I am scheduled to be on the PBS Newshour tonight on Sandy.

Satellite image of Superstorm Sandy taken at 10 am EDT Tuesday. Image NASA GSFC via Masters.

Climate science explains how global warming can make a superstorms like Sandy more destructive in several ways:

1. Warming-driven sea level rise makes storm surges more destructive. In fact, a recent study found “The sea level on a stretch of the US Atlantic coast that features the cities of New York, Norfolk and Boston is rising up to four times faster than the global average.”
2. “Owing to higher SSTs [sea surface temperatures] from human activities, the increased water vapor in the atmosphere leads to 5 to 10% more rainfall and increases the risk of flooding,” as Kevin Trenberth explained to me in a 2011 email about Hurricane Irene. He elaborates on that point for Sandy here and for all superstorms in this article.
3. “However, because water vapor and higher ocean temperatures help fuel the storm, it is likely to be more intense and bigger as well,” Trenberth added (see another of his articles here). Relatedly, warming also extends the range of warm SSTs, which can help sustain the strength of a hurricane as it steers on a northerly track into cooler water (much as apparently happened for Irene). September had the second highest global ocean temperatures on record and the Eastern seaboard was 5°F warmer than average (with global warming  responsible for about 1°F of that).
4. The unusual path of the storm — into the heavily populated east coast rather than out to see — was caused by a very strong blocking high pressure system that recent studies have linked to warming.  Meteorologist and former Hurricane Hunter Jeff Masters has an excellent analysis of this, “Why did Hurricane Sandy take such an unusual track into New Jersey?“

I have put these in order from most scientific certainty to least. The first two — the impact of sea level rise and increased water vapor — are unequivocal. The third is extremely likely. The fourth is more speculative.

Remember, climate scientists and others have for quite some time been warning New York City that climate change was dramatically increasing the odds of a devastating storm surge — see Greg Laden’s post, “Peer Reviewed Research Predicted NYC Subway Flooding by #Sandy.” See also today’s NY Times story, “For Years, Warnings That It Could Happen Here.” Also a brand new study of storm surges since 1923 finds “that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years” — so more severe surges are on the way.

And that’s the other key reason we must make the connection to climate change: Scientists worst-case scenarios are already happening — so their latest findings deserve attention so that Sandy doesn’t become just another Cassandra whose warnings are ignored. Now climate scientists project that we risk up to 10 times as much warming this century as in the last 50 years — with many devastating consequences from dramatic sea level rise to Dust-Bowlification (see my review of more than 60 recent studies).

That means the 4 factors described above are going to have a greater and greater impact over time. That’s one of the many, many reasons we must act to reduce emissions ASAP, so we don’t keep getting “new normals” that ultimately make Sandy and Irene seem tame.

The media coverage of the link between Sandy and climate change started (too) slowly, as Climate Progress reported, but has vastly improved. NBC News in particular had a great story with Trenberth that touched on the points above.

Unfortunately, while more of the media are getting the story right, some are still not.

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by Katie Valentine

After more than two months of protests against construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas and Oklahoma, the arrest count has reached 33.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was the latest to get arrested after she brought supplies to activist treesitters attempting to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas. Stein issued a statement criticizing both President Obama and Governor Romney for their policies on fossil fuels:

“I’m here to connect the dots between super storm Sandy and the record heat, drought, and fire we’ve seen this year – and this Tar Sands pipeline, which will make all of these problems much worse. And I’m here to connect the dots between climate devastation and pipeline politicians – both Obama and Romney – who are competing, as we saw in the debates, for the role of Puppet In Chief for the fossil fuel industry. Both deserve that title. Obama’s record of ‘drill baby drill’ has gone beyond the harm done by George Bush. Mitt Romney promises more of the same.”

Stein’s arrest follows the Oct. 4 arrest of 78-year-old great grandmother Eleanor Fairchild, who was charged with trespassing on her own land after standing in the path of bulldozers. Fairchild, who was joined in her protest by actress Daryl Hannah, said in a video that she blocked the bulldozers for environmental reasons beyond her land.

“This is not just about my land; it’s about all of our country,” she said. “It needs to be stopped.”

Protests and acts of civil disobedience have been going on in Texas and Oklahoma since mid-August, after construction of the pipeline’s southern leg, which runs from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, began in Texas on Aug. 9. Activists have chained themselves to logging machinery and pipeline transportation equipment and have hung banners at equipment storage sites. On Sept. 24, eight people climbed trees outside Winnsboro, Texas and refused to come down until pipeline construction stops, beginning what is said to be the first tree blockade in Texas history. As of last week, there were two protesters living in the tree houses and platforms constructed in the 80-ft. trees, each with no plans of coming down.

Though the arrest count has remained low compared to last year’s protests at the White House, interactions between police and protesters have been far more contentious. Last month, police reportedly used pepper spray and Tasers on two protesters chained to logging equipment before eventually removing and arresting them. Tar Sands Blockade describes police interaction at the tree blockade site:

During the last month TransCanada has tried everything to deter us from doing what we know is right. They’ve encouraged police to use torture tactics, operated heavy machinery dangerously close to peaceful protestors, confiscated our cameras, hit us with a SLAPP law suit, hired local law enforcement to set up a police state around the blockade, denied us food and water, arrested journalists, subjected blockades to 24/7 surveillance and floodlights…the list goes on.

The latest round of Texas protests also comes as Canadians protested the Northern Gateway Pipeline in British Columbia. Last Wednesday, in a show of solidarity, one protester hung a banner from the gate she chained herself to, which read: “Defend All Coasts from British Columbia to the Gulf Coast.”

