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The Polluters the Paris Treaty Ignores

by Myrna Posted on December 11, 2015

International shipping and aviation emit as much as entire wealthy nations, but they’re not bound by the COP21 deal. 06photo/Shutterstock With the Paris climate talks coming to a close, participating nations are hashing out the details of how to hold each other to their carbon reduction goals and finance the whole transition to a cleaner world. Non-state actors are present, too; 400 cities signed a Compact of Mayors to set and track climate goals. And financial institutions have made big commitments to shift investment away from fossil fuels and better disclose climate-related business risks. But there are two particular industries that must factor into any plan to cut carbon and yet aren’t directly represented in the current COP21 talks: international shipping and aviation. They’re both big. International shipping produces 2.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to all of Germany. Meanwhile total aviation yields about 2 percent of global GHGs, and international flights account for 65 percent of that figure. These emissions won’t be covered by reductions being discussed at COP21, because they don’t happen within the boundaries of any specific countries. They’re also projected to rise dramatically by 2050. Two major obstacles stand in the way of resolving emissions from international shipping and aviation. The first is procedural: those industries are not bound by the Paris climate deal. The second is practical: the world currently lacks a promising technology to replace carbon-based propulsion systems, as well as a promising alternative to carbon-based fuel. Read the rest at CityLab. See original article here:  The Polluters the Paris Treaty Ignores ; ; ;

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The Polluters the Paris Treaty Ignores

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The Keystone XL Pipeline Isn’t Dead Yet. Here’s What You Need to Know About What Comes Next.

by Myrna Posted on November 3, 2015

Excerpt from:  The Keystone XL Pipeline Isn’t Dead Yet. Here’s What You Need to Know About What Comes Next. ; ; ;

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The Keystone XL Pipeline Isn’t Dead Yet. Here’s What You Need to Know About What Comes Next.

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We Finally Found a GOP Congressman Who Believes in Science. Too Bad He’s a Felon.

by Myrna Posted on January 6, 2015

Michael Grimm pleaded guilty to tax evasion. As the new Congress is sworn in today, New York’s 11th district, comprising Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, has been left without a lawmaker in the House of Representatives. The missing member: Republican Michael Grimm. The disgraced politician announced his resignation last month after pleading guilty to tax evasion—a federal felony. He officially left Congress yesterday and will be sentenced in June. If New York’s tabloid headline writers are anything to go by (“Good Riddance!” said the Daily News), the city won’t muster much sympathy for a man who cheated on his taxes when he ran a restaurant (before running for Congress). Nor will it miss his aggressive style: “I’ll break you in half. Like a boy,” he once told a television reporter. Oh yeah, and there was that time he allegedly waved a gun around at a nightclub in Queens when he was an F.B.I. agent. (Grimm has denied doing this.) But there is one lesser known fact about Michael Grimm worth taking a moment to mourn as he leaves office: He was one of a precious few Republican politicians who actually accepted the science of climate change. That wasn’t always the case. During a campaign debate in 2010, Grimm told the audience that “the jury is obviously still out on it. We see nothing but conflicting reports from across the globe.” He added, “I’m not sure, I’m not a scientist”—that now-familiar line deployed by a number of Republican politicians. But then Grimm had his come-to-science moment, which was documented in last year’s award-winning Showtime docu-series, Years of Living Dangerously. In a segment exploring the impacts of Superstorm Sandy on Grimm’s New York district (you can watch part of it above), the congressman recounted how his thinking had changed. Here’s a transcript (via The Huffington Post), featuring interviewer Chris Hayes, from MSNBC: HAYES: Last time you and I spoke, you said the jury was still out on climate science. Do you still feel that way? GRIMM: After speaking with Bob Inglis, it made me do some of my own research, you know, I looked at some of the stuff that he sent over, my staff looked at it. But the vast majority of respected scientists say that it’s conclusive, the evidence is clear. So I don’t think the jury is out. HAYES: The basic story of—we’re putting carbon in the atmosphere, the planet’s getting warmer, that’s gonna make the sea levels rise—like, the basic story of that, you pretty much agree with, right? GRIMM: Sure, I mean there’s no question that, um, you know, the oceans have risen, right? And the climate change part is, is a real part of it. The problem that we’re gonna have right now—there’s no oxygen left in the room in Washington for another big debate, that’s the reality. It’s an otherwise pretty depressing interview, in which Grimm says that science is “irrelevant” when it comes to politics on the Hill. In a separate segment below, Grimm elaborated on the intractable political divides that prevent lawmakers from discussing climate change. He’s speaking here to former GOP Rep. Bob Inglis, who experienced first-hand the negative impact that believing in science can have on a Republican’s career: Inglis lost his seat in South Carolina after a tea party revolt in 2010, in part because he wouldn’t publicly deny that humans were causing the globe to warm. This exchange is representative of what Years of Living Dangerously did so well in this episode. It revealed something that you or I rarely see: a frank discussion between politicians about the risk on taking on the establishment: Republicans now control both houses of Congress for the first time since 2007, and incoming GOP lawmakers largely fall into the climate skeptic camp, as my Climate Desk colleague Tim McDonnell recently illustrated. James Inhofe, the party’s climate denial standard barer from Oklahoma, will likely be the chair of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee, for example. In the House, there are a few Republicans who provide a modicum of hope, including Chris Gibson (R-NY), who assumed office in 2013, and who said last month that he plans to introduce a resolution to rally Congress to “recognize the reality” of climate change. But for the moment, what Grimm tells Inglis in the clip above seems to be the rule among Republicans on Capitol Hill: “Let’s say that they did agree with the science, and they were bold enough, and had the political courage…and then they lose?” he said. “They’re not all lemmings. Okay? They’re not just going to go right off that cliff. So the political constraints I think are a lot bigger than most people would understand, and they’re very real.” Source: We Finally Found a GOP Congressman Who Believes in Science. Too Bad He’s a Felon. ; ; ;

