Tag Archives: climate change

The Moniz confirmation hearing — what he said

Posted: April 9th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Early online reports on Tuesday’s confirmation hearings on Secretary of Energy nominee Ernest Moniz focused on his well-known and long-stated support for natural gas development.

But from where I was sitting, the most important moment in the MIT professor’s relatively low-key questioning by members of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee came when Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado spoke about the impacts of climate change in his state and asked how a balanced energy portfolio could reduce carbon emissions.

As to climate change in general, Moniz said, “I certainly agree the scientific basis for warranting action is completely clear,” and the statement passed with no further comment by anyone on the committee, at least while I was listening to the hearing.

Does the lack of controversy raised by the remark signal that Republicans, at least on this committee, are not disputing the science of climate change and are open to discussing options for U.S. action on the issue?

Moniz then went on to talk about going to a low-carbon economy “that will include natural gas among traditional sources in this country being a bridge. But assuming we do go to a very low-carbon economy, even natural gas will require capping while we deploy renewable energy, nuclear and efficiency, plus hydro.”

I managed to listen in on the live stream for about an hour during which I focused mostly on what Moniz said on issues relevant to the Coachella Valley — renewable energy development, energy efficiency and innovation.

Overall, I’d say Moniz pretty much aced the hearing. It is clear President Obama nominated him because he does embody an all-of-the-above approach to energy and is equally comfortable talking about fossil fuels or renewables. When individual senators tried to push him on specific local or partisan issues, Moniz was not afraid to say he was not up on a specific issue, but would do his research and work with lawmakers on solutions. At the same time, he never backed down on his basic support for a strong role for renewables in the nation’s energy future and support for research and innovation.

One example – at one point, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah referred to a Government Accountability Office report finding significant overlap in wind energy incentive programs across different federal agencies — the Department of the Interior, Agriculture and Energy — and pointedly asked about whether it made sense to have multiple programs.

Moniz answered he was not aware of the report, but added, “I’m very supportive of providing the marketplace with low-carbon options.”

Several questions were asked about the DOE’s national research laboratories and their role in supporting innovation and technology transfer to the private sector — that is, getting federally developed technologies out to start-ups that work with green or tech incubators such as the Coachella Valley iHub.

Moniz said he wanted to involve lab directors in setting research priorities for the departments and also possibly develop regional or state-level initiatives to create a “better innovation eco-system.”

Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota asked about the low funding levels for clean energy research, about $5 billion, compared to other government funding, tens of billions, for defense and medical research and potential budget cuts in this area due to sequestration.

“This is a very serious issue,” Moniz said. “I would note if one does simple arithmetic as a guide . . . we are under investing by a factor of three.”

With sequestration, leveraging available funds will be needed, he said.

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii asked for Moniz’s views on the role of energy efficiency in U.S. energy policy.

“Energy efficiency demand side is enormously important if you look at a low-carbon future. It’s hard to see how that can happen withour efficiency gains,” he said. “This low-hanging fruit is quite ripe.”

Moniz called for additional research and more federal-state cooperation, possibly drawing on the Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” model — states being eligible for federal grants for some level of achievement in energy efficiency.

Udall also asked for Moniz’s views on public-private partnerships in developing new technologies in the energy sector.

“I’m an enormous fan of public-private partnerships,” he said (obviously, “enormous” is a frequently used adjective in the Moniz vocabulary). “I would be seeking all kinds of new ideas of moving that forward. We should think about regionally focused industry. The regional issues for solving energy problems are quite big.”

Barring some political bomb shell, Moniz’s confirmation by the full Senate seems likely.  Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has already announced his support.

More controversy can be expected on Thursday, when the Senate Committee on the Enviroment and Public Works takes up Obama’s nomination for the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy.

The hearing begins at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, which means another early morning, 7:30 a.m. out here and will also be live-streamed from the committee’s website.

The archived stream of Moniz’s hearing is available on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee website.

Climate change, coffee and chocolate

Posted: March 18th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Last week I wrote about climate change and water, which are pretty basic issues, but this week, as noted above, it’s time to get our heads around the impacts of climate change that could really hit home with ordinary folks – the rising prices of chocolate and coffee.

Reese Halter, an Australian born environmentalist, has an article on The Huffington Post website that looks at yet more recent evidence of the accelerating speed of climate change and its impact on what have become for Americans commodities so integral to everyday life that few would want to even think about living without them.

