• Cassava, sorghum yields drop, toxicity rises with more CO₂
• Differences between aerosol effects in models vs. observations largely explained
• Methane clathrates proposed for energy and carbon sequestration

Cassava and sorghum are tubers that form the protein base for hundreds of millions of people. But while there’s a great deal of protein in the plant, there’s also cyanide in the plant’s leaves. Whether the leaves are poisonous or not depends partly on how much protein there is - more protein means that the cyanide is less toxic and the plants are safe to eat for man and beast alike. But according to a new study reported in Reuters, higher carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations means both less protein and more cyanide, a toxic combination. Full Story »

Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is calling for a further weakening of the American Climate and Energy Security Act (ACES) that passed out of the House last week. Of course, that’s not what she calls it. Sen. McCaskill twittered last week:

I hope we can fix cap and trade so it doesn’t unfairly punish businesses and families in coal dependent states like Missouri. (emphasis mine)

I can’t help but wonder what happened to the Senator who dared mention that oil prices shouldn’t be allowed to fall too far at the Rocky Mountain Roundtable, Session 2, Part 3, during the DNC:

There’s a certain reality here that it is important that we don’t get gas too cheap again, and I certainly agree with what [Randy Udall] said. We will never see the days of… when people are pumping $1, $1.50 gas again. And that may not be an all bad thing because it will motivate the politics on this issue to the forefront so we have a sense of urgency.

Full Story »

• Early deaths cost Appalachia more than coal jobs earn
• Emission of strong GHGs exceed IPCC emissions scenarios and expected to continue to do so
• Raytheon testing oil shale tech to sequester CO₂

Appalachia has some of the most impoverished communites in the United States. The entire region is economically depressed as compared to the national average. But coal communities in Appalachia are even worse off than the rest of the region, a fact that runs counter to the idea that coal jobs support local communities. A new study out of the Institute for Health Policy Research at West Virginia University and published in Public Health Reports looked at this discrepency and found that, even using conservative assumptions, the economic costs of coal mining in Appalachian communities far outweighed the benefits from having a coal mine in the community. Full Story »

• Study says offsets make ACES carbon cap almost meaningless
• China rejects binding GHG cuts
• USGS study suggests peak coal may be closer than previously thought
• FutureGen coal CCS pilot project revived
• EU needs to upgrade its electricity transmission
• Deep water wind turbine undergoing testing
• More wind power means fewer hydroelectric dams?

Michael Shellenberger is one of environmentalism’s persona non grata de jour. He and Ted Nordhaus founded the Breakthrough Institute in order to push for technological solutions to environmental problems instead of policy solutions that both men have argued are doomed to failure from the word “Go.” This was not exactly a popular thing to say in the halls of Congress or around the water cooler at any number of large environmental organizations dedicated to creating policy solutions.

An analysis of the American Climate and Energy Security Act (ACES) by Shellenberger and Jesse Jenkins, Breakthrough’s Director of Energy and Climate Policy, found that the offset provisions of the legislation are so loose that they essentially make the carbon cap portion of the ACES-defined “cap-and-trade” system almost meaningless. Full Story »

My article published yesterday in Columbia Journalism Review:

Former CNN correspondent-turned-PR consultant Gene Randall’s video “report” for oil giant Chevron might be unprecedented for how it blurred the line between public relations and journalism. But the Randall-Chevron production raises not only ethical questions, but also the question of whether a surge of newly pink-slipped reporters might go, as one media critic put it, “over to the dark side” and how that might further muddy the line between news and corporate advocacy.

As detailed in a recent New York Times article, when Chevron, America’s third largest corporation, heard that 60 Minutes was preparing a report about the $27 billion lawsuit filed against it for allegedly contaminating the Ecuador region of the Amazon rain forest, Chevron hired former TV newsman Randall to craft a video from the corporation’s perspective, which was posted on YouTube and Chevron’s Web site three weeks before the 60 Minutes report aired on May 3.

Read the rest of the article HERE. (The piece includes expert opinion by author and media critic Norman Solomon, Poynter Institute media ethicist Kelly McBride and FAIR senior analyst Steve Rendall. Don’t miss the particularly devastating quote by Solomon in which he calls out PBS NewsHour’s toxic relationship with Chevron.)

• Port of Long Beach powers BP supertankers with electricity
• Most companies don’t mention climate change in annual reports
• Scotch distilleries to cut fossil fuel use
• Videos show human effects on Earth
• Dependence is dependence, be it energy or minerals

Maritime shipping is responsible for emitting 3% of global carbon emissions, roughly equal to air travel and more than most nations. Worse than that, however, is the fact that most oceangoing vessels burn heavy fuel oil (aka bunker fuel), the heavy sludge that’s left after every other useful product has been refined from petroleum. Bunker fuel emits a truly massive amount of nitrogen oxide compounds (NOx) and, due to its high sulfur content, a huge amount of sulfur dioxide (SO₂). According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, one of the ways to reduce emissions at port was to implement “shore-side electricity” in port. This enables a suitably equipped shipping vessel to operate off of comparably clean electricity instead of extremely dirty bunker fuel.

