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Climate Progress
	Updated	Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:38:06 +0000
	Description	The Latest on Climate Science, Solutions, and Politics
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Science scorned: The journal Nature warns, ?The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.?
Category	Media, Science
Published:
Description:	US citizens face economic problems that are all too real, and the country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology as it faces increasing competition from China and other emerging science powers….  Yet the public often buys into anti-science, anti-regulation agendas that are orchestrated by business interests and their [...]  more...
	US citizens face economic problems that are all too real, and the country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology as it faces increasing competition from China and other emerging science powers….  Yet the public often buys into anti-science, anti-regulation agendas that are orchestrated by business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups. That’s from a powerful editorial published today by the journal Nature titled, “Science scorned” (subs. req’d).  It is an important message that, apparently, few science journals and leaders in this country have the guts to spell out. Then again, Nature is not merely one of the top journals in the world, it is one of the rare publications of any kind that understands what we are up against — see Nature: ?Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.? Here are extended excerpts from this must-read piece: The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge. ?The four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That’s how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper.? It is tempting to laugh off this and other rhetoric broadcast by Rush Limbaugh, a conservative US radio host, but Limbaugh and similar voices are no laughing matter. There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts ? including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research. Take the surprise ousting last week of Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent Republican senator for Alaska, by political unknown Joe Miller in the Republican primary for the 2 November midterm congressional elections. Miller, who is backed by the conservative ‘Tea Party movement’, called his opponent’s acknowledgement of the reality of global warming ?exhibit ‘A’ for why she needs to go?. The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse ? a suspicion of elites and expertise. Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that ?science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists?, has called climate-change science ?the biggest scam in the history of the world?.  The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research ? which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government…. In the current poisoned political atmosphere, the defenders of science have few easy remedies. Reassuringly, polls continue to show that the overwhelming majority of the US public sees science as a force for good, and the anti-science rumblings may be ephemeral. As educators, scientists should redouble their efforts to promote rationalism, scholarship and critical thought among the young, and engage with both the media and politicians to help illuminate the pressing science-based issues of our time. Hear!  Hear! Related Posts: With science journalism ?basically going out of existence,? how should climate scientists deal with well-funded, anti-science disinformation campaign? GOP WI Sen. candidate Ron Johnson: ?I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,? claims ?sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time? is warming the planet:  Republicans embrace pro-pollution, anti-science candidates Nature editorial: ?Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real ? or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.?
The coming climate election: Tea party extremists backed by Big Oil and corporate polluters want to stop and then reverse all efforts to advance clean energy or avoid catastrophic global warming
Category	Advocacy Content, Politics
Published:
Description:	The chattering class predicts this will be the year of the Tea Party because its members feel more passion about their issues. Despite repeated blows to its moral during the past year, the climate action movement must not lose its passion — or this November?s elections. Guess blogger Bill Becker is Executive Director [...]  more...
	The chattering class predicts this will be the year of the Tea Party because its members feel more passion about their issues. Despite repeated blows to its moral during the past year, the climate action movement must not lose its passion — or this November?s elections. Guess blogger Bill Becker is Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, On November 2, America?s attention will focus on the mid-term elections for Congress. But those of us who believe government must act against global climate change had better pay attention to another set of races:  the election of 37 governors and scores of state legislators. In the years ahead, the people we elect to our 50 statehouses may be more important than the people we elect to Congress. Consider the impact on international climate treaty negotiations. At the end of November, negotiators from more than 190 nations will gather for the 16th Conference of the Parties in Cancun to continue working on a global climate pact. Few experts expect that a treaty will be signed in Cancun, but there?s hope the meeting will narrow the gaps nations have failed to bridge in the negotiations so far. One positive development would be a concrete, credible, verifiable plan by the United States to cut its greenhouse  emissions. The chief U.S. negotiator, Todd Stern, has just reaffirmed Obama?s goal to cut the nation?s greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. But with no climate bill from Congress again this year, U.S. negotiators reportedly are pondering how to show the United States will achieve the goal with ?other available tools?. There?s the Clean Air Act, of course, but it?s a path with lots of litigation ahead. Many other tools belong to states and cities and already are in place ? for example, utility regulation, energy codes for buildings, public benefit funds, renewable energy and energy efficiency portfolio standards, and zoning that influences how much energy people need for mobility. The World Resources Institute (WRI) issued a report in July that put a number on what states are doing with their tools. WRI counted the climate actions announced or put into effect so far by 25 states and the federal government. Fully implemented, the combined policies would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 14 percent by 2020, most of the way to Obama?s goal. Other policies in the pipeline could result in deeper reductions. For example, WRI?s calculations did not include: Federal policies to reduce vehicle miles traveled; Measures to decrease net emissions  by increasing carbon sequestration in forests and farmlands; Actions cities are taking beyond the requirements of state or federal law. Of special interest are the more than 1,000 U.S. cities that have signed the Mayors? Climate Protection Agreement. Armed with WRI?s documentation, U.S. negotiators can go to Cancun with more than aspirations.  They won?t have one big national climate bill, but they will have an inventory of national and sub-national commitments that show the United States is moving in the right direction. WRI?s calculations must be considered qualified evidence of progress, however, because the states? contribution to emission reductions depends on whether they fully implement the policies they?ve announced. That?s where the November 2 election comes in. The danger is that voters will elect governors, legislators, mayors and city council members who are opposed to, agnostic about, or frightened to implement the climate and energy policies their predecessors embraced. Although global climate change is not an inherently partisan topic ? some Republican governors have been vocal supporters of climate action, while some coal-state Democrats have been opposed — conservative Republicans are trying hard to make it a wedge issue. Politico reports that Republican candidates for Congress and governorships are becoming more vocal in denying climate science and opposing climate action. Opinion polls show that while a national climate bill has bipartisan support among likely voters, considerably more Democrats than Republicans favor action. So, however imperfect, domination by one political party or the other has become an indicator of whether a state will move boldly to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The governorships up for reelection this year are evenly split between Democrats (19) and Republicans (18). Democrats control both houses in 27 legislatures, while Republicans control both houses in 14. Control of eight legislatures is split between the parties. The Washington Post reports that at the national level, the Republican and Democrat organizations are focusing on about 100 competitive legislative races. The national parties are said to be approaching statehouse elections with the intensity usually given presidential elections. The reason: The outcome will determine the composition of Congress for years to come. Every 10 years the Census results in reapportionment of House seats among the states based on their newly counted populations. States that gain or lose seats redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts. The process invites  gerrymandering ? the manipulation of district boundaries to favor one political party over the others. As a result, the party that controls the state capitol usually controls redistricting. As the Washington Post explains: Redistricting plays a central political role very 10 years, but the stakes seem particularly high this cycle?Republicans see an opportunity to improve their prospects for winning back Congress and controlling it for years to come by shaking loose the Democrats? grip on state governments. The Post quotes Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, that legislative races in 16 states could control the remapping of districts for nearly 200 congressional seats. Current polls notwithstanding, the biggest issue on November?s ballots is not illegal immigration, health care, the federal deficit, greed on Wall Street, creeping socialism, Glenn Beck?s megalomaniacal ownership of godliness and patriotism, same-sex marriages or even jobs.  The most enduring, destructive and irreversible damage to God?s creation and our way of life will be global climate change, and it already has begun. For that reason, November 2 is more than a mid-term election; it?s a climate election. It will influence public policy at all levels of government in the United States during a decade that leading scientists tell us is crucial if we are to avoid the worst consequences of an unstable climate. The chattering class predicts this will be the year of the Tea Party because its members feel more passion about their issues. Despite repeated blows to its moral during the past year, the climate action movement must not lose its passion, or this November?s elections. – Bill Becker is Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, an initiative to help the next President of the United States take decisive action on global warming and energy security in his or her first 100 days in office. Related Posts: Ohio Tea Party survey to candidates: ?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.? GOP WI Sen. candidate Ron Johnson: ?I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,? claims ?sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time? is warming the planet:  Republicans embrace pro-pollution, anti-science candidates Every GOP New Hampshire Senate candidate is a global warming denier New Mexico GOP candidates deny global warming reality Leading GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller says ?We haven?t heard there?s man-made global warming.? New Yorker exposes Koch brothers along with their greenwashing and whitewashing Smithsonian exhibit
The WashPost gets it wrong again: The replacement of old technologies by new ones drives growth
Category	Clean Energy Jobs Bill
Published:
Description:	Guest blogger Kate Gordon is CAP’s VP for Energy and Climate Policy. In yesterday?s Washington Post, Peter Whoriskey argues ? predictably for the Post these days ? that making lightbulbs more efficient puts Americans out of work.  The last US-based GE factory to make old-school incandescent lightbulbs is going out of business, and here is [...]  more...
