First, on Wednesday a study came out that found 97% consensus on human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. It was by our friends at Skeptical Science, John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli.

Then on Thursday, President Obama tweeted the study to his 31,000,000 (!) followers:

So how does the ever-shrinking Washington Post report the story? With the headline, “Obama tweet gets Australian researcher 31.5 million followers on Twitter.” #FAIL

And just to be clear that the WashPost is in fact as confused and innumerate as their headline suggests, the story asserts:

That tweet, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, led 31,541,507 people to decide to follow Australian climate change researcher John Cook on Twitter.

The Herald didn’t, however, make such a transparently silly claim. Their headline read, “Obama gives Aussie researcher 31,541,507 reasons to celebrate.”

Ten seconds on the interwebs will reveal that Cook has 6,560 followers. But then we’ve suspected for a while that the Washington Post doesn’t employ any fact checkers. Nor does it have a single editor who understood enough about social media to realize instantly that the headline — and hence the story — must be wrong.

No wonder the MSM is collapsing in the face of the new media onslaught. Note: As of Saturday morning, the story is still uncorrected.

This afternoon, the Department of Energy approved the second application for a facility to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) worldwide. Today’s approval to export up to 1.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day goes to Freeport LNG Expansion, on Quintana Island in Texas, for 25 years. The approval process now moves to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissions (FERC), so the company is not in the clear yet.

Several companies have received nearly two dozen permits from DoE to export LNG to countries with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement (FTA), but the approval process has been much slower for permits to export to non-FTA countries. 19 facilities that want to export LNG to non-FTA countries are still under review by the Energy Department — including a joint project between ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum.

The natural gas industry is booming in the United States, largely due to the practice of fracking, which opened up large parts of the country to extraction previously thought uneconomical to drill. Natural gas can be transported via pipeline across land, but when companies want to export the fuel overseas, they have to use ships. Since natural gas (mostly methane) in gas form would require a large ship to transport, it must be cooled and liquefied before it can be exported across an ocean.

In the last decade, companies built facilities to import natural gas because the U.S. expected lower production than what fracking actually allowed. Once the shale gas boom sharply increased domestic production, they have tried to turn those import terminals into export terminals. Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass terminal, the first facility to receive DoE approval to export to non-FTA countries, is one example of this.

The reason for the delay of such applications is due to opposition largely from the chemical industry, which fears that exports will lead to an increase in the price of natural gas (which it uses for industrial purposes), and those who care about carbon emissions and the environment, who point out that the U.S. still does not know the consequences that exports will have on carbon emissions.

Congressman Ed Markey, running for John Kerry’s old senate seat in Massachusetts, said today that “The Department of Energy still doesn’t even know what the impact of natural gas exports will be on domestic businesses and consumers, but they are approving more exports anyway.”

If the U.S. is increasing exports, it becomes even more critical to ensure that the natural gas obtained through hydraulic fracturing is as safe as possible, with zero fugitive emissions. Yesterday the Interior Department released draft fracking rules, and there are some easy ways (5 in fact) to make the rules adequately protect Americans and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is one thing to argue for weak safeguards to give Americans access to “cheap energy” — it is another to argue for weak rules that poison the air and water to export the energy to other countries.

The net climate effects of LNG exports depend largely on the energy currently used by the importing country — what the gas will replace. Coal-heavy economies that replace their coal with natural gas should see lower emissions, but this transition could threaten more valuable transitions to renewable energy.

The Energy Department said in today’s approval that “the exports proposed in this Application are likely to yield net economic benefits to the United States.” Left unsaid is the fact that the more fossil fuels left in the ground, the easier it is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which would benefit the economy in myriad ways.

Since last November’s Presidential election, immigration reform with a road map to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the country has been gaining momentum. On April 16 the bipartisan Senate “Gang of 8″ introduced their immigration bill, and diverse groups such as organized labor, evangelical Christians, and business leaders have lent their support for reform.

Just last month, the board of the Sierra Club, the oldest environmental organization in the United States voted to add their voice to the movement, officially supporting immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship. In doing so they joined other well-known environmental leaders like Bill McKibben and Van Jones.

Immigration reform and environmental protection are progressive issues that are in alignment, as the Sierra Club’s support illustrates: immigrants are affected by climate change and care about the environment, and the environmental movement is in turn strengthened by the inclusion of immigrant voices.

Here are the top five things you need to know about immigrants and the environment:

1. Immigrants are already a part of the environmental movement. Immigrants and people of color have long been key players in the environmental justice movement, which has been fighting back against environmental injustice that has disproportionately affected communities of color and low-income communities. Environmental justice organizations, for example, often speak out against polluting and toxic businesses, like power plants and fuel tank facilities that are sited in or near communities of color. But while immigrants have been active in the more localized environmental justice movement, they need to have a larger role in the overall environmental movement which has all too often been criticized for a lack of diversity. In a recent Grist post, One America board member Sudha Nandagopal wrote, “… we don’t just need to add diverse faces to the crowds at environmental protests. We need inclusive strategies and a diversity of ideas. Communities of color must be equitable partners in identifying problems, crafting solutions, and pushing for change.”
2. Immigrants have a big stake in the health of the planet. Historically, immigrants and people of color have borne a greater share of environmental burdens in their communities and at their jobs. According to the Sierra Club, 43 percent of Latino voters either live or work near a toxic site (such as a power plant, refinery, highway or factory.) This figure has increased by close to 10 percent since 2008, showing a dangerous uptick in the number of Latinos potentially exposed to dangerous environmental conditions, and the need among this community for a cleaner, healthier planet.
3. Immigrants tend to lead low-carbon lifestyles. More than half of all immigrants live in large metropolitan areas, which have some of the lowest per capita emissions in the U.S. In fact, CAP analysis has found that cities with the lowest carbon footprint had an average immigrant population of 26 percent, while the 10 highest per-capita carbon emitting cities have an average immigrant population below 5 percent. In addition to living in big cities, immigrants are almost three times more likely to take public transportation and nearly two times more likely to carpool than native-born residents.
4. Immigrants are helping to drive the green economy. Immigrants are leading new businesses in the green and high-tech industries, having launched 40 percent of publicly traded, venture-backed companies and nearly half of private, venture-backed startups. Additionally, immigrants occupy many “green-collar” jobs (blue-collar jobs in the green goods and services industry) and use their skills to advance energy efficiency, clean energy and sustainability. Green-collar employment includes jobs in wind turbine manufacturing, solar power project construction, home weatherization, solar panel installation, etc.
5. Immigrants support environmental policies. A recent poll found that 7 out of 10 Latino voters support environmental protections while 9 out of 10 feel a sense of “moral responsibility” when it comes to protecting the environment. A similar study of Asian American voters in California found that 3 out of 4 are extremely or very concerned about environmental issues, and 7 out of 10 believe that environmental regulations “provide an important benefit to society and protect health, air and water.” Immigrants from Latin American and Asian countries represent more than 60 percent (over 24 million residents) of the U.S. foreign-born population and these polls indicate that they can be strong advocates for environmental protections.

In coming out in support of immigration reform, Sierra Club President Allison Chin stated, “By establishing an equitable path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America today, we can empower those in our society who are most vulnerable to toxic pollution to fully participate in our democracy, fight back against polluters and demand public health protections and clean energy solutions.” The intersection of environmentalism and immigration reform will continue to benefit and strengthen both movements.

Dave Roberts at Grist is (eternally) puzzled that folks don’t seem to know that. Since eternity is a very long time — only slightly longer than the lifetime of some CO2 molecules in the air — I’ll repost his key points:

1. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Mass v. EPA that CO2 qualifies as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
2. In 2009, EPA issued an endangerment finding that deemed CO2 a threat to public health. Once those two things happened, a cascading series of of legal obligations was set into motion.
3. First, EPA must regulate “mobile sources” of CO2 under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act. That’s what it did with its new auto mileage standards.
4. Then, EPA must regulate “stationary sources” of CO2 underSection 111 of the Clean Air Act. First it will issue standards on new power plants. It issued a draft regulation last year, but it missed a deadline in April for issuing the final rule (for which some green groups are suing it). Supposedly it has delayed release of the final regulation so it can do more work to protect the rule against legal challenge.
5. Then, EPA must regulate existing stationary sources — in the case of CO2, primarily power plants — under Section 111(d). That rule, the 111(d) rule, is the one EPA keeps telling journalists it has “no current plans” to develop, and no surprise, since it’s got its hands full working on the rule for new power plants.

That is from Roberts’ post, “Once more, with feeling: EPA is required to regulate carbon from existing power plants.”

