Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 142

Jeb Bush Says People Who Accept Climate Science Are ‘Really Arrogant’

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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at the winter meeting of the free market Club for Growth winter economic conference at the Breakers Hotel, Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015, in Palm Beach, Fla.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Joe Skipper

First, Jeb Bush said he was “not a scientist” when it comes to climate change. Now, he says the scientists are not to be believed.

In comments reported by CNN on Wednesday, the potential 2016 presidential candidate called the science of human-caused climate change “convoluted,” and questioned the degree to which carbon emissions are responsible.

“For the people to say the science is decided on this is really arrogant, to be honest with you,” he reportedly said. “It’s this intellectual arrogance that now you can’t have a conversation about it, even.”

Of the climate scientists who actively publish research, 97 percent agree that humans cause climate change. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which draws on the knowledge of almost 800 climate experts across the globe — says it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities are the main cause of atmospheric and ocean warming since the 1950s.

In the scientific world, a 97 percent rate of agreement does amount to a consensus. No scientific issue is 100 percent certain; Indeed, there are similarly small percentages of researchers who think the HIV virus does not cause AIDS, and that smoking cigarettes does not cause cancer.

But policy decisions surrounding the human health risks of HIV and cigarettes don’t take into consideration the very small percentage of scientists with contrary opinions, because a percentage of consensus in the high nineties is as close to certainty as most science ever gets.

Still, the three percent rate of scientific uncertainty when it comes to whether humans cause climate change is what most prominent conservatives have relied upon when questioning the reality of the phenomenon. That fact has led many (including this publication) to brand the Republican party as “anti-science.”

Interestingly enough, Bush followed up his comments on climate change on Wednesday with a call for conservatives to become better at understanding and embracing science in all its forms.

“Just generally I think as conservatives we should embrace innovation, embrace technology, embrace science,” he said. “Sometimes I sense that we pull back from the embrace of these things. We shouldn’t.”

The post Jeb Bush Says People Who Accept Climate Science Are ‘Really Arrogant’ appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Kayaktivists Vs. A Massive Oil Rig: Inside Seattle’s Fight Against Shell’s Arctic Drilling Plans

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Kayaktivists protesting the 300-foot Polar Pioneer.

CREDIT: Emily Johnston

On Saturday, they came by sea: hundreds of “kayaktivists” gathering around a newly-arrived, massive offshore oil drilling rig in Seattle’s Elliot Bay.

On Monday, they came by land, with an estimated 700 people blocking the road to the Port of Seattle’s Terminal 5 for about six hours.

Their goal? Disrupt access as the rig attempted to prepare for departure to Alaska in Shell’s bid to start drilling for oil in the Arctic. Do it long enough to cause a delay that shortens the already-short drilling window during the Arctic summer.

The effort was organized by ShellNo, “a coalition of activists, artists, and noisemakers battling Shell in Seattle.” A broad array of local groups, as well as some who came down from Alaska, have turned what would have been a simple drilling rig transfer into a rallying cry for climate change and the Arctic.

“To be honest, this has been something of a surprise to me,” said Emily Johnston of 350 Seattle, one of the coalition’s partner organizations. “I’ve never seen anything like this. When the Kulluk [a Shell Arctic drilling rig] was here in 2012 there was nothing like this here.”

“Part of our goal is to delay them as long as possible because the drilling window is quite small,” Johnston said.

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Protesters lift up a circular tarp painted in earth colors during a rally at Terminal 5 at the Port of Seattle, Monday, May 18, 2015, in Seattle where the Polar Pioneer oil drilling rig and other equipment to be used by Royal Dutch Shell for Arctic oil drilling is currently stationed.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

Shell has spent well over $5 billion in its effort to try to explore for oil in the rapidly melting Arctic Ocean, attempting to make progress for several years and thus far failing miserably.

In 2012, the oil giant hit delay after delay: its oil spill recovery barge failed to meet code, one rig went out of control in Dutch Harbor after slipping anchor, they postponed exploratory drilling until 2013 after just drilling two preparatory wells, and another rig (the aforementioned Kulluk) was nearly lost after it ran aground in harsh weather while heading south for the winter.

In both 2013 and 2014 they cancelled the Arctic drilling season before it even started.

Shell’s proposal to drill in the frozen — but rapidly warming — Arctic gained new life last week after the Obama administration conditionally approved Shell’s plan to drill up to six exploratory wells 70 miles off Alaska’s coast. Abigail Ross Hopper the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), said the agency took a “thoughtful approach” to considering Arctic exploration. Shell still would need seven more permits to get final approval to drill in earnest.

