UPDATE:  Some confusionists who don’t know the scientific literature are misrepresenting this post.  The key point, as I make clear, is that the NY Times focused its story specifically on why this drought is so hot — but never mentioned global warming at all.  Further, as one of the country’s leading climatological experts on Southwestern drought made clear in 2011 Senate testimony on the New Mexico drought (see below):

There is broad agreement in the climate science research community that the Southwest, including New Mexico, will very likely continue to warm. There is also a strong consensus that the same region will become drier and increasingly snow-free with time, particularly in the winter and spring. Climate science also suggests that the warmer atmosphere will lead to more frequent and more severe (drier) droughts in the future. All of the above changes have already started, in large part driven by human-caused climate change.

UPDATE 2:  Andrew Freedman of WashPost’s Capital Weather Gang, writes me “The fact that the article basically said ‘man, it’s hot too!’ and failed to at least examine the link between that, the dry ground, and climate change was rather egregious.”

Another week, another New York Times article on extreme weather that fails to connect any dots whatsoever to global warming for the public.  The NYT similarly blew the Arizona wildfire story and the Dust Bowl story.

Now readers have been sending me this double by-lined gem all day:  “Drought Spreads Its Pain Across 14 States.”  The piece does have a great chart [click to enlarge].

“Dangerously Dry:  Nearly a fifth of the contiguous United States has been faced with the worst drought in recent years.”

And it starts to tell the story:

COLQUITT, Ga. — The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement.

Farmers with the money and equipment to irrigate are running wells dry in the unseasonably early and particularly brutal national drought that some say could rival the Dust Bowl days….

In Texas, where the drought is the worst, virtually no part of the state has been untouched. City dwellers and ranchers have been tormented by excessive heat and high winds. As they have been in the southwest, wildfires are chewing through millions of acres….

Most troubling is that the drought, which could go down as one of the nation’s worst, has come on extra hot and extra early…..

Oklahoma has had only 28 percent of its normal summer rainfall and the heat has blasted past 90 degrees for a month.

The question, of course, becomes why. In a spring and summer in which weather news has been dominated by epic floods and tornadoes, it is hard to imagine that nearly a third of the country is facing an equally daunting but very different kind of natural disaster.

Why didn’t anyone warn us such stuff could happen?

If only there were some scientific theory that explained why we might see so much heat at the same time we are making dry areas drier and wet areas wetter.  If only scientists could explain why we are seeing heat waves and wildfires earlier in the year.

Nahhhh!

The NY Times has the answer:

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Our guest blogger is Daniel Weiss, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Center for American Progress.

Lately it seems that the House Republican leadership is against everything that isn’t pre-approved by Big Oil or the Tea Party. Perhaps the most outlandish example of this Groucho Marx approach to public policy is today’s vote on the BULB Act, H.R. 2417. It would repeal the energy efficiency standards for light bulbs established in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, or EISA, P.L. 110-140. It would also prevent California from setting its own light bulb efficiency standards. The original author of the provision is House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI), who is now supporting the repeal of his own idea after conservatives attacked it along with other clean energy programs.

EISA, with Rep. Upton’s efficiency measure, passed the House in 2007 by a bipartisan vote of 319-100, with support from 49.7 percent of Republicans who voted and 98 percent of Democratic votes. President George W. Bush signed it into law.

Afterwards, Rep. Upton bragged in a press release, “Upton Measure to Upgrade Energy Efficiency Standards for all Light Bulbs Now Law”:

Current incandescent bulbs on store shelves are obsolete and highly inefficient — only 10% of the energy consumed by each bulb is for light with 90% wasted on unnecessary heat. Today’s incandescent bulbs employ the same technology as the bulbs Thomas Edison first created over 120 years ago.

This common sense, bipartisan approach partners with American industry to save energy as well as help foster the creation of new domestic manufacturing jobs. By upgrading to more efficient light bulbs, we will help preserve energy resources and reduce harmful emission [sic], all the while saving American families billions of dollars in their electric bills — and the benefits will be as easy as a flip of the switch.

Interestingly, this press release was removed from Rep. Upton’s website.

Rep. Upton was correct in 2007. EISA’s light bulb efficiency standards would save about $100 per household annually in lower electricity costs, or about $12 billion per year when fully implemented. And despite false claims to the contrary, incandescent light bulbs will still be available, but they will use 28 percent to 33 percent less energy.

