Extreme weather disasters, fueled by global warming pollution, dominate the nation’s news, even as the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination vie to scorn the threat of climate change. Even those who purport to accept the science of global warming, such as Jon Huntsman Jr., argue that making our climate less deadly would hurt the economy.

The montage below is drawn from a few front-page headlines from the nation’s newspapers on Thursday and Friday, via the Newseum. From the record, killer wildfires in Texas to the record, killer floods in the Northeast, our nation is under attack by a poisoned climate system.

Read more

A BRIDGE FUEL TO NOWHERE

A stunning new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) concludes:

In summary, our results show that the substitution of gas for coal as an energy source results in increased rather than decreased global warming for many decades….

Coal, natural gas, and climate: Shifting from coal to natural gas would have limited impacts on climate, new research indicates. If methane leaks from natural gas operations could be kept to 2.5% or less, the increase in global temperatures would be reduced by about 0.1 degree Celsius by 2100.  Note this is a figure of temperature change relative to baseline warming of roughly 3°C (5.4°F) in 2100.  Click to Enlarge.

The fact that natural gas is a bridge fuel to nowhere was first shown by the International Energy Agency in its big June report on gas — see IEA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change.  That study — which had both coal and oil consumption peaking in 2020 — made abundantly clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we need to start getting off of all fossil fuels.

But what NCAR’s new study adds is more detailed modeling of all contributors to climate change from fossil fuel combustion — positive and negative.  The study is here [they just eliminated the subscription requirement], the news release is here. It’s by senior research associate Tom Wigley, one of the country’s leading experts on climate modeling.

“Relying more on natural gas would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, but it would do little to help solve the climate problem,” says Wigley, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia. “It would be many decades before it would slow down global warming at all, and even then it would just be making a difference around the edges.”

Wigley’s analysis is the first to include all of the relevant climate factors:

Read more

Armed with tens of billions in loans from the Chinese government, Chinese solar companies have scaled at a rate unthinkable only a few years ago. At the end of this year, there will likely be 50,000 MW of manufacturing capacity in place around the world, with much of that new capacity being developed in China and other Asian countries. (In the year 2000, there was only 100 MW of production capacity world-wide.)

In four years, the solar manufacturing sector shifted from being led by a geographically-dispersed number of companies to one dominated by Chinese companies. In 2006, there were two companies from China in the list of top-ten cell producers.  In 2010, there were six, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. There are currently only two non-Asian manufacturers in the top ten, and those companies — First Solar and Q-Cells — have shifted a lot of their production to Asia.

So what happened? How did the Chinese come to completely dominate the solar industry in such a short period of time?

Bryan Ashley, the Chief Marketing Officer for Suniva, an American company that produces high-efficiency solar cells in Georgia, doesn’t mince words.

“The Chinese strategy is very clear. They are engaging in predatory financing and they’re trying to drive everybody else out of the market. When you’ve got free money you can out-dump everybody below cost,” Ashley said in an interview with Climate Progress.

That “free money” Ashley refers to is the cheap debt provided by the Chinese Development Bank (CDB).  Here’s how the CDB works its magic:

Read more

By Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund

To the short list – death and taxes – of things that are certain, add a third: House Republicans whining a duet with the oil and gas industry about complying with the nation’s bedrock environmental laws.

The latest example came today during a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee to examine the arcane subject of allowing the energy industry to employ so-called “categorical exclusions” to dodge thorough environmental reviews of drilling projects on federal lands. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) pushed back on the oil and gas industry claims:

The BP oil spill disaster proved that allowing companies to take shortcuts is a bad idea. It’s unfortunate that some continue to attempt an end-run around the law and protections for Colorado’s water, air, and public lands. We need reasonable, common-sense solutions that allow for balanced energy development, and I commend Sec. Ken Salazar for his diligent work to ensure responsible energy policy in the West.

The authority for drilling projects to bypass environmental assessments and more rigorous environmental impact statements under the National Environmental Policy Act was pushed by the administration of George W. Bush and endorsed by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. As with most things involving energy development on public lands, Bush’s Interior Department proceeded to go hog wild.

A 2009 investigation of how the authority was (mis)used by the Government Accountability Office found widespread abuses and illegalities in the way the authority was applied. Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees mineral development on federal lands, gave the industry exclusions in 28 percent of drilling permit applications from fiscal 2006 to 2008, the GAO found. And it did so in ways that were frequently “out of compliance with both the law and BLM’s guidance,” the report said.