“Scientists have told us over and over that drilling in the Arctic means cooking our planet even faster, and plunging deeper into climate chaos,” said Karthik Ganapathy, 350.org’s U.S. communications manager. “While President Obama might have missed that memo, our movement hasn’t, which is why so many people are standing up and putting their bodies on the line to say Shell No to Arctic drilling.”

Three things changed between this year and Shell’s last attempt in 2012 that made Seattle a new climate battleground.

First, Shell sends its Arctic-bound drilling rigs through the Port of Seattle, and locals have realized that their city has become a climate choke point as companies look for ways to exploit the offshore oil resources in the Arctic.

Second, instead of mooring their rig at a private dock like in 2012, Shell and local contractor Foss Maritime are using the Port of Seattle, a public entity. This enabled the public pressure that helped the Port Commission to vote to delay the arrival of the rigs last week “pending further legal review.” The City of Seattle this week declared that the rig did not have a proper permit, issuing a violation notice that could result in minor daily fines.

The third factor that led to the massive resistance facing Shell this year was the evidence in research published in Nature this year, in order to keep global temperature increases below 2°C, all fossil fuels in the Arctic need to stay in the ground.

So now Shell has found it cannot quietly send its Arctic drilling rigs through Seattle.

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Justin Finkbonner, the Lummi Youth Canoe Family skipper, stands in his canoe in front of the Arctic-bound Polar Pioneer.

CREDIT: Emily Johnston

Saturday’s kayak-based protest brought hundreds of people on kayaks outside a hundred-yard exclusion zone around the massive Polar Pioneer rig. No one was arrested, as the Coast Guard worked with the kayakers, who sometimes drifted closer to the rig, to keep everyone safe.

“I thought it went pretty beautifully,” said Bill Moyer, co-founder of the Backbone Campaign, one of ShellNo’s partner organizations. “It succeeded in its main objective: to safely and beautifully put hundreds of people on the water that garnered attention across the world.”

Carl Wassilie, a Yupiaq biologist and former fisherman has been fighting oil extraction in the Arctic since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, and traveled down to Seattle to describe the horrible consequences of the spill on locals.

The protest’s venue posed myriad hazards. The water around the rig is so polluted that it is actually a Superfund site, and a Grist reporter who piloted a kayak that day said it felt oily to the touch.

“It was so great to see such a contrast between the colorful, beautiful collection of hundreds of canoes, human sized, human powered,” Johnston said, “against the hulking monster in the background.”

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CREDIT: Emily Johnston

On Monday, about 700 people met at Harbor Island and proceeded down the truck road toward Terminal 5, which is where the massive rig is moored, according to 350 Seattle’s Johnston. From there they set up blockades at the ends of the road in a “nonviolent direct action,” preventing people from getting into the entrance for around six hours.

No one was hurt or arrested and the demonstration remained peaceful, under the watch of about a dozen police on foot and bicycle. A Shell spokesperson said that the demonstration did not affect the work underway to prepare for the rig’s journey north.

Jeff Raley, an oil industry worker who had recently lost his job came to see the rig when it arrived on Thursday to show support for oil industry jobs, according to the Seattle Times. “If these (activists) choose to put me and guys like me out of work for an idea, what are they trying to do?”

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March to Terminal 5.

CREDIT: Emily Johnston

One of the only reasons Shell can seriously entertain the prospect of exploratory offshore drilling in the Arctic is because there is less and less ice to block its activities each year. In February, winter sea ice reached its smallest extent in the satellite record era.

The U.S. recently took over as chair of the Arctic Council, an international body charged with addressing important Arctic issues. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to the council in April, identified climate change as the first thing on which the U.S. would focus. While he spotlighted renewable energy as the solution, he did not mention fossil fuels or energy extraction at all. Kerry also said that while the increased human traffic brought by melting Arctic ice threatened maritime ecosystems, there were also benefits to that traffic.

Yet as Mia Bennett pointed out on the Arctic news blog Cryopolitics, “the first major choice that the U.S. has made as Arctic Council chair has been to conditionally approve Shell’s exploratory drilling plans in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska this summer.”