Roberts opines:

Again, this series of executive actions is prescribed by statute. EPA is not “bypassing” Congress, or going around it, or in any way exceeding its authority. It is not even acting on Obama’s discretion, not really. It is simply carrying out the will of Congress, as embodied in the Clean Air Act….

The Savvy Washington Insiders of the political press don’t understand or care about policy, they only care about court intrigue, so they are suckers for the daft conservative narrative that EPA regulation of carbon is some quasi-dictatorial power grab that Obama is contemplating. Now, as usual, they’re busy being amateur Sun Tzus and gaming out whether and how he will screw enviros over.

Who knows, maybe enviros — and the planet — will get screwed in the end. It’s usually a safe bet in D.C. But whatever happens, rules on carbon from power plants are coming. On that, Obama has no choice.

So again, EPA is required to regulate carbon from existing power plants. Or, rather, EPA is required to regulate carbon from existing power plants!!!

(Credit: NY Times)

Gina McCarthy finally got a vote.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing yesterday to vote on McCarthy’s nomination to be the next EPA Administrator. This came after a week of obstruction from the Republican members of the committee, who boycotted the scheduled vote last week.

As one of the most highly-qualified nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency in its history, McCarthy has understandably won plaudits from Republicans like Senator James Inhofe and energy industry titans like American Electric Power. She has been dubbed the “green quarterback” in President Obama’s administration as well as former Governor Mitt Romney’s. Indeed, McCarthy was approved by the full Senate in 2009 for her current position leading the Office of Air and Radiation by a voice vote.

Carol Browner, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, expressed hope that McCarthy would receive a similar vote before the full Senate:

I commend the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for approving the nomination of Gina McCarthy. Not only is she a seasoned civil servant with decades of experience, she is clearly a bipartisan nominee, having worked as an environmental adviser for both Republican and Democratic governors. The Senate already confirmed her once for her current role at the EPA, and I hope they move forward expeditiously with her current confirmation so that she can continue her lifelong work of protecting children and families from air pollution and other hazards.

The ranking member of the committee, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), outlined five “requests” prior to last week’s scheduled vote, and cited dissatisfaction with EPA’s responsiveness to those five requests as the reason all committee Republicans boycotted last week’s vote. These five questions mainly involve transparency issues: two have been fully satisfied and are moot at this point. In fact, each have been answered, and the reasonable requests fulfilled.

What are the points of contention? The only things EPA will likely not do is:

• release the full data behind air pollution studies that reveal personal medical information — EPA has released the rest of the data
• adopt an industry-backed “cost-benefit” analysis for its regulations in place of several comprehensive cost-benefit analyses that take environmental and health factors into account
• give corporations and industry parties the right to join all EPA settlement talks in lawsuits against the agency for violating the law as “intervenors,” allowing industries that pollute illegally sit in on talks about the response to their own illegal activities

Requests to do any of these things are far beyond the scope of a confirmation vote. EPA and Gina McCarthy have acquiesced to all reasonable demands from Senate Republicans. Vitter essentially said so during yesterday’s hearing:

Our key focus has been these five key transparency requests … The good news is that as of last night there has been meaningful progress in terms of our five key transparency requests and that’s why we’re here today, to recognize that progress and to urge additional progress.

In response to the progress made as of last night, I’m sending a letter today to the acting administrator Bob Perciasepe and to Gina McCarthy. And I just want to read relevant parts of the letter. ‘Dear Acting Administrator Perciasepe and Assistant Administrator McCarthy … Because these steps forward were significant, we want to thank you and acknowledge progress including by moving forward with the committee markup of Gina’s nomination…. Should major additional progress be made in all of the five categories over the next two weeks, I will strongly support handling the McCarthy nomination on the senate floor without a cloture vote or any 60 vote threshold. Should all of our requests in the five categories be granted, I will support the McCarthy nomination.

Given that McCarthy and EPA have complied with all reasonable demands, Vitter’s own words would suggest that Gina McCarthy deserves an up-or-down vote without obstruction. Her qualifications, experience, and poise certainly suggest she deserves unanimous approval. The importance of the work that lies ahead of the EPA in the next four years demand a strong, qualified leader like Gina McCarthy.

Ernest Moniz, a former MIT physicist, is the new secretary of energy. The Senate voted to confirm Moniz this afternoon by a vote of 97 to 0.

Moniz now takes over for Steven Chu, who left the Department of Energy in April after a tumultuous tenure in office. Faced with the sequester and a possible continuing resolution that would limit the department’s budget, Moniz will also need to make hard decisions about what programs to fund.

As a moderate progressive on energy issues, Moniz had strong bipartisan support — unlike many of President Obama’s other nominees. However, some environmental groups publicly worried about Moniz because of his support for an “all-of-the-above” strategy to energy production, particularly his promotion of natural gas while at MIT…. Moniz has also been a strong supporter of renewable energy and the need to address climate change.

The Interior Department issued new draft rules on fracking, weaker than a previous version supported by many, and stronger than the “no federal regulations” position advocated for by industry. [Washington Post]

In an extended road trip around the country, a researcher has found that methane emission levels are much higher than previously thought. [Yale Environment 360]

Unfortunately, a climate denier talking point that increasing clouds will cool the earth is even less true than once originally thought. [Climate News Network]

Gina McCarthy’s nomination to head the EPA was voted out of the Senate EPW Committee on party lines, and faces a meeting with Senator Blunt over a levee issue in his state, more requests by Senator Vitter, and finally a vote on the Senate floor. [The Hill]

EPA is the most effective agency in the Office of Management and Budget’s cost-benefit analysis. [Sustainable Business]

The hacker group Anonymous launches Operation Petrol, against the fossil fuel industry. [The Hill]

President Obama travels to Baltimore today on a jobs and opportunity tour, and will visit a company whose president testified on behalf of the Keystone XL pipeline. [Buzzfeed]

Solar power windows could be in the marketplace very soon. [CleanTechnica]

2012′s spring was the earliest on record. [Capital Weather Gang]

Epic drought in Texas has impacted the state’s turkey hunt, and if conditions remain the same, hunters could see less than half of the usual numbers. [Daily Climate]

10 reasons Canada should rethink oil sands development, courtesy of a new website: oilsandsrealitycheck.org. [Oil Sands Reality Check, DeSmogBlog]

The UK rejected a proposal to define tar sands oil as “highly polluting,” signaling that it supports EU imports of the carbon-intensive fuel. [Guardian]

The USGS explains, “The new study builds upon a previous USGS snowpack investigation which showed that, until the 1980s, the northern Rocky Mountains experienced large snowpacks when the central and southern Rockies experienced meager ones, and vice versa. Yet, since the 1980s, there have been simultaneous snowpack declines along the entire length of the Rocky Mountains, and unusually severe declines in the north.”

We reported on that previous work in 2011 — see “USGS: Global Warming Drives Rockies Snowpack Loss Unrivaled in 800 Years, Threatens Western Water Supply.” The USGS explained back then:

The warming and snowpack decline are projected to worsen through the 21st century, foreshadowing a strain on water supplies. Runoff from winter snowpack – layers of snow that accumulate at high altitude – accounts for 60 to 80 percent of the annual water supply for more than 70 million people living in the western United States.

What’s most worrisome is that we now have three major trends driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases that threaten to significantly worsen drought and water problems in the West and Southwest:

1. Less precipitation in many areas (see here)
2. Less snowpack, as the USGS studies have found
3. Hotter temperatures (see “We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming“).

Assuming the anti-science crowd continue to block any serious action, these catastrophic changes will last a long, long time (see NOAA: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

For the record, it was the possibility of losing the Sierra snowpack in the second half of the century that led then Energy Secretary Chu to warn in 2009, “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

Geophysical Research Letters published the new research, “Regional patterns and proximal causes of the recent snowpack decline in the Rocky Mountains” (subs. req’d). Here are the key points from the USGS news release:

The new study has teased apart and quantified the different influences of winter temperature, spring temperature, and precipitation on historic snowpack variations and trends in the region. To distinguish those varying influences, the researchers implemented a regional snow model that uses inputs of monthly temperature and precipitation data from 1895 to 2011.

“Each year we looked at temperature and precipitation variations and the amount of water contained within the snowpack as of April,” said USGS scientist Greg Pederson, the lead author of the study. “Snow deficits were consistent throughout the Rockies due to the lack of precipitation during the cool seasons during the 1930s – coinciding with the Dust Bowl era.  From 1980 on, warmer spring temperatures melted snowpack throughout the Rockies early, regardless of winter precipitation. The model in turn shows temperature as the major driving factor in snowpack declines over the past thirty years.”

… The timing of snowmelt affects not only when water is available for crop irrigation and energy production from hydroelectric dams, but also the risk of regional floods and wildfires. Earlier and faster snowmelt could have repercussions for water supply, risk management, and ecosystem health in western watersheds.

