Figure 1. A tale of two winters: Lake Superior was choked with ice at the end of the winter of 2008 – 2009 (top), but was virtually ice-free at the end of the winter of 2011 – 2012 (bottom.) Image credit: NASA.

by Jeff Masters, reposted from the WunderBlog

Ice cover on North America’s Great Lakes–Superior, Michigan, Huron, Ontario, and Erie–has declined 71% since 1973, says a new study published in the Journal of Climate by researchers at NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

The biggest loser of ice during the 1973 – 2010 time period was Lake Ontario, which saw an 88% decline in ice cover. During the same time period, Superior lost 79% of its ice, Michigan lost 77%, Huron lost 62%, and Erie lost 50%. The loss of ice is due to warming of the lake waters. Winter air temperatures over the lower Great Lake increased by about 2.7°F (1.5°C) from 1973 – 2010, and by 4 – 5°F (2.3 – 2.7°C) over the northern Lakes, including Lake Superior. Lake Superior’s summer surface water temperature warmed 4.5°F (2.5°C) over the period 1979 – 2006 (Austin and Colman 2007).

During the same period, Lake Michigan warmed by about 3.3°F (1.7°C), Lake Huron by 4.3°F (2.4°C), and Lake Erie showed almost no warming. The amount of warming of the waters in Lakes Superior, Huron, and Michigan is higher than one might expect, because of a process called the ice-albedo feedback: when ice melts, it exposes darker water, which absorbs more sunlight, warming the water, forcing even more ice to melt. This sort of vicious cycle is also responsible for the recent extreme loss of Arctic sea ice. The increase in temperature of the lakes could be due to a combination of global warming and natural cycles, the researchers said. They noted a pronounced 4-year and 8-year oscillation in ice coverage, which could be caused by the El Ninño/La Niña and Arctic Oscillation (AO), respectively.

The consequences of Great Lakes ice loss

Ice coverage on the Great Lakes was just 5% this past winter, the second lowest on record, behind 2002. The lack of Great Lakes ice this winter probably added a few degrees of warmth to the unprecedented “Summer in March” conditions observed in Michigan last week–an event the National Weather Service in Detroit called “perhaps the most anomalous weather event in Michigan since climate records began 130 years ago.” We can anticipate that areas surrounding the Great Lakes will see an increased incidence of warm spring weather due to decreased ice cover on the lakes.

The loss of Great Lakes ice has allowed much more water to evaporate in winter, resulting in heavier lake effect snow near the shore, and lower lake levels. Lower water levels have had a significant impact on the Great Lakes economy. Over 200 million tons of cargo are shipped every year through the Great Lakes.  Since 1998, when water levels took a severe drop, commercial ships were forced to light-load their vessels. For every inch of clearance that these oceangoing vessels lost because of low water levels, $11,000 – $22,000 in profits were lost per day. Hydropower plants have also been affected by low water levels; several New York and Michigan plants were run at reduced capacity, forcing them to buy higher priced energy from other sources, and passing on the higher costs to consumers.

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by Jesse Morris, via Rocky Mountain Institute

Earlier this month I handed a $10 bill to a clerk at the local theater. I didn’t think about it at the time, but a portion of that bill probably didn’t go directly into the coffers of a movie production company or the theater. Instead, it’s likely that some of my money was thrown together with money from tens of thousands of other ticket purchases, bundled up into a virtual package by a banker, combined with cash flows from other payments, and traded on a financial market.

My movie ticket was part of a security, a pool of assets (like car loans, credit card receivables, student loans, and home mortgages) that generate a steady stream of revenue over time. It’s strange to think that movie tickets are considered steady streams of revenue, but it makes some sense: the syndication of a sure-fire hit like Avatar has got to have some pretty reliable cash flows, right?

As an advocate for distributed renewable energy and a bit of a finance geek, I can’t help but look at this definition of a security and draw a connection to photovoltaic solar projects. At its core, a solar system is a piece of equipment that generates a steady, relatively predictable stream of electricity over a 20- to 30-year period, with a dollar value attached to each electron produced. So why can’t we simply bundle up electricity purchases from PV systems and “securitize” them like we do with movie ticket sales?

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A cyber-penny for your thoughts.

Stephanie McMillan has kindly given me permission to reprint her cartoons. So I said I’d post the link to Paypal where you can donate to her if you like her cartoons.  CLICK HERE (then click where it says donate).