The new light bulb efficiency standards are supported by the light bulb manufacturing industry. “When this bill was passed, it was passed by people who knew how to make light bulbs,” says Randall Moorhead, vice president of government affairs at Philips, a leading light bulb producer. “Everyone supported it. And since then, it’s created more choice for consumers — we have two incandescent bulbs on the market that weren’t there before.”

Upton defended the efficiency standards in 2009. At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, he said:

Our work on light bulbs wasn’t an arbitrary mandate. We didn’t just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead, we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable.

But Upton reversed course after the Republicans won a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 election and conservatives attacked his handiwork. Archconservative radio host Rush Limbaugh savaged Upton and his bill:

This would be a tone-deaf disaster if the Republican leadership lets Fred Upton ascend to the chairmanship of the House energy committee. This is exactly the kind of nannyism, statism, what have you, that was voted against and was defeated last week. No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism, can be rewarded this way.

Fox TV personality Glenn Beck called Rep. Upton “all socialist” in November 2010 for his authorship of the efficiency measure.

Upton attempted to appease the right wing rather than defend his program from these false attacks. He promised, “If I become chairman, we’ll be reexamining the light bulb issue, no problem.”

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Last month’s bleak jobs report is a reminder of just how deep our economic troubles are: With only 18,000 jobs created and the unemployment rate creeping up to 9.2 percent, the hangover from 2008’s financial implosion is still with us. But a look at the increase in job postings for clean energy and sustainability-related jobs anecdotally suggests that the “sustainability” sector is fairing better than most, according to the Wall Street Journal:

In the past two years, the number of online job postings containing the keyword “sustainability” has more than quadrupled to 8,245 in May, according to Indeed.com, which aggregates online job postings. The number containing “wind” and “solar” more than doubled in the same time period.

Some of that growth might have come from the $800 billion economic stimulus package, about $100 billion of which was devoted to green-related projects, said Robert Pollin, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Much money was devoted to helping companies retrofit buildings to be energy efficient, and according to Mr. Pollin’s research, every $1 million devoted to that task created about 17 jobs for the life of the project, he said

The government estimates that around 68,000 jobs have been created or saved through just the loan guarantee program, which has helped manufacturers and project developers build large facilities. And the advocacy organization Environment America says that 59,000 U.S. jobs were created through the grant program, which made project financing much easier after the financial collapse.

Tracking those jobs is difficult, however. Because many of the jobs are cross-sector, we can’t be exactly sure how many were created for what reasons. But it’s clear that tens of thousands of Americans are being employed in the clean energy field that might otherwise not have jobs. This rough analysis from the WSJ illustrates the increase in activity.

The Brookings Institution is coming out with a comprehensive report on the clean-energy economy later this week. It’ll be interesting to see how their analysis matches up with these figures.

Related Post:  The NY Times ‘Noticed’ That ‘Green Jobs Attract Graduates’

Below are earlier comments from the Facebook commenting system:

Lipscomb University, Institute for Sustainable Practice

Students and Prospective students, read this!

July 12 at 10:48pm

hapamoku

so… I corrected mike hanson’s very wrong $/job figures in a reply to his comment… and facebook social plugin hid that comment deep down, you have to click twice to dig it out, and why would you want to dig out ANYTHING from underneath the trash talk at the top… this isn’t conducive to quality conversation.

July 11 at 7:03pm

hapamoku

fiscal sustainability is also a new concern at companies that are hiring, but it’s probably an also-ran.

July 11 at 4:20pm

A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

Car makers jump on energy bandwagon as Japan saves power

With the country steeped in power-saving mode, energy generation has become all the rage among Japanese automakers.

Nissan Motor Co on Monday unveiled a new charging system that gets electricity from solar power that can also be stored in the lithium-ion batteries used in its Leaf electric car.

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Could France, the world’s nuclear leader, be considering a transition away from nukes? Judging from a few recent pieces of news coming out of the country, it’s a distinct possibility.

Earlier this month, the French Parliament voted to ban fracking, a controversial drilling method that has enabled a global boom in natural gas. Now, the country is turning its attention to offshore wind – opening up a bidding program for five marine zones that could host up to 3 GW of projects. The first round of bidding is part of an effort to build 6 GW of projects from 2015 through 2020.