… [Greg] McCabe, co-author of the study, explains that “recent springtime warming also reduced the extent of snow cover at low to middle elevations where temperature has had the greatest impact.”

What’s particularly worrisome is that we’ve seen these dramatic and harmful changes already — and we’ve only warmed about a degree and a half Fahrenheit in the past century.  The problem for our children and grandchildren is that if we continue anywhere near our current greenhouse gas emissions pathway, we are on track to warm five times times that or more this century (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

Another 2011 study, “The Last Drop: Climate Change and the Southwest Water Crisis,” found that drought and reduced precipitation in the U.S. SW alone could cost up to $1 trillion by century’s end.

The time to act was a long time ago, but now is still better than later.

(Credit: Philippe Lissac / GODONG)

Conservative states, business groups, fossil fuel companies, and politicians who deny the science of climate change are petitioning the Supreme Court to reverse Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on greenhouse gases and to weaken the Clean Air Act. This would involve the Court either limiting or reversing its own 2007 decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which found that the EPA is required to regulate carbon pollution as pollution.

Reuters reported that the Court’s decision of whether or not to take up the petitioners’ case will have a significant impact on future efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The appeals to the Supreme Court follow the DC Circuit Court of Appeals’ refusal to reconsider the matter. The Court is expected to decide whether to hear the petitions in October.

The nine petitions, filed over the last few months, seek review of EPA regulations. Petitioners include: states with fossil fuel-friendly governors like Texas, Alaska, and Virginia; industry groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers; as well as fossil fuel companies like Peabody Energy (the world’s largest private-sector coal company). The petition led by Texas includes as fellow petitioners Gov.Rick Perry (R), Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), and Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), who deny the reality of climate science.

Since the Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant, the EPA found that it was a threat to public health through an endangerment finding:

“Pursuant to CAA section 202(a), the Administrator finds that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated both to endanger public health and to endanger public welfare.”

In August of 2012, EPA implemented new mileage standards in order to regulate vehicles, and is expected to do the same with stationary sources — primarily power plants. These standards are already reaping benefits for drivers and manufacturers through increased efficiency, lower emissions, and wider inventory selection. Reducing carbon pollution emitted by power plants would slow the dangerous acceleration of climate change, improve air quality, and would be a net economic positive by avoiding “negative health and environmental effects.”

The wide range of petitions present an unusual number of options for the Supreme Court to rein in or overturn Massachusetts v. EPA (there were 5 petitions challenging the Affordable Care Act in 2011). The Court is more likely to take up one of the petitions on narrower grounds, as most experts see broad action as unlikely.

They represented a range of groups from all fifty states, as well as Puerto Rico, all organized under the “50 States United For Healthy Air” campaign. They spoke this week with elected officials to call for several needed changes:

1) Finalize new carbon limits for new power plants, and establish limits for existing power plants. The regulations for new plants are in the works, driven by a Supreme Court ruling that the executive branch has the power and legal obligation to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. The Obama Administration hasn’t decided yet what to do about emissions from already existing plants, but the National Resources Defense Council recently came up with an impressive proposal. And this can all be done without the need for legislative approval from Congress.

As the “50 States United For Healthy Air” campaign notes, the rising temperatures driven by climate change intensify the damaging health effects of smog and other pollutants. On top of that, climate change can alter the spread of diseases and increase deaths due to heat waves, and all these effects fall harder on poorer and more vulnerable populations.

2) Finalize federally enforceable coal ash rules. Coal ash is created whenever coal is burned, and generators often then dump the toxic residue in landfills — which have given way on more than one occasion, leading to spills that are hazardous to both the environment and human health. Meanwhile, the EPA’s regulations of coal ash have been stuck in limbo for years.

3) Strengthen standards limiting air pollution and smog. Along with carbon dioxide, the burning of fossil fuels emits all sorts of other pollution into the air we breath, driving up rates of asthma, heart and lung disease, hospital visits and premature deaths. Again, these harms fall hardest on children, the old, the poor, and minorities.

Estimates of new EPA rules to crack down on these pollutants suggest the limits could prevent 21,600 premature deaths, 12,540 hospitalizations, 199,000 asthma cases each year. The rules include standards for power plants and industrial emitters, as well as the still-being -developed “Tier 3″ standards for motor vehicles. But again, the rules are still awaiting finalization.

“50 States United For Healthy Air” includes representatives from the American Nurses Association, Earthjustice, the Hip Hop Caucus, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Council of Churches, the National Latino Coalition on Climate Change, and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

It has been a year since the BLM took its first stab at this task — and fell short of what is required. As CAP’s chair and counselor John Podesta said on May 4, 2012, about that effort:

Natural gas is a key component to establishing a clean energy future in the United States, but the public must be confident that it is done safely and responsibly, and the proposed rule released today by the Department of the Interior misses the mark.

The federal rules governing the controversial well stimulation technique commonly called fracking — which haven’t been updated since 1988 — should be a model of thorough, transparent and workable government oversight.

Most of the lands where they will be applied belong to all Americans, a birthright that we hold in trust for generations to come. That alone requires the Interior Department and the Obama administration to not cut corners in deference to the oil and gas industry. Unfortunately there are numerous indications that, as Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) said last week, “The Interior Department seems to be making the rule weaker, not stronger.”

The tests that the new rules should meet include the following:

• Maximum transparency. Chemicals used in fracking must be disclosed to the public to the greatest extent possible. While it is common in states that require disclosure to allow exemptions for trade secrets held by individual companies, this exception has in some cases been stretched to become a loophole. In the new federal rules there should be thorough oversight so that only truly legitimate trade secrets are protected. And even real trade secret information should be disclosed to regulators and medical professionals who may have to respond to health emergencies.
• Disclosure through a government website. The public must have access to full information on where fracking is occurring, and what substances are being used, through a government-run website, not one that is industry supported. The FracFocus website managed by an Oklahoma non-profit with industry ties has numerous flaws. It doesn’t collect and publish some of the information that individual states require be disclosed, and it is very difficult for users of the site to aggregate and analyze information.
• Disclosure before drilling. The public must know before drilling begins, and not only after it is completed, what chemicals are being injected underground. Early disclosure will allow the public and nearby private landowners to assess risks to their health and to document conditions that exist before drilling begins so they can make comparisons if accidents or spills occur.
• Baseline and post-drilling water testing. The Department of the Interior should require that nearby water supplies be tested both before and after drilling.
• State of the art well construction standards. Protection of underground water supplies cannot be guaranteed without application of the highest possible industry standards for well integrity and testing of cement casings.

With the unveiling of the new rules on fracking on public lands the Interior Department under new Secretary Sally Jewell — and the Obama administration as a whole — will be laying down an important marker about how they will manage fossil fuel development on the public’s lands.

Other tests lie ahead. They include whether the administration can build on the progress made during the first term in reforming oil and gas leasing so the program does a better job of cohesive planning over large landscapes and of avoiding conflicts with other resources and uses such as recreation and municipal watersheds. The administration should also make good on its promise to raise decades-old royalty rates paid by oil and gas companies, should adopt a clean resources standard for public lands to re-direct energy development more towards clean energy, and should take into account climate change impacts when doing environmental reviews of energy projects.

Finally, an administration which has been aggressive about increasing fossil fuel production from federal lands should be equally aggressive about conserving public lands that have great value for things other than commercial development. As we have shown in the past, the administration’s record in that regard is insufficient, and lags far behind some of its recent predecessors.

“I don’t know whether it’s [sequester] going to hurt the economy or not. I don’t think anyone quite understands how the sequester is really going to work.” – John Boehner, 3/3/13

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) claims he did not know whether the automatic budget cuts (or sequester) imposed by the Budget Control Act would hurt Americans, but he must not have been paying attention. In February, the Center for American Progress predicted that “Sequester Will Expose Americans to Greater Health Risks and Other Perils.”

Ten weeks after the budget sequester took effect on March 1, the House Appropriations Committee Democrats released “Report on Sequestration Effects and Efforts to Mitigate its Impact.” This brand new analysis confirms many of our predictions that the sequester cuts threaten Americans’ health, safety and well-being.

The sequester cuts in energy and environment related programs generally have had the following impacts so far:

• Less ability to fight wildfires
• Greater exposure to climate related extreme weather
• Less protection from air pollution
• Reduced protection for national parks and other protected places

Climate Progress Deputy Editor Ryan Koronowski described the impact of budget cuts on our ability to fight wildfires this summer in what many experts believe will be quite a vicious fire season.