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We Finally Found a GOP Congressman Who Believes in Science. Too Bad He’s a Felon.

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Lima Climate Change Talks Best Chance for a Generation, Say Upbeat Diplomats

by Myrna Posted on December 3, 2014

Hopes rise for global warming deal after US-China carbon commitments inject much-needed momentum into Peru talks. Delegates attend the opening ceremony of the Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru. Martin Mejia/AP UN climate negotiations opening in Lima on Monday have the best chance in a generation of striking a deal on global warming, diplomats say. After a 20-year standoff, diplomats and longtime observers of the talks say there is rising optimism that negotiators will be able to secure a deal that will commit all countries to take action against climate change. The two weeks of talks in Peru are intended to deliver a draft text to be adopted in Paris next year that will commit countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions without compromising the economic development of poor countries. Diplomats and observers of the UN climate negotiations said recent actions by the US and China had injected much-needed momentum. Read the rest at the Guardian. Link – Lima Climate Change Talks Best Chance for a Generation, Say Upbeat Diplomats

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Lima Climate Change Talks Best Chance for a Generation, Say Upbeat Diplomats

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“So Little Time Between Hope and Death”

by Myrna Posted on December 2, 2014

This fall, Kashmir saw its worst floods in more than half a century. My family and I barely survived them. A Kashmiri Muslim man carries an electric transformer through floodwaters. Dar Yasin/AP When Kashmir’s uprising was at its peak in the late 1990s, I used to walk along the banks of the Jhelum River after school. Amid the fighting between India, which controls the part of Kashmir where I grew up, and armed groups battling for independence or union with Pakistan, the river was calm in a way that the rest of the region wasn’t. I moved away from my home in Srinagar, the summer capital of India-administered Kashmir, six years ago, but every time I come back, I try to walk on the bridge over the river, to watch the water flow with the same serenity that it had when I was a child. The same river submerged my family’s house this fall in Kashmir’s worst flooding in more than half a century, which ultimately killed more than 400 people on both the Indian and Pakistani sides of the region’s disputed border. But that river wasn’t the Jhelum of my childhood. It wasn’t the Jhelum I loved. When the river started to breach banks and burst levees on September 6, I was at my parents’ house in Srinagar, visiting my sister, who had just given birth to a daughter. By then, it had been raining for days. But that evening was almost completely ordinary. We heard the occasional sounds of cars rushing past. Loudspeakers in the nearby mosque broadcast periodic announcements that residents should move to higher floors of their houses in case of flooding, as well as requests for young men to help reinforce the river’s embankment with sandbags. Read the rest at The Atlantic. This article: “So Little Time Between Hope and Death”

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“So Little Time Between Hope and Death”