Halter begins with a reference to an Associated Press story with yet more unsettling news about rising carbon emissions from the National Oceanic and Atmoshperic Administration. A carbon monitoring station near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii — far from any major greenhouse gas spewers — found carbon dioxide levels have jumped by 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million.

That’s the second highest rise in carbon emissions since 1959, which is when record keeping began, AP journalist Seth Borenstein reported. The culprits, he said, are coal-burning plants in the developing world.

Only 1998 had a bigger annual increase in carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas from human activity. That year, 2.93 parts per million of CO2 was added. From 2000 to 2010, the world averaged a yearly rise of just under 2 parts per million. Levels rose by less than 1 part per million in the 1960s.

I should also add here that many scientists have said that 350 parts per million is the upper limit for carbon dioxide the earth can tolerate without dramatic climate change.

The news gets worse. Not only are we pouring more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but plants and the world’s oceans, our natural carbon storage units, last year absorbed less CO2 than they normally would have, according to John Reilly, co-director of Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.   Plant and ocean absorption of carbon varies naturally year to year.

But, the AP article notes, carbon dioxide rates in the atmosphere are now rising faster than the worst-case scenarios climate scientists typically use for their simulations and reports.

So, what does this mean for our morning lattes and afternoon or evening chocolate fix?

“Coffee beans are the second most globally traded commodity next to oil,” Halter writes.

Higher temperatures, longer droughts and more intense rainfalls have brought coffee producers around the globe more resilient pests, i.e. coffee berry borer, and higher incidences of plant disease, i.e. coffee rust. Furthermore, intense water stress associated with vicious droughts in southern Sudan are driving wild coffee plants to extinction, now predicted to occur by 2020.

Maxwell House, Yuban and Folgers all increased their coffee prices by 25 percent between 2010 and 2011, while Starbucks upped its coffee prices by almost 20 percent in 2011.

The story is the same for chocolate, Halter said.

West Africa produces more than 40 percent of the world’s cocoa. In the past decade, droughts around the globe have caused the price of cocoa to double.

Rising carbon dioxide concentrations could mean ever-higher temperatures and ongoin drought across the cacao-producing regions of Africa, putting thousands of small-scale growers out of business and pushing chocolate prices to new, luxury-commodity highs.

How quickly can we cold-turkey off fossil fuels? Grand Rapids, Mich. has set itself the goal of getting 100 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020. In Germany, the deadline for 100 percent renewable power is 2050.

Iceland already gets all of its electricity from renewable sources, either hydropower or geothermal.

California will require new homes to be carbon neutral, or net zero, by 2020 and new commercial buildings by 2030.

It isn’t that we can’t. The evidence is stacking up that we are past the tipping point where climate change can be stopped or managed.

High gas prices haven’t worked; super storms and droughts aren’t making much of an impression.

Maybe if chocolate and coffee prices go off the charts, disgruntled and caffeine-tweaked American voters will demand their lawmakers find the political will to tackle climate change and set an aggressive national renewable energy agenda.

 

Obama and George Will — Cherry-picking the facts on climate change

Posted: January 29th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Whenever I write a column on climate change, I am almost guaranteed to receive a few emails from the Coachella Valley’s climate skeptics, citing their evidence that any claims to a scientific basis for global warming are baseless and a hoax.

My quoting of President Barack Obama’s inaugural address in my Jan. 27 column quickly brought an email directing me to George Will’s column first published in the Washington Post and reprinted in The Desert Sun.

Will challenges the President’s reference to “raging fires” with figures suggesting that wild fires have decreased since 2006:

“Are fires raging now more than ever?” Will writes. ”(There were a third fewer U.S. wildfires in 2012 than in 2006.) Are the number and severity of fires determined by climate change rather than forestry and land use practices? Is today’s drought worse than that of the Dust Bowl, and was it caused by 1930s global warming?”

Joe Romm, writing on the Think Progress website, argues that Will is willfully (pun obviously intended) cherry-picking the facts.

“2006? Seriously, George Will . . .  If you wonder why in Hell (and High Water) Will just happens to pick the year 2006, you need look no further than the above graph of annual U.S. acreage burned from the National (Interagency) Fire Center.

“For Will . . . the ‘decline’ since the record-smashing 2006 disproves climate change. In Will’s logic, unless ever year is worse than the previous year in all respects, humans are not suffering the effects of global warming.”

