We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public.

Of course, the climate science deniers don’t want factual information and scientific analysis to reach policymakers and the public untainted by their lies.

The AAAS, which publishes the journal Science, is specifically talking about cyberbullying and lawsuits going after two of the nation’s top climatologist, Michael Mann and James Hansen, as their news release makes clear:

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We’ve been reporting on statistics from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization that illustrate a dire global problem: We squander nearly one third of our food through food waste (on the consumption side) and food losses (on the production side). In developed countries, over 40% of losses come from companies and consumers throwing out perfectly good food. And on the production side, we lose enough food to feed at least 48 million people due to inefficiencies in harvesting, storage and delivery, according to the FAO. The WorldWatch Institute is addressing the problem through its Nourishing the Planet project, a two-year effort to make the food system more equitable and efficient. It couldn’t come soon enough. — Stephen Lacey

From the WorldWatch Institute:

At a time when the land, water, and energy resources necessary to feed a global population of 6.9 billion are increasingly limited  —and when at least 1 billion people remain chronically hungry-food losses mean a waste of those resources and a failure of our food system to meet the needs of the poor. The Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project, a two-year evaluation of environmentally sustainable agricultural innovations to alleviate hunger, is highlighting ways to make the most of the food that is produced and to make more food available to those who need it most.

According to Tristram Stuart, a contributing author of Worldwatch’s State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet report, some 150 million tons of grains are lost annually in low-income countries, six times the amount needed to meet the needs of all the hungry people in the developing world. Meanwhile, industrialized countries waste some 222 million tons of perfectly good food annually, a quantity nearly equivalent to the 230 million tons that sub-Saharan Africa produces in a year. Unlike farmers in many developing countries, however, agribusinesses in industrial countries have numerous tools at their disposal to prevent food from spoiling-including pasteurization and preservation facilities, drying equipment, climate-controlled storage units, transport infrastructure, and chemicals designed to expand shelf-life.

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A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

Talk of natural gas bubble draws industry ire

Big energy company executives and government researchers are firing back at a recent New York Times story suggesting the recent boom in natural gas production from shale rock is unsustainable and perhaps fraudulent.

“You really have to wonder why the New York Times is campaigning against cleaner-burning, domestically produced natural gas,” ExxonMobil Vice President Ken Cohen wrote in a blogpost Monday. “If the writer had bothered to call us, we would have told him that ExxonMobil’s investment approach is disciplined and based on a long-term view of global market conditions.”

[Joe Romm:  You really have to wonder why Big Oil is still campaigning against clean energy legislation and funding climate science denial, if they actually care about "clean-burning, domestically produced" energy (see below).]

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By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Public Lands Project, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

America’s national parks are well-loved by Americans of all political leanings due to their immense beauty, function in preserving the past, and their iconic role in our history. But the findings of a new study released yesterday by the National Parks Conservation Association on the State of America’s National Parks show that efforts to protect national parks are more challenging than ever in the face of climate change. Indeed, it is an ironic reality that parks — the natural reserves that we will depend on to help our country and its natural resources adapt to climate change — are themselves threatened by it and other human influences. The addition of climate change to the already-evident stressors of invasive species, industrial development, degraded water, and dirty air will have an unprecedented, compounding effect on national parks, and will severely limit their abilities to bounce back from the impacts that they are already feeling:

Climate change poses a long-term threat to park resources by exacerbating landscape fragmentation and complicating traditional approaches to resource management.

Climate change is a “systemic threat” to the character and appeal of national parks, chipping away at what makes them unique and loved in the first place: glaciers melting in Glacier National Park, Joshua trees disappearing from Joshua Tree National Park, redwoods threatened in Redwood National Park, and the coral reefs surrounding Virgin Islands National Park getting bleached with rising sea temperatures.

A few weeks ago, Think Progress reported on three prominent Republicans speaking out in support of parks, an odd occurrence in an era where public lands are politicized more than ever before. Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), on the influential House Appropriations Committee, noted that fighting for the park service budget is her “number one priority” in advance of the parks’ 100th anniversary in 2016. But Republicans on committees overseeing the national park service continue to deny the very existence of man-made global warming:

- Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), the self-crowned hero of the park service budget: “I believe the jury is still out on whether mankind can alter global climate trends.” [Lummis]

- Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Land: “Despite the fact that scientific data underlying the studies of global warming appear to have been manipulated to produce an intended outcome, EPA officials disregarded the contaminated science, calling it little more than a ‘blip on the history of this process.’”
” [Bishop, 12/08/09]

- Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and Environment: “While scientists cannot explain the climate changes of the past few decades without including the effects of elevated greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations resulting from the use of fossil fuels, there is widespread disagreement as to the magnitude of human influence on the climate and the degree to which any effort by humanity to reduce carbon output would slow or reverse the effects of climate change.” [Simpson]

- Every GOP member of those subcommittees: The seven GOP members of the Interior and Environment Appropriations subcommittee and the 13 members of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands all supported H.R. 910 to reverse the scientific endangerment finding that greenhouse pollution threatens the public welfare [Dirty Secrets]

Major cuts have already been made on the National Park Service budget this year, which will keep the agency from being able to address man-made crises that national parks are facing. The Continuing Resolution passed by Republicans to fund the government through September made $11.5 million in cuts to the national park system when compared to FY 2010 levels. The FY 2012 is still in the midst of being worked out in Appropriations Committee, but House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s “roadmap,” passed by the House in April, cut funding to Interior and environment agencies by $2.1 billion. The park system will be underfunded, at a time when they are the most vulnerable to climate change.

