Record smashing heat-wave hits nation

CP:  So it’s friggin’ hot in DC and much of the country.

Audience:  How hot is it?

CP:  It’s so hot that:

• I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walkin’.
• The robins are laying their eggs sunny side up.
• I saw squirrels fanning their nuts.
• Even meteorologists are doing stories about human-caused global warming.

Settle down, anti-science disinformers who try to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather — these are only jokes.  We all know that you can’t use a single weather event as evidence for or against climate change — unless of course that weather event is a big snowstorm [see "Massive moisture-driven extreme precipitation during warmest winter in the satellite record "” and the disinformers say it disproves (!) climate science].

What people should be talking about are record highs versus record lows across the country.  The figure above comes from a Weather Channel post by Jonathan Erdman, “July or April? Spring skipped?“:

Read more

For all you New Englanders, the details on the “Second Annual Great Issues in Energy Symposium” are here and below:

Read more

After the worst coal mining disaster in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is facing long-overdue scrutiny for his record of putting coal profits over fundamental safety and health concerns. Blankenship, a right-wing activist millionaire who sits on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association, used his company’s ties to the industry-dominated Bush administration to paper over Massey’s egregious environmental and health violations. Massey rewarded Republicans with massive donations after the company avoided paying billions in fines for a 2000 coal slurry disaster in Martin County, three times bigger than the Exxon Valdez. After both mine inspectors and Massey employees got the same message that it was more important to “run coal” than to follow safety rules, a deadly fire broke out in the Aracoma Alma mine in 2006, burning two men alive.

Blankenship was abetted by former employees placed at the highest levels of the federal mine safety system. Massey COO Stanley Suboleski was named a commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in 2003 and was nominated in December 2007 to run the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy. Suboleski is now back on the Massey board. After being rejected twice by the Senate, one-time Massey executive Dick Stickler was put in charge of the MSHA in a recess appointment in October 2006. In the 1990s, Stickler oversaw Massey subsidiary Performance Coal, the operator of the deadly Upper Big Branch Mine, after managing Beth Energy mines, which “incurred injury rates double the national average.” Bush named Stickler acting secretary when the recess appointment expired in January 2008.

Below are further details of these two past incidents that foretold Blankenship’s latest disaster:

THE FATAL ARACOMA MINE FIRE

Blankenship Branded Deadly Fire At Dangerous Aracoma Mine ‘Statistically Insignificant’. In the most egregious case of preventable death before the Upper Big Branch explosion, Massey’s Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to “plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $2.5 million in criminal fines” after two workers died in a fire at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Melville, West Virginia. Massey also paid $1.7 million in civil fines. The mine “had 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws” before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Massey CEO Don Blankenship passed the deaths off as “statistically insignificant.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06; Charleston Gazette, 12/24/08]

Federal Mine Inspector Who Wanted To Shut Down Mine Told To ‘Back Off’. Days before fire broke out in the Aracoma mine, a federal mine inspector tried to close down that section of the mine, but “was told by his superior to back off and let them run coal, that there was too much demand for coal.” Massey failed to notify authorities of the fire until two hours after the disaster. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/23/06]

Blankenship Memo: “Coal Pays the Bills.” Three months before the Aracoma mine fire, Massey CEO Don Blankenship sent managers a memo saying, “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal . . . you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06]

THE MARTIN COUNTY COAL-SLURRY DISASTER

Three Times the Volume of the Exxon Valdez Spill. Massey Energy is the parent of Martin County Coal, responsible for the “nation’s largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi” until the 2008 Tennesee coal-ash spill In October 2000, a coal slurry impoundment broke through an underground mine shaft and spilled over 300 million gallons of black, toxic sludge into the headwaters of Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek,” in Martin County, KY. [Lost Mountain, p. 128]

Site Denied Superfund Status. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency “determined that the slurry spill was not a release of a hazardous substance” and thus ineligible for Superfund status. [KY EQC]

Sen. McConnell and Wife Stopped MSHA Investigation. U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Chao “put on the brakes” on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 10/2/06, OpenSecrets]

$2.4 Billion Becomes $20 Million. In May 2007 the EPA filed suit for $2.4 billion against Massey for violating “Clean Water Act more than 4,500 times from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2006″ in West Virginia and Kentucky, including the Martin County spill. In January 2008 Massey agreed to pay $20 million to settle the case. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 1/18/08]

Photo credit: Bill Rhodes

Catastrophic rainfall is increasing in the northeastern United States, a new climate change report has found. As New England residents continue the clean up from the latest round of disastrous flooding, researchers at the University of New Hampshire commissioned by Clean Air-Cool Planet found these calamities are part of a long-term trend of extreme precipitation. The region, like the planet in general, is warming, shifting precipitation into more extreme events. As weather patterns are increasingly shaped by manmade pollution, the climate change impacts in specific regions like the Northeast become more starkly evident:

One of the most obvious examples of these impacts is the increase in extreme precipitation events, which, combined with changes in land use, have led to an increase in freshwater flooding events across the region, exemplified by the “100-year” floods that have occurred in southern New Hampshire in 2005, 2006, 2007. And again in 2010, powerful nor’easters drenched the northeast with 3″ to 8″ of rain three times (late February, middle of March, and end of March) which resulted in significant flooding across the region.

