Nature: Limiting Climate Change Will Become Much Harder ‘And More Expensive If Action Is Not Taken Soon’

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jan 6, 2013 at 3:52 pm

Limiting climate change to target levels will become much more difficult to achieve, and more expensive, if action is not taken soon, according to a new analysis from IIASA, ETH Zurich, and NCAR.

The new study, published this week in the journal Nature, examined the probability of keeping average global temperatures from rising more than 2°C above preindustrial levels under varying levels of climate policy stringency, and thus mitigation costs. In addition, the study for the first time quantified and ranked the uncertainties associated with efforts to mitigate climate change, including questions about the climate itself, uncertainties related to future technologies and energy demand, and political uncertainties as to when action will be taken.

The climate system itself is full of uncertainty – an oft–used argument to postpone climate action until we have learned more. “We wanted to frame the problem in a new way and try to understand which uncertainties matter in trying to limit global warming by specific climate action,” said Joeri Rogelj, ETH researcher and lead author on the paper, who carried out the research at IIASA.

The most important uncertainty, according to the study, is political – that is, the question of when countries will begin to take serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and implement other policies that could help mitigate climate change. Keywan Riahi, IIASA energy program leader and study co-author said, “With a twenty-year delay, you can throw as much money as you have at the problem, and the best outcome you can get is a fifty-fifty chance of keeping temperature rise below two degrees.” Two degrees is the level that is currently supported by over 190 countries as a limit to avoid dangerous climate change.

Social uncertainties, which influence consumer energy demand, were second-most important, the study found. Social uncertainties refer to things like people’s awareness and choices with respect to energy and to the adoption of efficient technologies.

(36)

Climate Progress

On The Road: ‘The Next Crazy Venture Beneath The Skies’ Means Dealing With Climate Change

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jan 6, 2013 at 3:13 pm

by Auden Schendler

After my high school Biology teacher saw what I did with the cat dissection, she said: “Had I known how you’d butcher that thing I wouldn’t have given you an ‘A.’” But it was too late: I was a senior and the grades were in, and the cat was a casualty of my drifting mind and my aspirations.

In my desk was a copy of Jack Kerouac’s masterpiece, On the Road, (just out in movie form) and it wasn’t long before I was putting myself as far out as I possibly could, hitchhiking through the West without clear destination and landing without definite plans. I slept in wheat fields beside truck stops, and next to hurricane-wire fences in industrial wastelands on the outskirts of cities. And all the while I was thinking about Kerouac’s characters Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise who most famously said: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

In the 20 years since, things happened to me that happen to us all, in some form or another. I got married. I had two children, a boy and a girl. I surprised myself by landing in my 40s. I became acquainted, as we all do, with loss, which can manifest in both the preciousness of the living and the stunningly thin line to oblivion. I understood why some people were religious, even if I was not.

In the last decade, I got very involved in important work: trying to stop climate change, which threatens everything I care about. And I began to realize that the problem might well be too big and messy to solve. As I myself failed, I realized everyone else was failing too: nonprofits, governments, activist groups, corporations. Even after ice melted and storms grew bigger as expected and fire and flood increased, people still didn’t believe, or didn’t act.

I am a resilient person, and yet I felt beaten down. I had lost Kerouac’s gift: a great, striving, eager, overwhelming craziness: “No matter what you do it’s bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.” Kerouac meant mad in a good way, like staying “up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee… talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets…”

What happened to me, and to others in the climate struggle, is best described by another Kerouac heir, Bruce Springsteen, who said: “With countries, just like people,” (and I’d add movements) “it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away.”

My friend the climate blogger Joe Romm, a great optimist, leaked a similar note of despair when he testified to Congress about climate change in July:

Security

Lindsey Graham Lobs Disingenuous Attacks At Chuck Hagel

By Ben Armbruster on Jan 6, 2013 at 12:51 pm

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday attacked former Republican senator Chuck Hagel, reportedly President Obama’s choice as the next Defense Secretary, calling him a “controversial pick” and suggesting that Hagel is out of the mainstream.

Graham’s evidence? He didn’t offer much in the way of specifics, of course. Rather, the South Carolina Republican claimed Hagel is “very antagonistic toward the state of Israel” (again, not saying how) and complained that Hagel said “you should directly negotiate with Iran” (we’re not sure why this is a bad thing. President Obama believes this as well) and that sanctions on Iran “won’t work.” Graham also cited the fact that Hagel has promoted talks with Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza. Watch the interview clip:

But is Hagel “antagonistic” toward Israel? Hardly. The Nebraska Republican has a history of strong support for Israel, as this blog recently noted. “At it’s core,” Hagel wrote in his book, America, Our Next Chapter, “there will always be a special and historic bond with Israel exemplified by our continued commitment to Israel’s defense.”

