NOAA reports “April 2011: historic U.S. extremes in rains, floods, tornadoes, and fires”

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center:  “April was a month of historic climate extremes across much of the United States, including: record breaking precipitation that resulted in historic flooding; recurrent violent weather systems that broke records for tornado and severe weather outbreaks; and wildfire activity that scorched more than twice the area of any April this century.”

The NCDC report for April reads like something out of a book titled … oh, I don’t know, Hell and High Water.

Multiple scientific studies find that indeed the weather has become more extreme, as expected, and that it is extremely likely that humans are a contributing cause (see “Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment” and links therein).

Equally important, human-caused climate change is exacerbating the extreme events we would normally experience — by making deluges more intense (because of the extra water vapor in the atmosphere) and by making droughts hotter.

“All extreme weather events are now subject to human influence,” said Dr. Peter Gleick, a climate & water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute, at a Capitol Hill briefing on Monday organized by the American Meteorological Society. “We are loading the dice and painting higher numbers on them.”

As the reinsurer Munich Re put in in September, “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change”

The staggering reality of the Mississippi flooding has consumed most of the extreme weather news, otherwise the news stories would be all about how a “record breaking 1.79 million acres burned across the country during the month”:

Back in mid-april I reported how an “unprecedented drought” is driving “never-before-seen wildfire situation in Texas.” Now meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters reports today at Weather Underground that the “Great Texas drought of 2011 intensifies“:

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“Looks like Greenland’s arrived earlier than expected” — from the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning:

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Combined policies of R&D and deployment will be needed to break through institutional and cost barriers

Of the approximate 300 GW of new electricity generating capacity added globally over the two year period from 2008 to 2009, 140 GW came from RE [Renewable Energy] additions

According to a new Special Report from the IPCC looking at over 160 scenarios, we could get 77% of our global energy from renewables by 2050, thus reducing carbon emissions by 560 gigatons and putting us on a path to stabilize emissions at 450 ppm.  The finding isn’t really new, but carries considerable weight coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC report documents the rapid rise of renewable energy in recent years — and makes clear that the future is even brighter if we combine the right set of policies.  That means we mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that research and development alone can get us down the cost curve and into the marketplace fast enough to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to avert multiple simultaneous catastrophes.

As the report concludes (emphasis in original):

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Japan PM on Fukushima: “Taking this as a lesson, we will lead the world in clean energy such as solar and biomass”

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday that Japan would abandon plans to build new nuclear reactors, saying his country needed to “start from scratch” in creating a new energy policy….

Mr. Kan said Japan would retain nuclear and fossil fuels as energy sources, but vowed to add two new pillars to Japan’s energy policy: renewable energy and conservation.

Even before Fukushima, nuclear power had priced itself out of the market in most industrialized countries (see “Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve?“)  Back in October, Exelon CEO John Rowe explained that low gas prices and no carbon price pushed back nuclear renaissance a “decade, maybe two.”

After Fukushima, the myth that we could somehow cuts costs by accelerating the permitting and construction process and skimping on safety had its own melt down (see “The Nukes of Hazard“).  And that myth was always going to take its hottest hit in Japan itself.

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By Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Rep. Jon Becker and Gov. John Hickenlooper

Republicans in Colorado are trying to pass legislation to cripple the state’s clean energy agency, which has helped spur a green jobs revolution.

Over the past few years Colorado has earned a reputation as a national leader in promoting and deploying clean renewable energy. It’s adopted a 30 percent renewable energy standard – the nation’s second highest requirement. It’s moving to retire a significant portion of its coal-fired electricity generation. And it’s fostered a robust clean energy economic sector with 1,500 companies and the nation’s fourth highest concentration per capita of clean energy workers.

Part of the credit goes to an executive agency – the Governor’s Energy Office – that works with communities, utilities, and citizens to promote the use of wind, solar and geothermal energy and energy efficiency through grants, loans and educational programs.

But if Republicans in the state legislature have their way, that office will be cut by 25 percent, renamed, and re-purposed to promote coal, oil and natural gas as well as renewables.