Being a primary source kind of person, I went to the NIFC website and took a look at the chart tracking number of wildfires and total acreages burned. The numbers are revealing.

Yes, in 2006, there were 96,385 fires destroying 9,873,745 acres of land. That averages out to about 102 acres per fire.

In 2011, the comparable figures are  74,126 fires and 8,711,367 acres, averaging out at 117 acres per fire.

The 2012 figures continue the upward trend, with 67,315 wildland fires burning 9,211,281 acres for an average of 136 acres per fire. So while the number of fires varies wildly, the intensity and impact are on an upward trajectory — as the President said.

That speaks to another issue — Will’s editorial cherry-picking — which Romm takes on as well.  

“Will coyly asks, ‘Are the number and severity of fires determined by climate change rather than forestry and land-use practices?’ The key debater’s word there is ‘determined.’ It should be ‘increased.’

“The goal of disinformers and their media allies is to create a straw man whereby those who accept the overwhelming judgment of science are accused of saying global warming is the sole cause of a given extreme event, rather than an aggravating cause.”

Romm ends his article with a graphic from a 2010 presentation by John Holdren, the President’s science advisor, projecting the increase in acres lost to wildfires for each 1 degree Centigrade increase in the earth’s climate. The Southwest deserts, including the Coachella Valley, could be in for a 74 percent increase.

Climate change experts have long said that one cannot look at specific regional weather or extreme events; the bigger picture of climate change is much more complex and convincing.

 

 

Obama puts climate change on second term agenda

Posted: January 21st, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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At his Inauguration in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama has spoken out strongly on climate change and renewable energy.

None

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

“None can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought & more powerful storms.

 ”The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long…But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.

“We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs & new industries – we must claim its promise.”

In response to the inaugural address, the greenies on twitter are happy campers.

 

 

Climate, food, water and energy — they’re all connected

Posted: January 14th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Friday afternoon, the National Climate Assessment Advisory Committee – a consortium of 13 federal agencies — released its 3rd draft report on the impact of climate change on the U.S. As seems to be the rule with federal documents, it’s monstrously long, but fairly readable and the online table of contents is easy to navigate.

I went directly to the section on the Southwest to see what’s in store for the desert. It’s unsettling reading.

– Snowpack and streamflow amounts are projected to decline, decreasing water supply for cities, agriculture and ecosystems. 

 

– The Southwest produces more than half the nation’s high-value specialty crops, which are irrigation-dependent and particularly vulnerable to extremes of moisture, cold and heat. Reduced yields from increased temperatures and increasing competition for scarce water supplies will displace jobs in some rural communities.

– Increased warming, due to climate change, and drought have increased wildfires and impacts to people and ecosystems in the Southwest. Fire models project more wildfire and increased risks to communities across extensive areas.

– Projected regional temperature increases, combined with the way cities amplify heat will pose increased threats and costs ot public health in Southwestern cities which are home to more than 90 percent of the region’s population. Disruptions to urban electricity and water supplies will exacerbate these health problems.

The not-so-subtle subtext here are the integral and finely balanced connections between food, water and energy — and the potentially dangerous disruptions that could occur as climate change drives more erratic and warmer weather.

Those connections are made more explicit in the report’s section on Water, Energy and Land Use:

“Energy, water and land systems interact in many ways. Energy projects – coal-fired power,  biofuel, solar farms – require varying amounts of water and land; water projects – water supply, irrigation – require energy and land; and land activities – agriculture, forestry – depend upon energy and water. Increasing population and a growing economy intensify these interactions. Climate change impacts each of these sectors directly, and because of the many connections between them, sectoral responses are often intensified or offset.”

Backing all this up is another report released Monday, Food, Water, Energy: Know the Nexus, from the Grace Communications Foundation, a New York group that works on a range of sustainablity issues.

The report’s introduction lays out the issues by looking at the water, food and energy that goes into a pizza. Taking into account the water required to grow the wheat, mill the flour and produce the mozzarella, your basic cheese pizza soaks up 333 gallons of water, or enough to fill 10 bathtubs.

“Producing one calorie of food requires about one liter of water,” the report continues. “That means you ‘eat’ more water than you drink.”

The amount of energy used to make pizza is mind-boggling to conceptualize, let alone put a number on — think about how much electricity might be needed to pump water to grow the wheat, produce fertilizers and even the electricity required to manufacture the pizza oven.