This week’s oil pipeline spill into the waters off Santa Barbara had the benefit of a fairly quick spill response enabled by industry and government infrastructure near by. Should something go wrong for Shell while drilling or transporting oil in the harsh, icy, cold, and remote Arctic Ocean, the nearest Coast Guard facility is over a thousand miles away.

With the protests over, what is next for the rigs?

Johnston said that organizers believe that Shell is trying to get underway by the end of May or the beginning of June.

On Tuesday, Shell’s CEO assured investors that the rig was in the Port legally.

“The contract that we have with Foss, the maritime contractor that we have there, the lease that they have in terminal 5 we think they are legally valid and indeed have tested it and are ready to move ahead with putting the Polar Pioneer (rig) there, loading it out so it is ready for its journey to Alaska,” Ben van Beurden said.

“We have not seen, apart from the protests, any legal obstacles for us to do that.”

Moyer said he understood that the rig workers were working 12-hour shifts for the next week. “My guess is that they’ll be leaving soon.”

The Port of Seattle will be holding town halls and hearings over the next several weeks, potentially visible public events. The second rig Shell plans to bring to the Arctic, the Noble Discoverer, arrived in Puget Sound earlier this month and is expected to arrive at Terminal 5 in the near future, possibly attracting similar protests seeking delays. CREDO Action launched a petition asking people to “tell President Obama not to drill the Arctic.”

“Business as usual is not on the table,” Johnston said, when asked what Shell and Foss Maritime could expect in the next few weeks.

The post Kayaktivists Vs. A Massive Oil Rig: Inside Seattle’s Fight Against Shell’s Arctic Drilling Plans appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Study Links Record Dolphin Die-Off In The Gulf Of Mexico To Deepwater Horizon Spill

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CREDIT: shutterstock

Exposure to oil and dispersants from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico to develop lesions and die, according to a new study.

The study, published Wednesday in PLOS One, looked at that the unusually high number of dolphins that died off the coast of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi between June 2010 and December 2012. The researchers compared the 46 dead dolphins they looked at to 106 dolphin carcasses they found outside either outside of the “unusual mortality event” region — dolphins found in places such as South Carolina, Texas, and North Carolina — or found before the Deepwater Horizon spill. The disaster, which killed 11 men and sent millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in April 2010.

The study found that the dolphins associated with the unusual mortality event — which, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is the highest bottlenose dolphin die-off in the Gulf of Mexico, and is ongoing — were more likely to have certain forms of pneumonia and adrenal problems than other dolphins, and that these problems were consistent with exposure to oil and dispersants. The dead dolphins that had been affected by the spill were found with lung, liver, and adrenal lesions.

“These dolphins had some of the most severe lung lesions I’ve ever seen,” Kathleen Colegrove, one of the study’s authors and associate professor at the University of Illinois, said during a press call Wednesday.

These dolphins had some of the most severe lung lesions I’ve ever seen

According to the study, the dolphins found off the coast of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi had “rare, life-threatening and chronic adrenal gland and lung diseases,” and these diseases are “are consistent with exposure to petroleum compounds as seen in other mammals.” Because of this consistency, the study concluded that the Deepwater Horizon spill helped cause the dolphins’ deaths, and that the lung and adrenal problems made the dolphins more susceptible to other stressors such as cold water and infections. The scientists looked at other possible causes of the dolphin die-off, including diseases that have resulted in dolphin deaths in the past, but ruled them all out.

“No feasible alternative causes remain that can reasonably explain the timing, location and nature of these distinct lesions,” Stephanie Venn-Watson, lead author of the study and veterinary epidemiologist said on the press call Wednesday.

The researchers said in the call Wednesday that bottlenose dolphins are particularly susceptible to oil and dispersant exposure because they take “big breaths” at the surface of the water, meaning that they’re likely to breathe in any contaminants that rest there.

The study is the latest to tie a drop in dolphin health to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and is part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment on the spill, which is being conducted by NOAA, BP, and federal and state agencies. In 2013, a study found that dolphins living in Barataria Bay, Louisiana were suffering from significant lung damage and hormonal problems — health issues that the study noted were “consistent with petroleum hydrocarbon exposure and toxicity.” Earlier this year, researchers also linked the unusual number of dolphin deaths and strandings to the oil spill, but the link wasn’t as definitive as in the most recent study.

“What this study really does is create a really strong link in the chain that shows that not only did you have an oil spill, but the habitat, particularly in Barataria Bay was impacted,” Alisha Renfro, staff scientist at the National Wildlife Federation’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign, told ThinkProgress of Wednesday’s study.

