We have turned ourselves into test subjects for the single most terrifying “crash” the world will ever know — the crash of a livable climate.

Since we have done so wittingly, and continue blissfully subjecting ourselves to the impending climate crash without making any serious effort to stop it in spite of the gravest warnings from the most credible sources, that makes us little better than crash test dummies:

Crash test dummies are full-scale anthropomorphic test devices (ATD) that simulate the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and are usually instrumented to record data about … velocity of impact, crushing force, bending, folding, or torque of the body, and deceleration rates during a collision for use in crash tests…. Crash test dummies remain indispensable in the development of … all types of vehicles….

I offer this definition of the other CTDs and ATDs:

“Climate test dummies are full-scale anthropocene test dummies (ATDs) that simulate exactly the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and usually record or complain about the impact of off-the-charts heat, rainfall, floods, snow, fire, dust or drought during a collision with extreme weather for use in climate tests. Or, rather, climate test, because we only get one and unlike cars we don’t get to go back and redesign the planet or the energy system to avoid the otherwise easily preventable suffering.”

If you want to know how humans respond to 115° temperature, you don’t have to wait a few decades — just drop by Hill City, Kansas:

“Hell, it’s the hottest place on earth,” Allen Trexler, an 81-year-old farmer who introduced himself as Old Man Trexler….

On Saturday, Mr. Trexler loaded three heifers into a maroon trailer and trundled them 70 miles to Oakley to sell them.

“We’re just going to have to sell,” said his son Brad, 58. “There’s no way out. Every time they take a bite of that grass, it’s gone. It doesn’t come back. There’s nothing to farm right now. Nothing will grow.”

… “We’ve still got two more months of this crap,” [another farmer] said.

I know you’re thinking that we really didn’t have to subject ourselves to all this misery in order to figure out how unpleasant and self-destructive it is. But you’re “thinking” like some sort of homo sapiens sapiens. Whereas CTDs must at least drop one of those “wise” appellations and make the other one provisional, as in homo “sapiens.”

If you want to know how humans respond to a super-charged derecho that knocks out power to millions during the worst June heat wave on record — “the largest non-hurricane-related power outages in Virginia’s history and more damage in the Midwest than Hurricane Ike in 2008″ – come to DC! Or wait a few years, I’m sure something similar will happen in your area.

Radar sequence of derecho thunderstorm complex. Storm traveled about 600 miles in 10 hours at an average speed of 60 mph. (Storm Prediction Center)

Capital Weather Gang meteorologist Jason Samenow has a good article (source of above image), “Derecho: Behind Washington, D.C.’s destructive thunderstorm outbreak, June 29, 2012.” He explains how the record smashing heatwave fueled the superstorm, which leads him to ponder the climate connection:

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by Shauna Theel, via Media Matters

Following the announced bankruptcy of Abound Solar, which borrowed about $70 million against a $400 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, the Associated Press is giving oxygen to attacks from Republicans saying the clean energy program shows the Obama administration “wasting taxpayer dollars.” While passing along GOP talking points, AP forgot to report these key facts:

1. Abound Solar was one of the few higher-risk loan guarantees. Over 87 percent of the funds for the Department of Energy’s 1705 loan guarantee program went to low-risk power generation projects, which are required to secure contracts with power purchasers before receiving a loan guarantee, virtually eliminating the risk of default. Like Solyndra, Abound Solar built solar panels and struggled to compete with Chinese manufacturers.

2. Congress set aside $2.47 billion to cover defaults. For a loan guarantee, the DOE is only on the hook if the company defaults on the loan, and the DOE is not able to recover the funds during the bankruptcy process. Even if all of the higher-risk (non-generation) projects defaulted on the full amount of their loan guarantees and “no assets were to be recovered, the DOE would still have $446 million remaining to cover additional project losses,” according to a Bloomberg Government analysis. Here is a chart comparing the amount that Congress budgeted for the 1705 program versus the current losses:

Current losses were measured as $9 million for Beacon Power, $535 million for Solyndra and $60 million for Abound Solar. *Graphic has been updated.

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2.1 Million comments are delivered to EPA Assistant Administrator for Air Gina McCarthy. Photo: Josh Lopez

by Susannah Marshall

It turns out a lot of people support the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon dioxide from power plants.