The report contains many eye-opening figures, such as the amount of water used each day to cool power plants in the U.S. – 58 billion gallons from the ocean and 143 billion gallons of fresh water — more than used for agriculture or public drinking water.

Climate change could mean first less water to cool plants and second, warmer water, which may not even be able to be used at all.

The National Climate Assessment notes:

“The projected warming of water in rivers and lakes will reduce the capacity of thermal power plants, especially during summer when electricity demand skyrockets.”

The Grace Communications report ends not with recommendations, but with a list of the things we don’t know – where, when, and how much water we use; the quantity and quality of our groundwater; the true economic costs of environmental degradation — and the problems that arise from looking at food, water and energy issues in isolation.

The nexus approach the report promotes also fits well with the kind of collaborative, and adaptive decision making process the National Climate Assessment says will also be key to finding effective responses to climate change. Policy going forward must be science-based and flexible, acknowledging the uncertainties involved and the need for ongoing evaluation and adjustment, the report says.

In other words, when it comes to climate change, we will never know everything and even if we did, it would change almost immediately.

But what is abundantly clear from both reports is that action is essential now.

 

Score!! The Super Bowl goes green

Posted: December 11th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Back in the 1990′s, I worked with John Javna, the man behind “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth,” the first book to encourage people to make small changes in their daily lives to reduce carbon emissions. His philosophy was that you have to start with people where they are and get them to take that first, small step toward the goal of major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

The book was wildly popular then and the approach has had remarkable staying power — as seen from the latest message popping into my email box from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (formerly the Pew Center on Global Climate Change), launching an initiative to link the 2013 Super Bowl at the Mercedes Benz Superdome (below) in New Orleans with carbon emission reductions.

The center is teaming up with Entergy Corporation, a New Orleans-based power company, for a Super Bowl energy-efficiency competition called Geaux Green.  (You pronounce the first word as “Go” — it’s a hybrid French spelling.) 

How it works is first, you go to the Geaux Green website, where you can get information on local green groups in New Orleans, such as Bike Easy, which supplies Bike Valets to encourage people to bike to events, or play the Geaux Green game, with a grand prize of two tickets to Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3.

To get into the game, you choose your favorite team and then commit to any of a list of fairly easy-to-do energy efficiency measures.  For example, change out your incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents and you save about 376 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year. Keeping your home electronics on a power strip and switching it off when your computer, TV or whatever, are not in use cuts another 439 pounds a year.

Looks small, but if you do even half of the list, you could knock off a ton of carbon dioxide a year, and of course, save money.  It’s the low-hanging fruit approach, showing people that living more sustainably need not involve huge sacrifices and can even be fun.

The site keeps track of the number of green fans each team has — New Orleans is currently in the lead with 25. Of the California teams, only San Francisco is on the board with 3.

Greenwashing? Yes and no. Every small reduction counts these days, but a more radical approach will be needed to forestall the increasing likelihood of catastrophic climate change.

Still, a December 2011 Gallup poll found that 54 percent of Americans identify as football fans, either very definitely or somewhat. So, if every football fan in the U.S. cut a ton, well, that could be millions of tons.

 So, sports fans, are you willing to go green for the home team?

The Obama victory: green relief and rallying cries

Posted: November 6th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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In the immediate aftermath of President Barack Obama’s election victory, the clean and green tech press were quick to hit the Internet with a collective sigh of relief and rallying cries for a second-term agenda that includes serious action on climate change.

Writing on ClimateProgress.org, Joe Romm laid down the second-term challenge for the President and the country:

Obama’s legacy — and indeed the legacy of  all 21st century presidents, starting with George W. Bush — will be  determined primarily by whether we avert catastrophic climate change.

If we don’t, then Obama — indeed, all of us — will be seen as failures, and rightfully so.

The clean tech sector is also breathing easier, writes Katie Fehrenbacher on Gigaom.com.

But it’s beyond just a victory — it’s a chance of survival for next-gen energy innovators and startups, which have had an extremely difficult past 18 months. Many of them will now at least continue to have an opportunity to compete on their merits. . . . cleantech will soon start turning a corner. With this news, it just has — the chief who clearly supports the development of these technologies, will be returning. Now we just need to get him talking about climate change, again.

Meanwhile, on the Huffington Post website, Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, set out a five-point action plan for Obama’s second term, with aggressive policies to halt climate change leading the list.