	Guest blogger Kate Gordon is CAP’s VP for Energy and Climate Policy. In yesterday?s Washington Post, Peter Whoriskey argues ? predictably for the Post these days ? that making lightbulbs more efficient puts Americans out of work.  The last US-based GE factory to make old-school incandescent lightbulbs is going out of business, and here is Whoriskey?s explanation: During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas. But the real story is, as usual, more complicated.  First of all, the U.S. is not the only country to move beyond wasteful incandescent lightbulbs, which burn out ten times faster than fluorescent bulbs.  The European Union, Australia, Canada, Russia, Brazil, and Argentina are among the other countries that have passed regulations to phase out these old-school bulbs.  So it isn?t a question of the U.S. driving these manufacturers overseas; instead, we are talking about a global shift to newer, more efficient technology. Second, the phase-out of incandescent bulbs may be bad for this one factory, but it is not a job killer.  In fact, U.S. regulations on energy efficient lightbulbs have created jobs across the lighting industry, in research, development, manufacture, and sales of compact fluorescent and LED bulbs.  The company Cree, for example, employs over 1400 workers in its factory in Durham, North Carolina, where it manufactures LED bulbs for a variety of uses.  Not only are these American jobs, these are American exports:  Cree famously provided the LED bulbs that powered the video boards and the Water Cube at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Just as the move away from snail mail and toward the internet cost some postal service jobs but created thousands of high-tech careers, so does the move away from yesterday?s energy technologies toward a new energy future hurt some industries while creating new jobs in others.  The key is for the old industries to adapt and innovate, by leveraging existing assets ? like skilled workers and manufacturing facilities ? to use in new technology development.  When the automobile replaced the horse-drawn carriage, some blacksmiths lost their jobs.  But others leveraged their metalworking skills to become the first auto mechanics of the 20th century.  Programs like the advanced energy manufacturing tax credit, otherwise known as the ?48C program? after its section in the tax code, can help American companies innovate.  But even this program, which was part of the Recovery Act and has bipartisan support, has not been renewed by Congress. This leads to the final point:  in order to innovate and compete in the industries of the new global energy economy, companies need the certainty that the U.S. is actually going to be a player in that economy.  Right now, they do not have that certainty.  The Congress has failed to pass a comprehensive climate and energy strategy that works to create markets, facilitate financing, and provide the infrastructure for clean and efficient energy technologies.  Those countries that have these policies ? countries like China and the European Union nations ? have surged ahead in clean energy patents and renewable energy installations, while decreasing their energy demand and carbon emissions.  China, while the world?s largest polluter, is now also the world?s largest investor in clean energy technology.  In contrast, as venture capitalist John Doerr pointed out at this week?s National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, of the top 10 companies in three areas — solar, wind, and batteries globally — the U.S. has only 4 companies of the 30.  Imagine, he said, if that were true of the Internet, telecom, and information technology. Unless the U.S. moves forward with a clean energy plan ? including critical support for manufacturers to retool their facilities and become part of a new global energy marketplace ? we will continue to fall behind, and factories like the GE lightbulb plant will continue to close their doors.  It?s not about government action killing jobs; it?s about government inaction killing any hope for sustainable economic growth. – Guest blogger Kate Gordon is the VP for Energy and Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress.
Energy and Global Warming News for September 9th: China Skirts trade rules on clean energy; California close to approving 4,300 MW solar by year?s end
Category	Climate Progress
Published:
Description:	… much of China?s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not. These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts interviewed by [...]  more...
	… much of China?s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not. These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts interviewed by The New York Times. On Clean Energy, China Skirts Rules Changsha and two adjacent cities are emerging as a center of clean energy manufacturing. They are churning out solar panels for the American and European markets, developing new equipment to manufacture the panels and branching into turbines that generate electricity from wind. By contrast, clean energy companies in the United States and Europe are struggling. Some have started cutting jobs and moving operations to China in ventures with local partners. The booming Chinese clean energy sector, now more than a million jobs strong, is quickly coming to dominate the production of technologies essential to slowing global warming and other forms of air pollution. Such technologies are needed to assure adequate energy as the world?s population grows by nearly a third, to nine billion people by the middle of the century, while oil and coal reserves dwindle. But much of China?s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not. These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts interviewed by The New York Times. A visit to one of Changsha?s newest success stories offers an example of the government?s methods. Hunan Sunzone Optoelectronics, a two-year-old company, makes solar panels and ships close to 95 percent of them to Europe. Now it is opening sales offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in preparation for a push into the American market next February. To help Sunzone, the municipal government transferred to the company 22 acres of valuable urban land close to downtown at a bargain-basement price. That reduced the company?s costs and greatly increased its worth and attractiveness to investors. Meanwhile, a state bank is preparing to lend to the company at a low interest rate, and the provincial government is sweetening the deal by reimbursing the company for most of the interest payments, to help Sunzone double its production capacity. Heavily subsidized land and loans for an exporter like Sunzone are the rule, not the exception, for clean energy businesses in Changsha and across China, Chinese executives said in interviews over the last three months. But this kind of help violates World Trade Organization rules banning virtually all subsidies to exporters, and could be successfully challenged at the agency?s tribunals in Geneva, said Charlene Barshefsky, who was the United States trade representative during the second Clinton administration and negotiated the terms of China?s entry to the organization in 2001. If the country with the subsidies fails to remove them, other countries can retaliate by imposing steep tariffs on imports from that country. China Clean-Energy Aid to Draw U.S. Trade Complaint The United Steelworkers union said it will file a trade complaint with the U.S. government against renewable-energy products from China, urging investigation of subsidies and preferences given by that nation. The case ?reveals five major areas of protectionist and predatory practices utilized by the Chinese to develop their green sector at the expense of production and job creation here in the U.S.,? the American union said in a statement, indicating specifics will be provided later today. The complaint that China is doing too much to help its companies expand their clean-energy sales contrasts with international efforts to encourage renewable energy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in order to curb global warming. Nations including the U.S. and China plan to meet in Cancun. Mexico at the end of November to renew climate-change talks. Legislation to limit carbon emissions and set requirements for the use of renewable energy have stalled in the U.S. Senate. The union?s filing will be made to the U.S. Trade Representative?s office. The Obama administration will have 45 days to decide if it will investigate the petition under U.S. law. … Asia makes more than half the world?s wind and solar energy equipment and is widening its lead. China invested $34.5 billion in low-carbon energy technologies last year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The U.S. spent $18.6 billion. China may spend about 5 trillion yuan ($738 billion) in the next decade developing cleaner sources of energy to reduce emissions from burning oil and coal, Jiang Bing, head of the National Energy Administration?s planning and development department, said in July. Attractive Markets Ernst & Young said this week that China overtook the U.S. for the first time to lead a quarterly index compiled by the accounting firm of the most attractive countries for renewable energy projects. A U.S. Energy Department report released Aug. 4 found that a growing share of wind-turbine equipment is being supplied domestically, as companies from the U.S. and abroad seek to minimize transportation costs and currency risks. U.S. content increased to about 60 percent in 2009 from about 50 percent the previous year, the department found. A wind turbine contains about 8,000 parts, and many of those may not be made in the U.S. China-US collaboration on clean energy research Chinese and US scientists will be collaborating on research into clean energy with millions of dollars in backing by the two nations, according to a US national laboratory. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California said Wednesday it was part of a US team that will receive 25 million dollars during the next five years from a joint US-China Clean Energy Research Center. The team, led by West Virginia University, will develop and test new technology for capturing and storing carbon gas considered a main culprit in climate change. “We believe strongly that cooperation between the United States and China on clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration is critical to national security and global energy and environmental interests,” said Julio Friedmann, director of the carbon management program at the lab. A second US team, headed by the University of Michigan, will get 25 million dollars in funding to improve technology for clean vehicles, according to the lab. Chinese research partners were to be announced in coming months. California Energy Commission approves Abengoa Mojave Solar Project State regulators on Wednesday unanimously cleared the Abengoa Mojave Solar Project for construction, pushing California closer to approving 4,300 megawatts of solar power by the end of the year. The 250-megawatt Abengoa project is one of nine solar proposals angling for the go-ahead from the California Energy Commission by the end of 2010, when federal stimulus funds expire. The commission unanimously approved the 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project at the end of August and is likely to consider the 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project next week. The Abengoa project will  be set up in San Bernardino County, on more than 1,700 acres of private land about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Construction, set to start in the fourth quarter of 2010, will be managed by a subsidiary of Abengoa Solar Inc., itself a subsidiary of Spanish giant Abengoa. In early July, President Obama announced a $1.45-billion federal loan guarantee for Abengoa to construct its 250-megawatt Solana project southwest of Phoenix. Clean Energy Entrepreneurs Face More Obstacles in U.S. With erect posture and clear gray eyes, Chuck Provini still looks like the Marine who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1969 and was repeatedly decorated for bravery in Vietnam. He fumes at strangers who call him a traitor for agreeing to manufacture in Zhuzhou, China, a new solar panel production device that his company developed in the United States. ?I love my country,? said Mr. Provini, chief executive of 10-employee Natcore Technology in Red Bank, N.J. ?It makes me crazy that I?ve got countries that want to do things with us, but not here.? Mr. Provini acknowledges that further refinements are needed to the technology, which involves replacing a costly furnace in the manufacture of solar panels with a room-temperature process. But his experience in trying to commercialize it highlights the challenges that clean energy entrepreneurs face in the United States ? and the opportunities that await in China. American venture capitalists are the main source of money for many clean energy start-ups because most commercial banks are leery of lending to businesses with no proven revenue. But venture capitalists are reluctant to make long-term financial commitments, Mr. Provini said, and want clear timetables for when they can get their money back with a profit. A Regenerative Feat for Solar Cells Leaves aren?t nearly as efficient as photovoltaic panels in harnessing the power of the sun. The typical plant captures just 3 to 6 percent of the sunlight available to it, compared with about 15 percent for the average solar panel. But when it comes to cost-efficiency, Mother Nature has mankind beat by a mile. Patrick Gillooly/M.I.T.A solution with nanomaterials generated solar power while imitating the self-repairing qualities of plant cells. Unlike silicon wafers, leaves require no manufacturing, just water, air, sunlight and a few common minerals to grow. And chloroplasts, the tiny engines within plant cells that drive the photosynthetic process, need no maintenance:  in full sunlight, they break down and reassemble the proteins they use to convert carbon dioxide into sugar every 45 minutes or so. This week, in one of several recent breakthroughs merging natural processes and solar technology, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology described the creation of solar cells just a few billionths of a meter wide that mimic this ability of plants? chemical engines to self-repair and regenerate. ?We?re basically imitating tricks that nature has discovered over millions of years,? Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering who led the team behind the discovery, said in an M.I.T. news release. Environmentalist Bill McKibben’s quest to bring solar panel to White House Esteemed environmentalist launches PR stunt to get President Obama’s attention? Yep, we’re officially back from summer break. Goodbye flip-flops, hello political theater. Bill McKibben, author of best-selling “The End of Nature” and an expert on global warming, is heading to Washington with one of the solar panels originally installed at the White House in 1979. His goal: to present it to Obama on Friday and urge him to reinstall it on the roof, therefore inspiring millions of like-minded citizens to go greener. “When Michelle Obama put the garden in the White House, it was one of the things that caused seed sales to jump 30 percent,” McKibben told us. “We’d rather have a climate bill than solar panels on the roof, but we’re not going to get it this year. This is a way to help build visibility for the steps we need to take. In a way, it’s a reboot of 1979.” To tout clean energy bona fides, President Jimmy Carter had 32 panels installed — which the Reagan administration took down and stowed away in a government warehouse. A professor at Maine’s Unity College later sought out the panels, which were installed on the school’s cafeteria roof. Now one of the 6-by-3-foot plates (they’re old but still work) is on its way to D.C. McKibben, who’s organizing a huge environmental rally next month on 10/10/10, left Maine on Tuesday with stops in Boston, New York and Washington. He scored an appearance on David Letterman’s show last week — much wonkier than your typical late-night fare. Now he’s angling for a splashy photo op at the White House, although nothing is set yet. “We keep hearing, ‘We’ll see’ and ‘It’s complicated,’” he said. “Compared with the other things Obama has to do, it seems relatively easy. They can’t filibuster the roof.” World?s Largest Wave Power Hub Goes Live Ten miles off the Cornish town of Hayle, 180 feet below the sea, lies a 12 tonne four way plug which cost $64 million to build and install. Called the Wave Hub, it can have four 5MW marine power devices connected to it at any one time and is connected to the main national grid by a 15 mile length of cable. Now, 5MW is peanuts compared to some of the projections for marine power installations; for example just up the coast it?s been estimated that the world?s largest tidal power generator could generate 187,000 MWh/year. However permanent installation is not the aim of the Wave Hub. Rather, it?s all about providing a live scenario test bed for marine energy developers to come and test and tweak their inventions. If it just so happens it provides energy for 20,000 homes, then so much the better! The first testers scheduled at the Wave Hub are New Jersey based Ocean Power Technologies, whose buoy based design is already live off the north coast of Spain. Their stint at the Wave Hub is to test out a new design which would see the buoys? output increase by over three times. Philadelphia To Recover Subway Trains? Brake Forces In Huge Battery For Reuse/Resale Having a battery could someday be compared to having gold mine. Take Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, for example. They? going to use a huge battery and charge it from the subway?s braking trains. The energy recovered thus will either be sold back to the grid or reused for acceleration. Viridity Energy, a smart-grid company, is behind the project, having received $900,000 from the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority for the pilot program costing $1.5 million. One of the ?hottest? lines in Philadelphia, Market-Frankford,will benefit the system, for the moment. 1.5 MW of energy will be recovered in much the same fashion that hybrid/electric cars and locomotives recover their braking force ? by reversing the motors to work as generators. Joseph M. Casey, general manager of the transportation authority, says the system will provide measurable gains in energy efficiency and voltage stability in a critical mass transit corridor. Audrey Zibelman, president and CEO of Viridity Energy, says the goal is to improve the transit agency?s operational efficiency, reduce its carbon output and cut its costs. A $500,000 saving in energy costs is estimated after the system will go online in the spring of 2011. Plans of further expanding it already exist, but their accomplishment only depends on the results of the pilot project. Anyway, theory says that if the regenerative braking system would be applied at all of the 33 substations, a cut of 40 percent would be possible.
Koch-funded oil rally calls global warming a ?hoax,? dismisses oil spill, and attacks Democrats
Category	Advocacy Content, Greenwashing
Published:
Description:	Beginning last week, the oil industry launched a national astroturfing effort called ?Rally for Jobs.? The events, which are being held across the nation, are backed by right-wing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. They launched a nearly identical campaign last summer that was widely mocked for its obvious astroturfing after it was revealed that [...]  more...
	Beginning last week, the oil industry launched a national astroturfing effort called ?Rally for Jobs.? The events, which are being held across the nation, are backed by right-wing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. They launched a nearly identical campaign last summer that was widely mocked for its obvious astroturfing after it was revealed that 15 of the 21 Energy Citizens events were actually planned by oil industry lobbyists. ThinkProgress attended one of the rallies yesterday in Canton, Ohio and reports on what happened. What was billed as an organic grassroots jobs rally quickly descended into attacks on three things the Kochs most oppose: global warming science, oil safety regulations, and Democrats. One of the speakers, Sgt. Dennis Bartow, called global warming a ?hoax.? He was joined by Karen Wright, CEO of the gas company Ariel Corporation, who ridiculed climate change as ?questionable science? and referred to pollutants as ?so-called carbon dioxide emissions.? Wright went on to rail against ?so-called green jobs? that were ?dubious? and ?phony.? Other speakers later dismissed attacks on the oil industry?s safety record, particularly in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. Radio host Matt Patrick called the deepwater drilling moratorium ?ridiculous? and compared it to a ban on building houses because one caught on fire. Wright ?did a quick Google search? on the oil industry?s safety record and openly wondered why Congress doesn?t ban cars because the number of auto accident deaths far exceeds the number of oil industry deaths. Wright also gleefully proclaimed that the oil spill is ?all gone,? a claim that is easily dispelled with a quick Google search. Many of the speakers also rallied the crowd against Ohio?s Democrats in Congress. For example, after telling audience members that he wasn?t going to call out particular politicians nor indict a single political party, Patrick ? literally ten seconds later ? called out only Democrats by name: I?m not going to sit here and tell you it?s all one political party or that it?s this politician or that politician. You?ve got some people right now in the state of Ohio that want nothing more than to tax small businesses right out of business. You know who they are. And John Boccieri and Zack Space and Tim Ryan and Betty Sutton and Charlie Wilson, this message is for you. We?re coming after you. Good luck in November! Of the approximately 400 who showed up for the rally, ?most arrived in four buses? that were paid for and organized by oil and gas companies. ThinkProgress caught up with one of the attendees, who confirmed that Marathon Petroleum arranged a bus to bring over 50 of its employees to the rally. Watch the highlights here: This cross-post is by Scott Keyes via Think Progress. Related Posts: New Yorker exposes Koch brothers along with their greenwashing and whitewashing Smithsonian exhibit
California public schools invited BP to help develop environmental curriculum
Category	Greenwashing
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Description:	BP is an extreme greenwasher (see ?Should you believe anything BP says??).  Its lies to the public, government, and itself have had catastrophic consequences (see The three causes of BP?s Titanic oil disaster: Recklessness, Arrogance, and Hubris). So naturally, when students in California return to school this fall, they will have a [...]  more...
