environment: barges drought media irresponsibility Mississippi rivers
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 27: And The Big Fuel Said To Push On
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch shares a minor local story of no interest to anyone outside the affected area. Oh, wait…
ST. LOUIS • Barge industry leaders on Friday renewed their warnings of far-reaching economic losses in the Midwest if water levels on the Mississippi River continue to drop to levels that disrupt shipping.
Severe drought conditions coupled with the reduced flows expected from the upper Missouri River later this month have prompted the American Waterway Operators and the Waterways Council to warn that river commerce could come to a standstill by early December.
“Slowing down or severing the country’s inland waterway superhighway would imperil the shipment of critical cargo for export, significantly delay products needed for domestic use, threaten manufacturing production and power generation, and negatively impact jobs up and down the river,” said Craig Philip, chief executive officer at Ingram Barge Co., based in Nashville, Tenn.
Philip and other industry officials spoke during a Friday morning news conference in St. Louis, alongside Maj. Gen. John W. Peabody, commander of the Mississippi Valley Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, and Rear Adm. Roy A. Nash, commander of the Coast Guard’s 8th District.
Industry officials are calling on the administration of President Barack Obama to issue a presidential declaration to allow an emergency response to the “crisis.”
Peabody said the Corps of Engineers, which manages the waterways, has been bracing for the latest round of low water since the drought year of 1988. This year, the corps has been involved in “continuous dredging” since July — with up to two dozen dredges operating on the river at one time — and has been storing water where possible.
Move along, folks. Sent November 22:
The Mississippi’s steadily lowering water levels are part of a much larger story. The predicament of barge operators is linked with that of Midwest corn growers who watched helplessly as drought withered their fields, and with Vermont maple trees no longer making enough sap for syrup production. This story includes millions of acres of Colorado forest turned into kindling by invasive pine borer beetles, subsistence farmers in Bangladesh whose meager holdings are submerged by rising sea levels, and island nations now looking at relocating entire populations before their homelands disappear beneath the waves. Don’t forget to include the East coast, still reeling from the impact of superstorm Sandy.
It’s a story of the countless local and regional consequences of global climate change. Each community may feel these impacts differently, but to ignore their connections is to deny our shared humanity — and the future we must all face together.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: coast lines extreme weather Republican obstructionism rising sea levels scientific consensus Storms
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 26: Casey Jones, You’d Better Watch Your Speed.
The Delmarva News (VA) hears some of them expert-ish types predictin’ mighty big troubles comin’ down the pike:
WALLOPS — Coastal communities including the Eastern Shore of Virginia need to begin to prepare for changes in the climate, according to two experts who spoke at the NASA Visitor’s Center at Wallops about adapting to climate change.
The climate is changing at “an increasingly rapid rate,” so much that scientists can no longer use the past to predict the future, said Joel D. Scheraga, Senior Advisor for Climate Adaptation at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Policy. Scheraga in addition to his role at the EPA has worked with the World Health Organization and the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“The bottom line is, climate change is making it more difficult for our communities to attain the goals that they want to get to in their communities. We have to begin to adapt,” he said.
More hippies. Sent November 21:
Given that scientific language is usually conservative and understated, climatologists’ use of phrases like “an increasingly rapid rate” when discussing climate change should be a warning to us all: big troubles ahead. Between rising sea levels brought on by melting Arctic ice and the rising probability of extreme weather events like superstorm Sandy, the twenty-first century is going to be a dangerous one for the Eastern US coastline, which is going to change shape dramatically in the blink of a geological eye.
While an ounce of planning in 2012 will be worth a pound of FEMA in 2030, the grim fact is that the proper time to start preparing for runaway climate change was around 1970. The last forty years of inaction (sponsored by fossil fuel lobbyists in Congress and the White House, along with the increasingly powerful anti-science wing of the GOP) is going to have painful consequences n the decades to come. Any further procrastination may make the difference between serious inconvenience and utter catastrophe.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 25: New Math
The Iowa City Press-Citizen is aware of a problem:
More than 40 University of Iowa scientists — some of them irked by the lack of climate change discussion in the recent presidential election — added their name to a statement released Monday declaring that climate change caused the 2012 drought.