But Graham is right. Hagel has supported negotiations with Iran. But so does President Obama and so do a majority of Americans. Hagel has indeed suggested that some sanctions on Iran are counterproductive but he has also supported sanctions on the Islamic Republic during his tenure in the Senate and in March, 2012, he said the U.S. should “keep ratcheting up the sanctions” and try to maintain the international coalition Obama has built against Iran. “Hagel’s positions [on Iran] may put him on the fringes of the Senate,” the Daily Beast’s Ali Gharib wrote last month, “but he’s firmly in the mainstream of expert opinion, from Israel to the Pentagon.”

And why does Graham attack Hagel for promoting talks with Hamas when Israel has negotiated with the terror group and high-level Israeli officials have said Israel should hold future talks? “People ask, why not talk with Hamas? There is nothing wrong, if you get a reply,” Israeli President Shimon Peres said last month. “We are willing to talk to Hamas, but they aren’t.” Moreover, former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy has for years advocated negotiating with Hamas.
Read more

()

Alyssa

Breaking Down The Deal That Ended The National Hockey League Lockout

By Travis Waldron on Jan 6, 2013 at 12:45 pm

The National Hockey League and its Players Association agreed on the framework of a new collective bargaining agreement early this morning, and while league owners and players must still ratify it, the deal will almost certainly end the owners’ 113-day lockout of players.

The deal comes just five days before the league’s self-imposed deadline to cancel the season, and it should get teams back on the ice in the next two weeks. Players largely acceded to ownership’s demands, but given the absurdity of the NHL’s previous offers, the NHLPA managed to mitigate at least some of the damage. Here’s a breakdown of the major issues in the dispute:

“Hockey-related revenue”: The league and players will split so-called “hockey-related revenue” evenly, a rollback from the previous bargaining agreement, which split revenue 57-43 in favor of players (it is important to note that hockey-related revenue is not comprised of all revenue NHL teams make, so this isn’t actually an even split). Players had agreed to a 50-50 split early in negotiations, even though that concession will likely lead to salary reductions. The union did, however, succeed in getting $300 million for “make whole” payments, which should partially mitigate at least some of the early salary reductions.

Salary cap: The league’s salary cap, the amount each team can spend in a year on player salaries, will rise to $70.2 million this year before falling back to $64.3 million next season, matching its previous level. Players wanted to move the salary cap higher, owners wanted it lower. The lower cap will likely lead to higher player payments into escrow accounts, which are used to ensure that the league’s hockey-related revenue split works over the course of the season. Players have previously expressed fears that higher payments into escrow accounts could lead to de facto salary reductions if league revenue falls short of projections.

Contracts: The NHL won concessions on player contracts, which are now limited in length (to seven years, or eight if the team is re-signing one of its current players), and in how they can be structured. In the past, teams could structure deals in a way that paid players highly one year and much less in others, an effort to circumvent the salary cap. That structuring, known as variance, is now limited — the amount a player is paid in one season cannot vary more than 35 percent from the previous year. Players opposed both limits, but neither is as strong as owners sought in previous offers.

Pensions: Players will receive a stronger pension plan in which owners assume some liability if there is a revenue shortfall, resolving an issue players called a “centerpiece” of the deal. Owners had wanted players to assume that liability — if revenue fell, the shortfall would be made up from the players’ share of revenue. Under this deal, though, at least some of the shortfall would be covered by owners, though how much is unclear since the pension plan has not yet been finalized.

Details of the final deal are still emerging, so it’s way too early to declare winners and losers. But it appears owners got most of what they wanted — particularly, a larger share of revenue and limits on player contracts — even though they didn’t get as much of it as they had sought in previous offers. And, at the very least, the deal prevents the entire season from being canceled, as it was during the NHL’s last labor dispute in 2004-2005.

()

Politics

Tea Party Senator: ‘I Don’t Think What Washington Needs Is More Compromise’

By Adam Peck on Jan 6, 2013 at 12:40 pm

For the last two years, Republicans in Congress have achieved new levels of obstructionism never before seen in Washington, passing fewer bills than any other session of Congress since such information began being recorded in the 1940s.

But if voters sent a message to the GOP in November by reelecting President Obama and voting out Republicans in both the Senate and the House, freshman tea party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) seems to have missed the memo. He appeared on Fox News Sunday:

I think the fiscal cliff deal was a lousy one, but moving forward with the debt ceiling and those who believe in limited spending and solving the debt…I don’t think what Washington needs is more compromise, I think what Washington needs is more common sense and more principle.

Cruz has said that he would not have voted for fiscal cliff agreement. Pressed by guest host John Harwood, Cruz extended his no-compromise agenda to everything from new revenue to gun control to the impending nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as Secretary of Defense. Cruz’s comments harken back to a similar promise made by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) three years ago, when he suggested that Republicans’ top priority shouldn’t be governing but rather defeating Obama in 2012. With the elections in the rear view mirror and Obama reelected to another four years, Cruz is simply interested in more GOP obstructionism.

