The hundreds of millions of acres of lands and nearly 1.7 billion acres of waters managed by the federal government are producing more fossil fuels than you might think. And more carbon pollution as well.

The Energy Information Administration released new data last week showing the amount of oil, gas, and coal that were extracted from public lands and waters. Last year alone, those areas owned by you, the taxpayer, contributed:

- 26.2 percent of our oil (596 million barrels)
- 17.8 percent of our natural gas (4,262 billion cubic feet)
- 42.1 percent of our coal (442 million short tons)

This has important implications for climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, this ThinkProgress analysis of the new EIA data shows that the total downstream emissions from these three fuels—after they have been combusted in power plants or vehicles—comes to approximately 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator,” we can see that these emissions are the equivalent of those produced by 427 coal-fired power plants. For comparison, there are 589 coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

In a similar analysis commissioned by The Wilderness Society last year, Stratus Consulting determined that the combustion of oil, natural gas, and coal produced from public lands and waters represents approximately 23 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, a fact that is often overlooked in discussions of federal land management and the drive to produce more domestic energy. As the Center for American Progress wrote in a recent issue brief:

The quantity and pace of fossil-fuel development on our federal lands and waters is at odds with the president’s goal of further reducing carbon pollution to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Last November, the International Energy Agency stated in its World Energy Outlook that “No more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2° C goal” and avoid the worse effects of climate change. Additionally, while emissions from electricity generation in the U.S. have been decreasing, the Energy Information Administration predicts that they will increase at an average rate of 0.2 percent per year between 2011 and 2040. And last week, the government announced that it has doubled the “social cost of carbon”—the estimate of how much this pollution harms human health and the economy.

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The fracking industry really doesn’t want you to see “Gasland 2.” The industry has brought in anti-science film-maker Phelim McAleer to produce an industry informercial, “FrackNation.” McAleer has a long track record of trying to disrupt and disinform. Here’s Part 2 of DeSmogBlog’s exposé of this oil and gas industry PR campaign — JR.

By Steve Horn via DeSmogBlog

Part one of the DeSmogBlog investigation of "FrackNation" - a film made in response to "Gasland 2" – honed in on the past track records and funding streams of co-directors Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.

We revealed that Donors Trust/Donors Capital – the "dark money ATM of the right" – partially funded their first two films, "Mine Your Own Business" and "Not Evil, Just Wrong."

We also revealed that "Not Evil," a climate change denial documentary, was utilized by a partner of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) to push the Balanced Education for Everyone (BEE) campaign.

That campaign calls for a "balanced" scientific teaching of the climate change "controversy" and parallels ones pushed for via an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill, by the Discovery Institute, and by the Heartland Institute.

Yet, what about "FrackNation"? Who bankrolled it and are the screenings and is the tour really a grassroots endeavor? 

It might seem that way based on its marketing, but as Jean de La Fontaine once said, "Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance."

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is scheduled to speak at 1:30 today on how the city must prepare comprehensive plans for addressing climate-driven storms, floods, droughts, heat waves and other weather events that could threaten its infrastructure. [New York Times]

The Bloomberg administration on Monday issued new warnings about New York City’s vulnerability to climate change, offering updated data to encourage businesses, residents and perhaps even future mayors to better prepare against hotter weather, fiercer storms and increased rainfall.

Administration officials estimated that more than 800,000 city residents will live in the 100-year flood plain by the 2050s. That figure is more than double the 398,000 currently estimated to be at risk, based on new maps the Federal Emergency Management Agency released Monday.

Many more businesses and jobs will also be at risk.

The EPA released numbers disproving conservative claims that the agency is discriminating against conservative groups on FOIA fee waivers. [Politico]

An EIA report shows that oil and gas reserves are 35% greater in 2013 than in 2011. [LA Times]

In two weeks, Massachusetts voters will choose Senator John Kerry’s replacement in a special election, and National Journal notes that Rep. Ed Markey is running for the office as the “first real Climate Candidate.” [National Journal]

The U.S. Coast Guard is ratcheting down oil spill cleanup efforts from the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill in 2010. [AP]

China’s rich coastal provinces are exporting their carbon emissions to the poorer provinces by importing their goods, making a climate solution more politically difficult for the country. [Guardian]

Developing countries are deploying new plans to seek climate project finance as funding for the Clean Development Mechanism dries up. [Reuters]

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So the good news is that the International Energy Agency reports U.S. emissions dropped in 2012 “while total CO2 emissions growth in China was one of the lowest in the last decade.” China’s annual carbon pollution now exceeds our by 60%!

