The Polar Science Center at the University of Washington has updated its calculations of Arctic sea ice volume.  As usual, Neven has the best graphs of the PSC’s data at his Arctic Sea Ice Blog, a must-read for cryosphere-junkies.

The PSC recently improved their PIOMAS model, which combines the best observational data with their own analysis.  They are publishing their findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research, “Uncertainty in Modeled Arctic Sea Ice Volume”:

… the 2010 September ice volume anomaly did in fact exceed the previous 2007 minimum by a large enough margin to establish a statistically significant new record.

And now that 2010 record is broken — and the melt season isn’t over yet.

Indeed, it is going to be a close race to see if we break the record for sea-ice extent, a two-dimensional metric that the media and others focus on because that data is reported every day by many different sources.  If you’re interested in that trend, the National Snow and Ice Data Center released its latest analysis yesterday, “Arctic sea ice near record lows” [see figure below].

Those who know polar ice the best know the “death spiral” continues.  Far from seeing the Arctic recovering since 2007, as some claimed, the volume of sea ice dropped by another one third in 3 years, according to the PSC!

In November, Rear Admiral David Titley, the Oceanographer of the Navy, testified that “the volume of ice as of last September has never been lower … in the last several thousand years.” Titley, who is also the Director of Navy’s Task Force Climate Change, said he has told the Chief of Naval Operations that “we expect to see four weeks of basically ice free conditions in the mid to late 2030s.”

Here’s another way to look at the death spiral, via Wipneus:

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Breaking:  I’ll do a longer post tomorrow on the debate, but for now, here’s Howard Fineman at HuffPost:

Perry Over His Head On Climate Change

Rick Perry just bought the farm on climate change. He came off as dangerously in over his head. He said that despite the fact that most credible scientists think that human activity has something to do with climate change, he was not convinced.

“Galileo was outnumbered for a spell!” he declared. He got the analogy exactly wrong. Galileo was the scientist; the church and its allies, who knew nothing about the scientific method, were lined up against him. He never answered the question about which scientists he had consulted. He suddenly looked like the guy Karl Rove says he is, “a guy who only cares about soundbites.”

The League of Conservation Voters just sent out this fact sheet about Perry’s statement on climate science at the debate:

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Oil production has soared under Obama.  But Big Oil and its allies in Congress say Obama “has hardly missed any opportunity to block, impede, delay, hinder or obstruct American energy production.”  What must he do to win their love, since that seems to be his goal?

The American Petroleum Institute released a report this morning outlining how the U.S. could create over one million jobs in the next decade through increased domestic drilling and use of tar sands. The solution? Open up every possible pocket of American soil and waters to drilling rigs — turning “drill, baby drill” into “drill, baby, drill, ’till there’s nothin’ left to drill.”

The report outlines aggressive oil and gas drilling scenarios for the Outer Continental Shelf, the Gulf of Mexico, onshore and offshore in the Arctic, and on various other public lands around the U.S., as well as development of the Keystone XL pipeline — all measures that would supposedly increase oil and production by nearly 50% compared with our current path (which is already set to raise production substantially) and increase tar sands production by 280%.

In other words, jobs creation through more climate destruction.  And they are all temporary jobs, since they aren’t sustainable.  We will be getting off of oil in the coming decades if we’re going to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“All [Obama] has to do is say the word,” said API President Jack Girard, in a challenge to the president at an event to promote the report. The study comes out a day before Obama is set to give a speech about job creation to Congress.

Doc Hastings, a Republican from Washington State who serves as Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee — one of the oil industry’s most stalwart advocates — used the release of this morning’s report to spread the myth that Obama is anti-drilling in order to make the case for the industry to drill anywhere it can fit a rig:

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Why is Climate Progress focusing so much on green jobs? As many of readers have noticed, there is a coordinated effort among right-wing politicians and the press to challenge the notion that green jobs are growing fast and that they’re necessary. With Obama set to make a major speech on jobs tomorrow night, we’re working overtime to combat many of the myths.