Recently, 2.1 million comments were submitted to the EPA in support of its proposed Carbon Pollution Standard for new power plants. The 2.1 million comments collected over the past ten weeks have more than doubled the previous record for comments to EPA. The groups collecting the comments say it’s the largest number submitted for any federal regulation in U.S. history.

This proposed regulation would reduce carbon pollution from new power plants by 123 billion pounds annually – roughly equal to the amount of pollution from 11 million cars.

Coal-fired power plants are the single largest emitters of carbon dioxide, spewing 2 billion tons of global warming pollution into our air each year — helping to accelerate heat waves, droughts, floods, and leading to more asthma attacks, heat induced mortality, and other serious ailments.

Throughout June, wildfires, floods, record-setting high temperatures and other extreme weather events were in full force, acting as a painful reminder that it’s time to seriously address carbon pollution.

A broad coalition of clean air organizations including the Center for American Progress Action Fund issued this statement last week, commending the incredible response to the new standards:

“[O]ur expectations have been exceeded by the unprecedented support demonstrated by the more than 2 million comments from Americans who support EPA’s historic standard to curb dangerous industrial carbon pollution from new power plants while urging EPA to move forward with a strong standard for existing power plants. The message is clear: Americans want cleaner air and less industrial carbon pollution and they want EPA to protect their kids, their families and their communities from the dangerous effects of climate change.”

EPA stated that the proposed carbon pollution standard is “in line with current industry investment patterns,” and therefore “is not expected to have notable costs and is not projected to impact electricity prices or reliability.”

Nonetheless, big coal and utility companies have spent millions of dollars to block reductions of smog, acid rain, mercury, toxic, and carbon pollution from power plants.

On Tuesday June 26^th, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld EPA’s “endangerment finding” and carbon pollution limits for passenger vehicles.  It also rejected suits by the American Petroleum Institute and other major polluters that challenged EPA’s ability to first limit carbon pollution from the very largest polluters.

In response to this legal victory, congressional allies of big coal and utility companies will attempt to pass legislation to block the proposed carbon pollution standard for new power plants.  There is such an amendment in the FY 2013 Interior and Environment spending bill passed by the House Appropriations Committee on June 28^th.  The Hill reports:

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Photo: US Dept. of Agriculture

A top official overseeing the health of America’s lands is warning about the influence of a climate change on the intensity of wildfires.

With Colorado facing a severe drought, less summer snow pack, and a strong heat wave, the state is experiencing the most destructive wildfire in its history. Scientists are warning that human-caused warming will continue to fuel these factors, increasing the intensity and frequency of wildfires across the western U.S.

The last decade has already brought a major increase in wildfire activity. And Harris Sherman, the nation’s Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, tells the Washington Post that climate change is contributing to the factors driving western fires:

“We’ve had record fires in 10 states in the last decade, most of them in the West,” said Agriculture Department Undersecretary Harris Sherman, who oversees the Forest Service. Over the past 10 years, the wildfire season that normally runs from June to September expanded to include May and October. Once, it was rare to see 5 million cumulative acres burn in a year, but some recent seasons have recorded twice that.

“The climate is changing, and these fires are a very strong indicator of that,” Sherman said.

Sherman’s comments reflect those made in recent weeks by officials responsible for managing the country’s natural resources. As Colorado and other Western states deal with a persistent drought, pest infestations, and a heat wave fanning the flames, talk of the connection to human-fueled warming has also increased. Speaking at symposium on fire preparedness last week, experts on forestry, water and energy policy all discussed the link between wildfire intensity and climate change. The Colorado Independent reported on the forum:

“If we accept that the world is changing – this whole new normal [of global warming] – why don’t we accept that we have to change?” said Jack Sahl, director of environment and resource sustainability for the Southern California Edison power utility. “I think a lot of our urban and rural planning has just been goofy, and we have to find a way to rethink that.

“How many times do we have to have a flood, or how many times do you have to have a fire burn out a community or how many times do you have to have a hurricane take out a community before you say, ‘There has to be a better way?’”

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by Justin Guay, via the Sierra Club

Despite what the coal industry would have you believe, the days of cheap, affordable coal fired power are over.