“Wind and solar can’t meet all of our demands, so we need to find a way to put in our traditional energy to help all of Colorado,” bill sponsor Rep. Jon Becker (R-CO) told the Denver Business Journal. Becker’s legislation, HB 1312, has passed in the GOP-controlled house and is awaiting action in the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority.

New energy companies are worried that enactment of the legislation will send the wrong signal to the renewable industry. Jim Burness, chief operating officer of solar company SolSource, told a legislative hearing that the bill “essentially says that we’re no longer serious about the clean energy economy and they really ought to look elsewhere, like California, Arizona, New Jersey, Massachusetts.”

If the legislation passes in the Senate before the legislature’s adjournment tomorrow, it will be up to new Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper to keep it from becoming law with a veto.

That ought to be a slam dunk, but Hickenlooper, unlike his predecessor Democrat Bill Ritter, has a history of appearing to go wobbly on clean energy and environmental issues. He told the New York Times early this year that Colorado “should drill the living daylights out of natural gas and cut regulation.” And during his campaign last year he said “environmentalists went way overboard” during a state re-write of oil and gas drilling regulations.

U.S., Chinese Firms Sign Solar-Power Pact

BEIJING””U.S. solar-panel maker First Solar Inc. and China Power International New Energy Holding Ltd. said they will collaborate on solar-energy projects in China, the U.S. and elsewhere.

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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory released this chart today from an upcoming report on the number of renewable energy projects underway in the U.S. as of the fourth quarter of 2010. The results are striking: With over 4000 Megawatts (4 Gigawatts) of projects over 1 MW and around 1.3 GW  under 1 MW in some phase of development, Solar PV is hitting its stride.

Q4 results from NREL’s Project Finance Tracking Initiative

We should make a couple very important notes.

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By Tom Kenworthy

As shale gas has emerged as potentially significant source of fuel for this country, it has come under increased scrutiny.  A NY Times series raised concerns about pollution of surface waters by the wastewater produced during drilling of natural gas wells using hydraulic fracturing.  A recent study by Cornell University researchers called into question the conventional wisdom that gas is far better than coal in terms of its carbon pollution, in part because of concerns of methane leakage during and after fracking.

Now comes a new paper by Duke University researchers that documents “systematic evidence for methane contamination” of household drinking water wells by shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania and New York.

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The Brookings Institution reported last week on “The Impacts of Air Pollution on Employment and Productivity.”  CAP’s Jorge Madrid has the story.

Brookings notes, “recent research suggests 94% of the non-climate-change costs of air pollution are health-related,” leading to “a direct impact on the health and productivity of today’s and tomorrow’s work force.”  Other findings include incidents of low birth rate as a result of prenatal exposure to pollution being associated with higher health care costs and reduced earnings later in life.

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Americans know who’s to blame for spiking gas prices: Big Oil and Wall Street.  Brad Johnson has the story.

As oil prices have skyrocketed, sending gas prices surging to $4 a gallon or more around the nation, American families have suffered. Although the surging prices threaten the national economic recovery as Americans cut back their household spending and driving, oil companies and commodity speculators have reaped billion-dollar payouts. Fossil-funded conservatives blame environmental regulations and President Obama, but a new poll by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN shows that the American public, no matter what party, know that they can just follow the money to find who’s to blame. Nine out of ten Americans believe that oil companies and speculators are to blame for the recent increase in gas prices:

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After a wave of Republicans came out for ending billions in taxpayer subsidies to big oil companies, first quarter profits showed major oil companies like Shell and ExxonMobil made about $35 billion in profits. Although observers expected that news of record profits might mean the end of some $70 billion in taxpayer subsidies, fiscal conservatives were disappointed last week when the Republicans voted in lockstep to extend oil subsidies.

ThinkProgress spoke with Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC), a freshman Republican who voted to preserve the subsidies, at a Republican Party dinner in South Carolina on Friday. Asked if giving taxpayer money to massively profitable companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron is “fair,” Scott danced around the issue:

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