U.S. bakes under extreme heat, half of population under heat advisory or warning

Temperature at 6 feet above the surface for July 12, 2011 at 5 p.m. ET

The media loves to report on stories about how public concern about global warming is waning — even if the polling data doesn’t support that view.

Ahh, but when it comes to actually connecting the dots between extreme weather we’re now experiencing and global warming, well, that story is apparently too hot to handle — even when the data does support that view.

The southwest is in an uber-hot drought, but the NY Times says no dots to connect to global warming — a story Climate Central’s Andrew Freedman also criticized.  Similarly, no dots for the Arizona wildfire story or the Dust Bowl story.  And TP Green’s Brad Johnson noted that last week’s “CBS News piece on 2011′s extreme weather ignored global warming.”

Now I don’t think that every story on extreme weather needs to mention climate change.  But it’s different if that story is on one or more record-smashing extreme events that scientists have linked to global warming AND if that story explicitly asks the question why are these events all happening at once.  Then yes, as NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth explained, “It is irresponsible not to mention climate change in stories that presume to say something about why all these storms” are happening.

Of course, monster heat waves are at the top of the list of extreme weather events  that scientists have already documented have become longer and stronger  thanks to global warming.

The PBS News Hour did a long story Tuesday night on “Sweltering Heat Wave Roasts 24 States, Feeds Wildfires,” but the only explanation they would offer up is “Meteorologists say the immediate culprit is a high-pressure system stalled over much of the country’s midsection.”

The NBC Evening News also did a long story on the “massive and dangerous heat wave” that has “half of the US population … under a heat advisory.”  Then NBC’s Ann Curry mentions the superstorms and floods the nation has experienced, along with the heat wave, and asks a “Weather Channel meteorologist” just “What Explains This?”

What follows is one of the great tautological non-answers ever seen on a major network:

Well, Ann, during the spring time we were stuck in a very active spring pattern.   Now that it’s summer, we’re stuck in a very active and persistent summer pattern.

Seriously.   With media reporting like this, we’re soon gonna be stuck in a very active and very persistent summer pattern (see Mother Nature is Just Getting Warmed Up:  “Stanford climate scientists forecast permanently hotter summers“).

Here is NBC’s must-see ‘explanation’ for the extreme heat and superstorms of 2011:

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Our guest blogger is Emilie Surrusco, communications director, Alaska Wilderness League.

Last week in Anchorage, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) held a joint press briefing with Shell Oil. The topic was Shell’s aggressive plans to drill 10 wells in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Sen. Murkowski –- who has taken close to $1.5 million from dirty energy companies over the course of her career — was ostensibly trying to find out if Shell really could clean up a spill in the Arctic’s treacherous and icy conditions. Lo and behold, she concluded that they could:

During questioning by reporters, Murkowski acknowledged she has “long been an advocate for responsible oil and gas development in our state” and that the presentation gave her “more assurances that Shell really is building a response community up in the Arctic.”

This kind of theater is not unusual in a state where oil literally fuels 82 percent of the state’s budget. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t Alaskans who are opposed to drilling in our pristine Arctic Ocean – in fact, those who stand to lose the most, a vocal group of Inupiat people who continue to live off the bounty of Alaska’s Arctic waters in much the same way as generations before them, are the most courageous critics of Alaska’s reliance on oil. It also doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t have a stake in what happens to a region that is priceless in its beauty and uniqueness – and in the fact that it functions as the world’s air conditioner. As climate change causes Arctic ice to melt at an alarming rate, we can’t afford to hand our Arctic over to oil companies like Shell.

What Murkowski and Shell didn’t say at last week’s press pageantry was that there is no way to effectively clean up a spill in the Arctic’s extreme, remote conditions, as reiterated recently with a comprehensive study by the federal government’s scientific arm. Despite recent technological advances in mechanical recovery for oil spill response, with the Arctic’s extreme weather conditions and broken ice, the amount of oil that could be cleaned up is estimated at a mere 1 to 20 percent, according to the USGS report. Meanwhile, Shell’s oil spill response plan for the Arctic states that the company would be able to clean up 90 percent of the oil in the event of a spill. This from a company that was recently found to own oil rigs in the northern North Sea that caused the majority of 100 potentially lethal spills.