The urgency of this crisis is manifested in the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, record droughts, massive wildfires, disappearing coral reefs, floods and a terrible, continuous stream of bleak headlines. Left unchecked, climate change threatens millions of people around the globe and countless species already on the brink of extinction. It’s time to stop waiting for someone else, including Congress, to lead. The best way to start: Fully harness existing laws like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to reduce carbon pollution.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, also on the Huffington Post, observed another key aspect of the Obama victory — it came in the face of massive election spending by fossil fuel interests mostly supportive of Mitt Romney.

As opposed to the frequent press criticism about “climate silence,” Beinecke wrote:

Energy issues figured prominently in this election. Candidates mentioned it frequently on the stump and it was among the top three topics discussed in campaign ads.  Oil, gas, and coal companies tried to influence the debate by spending more than $150 million in campaign ads by mid-September. Polluters’ anti-environmental messages were reflected on the campaign trail, where Governor Mitt Romney ran on a platform of more drilling, more coal-fired power plants, more climate paralysis, and weaker pollution standards.

Yet despite the dirty ad blitzes and the anti-environmental policy proposals, voters rejected this outdated vision for our country. Poll after poll has identified people’s preference for a clean energy economy.

The question now is whether Obama might be willing to use the political capital raised by Superstorm Sandy and this solid election win to put forward an aggressive climate change and green-tech agenda and fight for it.

Post-election green: Is climate realism taking root?

Posted: November 5th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Whoever wins the presidential election and other key political contests across the country tomorrow — two things are certain.

Climate change and efforts to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing it will both continue — and the fact that both more radical and mainstream organizations are launching programs to tackle the problem on the eve of the election underlines the nonpartisan nature of the issue.

On the more radical end is Bill McKibben and his grassroots organization 350.org, who are launching a nationwide campaign and speaking tour called Do the Math.

The campaign is founded on an article McKibben wrote in Rolling Stone in July called “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” in which he focused on some key numbers underlying global climate change.

– There is broad scientific consensus that the world’s temperature should not be allowed to rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.  But as McKibben notes:

“So far we’ve raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists A growing number of climate experts now say the limit should be 1 degree Celsiuus.

– To keep global warming to the 2-degree Celsius limit, the top amount of carbon we can pump into our atmosphere by midcentury is 565 gigatons.  With 1 billion tons per gigaton, that means 565,000,000 tons.

The problem here is that, after the recession brought a brief dip in 2009, global carbon emissions are rising. Last year, worldwide carbon emissions rose 3.2 percent to 31.6 gigatons, according to figures from the International Energy Agency.

Looking at the findings, Fatih Birol, chief economist for the IEA, said, “The new data provide further evidence that the door to a two-degree trajectory is about to close. When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of six degrees.”

And Birol is talking Celsius here; the equivalent is 11 Fahrenheit.

– McKibben’s last figure is the killer — 2,795 gigatons. That’s the amount of carbon contained in proven coal, oil and gas reserves worldwide — the fossil fuels we’re planning to burn — which is just short of five times the 565 gigatons that we need to keep to a 2-degree rise.

To upend these figures, McKibben wants to enlist college students to pressure their schools to divest fossil fuel stocks from their investment portfolios — similar to the highly effective divestment campaign in the 1980s aimed at companies doing business in then-apartheid South Africa. The Do the Math tour will take him to 20 colleges across the country between Nov. 7 and Dec. 3.

He will be at the Ackerman Ballroom at UCLA at 7 p.m. Nov. 11.

On the other end of the spectrum is the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit organization with funding from private, government and other nonprofit sources. Its post election play is a new program called Scaling Up Utility Programs for Multifamily Homes. 

Multifamily homes — apartments, including low-income units — have not benefited from recent efforts to retrofit single family homes, because of the upfront costs to property owners. But a joint studyACEEE did with CNT Energy, found that raising energy efficiency in the multifamily sector 30 percent for natural gas and 15 percent for electricity could yield $3.4 billion in savings.

Through the Scaling Up program, ACEEE hopes to partner with utilities, property owners, local governments and others to develop best practices and guide materials for developing energy efficiency programs for multifamily buildings.

ACEEE does not talk about how much carbon such efforts would take out of the atmosphere, but reducing natural gas use 30 percent in the multifamily housing sector would certainly have an impact and keep more of those 2,795 gigatons of carbon in the ground.

McKibbon argues that energy-efficiency programs, however much they may save individual families or companies, are not enough for the major break in business as usual that is needed to begin to slow and eventually stop and reverse climate change.

