Archive for the 'environment' Category
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 »
Posted on June 29, 2009 by Bonesparkle under Bush administration, Congress, Democrats, Dr. Slammy 2008, Green Party, Obama administration, Republicans, capitalism, conservatives, democracy, economy, education, environment, gay rights, government, health care, liberals, politics, progressives, race relations, religion [ Comments: 38 ]
 A modest proposal, perhaps.
It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)
On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”
On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office: Full Story »
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 »
Posted on June 22, 2009 by Brian Angliss under Afghanistan, Congress, Democrats, Iraq, Obama administration, Senate, United States, environment, foreign policy, government, health care, politics [ Comments: 6 ]
What do all these things have in common: Cash-for-clunkers, IMF funding, pandemic flu preparations, and anti-narcotic aid to Mexico? They’re all considered “supplemental war funding” that the Senate approved in a late-night session July 18th.
Excuse me, Mr. President, but I thought I heard you promise not to use supplemental war funding bills any more. Apparently, according to PoliFact, I misheard (thank Bush for only funding Iraq and Afghanistan through September, 2009, instead of the whole year). But still, I’d really like to know how those programs are related to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh, that’s right. They’re not. Full Story »
Posted on June 17, 2009 by Brian Angliss under ClimaTweet, Obama administration, Weekly Carboholic, economy, energy, environment, foreign policy, global warming, infrastructure, policy, politics, society, technology [ Comments: 5 ]
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.)
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 »
 Today, Memeorandum featured a post by climate disruption denier Michael Andrews and writer for the website DailyTech that claimed, among other things, that “even NASA’s own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past.” Not exactly news, but given that this article has been linked by other prominent denier sites like American Thinker, Newsbusters, and WattsUpWithThat, I figured that it was worth a little more looking.
And I’m glad I did, because I came across a great post at The Phoenix Talking Politics blog that pointed out something I’d missed: Andrews got all hot and bothered by a general interest piece that ran in ScienceDaily in May, 2008.
Oops.
Full Story »
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 »
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 »
Posted on May 21, 2009 by Brian Angliss under ClimaTweet, Congress, Democrats, House of Representatives, Republicans, Senate, United States, energy, environment, global warming, lobbying, politics [ Comments: 2 ]
 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 »
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 »
 Last Saturday we decided to explore these strange formations in southwest Washington State. These are large uniform mounds of earth covered in prairie. These formations also go by the name Hogwallows and appear in at least six other states and five other countries.
 No one has been able to determine the origins of these mounds, but the leading theory about retreating glaciers got a boost when Department of Natural Resource scientists presented new laser imaging of the mounds.
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 »
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is well known for producing strictly non-partisan, tightly controlled and pretty conservative (as in careful not to overreach) economic forecasts for the effects of legislation on the national economy. These forecasts are usually quantitative in nature, giving dollar estimates for costs, benefits, savings, growth, and so on. Which is one of the reasons why last week’s release of the CBOs Potential Impacts of Climate Change in the United States was relatively unusual - it’s remarkably quantitative for a body whose products are usually numbers.
Perhaps more unusual, however, is the fact that the CBO produced the summary in the first place. Scientific summaries are usually the domain of the National Academies, NOAA, NASA, et al, not the budget office. But this time Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, requested that the CBO produce “an overview of the current understanding of the impacts of climate change in the United States,” with an emphasis on the uncertainties surrounding those impacts and the policy difficulties that fall out of the difficulties. Full Story »
 Every region of this beautiful planet has their treasured local festival and celebration. Spring is not officially Spring in Western Washington State without the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. This year marks the 26th year of this springtime icon. Over 700 acres are planted with daffodils, tulips and irises.
I had my ritual visit early this past Friday morning. The tulips are stunning. They speak for themselves. After a walk around the 3 acre show garden I decided to explore the barn on the property.
Barns are just cool. Full Story »
I’m good with “carbon neutral.” No problems with “no greenhouse gases were emitted in the production of this product.” But there’s a small problem with the following image (taken by my wife at a local natural grocer). I’ll give you a hint - the chemical formula for sucrose, aka sugar, is C12H22O11:
Full Story »
Posted on April 25, 2009 by Brian Angliss under ClimaTweet, Congress, Democrats, Republicans, United States, capitalism, economy, energy, environment, freedom, global warming, government, policy, politics, public health, public interest, science, trade [ Comments: 5 ]
 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 »
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