These two developments come as officials in the country are openly considering a long-term energy plan that would phase out nuclear power over the coming decades. Considering that France gets around 75% of its electricity from nuclear – the highest penetration in the world – this announcement, as reported by Reuters, is significant:

Energy Minister Eric Besson announced on radio Europe 1 the launch of a study on Friday on the country’s energy mix by 2050, with options including a complete exit from nuclear production, a cut in the share of nuclear to 50 percent and a progressive reduction of total electricity production in France.

“We will study all possible scenarios for what we call the energy mix,” he said. “It will be done with total objectivity, in full transparency, without avoiding any scenario (…) including the scenarios of a nuclear exit.”

An energy ministry official told Reuters one scenario would consider a total exit from nuclear by 2050, or even 2040.

Of course, a theoretical “study” doesn’t tell us how France will act in reality. But French officials say the country’s focus on nuclear will be around safety enhancements of the existing fleet – not on building new plants – while the focus on renewables will be rapid deployment of new projects. France has a target of procuring 23% of its energy from renewables by 2020, with 18 GW coming from onshore wind, and 6 GW coming from offshore.

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Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has picked an activist environmental lawyer to be his top energy advisor, distinguishing himself from a field dominated by fossil interests. Huntsman, President Obama’s former ambassador to China, selected Mark McIntosh, a Boyden & Gray energy lawyer, as his policy director. McIntosh is a former George W. Bush official, serving as deputy general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality under Jim Connaughton.

McIntosh has a long record of environmental activism, and is now an influential actor in the international movement to stop global warming. An heir to the A&P fortune, McIntosh oversaw policy operations for The Pew Environment Group, was an attorney for Earthjustice, and worked at the Environmental Law Clinic. He has long been vice president of his family’s ecocruise non-profit, The Boat Company. The McIntosh Foundation is a major contributor to environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and the Earth Day Network.

In recent years, McIntosh has been the legal advisor to ClientEarth, a European legal non-profit dedicated to environmental activism founded with support from the McIntosh Foundation. ClientEarth believes that a healthy environment is a “fundamental human right,” like liberty and free speech. Other excerpts from the ClientEarth website demonstrate its strong commitment to aggressive action on global warming:

ClientEarth is an organisation of activist lawyers committed to securing a healthy planet.

Coal power is globally the single biggest threat to a secure climate, and we are working across Europe to oppose new coal power stations unless they capture the carbon they produce.

Huntsman is the only Republican candidate other than Mitt Romney to publicly admit that fossil fuel pollution is threatening our planet’s climate. Unlike Romney, who is getting climate advice from a pro-pollution Bush lawyer, Huntsman seems to have picked an advisor with a significant background in environmental activism.

David Edison Sloane:  My great-grandfather would be all for keeping intact the Energy Independence and Security Act. The law requires light bulbs of all types to be at least 25 percent more energy efficient by 2012. To [Thomas Alva] Edison, that would have been no big deal.

He would have immediately embraced the challenge of reducing the power usage of the incandescent light bulb — and regarded it as a great opportunity to offer consumers a better and more ecologically sound product

That is Sloane writing in HuffPost on “What Thomas Edison Would Do.”

Politico:  “House Republicans will bow to their tea party base on Monday by bringing up legislation” aimed at undoing light bulb standards. AP Photo.

As Climate Progress reported Friday, Republicans are set to repeal a light bulb efficiency standard that would save consumers $12 billion a year.   They claim this is about preserving the incandescent bulb, but as a leading manufacturer told CP:

“The reality is, consumers will see no difference at all. The only difference they’ll see is lower energy bills because we’re creating more efficient incandescent bulbs.”

Even the centrist Politico points out the pointlessness of this purely ideologically-driven effort:

But for those keeping score at home, the proposal that reflects the catcalls of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann is likely to land in the same dustbin now home to many other GOP energy proposals.

Here’s more from David Edison Sloane on why his great-grandfather, who invented the incandescent light bulb 132 years ago, would support maintaining the lighting efficiency standard:

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UpStart [uhp-stahrt] n. 1. A company or organization with innovative approaches to energy use, carbon pollution, resource consumption, and/or social equity, 2. A company or organization overcoming market barriers to build the new clean energy economy.

Newton Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn New York, Photographs by Lisbeth Kaufman

by Lisbeth Kaufman

Waste water treatment is an expensive, energy-intensive process. But it’s also a potentially rich renewable energy source. A few fearless UpStarts are developing technologies and services that can convert dirty sewage sludge into clean energy, cutting pollution and costs while making a profit.