Katie Valentine graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism. She is currently an intern with the international climate team at the Center for American Progress.

Credit: Paul K. Anderson

by Jessica Goad

Exporting coal from Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to markets around the world by way of shipping terminals in the Pacific Northwest is shaping up to be one of the next big environmental fights.

Currently five export terminals are proposed for Oregon and Washington, which would also require additional infrastructure like new coal trains running from the interior West to the coast.

There is serious money to be made from shipping coal abroad. As David Roberts at Grist pointed out: “the health of the U.S. coal industry hinges on its ability to increase exports to China and India.” So it’s no surprise that the coal, rail, and shipping industries spent nearly a million dollars in one month on television ads supporting the construction of coal export terminals.

A ThinkProgress analysis of the Kantar Media Group’s CMAG data reveals that the Alliance for Northwest Jobs and Exports spent approximately $866,000 in Oregon and Washington in September on TV spots lauding the benefits of building coal export terminals.

The Alliance — which the Seattle Post-Intelligencer referred to as “astroturf” this summer — is a trade association consisting of major Powder River Basin coal mining companies like Arch Coal, Peabody Energy, and Cloud Peak Energy, as well as the interests promoting the various shipping terminals like Ambre Energy and SSA Marine. Rail and shipping companies, other business associations, and local labor groups are also part of the alliance.

Most of the coal that will be shipped from the five proposed terminals is from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.  The vast majority of this coal is found under federal public lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, meaning that it belongs to American taxpayers (about 43 percent of all the coal mined in the U.S. is from public lands).  As ClimateProgress has reported before, taxpayers are getting a raw deal in this equation:

Over the last 30 years, the Bureau of Land Management has held “auctions” with one bidder and sold the resource for almost nothing, keeping coal prices artificially low…In one recent auction, the largest private coal company in the world, Peabody Energy, secured taxpayer-owned coal for $1.11 per ton. The company will likely be able to sell it in China for around $100 per ton.

While the industry touts the jobs and economic development that will come with the shipping terminals, railways, and other infrastructure associated with coal exports, local communities along the rail routes and the coast worry about health and land impacts like coal dust and noise. Sportsmen have also warned that coal exports could damage salmon and other wildlife habitat.  And exporting coal to be burned overseas also presents a “moral crossroads” on climate change.

It is unclear exactly how much influence the group’s spending will have on the political, media, and legal battles growing around coal exports.  But the Energy Information Administration determined earlier this week that the U.S. is on track to ship record amounts of coal abroad in 2012.

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

Coverage of climate change from television news outlets has dropped precipitously since 2009. And during the lead-up and arrival of Superstorm Sandy, the climate connection to extreme weather was conspicuously absent.

But as broadcast journalists transition from tracking Superstorm Sandy to covering its aftermath, some television outlets are starting to explore the role of climate change in more detail. Starting yesterday afternoon, there was an increase in climate-related stories, with extensive segments appearing on Al Jazeera, Current TV, MSNBC, and NBC. (There were also a couple segments on Fox, both of which were used to raise doubts about climate science).

Below are some of the top pieces covering the link between a warming planet and extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy.

NBC News science reporter Robert Bazell had a terrific piece on yesterday’s Nightly News called, “Dramatic weather patterns the ‘new normal’ “:

Chris Matthews hosted an extensive eight-minute segment on MSNBC’s Hardball last night, featuring geosciences professor Michael Oppenheimer and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), a vocal advocate of climate action:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Also last night, Al Gore was featured on Jennifer Granholm’s show, The War Room. Gore discussed the link between “dirty weather” and “dirty energy”:

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Gov. Cuomo (D-NY):  ”There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement, that is a factual statement. Anyone who says there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns is denying reality.”

Floodwaters inundate Ground Zero construction site in NYC (AP)

At a press conference yesterday, New York Governor Cuomo talked about the need to plan for this permanent change in extreme weather. Cuomo has already had to deal with two devastating superstorms  since taking office in 2011 — Sandy and Irene.

He said, I don’t believe that” this is “the last occurrence we will have.” He told reporters, ”We have a one-hundred year flood every two years now.”

His remarks are worth noting particularly since the 55-year-old governor is widely mentioned as a potential candidate in 2016 or beyond.

Yes, Cuomo didn’t specifically mention global warming, but his entire point was that there is a “new normal” but an old infrastructure, and it’s time to do some serious planning:

You did not have ocean water, salt water, breaching the banks the way you’ve had it in Manhattan, you know, in my lifetime…..

When you start to fill the subway tunnels with salt water—much of the Con Ed equipment is in the tunnels, is underground—when hot electrical equipment hits cold salt water, that is a bad combination. And that is a design flaw, I believe, for our system now, if you anticipate these extreme weather conditions.

Obviously we didn’t when we designed this system. We did not anticipate water coming over the Hudson River, coming over the banks, being five feet deep on the West Side Highway, and filling subway grates and every opening and filling that massive infrastructure we have below ground.

Going forward, I think we do have to anticipate these extreme types of weather patterns. And we have to start to think about how do we redesign the system so this doesn’t happen again. After what happened, what has been happening in the last few years, I don’t think anyone can sit back anymore and say “Well, I’m shocked at that weather pattern.” There is no weather pattern that can shock me at this point. And I think that has to be our attitude. And how do we redesign our system and our infrastructure assuming that?”

Note: The video of the press conference appears to be down, but I transcribed these remarks yesterday.