	BP is an extreme greenwasher (see ?Should you believe anything BP says??).  Its lies to the public, government, and itself have had catastrophic consequences (see The three causes of BP?s Titanic oil disaster: Recklessness, Arrogance, and Hubris). So naturally, when students in California return to school this fall, they will have a brand new environmental curriculum developed, in part, by BP.  Think Progress has the amazing story: The Sacramento Bee reported today that BP helped California?s public schools form an environmental curriculum to be used by over 6 million public school students (kindergarten through 12th grade) in 1,000 districts. The Bee reports that state officials included BP on a technical team that ?was responsible for developing the program?s guiding principles.? Even before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, which BP officials admit was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, the company had a terrible environmental record: over the past five years, BP paid $373 million in fines to avoid prosecution after admitting to breaking U.S. environmental and safety laws. The same company involved in forming California?s environmental curriculum also has a long record of dishonest greenwashing. As Lisa Graves, executive director for the Center for Media and Democracy, which monitors ?greenwashing? techniques, told the Bee: ?I?d hate to see how a section in future textbooks mentioning the BP oil spill will look. ? I think it?s very worrisome because their fundamental goal is to profit from energy and not to teach children.? BP?s dishonesty was on full display during the Gulf disaster, as the company tried to spin the environmental catastrophe that unleashed 206 million gallons of oil into the ocean. Just today, BP released a report deflecting blame for the oil spill onto various other companies. The Wonk Room?s Brad Johnson has been tracking some of BP?s most egregious statements: ? Five months and one day before its Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, BP?s top Gulf of Mexico official testified its practices were ?both safe and protective of the environment.? ? In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, BP officials called the disaster ?inconceivable,? ?unprecedented,? and completely unforeseeable: ?I don?t think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we?re faced with now,? said one spokesman. This was despite the fact that blowouts are unfortunately common in offshore oil drilling. ? Then-CEO Tony Hayward said on May 19 that ?the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest.? ? On June 9, Hayward said that a new fund the company set up ?will have a significant positive impact on the environment in this region.? ? BP?s new CEO, Robert Dudley, has repeatedly said dispersants the company used in the Gulf were ?like dish soap.? The dispersant used, Corexit, is a combination of petroleum distillates, propylene glycol, and dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate which is banned in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, California officials defended BP?s involvement in interviews with the Bee, saying that the company?s involvement was ?minor? and that it was ?important to get all sides of the environmental debate involved in developing the classroom materials.? The problem is that the side BP generally represents is not based in fact. – This is a TP cross-post. Related Posts: ?BP proves Beyond Petroleum was greenwashing, joins ?biggest global warming crime ever seen? Waxman and Stupak demand BP detail scope of greenwashing campaign EXCLUSIVE: Sandra Bullock disowns BP-backed greenwashing campaign Exclusive: BP worked with FreedomWorks, Chamber to build phony ?grassroots? support for more drilling ?BP proves Beyond Petroleum was greenwashing, joins ?biggest global warming crime ever seen? Investors warn Shell and BP over tar sands greenwashing? BP stand for ?back to petroleum? ? oil giant shuts clean energy HQ, slashes renewables budget up to $900 million this year, dives into tar sands
Major analysis finds ?less ice covers the Arctic today than at any time in recent geologic history.? - Paleoclimate study: "the Arctic temperature change consistently exceeds the Northern Hemisphere average by a factor of 3?4"
Category	Science
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Description:	A first-of-its-kind analysis, “History of sea ice in the Arctic” (subs. req’d), by an international team of 18 top scientists led by Leonid Polyak concludes: [E]pisodes of considerably reduced sea ice or even seasonally ice-free conditions occurred during warmer periods linked to orbital variations. The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high [...]  more...
	A first-of-its-kind analysis, “History of sea ice in the Arctic” (subs. req’d), by an international team of 18 top scientists led by Leonid Polyak concludes: [E]pisodes of considerably reduced sea ice or even seasonally ice-free conditions occurred during warmer periods linked to orbital variations. The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high insolation) was in the early Holocene, after which the northern high latitudes cooled overall, with some superimposed shorter-term (multidecadal to millennial-scale) and lower-magnitude variability. The current reduction in Arctic ice cover started in the late 19th century, consistent with the rapidly warming climate, and became very pronounced over the last three decades. This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities. The key point is that the Arctic loses ice when it is forced to lose ice.  In the past that was driven by orbital changes, and now it is being driven by human emissions. This Quaternary Science Reviews paper is based on a detailed study of “proxy records from the Arctic Ocean floor and from the surrounding coasts.”  You can find a brief discussion of those methods in the Ohio State University news release here, which explains this is “the first comprehensive history of Arctic ice.”  The analysis “re-examined the data from past and ongoing studies — nearly 300 in all — and combined them to form a big-picture view of the pole?s climate history stretching back millions of years.” I asked the lead author, Leonid Polyak, of Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center, when was the last time the Arctic was ice free.  He replied: The paleo data we have so far is very scant, so we can’t know for sure when the Arctic was ice free in the summer last time. To be conservative, the closest candidate is the early Holocene (roughly ~10 kyr ago), when the insolation in the Arctic was high due to the beneficial orbital configuration; however, the more data I see, the stronger is my impression that there was not that little ice at that time. The next best (actually, better) candidate is the Last Interglacial, about 125kyr ago, again due to orbitally-driven high insolation: the ice was likely very low, but we can’t say whether it was completely ice free in summer or not. There are also a few other major interglacials, which may have had a similar picture, in particular Marine Isotopic Stage 11, about 450 kyr ago. In any case we are talking about very rare events controlled by a forcing very different from today. If none of those intervals was really ice free, then a million year assessment would be correct. The Quaternary Science Reviews piece, whose co-authors include Penn State’s Richard Alley and NSIDC’s Mark Serreze, explains why it was warm (and there was reduced ice) in the Arctic 11,000 years ago — and why it’s warm now with rapidly shrinking summer ice: The present interglacial that has lasted approximately 11.5 kyr is characterized by much more paleoceanographic data than earlier warm periods, because Holocene deposits are ubiquitous and technically accessible on continental shelves and along many coastlines. Multiple proxy records and climate models indicate that early Holocene temperatures were higher than today and that the Arctic contained less ice, consistent with a high intensity of orbitally-controlled spring and summer insolation that peaked about 11 ka and gradually decreased thereafter…. Reviewed geological data indicate that the history of Arctic sea ice is closely linked with climate changes driven primarily by greenhouse and orbital forcings and associated feedbacks. This link is reflected in the persistence of the Arctic amplification, where fast feedbacks are largely controlled by sea-ice conditions. So external forcings — primarily orbital in the past and primarily greenhouse gases now — start a process that is accelerated by polar amplification. This was actually a special-themed issue of QSR, “Arctic Palaeoclimate Synthesis.”  