While political candidates are not legally required to identify bundlers — volunteer fundraisers who collect bundles of campaign contribution checks for the campaign — a 2007 law requires that federal candidates disclose the names of any registered lobbyists who bundle large amounts for their campaign. Though President Barack Obama has voluntarily disclosed the identities of his campaign bundlers — and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and President George W. Bush (R) did so in their 2000, 2004, and 2008 races — Mitt Romney has refused to identify any beyond those lobbyist bundlers required by the law.

Earlier this year, ThinkProgress exclusively reported that the Romney campaign’s January filing identified a registered foreign agent as a major lobbyist bundler. Now, an analysis of the campaign’s latest filing reveals another notable bundler: oil and gas industry lobbyist B. Kent Burton.

The filing indicates that Burton, senior vice president of National Environmental Strategies, raised at least $26,510 in February for the Romney campaign. Burton, an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere in the Reagan administration, represents a wide array of energy clients.

Among his 2011 clients:

Cenovus Energy, a Canadian oil company

Marathon Oil, a Texas-based oil and gas company

Murray Energy, an Ohio-based coal company

New West Strategies, a lobbying firm led by former Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), whose clients also include Murray Energy

Noble Energy, a Texas-based oil and gas company

Pacific Gas and Electric, a California-based natural gas and electrical utility

QEP Resources, a Colorado-based oil and natural gas company

Shell Oil, a Dutch oil company

While Romney continues to make a secret of the most of the bundlers fueling his campaign. He has made no secret of his support for allowing Big Oil free reign to act without environmental or safety regulations.

And, to no one’s surprise, Big Oil has made no secret of its support for Romney.

Photo by Walter Disney

A new journal article finds that methane leakage greatly undercuts or eliminates entirely the climate benefit of a switch to natural gas. The authors of “Greater Focus Needed on Methane Leakage from Natural Gas Infrastructure“ conclude that “it appears that current leakage rates are higher than previously thought” and “Reductions in CH4 Leakage Are Needed to Maximize the Climate Benefits of Natural Gas.”

Natural gas is mostly methane – a very potent greenhouse gas, though with a much shorter lifetime in the atmosphere than CO2, which is emitted by burning fossil fuels like natural gas. Recent studies suggest a very high global warming potential (GWP) for CH4 vs CO2, particularly over a 20-year time frame.

The new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study introduces the idea of “technology warming potentials” (TWPs) to reveal “reveal time-dependent tradeoffs inherent in a choice between alternative technologies.” In this new approach the potent warming effect of methane emissions undercuts the value of fuel switching in the next few decades, exactly the timeframe we need to reverse the warming trend if we are to have any chance at triggering amplifying feedbacks and preventing multiple catastrophes.

For instance, the new study finds that a big switch from coal to gas would only reduce TWP by about 25% over the first three decades — far different than the typical statement that you get a 50% drop in CO2 emissions from the switch.

Note that the conclusion above is based on “EPA’s latest estimate of the amount of CH4 released because of leaks and venting in the natural gas network between production wells and the local distribution network” of 2.4%.

Many experts believe the leakage rate is higher than 2.4%, particularly for the fastest growing new source of gas — hydraulic fracturing. Also, recent air sampling by NOAA over Colorado found 4% methane leakage, more than double industry claims.  The study notes:

We emphasize that our calculations assume an average leakage rate for the entire U.S. natural gas supply (as well for coal mining). Much work needs to be done to determine actual emis- sions with certainty and to accurately characterize the site-to-site variability in emissions. However, given limited current evidence, it is likely that leakage at individual natural gas well sites is high enough, when combined with leakage from downstream operations, to make the total leakage exceed the 3.2% threshold beyond which gas becomes worse for the climate than coal for at least some period of time.

In short until we have far more actual data showing low leakage rates — or regulations to ensure low leakage rates — it is hard to claim that switching from coal to gas plants has a substantial warming benefit in the near-term (that is especially true for reasons I’ll touch on below).  It’s even harder to claim that simply shoving massive amounts of natural gas into the energy supply system is a good idea at all, given that some of it would inevitably replace new renewables — and  if even a small fraction of new gas plants replace renewables, that eliminates any warming benefit that  switching from coal to gas might have.

I had previously argued that you need a rising carbon price to ensure that any new natural gas plants replace coal and not renewables (see here). Indeed, I first made that argument three years ago — see “Why unconventional natural gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet.”

But now it’s increasingly clear that a carbon price alone doesn’t address the full problem. You are going to need enforceable national standards to bring the leakage rate way down. Such standards could in fact be a very quick way to reduce the rate of global warming.

