Our guest blogger is Andrew Freedman, managing editor for online content and climate policy analyst at Climate Central. He also blogs for the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang.

In the wake of Hurricane Irene’s deadly march up the East Coast, and with two new tropical systems to track – Hurricane Katia and Tropical Storm Lee – hurricane forecasters are under increasing pressure to improve the accuracy of their forecasts. In particular, the National Weather Service (NWS) has taken some heat regarding its forecasts for Hurricane Irene’s intensity although meteorologists predicted the storm’s track with a high degree of accuracy.

Specifically, NWS meteorologists working at the National Hurricane Center in Miami did not anticipate the weakening trend that brought Irene ashore as a Category One hurricane in North Carolina, rather than a strong Category Two or low-end Category Three storm. After weakening even more, Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm when it made a third landfall near New York City on Aug. 28.

Yet, despite its weakening winds, Irene unleashed a record deluge over already waterlogged states like New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. Irene is estimated to have caused upwards of $13 billion in damage, and killed 46 people – more than double the number of people whose deaths are directly attributable to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, a Category Five storm. Longer-term data shows the United States is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, including hurricanes and the many dangers they bring with them.

As my Climate Central colleague Heidi Cullen wrote this week in the Daily Beast, this year is becoming known as the “Year of Billion Dollar Weather,” with a record number of natural disasters costing more than a billion dollars.

“Preliminary estimates place the total damage on property and the economy for all weather-related disasters this past year at more than $35 billion. With four months left in the year, we’ve already set a record for the most billion-dollar weather disasters, breaking the old record of nine that occurred in 2008,” Cullen wrote.

There is a growing consensus among hurricane experts that warming seas will result in stronger and wetter storms in the coming decades, although fewer of the storms may occur. This makes the need to more accurately anticipate their strength and movement an even more urgent task. In addition, hurricane experts are united in warning about the recklessness of coastal development practices that have placed too many people in harms way, thereby ensuring that any land-falling storm will be more damaging and potentially deadly.

At the same time that damage costs are increasing, our ability to monitor and predict weather and climate threats is eroding. Budget cuts are threatening everything from a key weather satellite to the “hurricane hunter” research flights the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration flies into fierce storms like Irene. As I wrote in the Washington Post last month, program delays and a lack of full funding for the Joint Polar Satellite System, or JPSS, now virtually guarantee that the U.S. will be without a key weather satellite for up to a year, starting in 2016, when a polar orbiting satellite is likely to stop functioning before a delayed replacement can be launched. This will mean a decline in the accuracy of many weather forecasts, since this particular satellite provides crucial data that is fed directly into computer models.

Without continued investments, we may be in for a period of declining forecast accuracy and skyrocketing damage costs, in terms of both dollars and lives lost.

For example, right now NOAA researchers are in their third year of a 10-year project aimed at dramatically improving hurricane forecasts. But potential budget cuts to the research flights and satellite program, as well as possible cuts to the hurricane research program itself, means the researchers are facing an increasingly uncertain forecast of their own.

NOAA’s Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project, or HFIP, has ambitious goals – to cut forecast errors for both hurricane track and intensity projections by 50 percent during the course of only a decade. The total cost of the program is estimated at $170 million, according to Fred Toepfer, a NOAA project manager who is helping to lead the effort.

Toepfer says experimental computer models have already showed some gains in anticipating hurricane intensity changes, and much of the new data is now being made available in real-time to hurricane forecasters and the public, albeit with the prominent disclaimer that the information is experimental. “We’re just getting started, and we’re already seeing an impact,” Toepfer says.

Better forecasts can save the country money, and lots of it. Yet Congress has shown an increasing willingness to flout the warnings of the scientific community and deny funding for crucial weather and climate monitoring programs.

Toepfer estimates the hurricane research project, which is heavily reliant on polar satellites like those in the JPSS program, as well as NOAA’s fleet of “hurricane hunter” aircraft and other data sources, will provide close to $300 million per year in economic benefits. He noted that the evacuation of the Texas coastline in advance of 2005’s Hurricane Rita cost $2.2 billion, an economic loss that more accurate forecasts could have significantly limited.

A smaller evacuation, based on a more accurate projection of the areas that would receive the highest storm surge, could’ve saved up to $1.5 billion, Toepfer says.

