Last week, I reported that leading scientific experts were warning we could see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” in a decade — if volume trends continue.

Here’s a short video showing those ominous trends from 1979 through early September 2012:

Since 1979, the volume of summer Arctic sea ice has declined by 75% and accelerating.…  This video by Andy Lee Robinson illustrates the dramatic decline from 1979 until September 2, 2012 (day 246). Sea ice volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System [PIOMAS].

And that is why what’s happening in the Arctic deserves the label “death spiral.” The main conclusion of the PIOMAS modeling — thinner and thinner ice — has been verified by The European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 probe.

The serious consequences of the death spiral are discussed in these two post:

• How The Arctic Death Spiral Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events “Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves”
• Why The Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral Matters

And you can hear some leading experts on the Arctic talk about sea ice trends in this Radio EcoShock show:

Rutgers scientist Jennifer Francis explains how this changes weather for billions of people in the Northern Hemisphere. Plus the Director of the Snow and Ice Data Center, Mark Serreze, on [the recent sea ice] record and what it means, and analysis from polar scientist Jennifer Bitz, U of Washington.

This post has been updated.

Mitt Romney’s energy plan is devoted almost exclusively to increasing consumption of fossil fuels — completely ignoring dire warnings from scientists and energy experts that the “door is closing” on our ability to avoid irreversible, catastrophic climate change.

Along with the environmental limitations of continuing our reliance on carbon-based resources, the Romney energy plan falsely claims the U.S. can become energy independent and lower prices simply through increased production of fossil fuels, mostly oil — an impossible goal in a global market.

Calling such goals a “pipe dream,” Michael Levi, a leading energy expert with the Council on Foreign Relations said, “the Romney plan overpromises on results while ignoring many of the biggest energy problems the United States faces.”

And now, one of Romney’s big selling points from his energy plan — turning over federal lands to the states for fossil fuel production — is being challenged by an international trade group of drillers as unfeasible and possibly bad for business.

Here’s what E&E News’ Greenwire reported on the industry group’s reaction:

The International Association of Drilling Contractors, which includes rig owners and oil field service companies, said Romney’s plan is politically improbable and would be opposed by many operators concerned about the potential for a hodgepodge of state regulations.

“You might find yourself — the operators — tearing their hair out,” said Brian Petty, the group’s executive vice president of government affairs, based in Washington, D.C. “I think it’s a little bit of populist raw meat thrown out.”

Petty said some operators could find themselves unable to drill in California, for example, even though they are able to operate in Montana. “If you have a one-size-fits-all, you have only one licensing agency,” he said.

By turning over public lands to states more likely to push fossil fuel production, Romney hopes to accelerate oil and gas drilling. As the New York Times explained:

“the purposes [of federal public lands], under established law, are various: recreation, preservation, resource development. States, as a rule, tend to be interested mainly in resource development. In the energy future envisioned by Mr. Romney, that is precisely what would prevail.”

In addition, all state regulations would supersede federal laws for permitting and environmental regulation under Romney’s plan.

This sounds like a paradise for oil and gas drillers. But the International Association of Drilling Contractors believes the policy could cause more headaches than it’s worth: “The proposal to transfer control of management of onshore federal lands resource extraction to the States will never fly. Even many producers would balk at that, left to a patchwork of State regulations instead of a common federal template,” wrote IADC’s Petty in Drilling Contractor magazine.

Even Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a fierce Tea Partier, vetoed a bill that allow her state to take over federal lands because she was “concerned about the lack of certainty this legislation could create for individuals holding existing leases on federal lands.”

Romney’s position on encouraging resource extraction in national parks is still unclear. His plan says that “lands specifically designated off-limits” would not be handed over to the states. However, this could mean spaces currently protected, or it could mean spaces designated specifically by a Romney-Ryan Administration. More detail is needed from the campaign on this issue.

But Romney has made one thing perfectly clear: his plan would open up as much of America up to oil and gas drilling as possible — environmental consequences be damned.

by Michael Conathan

After five years of waiting and billions of dollars invested, Peter Slaiby, Shell Oil’s Vice President for Alaska, gushed to the Alaska Daily News last Sunday, that he was “happy, happy, happy” his company had driven its first drill bit into the floor of the Chukchi Sea.

Now it seems Slaiby’s delight about offshore drilling in the Arctic may have been short-lived.

