A US Geological Survey study released today suggests that snowpack declines in the Rocky Mountains over the last 30 years are unusual compared to the past few centuries. Prior studies by the USGS and other institutions attribute the decline to unusual springtime warming, more precipitation falling now as rain rather than snow and earlier snowmelt.

The warming and snowpack decline are projected to worsen through the 21st century, foreshadowing a strain on water supplies. Runoff from winter snowpack – layers of snow that accumulate at high altitude – accounts for 60 to 80 percent of the annual water supply for more than 70 million people living in the western United States.

That’s from a USGS news release for an important new study in Science, “The Unusual Nature of Recent Snowpack Declines in the North American Cordillera” (subs. req’d).

What’s most worrisome is that we now have three major trends driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases that threaten to significantly worsen drought and water problems in the West and Southwest:

1. Less precipitation in many areas (see NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path)
2. Less snowpack, as this USGS study found
3. Hotter temperatures (see SW could see a 60-year drought like that of 12th century — only hotter — this century)

Assuming the anti-science disinformers continue to block any serious action,  these catastrophic changes will last a long, long time (see NOAA: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

For the record, it was the possibility of losing the Sierra snowpack in the second half of the century that led our Nobel prize-winning Energy Secretary to warn in 2009, “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

Here’s more on the new study:

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Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), a long-time champion in the fight against hunger, is outraged by Republican cuts to food programs as the need for assistance has grown. Through no fault of their own, millions of American families are struggling to find jobs and put food on the table for their children, even as oil companies, agribusiness giants, and Wall Street traders reap record profits. The Tea Party response to this growing need has been to slash funding for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program by $686 million, hurting 200,000 to 350,000 low-income mothers and young children; to cut the Commodity Supplemental Food Program for low-income seniors by 22 percent, hitting at least 130,000 low income seniors; to drop The Emergency Food Assistance Program by $51 million; and to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by an astounding $2 billion.

In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress last Friday, McGovern decried the agriculture appropriations bill, which is going to the House floor tomorrow:

The agriculture appropriations bill that the Republicans are putting on the floor next week cuts food and nutrition programs by more than half a billion dollars. I think that’s morally indefensible. We shouldn’t be balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. Taking food from people can’t be justified. We have a big fight next week and I hope that people are outraged by the priorities of this new Congress. They’re all messed up.

Watch it:

“The number of clients being served by the emergency food system increased 46 percent since 2006,” 47 hunger, justice, and religious organizations note, writing that “deficit reduction should not come at the expense of the most vulnerable among us, especially low income children and seniors for whom daily life is already a struggle. “

With Gov. Chris Gregoire’s (D-WA) announcement that she will not seek reelection in 2012, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) has emerged as the frontrunner to get the Democratic nomination for the Washington governorship. Inslee is one of the fiercest climate hawks in the nation, leading the Congress in the fights to fight climate pollution and build a clean energy economy. Since 2003, he has fought for a new Apollo-style mission to mobilize the entire nation for clean energy. In 2009, Inslee co-founded the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, because of the need for “bold, aggressive action” to fight the climate crisis. And he has been one of the strongest defenders in the nation of science, scientists, and the American dream against climate polluters and their right-wing allies, as these ThinkProgress videos show:

April 2011: Shutting down the government is not a solution. Shutting down the EPA is not a solution. Shutting down American innovation is not a solution.

April 2010: Mine safety is as silly as global warming — they’re both deadly serious and they’re not silly at all.

March 2010: I would counsel people who don’t want to move on this to just get over their fear. Because frankly it’s fear that’s holding back. It’s people who are afraid that Americans aren’t smart enough to invent new technologies to deal with that. That we’re not bold enough like we used to be when we went to the moon with the original Apollo project.

December 2009: It’s troublesome to me that people who put man on the moon, people who discovered water on the moon, the people who are doing great research figuring out how the oceans are acidic, some of whom are my constituents — It’s disturbing to me that people would come to this chamber and call them fascists!

October 2009: You can’t solve ocean acidification without controlling CO2 and yet people are still trying to write books to deceive the American public. And we ought to blow the whistle on them, we’re blowing the whistle on one today, we’ll continue to do it, because ultimately science is going to triumph in this discussion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Tyce Herrman

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has updated its dietary guidelines, now called MyPlate, to include more fruits, vegetables and a diverse range of proteins beyond meat.

However, the USDA needs to put its money where its mouth is. According to a report compiled by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, less than 1% of agriculture subsidies go to fruits and veggies, and 63% of subsidies go to meat and dairy. Grain subsidies total 20%; however, most of those grains go to feeding livestock, bringing the actual subsidies for meat and dairy much higher than 63%.

How does livestock production contribute to greenhouse gas emissions?  The FAO calculates yearly CO2 contributions from the different steps along the livestock production chain this way:

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By Arpita Bhattacharyya

The heat wave last week got me thinking: We may need smog work-at-home days, just like snow days.

