On Tuesday, President Obama tweeted out a short version of his convention comments on climate to his 20 million twitter followers.

Today, Obama added a slightly tweaked version of his convention riff to his stump speech at his University of Miami speech in Coral Gables (full video here):

Yes my plan will reduce the carbon pollution that is heating the planet.  Because climate change is not a hoax.  More drought and floods and hurricanes and wildfires, that’s not a joke.  That’s a threat to our children’s future.  And we can do something about it.

And yes, as semi-delighted as I am that the president is talking about climate change (at least to university audiences), I really wish he would stop repeating the “hoax” myth in trying to debunk it. So let’s call this “modified rapture.”

Will Biden bring up this issue in tonight’s debate even if the moderator does not? He will if he looks at the polls and public opinion analysis (see Krosnick: Candidates “May Actually Enhance Turnout As Well As Attract Voters Over To Their Side By Discussing Climate Change”).

by Melanie Hart, with Stephen Lacey

The Department of Commerce has issued a final decision in a year-long solar trade case. And it’s made the Chinese very upset.

After investigating whether China is providing unfair subsidies to domestic solar manufacturers, thus allowing companies to dump product into the U.S. market below cost, the Commerce Department has confirmed its decision to slap tariffs of up to 35 percent on Chinese-made solar cells.

Over all, the tariffs are slightly higher than expected, with mixed results for different companies. The chart below, provided by the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy, shows the differences between the preliminary anti-dumping tariffs (AD) designed to penalize dumping and the countervailing duty tariffs (CVD) that were designed to counteract domestic subsidies in China:

Tariffs Still Apply only to Cells

Crystalline silicon solar panel manufacturing is a four-step process: (1) producing silicon crystals, (2) turning crystals into wafers, (3) turning wafers into cells, and (4) turning cells into panels.

The Commerce Department’s initial countervailing duty and antidumping rulings apply tariffs specifically to Chinese-manufactured photovoltaic cells, sold either as-is or manufactured into panels. The problem: that creates a potential loop hole. Chinese manufacturers can simply offshore the cell-production (step #3 above), keep the rest of the production process in-country, and evade U.S. tariffs even though the final product (step #4 above) is still manufactured in China.

Some of the big Chinese solar panel manufacturers have already invested substantial resources to set up that exact process and evade the tariffs. That does not sit well with some U.S. solar panel manufacturers. Several members of Congress recently petitioned the Department of Commerce to close that loophole.

What does this decision mean?

Read more

by Katie Valentine

Palm oil plantation expansion in Indonesia is set to release more than 558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2020, according to a report published Sunday in Nature Climate Change. That’s more than Canada’s yearly CO2 emissions.

The study, conducted by researchers from Yale and Stanford, examined palm oil plantation development in the Kalimantan region of Indonesia from 1990 to 2010.  Using Landsat satellite images and carbon accounting, the researchers analyzed land cover changes over the 20-year period, estimated the carbon emissions from the plantations and projected the levels of carbon emitted between 2010 and 2020 under Business as Usual and protection scenarios. Here’s what they found:

• In 1990, oil palm plantations covered 903 square kilometers of Kalimantan – by 2010 that number had grown to 31,640 km2.
• Between 2000 and 2010, forest clearing for palm plantations contributed to about 57 percent of Indonesia’s total deforestation.
• Palm growth occurs on government-awarded land leases, 79 percent of which remain undeveloped. The development of the remaining leases would convert 93,844 km2 of land to palm plantations, 90 percent of which is forested and 18 percent of which is peatland.

It’s oil palm’s method of growth that makes it such a high-emissions crop. In Indonesia and Malaysia, which grow and produce 90 percent of the world’s palm oil, rainforests are cleared and sometimes burned to make way for plantations. The emissions from this deforestation are multiplied when the clearing occurs on peatlands, which store vast quantities of carbon. The study found that, as of 2010, 13 percent of Kalimantan’s palm oil plantations were situated on peatlands.

The study comes after the EPA’s decision this January to deny palm oil’s use as a biofuel in the Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates that 36 billion gallons of biofuels be incorporated into American transportation fuel mix by 2022. The EPA’s analysis of the use of palm oil for biodiesel found that it reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent, falling short of the 20 percent benchmark necessary for a fuel to be included in the standard.

Many scientific and environmental groups applauded the EPA’s decision but claimed the agency underestimated palm oil emissions in its analysis, arguing that the greenhouse gas emissions from palm oil’s lifecycle are actually higher than petroleum-based diesel. During an extended commenting period for the EPA analysis, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report that attempts to correct several of the EPA’s conclusions on palm oil.