The fact that the researchers were able to eliminate all other possible causes of death of the Gulf dolphins was important, Renfro said, because it strengthens the conclusion that the oil spill contributed to the dolphin’s deaths.

BP disputes the study’s findings — as it has in past cases of research linking the drop in dolphin health to the Deepwater Horizon spill.

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In this photo taken May 10, 2015, a dead dolphin washes ashore in the Gulf of Mexico on Grand Isle, La.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Cain Burdeau

“The data we have seen thus far, including the new study from NOAA, do not show that oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident caused an increase in dolphin mortality,” Geoff Morrell, BP’s Senior Vice President for U.S. Communications and External Affairs, said in a statement. “This new paper fails to show that the illnesses observed in some dolphins were caused by exposure to Macondo oil.”

Morrell also noted in the statement that the dolphin strandings in the Gulf began in February 2010 — a few months before the Deepwater Horizon spill. The researchers acknowledged this fact on the press call, but said that those strandings were more localized than the die-off seen after the spill.

As BP is still wrapped up in court proceedings over the spill, the studies from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment have been slow to come out. But Renfro said that, as more and more of these studies come out, the country will be able to better understand how much the spill affected the Gulf ecosystem. There are still many creatures that may have been affected by the spill that scientists don’t have as clear of data on as bottlenose dolphins, including sperm whales and sea turtles.

“We’re still trying to understand what happened and what the status of the Gulf is and what it’ll be in the future,” Renfro said. “I don’t think we have all the information yet, and I think that BP is a little premature in trying to brush it off and say the Gulf is fine…I think we have to wait and see, and I think the science isn’t quite there yet.”

The true impact on the ecosystem isn’t the only question surrounding the Deepwater Horizon disaster, five years after the spill occurred. The total oil spilled, the impacts of human health, the total amount BP will have to pay and the future of the deep sea environment are all still unclear.

The post Study Links Record Dolphin Die-Off In The Gulf Of Mexico To Deepwater Horizon Spill appeared first on ThinkProgress.

President Obama To Coast Guard Graduates: Climate Change Is A ‘Serious Threat To Global Security’

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President Barack Obama and Ensign Mary Elizabeth Hazen strike a pose after she received her diploma and commission at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation. Obama used his address to talk about the threats posed by climate change.

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS

President Barack Obama told the Coast Guard graduating class Wednesday that climate change is a “serious threat to global security.”

Climate change “will affect everything that you do in your careers,” Obama told the class of 2015 at a graduation ceremony in New London, Connecticut. He applauded the Coast Guard’s low-emissions initiatives and called on the newly commissioned officers to be leaders in the continued effort to reduce carbon emissions.

“Our men and women in uniform show us the way,” he said. “They are used to sacrifice and they are used to doing hard stuff.”

Climate change will directly impact the Coast Guard’s activities. In addition to causing rising sea levels and diminishing sea ice, which will literally change the shape of the Coast Guard’s purview, climate change is also behind increased extreme weather events and can contribute to political instability. In his speech, Obama referenced climate change’s role in Superstorm Sandy, as well as in war and terrorism in Syria and Nigeria.

“This is not just a problem for countries on the coast or certain regions in the word,” he said. “Climate change will affect every country on the planet.”

Readiness in the face of climate change is an increasing concern for the U.S. military. Climate change is expected to impact to homeland security, economic structures, and the safety and health of Americans, Obama said.

The same day as Obama’s speech, the White House released “The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate,” a collection of findings that outlines climate change’s impacts on national and international security, as well as the new demands it puts on military resources. The report concludes:

Climate change is predicted to strain economies and societies around the world, placing an additional burden on already-vulnerable nations abroad and putting pressure on capacity at home. Climate change will change the nature of U.S. military missions, demand more resources in the Arctic and other coastal regions vulnerable to rising sea levels and other impacts, and require a multilateral response to the growing humanitarian crises that climate change is predicted to bring.

The Commander of the U.S. Pacific Forces has called climate change the biggest threat to the region’s security.

Obama didn’t miss the opportunity Wednesday to call out those who question or deny the science behind climate change, a group that includes over 56 percent of Congressional Republicans.

“The best scientists in the world know climate change is happening,” Obama said. “Our analysts in the intelligence community know climate change is happening.”

Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have been in the past 15 years, Obama noted. This year, the earth has seemed to break heat records every month.