Ousted Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, the subject of the new climate documentary “Island President,” told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell about the challenge of saving his nation from extinction by the effects of greenhouse pollution. “Climate change is a very real issue to the Maldives. It’s not something in the future. We already have 16 islands where we have to relocate people.” The entire nation lies below 1.5 meters above sea level. By 2100, sea levels are likely to rise by at least that amount unless immediate action is taken to reduce the amount of fossil-fuel pollution in the atmosphere. “What happens to the Maldives today will definitely happen the same to everyone else,” Nasheed said. “Maldives today, Manhattan tomorrow,” Mitchell agreed.

“The Island President” opens this weekend in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and next week in Washington DC and San Diego.

Chevron contributed $500,000 to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the American Petroleum Institute gave $25,500 to the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, both of which ran vicious right-wing attack ads in the 2010 midterm elections:

The American Petroleum Institute, which advocates for the oil and gas industry, gave $25,500 to Americans for Prosperity, IRS disclosures show. Americans for Prosperity, based in Arlington, Virginia, spent more than $1.2 million in 2010 to help elect Republicans to Congress, according to FEC records.

The petroleum institute also gave $25,000 to the Alexandria, Virginia-based 60 Plus Association, which favors privatizing Social Security and spent more than $7 million in 2010 in support of Republicans, IRS and FEC records show.

Of course, Republicans picked up seats in both the House and Senate in 2010, when spending from these groups favored Republicans 10-to-1.

Groups like Chevron have seen billions in returns for their 2010 contributions. Chevron’s profits jumped 23.3 percent since 2010, and the company earned $3 million every hour last year. However, the company only paid an effective 19 percent income tax in 2011. Exxon, the most profitable oil company, paid a lowly 13 percent.

In 2012, undisclosed donations will play an even larger role, since interest group spending is up 1600 percent from the 2008 cycle.

As BP reaps billions in profits from rising gasoline prices, the Gulf of Mexico is dying from its uncleaned pollution. “After months of laboratory work, scientists say they can definitively finger oil from BP’s blown-out well as the culprit for the slow death of a once brightly colored deep-sea coral community in the Gulf of Mexico that is now brown and dull,” the AP reports. Tarballs that washed up on the beaches were “teeming with bacteria.” Oil from the killer Deepwater Horizon blowout “has contaminated zooplankton, one of the first links in the oceanic food chain,” scientists found. And Louisiana state officials have found their coastline soaked in toxic oil, where the Coast Guard and BP have declared victory and abandoned monitoring:

Wetland areas in north Barataria Bay and the Pass a Loutre Wildlife Management Area at the mouth of the Mississippi River continue to show signs of oil that state officials say is from the BP oil spill, according to photos posted on Flickr by the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

In February, the oil giant BP reported reported $7.7 billion in profit for the fourth quarter of 2011, a 38 percent increase from a year earlier.

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Climate change could fuel a giant ‘compost bomb’ … as decaying vegetation stuck under under the ice or in peat bogs starts to heat up and tips the world into dangerous global warming.

“Scientists fear that if temperatures warm up too fast peatland soils will heat up like a compost heap and release billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.” Photo: GETTY IMAGES

The Planet Under Pressure conference began with an urgent warning of fast-approaching tipping points like the “compost bomb.” It ended with a plea by the conference leaders for urgent and large-scale action.

The conference website reports, “Scientists issue first ‘State of the Planet’ declaration at the world’s largest gathering of experts on global environmental and social issues in advance of the major UN Summit Rio+20 in June.”

The language is unusually blunt for scientists — or it would have been considered unusually blunt before humanity chose to ignore decades of warning by scientists (see Lonnie Thompson on why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization”).

The statement begins:

Research now demonstrates that the continued functioning of the Earth system as it has supported the well-being of human civilization in recent centuries is at risk. Without urgent action, we could face threats to water, food, biodiversity and other critical resources: these threats risk intensifying economic, ecological and social crises, creating the potential for a humanitarian emergency on a global scale….

The defining challenge of our age is to safeguard Earth’s natural processes to ensure the well-being of civilization while eradicating poverty, reducing conflict over resources, and supporting human and ecosystem health….