What’s more, Alaska’s Arctic region is so remote – there are no large roads, no hotels, no major airports, no boat docks – that the nearest Coast Guard station — a critical component to any oil spill response — is 1,000 miles away. Even after BP’s disaster in the Gulf, Alaska’s politicians and the oil cheerleaders in Congress continue to push for Arctic drilling. Shell’s plan for the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea could be approved as soon as next month.

That is why a growing coalition of concerned organizations launched a national campaign to protect our one and only Arctic. Over the next year, we will be using a combination of media and grassroots tactics to bring these facts to light. Because once the American public learns that Shell and its cronies in Congress are willing to destroy one of our nation’s greatest natural treasures to further pad their already-bulging pockets, the Obama administration will have no choice but to tell Shell – if you can’t clean up a spill, you can’t drill. We hope you will join us in the Arctic on July 4, 2012 (which also happens to be when Shell hopes to begin drilling) for a celebration of the Alaskan Arctic’s “independence” from Shell.

The State Department says it’s objectively reviewing the proposed Keystone Pipeline, a $13 billion pipeline expansion that would bring 500,000 barrels of the dirtiest, most energy-intensive oil from Alberta’s tar sands into the U.S. each day.

But a 2009 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks puts that objectivity into question:  The LA Times wrote about the leak today:

The cable, obtained by WikiLeaks, describes the State Department’s then-energy envoy, David Goldwyn, as having “alleviated” Canadian officials’ concerns about getting their crude into the U.S. It also said he had instructed them in improving “oil sands messaging,” including “increasing visibility and accessibility of more positive news stories.”

Goldwyn now works on Canadian oil sands issues at Sutherland, a Washington lobbying firm, and recently testified before Congress in favor of building the 36-inch underground pipeline, Keystone XL.

As if Koch Industries, the $100 billion oil giant that has funded climate-change denial groups and spent tens of millions of dollars on media campaigns and lobbying efforts against clean energy, needs any help in spinning coverage. Koch Industries currently ships around 250,000 barrels of tar-sands oil per day to the U.S., and stands to gain handsomely from the pipeline if built.

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New Report Falsely Claims Cutting Tax Loopholes for Big Oil Worsens the Federal Budget Deficit

Chevron’s oil well pump jacks in Coalinga, CA.  AP Photo.

by Dan Weiss and Sean Hanlon

There are now three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and big oil statistics, to update the famous quip by noted 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Once again an analysis funded by the oil industry of proposals to eliminate some of their large tax breaks finds that this would be bad for the oil industry and the rest of us, too. And once again these results are sharply contradicted by the official analyses of nonpartisan government economists.

The latest biased report from an oil-industry-funded outfit is “Repealing Tax Deductions on U.S. Energy Companies Exacerbates Federal Deficit, Increases U.S. Debt” by Joseph Mason, a Professor at Louisiana State University. The report was “prepared with the support of the American Energy Alliance,” which receives oil industry funds. The study unabashedly relies on other oil-industry funded research to support its false claims.

In the report, Mason attempts to evaluate the impact of eliminating two special subsidies enjoyed by the oil industry:

• Domestic manufacturing deductions for oil production under Section 199 of the U.S. tax code
• The treatment of so-called “dual capacity taxpayers” who claim foreign tax credits, including oil companies

These are both arcane tax loopholes that reaped oil companies $29 billion over the past decade.

Congress and the Obama administration have their eyes on these two and other tax loopholes enjoyed by the oil industry that have been worth more than $40 billion over 10 years to help resolve our nation’s long-term budget deficit problems. So let’s unpack both of the claims by Mason to demonstrate why these loopholes are a legitimate target for policymakers amid the debate over how the raise the federal debt limit by August 2.

Section 199 is the domestic manufacturing deduction designed to help beleaguered manufacturers of all sorts by providing an incentive to keep their facilities and jobs in the United States. But beleaguered does not describe Big Oil for a number of reasons. These include the capital-intensive nature of oil production, the relative mobility of investments, and of course the level of profitability—there are vast differences between the oil industry and traditional U.S. manufacturing. Big Oil has been wildly profitable, with the five largest companies earning nearly $1 trillion in earnings over the past decade. Nonetheless, due to a concerted lobbying campaign in 2004, the oil industry got itself included in this provision intended to benefit manufacturing.