The sequester will expose Americans to additional risks from climate change. The House Appropriations Committee Democrats report that

The sequester will result in a cut of at least $50 million from NOAA’s geostationary weather satellite program, which provides continuous monitoring to track severe weather. The cut will cause a 3-6 month satellite launch delay, increasing the likelihood of having fewer than two operational geostationary weather satellites in the 2017 timeframe, increasing the risk of inaccurate forecasts for hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe thunderstorms, with further risks to public safety and costs from weather-related damage.

In addition, NASA’s science budget cuts will affect “climate research satellites.”

These cuts follow two years when the 25 most severe climate related floods, drought, storms, heat waves, and wildfires took 1,107 lives and caused $188 billion in damages. A CAP analysis estimated that taxpayers spent a total of $136 billion on relief and recovery for these and other disasters that occurred in 2011-2012 — about $400 per home per year. The reduction in weather forecasting and climate research will hamper our ability to warn vulnerable communities about future extreme weather events, increasing their risk.

The House report also found that the Environmental Protection Agency will have less ability to protect people from air pollution.

EPA plans to delay the implementation of monitoring sites for dangerous air pollutants and cut grants to State regulators. The result will be reduced enforcement of air pollution rules, potentially overturning years of public health benefits from increasing air pollution.

For instance, this will reduce the number of “off-road monitors” that measure levels of smog-forming chemicals. In addition, cuts will make it more difficult for state agencies to enforce restrictions on pollution, according to the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.

Federal enforcement of environmental safeguards is also impaired. Doug Parker, the director of EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) warned that:

There are areas where there were boots on the ground where there are no longer boots on the ground…. There are significant geographic regions we can no longer cover.

Polluters know that if there are fewer cops on the beat then they can emit more toxic and other harmful pollutants with less risk of discovery.

As Climate Progress has repeatedly noted, it is imperative that we speed the conversion from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewable energy. But we will continue to rely on oil and natural gas to fuel our transportation and electricity, respectively, while this transition is underway. It is to our economic and security benefit to produce these fuels here, including from public lands and waters set aside for that purpose (though not through allowing drilling in currently protected places). Yet the House report determined that the U.S. will produce less domestic fuel due to the sequester.

The Bureau of Land Management is forced to slow down approval of oil and gas drilling permits and cancel lease sales to meet the spending reductions required by the sequester. 300 to 400 fewer drilling permits will be processed, 150 fewer leases issued, and two lease sales cancelled this year, all as a direct result of the sequester. There will be an estimated $150 million in revenue losses to the States and U.S. Treasury because of these reduced lease sales and drilling permits.

The sequester will also curtail Americans ability to hunt, fish, hike, boat, and otherwise enjoy our millions of acres of wild places. The House report found that:

The public should be prepared for reduced hours and services this year at our nation’s 401 national parks, 155 national forests, 561 national wildlife refuges, and more than 258 public land units. For the National Park Service alone, the sequester means that 900 permanent positions are being left unfilled and 1000 fewer seasonal workers are being hired this year.

Fewer employees means fewer staff at visitor centers, and less interpretive talks and campfire programs that the public has come to expect when they visit these special wild places.

These are just some of the risks posed by this meat ax approach to cutting government spending at a time when the federal budget deficit is already shrinking. Americans can’t afford more of this untargeted austerity.

That was the message delivered by a group of business leaders who visited Washington, D.C. this week to tell their elected officials that protected public lands like national parks, national monuments, and wildness areas are key to attracting talent and maintaining their bottom line.  As Jeff Welch, the co-founder and president of Bozeman, Montana-based communications and advertising firm MercuryCSC put it:

The outdoors for us in our region is a big competitive advantage, it helps us recruit people from all over the country, even other places in the world to come to Montana.  It’s really the only thing we have as a competitive advantage in a place like Bozeman.

And the president of software company Foundant Technologies, also located in Bozeman, echoed this sentiment:

We use the outdoors as a competitive advantage to attract and retain employees.  And so the outdoors and access to public lands and preservation of public lands are really critical to our business.

These anecdotes are supported by growing research about the economic value of public lands.  For example, a report from economic consulting firm Headwaters Economics found that the American West’s protected public lands help to create a high quality of life in the region, which draws both entrepreneurs and their employees.  This is one reason that the region has seen more employment growth over the last 40 years compared to the United States overall (graph below). Other growth indicators such as population and personal income have also increased more in the West than in the rest of the country.

The report from Headwaters Economics also discusses how the economy of the West is changing.  Whereas it once was based on resource extraction, it is diversifying to be more knowledge-based with industries like technology and health care.  As the group writes, “This western job growth was almost entirely in services industries such as health care, real estate, high-tech, and finance and insurance, which created 19.3 million net new jobs, many of them high-paying.”

The business leaders’ trip to Washington comes at an important time for public lands policy.  Sally Jewell, the former chief executive of outdoor company REI, was confirmed as the Secretary of the Interior last month.  She will have a number of important decisions on her plate regarding public lands, from new rules about drilling and hydraulic fracturing to protecting landscapes that local communities want to see set aside for future generations.

And she will also have the challenge of better balancing energy development and conservation on public lands considering that during the first term of the Obama administration, 6.3 million acres of public lands were leased to oil and gas companies while only 2.6 million acres were permanently protected.

(Credit: TANAKA Juuyoh/Flickr)

For more than 30 years, ocean fish and mammals have migrated away from warming equatorial waters and toward the poles, providing more evidence climate change has already had broad global consequences. [Washington Post]

Fish and other sea life have been heading toward the Earth’s poles for more than three decades, a mass migration to cooler waters that provides more evidence of a rapidly warming planet and has repercussions for fish harvests around the globe, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Wednesday.

The study, in the journal Nature, found that significant numbers of 968 species of fish and invertebrates examined by University of British Columbia researchers moved to escape the warming waters of their original habitats. Previous studies had demonstrated the same phenomenon for specific places in the world’s oceans. The authors said their research is the first to assess the migration worldwide and to look back as far as 1970.

The research is more confirmation that “global change is real and has been real for a long time. It’s not something in the distant future. It is well underway,” said Boris Worm, a professor of marine biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who was not part of the study.

EPA nominee Gina McCarthy should get a real vote in the Environment and Public Works Committee today at noon, while Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz is set to get a vote on the Senate floor. [The Hill]

George Bush’s EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said that GOP members of the EPW Committee “looked like sore losers” when they boycotted McCarthy’s vote hearing last week. [National Journal]

A new study confirms broad, 97.1% consensus among peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals that humans activity causes global warming. [Guardian, Reuters, ThinkProgress]

The U.S. military’s programmatic efforts to rely less on fossil fuels are threatened by the sequester. [Medill]

BP wants British Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene regarding the compensation of businesses affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. [BBC]

The GAO finds that the federal government should help local communities adapt to the impacts of climate change. [The Hill]

The 5th Circuit ruled against a lawsuit filed by Mississippi coastal residents arguing that fossil fuel emissions contributed to the strength of Hurricane Katrina. [Clarion Ledger]

Organizing for Action called on supporters to press the Republican EPW members for boycotting McCarthy’s nomination hearing. [The Hill]

Weather prediction is slated to improve significantly following upgrades to the two supercomputers the National Weather Service uses to forecast local, national, and global weather patterns. [Washington Post]

Spoiled food could be used to power grocery stores using clean electricity. [LA Times]

A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97 percent consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.

Lead author John Cook created a short video abstract summarizing the study.

The Abstracts Survey

The first step of our approach involved expanding the original survey of the peer-reviewed scientific literature in Oreskes (2004). We performed a keyword search of peer-reviewed scientific journal publications (in the ISI Web of Science) for the terms ‘global warming’ and ‘global climate change’ between the years 1991 and 2011, which returned over 12,000 papers. John Cook created a web-based system that would randomly display a paper’s abstract (summary). We agreed upon definitions of possible categories: explicit or implicit endorsement of human-caused global warming, no position, and implicit or explicit rejection (or minimization of the human influence).

Our approach was also similar to that taken by James Powell, as illustrated in the popular graphic below. Powell examined nearly 14,000 abstracts, searching for explicit rejections of human-caused global warming, finding only 24. We took this approach further, also looking at implicit rejections, no opinions, and implicit/explicit endorsements.

We took a conservative approach in our ratings. For example, a study which takes it for granted that global warming will continue for the foreseeable future could easily be put into the implicit endorsement category; there is no reason to expect global warming to continue indefinitely unless humans are causing it. However, unless an abstract included (either implicit or explicit) language about the cause of the warming, we categorized it as ‘no position’.

Note that John Cook also initiated a spinoff from the project with a survey of climate blog participants re-rating a subset of these same abstracts. However, this spinoff is not a part of our research or conclusions.