As consumption accelerates everywhere and world population rises, it is no longer sufficient to work towards a distant ideal of sustainable development. Global sustainability must become a foundation of society. It can and must be part of the bedrock of nation states and the fabric of societies.

While some bloggers have tried to suggest that this statement endorses a do-little, R&D-centric approach, in fact the reverse is true. The statement makes clear, “Society is taking substantial risks by delaying urgent and large-scale action.”

Further, the Conference’s Board of Patrons — 18 leading figures including scientists, CEOs, and major politicians — took the unusual step of endorsing the entire statement and adding their own blunt assessment:

The Board of Patrons welcomes and endorses the Conference statement.

The human species is degrading the environment at all spatial scales, from local to global. Scientific understanding of environmental deterioration has improved and deepened since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, but society has failed to address environmental degradation at a scale the problems require. We have to manage the planet as the biophysical system that it is and for all the promise that it holds. The survival of our societies, our civilization and our cultures are dependent on a stable climate, natural resources and ecosystem services. We have become a force of nature, but individually we continue to be vulnerable. Business-as-usual is not an option. The time for action is now.

Our civilization is at stake.

The UK Telegraph reported on one of the openings talks that underscored that point, “ ‘Compost bomb’ is latest climate change ‘tipping point’ “:

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by Richard W. Caperton

Here we go again.

After spending the last year investigating the scandal-free DOE Loan Guarantee Program, House Republicans have thrown in the towel.  Instead of getting down to serious business, though (like, extending the Production Tax Credit), they’ve decided to waste more time and taxpayer money investigating another clean energy incentive: the Section 1603 tax credit reimbursement program.

Here’s what Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) had to say on this topic yesterday:

“You know, I made clear earlier this year that oversight of the Obama administration’s policies on jobs, on the economy, and its spending taxpayer dollars was going to be a priority. Two weeks ago, Chairman Upton at the Energy & Commerce Committee began looking into the Department of Energy’s Section 1603 grant program, a Solyndra-style ‘stimulus’ program that offers cash payments to renewable energy companies. More than $10 billion – that’s with a ‘b’ — $10 billion has been spent on this, and Secretary Chu said it created ‘tens of thousands of jobs,’ except there’s no evidence to support that.

“The Energy & Commerce Committee set a deadline for today for the Energy Department & Treasury Department to produce documents or information about what taxpayers got for their $10 billion. The administration thus far has failed to provide the committee with any information to justify this claim.

“Listen, the American people continue to ask the question ‘Where are the jobs?’ They deserve answers and they deserve the truth.”

Fair enough. Americans deserve to know the truth, and here it is: the 1603 program led to thousands of clean energy jobs, leveraged billions of dollars in private investment, and helped clean energy industries grow despite tough economic times.

You know how you can tell that Boehner is not interested in the truth?  The entire premise of this investigation is based on a misleading statement, that the 1603 program is a “Solyndra-style” program.

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by Richard W. Caperton

Yesterday, 47 United States Senators voted to kill 37,000 American jobs, while giving $24 billion in tax breaks to big oil companies. It’s clear where these Senators’ loyalties lie: They would rather give handouts to the dirty energy of the past rather than invest in the clean energy of the future.

In a largely party-line 51-47 vote (four Democrats side with Big Oil, and two Republicans side with clean energy), the Senate failed to reach the 60 votes necessary to move forward on the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act, sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

This bill would do two things: End several egregious subsidies to big oil companies, while extending industry-supporting incentives for clean energy. Among those incentives is the critical Production Tax Credit, which encourages investment in wind energy. As we’ve reported before, raising taxes on the emerging wind power industry by failing to extend this credit will kill 37,000 jobs. Indeed, we’ve already seen layoffs as manufacturing companies prepare for the worst.

Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it.  Here’s Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), giving a perfect description of why the PTC should be extended, from a floor speech on Wednesday:

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by Greg Dalton, reposted from Climate One

General Motors has decided to discontinue funding of the Heartland Institute, an organization that downplays the risks of climate disruption, three weeks after GM Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson was asked about it during a Climate One radio interview. GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss confirmed the move today.

Hours before Mr. Akerson went on stage March 7^th at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to record the interview before a live audience of about 200 people, several questions were submitted via Facebook about GM’s financial support of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based group that advocates free market ideas. Climate One is the sustainability project of The Commonwealth Club of California, a non-profit and non-partisan public forum.

