents during the summer of 2010 reads like the latest Hollywood global disaster movie," Nathanial Gronewold writes at Climatewire:
The hottest summer ever recorded in 130 years has sparked thousands of wildfires in Russia, burning some entire villages to the ground, killing 53 and leaving 3,500 homeless, according to Russian state media. Cooler temperatures are finally bringing some relief, shrinking the extent of the flames from more than 100,000 acres down to about 54,000 acres.
Next to Pakistan, record rainfall and subsequent flooding and mudslides in western China are estimated to have left roughly 1,200 dead and scores more homeless. China's government has been handling that crisis on its own and has yet to appeal for international support.
Russia's drought has reduced its wheat crop by 20 percent, and droughts in Canada are anticipated to reduce the crop there by an equal proportion. Though the Food and Agriculture Organization says the United States alone has enough grain in storage to meet the gap, the U.S. Department of Agriculture put out a warning last week that reduced yields from droughts in Europe and Africa have lowered food stores to levels close to those seen just before the onset of the 2007 food crisis in the developing world.
Less reported, on Aug. 5, a sensor on a NASA satellite recorded a massive chunk of ice breaking off a glacier in Greenland. The huge block measures more than 77 square miles in size and is one of the largest calving incidents witnessed in the Northern Hemisphere.
That recap comes at the end of a sobering story about Pakistan's floods, which "will join the ranks of the worst natural disasters in recorded history," according to Gronewold. Extreme rain -- which is expected to continue -- and deforestation have combined to flood one fifth of the country, leaving millions homeless.
Climatologists are increasingly willing to connect the frequency of these disasters to a warming climate:
Most experts are still cautioning against tying any specific event directly to emissions of greenhouse gases. But scientists at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva say there's no doubt that higher Atlantic Ocean temperatures contributed to the disaster begun late last month.
Atmospheric anomalies that led to the floods are also directly related to the same weather phenomena that a caused the record heat wave in Russia and flooding and mudslides in western China, said Ghassem Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Programme and WMO. And if the forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are correct, then Pakistan's misery is just a sign of more to come, said Asrar.
"There's no doubt that clearly the climate change is contributing, a major contributing factor," Asrar said in an interview.
The American Red Cross and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are both asking for donations for relief to displaced Pakistanis.
Related Links:
Invitation to join 350 EARTH: A global satellite art project
Mother Earth not invited to housing summit
Scientists say figures on spilled oil in Gulf too low