It has a good piece just on that fast feedback, “Arctic amplification: can the past constrain the future?” (subs. req’d), which concludes: Arctic amplification, the observation that surface air temperature changes in the Arctic exceed those of  the Northern Hemisphere as a whole, is a pervasive feature of climate models, and has recently emerged in observational data relative to the warming trend of the past century…. Here we evaluate the mechanisms responsible for Arctic amplification on Quaternary timescales, and review evidence from four intervals in the past 3 Ma for which sufficient paleoclimate data and model simulations are available to estimate the magnitude of Arctic amplification under climate states both warmer and colder than present. Despite differences in forcings and feedbacks for these reconstructions compared to today, the Arctic temperature change consistently exceeds the Northern Hemisphere average by a factor of 3?4, suggesting that Arctic warming will continue to greatly exceed the global average over the coming century, with concomitant reductions in terrestrial ice masses and, consequently, an increasing rate of sea level rise. Now that should be alarming to anybody: the Arctic temperature change consistently exceeds the Northern Hemisphere average by a factor of 3?4 And indeed the best recent models show staggeringly high Arctic warming this century if we stay on our current emissions path (see M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F ? with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F“). As RealClimate noted in their useful discussion, ?Polar amplification is thought to result primarily from positive feedbacks from the retreat of ice and snow.? Indeed, the popular explanation is that warming melts highly reflective white ice and snow, which is replaced by the dark blue sea or dark land, both of which absorb far more sunlight and hence far more solar energy. But in fact Arctic warming is amplified for several additional synergistic reasons, which are worth knowing, as I discussed in “What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?” As the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) explains in their 2004 report, Impacts of a Warming Arctic (see figure here): In the Arctic, compared to lower latitudes, ?more of the extra trapped energy goes into warming rather than evaporation.? In the Arctic, ?the atmospheric layer that has to warm in order to warm the surface is shallower.? So, when the sea ice retreats, the ?solar heat absorbed by the oceans in summer is more easily transferred to the atmosphere in winter.? [And as one climate scientist explained to me, it can get incredibly cold above thick ice, but it can't get much colder than freezing above open water.] All this leads to more snow and ice melting, further decreasing Earth?s reflectivity (albedo), causing more heating, which the thinner arctic atmosphere spreads more quickly over the entire polar region, and so on and on. And that in turn threatens a cascade of effects. As the scientists at The International Polar Year explained last year, this could ?speed up melting of the Greenland ice sheet, accelerating the rise in sea levels,? and ?Permafrost melting could also accelerate during rapid Arctic sea-ice loss due to an amplification of Arctic land warming 3.5 times greater than secular 21st century climate trends? (see ?Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss?). Yet the destruction of a significant fraction of the permafrost must be avoided at all cost, since the tundra feedback, coupled with the climate-carbon-cycle feedbacks that the IPCC models, could easily take us to the unmitigated catastrophe of 1000 ppm (see Tundra, Part 2: The point of no return).  See also NSF issues world a wake-up call: “Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the [East Siberian Arctic Shelf] shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.? One final point from the summary overview of the special issue of QSR: Taken together, the size and speed of the summer sea ice loss over the last few decades appear anomalous compared to events from previous thousands of years, especially considering that changes in the Earth?s orbit over this time have made sea ice melting less, not more, likely. Human-caused Arctic warming has overtaken 2,000 years of natural cooling, as a ?seminal? 2009 Science study found” [see figure below]: A Hockey Stick in Melting Ice In short, “greenhouse gas emissions are overwhelming the system,? as David Schneider, a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and one of the Science article?s co-authors put it. So the next time some anti-science disinformer — or more likely, one of the doubters who has been duped by them — says past warmth undermines our understanding of human-caused warming, tell them, quite the reverse is true.  The paleoclimate record provides us more cause to be worried, not less.  We know natural forcings led to warming in the past, but human emissions of greenhouse gases are overwhelming the climate now, and threatening catastrophic levels of warming if we stay on our current emissions path. Related Posts: Science: CO2 levels haven?t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher ? ?We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in CO2 levels of about 100 ppm.? Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred
Climate and clean energy jobs legislation: Carly Fiorina was for it before she was against it
Category	California
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Description:	Last week the Politico reported on the California Senate debate: ?Fiorina?s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition 23.? Fiorina had waffled on whether she supported the landmark climate and clean energy legislation that Prop 23 would kill, since, of course, she supported cap-and-trade during the presidential campaign. Now the GOP Senate candidate she [...]  more...
	Last week the Politico reported on the California Senate debate: ?Fiorina?s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition 23.? Fiorina had waffled on whether she supported the landmark climate and clean energy legislation that Prop 23 would kill, since, of course, she supported cap-and-trade during the presidential campaign. Now the GOP Senate candidate she has completed her flip-flop to full support for the dirty energy proposition funded by Big Oil, as the L.A. Times notes in its piece, “Global warming bill a lose-lose issue for GOP candidates.” Fiorina?s campaign finally released a (somewhat) clear message on where she stands on Prop 23 on Friday, calling the measure ?Band-Aid fix and an imperfect solution? to addressing the energy and climate issues, but still supporting it.  Here is her full statement on Prop 23: Proposition 23 is a Band-Aid fix and an imperfect solution to addressing our nation?s climate and energy challenges. The real solution to these challenges lies not with a single state taking action on its own, but rather with global action. That?s why we need a comprehensive, national energy solution that funds energy R&D and takes advantage of every source of domestic energy we have ? including nuclear, wind and solar ? in an environmentally responsible way. That said, AB 32 is undoubtedly a job killer, and it should be suspended. It is unclear how a candidate can call for extensive research and legislative action on the climate and energy ?challenge? and at the same time support a proposition that would bury the work that California has done on the issue over the last decade.    California has set itself up to be the leader in renewable energy through AB 32 and the resulting rules, but Prop 23 would eviscerate all the progress the state has made. How can she say AB 32 “is undoubtedly a job killer” now when just two years ago she said cap-and-trade ?will both create jobs and lower the cost of energy.? Fiorina seems to be trying to pass the buck to the federal government, in language that is eerily similar to that coming from the climate change deniers at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  The Chamber, which has endorsed Fiorina, is notorious for questioning the science of global warming.  It made headlines when its anti-climate position caused a number of major companies to walk away from the Chamber last year. Again, as recently as 2008, she advocated for the proposed cap-and-trade system she now opposes.  And now she appears to be siding with Texas oil interests over her own state and an approach she embraced just two years ago), as this video makes clear: What changed?  Could it be all the contributions from the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, Halliburton,  Sarah Palin, and Tesoro — all part of a PAC contribution list that reads like a Who?s Who of oil profiteers?   The same Koch brothers that have sent a reported $50 million to climate change denying groups have already given thousands of dollars to Fiorina, with more likely on the way. Fiorina?s vacillation and final decision to support Prop 23 leads one to believe that her support is available to the highest bidder or whatever way the political winds blow.  Instead of standing with the thousands of jobs in renewable energy, or the millions of Californians that want the state to lead on climate change, she has chased campaign donations.  What a shame. This post is by Araceli Ruano, CAP’s Senior Vice President and the Director for California, and Joseph Romm. Andrew Fitzgerald Adams contributed to this post. Related Posts: The dumbing down of Carly Fiorina After Inhofe?s endorsement, Carly Fiorina challenges climate science ? unlike the company she once ran!
Energy and Global Warming News for September 8th: Biochar emerges as major tool for curbing carbon; DOE giving $575 million in carbon capture grants; China blows past U.S. in offshore wind
Category	Solutions
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Description:	Once-Lowly Charcoal Emerges as ‘Major Tool’ for Curbing Carbon Charcoal is taking root on the farm. Simmered out of eucalyptus, charcoal is being hoed into the degraded soils of former forests in western Kenya. Roasted out of chicken manure, it is spurring the growth of malting barley in Australia. And in Iowa, researchers are [...]  more...