The IEA sums up the not so good news in this slide:

Yes we are headed toward up to 9°F warming if we keep listening to the do nothing and do little crowd. And that, according to Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven, has “potentially disastrous implications in terms of extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and the huge economic and social costs that these can bring.

Doing nothing to reduce carbon pollution this decade also has a staggering net cost of $3.5 trillion — assuming that post-2020 we then tried to get back on the 2 C (3.6 F) pathway, as the report explains:

Delaying stronger climate action to 2020 would come at a cost: $1.5 trillion in low-carbon investments are avoided before 2020 but $5 trillion in additional investments would be required thereafter to get back on track.

The cost of staying on the 2C path this decade is not costly. IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol, who is the report’s lead author, said “We identify a set of proven measures that could stop the growth in global energy-related emissions by the end of this decade at no net economic cost.”
In this “4-for-2 C Scenario, global energy-related greenhouse-gas emissions are 8% (3.1 Gt CO2 equivalent) lower in 2020 than the level otherwise expected,” thanks to 4 key strategies
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There has been mounting concern over the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s mandatory furloughs of National Weather Service employees amidst increasingly severe weather. As a result, NOAA has reportedly submitted a plan to Congress that would restore the jobs at the expense of its weather satellites.

This ‘pay one debt to incur another’ plan is the result of budget cuts mandated by sequestration, which severely threaten the agency’s ability to carry out its key mission by slashing $271 million from its 2013 budget, including a $50 million cut in its geostationary weather satellite program.

After the devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma and Missouri and in preparation for what’s predicted to be an extremely active hurricane season, NOAA’s acting administrator Dr. Kathryn Sullivan announced last week that the agency was cancelling its mandatory furloughs, but provided no details on how it would be offset.

On Sunday evening, Politico reported that the agency has proposed draining the funds from the promising COSMIC-2 satellite program in order to save weather jobs on the ground.

A joint initiative with Taiwan, the COSMIC program began with the launch of six satellites in 2006. As the initial fleet nears the end of its life, COSMIC-2 would launch 12 new satellites into orbit with the capacity to collect and transmit an enormous amount of data that enhance weather forecasts and climate models. According to the program’s website, more than 2373 researchers from 71 countries are registered users of COSMIC data, which are freely available to users in all countries, and 90% of COSMIC soundings are available within three hours of collection.

Whereas most satellites point down toward Earth, COSMIC satellites are unique in that they look across the horizon and monitor radio signals from the dozens of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. Since so many soundings are collected continually around the globe — including atmospheric density, pressure, moisture and temperature data from space — COSMIC provides a three-dimensional picture of the diurnal cycle in all types of weather.

This is particularly helpful in collecting data above the oceans, polar regions, and other hard-to-sample areas. According to Nature, COSMIC team members hoped to launch the first six COSMIC-2 satellites in 2016 “to orbit a narrow section of the tropics, gathering data that would reduce uncertainty in measurements of hurricane intensities by 25%, and in those of hurricane tracks by 25–50%”.

As climate change increases the severity of extreme weather across the country, sequester was already jeopardizing NOAA’s ability to provide accurate and advance forecasting of extreme weather events by further delaying the launch of replacements for the agency’s aging geostationary satellites.

While NOAA has yet to make any statement on its plan to avoid furloughs, cutting the COSMIC-2 program to save forecasting jobs does not mean forecasting quality will stay the same — instead, sequester cuts just create more problems elsewhere by undermining the ability to predict and prepare for severe weather in the future.

As Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress explained, “This is not cutting spending to increase efficiency, it’s cutting spending that will decrease capabilities.”

After decades of very little progress on developing American offshore wind, things are finally happening that could see the U.S. catch up with Europe to install clean, renewable power off American shores.

Last week, the Interior Department announced the first federal offshore wind lease sale for an area 9 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. To select the site, Interior had to dodge shipping lanes and migratory bird patterns, while sticking to areas with excellent wind power potential capacity. If it is developed into an offshore wind farm, the energy produced could generate 3,400 megawatts, enough to power more than 1 million homes.