()

Economy

GOP Rep: ‘It’s About Time’ We Had Another Government Shut Down

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 6, 2013 at 12:35 pm

Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation this morning, Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) enthusiastically called for a government shut down:

SALMON: I was here during the government shutdown in 1995. It was a divided government. we had a Democrat [sic] President of the United States. We had a Republican Congress. And I believe that that government shutdown actually gave us the impetus, as we went forward, to push toward some real serious compromise. I think it drove Bill Clinton in a different direction, a very bipartisan direction. In fact, we passed welfare reform for the first time ever, and we cut the welfare ranks in the last decade and a half by over 50%. These are good things. We also balanced the budget for the first time in 40 years in 1997, 1998, 1999. And when I left we had an over $230 billion surplus. This was with a Democrat [sic] president, A Republican —

HOST: You think that’s a good idea?

SALMON: Yes, I do. I really do. I think it’s about time!

Watch it:

Salmon’s theory, that the government shutdown somehow led to balanced budgets during President Clinton’s second term, was floated by Newt Gingrich in 2011, and it was no more true then than it is now.

Gingrich claimed that the shutdown led to the misleadingly named Balanced Budget Act of 1997, but the law was so laden down with conservative pet projects that it actually increased the budget deficit. In reality, the principal policy driver of the Clinton era surpluses was something that every single Republican in Congress voted against — the Clinton tax hikes on the rich. These surpluses, of course, were wiped out almost immediately after President George W. Bush took office, thanks to Bush’s tax cuts that largely benefited the very wealthy.

()

Climate Progress

Silence Of The Lambs 3: Media Coverage Of Climate Mixed In 2012, But Still Down Sharply From 2009

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jan 6, 2013 at 12:33 pm

by Douglas Fischer, via the Daily Climate

Widespread drought, Superstorm Sandy, and a melting ice cap failed to revive the media’s interest in climate change in 2012, with worldwide coverage continuing its three-year slide, according to a media database maintained by the nonprofit journalism site The Daily Climate.

The decline in the number of stories published on the topic – 2.4 percent fewer than 2011 – was the smallest since the United Nations climate talks collapsed in Copenhagen in 2009.

Coverage of climate impacts – extreme weather, melting glaciers and Arctic ice, warming temperatures and more – dominated climate news, accounting for almost one of every three stories written on the topic in 2012. That is the highest proportion in the five years that the website has been tracking coverage.

And coverage rebounded in some areas, particularly by the editorial boards of the world’s newspapers.

Start of a trend?

Separate analyses by other media watchers even showed an uptick in some climate-related reporting. Whether this represents a one-year blip or the start of a trend remains unclear, journalists and media researchers say.

“I ask myself, ‘In 20 years, what will we be proudest that we addressed, and where will we scratch our head and say why didn’t we focus more on that?’” said Glenn Kramon, assistant managing editor of the New York Times.

The Times published the most stories on climate change and had the biggest increase in coverage among the five largest U.S. daily papers, according to media trackers at the University of Colorado.

“Climate change is one of the few subjects so important that we need to be oblivious to cycles and just cover it as hard as we can all the time,” Kramon said.

Last year 7,194 reporters and commentators filed 18,546 stories, compared to 7,166 reporters who filed 18,995 stories in 2011, according to The Daily Climate.

The numbers remain far from 2009′s peak, when roughly 11,000 reporters and commentators published 32,400 items on climate change, based on the news site’s archive.

Some surprises

Justice

White House Preparing Broad Push For Gun Violence Reduction

By Hayes Brown on Jan 6, 2013 at 11:58 am

The Obama administration is set to harness the mood of the country in the aftermath of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary to enact wide-ranging efforts to reduce gun violence, according to the Washington Post.

Vice-President Joe Biden was named by President Obama in the days after the massacre to head a task force charged with finding ways the government could act to prevent further shootings. What seems to be emerging following discussions between the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Education is a much broader set of ideas that would seek to clamp down on gun violence throughout the country.

Beyond reinstating the lapsed Assault Weapon Ban and enacting bans on high-capacity ammunition magazines, the White House is reported to be considering instituting universal background checks for gun buyers, boosting mental health checks, putting into place a national database to track the movement and sale of weapons, and locking in harsher penalties for carrying guns in the vicinity of schools.