Maybe, but that kind of logic too often leads to the rationalization that any effort, outside of something huge and dramatic, will not be effective or valuable, so why bother. In this case, all-of-the-above is definitely the way to go.

Smaller or incremental actions also contribute to the mindset and cultural changes that are undoubtedly occurring. Maybe not fast enough for some, but people and institutions are moving toward the recognition that climate change is serious and requires a range of responses at all levels of our society.

The question is whether Superstorm Sandy, and McKibbens’ unsettling arithmetic will spawn a new sense of climate realism and urgency in the U.S. government as it has at the grassroots.

The man in the White House, and our other federal leaders, may help accelerate or slow the momentum, but they won’t stop it.

 

 

 

Hurricane Sandy: Will Obama and Romney talk about climate change now?

Posted: October 26th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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I am monitoring the progress of Hurricane Sandy as the Category 1 storm spins toward the East Coast, and we all anxiously wait to see whether it’s going to make its predicted hard left in the mid-Atlantic or hold off for a more northern landfall.

Like many reading this, I have friends and family  back East, stretching from the Washington, D.C. area to Boston, and I’m sure some of them are in for some very uncomfortable, powerless days. I talked with my younger sister in Silver Springs, Md., this morning — her neighborhood almost always blacks out in big storms — and while I haven’t talked with my 91-year-old father yet, he volunteers for the D.C. area Red Cross, so it’s likely he’s already busy preparing to set up emergency shelters.

Certainly utilities across the country are all on high alert — check out the Edison Electric Institute’s Twitter feed, where East Coast power companies are posting links to their emergency plans and utilities from Alabama, Mississippi and Texas have said they are  putting together crews to send east.  People have been warned to prepare for power outages of 7 to 10 days.

The danger is that Sandy is going to hook up with a monster nor’easter blowing in from the north, becoming one big mess — rain, snow, high winds and coastal surges — that will park itself over the East Coast.  If you want to see something really scary, take a look at the computer models on the National Hurricane Center website of the rainfall potential if the two storms collide.

While the mainstream news coverage thus far is focusing mostly on the storm itself and the emergency preparations underway, questions are surfacing on weather and climate savvy websites about whether and to what extent climate change is contributing to this unprecedented confluence of extreme weather events.

Jordan Nichols writing on Climate Science Watch, nails the irony of the storm arriving just as President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have been criticized for not addressing climate change in any of their three televised debates.

Indeed climate change does not wait for any mortal — or election cycle for that matter.  But you have to see the irony in this unfortunate series of events.  As media and well-known activists call out the candidates for ducking climate change, it seems Mother Nature is sending us a message . . . “you can ignore climate change all you want, but its not going away.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I am sure these climatic events would have occurred whether or not the current administration was talking about climate change, but it does seem odd.  The trend of climate silence has coincided with unprecedented extreme weather in the United States during the last few years.  As politicians and environmental groups strayed away from even speaking the words climate change, it has only gotten worse.

Exactly how climate change may be contributing to the intensity and unprecedented nature of this storm is complex, as Andrew Freedman points out in his post on Sandy on Climate Central. Part of the convergence of different weather patterns all coming together on the East Coast includes a high pressure area, called a blocking high, near Greenland, he writes.

Recent studies have shown that blocking patterns have appeared with greater frequency and intensity in recent years, which some scientists think may be related to the loss of Arctic sea ice as a result of global warming. The 2012 sea ice melt season, which just ended one month ago, was extreme, with sea ice extent, volume, and other measures all hitting record lows.  The loss of sea ice opens up large expanses of open water, which absorbs more of the incoming solar radiation and adds heat and moisture to the atmosphere, thereby helping to alter weather patterns. Exactly how weather patterns are changing as a result, however, is a subject of active resesarch.

Dr. Jeff Masters, writing on the Weather Underground website, also spoke about the impact of the warming of the Atlantic Ocean, particularly off New England:

If Sandy makes landfall farther to the north near Maine and Nova Scotia, heavy rains will be the main threat, since the cold waters will weaken the storm significantly before landfall. The trees have fewer leaves farther to the north, which will reduce the amount of tree damage and power failures compared to a more southerly track. However, given that ocean temperatures along the Northeast U.S. coast are about 5°F above average, there will be an unusually large amount of water vapor available to make heavy rain. If the trough of low pressure approaching the East Coast taps into the large reservoir of cold air over Canada and pulls down a significant amount of Arctic air, the potential exists for the unusually moist air from Sandy to collide with this cold air from Canada and unleash the heaviest October rains ever recorded in the Northeast U.S., Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. This Northeast U.S. scenario would probably cause damages near $100 million.