	Once-Lowly Charcoal Emerges as ‘Major Tool’ for Curbing Carbon Charcoal is taking root on the farm. Simmered out of eucalyptus, charcoal is being hoed into the degraded soils of former forests in western Kenya. Roasted out of chicken manure, it is spurring the growth of malting barley in Australia. And in Iowa, researchers are plowing charcoal into corn rows, hoping to limit the tons of fertilizer that saturate the state’s fields each year. At these farms and more, scientists are probing the limits of how high-grade charcoal, dubbed biochar, can be formed from plant and animal waste to squirrel away the atmosphere’s carbon for centuries, or even millennia. Inspired by ancient Amazonian soils, researchers have found that buried charcoal resists bacteria’s attempts to break it down. And thanks to its porous geometry, it has a knack for improving land in ways still being revealed. “Once we get serious about climate change, this information is available now,” said James Amonette, an environmental geochemist at the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “[Biochar] is one of the major tools we can use to fight climate change, if we decide to do so.” Charcoal’s status may be comparable to the start of the world’s head-over-heels embrace of synthetic fertilizer a century ago, scientists say. As piling evidence shows, converting organic matter — be it corn scraps, human sewage or chicken litter — to charcoal can, in effect, increase the carbon cycle’s latency by hundreds of years, buying humanity just a bit more time to solve its fossil fuel fix. While it has roots in decades-old research, the biochar movement took life only recently, as soil scientists realized the scope of charcoal’s climate implications. The field, rich in unanswered questions, has exploded in the past five years, leading several hundred scientists to gather this month in Brazil for the world’s third annual biochar conference. “Biochar is certainly not a fringe science anymore,” said Lukas van Zweiten, an Australian researcher running one of the world’s largest biochar field trials. “[It's] a big change from five years ago, when we were still trying to convince the scientific community of its worth.” Even Washington is digging into biochar. Last year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced a bill supporting biochar research, and provisions tucked into the stalled climate measure sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) direct the Agriculture Department to provide grants to up to 60 research projects. It is funding that is sorely needed — currently, there is not enough biochar being produced to meet even scientific demand. In Brazil, scientists will complain about lack of funding, of course, but they will also detail recent progress made in understanding why biochar can be so beneficial for degraded soils. They will discuss how variable biochar can be, depending on its source. (Forest and chicken waste, it turns out, are not created equal.) And they will tamp down some of the rapturous rhetoric that can accompany charcoal’s agricultural potential. “Biochar is not a fix for all problems,” be it soil quality or climate change, said Johannes Lehmann, a scientist at Cornell University and perhaps the leading biochar researcher. It will only improve soil that can be improved, he said. “Whether it’s a viable global strategy? Nobody can say at this point.” Biochar may not sequester all of society’s excess carbon, but it can play a tangible role in limiting emissions. Projections recently released by Amonette have found that biochar could trap the equivalent of 12 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions a year, in sustainable scenarios. Such a plunge, however, would carry steep economic costs and would likely only be spurred by putting a price on CO2 emissions. In effect, these researchers believe that biochar will allow society to generate energy from plant waste and nonfood crops — a combustible oil is the major byproduct of charcoal production — while also ticking down CO2 emissions. Plants naturally absorb atmospheric CO2 to build themselves up and by delaying the escape of that carbon once crops die a thumb is placed on the carbon-cycle scale, mitigating emissions. Unlike the geological CO2 sequestration proposed for coal-fired power plants, biochar can operate on small scales. It can be produced in massive factories but also in small stoves tagged for distribution in the world’s poorest regions, which often also have impoverished soil, an option that has drawn interest from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Such stoves, though they might not produce ideal charcoal, possess a rare trait in the development world: poverty relief that also reduces CO2 emissions. For many scientists, biochar is about much more than climate change. It is a chance to rewire agriculture. For too long, farmers have neglected soil health, instead dousing their fields with escalating amounts of synthetic fertilizer, heavy in nutrients, to boost plant growth, said David Laird, a soil scientist at Iowa State University. “Soil quality has not been the focus of a lot of research or industry over the years,” Laird said, with attention instead locked on fertilizer and irrigation. “Char is a paradigm shift. It puts the emphasis on building the soil resource base itself. That’s the opportunity.” … According to Amonette, biochar’s stability provides half of its greenhouse gas benefit; another third derives from replaced fossil fuel energy, and one-fifth to avoided emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, both powerful greenhouse gases. (The degree that biochar limits nitrous oxide emissions remains a matter of debate.) For nearly every farming region, it will be better to produce biochar for energy, rather than simply burning waste, Amonette’s study found, except for areas with already fertile soil that depend on coal-fired power plants. Like biofuels, biochar has the potential, if widely used, to see forests sacrificed to farming, or food crops used instead for fuel. Well aware of these problems, Amonette’s projections relied only on the use of agricultural and human waste, along with dedicated energy crops that would only be grown on abandoned, degraded soil, he said. Estimates for biochar’s offset potential could have run higher, but not without untold indirect consequences. There are other possible indirect consequences, Amonette added. Darkening soil with finely ground charcoal could cause more sunlight to be absorbed. And should too much charcoal escape into the air, it could become the equivalent of black carbon, blowing into arctic regions and glaciers, its darkness causing increased heat absorption. Watering down charcoal before use will limit those concerns, though, Iowa’s Laird said. For some crops, biochar is a no-brainer, particularly rice, Amonette said. Water lies stagnant in paddies for weeks or months at a time. Bacteria feed off the rice waste and suck oxygen out of the water, creating space, once the oxygen is gone, for microbes that emit methane. (”Take any soil, put it in a beaker, and in a few weeks you’d be producing methane,” Amonette said.) Steps to eliminate such methane emissions with biochar, including production from manure and yard waste, make immediate sense, he said. In other environments, biochar could prove an ineffective carbon sink, scientists warned. Seeding forests does not seem particularly promising, especially in colder climates. And there needs to be more study of the overall influence charcoal has on soil, Iowa’s Laird added. Does it bump the growth of carbon-chewing microbes? Does it encourage more carbon to settle? “We actually have data that say both,” Laird said. The Swedish biologist David Wardle has been one of the most prominent researchers calling for calm in the charcoal rush. He conducted a 10-year study of charcoal’s interaction with forest tundra and found that the charcoal accelerated the loss of carbon. (Wardle’s methodology may have been flawed, however, as it did not account for new charcoal-caused carbon deposits, Lehmann said.) It is one data set for one region, but the upshot is that a more holistic accounting needs to take place, Wardle said. “A more realistic vision is a more nuanced vision,” he said. “If you have [charcoal] in the soil, there will be long-term consequences on microbial activity. It’s not as simplistic as it initially seems.” While biochar’s carbon storage grabs headlines, what gets soil scientists exercised is its potential to improve soil in the United States and, especially, in the tropics, where so many currently suffer from food insecurity. For too long, farmers have focused on improving yield with fertilizers derived from natural gas, Amonette said. The soil itself has been neglected. Cornell’s Lehmann has been at the forefront of testing how African soils could take to charcoal, running trials in western Kenya’s highlands for six years. Over the past century, the highland forests have been slowly razed for agriculture, resulting in a gradient of soil richness, from the lush dirt of recently deforested land to plots that have been farmed, year after year, for a century — a perfect experimental site. In these trials, Lehmann found that, after several years, the amount of corn grown per plot doubled in older soils supplemented with biochar. The yield gains were not unprecedented: By spreading dead sunflowers across the soil, scientists made similar improvements. But unlike the mulch, which will erode unless reapplied, the biochar’s benefits will linger, Lehmann said. Similar studies have paralleled Lehmann’s work across multiple continents — China is building a large biochar research cohort — over the past five years, to varying results. In the United States, biochar has potential for the southeast United States, where soil is nearly as poor as the tropics. Fruit and vegetables grown in California’s Central Valley, too, are promising targets, Amonette said…. “We have examples where biochar does very little, at least in the short term, in soil, while other examples show quite stunning improvements in soil fertility and productivity,” [Australian researcher] van Zweiten said. Farmers should not get ahead of themselves in expectations, he said, “that biochar is always going to do good things in the soil, because I know for a fact this is not the case.” Some of van Zweiten’s earliest field trials, on subtropical pasture in Australia, saw little in the way of additional growth when one biochar variety was added, he said. Another trial, though, begun three years ago, has had large yield gains for a mix of crops, such as malting barley; the site’s control plots, fed only fertilizer, are failing. Few places have better farming soil than Iowa, where Laird tests biochar on row after row of corn. Given these conditions, biochar will only add a slight yield improvement, if any, he said. Laird’s hope, instead, is that charcoal will improve soil’s nutrient efficiency, dropping the vast amount of synthetic fertilizer dumped on cash crops each year, much of which then leaches into the watershed to cause seasonal “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico. The nutrient efficiency questions are far from answered. “It’s going to take time to put all the pieces together and be able to come up with definite answers,” Laird said. But while it is not yet proven, he said, “I think we need to move ahead with testing of this at a significant scale.” … In the end, it could be the powerful farm lobby that will ultimately push biochar forward. Farmers have long desired a way into the carbon markets that would be created by potential climate legislation, if it ever moves forward. And biochar could provide the greatest certainty that their biological carbon sinks cause true emission offsets, though only time will tell. “Biochar becomes increasingly viable once we make a societal decision to deal with climate change,” Amonette said. “Until we do that, it will remain a niche.” DOE giving $575 million in carbon capture grants The Energy Department said Tuesday it was awarding $575 million for carbon capture research-and-development projects in 15 states. The experimental technique involves storing carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants and other sources underground, in an attempt to reduce pollution blamed for contributing to global warming. “This is