Indeed, the other shocker in this study is how bad natural gas vehicles (NGVs) are for the climate. In particular, many are trying to pass legislation for switching heavy duty diesel vehicles to natural gas. The study concludes that such a switch sharply increases Technology Warming Potential for many decades, and no one alive today would ever see a climate benefit from that switch.

This new research, coauthored by two EDF scientists as well as other leading scientists, appears to have led EDF to strongly oppose NGVs. As the National Journal reported last month:

Read more

A federal grant program created to boost renewable energy development during the height of the economic crisis supported 75,000 jobs and more than $25 billion in economic activity, according to a new analysis from the Department of Energy.

The grant program was created in February of 2009 as part of the stimulus package. It allowed developers to take a cash grant through the Treasury in lieu of a tax credit, helping thaw out the frozen capital markets and stimulate strong activity in the renewable energy sector.

According to the report, Treasury grants supported 23,000 projects across the U.S. and helped add more than 13,000 megawatts of wind and solar capacity to the grid.

Between January of 2010 and December of 2011, the solar market grew 176% — driven in part by the availability of grants. The wind sector, which took a deep nosedive after the financial crisis, was able to develop more than 12,000 MW of projects with the support of the program.

In spite of this success, Congress failed to extend the program last year.

The incentive was also offered to biomass, landfill gas, hydro and geothermal technologies; however, the majority of grants went toward wind and solar. The Department of Energy report only tracked job creation and development figures for those two sectors.

It is difficult to isolate the exact influence that grants had on each installation. Some projects may have gone forward without the grant, others may have not. But the analysis does show that the gross economic impact was substantial, particularly along the component supply chain:

Read more

Mitt Romney has adopted a Big Oil platform for the elections, appointing oil shale billionaire Harold Hamm as an energy adviser and fully embracing the House Republican budget, which preserves tax loopholes for the industry.

Illustrating the candidate’s ties to the oil industry further, Big Oil’s chief spokesman, API President Jack Gerard, has long backed Mitt Romney. Gerard and his family have donated $7,440 to the Romney campaign, and the campaign in turn has publicly thanked Gerard:

On Super Tuesday, Ann Romney publicly thanked him for helping her husband in his bid for the presidency. According to the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets Web site, Gerard has given $2,470 to Romney and his family members have given $4,970 for the 2012 campaign. He has raised much more by hosting fundraisers, including one at the District Chop House in 2010. He was a supporter of Romney in 2008, too, and some former API employees think he hopes to land a job in a Romney administration.

“Romney has a business background that would be helpful to get us back on track,” Gerard says. “They’ve asked us to support them, and we have. They’re good people.” He and his wife “believe the president’s approach to date is not consistent with what the people need or the country needs for sound energy policy.”

The candidate has pulled some serious support from the oil and gas industry, taking more than $750,000 from oil and gas and another $1 million for the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future.

API promised to play a heavy hand this election cycle and has dropped $4.3 million in the last three months alone. API launched ads a few weeks ago to protect the industry’s tax breaks, even as Big Oil is making record profits off of higher gas prices. Like his favored candidate, Gerard is one of America’s 1 percent, receiving one of the largest salaries of any trade group executive at over $6.4 million.

JR: The fully study in the journal Nature, “Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation” is here (subs. req’d).

Credit: flickr/Rita Willaert

by Michael D. Lemonick, via Climate Central

Climate scientists have long argued that ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice is the smoking gun that links carbon dioxide to global warming. Over the past 800,000 years or so the planet has gone through a series of ice ages interspersed with relatively warm periods (during which glaciers retreat back toward the poles) — and inevitably, these warm interludes happen when there’s more CO₂ in the atmosphere.

The only tricky part of this argument is that the smoke seems to come before the gunshot. It’s most apparent in the most recent warming period, which began about 19,000 years ago: the temperature seems to begin rising before CO₂ concentrations increase. Climate skeptics have argued that since effects don’t come before causes, the whole theory falls apart.

In fact, it’s not much of an argument, since even little bit of warming would release extra carbon dioxide into the air, leading to a feedback loop, causing even more warming. But whatever feeble merit the skeptic argument might have had, a new study just published in Nature — one of two climate studies from that prestigious journal that we’re reporting on — pretty much demolishes it. It’s the most comprehensive analysis ever done of carbon dioxide and temperature at the end of the last ice age, and it shows quite clearly that in most of the world, the thermometer began to shoot up only after the atmosphere was spiked with carbon dioxide. “I think,” said Jeremy Shakun, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow and the lead author of the study, at a press conference, “this ends the skeptic argument.“

Read more

Energy has turned into a contentious campaign issue in 2012, pitting “drill-baby-drill” against “clean energy now.” But multiple polls now make clear that the clean energy issue is a winning one for progressives.