And according to an article last week in the Long Beach Press-Telegram , the first supertanker with a shore-side electricity retrofit pulled into the Port of Long Beach and plugged in. Full Story »

• Devil in the ACES details - fossil fuel industry pork
• Science academies call for Copenhagen to address ocean acidification
• Permafrost’s complex response to rising temperature
• Swiss RE expects a wave of climate litigation

In any legislation that’s nearly 1000 pages long, it’s inevitable that there will be some interesting details. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is no exception. Last week, Solve Climate reported on one of those interesting details, namely that ACES has a $50 million per year “self-assessment” that directly benefits the coal and other fossil fuel industries.

According to the article, the direct benefit comes down to the creation of a federal Carbon Storage Research Corporation that is funded by per-kilowatt charges on electric bills instead of a tax on fossil fuel-burning utilities. Full Story »

• GPS degradation to affect climate measurements too
• Secretary Chu suggests white roofs to combat climate disruption
• Ecuador wants cash to leave carbon underground
• Subsidies, quotas warping “renewable” definition

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the the Global Positioning System (GPS) could degrade significantly as early as next year. The GAO report says that the existing GPS satellites are aging and need to be replaced, but new satellites are years late and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. For this reason, the constellation of 31 GPS satellites has a chance of falling below the minimum number needed (24 satellites) to provide the required accuracy for military uses starting in 2010.

Normally, the trials and tribulations of the GPS system might not be considered a climate issue, given that most people only know about the everyday items that use GPS signals - smart phones and car navigation systems for starters. But GPS is used for thousands of lesser known applications. Full Story »

I don’t know what to make of the monstrosity that is the Waxman-Markey American Climate, Energy, and Security Act (ACES) that just passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C). It’s nearly 1000 pages long and initially faced at least 449 Republican amendments. It’s a mess.

After thinking about it for a while, I’ve concluded that it’s just not worth driving myself crazy trying to determine whether ACES is “better than nothing” or whether it “sucks so bad it must be killed.” We’re less than a week into a process that could make ACES unrecognizable by the time it’s done, and so tearing my hair out over whether it’s enough today is an exercise in futility. Full Story »

• Climate disruption lowering Juneau sea level
• Paper shows cooler periods entirely expected
• Convert biomass to electricity instead of ethanol

There’s a few reasons that I prefer the phrase “climate disruption” over “global warming” or even “climate change.” One of those reasons is that “climate disruption” describes what’s happening around the world in a way that people immediately understand - the climate they’ve grown accustomed to is going to be disrupted in some fashion, but not necessarily in a way that’s immediately obvious. One place that’s historically warm and wet could turn hot and even wetter (something that might reasonably be predicted by your average climate layperson) while another area could actually cool off and dry out as a result of climate disruption. The effects of climate disruption may be counter intuitive, thus the term “disruption.”

One such place that is facing a counter intuitive disruption is Juneau, the state capital of Alaska. As local glaciers melt rapidly, the sea level around the city is actually falling instead of rising. Full Story »

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is running an advertisement at the Washington Post and The Hill websites which makes the following claim: 72% of opinion leaders support coal electricity. The ACCCE touts this claim repeatedly at their various websites, but there is so little information available about the study that produced this claim that it’s literally impossible to verify. However, given the number of inconsistencies in what little information is available, we can make an educated guess as to the accuracy of the 72% claim.

If you click on the “America’s Power” advertisement (screen shots shown at right), you’re taken to this page, where the ACCCE claims “it’s easy to see why 72 percent of American opinion leaders support the use of coal.” On this page, however, there are four links on the page that all go to the same press release that describes the ACCCE study that produced this 72% number. Full Story »

S&R has been following Newt Gingrich’s lies about energy and climate since last year when he pushed the “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” lie in response to last summer’s oil price woes. On Friday, Gingrich appeared as a minority witness, on a panel all by himself, before the House Energy and Commerce Committee - Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment hearings on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES). S&R has reviewed Gingrich’s prepared remarks for today’s hearing and has determined that Gingrich is still up to his old tricks of lying to Congress and the American people. Full Story »

Obama is currently haggling with Congress over $150B in budget for his green initiatives. As you know, he made the transition to a sustainable energy infrastructure one of his key priorities during the election, but that doesn’t guarantee success at the policy level.

For the past few months I’ve been thinking about how a particular piece of the Internal Revenue Code - Section 1031, which has been on the books since 1921 and which governs “like-kind exchanges” - might be used to help speed the greening of America along. (Full disclosure - I work in the 1031 industry. I’m still in the “vertical learning curve” phase, but the more I learn the more ideas occur to me.)