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Climate activists are comparing the right-wing, corporate agenda of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the villains that bedevil Harry Potter in a new website. Chamber President Tom Donohue looms as a Lord Voldemort figure on the site. This mini-campaign was launched in conjunction with the final installment of the Harry Potter movies, like climate change, one of the defining phenomena of the millenial generation. At the U.S. Chamber of Secrets, the 350.org campaign exposes the lobby group’s sordid history of opposing progress:

In real life, groups like the US Chamber of Commerce use money to charm their way into the offices of our elected leaders. In real life, they use their coffers of cash to intimidate politicians, fund extremist candidates, and run propaganda campaigns telling us that our tax dollars belong in the pockets of corporations.

As spooky as the last installment of Harry Potter might be, the real life story of the US Chamber of Commerce might actually be hiding more sinister secrets. From fighting against civil rights and clean air to their attempts to dismantle health care and stop action on climate change: The US Chamber is hiding much of its history away.

“Hogwarts isn’t the only place with a dark secret,” the site explains, asking people to join 350.org’s campaign against the Chamber’s anti-American activities, “The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak For Me.”

Congress Should Continue to Fund the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program

Officials with First Solar and Public Service Company of NM gather after the dedication of the utility’s 2-megawatt photovoltaic solar array in Albuquerque in April. First Solar’s new project will increase efficiencies and help make solar power more cost competitive. The project received a DOE loan.

by Richard Capterton and Steve Spinner

What do the world’s biggest wind farm, the world’s biggest solar photovoltaic, or PV, project, and the world’s first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant have in common? These projects—and dozens of other innovative clean energy projects across the country—are moving forward because of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program.

In two short years the Loan Guarantee Program has proven to be much more than a financing tool. It is a job-creation tool, a clean energy commercialization tool, an innovation tool, and a private capital leveraging tool all rolled into one. The program has financed more than 40 projects costing more than $60 billion and created nearly 70,000 jobs while only costing the government $2.5 billion.

These projects are critical in helping America compete in the worldwide clean energy race, especially given that developing countries like China are now investing more in clean energy than developed countries. In fact, over the last 12 months the China Development Bank Corporation has offered twice as much financing support as the Loan Guarantee Program. While China’s government is likely to finance more than $30 billion in renewable projects each year going forward, the United States government is at serious risk of financing zero.

Unfortunately, key elements of the Loan Guarantee Program are out of money, and they will draw to a close at the end of September without congressional action. Instead of letting this key economic tool shrink, Congress should continue to strengthen the clean energy economy by appropriating more money for the program within the fiscal year 2012 budget. Congress should also this year establish a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (or Green Bank) as a permanent financing tool for clean energy projects.

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has made no secret of her position against environmental regulation, even going so far as to propose renaming the Environmental Protection Agency as “the Job-Killing Organization of America” during a Republican primary debate.

A glance at her campaign finance records provides some clues as to why she ignores that environmental protections create jobs to take up such a radical stance on environmental deregulation.

Bachmann’s top campaign donors include one of the nation’s largest corporate polluters, Koch Industries. Koch has spent $30,000 in support of her political campaigns since she first ran for the House of Representatives in 2006. The figures for the latest quarter of Bachmann’s nascent presidential campaign have not yet been made available.

Petrochemical giant Koch Industries — which advances a conservative, deregulatory agenda through its large political network — donated $5,000 to Bachmann through its political action committee and ranked as the 29th top donor in her 2010 congressional race. The Koch brothers’ environmental track record explains the attraction to the Minnesota congresswoman:

- Koch Industries has faced over $55 million in civil fine and settlement fees stemming from various oil spills, pollution incidents, and industry cover-ups, including one case in which the corporation was found guilty of negligence and malice in the deaths of two Texas teens in a gas-leak explosion.

- Over 13 Superfund sites currently listed are linked to Koch Industries or one of its subsidiaries.