Faced with a potentially harsh Congress and efforts by pro-gun lobbyists to hamper such moves, the task force is also considering ways to work around those roadblocks:

In addition to potential legislative proposals, Biden’s group has expanded its focus to include measures that would not need congressional approval and could be quickly implemented by executive action, according to interest-group leaders who have discussed options with Biden and key Cabinet secretaries. Possibilities include changes to federal mental-health programs and modernization of gun-tracking efforts by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In doing so, the administration has made clear that it is willing to take on the National Rifle Association and other special interest groups to reduce the impact of firearms in America. Among the ways the White House is seeking to outflank their opponents, according to the Post story, is by working both by working in tandem with law enforcement officials and in convincing businesses like Walmart of the economic benefit to be had in reform.

Despite a growing coalition willing to take on gun violence, the rumored proposals are already receiving pushback from pro-gun members of both parties as memory of the devastation of Sandy Hook begins to fade. On ABC’s This Week, incoming Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) referred to the Washington Post’s reporting to say that the measures seemed “extreme” and would not pass. Likewise, incoming Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) indicated that he was of the belief that further gun safety legislation would be “unconstitutional.”

()

Economy

ABC’s Stephanopoulos Fact Checks McConnell: We’ve Already Confronted The Spending Problem

By Jeff Spross on Jan 6, 2013 at 11:49 am

This morning on ABC’s This Week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reiterated what has become the go-to Republican talking point in the wake of the fiscal cliff deal: That the issue of taxes and new revenue is finished, and will not be re-opened. “Now the question is, what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and our future,” McConnell said.

But this time host George Stephanopoulos pushed back. He pointed out that since last year Congress has already cut $1.5 trillion in spending, without any counter-balancing hikes in tax revenue until the fiscal cliff deal:

STEPHANOPOULOS: The President has said he’s willing to engage in more discussions over the sequester and the government shutdown, but that would also include new revenues. You say that the tax debate is over.

McCONNELL: Oh yeah, the tax issue is finished, over, completed. That’s behind us. Now the question is, what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and our future? And that’s our spending addiction. It’s time to confront it. The President surely knows that. He’s mentioned it both publicly and privately. The time to confront it is now. We have to engage.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me just interrupt you there. In the last year in the Budget Control Act, the Congress actually cut $1.5 trillion in spending. That’s more than was raised in revenue in this last fiscal cliff deal. So are you saying that any discussion of revenue is completely off the table going forward? You will not accept any new revenues in any new deal?

McCONNELL: Yeah, absolutely. The tax issue is behind us. Now the question is, what are we going to do about the real problem?

Watch it:

Stephanopoulos got one detail wrong: The spending cuts of 2011 came from the spring budget deal to avert a shutdown as well as the Budget Control Act, which concluded the last debt ceiling crisis. But the total cuts did come out to at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade — and considerably more than that, once reduced interest payments due to a smaller debt are factored in.

So more than twice the $600 billion in new revenue raised by the fiscal cliff deal. And before that there was the $700 billion in reduced Medicare spending passed in the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The country has, in fact, already “confronted” the spending problem.

Even if Obama’s call for a balanced deal going forward is strictly adhered to, the country’s total deficit-reduction efforts would still be tilted in favor of the GOP’s preference for spending cuts. McConnell’s stone-faced insistence today that any future deal contain nothing but spending cuts vastly compounds the imbalance.

And as Stephanopoulos pointed out later in the interview, it’s a stance that makes a future agreement impossible by definition.

()

Justice

New Republican Senator Says Gun Safety Is ‘Unconstitutional’

By Igor Volsky on Jan 6, 2013 at 10:12 am

Newly-elected Sen. Ted Cruiz (R-TX) accused politicians of exploiting the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut to advance gun safety legislation and argued that efforts to limit assault weapons and high capacity magazines are unconstitutional. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Cruz said he would back efforts to strengthen the federal database used to determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy firearms, but argued that any other reforms would violate the Second Amendment:

HOST: You are a fierce defender of Second Amendment rights…. is there any new gun control that you would accept?

CRUZ: The reason we are discussing this is because of the the tragedy in Newtown. And every parent, my wife and I we have two girls aged four and two, every parent was horrified at what happened there. To see 20 children, six dults senselessly murdered it takes your breath away. But within minutes, we saw politicians run out and try to exploit and push their political agenda of gun control. I do not suppor their gun control agenda for two reasons. Number one, it is it unconstitutional.

The right to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment, but it is not absolute and lawmakers have introduced a series of common-sense restrictions. For instance, in the Heller case, the Supreme Court found that while a handgun ban is not constitutional, because handguns are in “common use,” a machine gun is not and therefore could be restricted. An assault weapon equipped with a clip that can shoot hundreds of rounds would likely fall into the same category. As conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.”

In 2011, the D.C. Circuit Court upheld a law prohibiting large-capacity ammunition magazines and assault weapons.

There were no serious challenges to the Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004, though in 2002 an appeals court unanimously upheld the law.

()

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Dec				Feb »
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31