Related Posts:

• Did Climate Change Help Create ‘Frankenstorm’?
• CNN Bans Term ‘Frankenstorm’, But It’s A Good Metaphor For Warming-Driven Monster: ‘Largest Hurricane In Atlantic History’
• How Does Global Warming Make Hurricanes Like Irene More Destructive?

by Mike Casey, via Scaling Green

Cleantech deniers are spending big these days to bolster their lobbying agenda. They’re airing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of anti-clean energy “Super PAC” advertisements, trying to block congressional renewal of the wind power production tax credit. And they just pushed a “No More Solyndras Act” through the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s all part of an aggressive, ongoing effort by the fossil fuel lobby to push clean energy policy into the culture wars (hat tip to J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun).

But if you look through the propaganda haze, the fact remains that Americans, even in very red states, overwhelmingly support growing the clean economy. If regular people (not lobbyists) had their way, politicians from both parties would be trying to out-compete themselves on who could be better at growing the clean economy. Instead, in many states, clean economy sectors are faced with a choice between one candidate who might be favorably inclined to help, and another who mocks what we do or even cheers on the demise of American clean economy companies.

In Virginia, which has one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country between two former governors, there has been an interesting contrast. Former Senator George Allen has routinely and aggressively mocked clean energy, while former Governor Tim Kaine actually sought out a meeting meet with clean economy leaders.

In an effort to grow our options, we got 10 mid-Atlantic clean economy players together for a roundtable discussion with Governor Kaine at our headquarters (list of participants below).

Our message was:

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Most television news outlets have given minimal airtime to the connection between global warming and Hurricane Sandy. In Fox’s case, it mentioned global warming in its Sandy coverage in order to mock climate science.

Fox News turned to climate denier Joe Bastardi at least twice in the last two days, where Bastardi presented debunked arguments that unprecedented extreme weather “has nothing to do with global warming” and “everything to do with nature.”

Bastardi appeared on Sean Hannity on Monday (he was also on Fox and Friends, Tuesday):

BASTARDI: When you see CO2 continue to go up and the global temperature goes up, levels off, and you can associate it with the natural cyclical pattern of the oceans and you look at the big picture. And also a lot of these people are just weather voyeurs. What if you’ve been studying since the day you were born? Some of them just study it now.

In fact, the world continues to warm. September marked the 331st month in a row that global temperatures were above the 20th century average. And scientists are increasingly making a direct connection between global warming and the probability and intensity of extreme weather events.

Although scientists reject Bastardi’s claims as “utter nonsense,” “simply ignorant” and “completely wrong,” Fox has often relied on the weather forecaster for climate denier arguments.

While Fox mocks climate scientists, other outlets have ignored climate change altogether, despite its relevant to Sandy’s destruction. (Some outlets did break the silence last night — more on that later this morning). Like a baseball player on steroids, the effects of human-caused climate change fuels the probability for more frequent extreme weather, such as superstorms.

AP Photo/Charles Sykes

Superstorm Sandy will end up causing about $20 billion in property damages and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, according to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. [Associated Press]

Monday’s mammoth storm that caused severe flooding, damage and fatalities to the eastern U.S. will raise pressure on Congress and the next president to address the impacts of climate change as the price tag for extreme weather disasters escalates. [Chicago Tribune]

A few months ago, forecasters were predicting a “near-normal” hurricane season. Now, the East Coast is dealing with one of the most damaging storms to date. [ABC News]

The warnings came, again and again. For nearly a decade, scientists have told city and state officials that New York faces certain peril: rising sea levels, more frequent flooding and extreme weather patterns. [New York Times]

Raw sewage, industrial chemicals and floating debris filled flooded waterways around New York City on Tuesday. Left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the toxic stew may threaten the health of residents already dealing with more direct damages from the disaster. [Huffington Post]

A new poll released Monday shows Americans rank the presidential candidates’ views on energy policy as more important to their 2012 vote than environmental policy. [The Hill]

After his adoptive hometown of New York City was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, former president Bill Clinton railed against Mitt Romney for having mocked the idea of climate action. In a campaign stop in Minneapolis, MN, Clinton criticized Romney for having “ridiculed the president for his efforts to fight global warming in economically beneficial ways.” “In the real world,” Clinton concluded, “Barack Obama’s policies work better.”

Transcript:

I was actually listening closely to what the candidates said in these debates. In the first debate, the triumph of the moderate Mitt Romney. You remember what he did? He ridiculed the president. Ridiculed the president for his efforts to fight global warming in economically beneficial ways. He said, ‘Oh, you’re going to turn back the seas.’ In my part of America, we would like it if someone could’ve done that yesterday. All up and down the East Coast, there are mayors, many of them Republicans, who are being told, ‘You’ve got to move these houses back away from the ocean. You’ve got to lift them up. Climate change is going to raise the water levels on a permanent basis. If you want your town insured, you have to do this.’ In the real world, Barack Obama’s policies work better.

JR: Romney’s mockery of Obama was in his Republican National Convention speech, not the first debate. Sadly, climate never came up in any of the debates.

by Bill Becker

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

That observation by Charles Darwin has interesting implications in these last weeks of the presidential election campaign.  It suggests that both candidates may be missing what’s most important to keeping America safe, strong and competitive in the years ahead.

Jobs, education, tax reform and energy security all are important, of course. But the key to America’s success will be our willingness to adapt to the new realities of the 21^st century.

One of those realities is that economic development as we have practiced it, and as it is now being replicated around the world, is rapidly pushing us toward several critical ecological boundaries and has already exceeded others.  These boundaries are important not only because they threaten some species and some regions of the world; they’re important because exceeding them is an existential threat to continued peace and prosperity. These are not the relatively isolated and repairable environmental problems of the past. They involve global systems that support life, including the oceans, soils and freshwater resources. They also include the atmosphere’s ability to absorb man-made pollution without destabilizing the climate.  The most available way to manage that risk is to reduce and eventually stop burning oil and coal to fuel economic development.