This question was posted from Bruce:

“Please ask Mr. Akerson why GM funds the Heartland Institute, a group that has tried to push misinformation about climate change into our public schools. Is this funding consistent with their company’s message in marketing of the Chevy Volt?”

That sounded fair game. So during the hour-long conversation I posed that question to Mr. Akerson. His response made it clear he accepts the scientific consensus that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide and other pollutants are increasing the Earth’s average temperatures.

“The first time I was interviewed by the press, I was stunned with the following reaction,” Akerson said. “Some guy says, ‘Do you believe in global warming?’ And I said, ‘Well yeah, I do.’ Several GM executives said, ‘You don’t say that in public. Well this may surprise you, my underwear doesn’t have GM stamped on it and I am an individual and I do have my own convictions and it may sometimes they — they agree and sometimes they don’t. I think it’s actually healthy to have different points of view and perspectives around the table.”

He went on to address the funding question more directly. “This is $15,000 that was committed to before I came in. I also think the Heartland Institute, I’m told, does other things and I find this interesting. I won’t go any further but I’m going to take another look at it when I get back to Detroit. I’ll leave it at that.” Disclosure: General Motors is also a corporate funder of Climate One.

Video of the Heartland exchange:

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As the saying goes, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

And if you can’t measure it, you can’t make money from it.

If we want to get serious about making this country more energy efficient, we need better measurement tools to help us understand how much our buildings are consuming. After all, buildings account for 40% of energy use in the U.S.

One of the simplest tools is the energy disclosure law — a requirement that all buildings over a certain size make their energy consumption public. The law may also include a rating system for ranking the performance of buildings online or in real estate dealings.

By making the information public and setting up a rating system, it provides an additional incentive for building owners to make efficiency upgrades.

There are currently five cities and two states that have passed such laws for commercial and multi-tenant buildings. Around four billion square feet of buildings are covered under these areas — double the number of LEED buildings in the U.S.

However, there’s still no serious push for the policy on a national level. And that could be preventing building owners from saving tens of billions of dollars in energy costs.

Two new reports from the Institute for Market Transformation illustrate how this straightforward policy could break the energy efficiency retrofit market wide open, potentially unlocking $18 billion in energy savings and 59,000 jobs by 2020.

The energy disclosure laws covered in the report would cover commercial buildings 25,000 square feet and greater. It would also cover multifamily residential buildings 20 units and greater.

Here’s how researchers describe the tool:

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Other stories below: Historic sea level rise identified by scientists; Source of North Sea gas leak found

Kochs linked to $3.6M anti-Obama gas price ad

The group launching a $3.6 million ad campaign hitting President Barack Obama on gasoline prices has deep ties to the billionaire libertarian industrialists Charles and David Koch.

The American Energy Alliance is the political arm of the Institute for Energy Research, and sources tell POLITICO that both groups are funded partly by the Koch brothers and their donor network.

The groups are run by Tom Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. Pyle regularly attends the mega-donor summits organized by the Koch brothers, including the 2012 winter summit in Indian Wells, Calif., where the Kochs raised more than $150 million to be directed to groups ahead of the general election.

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Looks like there has been a conservative war on science after all, just as Chris Mooney asserted in his 2005 bestseller.

A major new study sought to “test Mooney’s (2005) claim that conservatives in the United States have become increasingly distrustful of science.” The analysis of 1974 to 2010 data (PDF here) finds that support for science has remained relatively flat among liberals and moderates, while it has steadily declined among self-identified conservatives:

This politicization long precedes Al Gore’s 2006 movie. Extensive polling data simply doesn’t support that widely-held myth Gore polarized the debate (see “Exciting” Public Opinion Study Debunks Claim Al Gore Polarized the Climate Debate and here).  I’ve asked many leading experts on social science and public opinion — including Stanford’s Jon Krosnick, as well as McCright and Dunlap, authors of “The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public’s views of global warming, 2001–2010.″ They all agree the data don’t support this myth.

Let’s get back to this new study. Since it vindicates Mooney’s analysis, it seems only fair to reprint Mooney’s discussion of it from DeSmogBlog.

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A new series of oil and gas industry “issue ads” running in seven states claim “Americans oppose” Democratic efforts to eliminate subsidies for the petroleum companies. But a ThinkProgress Green analysis finds the industry claims do not add up.