The Team

A team of Skeptical Science volunteers proceeded to categorize the 12,000 abstracts — the most comprehensive survey of its kind to date. Each paper was rated independently at least twice, with the identity of the other co-rater not known. A dozen team members completed most of the 24,000+ ratings. There was no funding provided for this project; all the work was performed on a purely voluntary basis.

Once we finished the 24,000+ ratings, we went back and checked the abstracts where there were disagreements. If the disagreement about a given paper couldn’t be settled by the two initial raters, a third person acted as the tie-breaker.

The volunteers were an internationally diverse group. Team members’ home countries included Australia, USA, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Germany, Finland, and Italy.

The Self-Ratings

As an independent test of the measured consensus, we also emailed over 8,500 authors and asked them to rate their own papers using our same categories. The most appropriate expert to rate the level of endorsement of a published paper is the author of the paper, after all. We received responses from 1,200 scientists who rated a total of over 2,100 papers. Unlike our team’s ratings that only considered the summary of each paper presented in the abstract, the scientists considered the entire paper in the self-ratings.

The 97% Consensus Results

Based on our abstract ratings, we found that just over 4,000 papers expressed a position on the cause of global warming, 97.1% of which endorsed human-caused global warming. In the self-ratings, nearly 1,400 papers were rated as taking a position, 97.2% of which endorsed human-caused global warming.

We found that about two-thirds of papers didn’t express a position on the subject in the abstract, which confirms that we were conservative in our initial abstract ratings. This result isn’t surprising for two reasons: 1) most journals have strict word limits for their abstracts, and 2) frankly, every scientist doing climate research knows humans are causing global warming. There’s no longer a need to state something so obvious. For example, would you expect every geological paper to note in its abstract that the Earth is a spherical body that orbits the sun?

This result was also predicted by Oreskes (2007), which noted that scientists

“… generally focus their discussions on questions that are still disputed or unanswered rather than on matters about which everyone agrees”

However, according to the author self-ratings, nearly two-thirds of the papers in our survey do express a position on the subject somewhere in the paper.

We also found that the consensus has strengthened gradually over time. The slow rate reflects that there has been little room to grow, because the consensus on human-caused global warming has generally always been over 90% since 1991. Nevertheless, in both the abstract ratings and self-ratings, we found that the consensus has grown to about 98% as of 2011.

Percentage of papers endorsing the consensus among only papers that express a position endorsing or rejecting the consensus. From Cook et al. (2013).

Our results are also consistent with previous research finding a 97 percent consensus amongst climate experts on the human cause of global warming. Doran and Zimmerman (2009) surveyed Earth scientists, and found that of the 77 scientists responding to their survey who are actively publishing climate science research, 75 (97.4%) agreed that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.” Anderegg et al. (2010) compiled a list of 908 researchers with at least 20 peer-reviewed climate publications. They found that:

“≈97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of ACC [anthropogenic climate change]“

In our survey, among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus. This is greater than 97% consensus of peer-reviewed papers because endorsement papers had more authors than rejection papers, on average. Thus there is a 97.1% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature, and a 98.4% consensus amongst scientists researching climate change.

Why is this Important?

Several studies have shown that people who correctly perceive the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming are more likely to support government action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. This was most recently shown in McCright et al. (2013), recently published in the journal Climatic Change. People will defer to the judgment of experts, and they trust climate scientists on the subject of global warming.

However, research has also shown that the public is misinformed on the climate consensus. For example, a 2012 poll from US Pew Research Center found less than half of Americans thought that scientists agreed that humans were causing global warming. One contributor to this misperception is false balance in the media, particularly in the US, where most climate stories are “balanced” with a “skeptic” perspective. However, this results in making the 3 percent seem much larger, like 50 percent. In trying to achieve “balance”, the media has actually created a very unbalanced perception of reality. As a result, people believe scientists are still split about what’s causing global warming, and therefore there is not nearly enough public support or motivation to solve the problem.\

Such false balance has long been the goal of a dedicated misinformation campaign waged by the fossil fuel industry. Just as one example, in 1991 Western Fuels Association conducted a $510,000 campaign whose primary goal was to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).” These vested interests have exploited the media desire to appear “balanced.”

Open Access for Maximum Transparency

We chose to submit our paper to Environmental Research Letters because it is a well-respected, high-impact journal, but also because it offers the option of making a paper available by open access, meaning that for an up-front fee, the paper can be made free for anybody to download. This was important to us, because we want our results to be as accessible and transparent as possible.

To pay the open access fee, in keeping with the citizen science approach, we asked for donations from Skeptical Science readers. We received over 50 donations in less than 10 hours to fully crowd-fund the $1,600 open access cost.

Human-Caused Global Warming

We fully anticipate that some climate contrarians will respond by saying “we don’t dispute that humans cause some global warming.” First of all, there are a lot of people who do dispute that there is a consensus that humans cause any global warming. Our paper shows that their position is not supported in the scientific literature.

Second, we did look for papers that quantify the human contribution to global warming, and most are not that specific. However, as noted above, if a paper minimized the human contribution, we classified that as a rejection. For example, if a paper were to say “the sun caused most of the global warming over the past century,” that would be included in the less than 3% of papers in the rejection categories.

Many studies simply defer to the expert summary of climate science research put together by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which states that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century has been caused by humans. According to recent research, that statement is actually too conservative.

Of the papers that specifically examine the human and natural causes of global warming, virtually all conclude that humans are the dominant cause over the past 50 to 100 years.

Net human and natural percent contributions to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, light green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange), Wigley and Santer 2012 (WS12, dark green), and Jones et al. 2013 (J12, pink).

Most studies simply accept this fact and go on to examine the consequences of this human-caused global warming and associated climate change.

Another important point is that once you accept that humans are causing global warming, you must also accept that global warming is still happening; humans cause global warming by increasing the greenhouse effect, and our greenhouse gas emissions just keep accelerating. This ties in to our previous posts noting that global warming is accelerating; but that over the past decade, most of that warming has gone into the oceans (including the oft-neglected deep oceans). If you accept that humans are causing global warming, as over 97% of peer-reviewed scientific papers do, then this conclusion should not be at all controversial. With all this evidence for human-caused global warming, it couldn’t simply have just stopped, so the heat must be going somewhere. Scientists have found it in the oceans.

Spread the Word

Awareness of the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming is a key factor in peoples’ decisions whether or not to support action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is a gap here due to the public’s lack of awareness of the consensus. Thus it’s critical that we make people aware of these results. To that end, design and advertising firm SJI Associates generously created a website pro-bono, centered around the results of our survey. The website can be viewed at TheConsensusProject.com, and it includes a page where relevant and useful graphics like the one at the top of this post can be shared. You can also follow The Consensus Project on Twitter @ConsensusProj.

Quite possibly the most important thing to communicate about climate change is that there is a 97 percent consensus amongst the scientific experts and scientific research that humans are causing global warming. Let’s spread the word and close the consensus gap.

– By Dana Nuccitelli and John Cook. This piece was originally published at Skeptical Science and was reprinted with permission.

A new report from the House Appropriation committee Democrats found that the Forest service “will have 500 fewer firefighters, 50-70 fewer fire engines, and two fewer aircraft because of sequestration.” Some of the equipment it does still have is outdated — such as the 50-years-old-on-average tanker planes that have crashed multiple times in the last decade, killing 14 people.

A Fox News radio AM talk show expressed incredulity that President Obama and Agriculture Secretary Vilsack “could not find $115 million of fat in the budget so they cut firefighters.” One of the more harmful aspects of sequestration is that the cuts take place “across-the-board” and do not permit the same flexibility in moving funds around within an agency.

Because last year’s wildfire season was so severe, the USDA Forest Service faced a $400 million shortfall for active firefighting and had to borrow money from fire prevention programs to cover the costs. These programs included paying for brush removal from public lands and protecting against invasive plants, disease, insect infestations, and fires. Eventually Congress reimbursed the Forest Service for the shortfall via the 2013 Continuing Resolution but the delays hurt prevention efforts. Last year’s fire season consisted of 67,700 fires burned 9 million acres.

This year, as of May 3, there have been 13,115 wildfires, burning 153,000 acres. Compounding the restraints posed by the inflexible sequester, agencies foresee a $700 million deficit in direct firefighting activities, so similar programs will be de-funded (such as a hazardous-fuels-reduction program to remove long-burning combustible materials from the path of fires).

Congress calculates wildfire suppression funds by averaging the cost over the last ten years. As climate change worsens drought year after year, this calculation becomes deficient. The wildfire season used to range between June and September, but has now expanded to include May and October.