The failure of the two candidates to address these planetary boundaries, and especially the enormous risks of climate change, is one of the profoundly disturbing shortcomings of the 2012 campaign.  It has been an unconscionable omission considering how critical the next four years will be to the future of the country and the international community.

However, the next president will have another opportunity to confront these risks, perhaps early in his term.  Members of both political parties in Washington are talking about reforming the tax system by lowering rates, trimming deductions and, in Obama’s case, asking the wealthy to pay a bit more. Tax reform also is an opportunity to begin de-carbonizing the U.S. tax code.

Sometime soon, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will issue a comprehensive carbon audit of the tax code – a report ordered by Congress to identify ways our tax system encourages the pollution most responsible for climate change.

Tax policies that encourage carbon emissions range from subsidies for oil companies – the latest proposal on the Hill would cut them by $113 billion over 10 years – to mortgage interest deductions for energy-wasting McMansions. There are many more. Ending or restructuring them will take a level of courage Congress has not exhibited in recent memory.

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In a recent interview with MTV, President Obama said he was “surprised” that climate didn’t come up in the presidential debates. This isn’t a very good excuse for avoiding discussion of the problem, particularly when you’re debating your opponent over drilling for fossil fuels and promoting clean energy.

But is it really a surprise that it didn’t get mentioned by a moderator?

After all, there are virtually no demands from broadcast journalists that political leaders actually talk about the problem. And the climate silence stretches far beyond the presidential debates. Coverage of Hurricane Sandy is the latest example.

Yesterday, while Superstorm Sandy passed over Washington, I hunkered down in front of my television and watched coverage of the storm. As I flipped between cable and network news shows, I was subjected to the same endless parade of reporters swaying in the wind, wading through flooded streets, and talking about projected catastrophic damage. But throughout it all, there were no mentions of the dramatic increases in extreme weather and no mentions of the influence of a warming planet on extreme storms like Sandy. According to tracking from TVEyes, there were only a couple quick references on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday morning and nothing on the other networks throughout the day.

This also shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. So little of television news is designed to put issues in context, particularly during times of emergency when outlets are intensely competing for viewers looking for disaster updates.

But there are too many factors to ignore. In September, we saw our 331st month in a row with global temperatures above the 20th century average. Meanwhile in 2012, we’ve seen record Arctic ice loss, and the U.S. has faced two record heat waves, a record drought, an above-average fire season, and now, an “unprecedented” hurricane.

The climate factors behind individual events like Superstorm Sandy are complex. But one thing is clear: the extra energy in the atmosphere from greenhouse gases increases the probability of extreme weather events.

“This isn’t the atmosphere I grew up with,” explained meteorologist Jeff Masters during this spring’s record heat wave.

“The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about,” said University of Arizona scientist Jonathan Overpeck, speaking to the Associated Press about this summer’s extreme weather.

Scientists have coined two really effective metaphors for communicating this change. NASA’s James Hansen likes to call it “loading the climate dice.” And others have compared the influence of greenhouse gases on extreme weather to a baseball hitter taking steroids. Both effectively illustrate how heat-trapping gases increase the probability and intensity of drought, heat, and storms.

These are good tools for reporters when explaining a very complex issue like climate change. However, rather than use them, reporters continue to ignore the problem altogether — choosing instead to focus on easy stories like flooded streets and electricity outages. Of course, these are important for getting people messages to keep them safe. But throughout the day yesterday, no outlet made an attempt to connect climate and extreme weather.

Research from Media Matters for America shows just how ridiculous this climate avoidance gets.

During this July’s extreme heat wave, only 8.7 percent of television news coverage mentioned climate change; over the summer, television news outlets covered Paul Ryan’s P90-X workouts three times more than the record loss of Arctic sea ice; and between 2009 and 2011, coverage of climate change on television news outlets plummeted by 90 percent — with every network covering Donald Trump more than climate issues.

After one recent presidential debate, CNN’s Candy Crowley inadvertently revealed how many television news reporters feel about climate. During the post-debate analysis, Crowley regretted not asking a question “for all you climate people” — dismissing climate as a fringe issue that doesn’t have any bearing on anything else being discussed.

And therefore, you get the kind of television coverage we’ve seen around Superstorm Sandy: anchors talking for hours about a broken crane in New York City; reporters sitting for hours in the middle of a flooded street saying very little new about water levels; and the complete avoidance of any scientific explanation of the factors driving extreme weather.

If we want our political leaders to start talking about climate change, we also need reporters to do the same when the opportunity arises. This was yet another failed opportunity.

Note: there are some outlets making a good effort on this issue. Check out the yesterday’s Sandy segments from Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks and Jennifer Granholm of The War Room — two shows on Current TV that often draw a very clear climate connection to stories. In addition, Chris Hayes of MSNBC had an extensive climate segment earlier this month, in which he called out the candidates for their climate silence.

by Michael Conathan

As Hurricane Sandy spins its way north across the eastern Great Lakes and into Canada, the northeast coast woke up today to find at least 25 people dead, almost 10 million without power, and monetary damages likely to approach the $20 billion mark. Wall Street is dark, coastal icons like the Atlantic City boardwalk have sustained heavy damage, and homes are flooded from Maine to the Carolinas.