- They directly lobbied against environmental protection legislation, including the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard Act, Clean Air Protection Act and the Superfund Polluter Pays Act.

- Koch Industries and their subsidiaries are attacking current EPA regulations in order to pursue greater profits, ranging from the disclosure of unit-specific or facility-specific greenhouse pollution, national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants from industrial boilers, all of the crude-oil, data-reporting requirements, tighter water-quality standards for stream-dumping, and the monitoring of chemical plant greenhouse pollution.

- An air-pollution study ranks the company 10th on the list of the top 100 air polluters in 2010.

- Koch Industries may face additional costs of anywhere between $1 billion and $40 billion if Congress passed legislation to regulate carbon emissions, according to ThinkProgress estimates.

- Since 1997, the Koch brothers have spent $55 million supporting climate-change skeptics, including the CATO Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and the “Hot Air” Movement.

- After Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli announced that he would be suing the EPA over its claim that climate change endangers human health, David Koch gave the following remark: “In the interest of full disclosure, I figured we may as well let the world know how proud we are of our investment in this guy.” Koch Industries donated $2,500 to Cuccinelli’s 2010 campaign, and the attorney general attended the infamous Koch retreat in Colorado this summer.

It’s no surprise that Bachmann voted for an amendment to the U.S. House spending bill that would stop the agency from regulating greenhouse gases through the end of 2011. Add to that her championing of the infamous climate skeptic, Chris Horner, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute — which has received over $700,000 from the Kochs. In Bachmann, corporate polluters have an anti-science champion eager to defend their toxic interests.

–Sarah Bufkin

Numerous reports have shown solid growth in the “clean economy” over the years. But what we’re seeing now is that the clean economy is just, well, a normal part of the overall economy — albeit one with higher wages and more value-added.

Growth in jobs, wages, and GDP has been too slow, for sure, but the clean economy has been one of the few brights spots.  From 2008 to 2009, the clean economy grew by 8.3% — almost double what the overall economy grew during those years. That’s according to a comprehensive report released today by the Brookings Institution that tracked the growth of these sectors over a 15-month period of time. (Note: we incorrectly reported earlier that the sector saw 8.3% growth from 2003 to 2010. We have since corrected that error to reflect the real time frame — 2008-2009. In fact, only one third of the sectors tracked saw 8.3% growth between 2003 and 2010.)

“The pace of growth really is torrid in that sector,” says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metropolitan Program and a co-author of the report. “This confirms the intuition that these exciting industries really are growing as fast as we think they are.”

And guess what? They pay better than the average job too. Median salaries for cleantech-related jobs are $46,343, or about $7,727 more than the median wages across the broader economy.

These Brookings figures show, yet again, that environmental sustainability isn’t some passing fad or a feel-good exercise, it’s a natural progression of the economy.

In 2010, 2.7 million jobs in the United States directly contributed to the production of goods and services that had an environmental benefit. The jobs were spread over 57,501 different establishments in 41,185 companies and existed in almost every industry.

There is also one more attractive feature of the clean economy opportunity structure: The clean economy not only pays well, but pays well even for those without post-secondary degrees. Almost half of all jobs in the clean economy are held by workers with a high school diploma or less, compared to only 37.2 percent of U.S. jobs.

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— A Media Matters cross-post

On his Fox Business show [Monday] Stuart Varney hosted Bjorn Lomborg to denounce the 2007 light bulb efficiency standards, which House Republicans are currently attempting to repeal. Varney introduced Lomborg as “our favorite rational environmentalist and a real scientist.” Moments later, Varney added: “You’re a scientist. What do you make of this?”

 

But Lomborg, who is known for opposing large-scale efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is not a scientist but [an adjunct] business school professor with a PhD in political science.

[Joe Romm: Lomborg and Varney also repeat the myth (aka "the lie") that the Light Bulb Efficiency Standard the GOP wanted to repeal would ban incandescents.  But that is par for the course for the anti-scientific Lomborg and Fox News.]

It appears the mistaken notion that Lomborg is a scientist is widely held among conservative media figures. In 2007 Glenn Beck hosted Lomborg on his HLN show to discuss climate change and introduced him by stating: “Bjorn Lomborg, he is a scientist”:
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— Cherise Udell, founder of Utah Moms for Clean Air in a cross-post.

