Now that Mitt Romney’s campaign has officially declared the candidate’s desire to kill tax credits for wind while maintaining tax credits for the mature oil and gas industries, Midwestern Republicans are not happy.

Iowa Republican Representative Tom Latham said Romney’s decision “shows a lack of full understanding of how important the wind energy tax credit is for Iowa and our nation.”

And Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the man working behind the scenes to get an extension of the tax credit for wind, said he thinks “people that didn’t know what they were doing said it.”

In an interview with Radio Iowa today, Republican Governor Terry Branstad also had strong words for Romney’s campaign, saying they “need to get out here in the real world and find out what’s really going on” before abandoning support for the industry. The wind industry supports 7,000 jobs in Iowa and makes up 20 percent of the state’s electricity.

Branstad said he’d like to speak with Romney personally about the issue:

“I hope to have that opportunity….  The statement has been made by somebody involved in his campaign, not by Governor Romney. And I think there’s a confusion on their part.

“We think it needs to be continued, not forever, but it does need to be continued for a while and the result is it’s been a very good thing for Iowa in terms of 20% of our energy is now generated by wind. We now have a lot of farmers that receive rent from having wind turbines on their property and we have a lot of jobs associated with it so we think he needs to be educated as to how important this is and I’m hopeful that we can see.. they’re lumping the two together and they need to understand there is a differential… And Senator Grassley is working really hard to get this extended.”

Reporter: “But on his campaign website for months, he has called them wind mills, he doesn’t call them wind turbines and he says they are as economically unproductive as solar energy.”

Branstad: “They don’t understand. You’ve got a bunch of people that have put the website together that are a bunch of east Coast people that need to get out here in the real world and find out what’s really going on.”

The wind tax credit, which has helped the wind industry drop costs by 90 percent and compete with the heavily subsidized coal and gas sectors, is set to expire at the end of this year. Already, wind companies are laying off employees and cancelling factories. Navigant Consulting estimates that up to 37,000 jobs could be lost if the credit is allowed to expire.

Fellow Republicans aren’t just concerned about the economic impact. They’re also concerned about potential political fallout in a region where wind is such an important piece of the economy. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Iowa Republican Representative Steve King implied he thinks the tax credit issue could have an impact:

“We need to win Iowa this time. President Obama thinks it’s a must-win state for him, and I think it’s a can-win state for Mitt Romney, but this wind piece.…”

He faded off without finishing the sentence — unsure what Romney’s stance on wind will do to the candidate’s political prospects.

By Jessica Goad

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power held a hearing this morning about the differences between drilling for oil and gas on private versus public lands. GOP members of the committee tried to use the hearing to claim the Administration is hampering oil and gas development.

However, a number of witnesses testified to the contrary, saying that there is a substantial amount of drilling occurring on public lands.  The Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Christy Goldfuss was one of them:

Regarding new lands offered for oil and gas development, the Bureau of Land Management held three of the top five largest sales in the agency’s history in calendar year 2011, and this year, it has approved controversial projects to drill in the Arctic Ocean and close to wilderness areas near Desolation Canyon, Utah. With this level of oil and gas activity on public lands, it is clear why a recent New York Times article about oil and gas production on public lands said, “The score card shows that the industry is winning.”

And yet members like Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) claimed that “the Obama administration has substantially cut back on new energy leasing in these federal lands and offshore areas.”

The oil and gas industry agreed with this sentiment in its testimony. Kathleen Sgamma,Vice President of Government & Public Affairs for the Western Energy Alliance, acknowledged that the oil and gas business is booming, but also complained that production on public lands “is simply not keeping pace” with the current boom in unconventional oil plays on private lands in North Dakota and Texas.

However, while the oil and gas industry demands more access to public lands, it is sitting on thousands of leases.  A report from the Department of the Interior found that 56 percent of the acres leased onshore and 72 percent of the acres leased offshore are not in production or exploration.

Goldfuss and other witnesses cautioned that many federal public lands — which are managed by the government on behalf of all Americans — are meant for multiple uses, of which oil and gas development is only one. Other uses of public lands include hunting, fishing, recreation, grazing, and renewable energy development.  In response to industry calling for more land to be leased, Goldfuss said:

… an “all of the above” energy strategy does not mean an “all of the acres” or “oil above all” strategy.

Today’s hearing is the eleventh in the House Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources Committees thus far in 2012 on how to increase drilling.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

by Tom Kenworthy

When it comes to academic research on the shale gas boom and the practice of hydraulic fracturing, it’s becoming increasingly important to follow the money.