Recently a potential application to the energy industry hit me and I’ve been working for some time to try and nail the concept down so that it makes sense. Short version: right now energy companies can use the code to defer taxes when they sell an asset and buy a new one of “like kind,” but they can’t use the same code if they want to sell a fossil fuel production asset and replace it with a green energy asset. Full Story »

• As the Arctic melts
• Aerosols strongly influence tropical Atlantic temperatures
• Latest EIA Annual Energy Outlook updates energy consumption estimates for 2030
• Large insurers required to disclose climate risks to regulators

“I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them.”

“Lakes in Siberia are five times bigger than when I measured them in 2006. It’s unprecedented. This is a global event now, and the inertia for more permafrost melt is increasing.”

This is what University of Alaska ecologist Katey Walter is quoted as saying in a New Scientist article published last week titled Arctic meltdown is a threat to humanity. Full Story »

• Project releases principles of climate science literacy
• Synchronized chaos and natural climate variability
• Stop drilling, baby! STOP!
• First federal loan guarantee for solar energy issued

Ask yourself the following question: “What do I know about climate change?”

If you answered “very little” or “not enough,” then the new guide Climate Literacy - The Essential Principles of Climate Sciences might be a good starting point. It lays out seven principles that every person should know about climate science:

1. The Sun is the primary source of energy for Earths climate system.Climate is regulated by complex interactions among components of the Earth system.
2. Climate is regulated by complex interactions among components of the Earth system.
3. Life on Earth depends on, is shaped by, and affects climate.
4. Climate varies over space and time through both natural and man-made processes.
5. Our understanding of the climate system is improved through observations, theoretical studies, and modeling.
6. Human activities are impacting the climate system.
7. Climate change will have consequences for the Earth system and human lives.

Full Story »

• California report recommends changes to adapt to rising sea level
• “Virtual” water exports a problem for Australia and the world
• An update on high voltage direct current transmission lines
• MIT develops new Li-ion battery that charges really, really fast
• New biodiesel stays liquid at colder temperatures

Limit development in low-lying coastal areas. Consider abandoning existing development in coastal areas likely to be affected by sea level rise. Require structures built along the coast to be able to adapt to higher sea levels. Discontinue federally subsidized flood insurance for existing property in low-lying coastal areas. Those are some of the recommendations made last week in the first report by California’s Climate Action Team and reported by the LA Times. Full Story »

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) stated on March 3 that “‘Cap-and-trade’ is code for increasing taxes, killing American jobs, and raising energy costs for consumers.” His claim is based on the fact that carbon-intensive energy sources such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum supposedly provide 85% of the energy consumed in the United States. And if energy prices go up as a result of a cap-and-trade market on carbon emissions, then that means the increase is a tax.

Let’s put aside for a moment the audacious claim made by the Heritage Institute (source of the 85% number mentioned at Boehner’s website) that nuclear power is renewable - it’s lower carbon, but it’s hardly renewable in the same sense as solar, wind, tidal, or geothermal. No, let’s focus instead on Boehner’s intentional blurring of the definitions of “capitalism” and “taxation.” Full Story »

• OCO satellite lost, GOSAT gets “first light”
• Scientists suggest burying carbon with crop residues in the deep ocean
• Reversing urban flight required to cut transportation carbon emissions
• Track your region’s CO₂ emissions on Google Earth
• Economists generally agree on climate disruption effects
• Coal ash affects hundreds of communities nationwide

On February 23, NASA’s newest satellite failed to reach orbit, crashing instead into the southern Pacific Ocean. This satellite, the Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO), was supposed to monitor the emission and absorption of carbon dioxide (CO₂) for at least the next two years. This is a terrible loss for the scientists involved, and for climate science in general, for reasons I’ll explain shortly.

Luckily, all is not necessarily lost. Full Story »

Two weeks ago, I published a post that claimed that the U.S. had offshored just over 18% of its carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. I was wrong - it’s only 15%. The problem was in how I calculated the CO₂ emissions of other countries. Instead of using actual estimates of CO₂ emissions (publicly available at the Energy Information Administration), I used market exchange rates and purchase power parity (PPP) exchange rates, and so added a significant source of error that made the percentage vary from 18% (for market rates) to 10% (for PPP rates).

I realized that there was a way to make the results independent of the currency exchange rate, and that’s how I generated the graphs below. Full Story »

• Pew poll says climate lowest priority, but results are curious
• Talking heads continue to confuse weather for climate
• Study says some climate changes cannot be reversed
• NOAA research jet measures greenhouse gases around the Pacific
• Study says oceans to dissolve much less oxygen
• Waste heat to eventually overwhelm greenhouse gases
• New magnets may replace HFC refrigerants

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in early January says that, of the priorities listed in the poll, “dealing with global warming” was dead last, with only 30% of respondents declaring it a “top priority.” This was below other issues such as the economy, jobs, fixing Medicare, crime, and the environment. But as is so often the case with polls, the devil is in the details and the methodology. For example, climate disruption is certainly an environmental issue, yet the issues are polled separately. And when you broaden the poll results beyond just the “top priority” category to include “important but lower priority,” global warming attracts support of 67% of the poll’s respondents. Full Story »