First of all, we should all take a moment to thank the brilliant and tireless forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service. Without their remarkably accurate and timely forecasting capabilities, these numbers could have been so much worse. Unfortunately, if Congressional Republicans and Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan get their way, next time they will be worse.

Our nation’s environmental satellites are aging, and replacements have been slow to come online. When Congress passed last year’s spending bills, cutting more than $150 million from President Obama’s request for the satellite program, the Government Accountability Office predicted that “there will likely be a gap in satellite data lasting 17 to 53 months” between the time the old satellite shuts down and when its replacement can come online.

In his proposed budget, GOP Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan recommended further cuts to environmental programs—14.6 percent across the board. If these cuts were distributed equally, NOAA’s satellite program would lose more than $250 million from its 2012 funded levels.

And according to multiple sources, including the Washington Post, Palm Beach Sentinel, and the Center for American Progress’ Senior Fellow Scott Lilly, the sequestration process looming over Congress’ lame duck session would cost the program an additional $182 million.

So what does this gap in service mean for our prediction capabilities? NOAA ran an analysis in 2011 that found without data from the satellite closest to the end of its shelf life, the accuracy of its forecasts for major storms like blizzards and hurricanes would decrease by approximately 50 percent. This means more uncertainty about the storm’s intensity and direction.

Unless we somehow decide that weather-monitoring satellites are no longer necessary, and that we should just forgo building them all together, we will have to replace them. And if we wait, they only get more expensive. Three to five times more expensive according to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco who a year ago called this decision “a disaster in the making,” “an expression of dysfunction in our system,” and “insanity.”

In congressional Republicans’ mindless crusade against all government spending, they have forgotten that there are some things the government actually does well and the private sector cannot provide. A few years ago, one GOP congressman famously asked then NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, “why are we building meteorological satellites when we have The Weather Channel?” Where do you suppose he thought the Weather Channel gets its data? That’s right, kids! NOAA’s meteorological satellites!

The GOP’s push for budget austerity is as blunt, broad, and mindless as a hurricane bulling its way forward without regard for the health, value, or well-being of anything in its path. If the party continues down this path of insanity, it may well also end up being just as destructive.

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

by Bob Berwyn, via Summit County Citizens Voice

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe this year joins a list of dubious anti-environmental characters in receiving the Rubber Dodo award,  given annually to those who have done the most to drive endangered species extinct.

The award is given each year by the Center for Biological Diversity. Previous winners include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (2011), former BP CEO Tony Hayward (2010), massive land speculator Michael Winer (2009), Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (2008) and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne (2007).

When it comes to denying the climate crisis — the single-greatest threat now facing life on Earth — James Inhofe has few peers. The Oklahoma Republican is the ringleader of anti-science climate-deniers in Congress and a driving force behind the tragic lack of U.S. action to tackle this complex problem.

“As climate change ravages the world, Senator Inhofe insists that we deny the reality unfolding in front of us and choose instead to blunder headlong into chaos,” said Kierán Suckling, the Center’s executive director. “Senator Inhofe gets the 2012 Rubber Dodo Award for being at the vanguard of the retrograde climate-denier movement.”

This year is on track to become the warmest on record; some 40,000 temperature records have been broken in the United States in 2012 alone, while Arctic sea ice melted to a record low. According to conservation activists, this summer’s record droughts, crop failures, massive wildfires, floods are unmistakable signals that manmade global warming is tightening its grip, threatening people and wildlife around the globe.

“Senator Inhofe’s pet theory that climate change is an elaborate hoax would be hilarious, if only he weren’t an elected representative of the American people,” Suckling said. “If he were, say, a performance artist, it’d be really funny. But sadly he has the power to affect U.S. climate policy. The United States has a chance — and a duty — to take significant steps to slow the climate crisis, and a brief window of time before it’s too late for us to do so. Deniers like Inhofe, in positions of leadership, are dooming future generations of people to a far more difficult world.”

More than 15,000 people cast their votes in this year’s Rubber Dodo contest. Other official nominees were Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who put a rider on a must-pass bill that stripped Endangered Species Act protection from wolves, and Shell Oil, a company bound and determined to pursue dangerous oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

Background on the Dodo
In 1598, Dutch sailors landing on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius discovered a flightless, three-foot-tall, extraordinarily friendly bird. Its original scientific name was Didus ineptus. (Contemporary scientists use the less defamatory Raphus cucullatus.) To the rest of the world, it’s the dodo — the most famous extinct species on Earth. It evolved over millions of years with no natural predators and eventually lost the ability to fly, becoming a land-based consumer of fruits, nuts and berries. Having never known predators, it showed no fear of humans or the menagerie of animals accompanying them to Mauritius.

Its trusting nature led to its rapid extinction. By 1681 the dodo was extinct, having been hunted and outcompeted by humans, dogs, cats, rats, macaques and pigs. Humans logged its forest cover while pigs uprooted and ate much of the understory vegetation.

The origin of the name dodo is unclear. It likely came from the Dutch word dodoor, meaning “sluggard,” the Portuguese word doudo, meaning “fool” or “crazy,” or the Dutch word dodaars meaning “plump-arse” (that nation’s name for the little grebe).

The dodo’s reputation as a foolish, ungainly bird derives in part from its friendly naiveté and the very plump captives that were taken on tour across Europe. The animal’s reputation was cemented with the 1865 publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Based on skeleton reconstructions and the discovery of early drawings, scientists now believe that the dodo was a much sleeker animal than commonly portrayed. The rotund European exhibitions were accidentally produced by overfeeding captive birds.

Bob Berwyn is Editor of the Summit County Citizens Voice. This piece was originally published at the Summit Voice and was reprinted with permission.

by Daphne Wysham

Sandy is like a horror film we can’t stop watching: And this “Frankenstorm,” coming right on Halloween, is giving us the best of the worst of storms.