As Bloomberg noted in a recent article detailing how oil and gas industry money had sponsored academic studies, the sector is using familiar tactics:

As the U.S. enjoys a natural-gas boom from a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, producers are taking a page from the tobacco industry playbook: funding research at established universities that arrives at conclusions that counter concerns raised by critics.

Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, who made the tobacco analogy, said companies and their trade associations are “buying the prestige” of universities that are sometimes not transparent about funding nor vigilant enough to prevent financial interests from shaping research findings.

A case at the University of Texas seems particularly egregious. The university professor, Charles Groat, who led the study did not disclose that he serves on the board of Plains Exploration and Production, or PXP, and that he received more than $400,000 from the Texas energy company in 2011. Groat receives 10,000 shares of PXP stock each year, and his holdings were worth $1.6 million based on a recent valuation. He also gets an annual fee — $58,500 in 2011 – from PXP, a company whose proposed natural gas development in a pristine area of western Wyoming was the subject of a recent video prepared by the Center for American Progress.

The study overseen by Groat concluded that there has been no groundwater contamination from the underground injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids — a mixture of water, chemicals and sand that are injected at high pressure to fracture deep rock formations and release natural gas and oil.

Andrew Revkin, the New York Times’ energy and climate blogger, has also delved into the Groat incident. Revkin calls it one of those “troubling instances in which an undisclosed financial ties has created after-the-fact problems for substantial research projects.”

In his blog post yesterday, Revkin quoted some comments on the Groat case that he solicited from University of Texas law professor Thomas O. McGarity, the co-author of the book, “Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research.” Coming from a university colleague of Groat’s they are worth quoting at length here:

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Oklahoma continues to get scorched by extreme heat and drought. The entire state is now in extreme drought, and more than 70% of the state is in severe drought (or worse), up from 50% just a week ago.

According to Gary McManus of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, July was the 23rd month out of the last 28 to come in warmer than statewide averages. Bloomberg reports:

More than 64 temperature records were broken in Oklahoma during a scorching July, and additional ones fell across the state Wednesday on the first day of August, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

The National Weather Service reported that Guthrie, about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City, registered 114 degrees to break the statewide record of 113 degrees, set at Meeker in 1896 and tied in Ralston last year.

The Oklahoman reports:

The January through July statewide average of 63.9 degrees was easily the warmest on record for the first seven months of the year at 4.8 degrees above normal.

It’s not only been extremely hot, but very dry. The May through July statewide average rainfall total of 5.99 inches fell 6.25 inches below normal and ranked as the third-driest period on record, McManus said.

Norman and Watonga have each gone 56 consecutive days with less than a tenth of an inch of rain on any one day, according to the Oklahoma Mesonet weather network.

In some areas of Oklahoma, the drought has been like one solid punch. Since October 2010, areas in the western Oklahoma Panhandle have only had 17 to 20 inches of rainfall, McManus said.

Even as residents swelter in the relentless heat, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe continued his tirade about man-made global warming during a Senate hearing yesterday, saying the science had “collapsed.”

This isn’t the first piece of heat-related irony to hit Inhofe. Last year, the pro-pollution Senator had to cancel his keynote address at the Heartland Institute’s climate denial conference after getting sick from an algae bloom exacerbated by extreme heat and drought. He joked at the time, the “environment strikes back.”

But it’s no joke what we’re doing to the climate and what, as a result, the climate is starting to do to us — and the residents of parched Oklahoma City:

Skyrocketing water use in Oklahoma City during the worst of the ongoing heat wave has prompted officials to implement a mandatory water rationing system until conditions improve….

The rationing also applies to Oklahoma City suburbs that use city water. Utilities spokeswoman Debbie Ragan said cities and other areas affected by the rationing are Blanchard, Canadian County Rural Water District No. 3, Deer Creek Rural Water District, Edmond, El Reno, Moore, Mustang, Newcastle, Norman, Piedmont, Pottawatomie County Rural Water District No. 3, Shawnee, Warr Acres and Yukon.

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View from the ISS at Night from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

by Dominique Browning, Senior Director of Moms Clean Air Force

I just stumbled on this gift of a link from a friend, having just gotten home from seeing the latest Batman movie, which I loved though it nearly made me crazy with anxiety. (I am a Batman freak from childhood, he was always my favorite superhero.)