The commenting period for the analysis closed April 27, but the EPA has yet to make a final decision on palm oil’s use as a biofuel. As of May, the palm oil industry has hired lobbyist Holland & Knight to help convince the EPA of palm oil’s viability as a renewable fuel. In its analysis, the EPA estimates that 104,000 hectares, or 1,040 km2, of land in Indonesia and Malaysia would be converted to palm plantation if palm oil were accepted as a biofuel source.

But even if the EPA sticks to its original ruling, the fight against palm oil is far from over: palm oil accounts for more than 30 percent of the world’s vegetable oil production, and worldwide demand of the oil is expected to double by 2020. According to the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70 percent of demand for palm oil is food related. This figure puts at least some of palm oil’s future in the hands of consumers: we can’t help make the EPA’s decision (since the commenting period is over), but we can wage a campaign against palm oil in our favorite foods and avoid products made with palm oil.

by Michael Conathan

It’s not even halfway through October, but Bill Koch has already put on his Halloween costume. This year, the black sheep of the billionaire band of brothers has decided to “trick or treat” as an environmentalist.

Yesterday, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound — a group established by Koch and his cronies to wage war on Cape Wind, the first offshore wind farm proposed in U.S. waters — dredged up an old lawsuit against the project. The frivolous nature of this latest tilt at the project’s offshore windmills is enough to make even Don Quixote blush.

This time, the plaintiffs allege the turbines would violate the Endangered Species Act, creating unacceptable risks to protected birds, sea turtles, and the north Atlantic right whale. What they fail to acknowledge is that any potential negative effects from the wind farm’s construction have already been looked at over and over again during the project’s 11 year trek through the regulatory process. The Environmental Impact Statement finalized by the Department of the Interior in 2009 carefully considered endangered species and determined that Cape Wind would not pose any population risks.

A handful of smaller green groups have joined the ersatz enviro Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in this most recent filing, but the vast majority of big time regional and national environmental groups have expressed unequivocal support for the project. These include Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, the Conservation Law Foundation, and the Audubon Society (a group with a pretty good reputation for protecting endangered birds).

Perhaps most galling was the Alliance calling out the Sierra Club in its press release as an organization that has “sounded the alarm” about Cape Wind. The Sierra Club is, in fact, a vocal supporter of the project. In August, the Club released a report, “Clean Energy Under Siege,” detailing the carefully executed campaign launched by Koch and other oil and gas industry leaders against Cape Wind and the rest of the clean energy economy.  The Sierra Club has also joined the Conservation Law Foundation in launching Cape Wind Now, an initiative with the goal of combatting the endless stall tactics from Koch and the Alliance.

Koch’s environmentalist costume comes with a lofty price tag. As a co-director of the Alliance, he has been one of its biggest donors since its inception in 2003. According to the Sierra Club’s report:

• as of 2006, he had contributed more than $1.5 million to the cause. If those contributions have held steady over the years, that would mean he’s approaching $5 million of personal money spent opposing the project.
• in 2009, his company Oxbow Energy, paid virtually the entire salary of the Alliance’s President, approximately $150,000.
• Oxbow also spent more than $600,000 to lobby the FAA against approving Cape Wind.

Why? In addition to protecting his investment in dirty energy, Koch also owns a massive, oceanfront mansion in a country club community on Cape Cod with ample views of the area of the Sound where the project will be constructed, Koch has openly opposed the project even though from his manse, the turbines would appear as tiny twigs on the horizon.

And then there’s also that other matter of preventing a commercially-proven, immediately available renewable source of energy from gaining a foothold in a region desperate for additional power capacity and establishing itself as a legitimate alternative to the Koch brothers’ precious oil, gas, and coal.

Just remember, Massachusetts, when the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound comes ringing your doorbell all dressed up as an environmental group, you better take a peek behind the mask. Otherwise, the trick will be on you.

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

Two new studies make a strong case that global warming is driving an intensification of high-pressure anomalies that in turn make North American weather more extreme. They add to a growing body of scientific observation and analysis on the connection between man-made climate change and extreme weather — and disasters.

So I can say, not coincidentally, Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company is releasing a report next week based on its natural catastrophe database — the most comprehensive of its kind in the world — that concludes:

• Global warming is driving an increase in weather-related disasters
• “North America is the continent with the largest increases in disasters.“

And so I can also say, not coincidentally, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported Tuesday in its “State of the Climate” for September that the Climate Extremes Index for the period January-through-September was over the highest ever — and over twice the average value — since record-keeping began in 1910.

NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index (year-tod-date) is at the highest level ever.

We appear to have a perfect storm: Detailed observations of more extreme weather in North America in recent years are now coming at the same time as new scientific analyses that can explain why manmade climate change is boosting extreme weather in our continent.