Despite the pressure from deniers, the National Park Service is already undertaking efforts to anticipate and adapt to a changing world, such as the Climate Change Response Council, the creation of which Republicans bashed. As National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said in 2010, “I believe climate change is fundamentally the greatest threat to the integrity of our national parks that we have ever experienced.” And the park service has an important role in the face of climate change, the NPCA report explains:

The National Park Service is in a unique position among federal agencies to communicate to the public both the consequences of climate change and the opportunities to avert some of those consequences by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As the National Parks Conservation Association noted in its report, “the threats facing America’s national parks are serious and sobering. Our parks are becoming biological lifeboats in a changing and challenging landscape.” We should take this call to action seriously — it’s the only way that our parks will survive.

Dominion, one of the largest utilities in the U.S., says it wants to convert three of its Virginia coal plants to run on waste biomass from timber operations. If approved by the state’s regulatory commission, it could bring about 150 MW of renewable capacity to the state and turn two “peaking” coal plants that operate only 25% of the time into round-the-clock generators that operate 90% of the time.

Like other coal-to-biomass projects we’ve reported on in the past, this one will create about 250 direct and indirect local jobs and only cost the typical ratepayer about 14 cents per month. So it will be good for the local economy and will increase renewable generation – but is it a core climate solution?

If biomass can help power plant owners ease away from coal faster, that is certainly a good thing. The Dominion announcement is particularly relevant given the number of planned plant retirements in the coal industry – there are currently 190 generators around the U.S. set to be shut down, and there’s a dwindling appetite to replace them with more coal.

While some independent power providers suggest that natural gas could fill the gap, it will be important for baseload renewables like biomass to be used in existing coal plants that don’t require much new build-out of infrastructure. And considering that new EPA mercury and air toxics regulations exclude biomass for now, the resource may look more attractive to plant owners like Dominion.

Joe Romm wrote about the benefits of using biomass in coal facilities a couple years ago:

Cofiring is a well-demonstrated strategy with multiple benefits. From a practical perspective, most of the existing coal plants are mostly paid off. Plus they are fully permitted and have all the necessary transmission plus they are connected to freight train lines and water supply. Plus this is baseload power. So you avoid all of the problems associated with citing new renewables in the Midwest or Southwest. Cofiring is thus a key near-term strategy for meeting climate goals — and renewable standards — in the midwest and southeast.

And, again, this is baseload power, and your typical coal plant has a capacity factor that is some 2 to 3 times larger than that of wind. So 20 GW of biomass coal firing will generate as much power as 50 GW of wind.

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—Bill McKibben, in a HuffPost repost

It was big news in Canada when, in 2008, the country slipped from the top-ten list of the world’s most peaceful countries (all the way to eleventh). By this year, it was back in eighth, 74 places above the U.S. and, when liberals in the U.S. feel despairing, what dominates their fantasy life but “moving to Canada?”

And yet, today, you could make an argument that Canada has actually become one of the earth’s more irresponsible nations — namely, when it comes to the environment. Indeed, you could argue that the world would be better off if the government in Ottawa was replaced by, say, the one in Brasilia, which has made a far better show of attending to the planet’s welfare. It’s a tale of physics, chemistry, and most of all economics, and it all starts in the western province of Alberta.

The Province’s Tar Sands cover an area larger than the United Kingdom and contain most of the world’s supply of bitumen, a particularly sticky form of petroleum that must be heated or diluted before it can be pumped. Because it’s so unwieldy, it’s only been in recent years that large-scale development of the tar sands have taken place. The steep rise in global oil prices has set off a boom in the region, with all that naturally follows (prostitutes have reported incomes as high as $15,000 a week).

But this is a boom unlike others. It’s the first huge oil play of the global-warming era, the first time we’ve dangerously stepped onto new turf, even though we understand the stakes.

NASA’s James Hansen, the earth’s premier climatologist, has laid out these stakes with some precision.

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NASA’s James Hansen is our leading climatologist and a modern day Paul Revere, if anyone were listening.  He has been right longer about the dangers of unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases than almost anybody (see “1981 Hansen study finds warming trend that could raise sea levels“).

So it’s no surprise that organizations around the world have given him prestigious awards — that include a substantial amount of money — which he is legally allowed to receive as a government employee.  It’s also no surprise that the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the subject of lawsuits and smears by the fossil-fuel-funded anti-science deniers who want unrestricted pollution, whose efforts, if successful, would doom billions to a ruined climate.

The latest effort is this lawsuit by Christopher Horner (of the American Tradition Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute), which is debunked here (and below).  This smearing of scientists is what Horner does for a living (see Inhofe, Horner, McIntyre and Watts fabricate another phony “despicable smear” against Michael Mann).