We are glued to the set, knowing exactly what comes next: The weathercasters wade into thigh-deep water; they stand at the ocean’s edge, buffeted by high winds; they shout into the microphone…. It is as if the whole thing is choreographed, like some archetypal play being enacted before our eyes for the one-thousandth time.

We have come to expect the endless parade of men (and they are largely men): mayors, governors, presidents, military leaders, all looking manly, in control, surrounded by more men, looking on, somberly, from behind. What they say is less important (we already know the advice, but, like children, must be told again and again: “Things are bad;” “Don’t take any risks;” “Stay off the roads”) than how they say it, and what the optics are: Does he look presidential? Is he a man in charge? How calm does he sound in the face of catastrophe? We need that “father figure,” it seems, when times are tough. And our media and our politicians willingly oblige.

We are so good at this, in America, so good at responding to the crisis. We cheer on our National Guard, our Coast Guard, our everyday heroes, and then, when the danger has passed, when the tide recedes, we congratulate ourselves and them by digging deep into our pockets and sending money to the Red Cross and the homeless shelters, saluting our men and women in uniform, as though this, and this alone, were the price of admission.

And yet…we are fooling ourselves, again and again, just as our children do every Halloween. This Frankenstorm, can we stop fooling ourselves? Our planet desperately needs us to act like adults and get beyond [just] responding to one storm after another, as though each one were a unique shock, and not related to an overall climate crisis of enormous proportions.

We need our political leaders and weather-casters to end the silence on climate change, to tell us the truth: That these storms will only grow more intense as our oceans warm and the Arctic melts. And we need to start to think long-term, to start claiming responsibility and not blame Mother Nature for our plight. Climate change is upon us, folks, and if this is what a 1 Degree Celsius rise looks like, imagine what a 2, 3, or 4 degree rise looks like.

For leadership, we may have to look beyond our borders, to the Danes or the Germans: They have taken their blinders off, looked around, taken stock of who owns most of the oil and gas in the world, carefully reviewed what Japan is suffering in the wake of Fukushima’s multiple nuclear meltdowns, and both countries have made a firm commitment to going both fossil-fuel-free and nuclear-free. These countries are committed to true energy independence–not the short-lived kind that results from trading one poisonous addiction for another. It is a long slog. Their path does not involve instant gratification nor feel-good heroics. It involves tinkering with different policies–such as Germany’s feed-in tariff and Denmark’s multi-decadal experimentation with wind. It involves committing hundreds of billions of dollars to solving a problem that will ultimately save these countries and their people hundreds of billions of dollars, while saving millions of lives around the world.

There are few heroes in these national dramas. There are plenty of ordinary people, including women, thinking of their children, their grandchildren, and of children on the other side of the planet, understanding that the energy commitments we make today affect the “Frankenstorms” our children will suffer tomorrow.

Can we grow up and out of scaring ourselves to death? Can we move into a long-term push toward the kind of energy future that will not bring real terror to millions around the world? Or will we just put on the costume of Superman and pretend we have saved [Metropolis] yet again while Frankenstorm 2.0 waits around the corner?

Daphne Wysham is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and is the founder and co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. This piece was originally published at IPS and was excerpted with permission.

by Jackie Weidman

BP, one of the Big Five oil companies, announced its 2012 third-quarter profits this morning. The company reported earnings of $5.4 billion — three percent higher than last year.  This brings the company’s 2012 profits to $9.7 billion in the first nine months of the year.

Below is a glimpse at where BP spends its billions of dollars in profits:

– BP has already spent $6.9 million lobbying Congress this year, according to the latest Federal Election Commission figures. Since 2011, BP spent almost $15 million on lobbying Congress.
– BP has $16 billion in cash reserves.
– BP has contributed close to $300,000 to federal candidate campaigns in the 2012 election cycle. Republican candidates received 60 percent of these contributions.
– Despite higher profits this quarter, BP’s oil production is 4 percent lower than this time last year (1.15 million barrels of net liquids per day vs. 1.19 million barrels per day for the 3^rd quarter of 2011)

Excess oil from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico washed onto Louisiana shores in the wake of Hurricane Isaac this past September. Tar clumps formed from oil were found on several beaches. The U.S, Coast Guard reported that oil-soaked pelicans and other wildlife were also found on the Louisiana coast. An estimated 1 million barrels of oil remain in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the spill.

ExxonMobil and Shell are the next of the Big Five companies to release third-quarter profits on Thursday November 1, 2012.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has a $14.3 billion budget to coordinate the national response to disaster situations like Hurricane Sandy. Should the sequester take effect, the White House estimates that the agency would lose about $878 million, largely from programs that provide direct relief to disaster victims. [Washington Post]

Hurricane Sandy’s economic toll is poised to exceed $20 billion after the biggest Atlantic storm slammed into the Eastern U.S., damaging homes and offices and flooding subways in America’s most populated city. [Bloomberg]

Hurricane Sandy seems straight out of a Hollywood apocalyptic blockbuster. But a confluence of environmental and topographical characteristics helps explain its vast size, slow progress, storm surge and multiple methods of wreaking havoc on the coast and deep inland, scientists say. [Los Angeles Times]

With the last hurricane to directly hit New York City dating back to the 1800’s, residents have so far lacked the impetus to demand concrete strategies for dealing with the potential devastation to housing, the subway system and the electrical infrastructure from a major modern-day storm. [New York Times]