That’s the conclusion of the Sierra Club’s most recent report Locked In, which analyzes the wide array of financial risks coal plant investments face. We decided to look into these risks because while the environmental and human health impacts of coal plant investments are increasingly well known, the financial impacts are not. What we found was eye opening – some of the world’s largest coal plants are on the verge of bankruptcy and an emerging ‘Organization of Coal Exporting Countries’ (OCEC) on the rise. As the title of our report suggests, avoiding locking ourselves into this risky environment is tremendously important because social and environmental damages aside – new coal plants are just lousy investments.

Here’s the biggest risks coal plant financiers face:

Plant construction costs are rising and increasingly unpredictable: Over the past decade, in the U.S. and abroad, plant costs have increased by up to 100 percent.  Add to that lengthy design and construction periods (5-7 years) and you get cost projections that are wildly out of date and that significantly understate the cost of new plants.

Coal prices are volatile, increasing, and exposed to an emerging ‘OCEC’: Just like oil prices, coal prices have trended sharply upward around the world. Worse, just like the oil market, the international coal market is highly concentrated; The top two producers alone – Australia and Indonesia – are responsible for roughly 50 percent of all internationally traded steam coal. That leaves new coal plants at the whim of an emerging “Organization of Coal Exporting Countries” (OCEC) that is increasingly, directly or indirectly, acting to maintain high prices.

Competing clean, renewable energy sources are coming down in price further increasing market uncertainty: Most reliable estimates put the cost of new wind power between 5 and 10 cents/kWh – at or below the cost of new coal-fired power in the United States. The same is true for solar photovoltaic (“PV”) in the sunniest parts of the US where it now competes for peaking power applications with the cheapest fossil fuel – natural gas. While high in capital expenditure (CapEx) clean energy sources like wind and solar are not exposed to fuel price (OpEx) volatility. In essence, investors lock themselves into the ever increasing costs of coal while competitors increasingly offer attractive returns that are not just environmentally preferable, but also economically preferable.

‘Too Big to Fail’ coal projects like Tata Mundra can and should be avoided: Despite significant coal price increases many new projects routinely underestimate price volatility, the cost of construction and the risk of cost overruns. Way too often the optimistic scenarios predicted by coal proponents fail to materialize, leaving financial wreckage in their wake. For example, even before construction of the 4 GW Tata Mundra project in India is complete, coal prices are three times those cited in its bid.  The problem is Tata Mundra is bound by a contract that fixes prices for decades to come forcing the government and investors to face billions in losses if they do not pass on significant price increases to average Indian consumers.

Ultimately, it’s quite clear to us that international coal markets are far riskier than most think. These risks are wide ranging – from soaring fuel prices to coal cartels – and they are not easily mitigated. Luckily a grassroots rebellion in the US and a growing clean energy revolution in the EU has helped avoid new coal plant lock in. But as the euro zone crisis rages and contributes to a slowing Chinese and Indian economy a significant lock in threat looms as investors seek to finance a new era of coal. But can these economies really afford to lock themselves into billions of dollars in financially risky new coal plant investments? The only rational answer to come to is a resounding NO.

Justin Guay is with the Sierra Club’s international program. This piece was originally published by the Sierra Club.

by Ben Bovarnick and Michael Conathan

While heads were spinning over last week’s decision by a conservative justice to uphold President Obama’s health care law, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was practicing its own version of Opposite Day.

The panel convened its fourth hearing to explore the case for ratifying the U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea. Interestingly, witnesses who are traditionally supported by conservatives found themselves at opposition with Senate Republicans — all while getting love from the panel’s Democrats.

The Law of the Sea treaty establishes the rights and responsibilities of nations when it comes to use and protection of the world’s oceans. It creates standards for fishing, mining, and pollution control. One hundred and sixty-two other countries have ratified it, and the United States remains the only industrialized nation that has not joined the international community.

Executives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute (API), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and Verizon Communications Inc. testified that ratifying the Law of the Sea would support the international rights of American companies, and would allow them to expand offshore enterprise and economic activity.

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) noted that he was having “an out of body experience” watching API CEO Jack Gerard defend a treaty backed by the Obama Administration. Mr. Gerard responded: “The irony wasn’t lost on me either, [but] what we’re talking about here is the future of the country and where we’ll stand in a global economy.”