Secretary Sally Jewell said, “If there is good interest in this one, then I think you will have this happening on a consistent basis.” In November, the Department announced another possible lease off the coast of Virginia, but did not set a date. The success of these auctions depends on interest from the private sector.

There are several reasons the United States has installed exactly zero offshore wind farms, whereas the industry is up and running in Europe.

Cape Wind is a planned wind farm in Massachusetts that advanced as far as any project in the country to actually putting steel in the water. It incurred almost a decade of delay following regulatory confusion over what agencies have jurisdiction, legal challenges from many different groups, and some Cape Cod residents objecting to the project for various parochial reasons.

The wind production tax credit has boosted the onshore wind industry in the U.S., but offshore wind projects are more expensive up-front. This makes a tax incentive for generated electricity less feasible for offshore projects. Investment tax credits (which take total costs into account when calculating the subsidy) could help the offshore industry get off the ground and eventually reduce the cost of an offshore wind farm. Bipartisan legislation would give a 30 percent credit for the first 3,000 megawatts from offshore wind, or about 600 turbines.

The Department of Energy has begun the development of wind energy along the Mid-Atlantic coast using a “Smart for the Start” approach designed to expedite the siting process while incorporating strong environmental protections. Maryland recently passed a bill encouraging development of offshore wind. It’s not just wind — tidal and wave energy present huge opportunities all over the American coastline.

There was, however, a recent development that has allowed the U.S. to say that it truly has “steel in the water.” Off the coast of Maine last weekend, a team led by the University of Maine deployed the nation’s first offshore floating wind turbine connected to the grid.

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The government has paid farmers about $1 billion since 1997 to help them develop more efficient irrigation systems — but the subsidies have backfired. According to the New York Times, water conservation subsidies have actually led farmers to use even more water to irrigate crops, draining already fast-depleting aquifers and reservoirs.

Increasingly severe droughts and record low rainfall have forced farmers to rely more heavily on groundwater supplies. But without changing current farming practices, these reserves will run out rapidly. Climate change will make droughts longer and hotter, while rain will only come in harsh storms that will flood crops and erode valuable topsoil without much of it making it down to the groundwater.

The conservation subsidy under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) was meant to help farmers employ more environmentally friendly practices. However, research shows the program prompted many farmers to expand their acreage using the water that was supposed to be conserved.

Two recent studies discovered that farmers receiving conservation payments in Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico used some of their water savings to expand irrigation or grow thirstier crops, effectively defeating the purpose. The new efficient irrigation equipment has actually shrunk groundwater supplies at an even faster pace, researchers found.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) have pushed responsible water management with bills to require that subsidized irrigation systems keep the conserved water in underground water tables or streams. Water tables have already dropped as much as 150 feet in some areas. Dwindling groundwater supplies coupled with record low rainfalls could transform American farmland into a blighted desert without aggressive water storage policies.

Americans are already wasting dangerously large amounts of water. Water consumption has tripled over the last 50 years, even though the population has not quite doubled in the same time period. The primary culprit is farming irrigation, which accounts for 80 percent of all water use. Most of this water is wasted through mismanagement. Popular sprinkler systems, for instance, lose tons of water to evaporation, while irrigation pipes flood plants with far more water than they can handle.

The last time farmers flouted conservation practices, much of American farmland was lost in the Dust Bowl, plunging hundreds of thousands of people into poverty.

California and other western states are starting to see the consequences of agricultural excess in the form of shrinking crop yields. Some farmers, no longer able to rely on aquifers, are experimenting with risky but more sustainable water-conserving techniques like dry-farming.

Farm subsidies have been hotly contested in Congress during the Farm Bill debate, as they tend to benefit the wealthiest farmers.

One of the most promising — and obscure — pieces of energy legislation moving in Congress is the Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act. This bill that would help drive down the cost of renewable energy, making it significantly cheaper to move to a clean energy economy.

As a reminder, a master limited partnership is a type of corporation that is able to raise money on public exchanges and doesn’t pay income tax at the corporate level. These two qualities lead to a much lower cost of capital for the companies organized as MLPs.