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Meet the Senate’s New Climate Denial Caucus

by ReinaSherrill Posted on November 5, 2014

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Their views range from tepid acceptance of the science to flat-out rejection. Shutterstock Well, folks, it wasn’t such a great night on the climate action front. It looks like the millions of dollars that environmental philanthropist Tom Steyer invested in the midterms didn’t buy much other than a fledgling political infrastructure to sock away for 2016. With Republicans now in control of the Senate, we’re likely to see a bill to push through the Keystone XL pipeline coming down the pike soon. And Mitch McConnell, probably the coal industry’s biggest booster, retained his seat. In fact, McConnell and his climate-denying colleague James Inhofe of Oklahoma—the likely chair of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee—won a lot of new friends on Capitol Hill last night. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that most of the Senate’s newly elected Republicans are big boosters of fossil fuels and don’t agree with the mainstream scientific consensus on global warming. Here’s an overview of their statements on climate change, ranging from a few who seem to at least partly accept to science to those who flat-out reject it. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska): In September, Sullivan, a former Alaska attorney general, said “the jury’s out” on whether climate change is manmade. (Actually, the jury came in, for the umpteenth time, just this week.) He repeated that position last month, when he said the role human-caused greenhouse gases play in global warming is “a question scientists are still debating,” adding that “we shouldn’t lock up America’s resources and kill tens of thousands of good jobs by continuing to pursue the President’s anti-energy policies.” Tom Cotton (R-Ark.): Cotton has seized on a common but misleading notion among climate change deniers: “The simple fact is that for the last 16 years the earth’s temperature has not warmed.” He admits, however, that “it’s most likely that human activity has contributed to some of” the temperature increase of the last hundred years. Still, he supports building new coal plants and the Keystone XL pipeline. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.): Gardner is shifty on the issue. In a debate last month, he wouldn’t give a straight yes-or-no answer on whether mankind has contributed to global warming. “I believe that the climate is changing, I disagree to the extent that it’s been in the news,” that humans are responsible, he said. Yet at the same time, he admitted that “pollution contributes” to climate change. David Perdue (R-Ga.): “In science, there’s an active debate going on” about whether climate change is real, Perdue told Slate this year, adding that if there are climate-related impacts to Georgia’s coast, some smart person will figure out how to deal with them. Perdue has also slammed the Obama administration for waging a “war on coal” and has called the EPA’s new carbon emission rules “shortsighted.” Joni Ernst (R-Iowa): Ernst is another rider on the “I don’t know” bandwagon. “I don’t know the science behind climate change,” she told an audience in September. She also hedged the question beautifully in a May interview with The Hill: “I haven’t seen proven proof that it is entirely man-made.” But she supports recycling! Bill Cassidy/Mary Landrieu (La.): This race is going to a runoff. Landrieu, the incumbent Democrat, has never been much of a climate hawk—she recently said humans do contribute to observed climate change but criticized Obama for “singling out” the oil industry for regulation. But at least she’s better on global warming than Cassidy, her Republican challenger, who flatly denies that climate change exists. He said last month that “global temperatures have not risen in 15 years.” Steve Daines (R-Mont.): Daines is a harsh critic of Obama’s energy and climate policies, which he said “threaten nearly 5,000 Montana jobs and would cause Montana’s electricity prices to skyrocket.” While in the House, he signed a pledge that he will “oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.” He believes global warming, to the extent that it exists, is probably caused by solar cycles. Tom Tillis (R-N.C.): During a North Carolina Republican primary debate, all four candidates laughed out loud when asked if they believed climate change is a “fact.” Ha! Ha! Then they all said, “No.” Later, Tillis expanded on that position, arguing in a debate with his Democratic rival, Sen. Kay Hagan, that “the point is the liberal agenda, the Obama agenda, the Kay Hagan agenda, is trying to use [climate change] as a Trojan horse for their energy policy.” Ben Sasse (R-Neb.): Sasse hasn’t said much about climate science, but he supports building the Keystone XL pipeline and opening up more federal land for oil and gas drilling. He also wants to “encourage the production of coal.” James Lankford (R-Okla.): As a member of the House, Lankford called global warming a “myth.” He also, along with Gardner, Cotton, Shelley Moore Capito (R. W.Va.), Cassidy, and Daines, voted to prevent the Pentagon from considering the national security impacts of global warming, even though top Defense Department officials have repeatedly issued warnings that climate change could worsen conflicts around the world. Lankford also floated an amendment to an energy appropriations bill that would have blocked funding for research related to the social costs of carbon pollution. Mike Rounds (R-S.C.): Rounds appears to accept at least some of the science on climate change. As governor of South Dakota, Rounds said that “there are a number of different causes that we recognize, and the scientists recognize, are the cause of global warming,” and that humans are “absolutely” one of those. He fervently supports the Keystone pipeline. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.): In a debate last month, Capito said, “I don’t necessarily think the climate’s changing, no.” Then she clarified that her opinion might change with the weather: “Yes it’s changing, it changes all the time, we heard it raining out there,” she said. “I’m sure humans are contributing to it.” I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Capito is also a founding member of the Congressional Coal Caucus.