The Western U.S. faces low mountain snowpack, and the most recent U.S. Seasonal Drought Monitor Outlook finds that “drought is forecast to either develop or persist across the western contiguous U.S. as this region enters its dry season.”

Dry conditions in nearly half the country make hampered fire management budgets and sequestration cuts even more dangerous for residents and will lead to even more shortfalls this season. A recent report found that climate change will double the area burned by wildfires by 2050.

Drought and wildfires, in addition to harming people and property, also have dramatic impacts on insects like monarch butterflies, as well as mammals, birds, reptiles, and nearly every plant in the region.

Local communities are trying to face climate adaptation issues alongside the federal government. Texas is preparing for record drought by creating a “rainy day” infrastructure water fund, though none of the legislators acknowledge that climate change is a primary cause of increasing droughts.

A recent report from the General Accounting Office found that the federal government needs to do a better job helping local governments adapt to climate change and integrate climate impacts into infrastructure planning. The report identified roads, bridges, wastewater systems, and federal facilities as particularly vulnerable. Sequestration makes it nearly impossible for the federal government to help local communities adapt to and prepare for climate change-fueled extreme weather and wildfires.

Journalists commonly cited eight groups with known oil, gas, and coal funding: The American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Institute for Energy Research (and its arm American Energy Alliance).

In total, they were cited 357 times, but outlets identified their funding from the Koch brothers, American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, or General Motors a mere one-third of the time:

Based on a Nexus search, UCS’s Elliott Negin found the rate of reporting varies widely across outlets: Politico and the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press disclosed funding over 40 percent of the time. The two largest papers in the country, USA Today and Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch), disclosed this information the least. And if Koch Industries succeeds in its bid for the Los Angeles Times, along with seven other major papers, it is possible the average will drop even more.

By not disclosing what exactly fuels myths about climate change science and clean energy, readers are free to take claims from groups at face value. Take an example from Politico on Wednesday, which ran an article on wind turbines and the California condor. Politico quotes the American Energy Alliance at length, but only identifies it as “the political arm of the energy industry-funded Institute for Energy Research,” although the Koch affiliate has pledged to fight wind energy.

One reason for journalists return to fossil fuel talking heads is false balance. Journalists include quotes from climate deniers to present “the other side,” even though on issues like climate, one is overwhelmingly substantiated in the scientific field. Bloomberg News recently did this by giving equal weight to climate science denier Marc Morano’s long-debunked arguments.

By Dan Lashof Via NRDC Switchboard

With all the debate on the federal budget in Congress, climate change rarely gets mentioned as a deficit driver. Yet dealing with climate disruption was one of the largest non-defense discretionary budget items in 2012. Indeed, as NRDC shows in Who Pays for Climate Change?, when all federal spending on last year’s droughts, storms, floods, and forest fires are added up, the U.S. Climate Disruption Budget was nearly $100 billion, equivalent to 16% of total non-defense discretionary spending in the federal budget—larger than any official spending category.

That means that federal spending to deal with extreme weather made worse by climate change far exceeded total spending aimed at solving the problem. In fact, it was eight times EPA’s total budget and eight times total spending on energy.

Overall the insurance industry estimates that 2012 was the second costliest year in U.S. history for climate-related disasters, with over $139 billion in damages. But private insurers themselves only covered about 25% of these costs ($33 billion), leaving the federal government and its public insurance enterprises to pay for the majority of the remaining claims. As a result, the U.S. government paid more than three times as much as private insurers did for climate-related disasters in 2012.

That reflects a major shift in liabilities with respect to climate change away from private insurers to public alternatives that began in earnest following the $72 billion hit the industry took in 2005 from hurricane Katrina.

Federal spending related to climate disruption falls into two major categories: Storms and droughts.

Spending related to storms includes appropriated funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as well as emergency supplemental appropriations following major disasters, such as Superstorm Sandy. It also includes the National Flood Insurance Program, which is supposed to be self-supporting, but is increasingly under water.

Drought-related spending includes the federal crop insurance program as well as the government’s share of higher food costs (see this post for more details).

The figure below shows how the federal climate disruption budget breaks down.

While some of these federal programs—such as forest fire prevention, crop insurance, flood coverage, and disaster preparedness—offer wider benefits to the country, it should be noted that these liabilities have largely been assumed by the public sector due to a lack of private sector alternatives. The true scorekeepers of climate risk—the insurance industry—realizes it can’t win when the dice are increasingly loaded with carbon pollution, so it’s walking away from the table, leaving taxpayers holding the bag. Last year that cost amounted to over $1100 per taxpayer, and we can expect to see even higher costs in future as CO2 concentrations continue to soar past 400 parts per million.

Even as the budget to clean up climate disruptions hit a record high in 2012 and is expected to continue to grow, the budget for programs to fight climate disruption—such as environmental enforcement, energy efficiency, clean energy vehicle research, and ARPA-E—suffered cuts of more than $100 million the “sequester” that went into effect in March and remain under continued pressure from the budget-cutting process.

Our climate plan is, in effect, to cut critical investments now for the sake of small short-term deficit reductions and send our children the tax bills to clean up the mess.

That’s colossally short-sighted, even by Washington standards.

– Dan Lashof is director of NRDC’s climate and clean air program. Reprinted with permission from NRDC Switchboard.

But it’s the metaphor from an unnamed Obama administration official explaining the umpteenth delay that caught my eye.

First, however, Reuters reported this “exclusive” last Friday:

The Obama administration is unlikely to make a decision on the Canada-to-Nebraska Keystone XL pipeline until late this year as it painstakingly weighs the project’s impact on the environment and on energy security, a U.S. official and analysts said on Friday.

The decision may not be made until November, December or even early 2014, said a U.S. official, as President Barack Obama will not rush the process, which still has a number of stages to work through. One of those stages has not even begun yet and will run for months.

The Administration is certainly giving pains. Whether it is taking them remains to be seen. But I digress.

So what kind of pains do they claim they are they taking?

“The president has to be able to show that the administration looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone,” said the official, who did not want to be named given the sensitive nature of the project.

First off, yes, it’s true, the pipeline has a sensitive nature. Heck, it still cries at “It’s a Wonderful Life” not to mention “E.T.” and “Bambi.” Oh and forget entirely about watching “Titanic” with the tar sands pipeline, at least while we are rearranging the deck chairs.

Bottom line on Keystone’s sensitive nature: Almost anything will make it spring a leak. But don’t mention that in public, of course. The pipeline is very touchy about that. I digress again.

It’s this metaphor I liked: Team Obama has to show it “looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone.”

Reuters notes, “The EPA had concerns about the level of emissions from Canada’s oil sands, where crude production is carbon-intensive. It also took issue with the State Department’s conclusion that the pipeline would have no effect on climate because the oil sands would make it to market whether or not the pipeline was approved.”

Team Obama is looking in the wrong place — in fact, it’s looking in the wrong direction entirely. The most worrisome impact of Keystone isn’t under every stone, heck, it isn’t under any stone. It is in the atmosphere, an accelerated change in the climate.

But whatever you do, don’t mention those climate impacts out loud. Turns out the pipeline is sensitive about them, too.

So here’s a drill down into what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, and what we can do about it.

First, the good news. The total carbon intensity of the economy dropped 17.9 percent over those ten years. That’s how much carbon we release for every million dollars our economy produces. Our carbon emissions per person are also down 12.6 percent, and the amount of energy we use for every million dollars of economic production we crank out is down 15.2 percent. That last number is good news for energy efficiency, but it’s the headline number that’s really important. It means we’re getting better at producing jobs and incomes while doing less damage to the global climate. Here’s a breakdown of the economy’s carbon intensity by state:

PERCENT CHANGE IN CARBON INTENSITY OF ECONOMY 2000 – 2010

Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency

Remember, we want reductions, so the columns in the negative are good — and all but Missouri are. Unfortunately, while some of this is certainly more renewable energy (driven by state/federal policy) and cheap natural gas and tightened fuel efficiency standards, a lot of it is also the recession. A sluggish economy is forcing us to learn to do more with less. The real question is whether we can hold onto those lessons once growth picks back up.

Now the bad news. Total carbon emissions only dropped 4.2 percent. That’s what will determine whether we catastrophically destabilize the climate. The planet doesn’t care how efficiently we produce carbon, it just cares how much carbon we produce. Again, here’s a breakdown by state. Notice how fewer columns are in the negative:

PERCENT CHANGE IN TOTAL CARBON EMISSIONS 2000 – 2010

Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency

Right now our increased efficiency and lower carbon intensity is being swamped by America’s rising population and the sheer scale of its economy. And the carbon intensity of our energy — how much carbon we produce per unit of energy — is only down 3.2 percent. So we’re getting better at using energy more efficiently, but not so much at producing less carbon while generating that energy.