In late July 2010, millions of gallons of oil flowed into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan from a leak in one of the world’s largest pipeline systems. Enbridge Energy, the Canadian company that owned the pipeline, had been warned that old pipes could rupture, according to the Detroit Free Press. And while Michigan’s spill represented only 32 percent of the amount of oil spilled per day in the BP disaster that was ongoing at the same time, it had immediate environmental consequences for the area.

And more than a year later, the cleanup from the spill — and concerns about exposure to its contents — continues. Enbridge missed an Aug. 31 deadline to remove 200 acres from the Kalamazoo River and surround bodies of water. In a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, which imposed the deadline, Enbridge said factors such as “the expanded scope of the spill” delayed the process.

The oil removal process has had “unique challenges” because of what flowed through the pipeline — tar sands oil mixed with a diluent:

The submerged oil is the result of the diluted bitumen oil mixture that was flowing through the pipeline at the time of the rupture last July. The heavier part of the diluted bitumen sank to the bottom of the riverbed over time and mixed in with the sediment, while the lighter chemicals evaporated.

“Once summer cleanup began after the completion of the reassessment, we learned that some submerged oil locations had shifted since the reassessment and other areas expanded,” the letter reads. “The area actually worked to date has increased by 79 percent over what was identified at the end of the spring reassessment.”

The EPA is investigating this claim.

“We anticipate that over the next couple of years, we’ll probably be doing very similar work,” said Mark Durno, deputy on-scene commander for the spill response from the EPA. No one knows what was in the diluent because it is a trade secret, but tar sands oil contains sulfur and heavy metals, which remain in the river so long as there is oil present. The Michigan Messenger reported that Dr. Jennifer Gray from the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) said anyone who came in contact with the river should wash with soap and water immediately to avoid irritation.

But beyond just avoiding irritation, residents near the river have shown symptoms similar to those of Gulf Coast residents and were exposed to oil as well. The MDCH released studies this summer that found no long-term health impact, which some decried as incomplete:

[Environmental Toxicologist Riki] Ott noted that just this July a peer-reviewed study of oil spill exposure found the same set of symptoms in each location. They are the identical to the ones being seen in Calhoun county. She also noted that the studies have begun to identify toxicity to DNA, as well as reproductive health impacts. She says many of the chemicals of concern to occupational and environmental health officials have been shown to impact fetuses in the first trimester. [...]

“By their own admission, multiple chemicals have not been fully tested. No doctor would look at a sick patient, skip doing a full diagnosis, and declare him fit as a fiddle. Officials are prematurely drawing conclusions about the risks of tar sands oil to human health.” said Beth Wallace with the Great Lakes Regional Center of the National Wildlife Federation. [...] “A complete study on the make-up of tar sands oil needs to be conducted before we can begin to truly understand the impacts to humans, wildlife and our environment.”

But as residents continue to avoid exposure and wonder about the long-term impacts, the cleanup efforts may soon stall as the warm, summer weather wanes. Once the temperature drops too much, an EPA official said the removal of any remaining oil would stop until spring.

Okay, we knew that the “reporting” about the bankruptcy of the solar company Solyndra would be bad. But this punditry from Fox News is just atrocious. (Should we expect anything different?)

If you hadn’t heard by now, Solyndra is a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government. Since the company announced on Wednesday that it was filing for bankruptcy, conservative politicians and press have been celebrating the tragedy and have used it to attack clean energy broadly.

In a statement, Solyndra officials pointed to the extremely competitive market conditions as the reason for the bankruptcy. They also partly blamed “regulatory and policy uncertainties” — meaning the lack of long-term support in the U.S. and other markets around the world for clean energy.

Well, Fox’s “veteran” business reporter Stuart Varney took that to mean over-regulation and blamed the Obama Administration for regulating another company out of business.

Seriously?

In fact, it’s just the opposite: Most conservative politicians have fought a long-term tax credits and a clean energy standard — two fundamental policies to create consistent regulatory support — every step of the way

Expect more of this atrociously inaccurate spin throughout the political season in order to bring down clean energy.

Wow.  Double wow.  Stop the Presses, Deniers!  Your effort to deny basic climate science based on bunkum has met its match.