“Politicians who say they care about military readiness ought to care about this, as well,” Obama added.

Denying anthropogenic climate change is being seen more and more as anti-American. In a video interview with Obama last month, Bill Nye framed accepting the science as an important part of being a patriot.

U.S. carbon emissions are lower than they have been in decades, Obama said, but he noted that it would take cooperation in the global community to address overall emissions.

“As a nation, we face many challenges…. yet even as we meet threats like terrorism, we must not and cannot ignore a peril that can effect generations,” Obama said.

The post President Obama To Coast Guard Graduates: Climate Change Is A ‘Serious Threat To Global Security’ appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Experts Blast New York Times Hit Piece On EPA

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CREDIT: Shutterstock

The New York Times put a 1,700-word piece on its front page Tuesday that accuses the EPA of violating federal laws on grassroots campaigning.

The paper ran the story despite knowing the accusation is not true, a fact that is buried deep in the article. How is that journalism?

Here is how the Times previews the story on its website:

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Now that is a click-bait story for both conservatives and progressives — EPA accused of law-breaking. The problem is you have to read 1,000 words into the story, something most people will never do, to learn this bombshell:

Jeffrey R. Holmstead, an energy industry lobbyist and an E.P.A. deputy in the Bush administration, said the E.P.A. was “using campaign and advocacy strategies to promote a regulatory action.” But he and other experts said the agency’s actions did not appear to cross a legal line.

D’oh.

For the record, fossil-fuel lobbyist Holmstead is the go-to guy for a respectable quote from the industry viewpoint — his firm has posted 12 pages of articles that quote him. If Holmstead “and other experts” say EPA didn’t “appear to” cross a legal line, you can be quite sure it didn’t.

In short, there’s no “there,” there. That’s why EPA chiefs under both George W. Bush and his father released a statement calling the EPA’s actions “appropriate.”

The Times has called Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, “an expert on environmental communications.” I asked him about the piece.

“Apparently the NYT was successfully spun to run a narrative of EPA malfeasance,” he said. “It is disappointing to see this sort of sensationalist journalism over a minor expenditure of funds appear in the NYT. Reporting means more than repeating the talking points of sources.”

The Times has nothing but some quotes from a couple of industries that don’t like the EPA’s new rule, and thus don’t like EPA’s efforts to inform the public about it and get comments on how it might be improved.

Indeed, the Times creates confusion by seeming to conflate informing the public about a draft rule and lobbying the Congress about legislation. Near the end of the article, the Times writes:

In its previous opinions to federal agencies, the Justice Department has indicated that “grass-roots” efforts are most clearly prohibited if they are related to legislation pending in Congress and are “substantial,” which it defined as costing about $100,000 in today’s dollars — a price tag that the E.P.A.’s efforts on the clean water rule almost certainly did not reach if the salaries of the agency staff members involved are not counted.

The Times notes that the spending wasn’t substantial. But the other key point is that the EPA’s outreach, such as the EPA tweet it posted (below), was not lobbying about pending legislation.

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A legal tweet by the EPA posted by the New York Times in its piece about (false) industry allegations of EPA law-breaking.

The Times asserts earlier in the piece, “The E.P.A.’s tactics in supporting the rule are clearly designed to move public opinion, at a time when Congress was considering legislation to block the agency from putting the rule into effect.”

But the Times provides no evidence whatsoever that there is any truth to such a claim, presumably because they don’t have any. Indeed that claim sounds like the Times left out the phrase “according to industry critics” since the full 1700-word Times piece shows that what the EPA was “clearly” doing was not lobbying about legislation. To repeat the words of Jeff Holmstead (the energy industry lobbyist and former Bush EPA deputy), the EPA was “using campaign and advocacy strategies to promote a regulatory action.”

The Times waits until the last two paragraphs to let EPA officials make this rather obvious point: “they did not violate the Anti-Lobbying Law because they never explicitly urged the public to lobby Congress.” The EPA has been doing its job.

“We are well within our authority to educate the American people about the importance of what E.P.A. is doing to act on climate change and protect public health,” Thomas Reynolds, associate EPA administrator, said at the end of the Times article. “There is a very clear line, and we never, ever cross it.”

On its website, the EPA explains, “A public outreach effort to increase awareness and support of EPA’s proposed Clean Water Rule is well within the appropriate bounds of the agency’s mission to educate and engage Americans.” The EPA quotes from a recent Comptroller General opinion: “Agency officials have broad authority to educate the public on their policies and views, and this includes the authority to be persuasive in their materials.”