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Meet the Senate’s New Climate Denial Caucus

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Meet the Senate’s New Climate Denial Caucus

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Big Oil’s New Pitch: Fracking Means Never Having to Fear Putin

by Myrna Posted on July 29, 2014

Oil and gas companies want Washington to believe that fracking can save Ukraine from Russia. It can’t. A worker passes by natural gas compressing equipment near the village of Kovalivka, Ukraine. Iren Moroz/AP As Ukraine sinks deeper into crisis, the oil and gas industry is pressing the United States to deploy its abundant natural gas supply as a weapon against Russia—and lawmakers of both parties are lining up behind the proposal. “We have this natural-gas boom,” Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio) said last week, after the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet, allegedly by pro-Russian rebels. “We can use this newfound energy as a diplomatic tool to give the European leaders some backbone in standing up to the Russians.” Their enthusiasm is understandable: Roughly half the natural gas Russia ships to Europe flows through Ukraine. During past disputes, Russia has clamped down on the nation’s gas supply, creating turmoil in European energy markets. Many US politicians fear this dynamic could dampen Europe’s response to the Ukraine crisis and have begun looking to the bounty of natural gas from the domestic fracking boom to counter Russia’s energy dominance. As House Speaker John Boehner put it in a March Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, ”The ability to turn the tables and put the Russian leader in check lies right beneath our feet, in the form of vast supplies of natural energy.” Washington has also seen a flurry of proposals to speed up natural gas exports. Last month, following a lobbying blitz by oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Halliburton, and Chevron, the House passed a billrequiring the Department of Energy (DOE) to rule on proposed natural gas export terminals within 90 days. The Senate has weighed similar bills and amendments. While they haven’t managed to bypass the prevailing Senate gridlock, these measures have considerable bipartisan support, and backers are determined to push them through. The fight over expediting natural gas exports helped derail the popular Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill and bogged down negotiations over an aid package for Ukraine. As Congress prepares to adjourn for its August recess, opponents of expanding exports are bracing for a new onslaught. “We are on the lookout, particularly for amendments being slipped into must-pass funding bills,” says one senior Senate staffer. Read the rest at Mother Jones. Original article: Big Oil’s New Pitch: Fracking Means Never Having to Fear Putin Related ArticlesObama’s Coal-Leasing Program Is Costing Taxpayers More Than $50 BillionWhite House: Delaying Climate Action Will Carry Heavy Economic CostThis Huge Corporation Is Tackling Climate Change—Because It’s a Threat to the Bottom Line

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Big Oil’s New Pitch: Fracking Means Never Having to Fear Putin

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How do you get an entire state to stop smoking on the beach?

by Myrna Posted on May 29, 2014

See the original article here – How do you get an entire state to stop smoking on the beach? Related Articles(You gotta) fight for your rightWhen we pollute the oceans, we pollute ourselvesWhy surfers care about plastics in the ocean (explained in a single photo)

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How do you get an entire state to stop smoking on the beach?

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Republicans Portray Obama Climate Push As A Distraction

by Myrna Posted on May 9, 2014

Three members of the Senate’s GOP leadership were not impressed, suggesting Obama was wasting time and effort. Gage Skidmore/Flickr WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in the Senate portrayed President Barack Obama’s push to highlight the devastating impacts of climate change this week as a distraction from issues that are more important to them, and, they argued, to Americans. The Obama administration released its mammoth National Climate Assessment on Tuesday, finding that climate change is already wreaking havoc across the country, and that it will get worse. At the same time, Obama himself met with weather forecasters at the White House to focus attention on the issue. Three members of the Senate’s GOP leadership were not impressed, suggesting Obama was wasting time and effort. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) put the threats of a warming planet on par with reports of botched care at the Veterans Administration. “I wish the White House, instead of traveling around the country talking about the urgency of climate change, would talk with equal urgency about this failure of leadership and confidence at the VA,” said Cornyn, speaking at the leaders’ weekly press conference. To keep reading, click here. Taken from: Republicans Portray Obama Climate Push As A Distraction Related Articles7 Scary Facts About How Global Warming Is Scorching the United StatesWATCH: These Reefs Are Beautiful—But Most of the Coral Is DeadWhat Happens to Fido When Fracking Comes to Town?

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Republicans Portray Obama Climate Push As A Distraction

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Chernobyl’s Toll on Nature

by Myrna Posted on May 5, 2014

Biologist Timothy Mousseau has been studying the lasting effects of radiation on the flora and fauna of Chernobyl, Ukraine. Original article: Chernobyl’s Toll on Nature Related ArticlesBlistering barnacles! Ship’s paint can save 9% of fuel use, and even earn carbon creditsSherpa’s Family on AvalancheHow To Convince Conservative Christians That Global Warming Is Real

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Chernobyl’s Toll on Nature

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