The problem is that only companies in certain industries — like oil and gas pipelines — are allowed to be MLPs. The MLP Parity Act would fix that, by expanding the treatment to renewable energy and energy efficiency. This is a commonsense fix with bipartisan support on the Hill, and a broad range of supporters in the think tank and advocacy community.

Of course, virtually no policy has unanimous support, and MLP parity is no exception. Most intriguingly, John Farrell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance wrote a piece recently called, “Why Master Limited Partnerships are a Lousy Policy for Solar, Wind, and Taxpayers”. Farrell’s very smart and a strong advocate for clean energy, so when he says something is a lousy deal for solar, wind, and taxpayers, it’s worth paying attention.

Farrell’s argument is essentially that the cost savings from MLPs in the oil and gas sector haven’t flowed through to consumers, and that MLPs in renewables will likely lead to more large-scale projects from large investors. These are fair points, but it’s important to respond. First, note what John doesn’t say: he doesn’t say that MLPs actually won’t lead to more wind and solar. They will. This is the point that Todd Foley made in a piece published today, “MLPs a powerful tool to boost renewables”. There doesn’t seem to be any disagreement on the fact that MLP parity would lead to more renewable energy.

The disagreement seems to be mostly about who we want to have building renewable energy: large corporations, or a mix small investors like individuals, communities, and local governments? The truth is that we need both. Certainly, large corporations have an inappropriately large role in many parts of our economy (for-profit prison operators strike me as particularly loathsome), but we should be careful about dismissing policies out of hand just because they would enable corporations to participate in certain businesses.

The problem in clean energy is that it’s not clear that small investors have enough money to make the transition to a zero-carbon future happen on their own. Let’s go through some numbers.

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Food is only going to get more expensive over the next decade, according to a new report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The report cited several reasons for rising prices, including: increased demand for food and biofuels as a result of a growing population and higher incomes and standards of living, slower growth in food production, and rising energy costs.

Limited water resources and farmland availability, as well as price hikes on necessities such as fertilizer, are expected to slow the increase in food production worldwide from 2.1 percent last decade (2003 – 2012) to 1.5 percent in the next decade. Meat, fish and biofuel prices are expected to rise more than fruit, vegetables and grains, but meat production is still expected to continue to expand, with China becoming the world’s largest consumer of pork by 2022.

The report notes that “increasing environmental pressures” — which include climate change-fueled storms, drought and flooding — will be one of the main factors slowing the growth of food production around the world. In China in particular — a country the report focused on, with a fifth of the world’s population and steadily rising income levels — water shortages will be one of the key problems facing food production as rainfall becomes more variable. And there will be other risks for China as well. As the report notes: “Food availability will be impacted by changes in temperature, water availability, extreme weather events, soil condition, and pest and disease patterns.”

But China’s not the only country that faces threats to food production from climate change. Last year, a report from Oxfam warned that extreme weather events would cause food prices around to world to soar in the coming decades. The report projected worldwide corn prices to spike by 500 percent by 2030, and that another U.S. drought in 2030 could raise America’s corn prices 140 percent on top of that.

The OECD and U.N. FAO’s report says key to meeting the demands of a growing global population is improving agricultural productivity and reducing food waste — a problem that has risen sharply over the past few decades. It warns that continued use of unsustainable farming practices will do little to improve food security around the world:

There is a growing need to improve the sustainable use of available land, water, marine ecosystems, fish stocks, forests and biodiversity. It is estimated that some 25% of all agricultural land is highly degraded, with growing water scarcity a fact for many countries. Many fish stocks are over-exploited, or in risk of being over-exploited.

As fish stocks decline and more people are consuming seafood, the report projects that aquaculture will surpass capture fisheries as the world’s main source of fish by 2015. This may be good news for rapidly depleting fish stocks, but a major expansion of aquaculture presents its own environmental and health-related concerns.

A report from Goldman Sachs said that Canadian tar sands oil extraction is likely not economically viable without the Keystone pipeline. [Wall Street Journal]

Extracting Canada’s huge deposits of oil sands in the next few years might not be economically viable without building the hotly contested Keystone XL pipeline into the U.S., according to new research that environmentalists said bolsters their view that blocking the project would shut off development of the energy source.

