A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.
U.S. coal companies have pumped $1.5 million into House Speaker John Boehner’s political operation this year, a sign of the industry’s beefed-up efforts to fight new and proposed regulations from the Obama administration.
The coal industry now ranks as one of the top sources of cash for the Ohio Republican, rivaling such perennial GOP donors as Wall Street and the real-estate industry. A large part of the coal industry’s donations came in a single week at the end of June.
Donations from coal-industry interests account for more than 10% of the $12.5 million Mr. Boehner collected from Jan. 1 to June 30 for fund-raising accounts he directly controls. Mr. Boehner’s personal campaign account collected less than $200,000 from the coal industry during the entire 2009-10 election cycle.
The cash flowing to Mr. Boehner’s coffers stems partly from the GOP’s efforts to roll back the Obama administration’s environmental and energy policies since taking control of the House in 2010, and replace them with fewer regulations in order to boost domestic energy production. Republicans say proposals to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants and limit mining threaten to raise energy costs and stifle job-creation. The speaker has long been a backer of the coal industry, and many coal interests are based in his home state of Ohio.
In April, the House voted to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources. In July, the House approved legislation that would limit the EPA’s authority to veto water permits previously issued by the Army Corps of Engineers. Other measures benefiting the coal industry are still moving through the House, though they have gone nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate…..
One top donor to Mr. Boehner this year has been William Koch, president of Oxbow Corp., which owns a coal-mining operation. Mr. Koch and his wife contributed a total of $70,000 to Mr. Boehner, according to fund-raising records. Two of Mr. Koch’s brothers are well-known Republican contributors.
“We are a big supporter of John Boehner. We think he is good for business,” said Brad Goldstein, a spokesman for Oxbow, based in West Palm Beach, Fla. “He looks out for business interests, and he wants to create more jobs for America, while this administration has been rather harsh on the industry.”
Chu: Obama jobs plan supports green energy
President Obama isn’t trying to sell his “American Jobs Act” as a clean-energy bill – the word energy didn’t even make it into his big speech to Congress last week, or his Rose Garden sales pitch Monday.
Indeed his pitch to Congress for the $447 billion measure comes as Republicans have pounced on past administration financial support for Solyndra, the California solar company that imploded late last month, taking over 1,000 jobs with it.
But Energy Secretary Steven Chu is emphasizing that the jobs proposal has a green tint. In a blog post, Chu is touting the green energy potential of the National Infrastructure Bank in Obama’s jobs plan.
EU Carbon Price Should Be 3 Times Higher, BNEF Says
Carbon permits in Europe’s cap-and- trade program are “underpriced” and should be more than three times higher to achieve the region’s post-2020 emissions- reduction goals, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said.
“Looking at how the scheme will evolve up to 2020 and beyond, the price today should be 40 to 60 euros ($54.50 to $81.70) a metric ton of carbon dioxide, compared to the current price of around 12 to 13 euros,” New Energy said today in an e- mailed statement about a Sept. 6 report. “By 2020, prices will need to rise to 60 to 90 euros.”
European Union carbon allowances for delivery in December have lost almost 16 percent this year because of an oversupply amid recession, concerns about economic growth and a sovereign- debt crisis in the region. The contract rose 3 cents to 11.94 euros a ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange at 10.26 a.m. in London. One allowance carries the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide.
A Huge Oil Palm Plantation Puts African Rainforest at Risk
As global agricultural companies turn to Africa, a U.S. firm is planning a massive oil palm plantation in Cameroon that it says will benefit local villagers. But critics argue that the project would destroy some of the key remaining forests in the West African nation and threaten species-rich reserves.
Industrial palm oil production is coming to Africa, its ancestral home. The world’s most productive oil seed has been a boon to Asian economies, but the looming arrival of large-scale plantations in Africa is raising fears that some of the same issues plaguing Malaysia, Indonesia, and other leading producers — deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, conflicts with local people, and poor working conditions — could befall one of the world’s most destitute regions.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has voted to kill Yucca Mountain again, sort of.