So the entire Times piece is a nothing-burger cooked up by a few not terribly credible industry critics. Unsurprisingly, after the New York Times published its piece, three former EPA administrators, including two from Republican Administrations — Christine Todd Whitman (2001-2003), Carol M. Browner (1993-2001) and William Reilly (1989-1992) — released a statement making this very point. It opens, “Engaging the American public in the development of public health safeguards is an important function of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Whitman, Reilly, and Browner (who is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at American Progress where I also work), end by noting:

As former Administrators, we only wish we had the tools available to today’s EPA when implementing safeguards against lead in gasoline, protecting the public from acid rain, and cleaning up our waterways from toxic pollution amongst many other measures. It is appropriate for the EPA to use these tools to engage as many Americans as possible especially as the agency moves forward with important public health protections in development today.

In this story, the Times mainly served as a stenographer for a few anti-EPA industries. It’s clear that the Times knew there was nothing to the story when they finally published it on their front page. The fact that they included some buried quotes eviscerating the piece’s central point suggests to me that this whole framing was driven by the editors and not the reporters. Either way, it is an example of how not to do journalism.

The post Experts Blast New York Times Hit Piece On EPA appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Pipeline Ruptures In California, Spilling Thousands Of Gallons Of Oil Into The Ocean

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This photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department shows an oil slick from a broken pipeline off the central California coast near Santa Barbara on Tuesday, May 19, 2015.

CREDIT: AP/Santa Barbara County Fire Department

On Tuesday, a pipeline along the coast of California just north of Santa Barbara ruptured and spilled an estimated 21,000 gallons of crude oil. A significant portion of this oil ended up in the ocean, creating a four-mile-long slick along the coastline. Nearby Refugio State Beach was evacuated, and those on the scene said it smelled “something like burned rubber” and that the spill was “just devastating.”

Wildlife has also been impacted. Two whales swam precariously close to the spill on Tuesday and birds have been spotted covered in oil.

As the oil slick moves slowly southward toward the city of Santa Barbara and the true environmental costs become clearer, residents are eager to know the cause of the spill. On Wednesday, the Santa Barbara County District Attorney announced the county was reviewing “potentially relevant criminal and civil statutes” related to the spill.

The pipeline, built in 1991 to carry about 150,000 barrels of oil per day, was shut down within several hours of rupturing and a culvert was put up to prevent any more flow into the ocean. Late Tuesday, the owner of the pipeline, Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline, released a statement saying the exact amount of oil released is unknown and that it is working to begin cleanup and remediation efforts.

“Plains deeply regrets this release has occurred and is making every effort to limit its environmental impact. Our focus remains on ensuring the safety of all involved,” the company said in the statement.

“Deeply regrets” is probably an understatement for the company. Santa Barbara was the site of a massive 1969 oil spill that played a large role in galvanizing the modern environmental movement. Since then, the oil industry has been subject to intense scrutiny throughout the region. Any spill — any reminder — of that dramatic event almost half a century ago could set back the industry further and re-energize the community.

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This photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department shows an oil slick from a broken pipeline off the central California coast near Santa Barbara on Tuesday, May 19, 2015.

CREDIT: AP/ Santa Barbara County Fire Department

Even before the 1969 spill — which doused the region in up to 100,000 barrels, or three million gallons, over the course of a ten-day leak from an offshore platform — Santa Barbara was a focal point of the relationship between fossil fuel extraction and environmental preservation. Around the turn of the 20th century, the first offshore drilling in the country took place in Summerland, California, just a few miles down the coast from Santa Barbara.

Some of the most important environmental legislation in U.S. history came into being during the few years following the 1969 spill, which was the largest oil spill in U.S. waters at the time and to this day is the third largest after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills.

Then-president Richard Nixon visited the site, saying “It is sad that it was necessary that Santa Barbara should be the example that had to bring it to the attention of the American people … The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”

Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, which led the way to the July 1970 establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. He also oversaw the passage of the Clean Water Act passed in 1972 and the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

California has also not allowed any offshore oil production in state waters since 1969. However, fossil fuel production is still a hot item issue in the state — even in Santa Barbara. Last November, a high-profile fracking ban in Santa Barbara County failed to pass after the oil and gas industry spent close to $6 million opposing it. The Santa Barbara region is rich in oil and natural gas reserves and there are some 1,167 active onshore wells — however few — if any — of them currently use conventional fracking technology.