Environmentalists say producing Canadian oil sands releases more carbon dioxide than other kinds of oil and are pressing President Barack Obama to block the pipeline, which would carry oil from Alberta and help it get to Gulf Coast refineries. The U.S. State Department, industry officials and some analysts counter that burgeoning railroad capacity will eventually give Canadian crude a way to reach global markets even if Keystone is blocked.

“The potential for Canadian heavy crude oil supply to remain trapped in the province of Alberta is a growing risk for the 2014-2017 period depending on the timing of new pipeline start-ups,” analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS -0.07% wrote in a research report this past week.

Without adequate pipeline capacity, Canadian heavy crude will continue to trade at a steep discount to other grades of oil for the next few years, which could weigh on the economics of developing Canadian oil sands, according to the Goldman Sachs report and other analysts.

Environmentalists say Mr. Obama can help curb greenhouse gases by rejecting the pipeline, and they want the State Department, which is reviewing the pipeline, to take into account the environmental impact.

A new IEA report found that global emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use rose 1.4 percent in 2012, though U.S. emissions dropped 3.8 percent. [Washington Post]

After cutting carbon allowances, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the northeastern U.S. raised a record $124.5 million in its quarterly auction. [Bloomberg]

Climate scientists Michael Oppenheimer and Kevin Trenberth (with input from others) respond to Rep. Lamar Smith’s op-ed that got at least 7 things wrong about climate and energy with an op-ed of their own that gets much more than 7 things right. [Washington Post]

More on the news over the weekend that China and the U.S. agreed to cut down production and use of climate warming HFCs. [Washington Post]

Tropical Storm Andrea broke rainfall records in the northeastern U.S. [LA Times]

Water supplies from Texas to New Mexico are stretched thin after three years of drought, which is affecting native fish populations all over the country. [Wall Street Journal, UPI]

Farmers that have dealt with years of drought in the Midwest are now plagued by floods, making it an awful spring for farming. [New York Times]

Last year’s storms, droughts, and extreme weather are a big contributing factor to Haiti’s hunger crisis. [Washington Post]

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So it’s the season finale of Game of Thrones tonight. One hopes there is not another wedding.

But why, aside from the casual violence and gratuitous nudity and, of course, Peter Dinklage, is the HBO show so popular?

In an otherwise excellent article on the appeal of the books and TV series for the London Review of Books, John Lanchester explains “the second structural reason for this story’s appeal right here, right now”:

This is to do with the seasons. In Westeros, seasons last not for months but for years, and are not predictable in duration. Nobody knows when – to borrow the minatory motto of the Starks – ‘winter is coming.’ At the start of Game of Thrones, summer has been going on for years, and the younger generation has no memory of anything else; the blithe young aristocrats who’ve grown up in this environment are, in Catelyn’s mordant judgment, ‘the knights of summer’. The first signs of autumn are at hand, however, and the maesters – they’re the caste of priest/doctor/scientists – have made an official announcement that winter is indeed on its way. A winter that is always notoriously hard, and can last not just years but a decade or more.

It’s a huge all-encompassing environmental force, determining the lives of everyone, open-endedly. The climate change aspect of this is obvious to the contemporary audience, but there’s something more subtle and subtextual at work here too: another economic metaphor, another kind of difficult climate. Westeros is like our own world, in which hard times have arrived, and no one feels immune from their consequences, and no one knows how long the freeze will last. Our freeze is economic, but still. Put these two components together, and even the fantasy-averse, surely, can start to see the contemporary appeal of this story, this world. It’s a universe in which nobody is secure, and the climate is getting steadily harder, and no one knows when the good weather will return.

Well, not quite.

While there may be, as one blogger put it, “9 Things Game of Thrones Taught Me About Climate Change,” The truth is, the climate really hasn’t started to change much, at least in the TV series. No, I haven’t read the books — these days I only have time for post-apocalyptic blood baths [or is that redundant?], not pre-apocalyptic ones

We’re near the end of season 3 and it’s still as hot as ever in most of Westeros, which of course it has to be to justify the gratuitous nudity. When winter comes, people put more clothes on, and who really wants to see a show where everybody’s body is totally covered up … unless, that is, they’re at a wedding and covered in blood, but I digress. Oh, and retroactive spoiler alert.