I was in a mood of wonder, at how apocalyptic the world can get, and yet how people always have hope. What with drought, floods, blow outs of electric grids, searing heat waves, the fate of the world has been weighing on my mind–as it has on anyone who thinks about global warming.

Then I opened this video of scenes (above) from the International Space Station. It moved me to tears. The stunning beauty of this planet of ours. How vulnerable we are, how tiny in that infinitely spangled sky– and how large this world is, at the same time; our only home, containing everything we know and love. And how ingenious, how brilliant, how unnervingly ambitious, that humankind was able to send up a space ship that looks like a brittle, gangly dragonfly, unfolding its wings, rolling around its eyes–so that we can see, through it, how we look, from way out there. I don’t know which is the most miraculous creation–the planet, the human, the space ship … all of it.

The gorgeous majesty of this movie should remind us all of what we are capable of achieving: the impossible. We can do this. We can take care of our world, and of each other. And we must. So that our children can one day gaze at the stars and wonder at the miracle of life here.

by Jill Fitzsimmons and Jocelyn Fong, via Media Matters

To forestall policy on climate change, the Wall Street Journal editorial board routinely downplays scientific consensus, overstates the cost of taking action, and claims that politics, not science, motivate those concerned about the climate. But an analysis of more than 100 editorials from 1976 to present shows that the Wall Street Journal used these same rhetorical tactics in previous decades on acid rain and ozone depletion and they did not stand the test of time.

The Journal’s Pre-Fabricated Arguments Against Environmental Protection

For decades the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board has campaigned with industry against government action to address major environmental threats. Regardless of the specific issue, the editorials offer this familiar refrain:

• ‘We Don’t Know Enough’: The Journal makes claims that are out of step with the weight of scientific evidence, seizes on uncertainties, and argues for further study before any action is taken to mitigate the risk.
• ‘It Will Cost Too Much’: The Journal claims regulations would have enormous economic costs, often citing unreliable industry-backed studies.
• ‘It’s All Politics’: To sidestep the science showing a clear threat, the Journal claims that those who want to address the problem are motivated by politics, not science.

The Wall Street Journal On Climate Change

WSJ Claims We Don’t Know Enough About Climate Change. Despite a strong scientific consensus based on abundant evidence that human activities are contributing to global climate change, the Wall Street Journal editorial board continues to cast doubt on the science:

This is an excerpt from a longer report at Media Matters. Click here to continue reading.

Jill Fitzsimmons and Jocelyn Fong, write and research for Media Matters.

by Zoë Casey, via Renewable Energy World

Wind power will be the second biggest contributor to global renewable electricity generation by 2017, according to a ground-breaking report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Despite economic uncertainties in many countries, global power generation from renewable sources including wind will increase by more than 40% to almost 6,400 terawatt hours (TWh) — roughly the equivalent of one-and-a-half times current electricity production in the U.S., predicts the Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report 2012.

This is the first time the IEA has devoted a medium-term report to renewable power sources and the agency says this is “a recognition of the dynamic and increasing role of renewable energy in the global power mix”. It forecasts that renewable electricity generation will expand by 1,840 TWh between 2011 and 2017, almost 60% above the growth registered between 2005 and 2011.

By 2017, wind power (onshore and offshore) should make the largest contribution to global renewable electricity generation after hydro at 16.7%. Between 2011 and 2017, wind power should grow on average by 100 TWh per year — an increase of 15.6%, says the IEA. Onshore wind power will account for 90% of this growth, as its capacity rises from 230 GW to over 460 GW.

“Onshore wind has emerged as a mature technology, which is increasingly competitive with conventional alternatives,” comments the IEA. “The current availability of global manufacturing capacity combined with the maturity of the manufacturing industry suggests that supply-side availability should not act as a deployment bottleneck.”

China will lead capacity growth in onshore wind, says the IEA, adding 104 GW between 2011 and 2017. The US, despite uncertainty over the durability of a federal production tax credit, should add 27 GW over this period, while India is predicted to increase capacity by 17 GW, Brazil by 8 GW and the UK by 7 GW.

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A woman arranges memorial candles in honor of the five people killed during anti-mining demonstrations that turned violent earlier this month. Photo: Ron Haviv

by George Black, via OnEarth

Three weeks ago, photographer Ron Haviv and I were in Cajamarca, Peru, where the Denver-based Newmont Mining Corporation plans to spend $4.8 billion on a new gold mine, Conga, in an environmentally sensitive area of the high Andes. The project has provoked massive opposition, and as I described in my last column, Haviv and I were detained by security officials when we tried to visit the mine site and later tear-gassed by riot police during a demonstration protesting the killing of five opponents of the Conga project earlier that day.