The two new studies are “The recent shift in early summer Arctic atmospheric circulation” (subs. req’d, news release here) and “Intensification of Northern Hemisphere subtropical highs in a warming climate“ (subs. req’d, news release here). The latter Nature Geoscience study is closely related to a 2010 Journal of Climate study that found “global warming is the main cause of a significant intensification in the North Atlantic Subtropical High (NASH) that in recent decades has more than doubled the frequency of abnormally wet or dry summer weather in the southeastern United States.”

The first study is related to another 2012 Geophysical Research Letters study, “Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes,” which found that the loss of Arctic ice favors “extreme weather events that result from prolonged conditions, such as drought, flooding, cold spells, and heat waves.”

What makes this study a bombshell is that it is led by our very own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (aka NOAA), which put out a news release explaining how global warming drives extreme weather in North America:

Read more

By Jessica Goad and Christy Goldfuss

What do laws protecting national parks and the accidental death of a border patrol agent have in common?  Nothing. And yet a Congressman from Utah has used a recent incident to push for legislation that addresses border safety by gutting environmental laws.

Last week, Border Patrol agent Nicholas Ivie was killed in what was apparently friendly fire while responding to an alarm along the U.S.-Mexico border near Bisbee, Arizona.  The incident remains under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

This tragic incident has also reignited the debate around the relationship between environmental laws, public lands, and border security.

Before it was clear that Ivie had been killed not by drug smugglers but in an accident, two Utah Congressmen issued a press release offering their condolences and also highlighting the fact that the incident took place on public lands.  The press release stated that “The shootings occurred in the immediate proximity of federal lands…” and reminded readers that another border patrol agent was killed “on federal lands about 70 miles from where this incident took place” in December 2010.

The press release also touted a bill introduced by Congressman Rob Bishop (R-UT), who is Chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands.  The “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act” (H.R. 1505) passed the House in June of this year.  It would roll back 16 environmental laws on public lands (including a few that protect national parks) and give the Department of Homeland Security authority to block access to public lands within 100 miles of U.S. borders in order to secure them.

The laws rolled back are: the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Archeological and Historic Preservation Act, the Antiquities Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, the Fish and Wildlife Act, the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Park Service Organic Act, the National Park Service General Authorities Act, parts of the National Parks and Recreation Act, and the Arizona Desert Wilderness Act.

Bishop has explained the need for this bill in the past by saying:

The Border Patrol’s inability to routinely access the entire border region leaves us not only vulnerable to the trafficking of drugs but also potential terrorists and others who wish to harm our country.  With the passage of this legislation the Border Patrol will finally have the access necessary to help us achieve a truly secure border–a sovereign nation should have nothing less.

He also told Greenwire that the incident has spurred him to reach out to various Senate offices to continue to push the bill.

While the incident did apparently take place on Bureau of Land Management land, a spokesperson stated that there were no restrictions to access on them:

BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey said he did not believe there were any access restrictions on the lands where the shooting took place. State, federal and private lands are interspersed in a checkerboard pattern there, according to a map provided by Bishop’s office.

“It’s very, very unlikely that there were any signs,” Godfrey said. “You’d walk onto that land and not know you’d change status.”

Previously, Customs and Border Protection has stated that public lands do not stand in the way of the border patrol doing its job.  CBP has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture and stated during a hearing on the bill that it has a “close working relationship” with the agencies that allows it to carry out its “border enforcement responsibilities while respecting and enhancing the environment.”

While the death of a border patrol agent on duty is a tragedy, it is not an excuse to roll back environmental laws in a bill that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has called “unnecessary” and “a bad policy.”

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

by Steve Horn, via DeSmogBlog

Roughly a year ago today in Houston, the shale gas industry was caught red-handed discussing its use of military tactics and personnel on U.S. soil to intimidate and divide communities in order to continue its fracking bonanza.

In a gathering thought to be exclusively among friends, one industry public relations professional representing Range Resources, Matt Pitzarella, said his company utilizes psychological warfare (PSYOPs) tactics on citizens living in the Marcellus Shale basin. The Marcellus is one of the epicenters of the global hydraulic fracturing boom (“fracking”).

Matt Carmichael, External Affairs Manager at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, told attendees, “we are dealing with an insurgency,” referring to citizens concerned about the impacts of oil and gas development in their communities. He advised the PR pros in the room to use the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, along with Donald Rumsfeld’s book, as guidebooks for suppressing dissent.

A year later, we’re learning that the oil industry is taking its aggressive military-style approach global. According to a press release published by Food and Water Europe, the industry is spying on fracking critics in Poland.

“Recent media reports from Poland show that heavy-handed tactics such as spying and undercover operations are being used against groups and individuals who question shale gas development,” explains the release. “Shale gas companies have sent spies to anti-fracking meetings and reported their findings to the highest levels of the Polish government and internal security services, according to reports in a Polish daily newspaper.”