a major step forward in the fight to reduce carbon emissions from industrial plants,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “These new technologies will not only help fight climate change, they will create jobs now and help position the United States to lead the world in clean coal technologies, which will only increase in demand in the years ahead.” All told, he said, the department has invested more than $4 billion in carbon storage and capture, matched by more than $7 billion in private investments. The newest money will fund 22 projects in 15 states, ranging from evaluation of geologic sites for carbon storage to development of turbo-machinery and engines to help improve carbon capture and storage. The projects, in states including California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York and Texas, are being funded from the economic stimulus law. President Barack Obama wants a cost-effective deployment of carbon capture and storage within 10 years ? despite questions about the technology and skepticism about its feasibility. He created a task force this year charged with coming up with a plan to overcome barriers to such deployment. Renewable energy touted at Nevada policy ’summit’ With clean-energy legislation trapped in a political deadlock, renewable-energy advocates called big business the new leader in the nation’s green revolution during a national summit meeting Tuesday. John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, said untapped potential in the sustainable energy market could revive the stalled economy and end the recession. “The focus now has got to be on getting these worlds and mechanisms together to finance innovative, renewable technology,” Podesta said. The Center for American Progress Action Fund and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hosted the third in a series of national clean-energy summit meetings Tuesday at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. More than 40 people rallied outside the event, with some wearing green hard hats and waving signs that equated clean energy with green jobs. Reid said encouraging the development of emerging clean-energy industries could ease the nation’s security problems and help overcome economic woes. “We need to take that little spark and turn it into a wildfire,” Reid said. Retrofitting just 40 percent of the country’s homes and commercial properties for energy efficiency would create 625,000 jobs over a decade, said Podesta, who was White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and headed President Barack Obama’s presidential transition team. Among the panels scheduled for the summit were ones on green energy, investments, jobs and state and national policy. A panel of business executives and owners chided Congress for failing to pass a substantive energy policy that would allow clean-energy manufacturers to compete with traditional energy giants. Chinese Offshore Development Blows Past U.S. As proposed American offshore wind-farm projects creep forward — slowed by state legislative debates, due diligence and environmental impact assessments — China has leapt past the United States, installing its first offshore wind farm. Several other farms also are already under construction, and even the Chinese government’s ambitious targets seem low compared to industry dreaming. “What the U.S. doesn’t realize,” said Peggy Liu, founder and chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, is that China “is going from manufacturing hub to the clean-tech laboratory of the world.” The first major offshore wind farm outside of Europe is located in the East China Sea, near Shanghai. The 102-megawatt Donghai Bridge Wind Farm began transmitting power to the national grid in July and signals a new direction for Chinese renewable energy projects and the initiation of a national policy focusing not just on wind power, but increasingly on the offshore variety. Tracking climate change in Africa via termite mounds To gauge whether climate change is affecting African grassland terrains, difficult to map because of sometimes dense forest cover, it turns out that watching where termites build their mounds is an excellent guide, scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology in Palo Alto, Calif. have found. Termite mounds in Africa wax and wane according to annual rainfall, they discovered, allowing their use as a predictor of ecologic shifts due to climate change. The research is published in the September 7, 2010, advanced online edition of Nature Communications. The researchers mapped more than 40,000 termite mounds covering 192 square miles of savanna in Kruger National Park in South Africa. They found three distinct ecosystems. Well-drained upslope sides of hills, which trees liked, wetter, downside slopes which grasses preferred and not too wet, not too dry well-drained soil where mound-building termites build nests. The scientists used the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, an airborne mapping system that works much like a diagnostic medical scan and can penetrate the tree canopy to the soil level. The mapping system creates a three-dimensional map of the vegetation and terrain. One Stop for Climate Change Info The ?Climate-1 Stop? aims to be just what its name implies: a single place where people easily can find all the reliable information, resources and tools about climate change that they need. ?There?s plenty of information out there, but it?s really difficult to find the one specific thing you need,? said Jessica Coughlin.  ?You can become overwhelmed.? Coughlin heads the Institute for the Application of Geospacial Technology, a nonprofit organization located in Auburn, N.Y. and affiliated with Cayuga Community College. The institute, which provides expertise in geographic information systems technology, including GPS, remote sensing, digital mapping, and geospatial data, among other things, has created a new single Web site on climate change. The goal is to help scientists, decision-makers, nonprofit workers, other officials, and even lay people, find the right climate change data they are seeking. The site will provide access to research papers and other documents, news articles, other Web sites and useful tools from other agencies. Carter’s solar panels headed back to Washington A group of environmental activists set out Tuesday for Washington with a well-traveled and recycled solar panel that once stood atop President Jimmy Carter’s White House, carrying hopes of persuading the current president to once again generate energy with the sun’s rays. Environmental author and activist Bill McKibben is leading Unity College students and staff on the solar road trip, with stops planned in Boston and New York en route to Washington. They’re toting along the Carter-era solar panel in hopes of drumming up support for renewable energy. They also hope to convince President Barack Obama to install new solar panels. “I can’t think of a clearer win for the president, a better reminder to the legions of young people who worked on his campaign that he is still focused on the future,” McKibben wrote Tuesday in Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. The solar panels were placed in service on the White House by Carter’s order during the late 1970s as a symbol of commitment to increasing the nation’s use of renewable resources. But they didn’t remain for long. They were removed by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and put in storage. Monitoring Climate Change in the Ocean’s ‘Most Studied Spot’ “The thing about oceanography is that it is a very collegial profession.” So says Tony Knapp, director of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), and given the backdrop ? aboard BIOS’s multimillion-dollar research ship the HSBC Atlantic Explorer, with the sun shining and the Atlantic Ocean rolling behind him ? it’s hard to argue. It’s also one of the few scientific professions where motion sickness is a real risk, as I’m learning aboard the ship, which is buffeted by the advance wind and sea swells of Tropical Storm Fiona. But beyond the fresh air and occasional seasick research assistant, what sets apart the oceanography done at BIOS from other disciplines is its importance ? the institute’s work is fundamental to our ability to model the ocean’s role in climate change, among other areas ? and its rarity. BIOS is one of just a handful of institutes worldwide that regularly monitor the ocean for physical and chemical changes. “We just have not invested in understanding ocean chemistry,” says Knapp. And when it comes to ocean science, what we don’t know may be hurting us. The scientists at BIOS are trying to change that. Founded in 1903, BIOS is one of the few marine-research stations actually situated in the middle of the ocean ? the Atlantic, in the waters surrounding the isolated island of Bermuda. That base has given BIOS scientists the ability to reach, in just a few hours’ sail, the deep water ? Bermuda sits on a seamount, and within a few miles of its reef-shielded coasts, the ocean can be more than 10,000 feet deep. For decades, BIOS researchers have been sailing to the same spot in the Atlantic ? Hydrostation “S,” 15 nautical miles southeast of Bermuda ? where they take water samples from the surface all the way down to just above the ocean floor. Since the program began in 1954, BIOS ships have visited the “S” more than 1,100 times. (There’s nothing special about the location of “S”; it’s simply a convenient deep-water spot near the island.) Researchers in Hawaii carry out a similar program in the Pacific, but they’ve taken fewer samples over a smaller amount of time. “This is the single most studied spot in the ocean,” says Knapp. Eastside oil spill could take days to clean up Cleanup could take several days after an estimated 20,000 gallons of used oil spilled from a storage tank at an Eastside bulk storage facility Tuesday, state environmental officials said. A broken valve spewed oil from the above-ground tank at Metal Working Lubricants, 199 S. Sherman Drive, said Amy Hartsock, public information officer for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management . The spill was reported around noon. The tank held about 120,000 gallons of oil before the spill, Hartsock said. Efforts to recover the remaining oil and clean up the spill were expected to continue for several days. As a precaution, Hartsock said, the Marion County Health Department would test a sample of water from the well of a nearby home to ensure that the spill was contained to the site. Neighbors may notice an odor of oil and will hear construction equipment working day and night while the cleanup is under way, Hartsock said. Hearings begin on wind farm contract It may be the most watched ? and controversial ? state Department of Public Utilities hearing in years, but opening day of the agency?s review of the Cape Wind energy project quickly devolved into a discussion of mind-numbing legal and technical minutiae as the main opposition group?s lawyer cross-examined representatives of the developer. The DPU must decide whether a contract allowing the utility National Grid to purchase half of the power generated from 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound is a good deal for ratepayers. The cost of that power is more than twice that of electricity from traditional sources, and the issue has emerged as among the most contentious in the wind farm proponents? nine-year struggle for government permits. Glenn Benson, a lawyer for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, questioned Cape Wind lawyer Dennis Duffy and one of its energy consultants, Robert Stoddard, about the company?s financing, timeline, and construction contracts. Duffy said Cape Wind has not found a buyer for the remaining 50 percent of its product. That buyer, along with financing and other details, will be determined after the outcome of the DPU case, he said. Food Crisis Worsens in Central Africa Torrential rains and flash floods that swept through cities and villages in Central Africa in late August have intensified a food crisis in the region, leaving upwards of 10 million people suffering from severe food shortages, the United Nations and relief organizations warned last week. The floods, which destroyed crops and livestock, struck an area already on the brink of famine after successive years