While API seems to be most concerned with ensuring access to oil and gas resources, another major economic motivation for ratification is access to rare earth minerals — critical components of advanced technology from cell phones to missile guidance systems — which exist in large quantities on the deep seabed in international waters. These deposits could offset the virtual monopoly China currently holds over global REM production; according to the Congressional Research Service, in 2010 China produced more than 97 percent of the world’s rare earth metals and is the source of 91 percent of our domestic supply.

American mining and manufacturing companies, such as Lockheed Martin, want access to these resources directly, but cannot because, as  NAM CEO Jay Timmons noted, “they will only do so if there is a structure in place that contains internationally recognized agreements” that assure the validity of U.S. claims.  “Ratification,” he added, “would give the companies the certainty they need to develop these resources.”

Oddly, a treaty that would help us both protect and more efficiently utilize our ocean resources — supported by businesses and the environmental community alike — is being held up by a small group of conservatives paranoid about the United Nations. As we’ve written before:

This brings us to the keystone in the arch of opposition. The treaty is officially titled the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And anything that bears the imprimatur of the United Nations is immediately and unconditionally dead on arrival in a certain tranche of senatorial offices. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), for example, has suggested the United Nations is “ineffective, they’ve been wasteful, there’s corruption, and there is deep concern that there is a lot of anti-American sentiment.”

Here’s the thing: The United Nations has virtually no role in management, implementation, or execution of this treaty. It remains in the convention’s title only because the treaty was initially negotiated at the United Nations.

The treaty itself does not establish U.N. oversight of any aspect of its implementation. It creates separate management bodies, like the International Seabed Authority, which work to regulate multinational operations in international waters without a direct link to the organization that has attracted so much vitriol from the protectionist wing of the conservative movement.

Apparently, conservative conspiracy theorists’ fears about the United Nations’s purported push for creation of a world government are stronger than their ties to Big Oil, corporate America, and military contractors. As Secretary Clinton put it, “Whatever arguments may have existed for delaying U.S. accession no longer exist and truly cannot even be taken with a straight face.”

The lack of support for this treaty among some GOP lawmakers is stunning. It shows once again that conservatives’ ideological opposition to the United Nations is getting in the way of smart planning for our natural resources.

Ben Bovarnick is an Energy Intern and Michael Conathan is Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

The 20th century was characterized by the frenzied acquisition, storage, and use of oil. But many experts believe that the 21st century will be remembered as the century of water.

One of the most alarming emerging issues is the symbiotic — and often conflicting — relationship between electricity generation and water.

A new report called “Burning Our Rivers: The Water Footprint of Electricity” details this relationship, illustrating the massive amounts of water resources used for electricity generation — particularly from fossil fuels and nuclear.

An average U.S. household’s monthly energy use (weighted by cooling technology and fuel mix) requires 39,829 gallons of water, or five times more than the direct residential water use of that same household…. Electricity—as we generate it today—depends heavily on access to free water. The impact to our freshwater resources is an external cost of electrical production. What the market considers ‘least cost’ electricity is often the most water intensive.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, 53 percent of all the fresh surface water withdrawn for human consumption in 2005 was used for electricity generation.

While consumption in the U.S. is falling, coal is still the most dominant source of power in the country. It is also the single largest consumer of water resources:

A MWh of electricity generated by coal withdraws approximately 16,052 gallons and consumes approximately 692 gallons of water…. On average (a weighted average taking into account the current mix of cooling technologies being used at coal plants in the U.S.), coal-fired electricity requires the withdrawal of approximately 13,515 gallons and the consumption of 482 gallons of water per MWh for cooling purposes.

The water not used directly for power generation is used in mining coal and other treatment before burning, creating millions of gallons of “sludge” that can potentially pollute freshwater supplies.

Nuclear power is not much better:

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Oiled boom lies across sea ice in Norway after a cargo ship ran aground and leaked heavy oil. Photo by Jon Terje Hellgren Hansen / Greenpeace, Feb 24, 2011.

by Joe Smyth

As Shell’s rigs head toward the Arctic to exploit melting sea ice to drill for more oil, the company took a small step this weekend in clarifying what would happen in an oil spill during the company’s planned Arctic drilling operations this summer.

Despite the oil industry’s spin, experts know it is impossible to recover more than a small fraction of a major marine oil spill, as retired Coast Guard Admiral Roger Rufe told NPR: “But once oil is in the water, it’s a mess. And we’ve never proven anywhere in the world — let alone in the ice — that we’re very good at picking up more than 3 or 5 or 10 percent of the oil once it’s in the water.”