There is also the question of water use. California is gripped in an epic drought that has been exacerbated by climate change. The state is imposing harsh water restrictions and a boisterous debate has emerged over who deserves what allotment of water. To many, oil and gas operations are low on the list.

“Why should we risk the safety of our water supply just to rush the supply of our local oil to the global market place?” Ken C. Macdonald, professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Earth Science, said in a statement supporting the Santa Barbara fracking ban in November. “We should keep our oil supply in the ground until we, locally, really need it, and then extract it only if the technology has advanced to the point where there is no threat to our drinking water.”

The pipeline rupture this week is a harsh reminder of the risks posed by the industry.

The post Pipeline Ruptures In California, Spilling Thousands Of Gallons Of Oil Into The Ocean appeared first on ThinkProgress.

How The 2016 Election Could Literally Put South Florida Underwater

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A cyclist and vehicles negotiate heavily flooded streets as rain falls, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, in Miami Beach, Fla. National and regional climate change risk assessments have used the flooding to illustrate the Miami area’s vulnerability to rising sea levels.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

When it comes to fighting sea level rise in South Florida, Jennifer Jurado has moved mountains.

With little to no help from her state government, Jurado — the director of Broward County, Florida’s natural resources division — took matters into her own hands. Teaming up with three other South Florida counties, she’s taken steps to raise buildings and parks; to install systems to prevent ocean saltwater from intruding into drinking water aquifers; and to build things called “backflow preventers” to stop flooded roadways.

But Jurado now worries that, in an instant, her team may no longer have the tools to prepare their state for climate change. That instant: The 2016 Presidential election.

“If the next term is eight years, there could be very significant decisions made that could undo our progress,” Jurado told ThinkProgress last week at the National Adaptation Forum, a conference where local leaders discussed best practices for adapting to a world with more severe droughts, flooding, heat waves, and storm surges.

For South Florida, adapting to sea level rise is a necessity. The ground lies low — so low that scientists have said coastal communities and barrier islands could be completely underwater in 100 years. But with current Governor Rick Scott and the state Legislature unwilling to recognize climate change as a problem, cities’ adaptation efforts have meant teaming up with the federal government at every possible turn.

Under the largely climate-friendly Obama administration, South Florida has been able to move forward on numerous sea level rise adaptation ideas. The U.S. Geological Survey, for instance, has given extensive support to the area’s groundwater monitoring effort — an important effort to fight saltwater intrusion into drinking water sources because of sea level rise. The Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency awarded South Florida a $4.25 million grant to develop long-term sustainability planning. And, under the Obama administration’s Climate Action Champions program, The Department of Energy is giving Broward targeted support to plan for sea level rise.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers supported the Unified Sea Level Rise Projection for Southeast Florida, a consistent, long-term model of how rising seas will impact the entirety of the region. The model has been adopted by all four South Florida counties, and is now embedded in nearly every plan for land use, transportation, and water supply throughout the region.

Perhaps most useful, though, has simply been what Jurado described as “informal support” — the unwavering access her team has been given to federal agency experts, who help answer various adaptation questions at a moment’s notice.

“The relationships that we’ve developed have been extremely important,” she said.

It’s unclear whether the four-county South Florida team — Monroe, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward counties — will receive that kind of support with a new presidential administration, particularly one that isn’t as climate-friendly. If the next president is chosen from the current field of Republican candidates, it’s almost certain the team would receive less.

But Jurado’s main worry is not just that an administration run by Marco “there’s no consensus” Rubio or Ted “zero warming” Cruz would be less likely to fund South Florida’s adaptation efforts. It’s that their administrations could make the state’s efforts essentially worthless by failing to reduce carbon emissions, thus ensuring a high-emissions trajectory that climate scientists predict would be catastrophic for the state.

In plainer words, all of South Florida’s efforts to adapt to sea level rise will mean nothing if the ocean rises more than expected.

“Really the biggest thing is the emissions question,” Jurado said. “Which one of these [warming] scenarios do we want to inherit? Which can we afford to inherit?”

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Cities Urged Not To Ignore Marginalized Communities In Climate Change Plans

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CREDIT: shutterstock

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI — When Tropical Storm Irene hit in 2011, New York City took protective measures by ordering mandatory evacuations. What it didn’t consider, though, was how disabled residents would manage to leave their homes.