But the story doesn’t end there. When we went back to our hotel later that night, we went online to find details of the newly declared state of emergency. What we found sharing the day’s headlines was a wire service story reporting that Chinese officials had halted work on a new molybdenum-copper alloy plant in Sichuan province after mass demonstrations in which 13 people were hospitalized after being attacked by riot police. A couple of minutes on Google then took us in quick succession to two people (or perhaps four — reports are contradictory) killed in protests in late May against a giant copper mine in the southern Peruvian province of Cusco. And from there to the bodies of two Brazilian environmental activists found tied up and drowned 50 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. The two men had been involved in protests against a huge new petrochemical complex, financed by the state oil company, Petrobras, which would threaten the rich fishing grounds of Guanabara Bay. (Ironically, the men disappeared on June 23, one day after dignitaries from around the world were putting their initials on the final Rio+20 declaration [pdf], with its ringing reaffirmation of the world’s commitment to people-centered sustainable development).

And so it went on, case after case, country after country, a veritable worldwide epidemic of killing. Most of it is provoked by opposition to the competitive stampede by powerful corporations making multi-billion-dollar investments to dig up, cut down, and ship out the world’s remaining natural resources, a disproportionate amount of which lie beneath the soil of developing countries and more often than not (as in Peru) in the territory of indigenous peoples. These are frequently places with feeble judicial systems, limited or non-existent environmental laws, and a culture of collusion between governments and foreign corporations who promise that at least a little of the wealth from their gold and copper mines, their logging operations, their oil and natural gas plays, or their giant soybean or palm oil plantations will trickle down to the impoverished locals.

A report [pdf] last month by a London- and Washington, D.C.-based group called Global Witness, timed to coincide with the Rio+20 conference, summarizes some of the known facts. I’ve been a fan of Global Witness since they started off in the 1990s, making their name with a campaign against the “conflict diamonds” or “blood diamonds” that were fueling ruinous wars throughout Central and West Africa. Their new report says that 106 environmental activists were killed in 2011, the highest number ever recorded, up from 96 the previous year; 711 deaths have been documented in the last decade, in 34 different countries. Many of these were targeted assassinations; others occurred in the violent suppression of protests like those we experienced in Peru.

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Data from Facebook, published on Wednesday, shows that despite the social networking’s rising star, its carbon emissions are still a fraction of internet rival Google. Facebook’s annual emissions were 285,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2011, compared with Google’s 1.5m tons in 2010. [Guardian]

The data, published on Wednesday, shows that despite the social networking’s rising star, its carbon emissions are still a fraction of internet rival Google. Facebook’s annual emissions were 285,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2011, compared with Google’s 1.5m tons in 2010.

The vast majority of the emissions (72%) come from the company’s data centres in the US. The annual footprint for each user that’s active monthly is 269 grams, or around the equivalent footprint of a cup of coffee, the company calculated.

Facebook also detailed the mix of energy sources that power its data centres. The majority, 27%, comes from coal power, with the rest coming from renewable sources (23%), gas (17%), nuclear (13%) and the remaining 20% uncategorised.

National and state health officials are increasingly concerned about the growing number of West Nile virus cases being reported across America, including in Louisiana. More illnesses from the virus have been reported in 2012 than any year since 2004. [WWLTV]

Preliminary climate data for July shows that many cities across the U.S. experienced record-setting months, with temperatures propelled upwards by a massive area of High Pressure, more popularly known as a Heat Dome, that kept cooling rains at bay. [Climate Central]

Drought, wildfires, hurricanes and heatwaves are becoming normal in America because of climate change, Congress was told on Wednesday in the first hearing on climate science in more than two years. [Guardian]

Two-thirds of likely voters in California believe global warming is a serious threat and 64 percent believe steps need to be taken right now to counter its effects, a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California finds. [Ventura County Star]

Developments in the renewable-energy industry, which has been the subject of U.S. trade actions aimed at products from China, warrant a fresh review by an independent agency, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said. [Businessweek]

The Earth’s ability to soak up man-made carbon dioxide emissions is a crucial yet poorly understood process with profound implications for climate change. [Los Angeles Times]

As electric power was restored across northern India on Wednesday, political jockeying over who was to blame for the widespread blackouts intensified. [Mercury News]