Yesterday, just one day after beginning its long awaited drilling operations, Shell suspended drilling due to a massive ice pack covering approximately 360 square miles drifting toward the site. Its trajectory has forced the oil giant to disconnect its drilling ship, costing the company at least one of just 15 days it has been allowed to drill before the government will force operations to shut down for the winter.

The arrival of this titanic ice sheet just days after Shell received permits from the Department of the Interior to begin drilling is yet another reminder of the inherent peril of operating in such a remote and extreme environment — and it contradicts Shell’s insistence that its operations will not pose a threat.

Addressing the World Ocean Conference in Singapore last February, Shell International Senior Adviser  Robert Blaauw insisted his company’s operations would be “benign”:

When there will be drilling, there will be drilling in open water seas and when the conditions are benign – more benign than the Gulf of Mexico – in shallow water in 24-hour daylight.  And we’ll stop drilling actually more than a month before the ice comes back.

For the record, when Shell’s drill bit first hit the ocean floor at 4:30 AM local time, it was dark. The sun didn’t rise that day until 7:11 AM.

As a report and short documentary video from the Center for American Progress points out, responding to an oil spill in the Arctic would be a daunting challenge even in the best case scenario Blaauw describes. In a region with virtually non-existent infrastructure or support facilities, there would simply be no way to house, feed, and supply the workforce that would be necessary to clean up a large-scale spill. And scientists know very little about how oil would affect the Arctic environment.

The decision to suspend operations must be particularly frustrating to Shell because it has already taken far longer than the company would have liked to get to this point. Sea ice has remained in the area longer than anticipated, and a series of gaffes — from failed Coast Guard inspections to a drilling rig slipping its mooring — prevented the company from receiving its permits and commencing operations in early August as it had anticipated.

Shell has petitioned the government for an extension of its drilling season beyond the September 24 deadline because its scientists predicted that sea ice would be later than anticipated coming back to the region. Given these latest developments, it seems granting such an extension would be rather ill-advised.

With the clock ticking and a massive ice sheet bearing down on their drill site, it seems Shell may not have as much room to operate as they originally thought.

Michael Conathan is Director of Oceans Policy at the Center for American Progress.

An illustration from Bill McKibben's new Rolling Stone piece, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math"

Below is an excerpt of an interview at Oilprice.com between James Stafford and climate activist Bill McKibben.

Oilprice.com: You have said that climate change is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced. Why do you think so little action is being taken to prevent it?

Bill McKibben: I think that so far the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry has trumped all else.

OP: In your opinion what strategy holds the best chance of solving our climate change problems?

BM: Well, I think we need to go straight at the fossil fuel industry. This fall 350.org launches a divestment campaign on college campuses — we’re calling it ‘do the math,’ based on an article I wrote for Rolling Stone this summer that went wickedly viral. I’m not certain it will work, but I know that these are the guys (not the politicians) calling the shots, so we need to reach them.

OP: What is your message to the oil companies? They obviously make incredible profits from their business – how are you looking to persuade them to cut back on production? Also the oil companies are controlled by shareholders – most of these pension funds, etc…. Surely you also need to approach the shareholders?

BM: I don’t think the fossil fuel industry will listen, not until we build up a lot of pressure. I do think we can persuade some shareholders that they don’t want to be involved in this enterprise.

OP: Would you be able to share any of the arguments you will use?

BM: Profiting from companies that are overloading the atmosphere with carbon and changing the atmosphere is wrong.

OP: The southern part of the Keystone XL pipeline has been developed — all that is missing is permission from the White House to complete the final part. This has led many to believe that the Keystone XL will be built. What is your opinion? Do you fear that there is too much money to be made and too many ‘interests’ for it to be permanently blocked?

BM: I share that fear. Mitt Romney has promised to build it, and Obama hasn’t promised not to, so the odds are far from stellar.

OP: You have stated that the Canadian Tar Sands represent ‘Game Over’ for any ambitions to battle climate change. A lot of money stands to be made from their development, and Canada’s economy will receive huge benefits. Do you truly believe that the Canadian government could be persuaded to forfeit this massive resource?

BM: The Canadian people will decide. It’s a great test for a country that traditionally has helped solve world problems, not cause them.

OP: Developing countries such as China and India are the worst polluters, yet in order for them to reduce their emissions significantly they would need to hold back on their own economic development. Is this a fair request to make of them?