I was commuting to work last week in Washington D.C., where a heat wave sent temperatures soaring to 101 degrees.  Looking around at the exhaust pipes spewing fumes into the baking sun, I realized why smog days may be necessitated.

As a kid, snow days were one of the perks of going to school in Minnesota, because you got to stay home and play in the snow.  When I got older, I finally realized as I slowly backed out of the icy driveway that snow days existed to prevent the potential fatalities of thousands of students commuting to school on slippery roads with visibly blinding weather conditions.  High levels of ground level ozone, like icy roads and severe weather, can be fatal and taking cars off the roads on those baking heat days could be one step towards saving lives.

When nitrogen and volatile organic compounds from motor vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions combine in the presence of heat and sunlight, it creates ground-level ozone, more commonly termed “smog.”  As reported earlier, hot, sunny days provide the perfect condition for smog levels to go through the roof.  Across the East coast and Midwest last week, the hot weather was cooking up deadly smog.  Temperatures last Thursday hit 101 degrees in Washington, 102 in Newark, and 94 in New York, nearly breaking NY heat records from 1933.  These days were labeled “code red,” meaning that outdoor activities should be severely restricted, especially for young children and the elderly. Read more

40% of respondents believe there will be a price on carbon in the next five years

American utilities, long known for being slow to adopt new technologies, are expressing concerns that the U.S. is falling behind in development of renewable energy. A new survey of 700 utility leaders released by Black and Veatch finds that 67% of respondents believe the country “is at risk of losing its domestic design and construction skills, equipment manufacturing capabilities and global competitive position in utility technology.”

“The lack of a comprehensive and coherent energy policy has encouraged the industry to remain fragmented and stagnant. Having no policy actually is policy. As leaders, we must collaborate to move the industry forward,” said Roger Smith, president of Black and Veatch’s management consulting business.

Please rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: “The United States is at risk of losing its domestic design and construction skills, equipment manufacturing capabilities and global competitive position in utility technology.”

Can you guess which country utilities fear is the biggest threat to the U.S.? You probably guessed right: China. Read more

New proposed EPA regulations for power plant emissions have raised the ire of Republicans. It seems the entire crop of Presidential hopefuls have made slashing the EPA a part of their rhetoric. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty doesn’t seem to like any sort of regulation:

“The Environmental Protection Agency— is now regulating carbon emissions. A policy rejected by Congress — but putting millions of jobs at risk.…  We don’t need the unelected officials at EPA—to do what our elected officials in Congress have rejected. We need less EPA monitoring of our economy. And more monitoring of EPA’s affects on our freedom.  I will require sunsetting of all federal regulations.  Unless specifically sustained by a vote of Congress.  ”

This anti-clean-air policy would allow a minority in the Senate to kill every regulation.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich added: “We should end the Environmental Protection Agency’s war against American oil and gas.”

While this makes good rhetoric on the campaign trail, the analysis doesn’t back up the candidates’ arguments. Consider a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI):

“The dollar value of the benefits of the major rules finalized or proposed by the EPA so far during the Obama administration exceeds the rules’ costs by an exceptionally wide margin. Health benefits in terms of lives saved and illnesses avoided will be enormous […] the combined annual benefits from all final rules exceed their costs by $32 billion to $142 billion a year. The benefit/cost ratio ranges from 4-to-1 to 22-to-1.”

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“WIRED asked LinkedIn to analyze the 7 million US members who have switched industries during the past five years.”  The growth in “Renewables and The Environment” was 56.8% — almost off the chart [click to enlarge].

In the future, the only jobs left will be green.  Last year, the NY Times reported, “In the energy sector alone, the deployment of new technologies, like wind and solar power, has the potential to support 20 million jobs by 2030 and trillions of dollars in revenue, analysts estimate.”

Averting catastrophic climate change will generate far more jobs by 2050, as we must deploy more than 10,000 GW of clean energy (see here).  Failing to avert catastrophic climate change will probably generate more jobs, especially post-2030, since we still have to make the transition off fossil fuels, but on top of that we will have to have to make probably 10 times as much investment in sea walls, levees, relocating people and cities, and the like (see Real adaptation is as politically tough as real mitigation, but much more expensive and not as effective in reducing future misery).

But the inevitable transition to a low carbon, low-fossil-fuel, water- and resource-efficient economy is apparently lost on many in the media.   Surprisingly, NPR runs this headline today:

Is Obama’s Bet On Green Jobs Risky?

Uhh, no.  The only “risky” move is failing to aggressively pursue clean energy, failing to quickly reduce dependence on  petroleum before peak oil forces us too, and failing to embrace a sustainable economy before the global Ponzi scheme collapses.