So even though we do still get climate-change-induced blasts of snow, it’s endless summer that’s coming our way — and it won’t be pretty (see “We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming”

The main quality the people of Westeros has in common with our world is choosing to blithely ignore warnings of impending climate change. Oh, and I suppose the other quality they have in common with our world is a lack of amoral compass, which may be much the same thing (see “Global Warming Is The Great Moral Crisis Of Our Time“).

But the people of Westeros have it better than us in one big way (not counting their not having to worry so much whether they gave the right wedding gift). No matter what they do, their winter lasts “only” a decade or two. If we don’t act soon, our summer is going to last a whole lot longer (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe_.

The fracking industry really doesn’t want you to see “Gasland 2,” which I can understand because it is in some respects even better than the Oscar-nominated “Gasland.” The industry has brought in anti-science film-maker Phelim McAleer to shadow director Josh Fox during Fox’s PR tour and to produce an industry informercial, “FrackNation.” McAleer has a long track record of trying to disrupt and disinform (see my 2009 post “A falsehood-pushing film-maker tries to shout down real journalists from asking Al Gore questions”), DeSmogBlog has been doing a great job of exposing this oil and gas industry PR campaign, so I’m reposting their latest 2-part series — JR.

By Steve Horn via DeSmogBlog

Big Oil has deployed the "Tobacco Playbook" once again, this time in response to the release of "Gasland 2."

It comes in the form of a documentary film titled, "FrackNation," whose co-directors' funding in the past came from Donors Capital and Donors Trust, referred to by Mothers Jones' Andy Kroll as "the dark-money ATM of the right" and a major source of funding for climate change denial. 

Both "Gasland 2" and "FrackNation" cover hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), the toxic horizontal drilling process via which unconventional oil and gas is obtained from shale rock basins around the country and world. Co-produced and co-directed by Irish couple Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, "FrackNation" purports to be "funded by the 99 percent to combat the misrepresentations by the 1 percent of urban elites who want to tell rural Americans how to work and live."

McAleer and McElhinney also say they are independent journalists working independently of corporate funding. McAleer was referred to by the San Francisco Chronicle as "climate denial's Michael Moore" and both McAler and McElhinney are listed as "experts" by the climate change-denying Heartland Institute.

"FrackNation is an independent film and we want to remain independent of the Gas industry and be funded by ordinary people," it says on its KickStarter page that it used to raise $212,265 from 3,305 backers of the film between February-April 2012.

This isn't the first dip in the "doubt is our product" pond for McAleer and McElhinney. In the past, they co-directed and co-produced a pro-mining documentary titled "Mine Your Own Business" and a climate change denial documentary titled, "Not Evil, Just Wrong."

Both McAleer and McElhinney have made a living in recent years deploying the "Tobacco Playbook," mutating settled scientific debates on energy and climate catastrophe into false two-sided affairs, which corporate-funded news media take and run with as "he-said, she-said" stories. 

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The East coast was drenched by record-smashing tropical storm Andrea this week.

Predicted rainfall for the 48-hour period from 8 am EDT Friday, June 7, to 8 am EDT Sunday, June 8, 2013. Image credit: NOAA.

The L.A. Times reported a few of the records demolished by this early-season tropical storm:

In some places, rainfall measurements smashed century-old totals as flash flooding occurred. Central Park saw 4.16 inches of rain, more than double the record set in 1918. No major damage was reported.

Philadelphia International Airport measured 3.5 inches of rain, compared to the 1.79-inch mark set in 1904. In Newark, N.J., 3.71 inches of rain broke a 1931 measurement of 1.11 inches.

Meteorologist and former hurricane Hunter Dr. Jeff Masters discusses the long-term trend:

Andrea’s formation in June continues a pattern of an unusually large number of early-season Atlantic named storms we’ve seen in recent years. Climatologically, June is the second quietest month of the Atlantic hurricane season, behind November. During the period 1870 – 2012, we averaged one named storm every two years in June, and 0.7 named storms per year during May and June. In the nineteen years since the current active hurricane period began in 1995, there have been fifteen June named storms (if we include 2013′s Tropical Storm Andrea.) June activity has nearly doubled since 1995, and May activity has more than doubled (there were seventeen May storms in the 75-year period 1870 – 1994, compared to 6 in the 19-year period 1995 – 2013.) Some of this difference can be attributed to observation gaps, due to the lack of satellite data before 1966.