By Christina C. DiPasquale and Kate Gordon, Center for American Progress

Green jobs are integral to any effort to jumpstart our economy and reduce as rapidly as possible our 9.1 percent unemployment that rate. The rapid growth of green jobs will boost demand in our economy by reducing unemployment, make America more competitive in the global economy, and protect our public health—all of which will result in greater economic productivity and long-term economic prosperity. Here are the top 10 reasons why this is the case today and into the future:

1. There are already 2.7 million jobs across the clean economy. Clean energy is already proving to be larger job creation engine than the heavily subsidized fossil-fuels sector, putting Americans back to work in a lackluster economy.

2. Across a range of clean energy projects, including renewable energy, transit, and energy efficiency, for every million dollars spent, 16.7 green jobs are created. That is over three times the 5.3 jobs per million dollars that are created from the same spending on fossil-fuel industries.

3. The clean energy sector is growing at a rate of 8.3 percent. Solar thermal energy expanded by 18.4 percent annually from 2003 to 2010, along with solar photovoltaic power by 10.7 percent, and biofuels by 8.9 percent over the same period. Meanwhile, the U.S. wind energy industry saw 35 percent average annual growth over the past five years, accounting for 35 percent of new U.S. power capacity in that period, according to the 2010 U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report. As a whole, the clean energy sector’s average growth rate of 8.3 percent annually during this period was nearly double the growth rate of the overall economy during that time.

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by Bill McKibben for tarsandsaction.org

Dear friends—

Here’s the battle plan we promised—a few hours late, because it’s been a big job wrapping up phase one of this campaign.

By now you know what you accomplished: 1,253 arrests, according to some journalists the biggest civil disobedience action since 1977, and the most sustained since the epic campaigns of the civil rights movement. That was enough to take a regional issue and make it a national and even global one (many thanks to our friends, who picketed American and Canadian embassies on every continent).

Together you managed to make this central environmental test for the administration, and to inform everyone who’s paying attention that Barack Obama will get to make the call by himself, without Congress in the way. In other words, you’ve laid the groundwork for a mighty victory—now we have to make it pay off.

Here’s the plan:

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Far more people care about clean air for their kids than profits for polluters.  So far more people are pissed off with Obama for his buck-stops-somewhere-else decision to do less on ozone pollution than George W. Bush proposed.

Joining the large and growing ranks of the pissed is our Nobel prize-winning former vice president.  Gore writes on his blog today:

On Friday afternoon, as brave and committed activists continued their non-violent civil disobedience outside the White House in protest of the tar sands pipeline that would lead to a massive increase in global warming pollution, President Obama ordered the EPA to abandon its pursuit of new curbs on emissions that worsens disease-causing smog in US cities. Earlier this year, the EPA’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, wrote that the levels of pollution now permitted — put in place by the Bush-Cheney administration– are “not legally defensible.” Those very same rules have now been embraced by the Obama White House.

Instead of relying on science, President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution—even though economists have shown that the US economy would benefit from the job creating investments associated with implementing the new technology. The result of the White House’s action will be increased medical bills for seniors with lung disease, more children developing asthma, and the continued degradation of our air quality.

Nothing good can be said about this decision other than by the likes of the Chamber of Commerce.

Related Post:

• Krugman Slams “Latest Obama Cave-In,” Explains Why “Tighter Ozone Regulation Would Actually Have Created Jobs”

 

A new survey on global warming by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communications finds that self-described members of the Tea Party movement are distinctly more skeptical of global warming than all other Americans. Only 34 percent of Tea Party members say they believe global warming is happening, compared to 78 percent of Democrats, and 53 percent of non-Tea Party Republicans:

Ironically, Tea Party members are much more likely than other groups to believe they are “very well informed,” and are much more likely to say they “do not need any more information” about global warming to make up their minds. A majority among all four groups — Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Tea Party members — said they support funding for research into renewable energy.

