Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a top marine ecologist and senior Obama administration official, is concerned that opening the Arctic to oil and gas development brings unknown risks to human civilization.

In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress Green, Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), discussed the vicious circle of oil and gas greenhouse pollution melting the Arctic sea ice, making it possible for new oil and gas drilling in the region that will melt the ice even faster. Lubchenco had just appeared in a panel on threats to oceans at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference on Friday morning, discussing ocean acidification and the unexpectedly rapid decline of Arctic sea ice, both results of greenhouse pollution from burning fossil fuels.

“Less sea ice means greater access to reserves for gas and oil that are there,” Lubchenco said in the TP Green interview, agreeing that “increased production of oil and gas means less sea ice.” When asked whether there are civilizational risks to a world without permanent Arctic sea ice, Lubchenco explained that “what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic”:

Well, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. It has huge implications for the global system. And one of the reasons people are legitimately concerned about melting of sea ice are the uncertainties associated with the consequences of that for the rest of the planet. We’re entering a no-analogue world here. We’ve never experienced the kinds of changes that we’re seeing now in the Arctic and elsewhere. And we don’t fully understand what the consequences of that are going to be.

Watch the interview:

The United States and other nations with access to the Arctic are taking steps to support the expansion of drilling in regions made accessible by global warming pollution. Although Norway is concerned about the costs of a Deepwater Horizon-like disaster, the government is still encouraging Arctic drilling. In August, Exxon Mobil signed a blockbuster deal with Russia’s Rosneft to explore the Russian reaches of the Arctic ocean for oil. This month, the Department of Interior announced it is moving forward with 500 oil drilling leases sold during the Bush administration for the Chukchi Sea. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency granted Shell an air permit for exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea.

The Arctic Ocean is estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to have vast reserves of oil and gas. Burning of those fossil fuels would add tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide to our already overheated atmosphere.

Although NOAA is the nation’s top oceanographic agency, its scientists play only a minor, advisory role in the government’s approval of offshore drilling, which is run by the Interior Department. NOAA plays a larger role in cleaning up after oil spills. Read more

Our guest blogger is Kiley Kroh, Associate Director for Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Earlier this year, Congressional Republicans decided accurate weather forecasting and hurricane tracking were services the American people could live without. The GOP-sponsored 2011 spending bill slashed the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing $700 million targeted for an overhaul of the nation’s aging environmental satellite system. NOAA scientists have stated unequivocally the existing satellites will fail and if they aren’t replaced, the agency’s ability to provide life-saving information to the American people will be compromised. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator, told reporters yesterday that the agency’s hurricane outlook last year was “spot-on” and cautioned that “not having satellites and applying their latest capabilities could spell disaster“:

Satellites are a must-have when it comes to detecting and tracking dangerous tropical weather. Not having satellites and their capabilities could spell disaster. NOAA’s satellites underpin hurricane forecasts by providing meteorological data over vast areas where we don’t have other means of information.

Highlighting the critical need for accurate forecasting, yesterday NOAA released their annual hurricane forecast predicting yet another “above-normal” hurricane season. This year, Americans can expect up to 18 named storms and as many as six that could become category five hurricanes. Last year’s hurricane season was one of the busiest on record and that is a trend we can expect to continue. Rising ocean temperatures have been found to increase the frequency and intensity of hurricanes – and this year, ocean temperatures are four degrees higher than normal. These alarming trends aren’t limited to hurricanes – scientists have found that as a result of climate change, killer weather is now the “new normal.”

“Because we have insufficient funds in the ’11 budget, we are likely looking at a period of time a few years down the road where we will not be able to do the severe storm warnings and long-term weather forecasts that people have come to expect today,” Lubchenco said.

Though the GOP got their way this year, the battle over NOAA’s budget is far from over – if funding isn’t restored, the federal government will be limited in its ability to anticipate devastating storms and warn the citizens in harm’s way. Will the GOP be so dismissive of American lives the second time around?

The undersea cloud of “highly toxic” oil emanating from BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster “is undoubtedly poisonous,” according to President Obama’s federal oceans chief. Marine scientist Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) director, described the threat posed by the “hidden” plumes of oil and dispersants diffusing into the Gulf of Mexico to its valuable ecosystem at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Tuesday. She told interviewer Andrea Mitchell that NOAA and independent scientists have identified “not a lake of black ooze” but a “cloud of very fine droplets spread over an area in the general vicinity of the well,” a prime spawning ground for bluefin tuna. This oil cloud “is undoubtedly poisonous” to the marine life in the Gulf:

As that oil, which is highly toxic, comes into contact with small larvae, with eggs, fish for example, or other creatures, it is undoubtedly poisonous to them.