Examining precipitation data from “219 weather stations in New England, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania from the years 1948-2007,” including some with long-term data going back to 1900, the researchers found that in “all but 18 of the stations storms which produced at least 1″ of rain in 24 hours (or the equivalent in snowfall) are increasing. Furthermore, storms which produce 2″ and 4″ of rainfall in a 48-hour period also are increasing in frequency.” The report authors note that we must abandon the idea that “100-year storms” will come only once every century, and must completely rethink public and private infrastructure and planning in our future of increasingly rapid climate change:

Requirements for how and where we build our homes, businesses, roads, wastewater treatment plants, power lines and other infrastructure need to be re-evaluated. For example, flood relief structures are constructed to a certain level of performance, in many cases, built to prevent flood impacts from the 100-year flood threshold (based on an outdated definition of the 100-year flood). The problem with increasing frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation is that the 100-year flood is now occurring much more frequently. It may be necessary to alter building codes to withstand even larger events and adopt floodplain ordinances to exclude/restrict construction in high risk areas. Knowing the trends will assist society in becoming more prepared and possibly help prevent the worst-case scenarios projected for our future, if current trends in climate change indicators continue.

The United States is under siege from manmade global warming. Increasingly extreme weather is already destroying homes, families, and even entire communities across this nation. As temperature rises increase, we must prepare to meet the coming deluge even as we make every effort to stop spewing climate-destroying greenhouse gases into the air.

NASA Scientist wins major environmental prize

UPDATE:  Hansen just won The Sophie Prize (see below).

The country’s top climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, writes in HuffPost:

The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century. Our fossil fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet.

I have no doubt that this will be the predominant moral issue of the 21st century.  In general, though, I don’t think it’s a good idea to compare un-comparable things, like unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions and slavery and Nazism.

That’s especially true in a blog post (on a highly trafficked website) that doesn’t actually make the scientific case or even link to the scientific case, either of which HuffPost would have allowed.  I wish Hansen would spend more time articulating the science, where he is a credible expert and where the public polling has dipped a tad, and less time opining on policy, where he isn’t an expert and where public support remains high (see “Memo to policymakers: Public STILL favors the transition to clean energy“).

Hansen has long decried cap-and-trade, and so his strong criticism of cap-and-dividend, while it may be surprising to some, is at least consistent:

Read more

Poll shows vets back energy bill; cite national security

A compelling new poll of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans finds that 73 percent of them support Clean Energy Climate Change legislation in Congress, 79 percent believe ending our dependence on foreign oil is important to national security, and 67 percent support the argument that such legislation will help their own economic prospects.

The poll was conducted by Lake Research Group for VoteVets.org In February, and is made up of 45 percent self-identified Republicans, 25 percent Independents, and 20 percent Democrats.  The full memo detailing the results is below.

“This poll confirms what we always knew was true – veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan know, first-hand, the destructive effect our dependence on oil has on our national security, and on the battlefield,” said Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org.  “They are well aware of arguments made in favor and against bi-partisan clean energy and climate change legislation, and firmly fall into the group of Americans supportive of passing that comprehensive legislation.  Veterans of the wars we’re fighting want legislation passed now.”

Indeed, an overwhelming majority of veterans said that they supported the view that our national security was adversely affected by our dependence on foreign oil – by a 79-14 percent margin.

Yet, veterans do not believe that the answer is just more drilling.  When asked the question, “Do you favor or oppose a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill that invests in clean, renewable energy sources in America and limits carbon pollution in the atmosphere?” Seventy-three percent of veterans supported the bill, while only 22 percent opposed.

Read more

Massey Energy is actively contesting millions of dollars of fines for safety violations at its West Virginia coal mine where disaster struck this week.  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has the story:

Read more

Virginia’s extremist attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA), is threatening the recovery of the American auto industry with new climate denial lawsuits.  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has the story.

Read more

Clean energy R&D finds a home in China

CAP has sent a cohort of their experts into the field to China to study the rapidly expanding Chinese efforts to support clean energy R&D, innovation, manufacturing, and deployment. At one of their first stops on the tour, Julian Wong and Sarah Miller document how and why Serious Materials, a titan of Silicon Valley Innovation, has chosen to locate its new solar energy R&D facility in Xi’An province, instead of California.

Read more