Commentary by Rhett Stevenson of America’s Finest News Service

The 20 hottest years on record have all taken place in the past quarter century. The resulting floods, wildfires, and heat waves have all had deadly consequences, and if we don’t reduce carbon emissions immediately, humanity faces bleak prospects. We can no longer ignore this issue. Beginning today, we must all do more when it comes to our brief and panicked thoughts about climate change.

Indeed, if there was ever a time when a desperate call to take action against global warming should race through our heads as we lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, that time is now.

Many well-intentioned people will take 20 seconds out of their week to consider the consequences of the lifestyle they’ve chosen, perhaps contemplating how their reliance on fossil fuels has contributed to the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap. But if progress is what we truly want, 20 seconds is simply not enough. Not by a long shot. An issue this critical demands at least 45 seconds to a solid minute of real, concentrated panic.

And I’m not talking about letting the image of a drowning polar bear play out in your mind now and then. If we’re at all serious, we need to let ourselves occasionally be struck with grim visions of coastal cities washing away and people starving as drought-stricken farmlands fail to yield crops—and we need to do this regularly, every couple days or so, before continuing to go about our routines as usual.

This may seem like a lot to ask, but no one ever said making an effort to think about change was easy.

So if you pick up a newspaper and see an article about 10 percent of all living species going extinct by the end of the century, don’t just turn the page. Stop, peruse it for a moment, look at the photos, freak out for a few seconds, and then turn the page.

And the next time you start up your car, stop to think how the exhaust from your vehicle and millions of others like it contributes to air pollution, increasing the likelihood that a child in your neighborhood will develop asthma or other respiratory ailments. Take your time with it. Feel the full, crushing weight of that guilt. Then go ahead and drive wherever it was you wanted to go.

To do anything less is irresponsible.

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and seven other Nobel Peace Prize laureates have written to President Obama to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Obama was awarded the prize in 2009, in part for playing a “more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.” In their letter, the humanitarian leaders from around the globe challenged Obama to live up to his promises and prevent the climate pollution that would come with the construction of a pipeline to feed Canada’s tar sands to Texas refineries:

The night you were nominated for president, you told the world that under your leadership—and working together—the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal. You spoke of creating a clean energy economy. This is a critical moment to make good on that pledge, and make a lasting contribution to the health and well being of everyone of this planet.

The letter was signed by nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates: Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams of Ireland, who shared the prize in 1976, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina (1980), Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa (1984), His Holiness the Dalai Lama (1989), Rigoberta Menchú Tum of Guatemala (1992), José Ramos-Horta of East Timor (1996), Jody Williams of the United States (1997), and Shirin Ebadi of Iran (2003).

“We cannot accept the growing threat posed by climate change, which could forever damage the world that we pass on to our children — sowing conflict and famine, destroying coastlines and emptying cities,” Obama said when he received the Nobal Peace Prize. “And that’s why all nations must now accept their share of responsibility for transforming the way that we use energy.”

Presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has company in her call for oil drilling in the Florida Everdglades: the state’s governor supports it as well. Gov. Rick Scott (R) was speaking to members of the Economic Club of Florida when an audience member asked him if he agreed with Bachmann’s call for drilling in the Everglades. Rather than oppose it like most Florida politicians, he was supportive of “cautious” drilling:

“With regard to the Everglades, I think we have to be very cautious if there’s going to be any more drilling. It’s my understanding at least, we haven’t had any problems in the Everglades to date,” Scott said.

Scott, who lived in Collier County before becoming governor, noted that there was already a small amount of oil production that has been going on for decades in the Everglades.

“We already have oil wells in the Everglades. There’s a road in Naples that’s called ‘Oil Well Road,” Scott said. “So, we already have oil drilling. We’ve done it I think since 1943…I think first off people are very shocked that we have it already. They don’t know that.”

Within hours of the event, his office retreated from the statement. “Governor Scott has not called for an expansion of drilling in the Everglades,’’ said Scott spokeswoman Amy Graham. “That discussion is not on the table.”