The radio ads, run in seven key states by the American Petroleum Institute this week, say:

It’s another bad idea from Washington. In speech after speech, President Obama is calling for higher taxes on the energy producers who power America, to raise money to pay for more government spending. But Americans oppose President Obama’s new taxes. We know what those taxes will do. Independent analysts say Obama’s tax plan could actually raise gas prices, making families pay more and hurting our economy.

In a press release on the trade association’s website, API explains the group’s rationale for the claim that the public opposes the “new taxes” — really elimination of tax incentives for the industry — claiming:

“Opposition to higher energy taxes is rising among the public. A recent “What is America Thinking on Energy Issues” poll showed that 76 percent of voters think that higher energy taxes could equal higher gas prices.”

The release quotes the group’s president and CEO Jack Gerard arguing:

Raising taxes will not lower energy prices for American families and businesses—in fact, the Congressional Research Service says this plan could cause gasoline prices to go higher. Our new campaign in key states will explain that more domestic production is critical to putting downward pressure on gasoline prices—supply matters.

The poll, conducted by Harris Interactive for API, does not include the question of whether Americans support or oppose ending the industry’s tax credits. As Climate Progress previously reported, polling shows strong national support for the idea.

Rather, the API poll asked the 1009 participants whether they agreed with the statement “Increasing energy taxes could increase consumer costs on a wide variety of products and services, including higher gasoline prices.” The polling memo did indeed show 76 percent agreed with that statement. Given that the industry sets its own prices, of course they could raise gas prices to preserve profits if the tax breaks were eliminated.

But fascinatingly, the polling company then read a statement to back up the argument, referencing the Congressional Research study to which the API’s Gerard referred in his quote:

The Congressional Research Service, an agency within the Library of Congress that provides bipartisan analysis to Congress, conducted an in-depth study that concluded that the Administration’s efforts to increase taxes on the U.S. oil and natural gas industry may have the effect of decreasing exploration, development and production here in America, while increasing consumer prices and increasing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

After being read that, the voters were again asked whether they agreed with the statement “Increasing energy taxes could increase consumer costs on a wide variety of products and services, including higher gasoline prices.” This time, only 70 percent said yes. The argument actually disuaded voters.

Perhaps the more voters hear from API, the less they support the industry’s positions.

A spokeswoman for API did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

by Kiley Kroh and Michael Conathan

In a decision yesterday on offshore drilling in the Arctic, the Department of Interior undermined its own authority on regulating potentially devastating oil spills in the region.

Just like the cleanup of an oil spill in the Arctic, the permitting process is extraordinarily complicated — for a good environmental reason. It just got more complicated. But not in a good way.

As the government considers the logistics of Shell’s offshore Arctic drilling plans, it has created two different standards that could impact the ability to respond to a blowout or spill.

Last December, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) conditionally approved Shell Oil’s Exploration Plan to accompany its plans to drill exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s North Slope. In so doing, BOEM took the reasonable step of shortening the approved drilling season by 38 days to ensure that if a spill occurred toward the end of the season, the company would still have time to clean it up before darkness, cold, and encroaching ice made the task impossible.

In approving Shell’s Beaufort Sea Oil Spill Response Plan, the agency’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) touted this reduction as a key element of ensuring adequate spill response capabilities.

But yesterday, BSEE approved Shell’s Oil Spill Response Plan for its proposed operations in the Beaufort Sea – for a drilling season extending through October 31^st.  The announcement, heralded by Shell as a “major milestone” in its effort to begin exploratory drilling in the Arctic Ocean this summer, came with assurances from BSEE Director James A. Watson that the organization’s “focus moving forward will be to hold Shell accountable.”

Yet, the inherent contradiction of allowing drilling to continue until November in the Beaufort when it would be shut down in late September in the Chukchi leads us to question the strength of the standard by which accountability will be measured. There’s no reason to think that if drilling is unsafe in one part of the Arctic in October, it would be safe in another.

Perhaps more importantly, yesterday’s approval will make it more difficult for the administration to defend its position from Shell’s challenge that a shorter Chukchi season is unnecessary. Shell spokesman Curtis Smith has already stated that this is a fundamental point of contention in the company’s challenge to the shorter Chukchi Season:

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