All told, 138 science faculty and research staff from 27 Iowa colleges and universities — 44 from UI — put their stamps of approval on the statement, which conceded that although science can’t with 100 percent certainty pin human activities as the drought’s culprit, such extreme weather events in recent years are symptomatic of a climate that’s growing warmer because of the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
With Iowa in the midst of an ongoing drought and the recent devastation of the East Coast by the unprecedented Hurricane Sandy, now is a “teachable moment” when it comes to climate change, said Jerry Schnoor, co-director of UI’s Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research and a leader in organizing the statement.
“We wanted to make clear that most scientists and people who teach science in our colleges and universities in Iowa feel quite strongly that climate change is here now and we’re suffering costs as a result of that,” he said. “There are a lot of things we can do to respond, both in terms of adapting to climate change and mitigating it and lowering our own emissions.”
Science, biyotches. Sent November 20:
While it was amusing to watch Republican strategists get sucker-punched by math and facts on election night, the moment of reckoning for climate change’s reality won’t be much to laugh about. Think about it: a major political party in the most powerful nation on Earth has rejected science and expertise in just about every area of policy. The GOP is grimly determined to create their own reality: Damn the experts! Full speed ahead!
This is fine for political reality, which is determined by the demands of the 24-hour news cycle. But climatic reality is determined by other factors, like the amount of CO2 in the upper atmosphere and the albedo of Arctic ice coverage. Carbon dioxide molecules don’t watch TV, and Arctic ice doesn’t care whether Karl Rove’s math is accurate. How much more devastation will it take for Republicans to acknowledge the scary factuality of a radically transforming climate?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists Republican obstructionism Storms
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 24: Did You Think About That?
The High Country News’ Heather Hansen talks about what needs to happen:
I have a file on my desktop called “Cool Ideas.” It’s filled with news items on practical steps Westerners are taking to address climate change. I collected them over this election year while the issue drew platitudes and punch-lines from the candidates but little meaningful discussion on the national level. Some highlights from my file include:
The plan to build a biomass plant in Eagle County, Colorado is forging ahead. When it starts humming in 2014 it will burn wood chips from beetle-killed pines and other “junk” wood, to generate 11.5 megawatts of electricity.
Not far from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, at the Fighting Creek Landfill, trash is treasure. Earlier this year Kootenai County and the Kootenai Electric Cooperative debuted their multi-million dollar plant which uses garbage gas to power 1,800 homes.
The Aspen Ski Company is plunking down over $5 million to capture methane vented from coal operations at the Elk Creek Mine in western Colorado. The project will both prevent the powerful greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere and will generate three megawatts of electricity, or roughly the amount the company uses for its annual operations.
The West is a hotbed of research and testing for the underground storage of carbon dioxide. One project, Rocky Mountain Carbon Capture and Sequestration, is studying a site near Craig, Colorado to potentially store 4.6 billion tons of carbon from power plants, natural gas processing plants, cement plants, oil shale development and other industries.
An unusual consortium including Montana Hutterite farmers, an Idaho wind energy developer and the federal government have joined forces to build the first silo-shaped wind turbine, capable of producing 100 kilowatts of electricity.
Kootenai ElectricIn his victory speech last week, President Obama said, “We want our children to live in an America that…isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.” This coincided with three related news items: First, the release of a study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder which concludes that earth warming is likely to be “on the high side of current predictions.” That means an 8-degree Fahrenheit increase in global temps by late this century.
Voices of the West. Good. November 19:
Heather Hansen is absolutely right: it’s about time that climate change becomes item number one on our national agenda. After all, it’s only been a few months since drought ravaged some of the world’s most fertile cropland, decimating crops and making farmers’ lives even more tenuous and threatened. And it’s only been a few weeks since superstorm Sandy clobbered the East Coast, leaving thousands homeless, hungry and cold. And, of course, those are only the things that made the nightly news. Everywhere around America and the world local and regional ecosystems are under assault from the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect.
But nowhere else is the outright denial of climate science so much a part of government. Because the Republicans in the House of Representatives plan to block any meaningful legislative action on climate, their ridiculous anti-science posturing is extremely dangerous. How much more damage must our nation sustain before these ideological extremists abandon their ignorance and let us all get on with the hard work of preparing for the coming climate crisis?
And to those insisting that climate-change mitigation is “too expensive” — it’s a sure bet that failure in the face of disaster is far costlier than that same disaster averted.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 23: All Of The Heavies Were Light As A Feather
The Pasadena Star’s Steve Cauzillo wonders about our President’s taste for the fight:
“I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. And as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.”
-President Barack Obama, Nov. 14, 2012THE president has been sending signals on the environment like policy test balloons. He mentioned climate change twice since re-election, once during his victory speech and during a press conference at the White House.
Though he was cautious to say the inordinate number of freak storms lately (i.e., Superstorm Sandy in the Northeast) can’t be traced with cause-and- effect accuracy to climate change, he did confirm his belief that the globe is getting warmer. He and 98 percent of all the scientists in the world agree that humans contribute to global warming, mostly due to industrialization which produces more greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Of course, the next four years will be about avoiding the fiscal cliff, fixing tax policies, lowering the deficit and creating an economy in which employers can expand and new businesses can sprout.
But, even in that context, Obama told the press that much has been accomplished to reduce energy use. Cars are getting better gas mileage due to stricter standards. Wind, solar and biomass plants are opening up to provide electrical energy.
“If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth, and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader, I think that’s something that the American people would support,” said the president.
Now we’re talking.
We shall see. Sent November 18:
While the President often talks a good game on climate issues, it is often disturbingly evident that other members of his staff regard them as irrelevant distractions — presumably from the economic questions that dominate the news cycle and the rhetoric of the President’s conservative adversaries. Mr. Obama’s apparent renewal of commitment to addressing climate change can have no more definitive test than his approval or rejection of the disastrous Keystone XL project.
Keystone is catastrophic on multiple levels of scale. The destruction of millions of acres of boreal forest in order to exploit Canada’s tar sands is already an environmental blunder of huge proportions. Transporting the filthy oil across the US offers the potential for hundreds of local and regional disasters from leaks and contaminated aquifers — and, or course, burning all that oil will send the greenhouse effect into a drastic runaway zone from which recovery may be impossible. If President Obama allows the pipeline project to proceed, we will know that his commitment to the fight against global warming is inadequate to the magnitude of the crisis.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL media irresponsibility Tar Sands
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 22: Show Me What You Do And I Will Tell You What You Believe
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune runs a McClatchy article titled, “Pressure builds on Obama over oil pipeline: Jobs vs. climate change.” SOS:
WASHINGTON – President Obama’s decision on whether to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline looms huge now that the election is over, and it could define Obama’s legacy on energy and climate change.
The oil industry, which is pushing hard for approval, describes the choice as the president’s “first test to the American people.”
Environmental groups are promising that thousands of activists will demonstrate against the pipeline on Sunday outside the White House, just the beginning of the efforts that are being planned to sink the project.
Energy analyst Charles Ebinger said he thought two weeks ago that there was little chance Obama would kill the pipeline. But he’s increasingly less sure about that.
Gotta stop the pipeline; gotta stop the “jobs vs. environment” bullshit meme. Sent November 18:
The notion that responsible environmental policies are “job-killers” is one of the most egregious falsehoods promulgated by fossil fuel spokespeople. The economy and the environment are only in opposition to one another if our notion of economic well-being is predicated on continuous consumption and continuous growth — inherently impossible on a finite planet. Wise economic policy recognizes that wealth is derived from the sustainable stewardship of Earth’s natural resources. This self-evident truth is ignored by those whose self-interest depends on maximizing short-term profits.
Coincidentally, theirs are the same voices eagerly pressing for Administration approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, a fossil-fuel exploitation strategy of near-sociopathic irresponsibility. Yes, the Keystone XL will generate jobs: cleanup specialists, leak stoppage crews, and (eventually) oncologists. If fossil fuel corporations could rebrand themselves simply as energy delivery corporations, their technology and resources would make them essential to the sustainable economy our country needs so urgently.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: economics inequality sustainability
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 21: A Modest Proposal
The Chicago Tribune, on economics and climate change:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. droughts, floods and heat waves likely fueled by climate change in the last two years hit the people who can afford it the least – the poor and middle class, a report published on Friday said.
In affected areas of U.S. states hit by five or more extreme weather events in the last two years, the median annual household income was a bit over $48,000, or 7 percent below the national median, according to the report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the White House.
Floods hit lower-income households particularly hard. Families in areas hit by the largest floods this year and last, many near the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, earned an average of 14 percent less than the U.S. median, said the report called “Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle and Lower Income Americans.”
“These findings reflect a cruel phenomenon sometimes called ‘the climate gap’” the concept that climate change has a disproportionate and unequal impact on society’s less fortunate,” said the report, which tapped U.S. data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Census and other agencies.
This letter doesn’t satisfy me, but after forty minutes of staring at the screen I just said the hell with it. Sent November 17:
Climate change’s disproportionate impact on the world’s poorest people is one of many ways in which environmental and economic issues are inextricably intertwined. Wealthy nations of course contribute the lion’s share of planetary greenhouse emissions, and wealthy individuals of course have more options and resources available when extreme weather threatens. But these facts are only the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg.
Climate change is a direct symptom of the greenhouse effect, but an indirect symptom of something far more pervasive and problematic. Any economic paradigm predicated on the notion of continuous expansion will eventually run out of room and resources. Infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet; it’s as simple as that. While American market capitalism has brought us many benefits, it has encouraged us to ignore the repercussions of our heedless consumption. Now that those consequences include droughts, hurricanes and heat waves, can we change our ways?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: damage mitigation Storms
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 20: Ch-ch-ch-changes…
The Rochester City-Times (NY) acknowledges Andrew Cuomo’s acknowledgement:
In an op-ed published yesterday, Governor Andrew Cuomo says that “extreme weather is the new normal” and that New York needs to “act, not react” to prepare for the events.
Cuomo’s article acknlowedges climate change, and touches on the human activities that are exacerbating it. He writes that the state needs to be smarter about where it locates power infrastructure, that way it avoids storm damage. He also writes that New Yorkers need to reduce their energy consumption, which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Otherwise, Cuomo stuck to what needs to be done to prepare for future storms. Mostly, that means infrastructure improvements and better infrastructure planning. New York needs to do this; damages from Superstorm Sandy are estimated at $30 billion.
Cuomo’s forming three committees to examine the problems and make recommendations. But because any changes are likely to be complex and expensive, I’m skeptical that any but the easiest changes will happen.
Indeed. Sent November 16:
Post- Hurricane Sandy, it’s no longer impossible for politicians to acknowledge the obvious fact that climate change is a threat to our security at all levels: individual, local, regional, national, and planetary. Governor Cuomo’s readiness to adopt what would have been a controversial position six months ago is evidence enough that the winds of change are blowing a little more heavily outside the walls of our politics.
But global warming won’t be put off with anodyne acknowledgements any more than a mugger will be dissuaded by a sympathetic gesture. The accelerating planetary greenhouse effect will turn very costly over the next few decades; our cities and states must start preparing now for the next superstorm, outrageous heat wave, or crippling drought.
Yes, it’ll be expensive. Perhaps it’s time to ask the fossil fuel corporations to contribute some of their $137 billion profits toward mitigating the damage their products have caused.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Al Gore carbon tax denialists fee and dividend idiots tobacco industry
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 19: Roll Your Own?
The Durango Herald (CO) runs an AP piece discussing the benefits of a tax on carbon:
Experts on all sides of the issue have watched climate proposals fail in the past. Congress is still split, and many in the Republican party deny the existence of human-made climate change, despite what scientists say. Congress also on Tuesday blocked the European Union from imposing a tax on American airliners flying to the continent as part of an effort to reduce greenhouse gases.
Energy industry lobbyist Scott Segal said many utilities will fight a carbon tax.
“The conditions are far from ripe for a carbon tax, if for no other reason than a carbon tax is a tax on economic growth,” he said.
But environmental advocates are seizing the moment, determined not to let the interest in climate change subside with the floodwaters.
On Wednesday, former Vice President Al Gore launched a 24-hour online talkfest about global warming and disasters. Another group, 350.org, headed by environmental advocate and author Bill McKibben, is amid a 21-city bus tour.
Gore compared the link between extreme weather and “dirty energy” from coal, oil and natural gas to the links between cigarette smoking and lung cancer or the use of steroids and home runs in baseball.
They have a 350-word limit, which is way on the high side. Interesting how that affects the processes of composition. Sent November 15:
America’s fossil-fuel consumption is one of the most significant drivers of global climate change, and it’s revealing to follow up on former Vice-President Gore’s analogy with tobacco. Our entire economy is built around the ready availability and artificial cheapness of oil and coal, and the result has been a national addiction to these substances and the convenience they facilitate. Like heavy smokers, we recognize our dependency while pretending to be immune from the cold equations; like heavy smokers, we promise to quit but never seem to get around to it.
Of course, once the biopsy comes back positive, it’s too late for quitting to do much good, which is the position our civilization is in right now with fossil fuels. The diagnosis is very clear: Earth’s health is in dire jeopardy, with a planetary greenhouse effect on the brink of a catastrophic “tipping point” beyond which recovery will be impossible.
And the voices most loudly raised in denial? Unsurprisingly, their paychecks come from the very fossil fuel industry reaping huge profits from our addiction. Equally unsurprisingly, many of the same “experts” currently asserting that climate change is unrelated to fossil fuel consumption were testifying a few decades ago that tobacco didn’t have anything to do with lung cancer. They were lying then, and they’re lying now.
It’s time for America, and the world, to kick the fossil fuel habit once and for all. Oil, gas and coal need to come with warning labels, and we must stop subsidizing an industry that is destroying our home.
Warren Senders
It’s time
environment Politics: 350 assholes Barack Obama idiots media irresponsibility Republicans
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 18: Figures Don’t Lie, And Liars Can’t Figure
USA Today says that “Climate change worries have had a high profile in New York, post-Hurricane Sandy.” Gee, ya think?
Climate change is suddenly a hot topic again. The issue is resurfacing in talks about a once radical idea: a possible carbon tax.
On Tuesday, a conservative think tank held discussions about it while a more liberal think tank released a paper on it. And the Congressional Budget Office issued a 19-page report on the different ways to make a carbon tax less burdensome on lower income people.
A carbon tax works by making people pay more for using fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas that produce heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
A letter with actual numbers in it! Sent November 14:
Hurricane Sandy definitely brought climate change back into the national spotlight by making the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect exponentially harder to ignore. But another recent storm should also help bring global warming back to the policy table. On November 6, Hurricane Arithmetic made landfall on the coast of Republican self-delusion, as nerds and statisticians predicted election results far more accurately than any conservative pundits had ever imagined. Not only was the President re-elected, but math was vindicated.
As Mr. Obama heads into his second term, he and his administration must call America’s attention to two numbers: 350 and 400. The first describes the level (in parts per million) of atmospheric CO2 consistent with the survival of our civilization. The second is the level of CO2 in our atmosphere today. While political posturing over the “fiscal cliff” may make for good headlines, the imminent “climate cliff” is far, far more permanent.
Warren Senders