Environmentalists warned Scott against supporting drilling in the Everglades unless he wanted to anger the Floridians who enjoy the Everglades for recreation and the millions who depend on it for their water supply. “My suggestion to the Governor is quite simple: Don’t go there,’’ said Kirk Fordham, CEO of the Everglades Foundation, a nonprofit formed to protect the Everglades.

And many Republican leaders stand with the environmentalists instead of Scott and Bachmann on this issue. Rep. Allen West (R-FL) slammed Bachmann’s “incredible faux pas” about supporting oil drilling in the Everglades. In the 2008 presidential campaign, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), who is also currently running for president, said Everglades drilling is not an option. Former President George W. Bush opposed the drilling in 2002 when he pushed for the government to repurchase oil drilling rights to prevent drilling in the Everglades, and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), opposes the drilling as well.

Construction is underway on a new home in Beaverton, Oregon. If we retrofitted just 40% of the nation’s residential and commercial building stock, we would mobilize a massive amount of domestic labor, more than half a million (625,000) sustained full-time jobs over a decade. This would generate as much as $64 billion per year in cost savings for U.S. energy ratepayers.  AP Photo.

By Bracken Hendricks and Jorge Madrid

Retrofitting America’s homes and offices for energy efficiency must remain at the top of the national agenda when Congress returns to work today. Congress needs to find bipartisan solutions to jumpstart the economy and create jobs.

Wasted energy is an obvious and costly drag on the productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. economy, but equally important amid the current jobs crisis is this—investing up front in energy-saving technology for homes and offices will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, especially in the hard hit construction and manufacturing sectors of the economy. The same dollars that we waste today on inefficient energy use would be better spent paying the wages of skilled American construction workers and purchasing state-of-the-art advanced manufactured products made here in the United States.

When there is substantial excess capacity in both the construction workforce and in domestic manufacturing, a program to retrofit U.S. homes and offices is well targeted to put American workers back on the job. While housing demand remands depressed, these cost-effective investments in efficiency can create a new source of demand for skilled workers.

Furthermore, building retrofit investments are driven by the private sector through targeted incentives, not government programs, drawing private capital to create lasting American jobs. That’s a smart, bipartisan way to tackle the jobs crisis, our dependence on foreign energy sources, and global warming.

In this issue brief we will make the case for residential and commercial building retrofits, demonstrate that successful efforts in the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the administration’s Better Buildings Initiative can lay the groundwork for jumpstarting a new wave of private-sector investment in this nascent but critical American industry. We then detail how we can build upon this foundation to create 250,000 new jobs over the next year. Specifically, Congress needs to enact three programs that enjoy widespread backing on both sides of the aisle and deep industry support—Home Star, Building Star, and Rural Star.

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Last week, lobbyists in Washington, DC announced the creation of yet another front group in Nebraska to support the approval of the controversial Keystone XL, a pipeline running through the Midwest from tar sands mining sites in Canada to refineries in Texas. Given its central location underneath the proposed expansion route for the Keystone XL, Nebraska has become a flash point in the debate over approval of the plan.

To counteract the broad opposition to the pipeline, oil lobbyists have paid special attention to Nebraska. As ThinkProgress reported, the American Petroleum Institute, an oil lobbying federation that counts many foreign oil companies as paying members, has set up fake citizens groups to support the pipeline (a version for Nebraska, called the “Nebraska Energy Forum,” can be found here). Now, the U.S. Chamber, a lobbying association funded by oil companies and other fossil fuel polluters, has announced its own astroturf effort in Nebraska:

LINCOLN — The U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy and key Nebraska business leaders today launched the “Partnership to Fuel America,” (www.fuelingus.org) in Nebraska, a major new initiative designed to build a stronger foundation for the U.S. – Canadian energy relationship. [...]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations.