Companies like BlackGold Biofuels, XEBEC, Quasar, and EnerTech are taking the most vile waste products that clog sewers and erode critical infrastructure, and are turning that waste into a valuable resource of renewable energy.  Likewise, cities and regions such as San Francisco CA, Rialto CA, and Quebec, Canada are harvesting sewage to power the processing plants and generate a new stream of income.

The Problem
Sewage treatment and water access is a massive problem in developing countries like Kenya, where 72% of local government authorities lack sewerage systems.  According to the World Health Organization, 39% of the world’s population lacks access to basic sanitation and waste treatment.  And here in the U.S., sewage and waste sludge presents a major problem for water utilities across the country.

The U.S. produces 7 million dry tons of waste per year.  Managing this massive amount of waste is a heavy burden that occupies about 20% of the EPA’s entire budget and 4% of the nation’s electricity use.  According to the EPA, America is having difficulty keeping up with the growing amount of sludge (i.e poop) that Americans produce, as waste water investment needs have been rising at $11 billion per year.  According to a Clean Watersheds Needs Survey report to Congress from 2008, waste-water utilities will need to invest $298 billion over the next two decades to keep up services.

There’s also a heavy emissions cost to waste water treatment. Energy-related emissions in the U.S. resulting from POTW (Publicly Owned Treatment Works) operations – not including organic sludge degradation – led to 15.5 million tons of CO2-equivalents, with an acidification potential of 145 gigagrams [145,000 tons] (Gg) SO2 equivalents.

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by Arne Jungjohann, Heinrich Boell Foundation

Germany’s plans to phase-out nuclear power seemed to catch many around the world by surprise and create a fair amount of skepticism. Some painted it as a “panicked overreaction” and even “environmental vandalism” to the nuclear meltdown in Japan.

One can argue that Germans are more risk-averse than other cultures. The accident of Chernobyl in 1986 resulted in a radioactive cloud over large parts of Europe for several weeks. It was a smart precaution to stay out of the rain and skip eating vegetables to avoid contamination. After experiencing this physical threat to personal health, Germans are more concerned about the risks of nuclear power than others might be.

The Fukushima accident not only confirmed this skepticism. It demonstrated the need for a new risk assessment: If a high-tech nation like Japan is not able to cope with a nuclear meltdown, why should Germany be? And why let a few corporations make all the profits when taxpayers are asked to pay billions for an accident in the end? With 80 million people and half the size of Texas, Germany is so densely populated that a nuclear disaster would turn into an economic catastrophe beyond imagination.

A decade ago, Germany started transitioning towards a low carbon economy. The share of renewable power has tripled. Wind farms, solar modules, biogas, and hydro power provide 18 percent of Germany’s power supply. Today, renewables are a reliable and indispensable pillar of Germany’s power supply that keep trains running and factories humming. The sector is fast growing and provides 370,000 good-paying jobs – much more than the 22,000 jobs in Germany’s lignite coal industry. Many of these jobs are within traditional industries, such as steel workers, farmers and the ceramic and glass industries.

Critics argue that Germany will hurt its economy by raising energy costs, replacing nuclear power with imports from France, and building more coal plants, thus increasing carbon emissions. The facts do not bear this out.

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by Tripp Brockway

When faced with budget constraints, most middle class American families would cut unnecessary spending, such as trips to the beach or season tickets to the local baseball team. They would not cut the spending deemed crucial to the future well-being of their family, such as health insurance or their child’s education.

The same applies to the United States government. Even in a budget crunch, the government should continue to invest in the future by funding infrastructure maintenance, public schools, and research and development for new technologies.

The UN’s 2011 World Economic and Social Survey, released on Tuesday, highlights the importance of investing in new technology to ensure a sustainable, safe, and prosperous future for our planet:

The “green economy” has been promoted as the key concept in this regard—the concept that embodies the promise of a new development paradigm, whose application has the potential to ensure the preservation of the earth’s ecosystem along new economic growth pathways while contributing at the same time to poverty reduction.

The report, entitled “The Great Green Technological Transformation,” focuses on three pillars vital to the development of a sustainable economy.  First, the world must accelerate the transition to non-greenhouse gas emitting, renewable sources of energy. Second, sustainable food security must be achieved through the promotion of small-holder agriculture and environmentally-intelligent farming technology. Third, new technology must be used to reduce disaster risk and ensure that countries around the world are prepared to adapt to a changing climate.

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