The way the media and cable TV frame the national debate may make it seem like there’s an even split between supporters of fossil fuels and supporters of renewable alternatives. However, a new poll from the Pew Research Center finds that clean energy has far more support than fossil fuels support across the political spectrum — except among conservative Republican males.

The poll illustrates how clean energy has become a wedge issue among Republicans moving into the presidential election. This is precisely what has happened on climate (see “Independents, Other Republicans Split With Tea-Party Extremists on Global Warming“).

Pew found that 52% of Americans believe “alternative” resources are the most important energy priority for the country. That’s still a substantial increase over oil, coal and gas, which received preferential support from 39% of respondents.

This poll shows that clean energy still has very strong bipartisan support. But that support has shifted in the last year, with an increase in Americans saying domestic production of fossil fuels should be a top priority. With previous polls showing support for offshore drilling increasing as gas prices climb, that shift isn’t much of a surprise. (It should be noted that multiple analyses, including one from the Associated Press, have shown no correlation between lower gas prices and more drilling.)

The poll showed a shift in favor of domestic fossil fuel production among a variety of voters. But the most striking change was among older, conservative Republican males:

Over the past year, there has been an increase in the percentage of Republicans, particularly conservative Republicans, who view the expansion of exploration and production of oil, coal and natural gas as a more important priority for addressing the nation’s energy supply than the development of alternative energy sources.

Conservative Republicans now prioritize traditional energy sources over alternative sources by a 65% to 26% margin; a year ago they were divided (47% oil, coal, natural gas vs. 43% alternative energy).

In the current survey, men 50 and older say it is more important to expand exploration from traditional energy sources, by 51% to 37%. A year ago, older men prioritized the development of alternative energy sources by a comparable margin (54% to 35%).

Here’s the chart:

Read more

by Ros Donald, via The Carbon Brief

“‘If you don’t believe in climate change you must be sick’: Oregon professor likens skepticism to racism,” read an article published on the Daily Mail‘s website over the weekend. But this Orwellian news of a villainous conspiracy to cure dissenters looks like little more than one more example of the Mail’s willingness to add … selective reporting to its daily churn.

Professor Kari Marie Norgaard, to whom the views are attributed, presented a paper at the Planet Under Pressure conference in London last week. Norgaard and her colleagues had conducted a study to examine “cultural inertia as a social process” in the case of the policy measures that are needed to tackle climate change. She says that the climate change message damages our perception of ourselves because it raises “fear about the future, a sense of helplessness and guilt”.

It is a little bit difficult to know where the Mail got its claim that Norgaard “suggest[ed]  that doubters need to have a ‘sickness’” — but it appears to be attributing it to a sentence in the press release:

“Resistance at individual and societal levels must be recognized and treated before real action can be taken to effectively address threats facing the planet from human-caused contributions to climate change.”

Treated! As in sickness – get it? We were at the professor’s talk at the Planet Under Pressure conference last week and heard no suggestion Norgaard considers skeptics to be sick. It looks rather more like some bright spark at The Register (which incidentally left out the other half of the sentence, therefore divorcing it from the context) made that connection. The paper itself isn’t yet available but you can see some of her previous work along similar lines here and here.

The University of Oregon has since removed the offending word from the press release, along with Norgaard’s email, prompting hue and cry at the skeptic website Watts Up With That. There, the thought is briefly entertained that she may want to avoid receiving unpleasant emails, before being brushed aside in favour of dark murmurings about a Communist plot.

The second press release quote exercising The Register and the Mail is:

Read more

by Araceli Ruano and Rebecca Friendly

On Tuesday the Los Angeles City Council approved the long-debated LA Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program also known as CLEAN LA. This policy requires the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to buy solar power produced by residents, businesses, and public organizations that have installed solar panels on their rooftops.

The program will begin in a few months with a 10 megawatt (MW) pilot phase as a way to work on rate setting, test the program’s structure and fine-tune its guidelines. The pacing of the full FIT program, which could be between 75 MW and 150 MW by 2016, will be determined after the launch of the demonstration program. The 150 MW cap would ultimately provide electricity for about 35,000 homes, create 4,500 jobs, generate $500 million in economic activity and offset 2.25 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2016.

CLEAN programs have driven the vast majority of renewable energy deployed around the world. In fact, 90% of all solar photovoltaics around the world were installed under CLEAN programs. These programs are successful because they provide transparency, longevity and certainty by creating standard guaranteed contracts, predictable and streamlined distribution, and predefined fixed rates.