However, even during the satellite era, we have seen an increase in both early season (May – June) and late season (November – December) Atlantic tropical storms. Dr. Jim Kossin of the University of Wisconsin looked at the reasons for this in a 2008 paper titled, “Is the North Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?” He concluded that there is a “apparent tendency toward more common early- and late-season storms that correlates with warming Sea Surface Temperature but the uncertainty in these relationships is high.” He found that hurricane season for both the period 1950-2007 and 1980-2007 got longer by 5 to 10 days per decade (see my blog post on the paper.)

This post has been updated.

Related Post:

• New Research Finds Humans Causing More Strong Hurricanes

The United States and China announced on Saturday that they will work together and with other countries to “phase down” the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are extremely potent greenhouse gases. A global phaseout would be the equivalent of cutting 90 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping just finished a two-day meeting in California initially thought to be more of an unscripted chance for the two leaders to forge a personal relationship than a meeting with any specific policy agenda. This is Xi’s first meeting with Obama as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, which is the analogue to the Chinese presidency. Recently China has made news on plans to cut carbon emissions but then appeared to partially walk some of that news back. The fact that powerful greenhouse gases were on the agenda during their talks is a welcome sign. And if the so-called “Group of Two” regularly acts to reduce the use of substances that cause climate change, it makes it much more likely that the rest of the world will agree to do the same.

Congressional Democrats urged the President to bring up HFCs during the meeting in a letter on Wednesday. According to the White House, the specific agreement between China and the U.S. reads:

Regarding HFCs, the United States and China agreed to work together and with other countries through multilateral approaches that include using the expertise and institutions of the Montreal Protocol to phase down the production and consumption of HFCs, while continuing to include HFCs within the scope of UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol provisions for accounting and reporting of emissions.

HFCs are used in air conditioning, refrigeration, and if released, stay in the atmosphere for 15 years. Their use has skyrocketed as a replacement for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the ozone-destroying compounds whose production was banned in 1990 through a global agreement known as the Montreal Protocol. This agreement was signed in 1987 and required reductions in CFC use but an amendment in 1990 required a complete phaseout. Every country in the world is a party to this agreement. At the time, experts saw HCFs (and HCFCs, which were eventually regulated under the Montreal Protocol) as “one of the best substitutes for reducing stratospheric ozone loss.” In the 1990s, all new vehicle air conditioning systems began to use HFCs.

Yet HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases. While carbon dioxide is the most famous human emission that causes climate change, other so-called “super pollutants” are responsible for nearly half of global warming. HFCs are one of these super pollutants. Automobile manufacturers are aware that the air conditioning systems they sell contain substances that do this, and they encourage consumers to recycle their vehicles so that chemicals like HFCs can be reclaimed.

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The biggest story of our time is the collapse of Arctic sea ice and its impact on our extreme weather (see “CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed“).

“Death spiral” is the right visual metaphor, as the latest monthly update of sea ice volume by creative tech guru Andy Lee Robinson shows:

If recent volume trends continue, many experts say we will see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” within a decade.

Recent research finds that may well usher in a permanent change toward extreme, prolonged weather events “such as drought, flooding, cold spells and heat waves.”

For more the link between the death spiral and weather whiplash, here’s Peter Sinclair’s latest video, featuring interviews with Dr. Jeff Masters and Dr. Jennifer Francis:

Related Posts:

• NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather
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Cartoon by Bob Eckstein via the New Yorker. You can purchase his cartoons here. His website is here. Besides being a great cartoonist, he may be the world’s foremost authority on snowmen.

Maine is trying to lower energy costs and increase energy efficiency. Sadly, its Governor may veto legislation that would do this at the expense of Maine’s ratepayers and emerging renewable energy industry.

A bipartisan omnibus energy bill is making its way through the Maine state legislature. The compromised package, L.D. 1559, passed the Senate on Thursday.

However, Governor Paul LePage opposes the bill, and his energy director said a veto will occur if the bill reaches his desk in its current form.