Here’s an editorial by Dr. Wolfgang Wagner, Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing, taking responsibility for the egregious blunder of publishing a “fundamentally flawed” paper by climate science denier Roy Spencer:

Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science.  Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims.  Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell [1] that was recently published in Remote Sensing is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.

After having become aware of the situation, and studying the various pro and contra arguments, I agree with the critics of the paper. Therefore, I would like to take the responsibility for this editorial decision and, as a result, step down as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Remote Sensing.

With this step I would also  like to personally protest  against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements, e.g., in a press release of The University of Alabama in Huntsville from 27 July 2011 [2], the main author’s personal homepage [3], the story “New NASA data blow gaping hole in global warming alarmism” published by Forbes [4], and the story “Does NASA data show global warming lost in space?” published by Fox News [5], to name just a few.  Unfortunately, their campaign apparently was very successful as witnessed by the over 56,000 downloads of the full paper within only one month after its publication. But trying to refute all scientific insights into the global warming  phenomenon just based on the comparison of one particular observational satellite data set with model predictions is strictly impossible.

For those who want the full debunking from “climate researchers and engaged observers” that persuaded Wagner, see “Climate Scientists Debunk Latest Bunk by Denier Roy Spencer.”  The key scientific point is that there are multiple lines of evidence that the climate is quite sensitive to greenhouse gases and that Spencer’s approach is deeply flawed.

For a list of the overblown hyping of this paper by the deniers, see Media Matters’ post, “Climate Science Once Again Twisted Beyond Recognition By Conservative Media.”  All of them should issue retractions, but few if any will.

While resignation of an editor over a bad decision to publish a flawed denier paper is extremely unusual, it isn’t completely unprecedented.  As Deltoid (aka Tim Lambert) points out on his blog, ”This reminds me of what happened in 2003, when several editors at Climate Research resigned because of the publication of Soon and Baliunas, another paper that should not have been published.”

Wagner has much more to say that is worth reading:

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Weigh in on the question “Is President Obama a Lost Cause Environmentally — and What Should Progressives Do?“

UPDATE 1:  Obama’s decision to do nothing on ozone pollution is actually worse than what the Bush-Cheney Administration proposed.  See Brad Plumer’s WashPost piece, “Did the White House double-cross its supporters on the smog rule?”

UPDATE 2:  I was on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown tonight on this and will post a video when it’s available.

That’s a tweet from Politico’s national political reporter Manu Raju.

After much debate about upcoming EPA regulation of air quality standards, the President has backed down on creating a new ozone standard:

[A]fter careful consideration, I have requested that Administrator Jackson withdraw the draft Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards at this time. Work is already underway to update a 2006 review of the science that will result in the reconsideration of the ozone standard in 2013.  Ultimately, I did not support asking state and local governments to begin implementing a new standard that will soon be reconsidered.

League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski issued the following statement:

“The Obama administration is caving to big polluters at the expense of protecting the air we breathe. This is a huge win for corporate polluters and huge loss for public health.”

The administration’s fecklessness is no doubt based on some crass political (mis)calculation.  But in fact the standard would not have any noticeable negative impact on the economy and, if anything, would have driven investment and innovation even in the short term.  The biggest uncertainty  businesses have now is “what the heck will Obama do next?” since the President appears to have no coherent and consistent philosophy guiding his  economic and environmental decisions.

And as for how this plays out with the voters, it’s one more move that disempowers a core constituency.  It also misses a chance to win over the biggest block of independent voters, those who want to preserve clean air and clean water for their kids.  As a May Pew poll found, 71% of Americans say “This country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment.”

UPDATE:  Below is the Center for American Progress statement on this decision, followed by the American Lung Association statement:

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Is oil leaking in the Gulf from the BP spill site?

Reports of oil surfacing near the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion are raising questions about its source and whether it is related to last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – one of the worst environmental disasters in US history.

A patch of oil was documented last week about a quarter-mile northeast of the Macondo wellhead leased by BP. That site was plugged in July 2010 after about 4.9 million barrels (206 million gallons) of oil leaked into the Gulf.

On Wednesday, reporters from the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register published photographs and video of their discovery on the news organization’s website, which was in response to surveillance flights conducted the week before by two environmental groups – the Gulf Restoration Network and On Wings of Care. The Press-Register reported witnessing “blobs of oil rise to the surface and bloom into iridescent yellow patches” that later “expanded into rainbow sheens 4 to 5 feet across.”