An internal government report provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and conducted by shale gas investors was given to Gazeta Prawna, a Polish newspaper. The Gazeta reported that anti-fracking activists have been deemed to “breach public security and order” by the investors, serving as the motive for the spy ops. This parallels anti-fracking activists in the Marcellus Shale being labeled “insurgents” by Matt Carmichael, Manager of External Affairs for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation at the Media and Stakeholder Relations Hydraulic Fracturing Initiative conference held in Houston in October 2011.

​This development is a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which reads, “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”

Fracking for commercial use has yet to begin in Poland, but as the Associated Press reported in March, could begin in 2014. Voices of dissent, though, are already being squealched before the fun has even begun.

“[L]ocal communities increasingly find that their concerns about the environmental and health impacts of shale gas activities are not taken seriously,” said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food and Water Watch. “This lack of an independent, science-based assessment of risks involved in shale gas in Poland is the reason why numerous local associations there are not welcoming this industry with open arms.”

Steve Horn is a Research Fellow for DeSmogBlog. This piece was originally published at DeSmogBlog and was reprinted with permission.

by Richard W. Caperton

Here’s something that shouldn’t surprise anyone: A company that benefits from high power prices is lobbying for policies that would raise power prices for consumers. What should surprise everyone, however, is the sheer audacity of their effort: using a deeply flawed study to argue that tax incentives for wind power are “distortionary” while arguing for the exact same incentives for their preferred technologies.

Earlier this summer Exelon Corporation, a large U.S. power generator and utility operator, began quietly lobbying against extending the production tax credit for wind energy. Its effort gradually became more public, and has now erupted into a full-scale war on the wind industry. In fact, the American Wind Energy Association terminated Exelon’s membership in the association. And Exelon is now touting a study by the NorthBridge Group, an economic and strategic consulting firm, that purports to show that the production tax credit is deeply harming consumers by—get this—saving them too much money.

Exelon’s argument is strange but has gained some traction among wind energy opponents on Capitol Hill. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), for example, just penned an editorial in The Wall Street Journal parroting NorthBridge’s claims. Fortunately, though, the facts are on the side of wind power.

This issue brief will show how the wind production tax credit benefits our economy, while also shedding light on Exelon’s efforts against the wind industry by:

• Explaining the anticonsumer motives behind Exelon’s antiwind arguments
• Showing some of the serious flaws in the study that Exelon claims justifies their arguments
• Describing how nuclear power—Exelon’s primary power source—could be substituted for wind in Exelon’s arguments, which shows that their concern is really wind power and not market distortions

Let’s begin with the benefits for consumers.

Read more

China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases linked to climate change, may create the impetus for a global carbon market as it begins pilot trading programs, according to the Climate Institute. [Businessweek]

The world’s second-biggest economy is scheduled to start emissions trading in seven manufacturing regions next year, and it may introduce a national system by 2015. Shanghai and Guangdong plan to require producers of steel, petrochemicals and electricity and others with annual emissions of more than 20,000 metric tons to buy tradable permits. The other regions in China’s pilot program are Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenzhen and Hubei….

“Though covering a fraction of China’s total emissions, these pilots are expected to cover 700 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2014, compared with 382 million tons in Australia, 165 million tons in California and 2.1 billion tons in Europe,” [Climate Institute CEO John] Connor said.

 

Climate change skeptics have seized on the Antarctic ice to argue that the globe isn’t warming and that scientists are ignoring the southern continent because it’s not convenient. But scientists say the skeptics are misinterpreting what’s happening and why. [Associated Press]

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday requested an accounting of federal spending for energy technology, citing concerns over the amount of subsidies given to the energy sector. [The Hill]

Falling prices for natural gas made it far more economical to burn natural gas instead of coal in the country’s power plants over the last few years. Environmental regulations – a favourite target of Romney – had little to do with the switch. [Guardian]

The Commerce Department issued its final ruling Wednesday in a long-simmering trade dispute with China, imposing tariffs ranging from about 24 to nearly 36 percent on most solar panels imported from the country. [New York Times]

China demanded Thursday that Washington repeal steep tariffs on solar panels that Chinese producers fear will shut their equipment out of the American market. [Washington Post]

The bankruptcy of a California poultry producer is showing in detail how the Midwestern drought is still rippling through the U.S. economy. [Wall Street Journal]

Now, apart from longstanding concern about harmful chemicals in the water that will be used to make that snow — piped directly from the sewage treatment system of the nearby town of Flagstaff — new research indicates that the wastewater system is a breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant genes. [New York Times]

A repeat of this year’s washout summer is the last thing most people want from the English weather – but more of the same could be on the way, and could become the norm, a new study has warned, thanks to human activities warming the climate. [Guardian]

David Cameron has today highlighted the success of the UK’s offshore wind and tidal energy industry, hailing them as “number one in the world” and an example of British enterprise and dynamism. [BusinessGreen]