Andrew Sturgeon, president of the Action Committee of 50 (a group of business and community leaders promoting economic development), wrote a special for the Bangor Daily News highlighting the ways the omnibus bill helps Mainers:

• “By expanding efficiency programs, all electricity consumers achieve a net savings — amounting to $76 million last year.”
• “The expansion of natural gas infrastructure could reduce electric bills of Mainers by $100 million to $200 million per year after full implementation.”
• “The governor proposed adding ‘lowering energy costs’ to the Public Utilities Commission’s mandated responsibilities and goals for the Efficiency Maine Trust, something this bill achieves.”
• “By using $3 million to $5 million per year from Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to reduce residential heating costs, this bill does exactly what the governor asks for.”

Despite the bipartisan work and the savings customers in Maine will experience, LePage will veto the bill because he wants the 100-megawatt cap in the state’s renewable energy standard to be removed.

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“Citi Bike finds itself at the very nexus of five different things that conservatives hate,” explains NY Magazine in a Venn diagram:

ThinkProgress has already reported on the Wall Street Journal’s over-the-top reaction to New York City’s new bike sharing program in which Ed Board member Dorothy Rabinowitz claimed “the bike lobby is an all-powerful enterprise.”

Leaving that absurd allegation aside, increasing the use of bikes cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions, benefits public health, and makes cities more accessible. There is also evidence that installing a bike share station increase economic activity by driving new customers to local shops and restaurants.

But what was missing was a trip to Bed-Stuy to see what regular people thought of the CitiBike, juxtaposed with critics who simply wish the city had installed electric golf carts instead.

The Daily Show‘s Al Madrigal has more, complete with someone popping a wheelie on a hefty CitiBike:

Once upon a time there was a second term President who understood that the science was in on the danger posed by carbon pollution.

This visionary understood “heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and more intense” as he made clear in his State of The Union Address: “We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.”

This leader spoke boldly of our moral obligation to act on climate in his second inaugural address: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

But, lo, a few months passed and he visited the Jersey Shore, much of which is still rebuilding from superstorm Sandy, yet his extended remarks made no mention whatsoever of climate change.

Then, just yesterday, he offered up these uber-lame comments at a California fundraiser:

When it comes to what I think will be one of the most important decisions that we make as a nation — this generation makes — the issue of climate change, we’re not going to be able to make those changes solely through a bunch of individual decisions that are made. We’re going to have to make some collective decisions about how much do we care about this when the science is irrefutable. And that means government is going to have a role to play in helping to organize clean energy research, and making sure that we’re taking into account the pollution that we’re sending into the air and that we’re encouraging new ways of delivering energy and using it more efficiently. We’re going to have a role to play.

“We’re going to have to make some collective decisions about how much do we care about this when the science is irrefutable…. We’re going to have a role to play”? What the hell happened to the guy who said:

But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.

This latest Presidential gobbledygook sounds a lot like preemptive cover-your-ass DC-speak for “I’m going to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

And what the heck does this even mean: “when the science is irrefutable”? The fossil-fuel-funded disinformers already refute the irrefutable and will do so long past the time it is too late to stop catastrophe. What happened to the guy who spoke of accepting “the overwhelming judgment of science”?

For the record, the National Academy of Sciences explained back in 2010 that man-made global warming is a “settled fact“:
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A small town in West Texas suffering drought and increased water demands from oil and gas drilling has run out of water, and the residents are “pretty P.O.’d.” [Texas Tribune]

Barnhart, a small community in West Texas, has run out of water.

John Nanny, an Irion County commissioner and an official with Barnhart’s water supply corporation, said on Thursday that the situation was serious. When reached by telephone, he was working on pumping operations and hoped to have a backup well in service Friday morning. A load of bottled water was on its way to the community center, he said.

The town has one main well that serves 112 customers, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. But the well stopped pumping quickly enough Tuesday evening, and while there is still some water in it, Nanny said, “We don’t want to get down to the mud.”

Nanny said he had checked for a leak but had not found one. The Barnhart area has been hard-hit by drought, he said, just as surging oil and gas drilling activities have increased local water demands. …

The residents of Barnhart are “pretty P.O.’d” about the water situation, Baker said.

New Mexico has approved an extraordinarily low power purchase agreement for the new Macho Springs solar project — cheaper than new coal plants. [Renewable Energy World]

Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates there’s 113 gigawatts in untapped geothermal capacity across the globe. [Bloomberg]

In Central Europe, “torrents of rain have produced another once-in-a-lifetime disaster, barely a decade after the last.” [New York Times]

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