The project has become more complex than nuclear physics. Yucca Mountain, a volcanic structure 100 miles from Las Vegas, was the government’s lead candidate for a nuclear waste repository, but President Obama, making good on a campaign pledge, cut funding for an Energy Department plan to build there, meaning that the country would have to restart the search for a burial spot.
The vote on Friday grew out of that policy but did not simplify matters. The complexity starts with a plan that Congress established in the 1980s for creating the waste repository. It was supposed to be built by the Energy Department, but only after the department had obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When President Obama pulled the plug on Yucca, the Energy Department withdrew its license application for building Yucca, which at the time was being considered by a panel of three administrative law judges of the regulatory commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
I might be mistaken but that picture of Boehner pouring some objects from a box tells me those objects are charcoal briquets. Of course, they are derived from wood and when added to soil become biochar. Not bad, Mr. Speaker. Way to go! Finish the job.
John McCormick
I was wondering about that. Maybe it’s Kingsford for a kumbaya party out on the back lawn. Gotta love the props.
I’d opposed storage at Yucca Mountain, even though I live in New York, because the risks of nuclear waste transport through this area are not acceptable. Aging railroads and highways run through cities, across watersheds and farmland, so there is too much at stake even with a single supposedly rare accident.
The prospect of next-generation small-scale nuclear reactors that can use the waste from the old reactors, and be placed near sources of ‘spent’ fuel rods, seems speculative at present, but tantalizing.
Floods worsen, 270 killed: officials Pakistan called on the world Tuesday to speed up relief efforts after torrential rains exacerbated major floods, killing 270 people and making another 200,000 homeless in the south of the country. http://tribune.com.pk/story/251425/floods-worsen-270-killed-officials/
Pakistan is hit by dengue fever epidemic
The government in Pakistan’s eastern province of Punjab is struggling to control a growing dengue fever epidemic, officials say.
They have warned that it threatens to affect other parts of the country.
More than 4,000 cases of dengue fever have been reported in the past two months, officials say, and at least eight people have died.
While the disease is not new in Pakistan, experts say it has spread fast and may reach crisis proportions.
They say that the illness is thriving because of poor hygiene, an absence of control measures and the fact that recent heavy monsoon rainfall has lowered temperatures and provided lots of water – ideal conditions for dengue-carrying mosquitoes. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14896393
Regarding John Boehner, what can a 20-year incumbent, who already won by a 2 to 1 margin in 2010, find to do with $12.5 million in election funds? Can he use the funds outside his home district?
I know you are ahead of the game, but today is the 13th, not the 14th.
Hmm. That would make a very interesting TV show….
http://theconversation.edu.au/global-climate-india-says-australian-carbon-tax-a-useful-idea-3356
http://theconversation.edu.au/global-climate-china-eyes-australian-ets-model-3328
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/13/carbon-tax-rebate?intcmp=122
Southwest Facing Flash Flood Threat into Midweek
http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/st...
Drenching thunderstorms will plague the desert Southwest through tonight, bringing a flash flood threat to the cities of Las Vegas, Needles and Palm Springs.
Flash flooding occurred in many places Monday and Monday night across Arizona as well as southern California and Nevada.
Topock, Ariz., received over an inch of rain in less than 45 minutes while lightning sparked a fire at a house near Kingman, Ariz.
Another phenomenon that residents could face the next few days is a dust storm. Blowing dust was reported Monday night in Phoenix and Yuma as thunderstorms were nearby.
Paul -
2.5 to 5 inches have fallen along I-10 between Kingman and Barstow .
http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=ESX&product=NTP&overlay=11101111&loop=yes
!! still aways to go till the end of the year….
Alleged Cold Fusion Patent
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/docs/2011RossiUSPatentApp.pdf
Look out for waterspouts…
http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/54958/waterspout-erie.asp
THE CASE FOR A CARBON TAX
by BRYAN WALKER on SEPTEMBER 12, 2011
The case for putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions from human activity is not arguable. It’s undeniable. But what is arguable is the best way of achieving it in the working of a modern economy. Shi-Ling Hsu, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, argues for a currently less popular way in his newly published book The Case for a Carbon Tax. “There is no policy instrument that is more transparent and administratively simple than a carbon tax.”
http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-case-for-a-carbon-tax/
Unfortunately its overtness tells against it politically because voters, politicians and emitting industries see the price very clearly and can calculate what they think it might cost them.