Before discussing Horner’s disingenuous and self-contradictory attack, let me reprint a couple of statements by Hansen on the general subject of this sort of harassment (since I’m sure NASA’s attorney has asked that he not comment publicly on this lawsuit).  Back in December 2009 Hansen explained the harassment strategy of the deniers here:

“I am now inundated with broad FOIA requests for my correspondence, with substantial impact on my time and on others in my office. I believe these to be fishing expeditions, aimed at finding some statement(s), likely to be taken out of context, which they would attempt to use to discredit climate science…. The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available, on our web site and elsewhere. If those input data could be made to yield a significantly different global temperature change, contrarians would certainly have done that — but they have not.”

More recently, in his open letter to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, he had this sardonic footnote to the deniers that harass him with e-mails:

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The good news is that the New York Times “noticed” that green jobs were attracting graduates.

The bad news is that the NYT buried this important story on page “ST6 of the New York edition” under “Fashion & Style.”

The ‘ugly’ part is that when I went online, the advertisement the NYT was running with the piece was for its absurdly embarrassing partnership with the Shell Oil (see “Media stunner:  NY Times partners with Shell Oil to peddle elite access“).  The favicon alone is priceless. 

[Hmm.  Perhaps there is also a boomlet in green-washing jobs.]

Anywhere, the NYT story itself is pretty good, pointing out “a new wave of recent college graduates entering a career field that, like blogging and social media strategy, hardly existed a decade ago: environmental sustainability.”  As the piece explains:

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Two coal companies accused of polluting streams in eastern Kentucky continued to pollute streams at higher levels than their permits allowed even after reaching an agreement with the state to stop. In October, environmental groups filed notice to sue International Coal Group (ICG) and Frasure Creek Mining over the pollution of streams. After meetings with state officials, the companies agreed to correct the issue and pay $650,000 in fines.

But according to a new suit filed by the environmental groups, the companies not only failed to stop polluting, they are actually polluting at even higher levels than they were before the agreement. According to the suit, “almost every reported pollutant in the permits analyzed had multiple violations at significant factors above what is considered safe for waterways of Kentucky and the people who use and enjoy those waterways”:

Lisenby’s and Chance’s affidavits allege a review of the companies’ DMRs showed the companies “self-reported” pollution levels as much as eight to 15 times above allowable, permitted levels of several pollutants.

Kentucky politicians are fighting the federal government’s efforts to regulate coal pollution, with dire consequences for its citizens. According to a recent study by professors at West Virginia and Washington State universities, mountaintop removal has a direct link to the prevalence of birth defects in the communities where it is practiced.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) is calling for flood management officials to recognize the role of global warming in creating more dangerous disasters. Yesterday, as the federal government agreed to assume most of the costs of the Missouri River flood in the state of Iowa, Harkin told reporters that U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs to take into account the “indisputable” climate change that has been increasing precipitation intensity in the Midwest. The Master Water Control Manual of the Missouri River Basin ignores the existence of manmade global warming, and left the corps unprepared for the scope of this year’s record precipitation. Harkin told the Quad City Times that climate change is “indisputable“:

I think it’s indisputable that something is happening to our climate. Perhaps the basis of that manual needs to be revised for climate change that’s happening and the amount of snowpack.

Speaking before television reporters on Monday afternoon, as President Obama signed a federal disaster declaration for the region, Harkin reiterated that the flooding disaster could have been managed if not for the global warming caused by fossil fuel pollution:

If we hadn’t had those big rainfalls, their plans would have worked. That’s why I say we have to maybe go back and revise that master plan simply because something is happening with our climate. and we’re getting more rain and more snowpack in areas that we’ve never had before.

Watch it:

The corps manual does not mention the implications of climate change for the river basin, despite years of relevant scientific publications and government reports. As climate change accelerates, the challenge of handling the greater droughts and floods in our future will only increase. Our national flood-control system is grossly unprepared for what is coming, even if immediate action is taken to eliminate climate pollution.

However, the manual does note the critical role that the National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Survey play in providing meteorological and stream flow observations and forecasts. The budgets of both agencies — and their ability to study climate change — are under attack by Tea Party Republicans along the Missouri River like Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

Google, a leader of innovation in the digital economy, says that without a private and public focus on innovation in renewables, storage and electric vehicles, the cost of delaying the clean energy economy could be in the trillions of dollars to the U.S.

Google released an analysis of the economic impact of clean energy innovation today, modeling a variety of long-term scenarios and their influence on GDP growth, a reduction in energy costs and greenhouse gas reductions. They used McKinsey’s Low Carbon Economics Tool, which provides models to assess the macroeconomic impact of climate and energy policies.

Based on our modeling, we estimate that by 2030, innovation in the modeled technologies alone could have a transformative impact on the US, adding over $155 billion per year in GDP and 1.1 million net jobs, while reducing household energy costs by $942 per year, oil consumption by 1.1 billion barrels per year, and GHG emissions by 13% relative to BAU. By 2050, annual gains in GDP increase to $600 billion, net additional jobs to 3.9 million, and emissions reductions to 55%.

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