Read more

Climate action is a classic political wedge issue for Democrats. That is, a candidate advocating climate action splits the anti-science Tea Party extremists from independents and even some moderate Republicans who favor cutting carbon pollution.

Given the inexplicable silence on the issue by most Democratic candidates, including the President, it’s been obvious that they don’t know this. And yet every major recent poll has come to be exact same conclusion (see here and links below).

The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent article on the subject:

Climate change: why it could be a hot topic on the campaign trail

Climate change had been virtually absent from the campaign until Mitt Romney and President Obama traded jabs at their conventions. Some polls say it could be a vote-getter for Democrats.

The article notes that the President probably wouldn’t have responded to Romney’s mockery of climate action unless team Obama was aware of the various  polls on the subject:

Obama and his campaign would be unlikely to be so undisciplined as to get into a national high-profile fight over climate policy if he were going to lose credibility with a public more hungry for jobs than fixing global warming.

But what if climate change turned out to be a good issue – not a boat anchor? That’s exactly what public opinion researchers at George Mason, Yale, and Stanford universities have been finding in national polls last year and this year.

To extend the metaphor, rather than being an anchor, climate change is an outboard motor or a mainsail that can allow a stalled candidacy to pick up speed:

Obama and other Democratic candidates, instead of paying a political penalty for hitting global warming as an issue on the campaign trail – actually benefit.

“Our polling shows that in swing states, Democratic candidates who take a pro-climate-action stance will find it to be a vote winner for them,” says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University in Virginia, who produced the poll. “The extra votes will come from independents.”

I posted a discussion by Maibach on this very topic last year (see “Polling Expert: Is Obama’s Reluctance to Mention Climate Change Motivated by a False Assumption About Public Opinion?“).

As a wedge issue, climate change may not be either a net vote getter or loser for Romney, Maibach explained to the CSM:

Read more

Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, the father of the GOP’s slash and burn budget, is once again coming under scrutiny for asking the federal government for clean energy stimulus money.

Last month, Ryan was called out for securing more than $25 million in stimulus funds for clean energy programs in 2009 — even while publicly calling the program a “wasteful spending spree.”

And now more documents show that Ryan sought federal funds for advanced auto manufacturing projects in 2008.

The Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program — signed into law by President George W. Bush — has been under relentless attack in stump speeches by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, and also in a $6.1 million ad buy. For months, Republicans have pushed an imaginary story that an electric car automaker supported by the program shipped jobs overseas after receiving a loan guarantee.

But before Ryan ripped the loan program for “picking winners and losers in the economy,” he supported the program in a letter to Bush Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, according to Politico.

More interestingly, Ryan’s letter, which was co-signed by Wisconsin Democrats, recommends a change to the program’s disbursement method. Ryan requested lump-sum loans up front, thus changing the program’s incremental disbursement method that provides funds only if recipients reach certain milestones. (This is why Republicans’ favorite target, Fisker Automotive, has so far received a portion of its loan, not the full $500 million that opponents claim.)

Without mentioning his prior support, Ryan has repeatedly attacked Obama over clean energy loan guarantees:

RYAN: That’s why we’re offering big solutions to the big problems we have today and I would just say, if you take a look at the president’s policies he calls them ‘investments.’ It’s borrowing money and spending money through Washington, picking winners and losers. Spending money on favorite, you know, people like Solyndra or Fisker. Picking winners and losers in the economy through spending, through tax breaks, through regulations does not work.”

Ryan seems to be hoping that voters and journalists have a short memory. After newspapers reported that Ryan had secured more than $25 million in stimulus funds in 2009, he claimed he didn’t know he ever signed the letters.

California has tight limits on how much corporations or unions can directly contribute to political candidates. But the state has no such limitations on how much these organizations can contribute to independent expenditure committees — creating an explosion of campaign spending in California that has been very difficult to track.

Over the last decade, California has seen roughly $127 million funneled through independent expenditure committees (the equivalent of political action committees, or PACs) to candidates. While corporate interests are not directly funding candidates, these committees allow them to indirectly send money to campaigns.

Examining the flow of money through various committees reveals just how opaque many of these contributions are. Let’s take a look at one California politician: State Senator Roderick Wright, a conservative Democrat who represents the state’s 25th district located in Los Angeles.