EU Carbon Price Should Be 3 Times Higher, New Energy Says
http://www.bloomberg.com
Carbon permits in Europe’s cap-and- trade program are “underpriced” and should be more than three times higher to achieve the region’s post-2020 emissions- reduction goals, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said.
Cairn draws a blank at second Arctic well
Doubts over Cairn Energy’s £400m Arctic drilling venture after it abandons second well
Cairn Energy, the Edinburgh-based oil and gas explorer, is abandoning a second well in Greenland, it said on Tuesday , after its controversial venture to find oil in the Arctic again drew a blank.
The Gamma-1 exploration well off the west coast of Greenland, within the Arctic circle, found no oil or gas.
It is a second serious blow to Cairn’s Greenland exploration efforts. The company is drilling five wells in the region in a project costing £400m. Cairn said in August a well further south had proved barren. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/13/cairn-arctic-well-dry?CMP=twt_fd
Great graph on peak coal in the UK…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/07/u-s-called-king-of-coal-some-disagree/
http://theconversation.edu.au/no-need-for-nuclear-even-in-the-face-of-climate-change-257
We know how to de-commission wind turbines and solar panels at the end of their life, at little cost and with no risk to the community.
“What was striking to me was the enormous pile of evidence that things are already happening,” Katja Philippart, a marine scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research who was involved in putting the study together, told The Associated Press. “There is so much happening already. We are just in the midst of it.”
It is not only the range of changes that has scientists concerned, but the speed of them.
“The biggest surprise to me is the fact that things are changing in the ocean much more rapidly than we thought was possible,” said Carlo Heip, who is director of the same institute in the Netherlands.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/13/bacteria-spreading-in-warming-oceans_n_960147.html
In 30 seconds, a decelerating subway train with electric brakes can put up to 4 megawatts of power into a flywheel via the station’s electric third rail — that’s enough to run 1,300 average U.S. homes.
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-09-13-gigantic-flywheels-will-make-subway-trains-efficient-by-harvesti
Climate Chaos
Cotton…weather…
Rising cost of clothes could signal end to ‘cheap chic’
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Biggest ever month-on-month increase in prices down to more expensive cotton, labour and transport costs, says ONS
Flood update : Ready cotton crop destroyed in Khairpur
Published: September 14, 2011
http://tribune.com.pk/story/251728/flood-update-ready-cotton-crop-destroyed-in-khairpur/
The cotton crop in three talukas of Khairpur district – Nara, Thari Mirwah and Faiz Ganj – has been completely destroyed, and the sugarcane and rice crops have been partially wiped out, said the DCO on Tuesday.
DCO Ghulam Abbas Baloch was briefing army officers led by Brigadier Qaiser. They met to evaluate the losses to property, crops and cattle. According to Baloch, more than 900,000 people have been affected in Khairpur.
Remnants of Tropical Hurricane Katia are beleaguering the British Isles and Sweden. Who would have thought tropical storms could cause problems so far north?
Hansens storms have arrived across the globe and they are reoccurring on yearly and biyearly basis. Certainly within a 5-7yr cycle for most places…
Sindh flood relief efforts: Govt advises people to flee before 3 days of storms hit
http://tribune.com.pk/story/250971/sindh-flood-relief-efforts-govt-advises-people-to-flee-before-3-days-of-storms-hit/
Under the influence of this strong weather system, more widespread thundershowers accompanied with strong, gusty winds are expected to hit Badin, Mirpurkhas, Thar, Umarkot, Thatta, Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Dadu and Larkana districts along Karachi and east Balochistan in the next three days.
Observations of Climate Change from Indigenous Alaskans
Personal interviews with Alaska Natives in the Yukon River Basin provide unique insights on climate change and its impacts, helping develop adaptation strategies for these local communities.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2931
Oil and gas subsidies are an outrage. This industry is already rapeing us at the gas pump. They should get no tax payer money.
John Mattick
Big Bend, WI
We need to impeach those justices who have clearly violated the constitution by allowing corporations greater access to government than the average citizen, who as far as I can see has no access at all……