Another point Nichols makes is key — the computer models being used to predict how Sandy may or may not interact with the nor’easter come with a big caveat. They are trying to make sense of weather patterns that are, as repeatedly noted, unprecedented. We are increasingly moving into weather we can’t control, can’t predict and for which we are increasingly unprepared.

Some climate scientists have predicted that the really extreme impacts of climate change, which could occur fast and furiously, will be preceded by a period of increasingly erratic weather. What we don’t know is where the tipping point is; we have no precedents, no computer models.

And that makes the political silence and lack of strong leadership even more dangerous.

Certainly in the coming days, Obama and Romney will make statements on the storm — sympathy and promises of help for the victims, rallying cries for the country to come together.

What we really need to hear is how they are going to meet the mounting challenges of climate change and prepare the nation for the perfect storm of environmental, economic and social upheavals that may lie ahead.

 

 

 

Presidential debates: Is climate change on the agenda?

Posted: October 1st, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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In advance of Wednesday’s first presidential debate, environmental groups across the country have been pushing hard to get questions about climate change asked and answered by Democratic incumbent President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Gov. Mitt Romney.

Exhibit 1: ClimateSilence.org, a website launched last week by Friends of the Earth Action and Forecast the Facts, which charges that, even in the midst of this summer’s crippling storms and droughts, both candidates have remained silent on climate change. The site includes a timeline, mapping out both candidates statements and actions from 2007 to present day, rating them from affirmation to denial, along with the following summary.

In 2008, both political parties nominated presidential candidates — Barack Obama and John McCain — who promised to address the climate crisis with mandatory caps on carbon pollution. Four years later, the arithmetic of climate change has become even more dire. Yet the rhetoric of the 2012 candidates has moved in the opposite direction. For President Obama, climate change has gone from an “urgent” challenge worthy of major speeches and comprehensive legislation, to an afterthought, fleetingly mentioned at occasional campaign events. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has backpedaled from weak acknowledgement of the basic science to outright mockery of the carbon crisis. While there is clearly a difference between these two positions, neither come anywhere near the honesty and leadership that the problem demands.

At the same time, nine nonprofit groups — the League of Conservation Voters, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, The Climate Reality Project, MomsRising.org, GlobalSolutions.org, iMatter Campaign and Moms Clean Air Force — dropped off 160,000 petitions for PBS newsman Jim Lehrer, who will moderate the first debate in Denver, urging him to ask the candidates about climate change.

“Millions of voters will be watching this first presidential debate to hear how the candidates plan to address the nation’s most urgent challenges – and the American people deserve to hear a substantive, meaningful conversation about confronting the climate crisis and building a clean energy economy,” Vanessa Kritzer, 0nline campaigns manager at the League of Conservation Voters, said in a press release announcing the petition drop.

On the Climate Progress website, Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has three questions on climate change and energy policy for the candidates.  Two challenge Romney on his past statements and actions, such as his opposition to the increasingly rigorous fuel economy standards enacted by Obama. Weiss’s question for the President urges him to be more specific about his plans for addressing climate change and energy issues if he is re-elected.

Recent polls indicate that voters are concerned about climate change, want the candidates to address the issue and are ready to support leaders who can offer a plan for the nation’s transition from fossil fuel dependence to clean energy.

Most enlightening is a report, “Climate Solutions for a Stronger America,” from Breakthrough Strategies & Solutions, a consulting firm focused on climate change and sustainable development.  The report puts together polling information showing voters’ rising concerns about climate change and support for clean energy, with a game plan for political messaging.

Key findings include:

– Three out of four Americans now acknowledge climate disruption is real, and more than two out of three believe we should be doing something about it.

– Oil industry propaganda and misinformation is being pushed back by the force of the wildfires, floods, droughts and violent weather than people see with their own eyes.

– Voters are strongly supportive of clean energy, and extremely distrustful of oil and coal companies who distort science and oppose responsible policy.

 – Voters are hungry for forward-thinking solutions and can-do leadership. Yet few leaders are talking about this issue. There’s a huge political opportunity here.

 Enough said.