of drought and failed harvests. Rising world grain prices, resulting partly from the heat wave and drought that destroyed wheat crops across Russia this summer, are compounding the crisis, relief organizations said. ?Imported food in the markets is already too expensive for those most in need, and the current uncertainty in the global food market is likely to push prices higher still,? Cristina Ruiz, a relief worker with Christian Aid, said in a statement. The crisis is worst in landlocked Niger, where as many as 400,000 children are at risk of dying of starvation or disease because of malnutrition, the aid group Feed the Children said. With national food reserves gone, some in the country have resorted to eating boiled weeds, according to news reports. An additional 200,000 people have been left homeless by the recent flash floods. ?Smart money? is heading into sustainable investments, says study A study from the pan-European thinktank Eurosif (the European Sustainable Investment Forum) has revealed that sustainable investment is now largely perceived by Europe’s high net worth individuals (NHWI) as a valuable mainstream investment strategy, not merely one with a niche appeal. The study, entitled High Net Worth Individuals & Sustainable Investment, analysed the findings of a questionnaire distributed to over 400 participants ranging from individuals, family offices and wealth managers between April and June of this year. The report said that European high net worth individuals are effectively navigating the crisis due to their focus on the incorporation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues with the ?smart money? being increasingly allocated to aspects of sustainable investing ?as a means to preserve capital and opportunistically earn above average returns’. Dr. Burkhard P. Varnholt, CIO of Bank Sarasin, one of the study?s sponsors believes that sustainable investment is playing an ever more important role in the construction of portfolios. Opposing view on fuel economy: Keep it simple This year’s Chevy Malibu gets 26 miles to the gallon, combined city and highway. Quick ? how much will it save or cost you over the next five years? How much carbon pollution does it emit? And how does it stack up against other options at the dealership? The answers could soon be on the window of every new car, minivan or pickup, along with a single letter grade that rates the vehicle by fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions. The idea is to enhance the gas mileage information long posted on new vehicles and to respond to growing consumer concerns about rising gas costs, oil dependence and global warming pollution. With a simple grade every middle-schooler understands, vehicles could be labeled as getting anywhere from an A+ to a D based on how much gas they burn and how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide they fire out the tailpipe. But if the auto companies get their way, the labels won’t have a grade, but instead have a long list of confusing numbers. Adding a grade to the labels is a great idea. They’ll be the most effective way to ensure drivers make the right choice to cut driving costs. And they’ll enable Americans to send clear market signals to automakers about how much we care about reducing our reliance on foreign oil, creating the jobs of tomorrow and ensuring a healthier future for our children. How innovation killed the lights The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s. The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs. “Now what’re we going to do?” said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful. During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas. Ecuador’s tallest waterfall to be destroyed by Chinese dam San Rafael Falls, Ecuador’s tallest waterfall, is threatened by a Chinese-funded hydroelectric project, reports Save America’s Forests, an environmental group . The 1,500 megawatt Coca-Codo Sinclair Hydroelectric Project will divert water flow away from the 480-foot San Rafael Falls, leaving it “high and dry.” Worse, the project, which is scheduled for completion in 2016, will be pressure on Sumaco Biosphere Reserve, an area so renowned for its biodiversity that “even the oil companies spared this area during prospection and development of pipeline corridors in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” according to Save America’s Forests, which says the falls have become the principal attraction of Sumaco. “It is located in the mega-diverse transition zone between the Andes Mountains and the Amazon,” stated the environmental group in a press release. “The falls have become one of the more prominent images and icons for promoting ecotourism in Ecuador, a country that made headlines in 2008 for being the first nation to grant constitutional rights to nature itself.”
German military study warns of peak oil crisis
Category	Peak Oil
Published:
Description:	A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how “peak oil” might change the global economy. The internal draft document — leaked on the Internet — shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis. The term “peak oil” is [...]  more...
	A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how “peak oil” might change the global economy. The internal draft document — leaked on the Internet — shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis. The term “peak oil” is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis — and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges. The issue is so politically explosive that it’s remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term “peak oil” at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes even further. That’s from an article last week in Der Spiegel online.  None of this is a surprise to CP readers (see “Peak oil production coming sooner than expected“) or to those who follow the once staid International Energy Agency (see World?s top energy economist warns: ?We have to leave oil before oil leaves us?). But what is remarkable is the source — and the bluntness of the report’s conclusions about political and economic impacts. “The study, whose authenticity was confirmed to SPIEGEL ONLINE by sources in government circles” is by “the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military”: According to the German report, there is “some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later.” This is what they expect for the 2020s and beyond: Oil will determine power: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center writes that oil will become one decisive factor in determining the new landscape of international relations: “The relative importance of the oil-producing nations in the international system is growing. These nations are using the advantages resulting from this to expand the scope of their domestic and foreign policies and establish themselves as a new or resurgent regional, or in some cases even global leading powers.” Increasing importance of oil exporters: For importers of oil more competition for resources will mean an increase in the number of nations competing for favor with oil-producing nations. For the latter this opens up a window of opportunity which can be used to implement political, economic or ideological aims. As this window of time will only be open for a limited period, “this could result in a more aggressive assertion of national interests on the part of the oil-producing nations.” Politics in place of the market: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center expects that a supply crisis would roll back the liberalization of the energy market. “The proportion of oil traded on the global, freely accessible oil market will diminish as more oil is traded through bi-national contracts,” the study states. In the long run, the study goes on, the global oil market, will only be able to follow the laws of the free market in a restricted way. “Bilateral, conditioned supply agreements and privileged partnerships, such as those seen prior to the oil crises of the 1970s, will once again come to the fore.” Market failures: The authors paint a bleak picture of the consequences resulting from a shortage of petroleum. As the transportation of goods depends on crude oil, international trade could be subject to colossal tax hikes. “Shortages in the supply of vital goods could arise” as a result, for example in food supplies. Oil is used directly or indirectly in the production of 95 percent of all industrial goods. Price shocks could therefore be seen in almost any industry and throughout all stages of the industrial supply chain. “In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse.” Relapse into planned economy: Since virtually all economic sectors rely heavily on oil, peak oil could lead to a “partial or complete failure of markets,” says the study. “A conceivable alternative would be government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other short-term coercive measures to replace market-based mechanisms in times of crisis.” Global chain reaction: “A restructuring of oil supplies will not be equally possible in all regions before the onset of peak oil,” says the study. “It is likely that a large number of states will not be in a position to make the necessary investments in time,” or with “sufficient magnitude.” If there were economic crashes in some regions of the world, Germany could be affected. Germany would not escape the crises of other countries, because it’s so tightly integrated into the global economy. Crisis of political legitimacy: The Bundeswehr study also raises fears for the survival of democracy itself. Parts of the population could perceive the upheaval triggered by peak oil “as a general systemic crisis.” This would create “room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government.” Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could “in extreme cases lead to open conflict.” It would have been nice if there had been any reporting on how Germany might get itself off of oil, given how dire this report is. Interestingly, the article notes: The leak has parallels with recent reports from the UK. Only last week the Guardian newspaper reported that the British Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is keeping documents secret which show the UK government is far more concerned about an impending supply crisis than it cares to admit. According to the Guardian, the DECC, the Bank of England and the British Ministry of Defence are working alongside industry representatives to develop a crisis plan to deal with possible shortfalls in energy supply. Inquiries made by Britain’s so-called peak oil workshops to energy experts have been seen by SPIEGEL ONLINE. You can read the Guardian piece here: “Peak oil alarm revealed by secret official talks.” Replacing oil in the transportation sector requires strong government action two decades before a peak because of the time needed to replace vehicles and fuel infrastructure. That was the conclusion of a major study funded by the Department of Energy in 2005 — yes, the Bush DOE — on “Peaking of World Oil Production.” The DOE report noted: “The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.” Ouch! The same central point is true about global warming. If we want global carbon dioxide emissions to peak and start declining, the planet will need to start aggressive mitigation policies two decades in advance. Since the climate and clean energy bill has died in the U.S. Senate with no serious possibility of comprehensive legislation for at least the next two years and likely the next several, the best chance of the nation proactively developing a peak oil strategy is all but gone. For that reason, the likely impacts of peak oil will continue to be a focus of Climate Progress. Related Post: What will it take to end our oil addiction? Science/IEA: World oil crunch looming? Not if we can find six Saudi Arabias! IEA says oil will peak in 2020 Deutsche Bank: Oil to hit $175 a barrel by 2016, which ?will drive a final stake into long-term oil demand,? spurred by a ?disruptive technology? ? ?the hybrid and electric car, that will very likely have a far greater positive impact on oil efficiency than the market currently expects? Merrill: Non-OPEC production has likely peaked, oil output could fall by 30 million bpd by 2015 Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence