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Climate Progress

NSIDC: Early Sea Ice Melt Onset, Soaring North Pole Temperatures, Presage Rapid 2011 Summer Decline

By Joe Romm on Jul 19, 2011 at 8:18 pm

Daily Arctic sea ice extent as of July 17, 2011, along with daily ice extents for previous low-ice-extent years. Light blue indicates 2011, dashed green shows 2007, dark blue shows 2010, and dark gray shows the 1979 to 2000 average.

As the country swelters, ice and snow melt in the North.   The National Snow and Ice Data Center has just issued an update on this year’s version of the Arctic death spiral, concluding:

Arctic sea ice extent declined at a rapid pace through the first half of July, and is now tracking below the year 2007, which saw the record minimum September extent. The rapid decline in the past few weeks is related to persistent above-average temperatures and an early start to melt.

In fact, “air temperatures over the North Pole were 6 to 8 degrees Celsius (11 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than normal.”

The NSIDC also published a helpful backgrounder, “Heading towards the summer minimum ice extent, on NSIDC’s new Icelights: Your burning questions about ice and climate.” It quotes NSIDC researcher Walt Meier explaining that while  individual years may  fluctuate, “the overall long-term trend will continue downward.”

Here are more excerpts from the sea ice update:

Read more

Economy

130 Republicans Who Are In Congress Today Voted To Hike The Debt Ceiling Under Bush Without Hostage Threats

By Zaid Jilani on Jul 19, 2011 at 7:30 pm

There was a time when House Republicans chose not to threaten the nation with default to get their agenda passed.

White House and congressional negotiators are currently in the process of striking a deficit reduction deal, as most Republicans in Congress are refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling without deep cuts to public investments and social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. By doing so, these Republicans are essentially holding the country hostage, threatening the United States with default unless Democrats agree to these cuts.

Yet these Republicans were not always demanding hostages in exchange for allowing the country to pay its own bills. In November of 2004, Congress voted in both the House and Senate to hike the U.S. debt limit by $800 billion, which raised the total ceiling to $8.1 trillion.

A ThinkProgress review of the votes in both the House and Senate finds that a whopping 130 congressional Republicans voted to hike the debt ceiling that November that remain in the U.S. Congress today (either in their same seats or by coming to the Senate). These members of Congress did not demand draconian cuts in public investment that would’ve driven up unemployment and threatened the economy in return.

Of course, there was one other difference between then and today. President George W. Bush was in the White House, and Republicans did not have an incentive to try to politically damage him by holding the debt ceiling hostage. In 2002, during another hike in the nation’s debt limit under Bush, his press secretary Ari Fleischer said it was important to raise the debt ceiling because it was not the time “to engage in activites that could in any way raise questions about the full faith and credit of the United States”:

MR. FLEISCHER: The Senate passed, 68-29, a clean increase in the debt limit. The President praises the Senate’s action. The debt limit is a very important issue. This is not the time to play any — this is not the time to engage in any activities that could in any way raise questions about the full faith and credit of the United States. And the President urges the House to follow the Senate’s action on this matter.

These votes also prove that these Republicans, when faced with the default of their country, are willing to vote to raise the debt ceiling; this indicates that it is perhaps unneccesary to strike any sort of deficit reduction deal at all to win their votes. If Republicans and Democrats want to strike a grand bargain on deficit reduction, they can certainly do that in the context of the budget appropriations process rather than holding the debt limit hostage.

Alyssa

Breaking The Bat, Or, Disability And The Limitations Of Superheroics

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jul 19, 2011 at 6:32 pm

I may be overreading the language of finality in the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, but it sure does look like Chris Nolan is leading up to having Bane break Batman’s back and leave him a paraplegic, doesn’t it?

If Nolan does go there, I don’t think he deserves infinite credit — he would, after all, just be replicating the original storyline — but he’d be smarter than past interpreters of Bane. And I think it would be of a piece with Nolan’s extreme skepticism about the long-term viability of the whole superhero project. Ra’s al Ghul isn’t an entirely unsympathetic character in Batman Begins — he’s right that Gotham keeps breeding new and major governance and corruption problems, and neither his genocidal solution nor Batman’s proposal of constant struggle seems terribly appealing. In The Dark Knight, that ongoing struggle isn’t viable unless Batman makes certain ethical compromises that cost him allies — and even then, goodness from unexpected sources helps save the day. And maybe The Dark Knight Rises will be about the fact that no matter how much cool technology you buy, or no matter how far you venture into your own personal heart of darkness, if your strategy for fighting evil is to put yourself between your city and the people who threaten it, you become the target, and someone will come along who can break you. If you just have to flip Harvey Dent, if you just have to put Commissioner Gordon in the hospital, if you just have to put Batman in a wheelchair, that’s a fairly easy goal to concentrate a lot of super-villainous energy towards solving.

As a side note, I’m fascinated by the role that paraplegia’s playing in a bunch of our big action movies. Whether it’s Jake Sully escaping into an alternative body after he lost the use of his legs in the Marines in Avatar, the badly-aimed bullet that hits Charles Xavier at the deeply moving end to X-Men: First Class, and now this, we’ve got an lot of heroes with disabilities. While Sully gets a do-over, and Xavier seems to accept the limitations to his abilities — I think it’s useful that we see Sully do things like moving in and out of his wheelchair, where Charles is never presented as physically awkward, even though he’s limited — I wonder if Batman will rage against what’s happened to him. People with disabilities shouldn’t be required to be saintly to be represented on screen.

Security

Israeli Embassy Spokesperson Issues Non-Apology Apology For Comparing Liberal Pro-Israel Group To The KKK

By Ali Gharib on Jul 19, 2011 at 6:21 pm

Israeli Embassy Spokesperson Jonathan Peled

When the Israeli Knesset passed a law that would impose penalties on calls to boycott Israel proper or the illegal West Bank settlements, the outcry from much of the American Jewish community came swiftly.

The liberal American Jewish group J Street came down hard in a statement:

J Street condemns the Knesset’s passage yesterday of a law making the call for boycotts of Israel or the West Bank settlements illegal, as a clear and unabashed violation of the fundamental democratic precept of freedom of speech.

This bill is part of a disturbing anti-democratic trend that undermines its purported purpose by giving fodder to Israel’s critics and alienating many of its friends.

The statement served as the latest salvo of the ongoing tensions between the right-wing government in Israel and J Street, which has drawn the ire of the right-wing pro-Israel lobby for criticizing Israeli policies such as settlement expansion. The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. rejected an invitation from J Street to attend its first ever policy conference in 2009, and this summer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who usually welcomes Diaspora pro-Israel groups, refused to meet with a J Street delegation.

But J Street’s condemnation of the anti-boycott law brought the war of words to a new level. Speaking to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Jonathan Peled, a spokesperson for Israel’s embassy in Washington, compared J Street to the Klu Klux Klan:

I think our approach to J Street was correct. We disagreed on many issues, but we didn’t boycott them. They are a unique example because they are a Jewish organization that calls itself ‘pro-Israeli.’ To bring some extreme example, if the Ku Klux Klan suddenly proclaim themselves pro-Israel, will it mean they are pro-Israel, or does it contradict our own understanding of what pro-Israel means? They are entitled to their views, but it doesn’t mean we want to invite them to our home.

Reached by ThinkProgress for comment, an official in the embassy’s press office passed along a non-apology “clarification” from Peled:

During my personal conversation with Ha’aretz, I was not intending to compare J Street to an extremist or offensive organization.

I regret any misunderstanding. Such a comparison would be clearly inappropriate and unacceptable.

The comments do not reflect the view of the government.

J Street seemed less than thrilled with the non-apology. Director of media relations Jessica Rosenblum gave a terse statement to ThinkProgress, saying, “We appreciate the clarification and take it at face value.”

The embassy spokesperson’s comparison of J Street to the KKK seems especially out of place because, in the same interview, Peled said that Israel welcomes all points of view. “We are interested in a big tent,” he said.

That was Peled’s dodge of a question about whether or not the government welcomed former Fox News personality Glenn Beck’s rally in Israel. Beck, who recently said Netanyahu had “evidence” to prove his conspiracy theories and addressed the Knesset, just moved his rally — which is to be attended by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — away from the Temple Mount because it coincides with a holiday when 40,000 Muslims are expected to be worshiping in Jerusalem. Beck intimated that the Muslims might try to kill him and were looking for any excuse to start “World War III.” So it seems that there’s room for Beck in the Netanyahu government’s “big tent,” but according to Peled, J Street doesn’t appear to be welcome.

Climate Progress

More Americans have Green Jobs Than Oil or Gas Jobs; Lighting Standards the GOP Wants to Kill Created 12,500 Jobs

By Joe Romm on Jul 19, 2011 at 6:19 pm

http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/clean-economy-jobs-a-modest-sector-for-employment/10457091-1-eng-US/Clean-economy-jobs-a-modest-sector-for-employment_full_600.jpg

Climate Progress previously reported on a Brookings Institution study, “Sizing the Clean Economy.” It demonstrated the “Clean Economy” has started delivering on its promise of high-wage jobs.

The Christian Science Monitor just did a nice article on the study, “Report: More Americans have green jobs than oil or gas jobs.”  They did a nicer graphic than the one we reposted from the study (see above).  The article also notes:

Lighting standards adopted by Congress in 2007 have also created at least 12,500 jobs by fueling the growth of new, greener technologies, according to separate data from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.  The US House recently tried to overturn those regulations…

Yglesias

State Pensions or: How Conservatives Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Borrowing

By Intern on Jul 19, 2011 at 6:14 pm

By Matthew Cameron

Amid relentlessly depressing news about the national economy and the federal debt situation, The Washington Post reported a rare bit of positive-sounding information this morning:

Gov. Bob McDonnell will announce Tuesday that Virginia ended the fiscal year on June 30 with a surplus of $311 million, according to the governor’s office.

McDonnell (R) will outline how he will spend the surplus in a news conference on Capitol Square, though most of the money is already accounted for — including funding for roads, education and the Water Quality Improvement Fund, which is used for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup.

This is the second year Virginia has had a budget surplus after three years of revenue shortfalls when the state had to cut billions from the budget. Last year, Virginia ended the fiscal year with a surplus of about $403.2 million — almost twice the previous estimate.

Before everyone packs their bags and moves to Virginia, however, it’s worth looking into this situation more closely. Did the state achieve it’s sterling fiscal situation through a balanced package of spending cuts and tax increases? Did it enact a stringent austerity budget along the lines of the Cut, Cap and Balance Act that was up for debate in Congress today?

No on both counts. Instead, let’s flashback to a Richmond Times-Dispatch article from last year detailing the state’s plan for balancing its budget:

Virginia is taking away more than $620 million that would have been paid toward state employee and teacher pensions, but the state is leaving an IOU.

Beginning in 2013, the state will have to repay the money to the Virginia Retirement System over 10 years, with 7.5 percent interest.[...]

Sen. Walter A. Stosch, R-Henrico, called the provision the most important step taken by the assembly to protect the retirement system, even as it relies on deferred pension contributions for almost one-fourth of the money used to balance the two-year budget.

That’s right, Virginia “balanced” its budget and set up this year’s surplus by borrowing money from itself. Coming on top of $17.6 billion worth of unfunded pension liabilities, that would have been a rather audacious move for any governor to approve. But that’s especially so for McDonnell, who is among the leading vice presidential candidates for a party that presently is waging a total war against increasing the federal government’s borrowing authority.

Of course, McDonnell isn’t the only conservative who has embraced these accounting gimmicks. The Virginia House of Delegates, which has a solid Republican majority, also voted for the plan. And this Pew report showed that a number of conservative-led states were guilty of underfunding their pension obligations in 2010, including those of GOP governors-turned-presidential hopefuls Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry.

NEWS FLASH

Household Formation Rate Sees Steepest Decline In 40 Years | Although the rate of new housing starts reached a five-month high in June, Jim Glass at the Money Illusion notes that the household formation rate is experiencing its largest plunge of the last 40 years. According to U.S. Census data, before the housing bubble burst in 2007, 1,627,000 new households were created, topping off a decade average of 1,499,000 new households a year. But in 2010, that figure was down to 357,000, a drop of 78 percent from three years before.

–Sarah Bufkin

By Guest Blogger on Jul 19, 2011 at 6:10 pm

NEWS FLASH

Rick Perry Signs A Mini-Ryan Health Bill | Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) is transforming Texas into a Paul Ryanian Mecca, having just signed legislation that seeks to privatize Medicare and compels the state to formally ask for a Medicaid block grant. The measure also “defunds abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood” and “implements co-payments for non-emergency visits to hospital emergency rooms.”

NEWS FLASH

Gay Servicemembers Admit To Marriage Scam For Benefits | Two gay men “pleaded guilty Monday to arranging three phony marriages, including one with a Navy doctor, so they and their wives could get more pay and health care benefits and so they could conceal their sexual orientations from the Navy,” Tim McGlone of the Virginian-Pilot reports. Charges are still pending against Cmdr. Jeanette F. Shimkus who “needed to conceal her lesbian relationship in order to name her girlfriend as a beneficiary to her life insurance.” The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policies prohibit the government from extending marriage benefits to same-sex couples.

Climate Progress

Mozambique Cuts Poverty, Creates Jobs with Clean Energy

By Energy Interns on Jul 19, 2011 at 5:30 pm

by Tripp Brockway and Raj Salhotra

Only ten percent of Mozambique’s population has access to the country’s electricity grid. Without electricity, subsistence farming is less viable, students cannot study at night, and hospitals cannot store vaccines. The lack of power is a drag on Mozambique’s economic development and an obstacle to improving the well-being of its people.

But this is not another clichéd story about how the West must save Africa from poverty. Instead, it is a story about how to provide electricity, in an environmentally and economically intelligent manner, to the 85% of people in rural sub-Saharan Africa who lack it.  It is a story about how to leverage efficiently local knowledge and resources.  It is a story about innovation, a story from which the developed world can learn.

In 2009, Jason Morenikeji started The Clean Energy Company in Mozambique. Morenikeji’s company provides small-scale, off-grid renewable energy along Mozambique’s “wind-strong” coastline. The company focuses on the design, construction, and installation of micro wind turbines that can be tailored to fit local needs and combined with other renewable energy sources, such as solar photovoltaics (PV).

By manufacturing the micro-turbines locally, Morenikeji’s company creates jobs and lifts people out of poverty. This is one of many ways that independent electricity generation, particularly from renewable sources, can be crucial for addressing the challenges of socio-economic development such as education, food security, and health.

Independently-powered micro-grids can provide lighting for students to study at night. Studies have found an almost two-year difference in education levels between children in electrified households as compared to those in homes without power. A good education gives students the skills necessary to achieve stable employment and higher income.

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