That’s a big problem. The International Energy Agency recently ran the numbers and determined that the carbon intensity of the United States’ energy sector has barely budged since 1990. Same for the carbon intensity of the world’s energy production. If those numbers don’t drop drastically by 2050, we’re headed for six degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100.

The 6DS scenario leads to 6C warming by 2100.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that would be a worldwide disaster. First, more heat waves, droughts, floods, storms, and extreme weather. Then, most likely, crop failures and worldwide destabilization of food supplies. Marine ecologies and the food chains they support for humans would fall apart as well. Combine all that with rising seas, and many places would become uninhabitable, creating huge numbers of climate refugees.

So what do we do? In America, ultimately, we need much more investment in clean energy and a meaningful price on carbon. But that requires action by Congress, which is hopelessly deadlocked for the moment.

That means the Obama Administration needs to find an alternative route to bringing down carbon emissions. Thanks to the Clean Air Act and a Supreme Court ruling, the White House has both the power and the legal obligation to regulate carbon emissions via the Environmental Protection Agency. The question is how. They’re already finalizing rules for new power plants, but they need to decide what to do about existing power plants.

To that end, the Natural Resources Defense Council has stepped in with a sophisticated proposal. It would allow power generators a mix of options to meet emissions targets and thus earn credits they can trade with other emitters, and it would set a different emissions caps for different states based on the fuel mix in the energy sector. That last point is worth emphasizing in light of the new EIA report, since it makes clear how much energy use, progress on efficiency, and reliance on coal versus natural gas versus renewables differs from state to state.

All told, the NRDC’s proposal could cut carbon emissions from power plants 26 percent from 2005′s levels by 2020, according to widely accepted models:

The NRDC’s plan wouldn’t get us all the way to where we need to go. It only covers power generation, for one thing, leaving emissions from cars and many other forms of transportation untouched. But it would be a good start. And unlike most policy changes, a lack of political will is literally the only thing that could prevent the Obama Administration from implementing it.

China's Loess Plateau

A UCLA news release reveals yet another key part of the world is far more sensitive to climate change forcing than the models had suggested.

Temperatures in central China are 10 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit hotter today than they were 20,000 years ago, during the last ice age, UCLA researchers report — an increase two to four times greater than many scientists previously thought.

The findings, published today in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help researchers develop more accurate models of past climate change and better predict such changes in the future.

“Previously, we could only infer temperature on land through changes in climate archives like tree rings or pollen over time,” said lead author Robert Eagle, a UCLA researcher in the department of Earth and space sciences. “This is the first time that temperature has been determined accurately on land at the time of the last ice age.”

To make their temperature measurements, the scientists used a technique known as clumped isotope thermometry, which detects subtle atomic differences in calcium carbonate, a compound commonly found in rocks, snail shells and wind-blown dust deposits known as loess. The method is the most accurate land-based temperature-determination tool available today.

“We can now tell what temperatures were on land 20,000 years ago with more accuracy than was ever previously possible,” said senior author Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

Tripati and Eagle chose to study the Loess Plateau in central China, a 250,000-square-mile agricultural region some 500 miles southwest of Beijing, because of its wide expanses of loess, the silty sediments that give the area its name and which contain deposits from the last ice age.

“We can calculate temperatures and reconstruct the chemistry of rainwater from the past ice age, then compare this to the present day climate in specific regions,” Eagle said. “We can then use this information to validate current climate models and study atmospheric processes.”

The researchers collected two unique ice age sample types from the Loess Plateau region: fossilized land-snail shells and soil deposits. While snails calcify quickly over just a few years, soil carbonates grow over longer time periods, ranging from a few hundred to thousands of years. Eagle and Tripati used clumped isotope thermometry to determine the temperature at which these samples formed roughly 20,000 years ago.

“One of the most important aspects of the study was showing that we could get the same result from such different types of carbonates,” said Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “Even though these materials integrate over very different time frames, they gave us the same result.”

Comparing the findings with climate models

When Eagle and Tripati matched their findings against climate models predicting the change in temperature in central China from the previous ice age to the present, they found that those models that took into account atmospheric processes tended to be more accurate.

“The climate models that did the best job of resolving temperature changes in this region were the ones that accurately depicted very large-scale atmospheric processes, such as patterns of winds in the atmosphere, the position of the jet stream and various atmospheric fronts,” Tripati said. “The models that didn’t resolve these atmospheric phenomena tended to do a poorer job of predicting temperature.

“It’s so important to have models that accurately depict regional climates on land for the study of past and future climate change. We were surprised at how poorly most climate models predicted temperature change in central China and also surprised at how sensitive this region has been to changes in climate forcing.”

Since the last ice age, numerous factors have influenced changes in global wind and precipitation patterns in Earth’s atmosphere. Atmospheric processes move in relation to a standing, stationary wave, which is an oscillating reference point that wraps around our planet like an invisible piece of string. The position of that wave around our planet has changed over time. Contributing factors have been a rise in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, changes in incoming solar radiation and changes in the amount of ice covering the Earth’s surface.

For example, ice sheets can deflect the stationary waves so that winds and precipitation patterns fall more frequently in certain locations on the planet. But as ice has melted over the last 20,000 years, the stationary waves have shifted, influencing the circulation of the atmosphere.

“Clumped isotope thermometry has allowed us to say with more confidence how temperatures have warmed in central China, and how the chemistry of rainfall has changed. The climate models that did the best job of simulating temperature changes seemed to also be the ones to give the best depiction of changes in water cycling in this region,” Tripati said. “Our results suggest that in this region, temperature, water cycling and winds are very sensitive to changing climate forcing. Rises in greenhouse gas levels, melting ice sheets and changes in solar radiation can all affect not only temperature but precipitation and winds as well.”

“We have not dissected out the specific role of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in this study, but they are certainly a contributing factor to temperature change and ice-sheet extent,” Eagle said.

The climate model developed by researchers at France’s Institut Pierre Simon Laplace des sciences de l’Environnement Global (the IPSL model) closely matched the data for this region in this study, but it has traditionally been one of the less frequently used climate models for predicting future climate change.

“That is quite extraordinary,” said Eagle, “because while more commonly used models have simulated a very small amount of temperature change in the region, that prediction was not validated by our data.”

Types of sediment similar to that found in central China exist in the Midwestern U.S., ranging from Mississippi to Nebraska, and they are currently being studied by scientists at UCLA.

“One of the things we’re doing is measuring samples from the loess deposits in the Midwestern U.S. to see how climate has changed in these regions,” Tripati said. “These deposits were also formed at the time of the last ice age and contain similar types of snail and soil carbonates that we analyzed in central China. It will be interesting to repeat a similar investigation in this region.”

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (EAR-0949191).

– A UCLA news release

If there were one American industry that would be particularly worried about climate change it would have to be insurance, right?

From Hurricane Sandy’s devastating blow to the Northeast to the protracted drought that hit the Midwest Corn Belt, natural catastrophes across the United States pounded insurers last year, generating $35 billion in privately insured property losses, $11 billion more than the average over the last decade.

And the industry expects the situation will get worse. “Numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the U.S. East Coast in the long term,” said Peter Höppe, who heads Geo Risks Research at the reinsurance giant Munich Re. “The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge.” Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn’t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming.

“Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought,” Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told me last week. “It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought.”

Yet when I asked Mr. Nutter what the American insurance industry was doing to combat global warming, his answer was surprising: nothing much. “The industry has really not been engaged in advocacy related to carbon taxes or proposals addressing carbon,” he said. While some big European reinsurers like Munich Re and Swiss Re support efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, “in the United States the household names really have not engaged at all.” Instead, the focus of insurers’ advocacy efforts is zoning rules and disaster mitigation.

Alaska politicians wrestle with the impacts of climate change while adhering to recent policy conversions to not acknowledge the causes of climate change. [Guardian]

Secretary Kerry regrets that the U.S. has not done more on climate change. [The Hill]

The vaunted Thames flood barrier system may become overwhelmed by rising sea levels and flooding by the end of the century. [Guardian]

A new IEA report sees U.S. oil and gas production rising this decade, fueling the fossil fuel dependency of developing nations and giving short shrift to the climate impacts. [CNBC]

The European Union’s civil aviation body faces a September deadline to reduce global airline emissions, with little progress thus far. [Reuters]

Despite calls for no oil development in the fragile region, the Arctic Council added 6 new members, signing an oil spill disaster treaty acknowledging that there would be increased economic development and shipping. [New York Times, Bloomberg]

A new report from the Revenue Watch Institute finds that governments dependent on mining and oil-and-gas production face more corruption and government mismanagement. [The Hill]

NJ Governor Chris Christie has been active in responding to Superstorm Sandy but labels the cause of the storm “esoteric” which conflicts with his first-term environmental commitments. [Washington Post op-ed]

New research links the high suicide rate of North Carolina with coal-fired power plant pollution. [CleanTechnica]

Sulfur dioxide (the pollutant) does not seem to block the sun’s rays as much as previously thought. [LA Times]

Senator Jim Inhofe introduced legislation calling for increased oil drilling to offset Iranian oil, which would be difficult given the realities of the global oil market. [The Hill]

Billionaire environmentalist Ted Turner and coal-based utility Southern Co. are jointly purchasing five solar projects, significantly increasing the utility’s solar power investment portfolio. [Bloomberg]

Garrey Carruthers, NMSU President

By a 3-2 vote on Monday, May 6, the New Mexico State University Board of Regents selected Garrey Carruthers, who questions the science of climate change, to be the next president of the land-grant institution in drought-plagued Las Cruces, despite widespread concern from faculty, students, alumni, and local legislators.