So how is it possible, according to the New York Times, that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar “said he believed the company’s claims that it could collect at least 90 percent of any oil spilled in the event of a well blowout.” These sorts of claims have raised eyebrows among advocates and scientists who study offshore oil drilling — they aren’t just unbelievable, they’re laughably, outrageously impossible. NPR’s Richard Harris cuts through Shell’s spin, and explains what these numbers really mean:

“They have a miniscule number of boats compared to what was available in the Gulf of Mexico,” [Peter Van Tuyn, and environmental lawyer in Anchorage] says, and in the Gulf, “they didn’t have to deal with the extreme weather conditions that we’ve got in the Arctic.” High winds are the norm, and sea ice is always a possible hazard, “and yet they [Shell] claim they can collect as much as 95 percent.”

Merrell says the company has made no such claim. Instead, he says, the oil company’s plan is to confront 95 percent of the oil out in the open water, before it comes ashore. That doesn’t mean responders can collect what they encounter.

“Because the on-scene conditions can be so variable, it would be rather ridiculous of us to make any kind of performance guarantee,” Merrell says.

While discussing the same issue with the Associated Press, Shell PR folks take another word out for a spin, and even try to blame “opposition groups” for this confusion:

Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith said opposition groups are purposely mischaracterizing Shell’s oil spill response plan. The plan does not claim Shell can clean up 90 percent of an oil spill, he said.

“We say in our plan we expect to ‘encounter’ 90 percent of any discharge on site — very close to the drilling rig,” he said. “We expect to encounter 5 percent near-shore between the drilling rig and the coast. And we expect to encounter another 5 percent on shore. We never make claims about the percent we could actually recover, because conditions vary, of course.”

Where Shell plans to drill in the Arctic, those conditions include 20 foot swells, hurricane force winds, sea ice, and months of total darkness, and all without deep water ports or other infrastructure needed to mount a major oil spill response. But let’s put that aside for a moment, to make sure we’re not mischaracterizing here: Shell expects to “encounter” or “confront” 90% of the spilled oil and another 5% the company plans to — rendezvous? — with elsewhere in the ocean, while the remaining 5% Shell might — happen upon? — on shore. How much of that oil might be recovered, collected, or, you know, removed from the environment? Well, Shell says conditions vary, so making a performance guarantee would be rather ridiculous.

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A round-up of the top climate and energy news.

With widespread power outages still plaguing a multistate swath from Indiana to Virginia after the severe “derecho” event on Friday night, the late June heat wave continues to make headlines. Numerous all-time high temperature records were set on Saturday, with additional records expected to be set during the first few days of July. [Climate Central]

Australia on Sunday joins a growing number of nations to impose a price on carbon emissions across its $1.4 trillion economy in a bitterly contested reform that offers trading opportunities for banks and polluters but may cost the prime minister her job. [Reuters]

As temperatures soared again on Sunday, utility crews in the mid-Atlantic region raced to remove fallen trees and restore power to about two million customers, even as the area faced the threat of additional thunderstorms. [New York Times]

Snow hardly fell during winter in snowy Colorado. On top of that, the state’s soaking spring rains did not come. So it was no wonder that normally emerald landscapes were parched as summer approached, tan as a pair of worn khakis. All the earth needed was a spark. [Washington Post]

This town on the parched plains, best known for its bountiful pheasant hunting and museum of oil history, recently earned a new, if unwelcome, distinction — the center of America’s summer inferno. [New York Times]

When meteorologists predict temperatures will be in the low 90s in downtown Los Angeles, it’s a given the mercury will reach the high 90s or triple digits in many parts of the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire. But what is not predicted, nor recorded, are 10- to 20-degree higher spikes in micro-climate pockets called heat islands – areas of concrete and asphalt that have few shade trees and radiate heat. [San Gabriel Tribune]

Could India’s power problems eventually be solved through tens of millions of mini-grids and other local power efforts? [Wall Street Journal]

In a series of short essays, Collier travels around the state, meeting with various researchers and showing the differing ways that climate changes are impacting human, animal, and plant life in Alaska. [Fairbanks Daily News]

Rising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next several hundred years, even if deep emissions cuts lower global average temperatures, but they can be slowed down, climate scientists said in a study on Sunday. [Reuters]