Senator Wright is a vocal critic of policies to reduce global warming pollution. Last month, Wright held a hearing in the Senate Select Committee on California Job Creation and Retention, in which he slammed California’s carbon reduction policy, AB 32, also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act. That law, passed in 2006, establishes a cap and trade program designed to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Wright used the hearing to criticize the cap and trade program as an economic disaster for California, while reportedly questioning the existence of global warming. Senator Wright was also the only Democrat to attend a March hearing in which Lord Monckton — one of the most widely-discredited climate deniers — testified to the California legislature in opposition to pricing carbon. Wright used the opportunity to claim AB 32 was like telling manufacturers “you should get out” of the state.

Having a Democrat critical of such a progressive climate law in California could be a key asset to energy companies that would be impacted by a price on carbon. And an analysis of campaign expenditures shows a curious relationship between Chevron, various expenditure committees, and Senator Wright.

An examination of political spending from September of 2011 to May of 2012 shows that contributions from Chevron Corporation closely match contributions funneled through California expenditure committees that eventually made their way to Senator Wright through an organization called the Alliance for California’s Tomorrow.

Here’s the timeline of contributions:

Read more

by Steve Valk

This summer, as the melting Arctic turned into an hourglass marking the time we have left to address climate change, it became obvious we have reached that “Pearl Harbor moment” on global warming.

Actually, it’s been more of a “Pearl Harbor year” — unusually warm winter, destructive wildfires out West, corn-killing drought in the Midwest, record-breaking high temperatures, flooding from Hurricane Isaac. The World Resources Institute has compiled a mind-blowing timeline on this year’s extreme weather and climate events.

But even if we’re having a Pearl Harbor year with extreme weather, it will have little impact on national policy if most people don’t know where the bombs are coming from. In order for Congress to declare war on greenhouse gases, constituents will need to be keenly aware of the role climate change is playing in these disasters and demand that their legislators apply the brakes on global warming.

So, who’s going to connect the dots for everyone?

According to Tony Leiserowitz from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, the person best suited for the job is your local TV weather forecaster. Most people haven’t read James Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren, but a majority tune in to their local TV station every evening to get the weather report. When that weather goes off the charts, so to speak, because global warming has increased the chances of extreme events, weather forecasters can play a crucial role in helping the public to understand that connection.

But there’s one little hurdle to leap: Many TV meteorologists are climate change skeptics. As we’ve learned with Koch-funded skeptic Richard Muller, however, non-believers can have an epiphany when faced with the overwhelming evidence of human-caused climate change.

And the overwhelming evidence is exactly what the American Meteorological Society looked at when they recently revised their statement on climate change. Here’s an excerpt:

Read more

Climate change could cause the number of people dying in Britain from unbearable heat to increase by more than 10,000 every year, the Health Protection Agency has warned. [The Telegraph]

… by 2080 the temperature in towns and cities could rise by 10C, peaking at up to 40C (104F) in London, in the summer for several days.

A panel convened by the UN reported on Monday at a meeting in Bangkok that the system, known as the clean development mechanism (CDM), was in dire need of rescue. The panel warned that allowing the CDM to collapse would make it harder in future to raise finance to help developing countries cut carbon. [Guardian]

The first eight months of 2012 have been the warmest of any year on record in the contiguous United States, and this has been the third-hottest summer since record-keeping began in 1895, the U.S. National Climate Data Center said on Monday. [Reuters]

West Nile virus has caused symptoms in at least 1,993 Americans and killed 87 so far this year. And it’s unlikely that this virus, which humans contract from infected mosquitoes, will be getting any less dangerous in the near future. [Los Angeles Times]

With a 520-mile-long coast lined largely by teeming roads and fragile infrastructure, New York City is gingerly facing up to the intertwined threats posed by rising seas and ever-more-severe storm flooding. [New York Times]

Hay fever sufferers face longer pollen seasons and highly allergenic new strains from invasive plants, a new report on the health effects of climate change on the UK warned on Tuesday. [Guardian]

Royal Dutch Shell on Monday was moving its drill ship off a prospect in the Chukchi Sea, a day after drilling began 70 miles off the Alaska coast because sea ice was moving toward the vessel. [Associated Press]

At its ongoing conference in South Korea, the International Union for Conservation of Nature released a report on Friday indicating that live coral coverage on reefs in the Caribbean has plummeted from nearly 50 percent in the 1970s to less than 10 percent today. [New York Times]