After news reports that Carruthers chaired a tobacco-industry front group in the 1990s and is a global warming skeptic, four New Mexico state representatives sent a letter to Board of Regents chair Mike Cheney questioning the wisdom of his candidacy. Last weekend, over 300 New Mexico residents signed a Forecast the Facts petition to the Board of Regents, saying: “Don’t select Garrey Carruthers, who rejects the science of climate change, to be the next president of New Mexico State University.” The petition was delivered to the board by an NMSU student.

Board of Regents Chair Mike Cheney, a local businessman and one of the three supporters of Carruthers, told reporters that he did not speak with the legislators concerned with Carruthers’ ties to Phillip Morris and his questioning of climate science:

On Monday, Cheney said he had not talked to Carruthers about his involvement in TASSC and still hoped to speak to several of the legislators about their concerns about Carruthers’ work on behalf of Philip Morris.

“When we began the search process, we realized immediately that our next president must clearly understand the environment,” Cheney said without a sense of irony.

In a comment on the Forecast the Facts petition, Dr. Stephen S. Mulkey, the president of Unity College in Unity, ME, urged against the selection of Carruthers:

Higher education should be leading our civilization in addressing the causes and impacts of climate change. It matters little whether or not Mr. Carruthers is a scientist or economist. What matters is that he respect and accept the overwhelming consensus of the experts, and that he lead his institution in responding to what is simply the greatest threat to civilization in the modern era. College and university presidents have an ethical obligation to this generation of students. Given the clarity of the scientific reality, failing to accept this charge should disqualify any candidate from a leadership position in higher education.

Last year, Dr. Mulkey explained on ClimateProgress his college’s decision to become the first in the nation to divest from fossil fuels.

In April 2007, NMSU President Michael Martin signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. As part of the commitment, NMSU submitted a comprehensive Climate Action Plan which lays out a framework for “climate neutrality” by 2050, with zero net greenhouse pollution. This commitment is institutional, and not subject to changes in the presidency — in 2012, the university reported major progress in cutting greenhouse pollution. The Presidents’ Climate Commitment website has been updated to reflect President Carruthers’ responsibility in carrying out the action plan.

Carruthers has not yet commented publicly whether he will ensure the NMSU Climate Action Plan is followed.

Carruthers was previously the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1987 to 1991. From 1993 to 1998, Carruthers served as chairman of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), an organization funded by Phillip Morris to deny the health risks of smoking and other public health threats. TASSC has labeled global warming “junk science.”

Climate change is slamming the Arctic more severely than any other place on Earth. Yet tomorrow’s Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Kiruna, Sweden is not expected to produce substantial action to address it.

In short, glaciers are moving faster than efforts to slow them. Representatives from the eight Arctic nations, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, will gather to sign an oil spill preparedness and response agreement and vote on permanent observer status for other major nations with Arctic interests, including China and the EU. While the agenda includes presentations on ocean acidification and resilience, meaningful commitments to slow the devastating effects of climate change are unlikely.

Acknowledging the fact that climate change is occurring in the Arctic at double the rate of the rest of the planet, Gustaf Lind, Sweden’s top Arctic official, stated in a pre-meeting press conference that discussions regarding reductions in the CO2 emissions that fuel global warming should be reserved for the United Nations process.

However, CO2 reductions are not the only means of curbing climate change, and smaller forums like the Arctic Council offer a rare opportunity to reach agreements without needing 190 countries on board. The last ministerial meeting in 2011 highlighted the role of black carbon in climate change. Black carbon — essentially soot from inefficient combustion, such as natural gas flaring, wood stoves and the controlled burning of agricultural waste — is particularly dangerous in the Arctic, where it darkens ice surfaces and accelerates melting.

Black carbon and other short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) are potent greenhouse gases that play a major role in driving global warming. However, new research from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that reducing SCLPs in conjunction with curbing carbon pollution could have a very powerful effect on mitigating climate change. Though the Council’s Task Force on SLCPs has produced a significant body of research and recommendations, no commitments from Arctic Council members to curb their emissions were made in 2011 and two years later, SLCPs are on the agenda once again but without a plan to reduce their destructive presence.

Unfortunately, time is not on the Council’s side. Last year was a very grim one for the Arctic, as record-low sea ice extent, record ice sheet surface melting in Greenland, record-high permafrost temperature, and record-low snow extent were all recorded.

Secretary Kerry has underscored the urgency of climate change in recent months, today offering “regret” that the US hasn’t done more to address the problem. A new Arctic management plan released by the White House on Friday, however, was little more than a restatement of the vague goals for the region drafted at the end of the Bush presidency. In addition to advocating responsible stewardship of the Arctic ecosystem, the plan called for development of offshore oil and gas resources as part of the administration’s “all of the above” strategy.

Offshore drilling in the Arctic comes with an enormous risk and cost due to the lack of infrastructure, oil spill response technology, baseline scientific knowledge, and preparedness to operate in the harsh and unpredictable conditions. Ironically, the dramatic changes experienced throughout the Arctic — many of which are the result of man-made climate change — are unlocking massive fossil-fuel reserves which, when burned, would only accelerate the destructive cycle of unchecked emissions and warming. Slowing the devastating steamroll of climate change requires slashing the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, not opening up vast new sources of carbon.

At a time when climate change should receive top billing at the Arctic Council ministerial, allowing another meeting to pass without a concerted effort to deal directly with the pollutants that are driving the dramatic changes in the Arctic is a serious missed opportunity.

Apart from carrying out his mission, Hadfield explained what happened when you cry in space, how astronauts clip their nails and brush their teeth, and what happens to vision quality in space.

Many may know him better for an almost true-to-life performance of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” which he performed on board the ISS with a guitar:

He has also gained a unique perspective on the way that humans are changing the climate of our planet from an orbital perch.

Florida Today reported earlier this year that Hadfield told Canadian reporters (translated from French) that we are changing the planet and are responsible for what happens to future generations:

Climate is changing naturally, and perhaps as a result of what we have done, our influence…. And so maybe we just need to be more responsible in the decisions we make and think of the longer term, more than five years, more than the upcoming elections, more than just one lifespan, and think about our grandchildren and even further.

He also commented on how different the Aral Sea looked from orbit nearly 20 years after his first visit to space. The sea has dried up for a number of reasons (mainly diverting rivers for irrigation), which as Hadfield said, “was human change — change that has occurred thanks to what humans have done.”

While astronauts are not climate scientists, it must be a very surreal to look back down on the planet from the station and understand what Homo sapiens sapiens has done to the planet.

The mission of the International Space Station is multifaceted, but some of the instruments on board collect important climate data according to NASA:

Several instruments relevant to Earth science and climate change are either in development or already deployed on the station. The zenith port of the CEPF is currently occupied by the ESA Sun Monitoring on the External Payload Facility of Columbus, or SOLAR, instrument, which measures the sun’s energy irradiance — an important parameter for climate studies.

The ESA Atmosphere Space Interactions Monitor, orASIM, which will study high-energy optical and gamma ray events associated with thunderstorms, will be deployed on Columbus in 2015.

On the external platform of the Japanese Kibo module, the JAXA Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb Sounder, or SMILES instrument, measured trace gases in the stratosphere, including chemicals that interact with the Earth’s ozone layer.

Also mounted on the outside of the Kibo, the NASA Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) is an imaging spectrometer for studying coastal waters.

More climate science research could be headed to the ISS. A call for research ideas in 2011 from the European Space Agency revealed significant global interest in attaching remote-sensing instruments for climate and global change studies to the station. Following a peer-review process, candidate experiments will be developed for use.

What is next for Commander Hadfield? Perhaps he could explore the ocean floor and determine what would happen when you open a can of soda. Scratch that: he’s already done it.