NPR  seems to have confused the (very high) risks inherent in investing in any single technology with the (super-low) risks of  placing a large bet across the full portfolio of green tech, as this excerpt  from the story suggests:

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Today, President Barack Obama is meeting with his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness at the North Carolina headquarters of Cree Inc., a leading manufacturer of LED technology. Obama has spent his first term pushing investment into clean energy industries, fighting unyielding Republican opposition. The resurgence of American auto industry is the greatest success of his strategy. Emergency government support, higher fuel economy standards, and long-term investment in advanced technology have turned a morbund industry of gas guzzlers into a global leader of high performing, efficient vehicles. Green job growth far outstrips other sectors of the economy, thanks in part to the strategic goals of the Recovery Act:

But political reporters are following the contrarian arguments of pollution advocates, questioning the logic of redirecting our struggling economy towards sustainable growth. NPR White House correspondent Ari Shapiro worries that Obama’s “gamble” on green jobs is “risky.” And Politico’s top energy reporter, Darren Samuelsohn, acts the cynic:

Nearly three years into Obama’s presidency, the White House can’t point to much solid evidence that significant numbers of Americans are scoring the green jobs the president has been touting.

Remarkably, Samuelsohn ignores the collapse of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, which would have generated the multi-billion-dollar annual investment in clean energy the nation desperately needs. Polluters and their conservative allies spent about a billion dollars killing this crucial climate and clean energy legislation, demonizing anything to end our nation’s deadly dependence on coal and oil.

Conservatives haven’t merely been skeptics of the green economy — they have been and continue to be active opponents of anything that would break the stranglehold of fossil fuel companies over our nation’s future.

A round-up of the top climate and energy news from around the web. Please post other interesting stories in the comments below.

Vestas bullish on building wind turbines in U.S.

The United States is ripe for a boost in wind power that would create domestic manufacturing and maintenance jobs as long as the right policies are adopted, said the chief of Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s top supplier of wind turbines.

“The potential over here is enormous,” Ditlev Engel, the president and CEO of Vestas, who visits Washington periodically to meet with lawmakers and others, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Many countries are envious of the United States with its strong wind corridors from South Texas to North Dakota and along the coasts, Engel said.

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By Michael Conathan, CAP’s Director of Ocean Policy at American Progress

One of the cornerstone recommendations of both the Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy whose reports were published in 2003 and 2005 respectively, was the institution of a national ocean policy to harmonize the responsibilities of the multitude of federal agencies with jurisdiction over some aspect of ocean management. Last year, President Obama announced such a policy and the creation of a National Ocean Council tasked with its implementation.

Particularly in today’s political climate when Bill Clinton’s campaign catch phrase, “it’s the economy, stupid” seems once again to be the order of the day, some may wonder how the oceans fit into the conversation. Well, the reality is U.S. coastal counties are home to more than half of all Americans, generate an estimated $8 trillion dollars per year, and support 69 million jobs. But declining ocean health and a lack of effective coordination among regional groups, states and federal bodies is putting this great economic engine at risk.

In response, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, comprised of members from both ocean commissions, released a report, America’s Ocean Future: Ensuring Healthy Oceans to Support a Vibrant Economy.

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This cross-post is by Lane Burt, Technical Policy Director, U.S. Green Building Council.

Today USGBC, with our partners at the Real Estate Roundtable and the Natural Resources Defense Council, released an analysis conducted by the Political Economy Research Institute that concludes that President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative (BBI) will create over 114,000 jobs.

As background, the Better Buildings Initiative is a collection of legislative proposals and federal agency actions designed to encourage the efficiency improvement of commercial buildings. The President has recommended tax incentives, grant and challenge programs, and increasing the availability of financing for the improvements. The analysis covers the major components of the initiative: the tax incentives, the financing programs, and the grant programs.

The full report is available at http://www.USGBC.org/advocacy/BBIJobs. Here’s what you need to know:

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This timeless humor from America’s Finest News Service seemed timely:

Claire drowns the western, eastern, northern, and southern seaboards, valleys, and metropolitan areas.

WASHINGTON:  In what many are calling the most devastating natural disaster of [the year], a massive hurriphoonado touched down in Southeast Asia, upending countless homes and drowning thousands before picking up speed and also ravaging the other six continents.

A storm system characterized by high winds, torrential rain, lightning, fist-sized hail, massive tidal waves, low barometric pressure, and six separate cyclonic eyes, the first-recorded hurriphoonado caused billions of dollars in property loss along the coast of China in early June. From there, meteorologists said, the weather system traveled inland, covering most of Asia Minor, where it sparked a series of even more destructive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, monsoons, and landslides.

“The scope of Hurriphoonado Claire was unprecedented,” said Mark Mancuso, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, who classified the hybrid storm as an F4 tornado, Category 5 hurricane, and Level 7 redemptive act of God. “By the time it surged through the Middle East in late August, there was little anyone could do but pray.”

“If only we’d evacuated all of Eastern and Western Europe in time,” Mancuso added. “And Northern Africa.”

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