The head of the nation’s largest labor federation blasted GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for pandering to coal country, saying President Obama would better support miners’ rights and jobs. [The Hill]

The warning is ominous — climate change and global warming will make vector-borne diseases like dengue and malaria – already causing havoc in the country more lethal. [Economic Times]

Renewable energy capacity will overtake nuclear power in the UK by 2018, if current rates of growth continue, and will provide enough power for one in 10 British homes by 2015, according to new research. [Guardian]

Parts of two nuclear power plant were shut down late Monday and early Tuesday, while another plant – the nation’s oldest – was put on alert after waters from Superstorm Sandy rose 6 feet above sea level. [Associated Press]

The production of renewable energies in Germany is expected to grow faster than the government’s forecast and account for almost half of the country’s electricity within a decade, a top official said Monday. [Business Insider]

UPDATE (9:22 EDT): CNN’s meteorologist just said: “There’s no one that’s not 300 years old that has seen anything like this.”

“Atlantic City is under water. The boardwalk is in the street.” via @MikeStacks609

Disaster modeling company Eqecat projected today that “Hurricane Sandy is likely to cause insured losses of $5 billion to $10 billion and economic losses of $10 billion to $20 billion.” If it hits $20 billion, it would be among the top 5 costliest U.S. hurricanes — and the costliest one to hit the Northeast.

The final storm track has made the too-aptly named Atlantic City ground zero for Sandy. CNN Weather Center tweets:

NEW #RECORD daily rainfall set at Atlantic City, NJ! 4.55″ of rain seen so far, shattering the old record of 2.33″ set back in 1908!! #SANDY

The New York Times reports:

“The city is under siege,” said Thomas Foley, [AC's] chief of emergency services. “Sandy is pretty furious at Atlantic City. She must have lost a bet or something. As we say in our slogan, ‘Do A.C.’ She’s doing A.C., all right.”

Or something! (see “Trenberth: Hurricane Sandy Mixes Super-Storm Conditions With Climate Change” and links below).

Weather Underground reported in its twitter feed today:

Atlantic City recorded a pressure of 959 mb at 4 pm, setting the city’s record for lowest pressure on record.

Twitter is definitely the place for finding the latest updates. The all-time record was 960.7 mb — and The Weather Channel’s Hurricane Central feed reported a few hours later:

Atlantic City down to 953.9 mb (28.17″) pressure and still plummeting.

TWC also tweets:

Barometric pressure in #Philly now 28.39″; this breaks their all-time low pressure record of 28.43″ set in March ’93 superstorm

In fact, the record was set today for the lowest pressure ever recorded for a hurricane north of the Carolinas!

New York City is also slammed. TWC tweets:

The water level at the Battery in #NYC has reached 11.25 feet, surpassing the all-time record of 11.2 feet set in 1821.

Eric Holthaus tweeted for his Wall Street Journal weather feed:

NYSE closure tomorrow will mark first time the market closes FOR WEATHER on consecutive days since 1888.

The WSJ blog has reported, “NYC Subways Could Be Crippled for Days“:

Floodwaters rushed through Lower Manhattan on Monday night, inundating subway and automotive tunnels and likely forcing a prolonged shutdown of New York City’s mass-transit system. No clear estimate was available, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority did not provide a timetable for reopening the subways. But the extent of flooding and the height of the storm surge appeared likely to meet or exceed the level of a 1992 nor’easter….

Jon Passantino tweets:

Wow: Floodwaters inundate Ground Zero construction site in NYC (via AP) pic.twitter.com/hiJFeHJW

Meanwhile, the Washington Post Weather Gang posted:

How historic would the amount of rain forecast be? Weather Decisions Technology (WDT) has prepared an analysis shown below. Its model projects Sandy to be a 500-to-1,000 year precipation event for some parts of the Mid-Atlantic with a 100-250 year precipitation event for broader areas….

Read more

Hurricane Sandy’s assault on the Eastern United States should remind us that this could happen again. We rightly grieve for the storm’s victims and, if past is prologue, will generously contribute to helping them get back on their feet. This very American concern for suffering can also be motivator for working to prevent these sorts of storms in the future — that is, working to limit change as quickly as possible.

Unchecked climate change will almost certainly result in more intense tropical storms and hurricanes — and rising seas – a combination that will be particularly deadly in these three places:

1. Bangladesh. Bangladesh was the site of the most deadly tropical cyclone in recorded history, Cyclone Bhola, which killed at least 500,000 people in 1970 despite only reaching Category Three strength. The country is so vulnerable to hurricanes as a consequence of its low, flat topography, relative poverty, and proximity to the ocean, which combine to produce devastating hurricane floods and limited ability to effectively prepare for them. Climate change, according to one model, is likely to increase the country’s vulnerable region by 67 percent by 2050, putting 9.1 million more people at risk from devastating floods and causing an estimated $5.5 billion in damages.

2. Indonesia. A recent study found that Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, is the most sensitive — defined as “would be most destructive to its country if hit” — city in Southeast Asia to climate-change induced storms. That outpaces anywhere in Bangladesh, as Jakarta has an an enormous population and is responsible for 20 percent of Indonesian GDP, meaning that a significant storm hitting the capital could cause immense damage. Indeed, the island country as a whole is quite vulnerable to extreme weather and flooding, as the horrific 2004 tsunami proved. A 2010 retread was far less destructive, but suggested the country was still vulnerable to extreme weather.