Surprising Areas See Growth In Green Jobs

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by Bill Becker

The term “perfect storm” is overused now, but it is the perfect metaphor for the violent relationship between people and the environment today.  We are experiencing a  convergence of factors that are putting us at great risk. For example:

• Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe.

• The big public works projects we built to protect us from natural disasters over the past century may no longer be affordable or the best option.

• The idea that we can bulldozer natural systems into submission and live wherever we wish has put millions of Americans in harms way.

• Weather-related disasters are becoming a clear and present danger to security at home and abroad.

• Our national leaders generally seem oblivious to this mounting danger, or in denial that it is real, allowing politics and flat-earth ideology to prevail over common sense.

• Even if our politicians were willing to unify around a national response to extreme weather, budget problems have greatly diminished governments’ capacity to act.

In this three-part post, I’ll weave together data from a variety of sources and experts to explore whether we are ready to live in nature’s new norm.

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When a 5.8 earthquake in Virginia shook the North Anna nuclear power station, about 12 miles from the quake’s epicenter, the plant lost power and shut down. Later, officials discovered that massive containers storing spent fuel had even shifted during the earthquake at the North Anna plant. But according to a review of nuclear plants across the central and eastern U.S., the North Anna nuclear reactors are not alone — at least 27 nuclear reactors are at risk of severe accident because of an earthquake.

The preliminary review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ongoing for six years but which became a priority following Japan’s massive earthquake in March that led to a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, found that the reactors are vulnerable to larger earthquakes than previously assumed and need upgrades to withstand the potential tremors. And the regulators suggested that the operators at all 104 commercial reactors review their facilities’ vulnerabilities to earthquake damage.

The industry and regulators say the reactors are safe as is for now, but an Associated Press report showed that NRC experts were still concerned:

After the March earthquake in Japan that caused the biggest nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, NRC staffers fretted in emails that the agency’s understanding of earthquake risk for existing reactors was out of date.

In a March 15 email, for example, an NRC earthquake expert questioned releasing data to the public showing how strong an earthquake each plant was designed to withstand.

The seismologist, Annie Kammerer, acknowledged that recent science showed stronger quakes could happen. “Frankly, it is not a good story for us,” she wrote to agency colleagues.

The upgrades needed for the North Anna plant and others like it are unclear, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will need to take action to ensure the reactors highlighted in the review are protected. Or, as Peter Sinclair wrote after the Virginia earthquake, the U.S. could turn its attention to other forms of energy because, “As of now, no reports of shutdowns, oil spills, or radioactive leaks at any wind turbines.”

With the State Department’s final environmental assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline complete, major public figures are starting to weigh in before a decision is made on whether or not to approve the project.

Keystone XL is a 1,700-mile pipeline that will bring hundreds of thousands of tar sands crude from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico to be refined. Producing crude from tar sands is the most energy and carbon intensive form of oil extraction – a process that environmental groups have called “the biggest global warming crime ever seen.”

Along with climate scientist James Hansen and the Center for American Progress, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Nebraska GOP governor Dave Heineman issued their opinions on the impact of the pipeline this week.

And their responses aren’t what you might think.

In an interview with EnergyNOW! at the National Clean Energy Summit, Steven Chu explained that the pipeline was a “tradeoff.” While he didn’t explicitly throw his support behind the project, he did say that companies extracting tar sands “are making great strides in improving the environmental impact of the extraction of this oil.”

However, the Canadian government expects carbon emissions from Alberta’s tar sands to double by 2020, cancelling out any emissions reductions that could come from developing renewable energy in the country by that time.

Directly after taping that interview at the summit, Chu explained in a brief conversation with Climate Progress that he believes that the fossil fuel industry has “an interest in seeing that action isn’t taken” on climate change and lamented the lack of understanding of climate science among political leaders.

“It saddens me. And I think as a scientist you have to re-double your efforts,” said Chu.

So which is it? Climate activists like Bill McKibben and James Hansen say that support of the Keystone pipeline “would be game over for the climate.” But Chu’s comments on the Keystone pipeline suggest that he would allow the pipeline to be built.

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