The press release for “Partnership to Fuel America” is filled with falsehoods. For one thing, the Chamber has already admitted that its claim of representing 3 million businesses is a lie. Second, the new group isn’t even managed from Lincoln, Nebraska. In fact, ThinkProgress has learned that the group is orchestrated by a Minnesota-based lobbying firm called Public Affairs Company. A call to the firm confirmed that Stacy Thompson, a Minneapolis-based Republican consultant, is really behind the Nebraska pipeline fake citizens group. Moreover, though the release claims the pipeline will help the local economy, a single spill could forever doom Nebraska’s agricultural industry by poisoning the water supply.

Backlash to the pipeline is growing every day. Conservative Gov. Dave Heineman (R-NE) even fired of a letter on Aug. 31 to administration officials broadcasting his opposition to the current plan. Reacting to a groundswell of opposition, Heineman, ordinarily no friend of the environmental movement, stated blunted: “I am opposed to the proposed route of this pipeline … 254 miles of the pipeline would come through Nebraska and be situated directly over the Ogallala Aquifer.” Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) and former Vice President Al Gore have also spoken out against the pipeline. But when even a conservative Republican governor leans against the pipeline, it’s no wonder oil companies are working to make multiple political groups to give the appearance of public support for the project.

Shortly after the New York Times released an inaccurate piece on the growth of green jobs, Van Jones expressed anger that the writer used selective quotes from an hour-long interview to satisfy the predetermined conclusion of the article.

Now, one of the other key sources, SolFocus VP of Business Development Nancy Hartsoch, is speaking out about the reporter’s selective use of facts to paint an inaccurate picture of her company’s operations.  In an exclusive interview, she tells Climate Progress:

Honestly, I’ve never been involved in a story that got this screwed up. I was so surprised to read the story. It’s like the facts were misstated in order to put forward an agenda.

The NY Times author starts the story:

Flanked by a cadre of local political leaders, Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose used a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a solar power company last week to talk up the promise of the green economy.

…But SolFocus assembles its solar panels in China, and the new San Jose headquarters employs just 90 people.

Hartsoch tells Climate Progress she was “shocked” when she read the story. Why? Because the reporter left out one very important fact: Sol Focus directly employs only four people in China and hires about 30 sub-contractors for manufacturing. So its U.S. operations are far larger than anything in China.

When factoring in all the sub-contractors in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan for production of components like glass and racking, the number of American jobs the company supports rises by dozens more, says Hartsoch.

She says she told all that to the reporter, who apparently had already decided his predetermined narrative was more important than fact-based reporting.

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Robert Redford in a HuffPost repost

One reason I supported President Obama is because he said we must protect clean air, water and lands. But what good is it to say the right thing unless you act on it?

Since early August, three administration decisions — on Arctic drilling, the Keystone XL pipeline and the ozone that causes smog — have all favored dirty industry over public health and a clean environment. Like so many others, I’m beginning to wonder just where the man stands.

For months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been poised to issue new ozone rules to reduce the smog that causes asthma attacks and other respiratory ills. We badly need these new standards, which the EPA estimates could prevent 12,000 premature deaths a year.

On Friday, though, the White House put the new rules on ice. The result: these vital protections will be delayed until at least 2013 – conveniently after next year’s presidential election.

The week before, the State Department gave a preliminary green light to the proposed Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry crude oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas refineries.

If this pipeline wins final approval from the administration in the coming months, it will wed our energy future to the dirtiest oil on the planet. It will invest this country in one of the most destructive mining practices ever devised. And it will put farmers, ranchers and cropland at risk across the great plains of the American heartland. That’s why the Republican governor of Nebraska came out against it this week.

And just last month, the Interior Department gave conditional approval to Shell Oil’s plan to begin drilling four exploratory wells in the Arctic waters off of Alaska’s North Slope as early as next summer. Congress has yet to pass a single law strengthening offshore drilling safeguards in the wake of last year’s BP blowout, and we’re giving Shell the go-ahead to drill in some of the nation’s most fertile fishing grounds, in waters that are iced in eight months each year and in a location a five-day journey by ship from the nearest Coast Guard station.

What’s going on here?

In all three cases, the administration’s decisions have come in the face of a withering industry lobbying campaign based on the usual mix of fear mongering and lies.

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