In 2008 LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa helped set the stage for CLEAN LA when he ambitiously called for a 150 MW FIT program, saying “it’s time we start using one of Los Angeles’ most abundant resources — sunshine. By using our resources wisely, we have the potential to lead the nation in solar power.”

The Los Angeles Business Council (LABC) has been advocating for CLEAN LA since 2009 and its passage last week marks an important victory for the City. Both the LABC, under the great leadership of Mary Leslie, and the University of California, Los Angeles, have been instrumental in promoting the various environmental and economic benefits of CLEAN programs.

This program will tap into LA’s massive underutilized resources (sunshine and abundant rooftop space) and will reduce the utility’s out-of-city transmission requirements and costs. Currently, most of the city’s renewable power is generated outside of the LA basin and is transmitted inefficiently to customers.

Finally, the program will serve as a powerful tool for economic development by creating thousands of local green jobs and leveraging private investment. These jobs will be created through assembly, manufacturing, installation, operations and maintenance.

While this is a great first step in the right direction, CLEAN LA still has room to grow. Unfortunately, the program’s trajectory after 2016 is still unclear. And the 150 MW cap through that date will represent a bit over 1% of the LADWPs electricity, not making a hugely important program for California’s 33% renewable energy goal.

The state of California can leverage this important program by adopting a full-scale CLEAN Program for the state — going beyond SB 32 . In 2010 UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group conducted a study on the economic impact of such a statewide program and found a handful of impressive benefits. The study showed that a CLEAN program would create three times more jobs than the state’s current plan for meeting its renewable energy goals (from 2011-2020), translating to approximately 280,000 more jobs over the next 10 years. The study also found that such a program would add over $2 billion in additional tax revenue and stimulate up to $50 billion in additional private investment.

Araceli Ruano is a Senior Vice President and the Director for California at American Progress; Rebecca Friendly is the Special Assistant at American Progress’ California Office.

by Chris Mooney

In a recent post, I explored what I called the science of “truthiness”: How we can come to understand the denial of science, on issues like global warming, by examining the underlying psychology of political conservatism itself.

But I must confess that in that item, I was relying on a fairly clichéd understanding of the word “truthiness.” Since it was first coined by Stephen Colbert in 2005, the term has taken on a massive life of its own — coming to mean, in its broadest sense, the problem of people making up their own reality, one just “truthy” enough that they actually believe it.

Frankly, though, most of us only have a “truthy” sense of what “truthiness” actually meant in its original formulation.

That’s why, when I went back and re-watched the original Colbert truthiness segment, I was so stunned. After a year spent researching the psychology of the right for my book The Republican Brain, Colbert’s words took on dramatic new meaning for me. Frankly, it now seems to me that in some ways, Colbert was ahead of the science on this matter — anticipating much of what we are only now coming to know.

Truthiness, as defined by Colbert in the segment, is the quality of knowing something in your gut, or your heart, as opposed to in your head. “I don’t trust books. They’re all facts, no heart,” as Colbert put it. He added: “We are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart.” Later, Colbert made fun of George W. Bush’s disastrous nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, a move Bush defended by saying, “I know her heart.”

In other words, in its original definition, “truthiness” was really about the power of emotion in guiding reasoning and our beliefs — and trumping calmer, more rational reflection. Later, Colbert elaborated:

Truthiness is, ‘What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

The Truth in “Truthy”

Read more

Below is our morning round-up of the latest in climate, environment and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

Alaska polar bears are losing their fur and U.S. Geological Survey scientists don’t know why. [Associated Press]

The French energy company Total estimates that its North Sea Elgin field gas well is leaking about 200,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day. If the gas continues escaping at that rate, and all of it reaches the atmosphere, it would approximate the annual global warming impact of 35,000 Americans. [Inside Climate News]

Hundreds of world landmarks from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate to the Great Wall of China went dark Saturday, part of a global effort to highlight climate change. [Washington Post]

It’s been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records weren’t just broken, they were deep-fried. [Washington Post]

The price of a barrel of oil remains stable, but the demand for gasoline continues to creep up, with Americans having spent 8.7 percent of their income on gas in March, according to AAA. [ABC News]

The United Kingdom this week launched a €24 million contest to support up to two pilot wave energy projects, with the government aiming to scale up clean technology to power more homes and businesses and curb carbon emissions. [The Malta Independent]

A letter delivered to Gov. Bill Haslam’s office yesterday urges him to veto recently passed legislation that ensures teachers will be permitted to teach the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of theories like evolution. [Nashville Scene]

Related Post:

• Anti-Science ‘Monkey Bill’ Passes Tennessee Senate