Watch it:

“This truly is an environmental disaster but more a human tragedy,” Lubchenco said in her opening remarks. “Its impact is likely to be considerable,” she said of the oil hidden undersea, “but we don’t yet know what it will be.”

The foreign oil giant BP has come under withering fire for questioning the existence of vast undersea oil plumes from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP’s skepticism is nearly matched by the federal government’s top ocean official, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the ocean scientist in charge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), raising more questions about the wisdom of the unnecessary federal collaboration with this environmental criminal.

In a teleconference with reporters, Lubchenco said that numerous teams of ocean scientists have found only “anomalies” that might or might not be oil which might or might not be from the BP disaster. She said that only chemical analysis to fingerprint water samples as being contaminated with the Deepwater Horizon’s oil should be considered confirmation of the plumes. Questioned by the Wonk Room, Lubchenco dismissed the findings of the University of Georgia research vessel Walton Smith team — who took physical samples of water contaminated with oil — as “circumstantial evidence.” After further questioning by Huffington Post’s Dan Froomkin, she then conceded:

It is quite possible there is oil under the surface. I think there is reason to believe that may be the case.

Although it is certainly true that chemical analysis of water samples will be definitive, the evidence for these “possible” oil plumes is far stronger than “circumstantial,” as today’s ABC News report about the Walton Smith mission shows:

Lubchenco’s expressed doubt of the existence of oil plumes is consistent with NOAA’s approach to other scientific questions about this environmental calamity. Like BP, she has dismissed the oil entrained in the loop current as a “very small amount of light sheen” which is “likely to be very, very diluted.” Like BP, Lubchenco claimed the 210,000-gallon-a-day guess for flow rate — which was questioned by independent scientists the day it came out on April 28 — was the “best estimate” for an entire month. Eventually NOAA admitted the actual flow rate was at least 240 to 500 percent greater.

Below is a timeline of the scientific research about these undersea plumes: Read more

BP and Obama administration officials have repeatedly downplayed the extent of the growing oil disaster in the Gulf, arguing that attempts to accurately measure the rate of flow at the seabed are impossible and unnecessary:

Jane Lubchenco, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator: “Simply observing where the oil is coming out is insufficient to really calculate any flow rate with any degree of accuracy.” [White House briefing, 4/29/10]

Lamar McKay, President of BP America: “The volume estimates are based effectively on surface expression, because you can’t measure what’s coming out at the seabed.” [Senate testimony, 5/12/10]

Tom Mueller, BP: “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.” [5/14/10]

Doug Suttles, BP COO, Global Exploration: Since the beginning, we’ve said it’s almost impossible to get a precise number. But ourselves and people from NOAA and others believe that something around 5,000 — it’s actually barrels a day — is the best estimate.” [ABC News, 5/14/10]

Rear Adm. Mary Landry, U.S. Coast Guard: “If the well let go, the design engineers will tell you that it could be approximately 55,000 barrels per day. We don’t think we have that much, because we’ve got satellite imagery; we know what we’re responding to. We know how much we’re seeing on the surface; we can estimate that. So the upward bound of worst case could be approximately 55,000 barrels.” [Blogger call, 5/17/10]

Since April 29, the joint BP-federal command has relied on an estimate from NOAA scientists that the oil rate was increasing by 210,000 gallons (5000 barrels) a day, even though on April 27, independent scientists looking at the same satellite imagery estimated the flow rate was at least 850,000 gallons a day. Without explanation, the administration allowed BP to block scientists from observing the disaster and to suppress video feeds of the spewing oil.

On Wednesday, May 19, Purdue engineering professor Steve Wereley testified before the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee that the statements made by BP and administration officials are false:

There are two statements in the media that I’d like to take issue with and I think that many scientists take issue with. The first is that this leak can’t be measured, and the second is that it doesn’t need to be measured.

I think there’s no — I don’t see any possibility, any scenario in which their number is accurate. I could see potential scenarios in which our numbers could come down, particularly based on the gas to oil ratio. But from what I see in the videos, I don’t see the numbers coming down that significantly.

95,000 [barrels per day] is the baseline. That’s the expected value, there’s an error bound around that, which I put at about 20 percent. So it could be considerably lower, roughly something short of 70,000, up to somewhere around 115,000. I’m definitely happy with saying that it’s fully an order of magnitude higher than what BP projects, without question.