In the winter of 2006-2007, I was utterly disgusted by our local air quality in Salt Lake City, which too often tasted like metal and smelled like gunpowder. On red alert days, I felt as if I was locking my young daughters in a windowless room full of chain smokers. And sure enough, a new group, called Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE), held a press conference in March 2007 confirming that my mama intuition was nearly as good as a mama grizzly’s, who senses a hunter near her cubs.

Breathing Salt Lake City’s dirty air during a winter inversion is like smoking cigarettes. UPHE explained that air pollution acted much like involuntary smoking because it had virtually all of the same health consequences of smoking about a quarter pack a day. The doctors estimate that between 1,000 and 2,000 Utahns die prematurely each year as a result of our smoggy air.

The image of my baby with a cigarette dangling from her toothless mouth was enough to move me to action. Utah Moms for Clear Air was born that day – a two-second inspiration – that began with a simple but heartfelt email to about a hundred local moms inviting them to join together to make Utah’s air cleaner and safer for our babes.

The response was phenomenal. Within a minute of hitting the send button, I received my first response, “Yes, please count me in.” By the end of the day, my inbox was flooded with emails from mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and grandparents all essentially saying, “thank you for standing up and taking initiative.” Four years later, the emails haven’t stopped.

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Reaffirming earlier work by the Center for American Progress, the Brookings Institution finds that green jobs are real jobs, green jobs are good jobs, and green jobs are growing jobs. According to a new report by the Brookings Institution and the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice, the U.S. “clean economy sector” is large — 2.7 million Americans — and made up of a base of traditional waste management, pollution remediation, mass transit, and other environmentally friendly jobs with emerging clean-tech sectors growing on top. That means that the green economy is already larger than the fossil fuel sector. As reported by Time’s Bryan Walsh, the report has a number of important findings:

– About 26 percent of clean economy jobs are in manufacturing, and the value of exports, on a per-job basis, is twice that of a typical American job.

– Median wages are 13 percent higher than the economy average.

– The South has the most clean economy jobs, while the West has the most jobs per capita.

– The clean energy sector in particular grew by 8.3 percent between 2003 and 2010, nearly twice as fast as the overall economy.

However, the green economy — necessary not only to restore American manufacturing but also to maintain healthy air, water, and a livable planet — is under attack. As much of the base of green jobs are in the public sector, austerity cutbacks to local, state, and federal government jobs hit the green economy especially hard. Furthermore, the Tea Party members of Congress are driving hard to slash or even eliminate funding, rules, and incentives for clean energy research and development, pollution control, mass transit, and advanced manufacturing.

Waste storage is one of the biggest problems for the nuclear industry. Again illustrating the problem, the fight over a proposed waste-burial site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has resumed.

The most recent development came July 1 when federal courts dismissed a lawsuit from Washington State and South Carolina challenging the Department of Energy’s decision to abandon the Yucca Mountain project. The proposed $11 billion project would store nuclear waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants 2,000 feet underground, but it faced stiff opposition and almost a decade of lawsuits from local groups before the government stopped pursuing the project.

Washington and South Carolina are two states with a lot of stored waste and no place to put it. They argued in the recent suit that DOE’s decision to halt the Yucca project was premature. But the saga is not over yet. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) still needs to weigh in on the matter. If it finds that the DOE stopped Yucca prematurely, the legal battles could resume.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) has been a staunch opponent of burying the nation’s nuclear waste in his state. Reid recently tweeted after the July 1 decision:

Great day for Nevada. Court decision marks imp. win in battle 2 put Yucca Mtn. project 2 rest #YuccaIsDead

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

Path appears clear for oil pipeline from Canada

At a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania in early April, President Obama was asked about a bitter fight between industry and environmentalists over a proposed $7-billion, 2,000-mile pipeline to ship crude from Alberta’s oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries.

Because the pipeline crosses the U.S.-Canadian border, a decision on a permit is pending at the State Department. Obama avowed neutrality: “If it looks like I’m putting my fingers on the scale before the science is done, then people may question the merits of the decision later on.”

But a 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa suggests the scale may have already been tipped.

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