Following up on that damning report, the Obama administration’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar put a halt to the reckless fast-tracking in 2010 by issuing new guidance to the BLM that limited the use of the broad exemptions. Last month, on procedural grounds, a federal judge in Wyoming ruled that Salazar’s guidelines were illegally implemented. At today’s hearing, BLM’s deputy director Mike Poole announced that the agency would conduct a new rulemaking to comply with the judge’s decision.

But for the “drill, baby, drill” crowd, that’s not good enough. They want the Bush-era party to resume.

The liberal use of categorical exclusions, said energy and mineral resources subcommittee chairman Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), “are an essential part of streamlining an overly burdensome and bureaucratic process.”

Somehow Lamborn and his allies never got around to mentioning that even with those burdens in place, onshore oil and gas drilling is near a 20-year high, total U.S. crude oil production is the highest it has been since 2003, and the industry is sitting on thousands of unused drilling permits and leases covering nearly 30 million acres that have yet to be developed.

Previously, Climate Progress outlined four good reasons why cloud computing is better for the climate:

1. Economies of scale
2. Diversity and aggregation
3. Flexibility
4. Outsourcing

And new data from Google underscores those points: In a blog post yesterday, Google reports that using a service like Gmail is 80 times more efficient than enterprise services.

The analysis from Google shows that the real energy guzzlers (and therefore carbon emitters) are small businesses that can’t capture economies of scale. According to Google, small businesses with around 50 employees typically have to buy servers that are much more power intensive than what they need:

Read more

Historic flooding in Pennsylvania has killed at least five people. President Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency in the state. In New York, thousands had to flee the rising Susquehanna River. The Associated Press’s Mark Scolforo reports:

Stretches of the swollen Susquehanna River began receding Friday after days of rainfall from what had been Tropical Storm Lee flooded communities from Virginia to New York, leading to evacuation orders for nearly 100,000 people. At least 12 deaths have been blamed on Lee and its remnants. The damage was concentrated along the Susquehanna in Binghamton, N.Y., in Wilkes-Barre, where more than 70,000 people were told to evacuate, and other communities downstream in Maryland. The National Weather Service said the Susquehanna crested above 38 feet Thursday night in Wilkes-Barre — below the top of the levee system and under the levels reached after historic flooding spawned by Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

This extreme flooding should come as no surprise. Climate scientists have warned for decades that this kind of disaster would be one of the consequences of unlimited greenhouse pollution. Between 1948 and 2006, Pennsylvania saw a 41 percent increase in extreme precipitation as the planet warmed. This is no “once-in-a-generation” event — it’s a mild hint of our disastrous future.

Dr. Jeff Masters:  An extreme rainfall event unprecedented in recorded history has hit the Binghamton, New York area, where 7.49″ fell yesterday. This is the second year in a row Binghamton has recorded a 1-in-100 year rain event; their previous all-time record was set last September, when 4.68″ fell on Sep 30 – Oct. 1, 2010. Records go back to 1890 in the city….

You don’t often see a major city break its all-time 24-hour precipitation record by a 60% margin, according to wunderground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, and he can’t recall ever seeing it happen before.

Radar-observed rainfall (via Masters)

Before seeing that amazing story, I was all set to lead with the “unprecedented” rains soaking the Washington, DC area:

“I can’t recall flooding like this. This is unprecedented,” [Virginia Department of Transportation spokesman] Morris said.

The unrelenting rains, sometimes falling at four inches an hour….

Capital Weather Gang’s Jason Samenow points me to this post, which has more details on our deluge:

Fort Belvoir, Va., recorded at least (last ob with rain total was 7:55 p.m.) an incredible 8.82” with as much as 7.03” coming during a three-hour stretch during the evening. It has received a stunning 13.52” since Monday.

And let’s not forget Irene’s recent devastating 1-in-100 year deluge, which was “the most devastating weather event ever to hit the region” where I grew up near the Catskill Mountains of New York state.  It also set “the greatest single-day rainfall in Vermont’s history” by over an inch.

What’s going on?

Well, a very basic prediction of climate science is that as you warm the planet you get more water vapor in the atmosphere and more rain comes down in extreme deluges.  Observations reveal that is already happening, and the  recent scientific literature has said that is extremely likely that human emissions are the cause of this increase in precipitation intensity.  Climate Progress ran through the recent literature in this February post, “Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment.”

In a new report by by the scientific group Climate Communication, “Current Extreme Weather and Climate Change” report, top climatologists scientists spell out how human-caused global warming is loading the dice for the extreme weather seen in the past year.  You can listen to a press conference held Wednesday by Jeff Masters and Jerry Meehl and Kevin Trenberth and Richard Somerville here.

Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explained the deluge-warming connection in an interview with Climate Progress last year:

Read more

A steadfast enemy to the air he breathes, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is a never-ending source of attacks on environmental regulations and the EPA.

In a Washington Times op-ed this week, Paul blasted the EPA as an “out-of-control agency” that “violate[s] constitutional rights” and “turns everyday life into a federal crime.” Paul opens his op-ed with the curious declarations that the EPA “has done more harm than good,” that regulations cost over 5 percent of our GDP, and that, somehow, these same regulations increased unemployment by 33 percent:

Since its creation in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency has done more harm than good. EPA regulations cost more than 5 percent of our annual gross domestic product – the equivalent of the costs of defense and homeland security combined. Since EPA regulations have expanded, unemployment in America has increased by 33 percent. This abuse of power by the implementation of regulations infringes upon our basic constitutional rights.

These are all curious declarations in that they’re completely nonsensical. EPA regulations do not cost over 5 percent of the U.S. GDP. In fact, according to recent study, “GDP in 2010 [was] 1.5 percent higher than it would have been without the Clean Air Act.” Clean air regulations saved about $1.3 trillion in public health and environmental benefits, “a value worth more than 9 percent of GDP.”

As for doing more harm than good, EPA regulations helped prevent 18 million child respiratory illnesses in 1990 alone. The Institute for Clean Air Companies estimated that complying with just one clean air standard about 29,000 full time jobs each year for the past seven years. That’s just for the clean air standards. The EPA also regulates water pollution, radiation, pesticides, and chemical safety. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, implementation of the EPA’s “toxics rule” will lead to 11,000 fewer heart attacks, 12,200 fewer hospital visits, and 225,000 fewer cases of respiratory symptoms.

And as for the idea that EPA regulations are somehow linked to a 33 percent rise in unemployment, the same study notes that regulations actually have very little impact on employment in the long run. Indeed, the same “toxics rule” will likely create 28,000 to 158,000 jobs between now and 2015. Economists agree the current unemployment crisis began when unregulated banks and polluters strip-mined our economy.

In any event, if Paul insists on “plac[ing] the power in the hands of the people,” polls indicate that the people will just give it back to the EPA. (HT: Barefoot and Progressive)

Tony Hayward of BP spill fame back in oil business

Tony Hayward, the oil executive Americans learned to hate during last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is back in business, this time in the rich oil fields of northern Iraq.

At a news conference Thursday in Istanbul, Hayward announced the merger of his Vallares PLC with Turkey’s Genel Energy in an effort to dominate exploration of the vast oil reserves of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. The new company also intends to invest in other areas in the Middle East.

Read more

by Melanie Hart

The U.S. media is abuzz over last week’s bankruptcy of thin-film solar manufacturer Solyndra LLC, with some conservative politicians trying to use the demise of the start-up to argue against federal financing for green energy. But the Chinese media is focusing on a far more important solar power development: two major energy plans that will lay the policy roadmap for China’s clean energy development over the next decade.

The first is the 12th Five Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development, covering 2011 to 2015, which focuses on sources of renewable energy such as hydropower, wind, solar, and biomass. The second is the Emerging Energy Industry Development Plan, covering 2011 to 2020, which also includes nuclear energy, clean coal, smart grid, and alternative fuel for new-energy vehicles.

The State Council, China’s national cabinet, is currently reviewing both plans, but it looks like the renewable energy plan for 2011-2015 will come out first. Details of the plan are already leaking to the press, and thus far, it looks like the biggest story will be solar. According to the latest leaks in the Chinese media, the new renewable energy plan will raise solar targets to unprecedented levels: 10 GW of installed solar capacity by 2015, including 9 GW from photovoltaic installations and 1 GW from solar thermal electric power generation, and 50 GW total installed capacity by 2020.[1]

The United States is currently ahead of China, with 2.6 GW installed solar capacity at year-end 2010. The United States is also leading in solar equipment, with $1.9 billion in overall net exports in 2010, and a $247 million trade surplus with China. But as Chinese policymakers prep for a major push on solar, U.S. policymakers are gearing up to slash funding for the basic support programs that created this impressive lead, and that means we could easily lose our edge to China.

For China, these new targets are truly big. As of year-end 2010, China had around 700 megawatts of installed solar capacity, so meeting the new 2015 target will require adding another 9.3 GW to the grid—a capacity expansion of over 1,000 percent during the 2011-2015 five-year plan period.[2]

Read more