3. Haiti. A 2008 hurricane killed hundreds and destroyed 60 percent of the crops in the extremely poor Caribbean country, underscoring the already hurricane-prone country’s vulnerability to climate change-induced storms. And the effects of severe storms on the country could be more long-term than generally thought. According to Madeleine Rubinstein, the Research Coordinator for the Columbia University Climate Center, “More frequent and more intense storms and rainfalls could harm Haiti’s food supply, as serious erosion and poor soil health lead to decreased livestock and crop productivity.”

These three countries are the tip of the iceberg. A recent study by the consulting group Maplecroft found that 30 countries were at “extreme risk” from the environmental consequences of climate change. For this reason, Harvard economist Dani Rodrik believes that reducing carbon emissions is one of the most effective avenues for addressing global poverty available to Western policymakers.

Related Post:

• How Does Global Warming Make Hurricanes Like Irene More Destructive?

by Brad Johnson

Will the Frankenstorm be the moment that galvanizes Americans to recognize climate change as an urgent threat to our economic and national security?

Only if the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties end their silence when climate disasters strike.

The silence of our leaders in both parties on global warming amid billion-dollar disasters is a key reason the American people are not better mobilized to address the threat. Even as communities across the nation work at the local level to build climate resilience, even as American voters connect the dots between the disasters they’ve faced and carbon pollution, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have missed repeated opportunities to provide leadership over the course of the presidential campaign.

Below are the candidates’ responses to four different billion-dollar climate disasters during the campaign season:

August 2011: Hurricane Irene. Obama delivers a statement on Hurricane Irene at the White House and addresses victims in Paterson, NJ, but does not mention that the storm’s impact was intensified by oceanic warming, sea level rise, greater atmospheric vapor, and increased extreme precipitation in the Northeast connected to global warming.

Romney cancels fundraisers in Martha’s Vineyard, South Hampton, and East Hampton, two days after telling voters, “I can’t tell you how much of the warming I think we’re experiencing is caused by human beings. It may be a lot. It may be a little.”

June 2012: Colorado Wildfires. Obama announces an “all-hands-on-deck” response in his weekly address to the nation from Colorado Springs, after visiting the devastating wildfires, but does not mention the role climate change had in fueling the fires, including higher temperatures, more intense drought, and bark beetle infestations.

A week later, Romney visits the wildfires, and recommends that Americans help the victims by vacationing in Colorado. He does not mention climate change.

August 2012: National Drought. Obama announces an “all-hands-on-deck” response in his weekly address to the nation. He notes that “the month of July was the warmest month on record — warmer than any other month since we began keeping track more than a century ago,” but does not connect that to climate change.

Romney visits Iowa, says he’s “a little concerned about the drought,” and says “we’re looking for more rain.”

In October, Romney jokes about the Iowa drought: “It used to be that there was rainwater in Iowa, and people cared about it – we hope it’s coming back soon.”

September 2012: Hurricane Isaac. Mitt Romney tours damage in Louisiana with Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), but does not mention climate change.

Obama tours the “enormous devastation” in Louisiana, but does not mention climate change.

Mitt Romney’s climate silence is carbon-fueled. His energy adviser is oil baron Harold Hamm, and his running mate is an anti-science conspiracy theorist, so there’s little chance Romney will connect the dots between this Frankenstorm and greenhouse pollution.

Furthermore, Romney believes that federal disaster relief efforts are “immoral” and should be privatized:

Read more

Michigan is playing host to a major battle over renewable energy this fall. On one side are clean energy proponents promoting a ballot initiative that would increase the state’s renewable electricity targets to 25 percent by 2025. On the other side are large coal-dependent utilities fighting to prevent any new increases.

In the middle are Michigan voters who are getting bombarded with millions of dollars in advertisements from utilities opposed to new renewable energy standards. Even so, a majority of Michiganders say they support new targets that would diversify the state’s electricity mix — stimulating billions of dollars in renewable energy investments while only adding about 50 cents per month to the average residential utility bill.

Backers of Proposal 3 might not have the spending power of the state’s largest utilities. But they now have a major heavy hitter on their side: Bill Clinton.

Former President Clinton — a man well-versed in the benefits of clean energy — has officially put thrown his support behind the 25 percent renewable electricity target.

“Proposal 3 is Michigan’s best opportunity this year to jumpstart the state’s economy by creating 94,000 jobs and increasing the use of renewable energy,” Clinton said in a statement. “Proposal 3 invests in Michigan’s future so that it won’t get left behind by the 30 other states that are already creating new clean energy jobs and lowering consumers’ electricity costs. That’s why I’m so proud to endorse Proposal 3.”

The high-profile endorsement from Clinton comes as a utility front group spends millions of dollars on advertisements to kill the proposal. According to clean energy proponents, the organization fighting Proposal 3 is set to spend $7 million on television and radio ads in the weeks before the November elections.

Michigan gets 59 percent of its electricity from coal. That’s one of the major reasons why Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, the state’s largest utilities, are opposed to new targets. According to a recent economic analysis, the cost of delivering coal to power plants in the state has jumped by 71 percent since 2006. Consumers Energy has projected fuel cost increases to total around $530 million over the next four years — resulting in a 3 percent rate increase each year.

That is also the reason why contracts for renewable electricity are coming in lower than the cost of new coal. In February, the Michigan Public Service Commission issued a progress report of the state’s current renewable electricity standard requiring 10 percent penetration by 2015, finding that the cost of wind, solar, and hydro “is cheaper than a new coal-fired generation” in the state.

In fact, on multiple occasions over the last four years, Consumers Energy reported that the cost of meeting Michigan’s current renewable electricity targets has been far lower than expected. In May, the company reduced its renewable electricity surcharge by 13 cents. It also reduced the surcharge in May of 2011, citing the lower-than-expected cost of meeting targets.