Watch it:

Surface analysis by Dr. Ian McDonald and Dr. John Amos, and subsea video analyis by Dr. Eugene Chang, Dr. Timothy Crone, and Dr. Steve Wereley all indicate the apocalyptic oil spill is growing at a rate between 840,000 gallons to 4,200,000 gallons a day. The surface analysis is clearly a lower bound, as an unknown percentage of the oil is remaining below the surface in the form of toxic plumes hundreds of miles long. Over ten Exxon Valdezes worth of oil may have flooded the Gulf of Mexico already.

There is not, as Dr. Wereley testified, “any possibility” that the BP-NOAA “best estimate” is accurate.

House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN), who has been blocking the passage of comprehensive climate legislation, dismissed a White House report on the damaging effect of global warming on U.S. agriculture. Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the chief of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association and one of the top scientists in the Obama administration, called the climate impacts report released yesterday a “clarion call for action” for a problem that “is happening now, and in our own backyards.” However, the Wall Street Journal reports that Peterson, “when asked by reporters Tuesday about the report’s findings, said they run counter to what many in his region are experiencing“:

We’ve just had the biggest floods and coldest winters we’ve ever had. They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing since they’ll be able to grow more corn.

It is not apparent what farmers Peterson is talking about. As the report explains in its section on the agricultural impacts of climate change, global warming brings not only warmer temperatures but also heavier floods. Despite the relatively cold winter of 2008, over the past thirty years winter temperatures in Peterson’s Minnesota have risen more than 7°F. In fact, floods and higher temperatures associated with global warming have already damaged America’s corn crops, with worse to come:

Analysis of crop responses suggests that even moderate increases in temperature will decrease yields of corn, wheat, sorghum, bean, rice, cotton, and peanut crops.

Responding to Peterson’s argument on a telephone briefing organized by the Center for American Progress, USDA Global Change Program director Bill Hohenstein explained that scientists have estimated that “the effects on the corn yield in the Midwest” from observed changes in temperature and carbon dioxide levels “are a decrease of about 3 percent, not accounting for changes in water availability.” Hohenstein was citing an earlier U.S. Global Change Program report, The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States:

Read more

Obama’s climate scientists are collateral damage in an unrelated fight over Cuba policy with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). Menendez is responsible for an anonymous hold on the nominations of Dr. John Holdren and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, both world-renowned experts on climate change and the physical sciences. Holdren and Lubchenco “sailed through” their confirmation hearing on February 12. But as the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin reports, Menendez has anonymously blocked their full Senate confirmation “as leverage to get Senate leaders’ attention for a matter related to Cuba rather than questioning the nominees’ credentials.” Menendez, a Cuban American, took to the Senate floor last night “to deliver a withering denunciation” of proposed changes to U.S.-Cuban relations included in the budget omnibus:

We should evaluate how to encourage the regime to allow a legitimate opening – not in terms of cell phones and hotel rooms that Cubans can’t afford, but in terms of the right to organize, the right to think and speak what they believe. However, what we are doing with this Omnibus bill, Mr. President, is far from evaluation, and the process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that it puts the Omnibus appropriations package in jeopardy, in spite of all the other tremendously important funding that this bill would provide.

Menendez points to a memo prepared by the staff of Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) as recommending a policy change that Menendez worries could “rescue the regime by improving its economic fortunes,” namely giving Cuba “financial credit to purchase agricultural products from the U.S.”

These picks have in fact languished for months, having been put forward by President Obama on December 20. Lubchenco’s nomination to be administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has been stalled in part by the turmoil over finding a Secretary of Commerce, whose department includes NOAA. NOAA career staff are gamely working to draft a spending plan for the $830 million in the recently passed recovery act, and energy adviser Carol Browner is managing climate policy from the White House with a skeleton staff. But the Office of Science and Technology Policy is a key White House office, and its director Holdren is meant to be the top science adviser to the president. The “wise counsel” of Holdren and Lubchenco is irreplaceable, especially given the scope of the challenges our nation faces.

Menendez spokesman Afshin Mohamadi declined to comment on the putatively anonymous hold. “He takes a back seat to no one on the environment,” Mohamadi discussed by telephone, saying the senator’s “record best reflects his feelings on the urgency of combatting climate change.” When asked if Sen. Menendez hopes to have climate legislation on President Obama’s desk before the end of 2009, Mohamadi explained that Sen. Menendez believes it “would be helpful to have it in place going into the December international climate change conference in Copenhagen.”

Each day that Dr. Holdren and Dr. Lubchenco have to sit on the sidelines makes that goal more unlikely.