As a result, the city was sued for allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Before the case was resolved, the city was struck by Hurricane Sandy, the most damaging storm in the region’s modern history. Residents with disabilities were stranded for days without power in high-rise apartment buildings unable to reach emergency service centers.

While New York was eventually found guilty of “benign neglect” of city residents, the issue of inequity in preparation for climate change impacts — also known as climate adaptation — is not unique. That was at least according to multiple attendees at the National Adaptation Forum in St. Louis last week, who emphasized a greater need for inclusive climate adaptation work in cities across the country.

“If you take one thing away with you today, it’s to ‘include everyone,’” said Jalonne White-Newsome, director of policy at the Harlem-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice. “I haven’t been in the policy world for very long, but I’ve found it doesn’t happen very often.”

Throughout the week-long conference, frequent examples of “frontline communities” — or low-income neighborhoods already overburdened by environmental injustices and less likely to have resources to adapt to climate change than their wealthier neighbors — were highlighted to help attendees avoid overlooking their specific needs in adaptation plans. Areas like Oakland, Detroit, and Shishmaref, Alaska where many residents live below the poverty line were discussed as areas where community input was key to enhancing adaptation work.

In the relatively new field of climate adaptation, early actions in the United States have primarily targeted infrastructure, industry, or seafront developments. But as frontline community advocates demand to have their voices heard, incorporating equity into resilience — a term referring to the ability to not just bounce-back from climate impacts, but bounce-forward more sustainable and prepared than before — is gaining traction in cities preparing climate adaptation plans.

One of those venues is New York City. Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he was adding equity as a core column to the city’s climate action plan.

“A beautifully sustainable city that is the playground of the rich doesn’t work for us,” he said.

First released by former mayor Michael Bloomberg after Hurricane Sandy, de Blasio stated the “profoundly important” plan will now have a major poverty reduction goal alongside its standing greenhouse gas reduction goal.

The same week as de Blasio’s announcement, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray formally launched the Equity & Environment Initiative, an effort to overcome a lack of inclusion of overburdened communities in climate and environmental programs. Among the framework’s three goals is fostering leadership among Seattleites who are “people of color, immigrants and refugees, people with low incomes, and limited-English proficiency individuals.”

For environmental justice advocates, major cities like New York and Seattle are ahead of the curve in efforts to make official policy more inclusive, but a larger issue lingers. According to the Georgetown Climate Center, only 106 local and regional adaptation plans of some kind exist nationally. Many of those are plans for different sectors of the same city.

Advocates are concerned that as unprepared governments scramble to respond to climate impacts like more extreme weather, marginalized communities will be left to improvise for themselves. Yet, according to National Adaptation Forum presenters, planners and government officials can and should include the concerns and unique needs of overburdened communities in sustainability plans.

For those looking to get leaders to incorporate equity into climate action, Shamar Bibbins, environment program officer at the Kresge Foundation, put forward a friendly reminder: “It doesn’t happen by accident. It’s because community groups were at the table pushing for it for a long time.”

Miranda Peterson is a research assistant for the Energy Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

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Stop Saying Humans Are Like ‘Slowly Boiling Frogs’

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CREDIT: Shutterstock

Even though people keep using the famous simile — “the fatally slow human response to climate change makes us like a slowly boiling frog” — it is not quite right.

Since last Wednesday was Frog Jumping Day, it seems like a good time to explain why this cliché should be retired.

As Wikipedia puts it, “German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but an intact frog attempted to escape the water when it reached 25 °C.” Other 19th Century studies appeared to have different results, but modern experiments (!) show that frogs with brains are in fact smart enough to leap out of water as it is heated up.

James Fallows of The Atlantic, who holds the world record for boiling frog posts, had his own update last week, “The Boiled-Frog Watch Returns.” Fallows posts this excerpt from the 1888 publication, Studies from the Biological Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University:

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Fallows argues that while the “metaphor is flat wrong,” that is just a “minor problem. The major problem is that it is such a damned cliché.” He links to this 2013 essay, “Can we please throw the boiling frog metaphor into some boiling water?”

So now you can decide to drop the cliché because it isn’t accurate or because it is a cliché. If you insist upon using it, then you should probably modify it….

We are the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. As I’ve said before, since we are the only species that gets to name all the species, we can call ourselves “wise” twice.

But given how we have been destroying the planet’s livability — despite repeated warnings by scientists — we should probably drop one of the “sapiens” and provisionally put the other one in quotes. We would then be Homo “sapiens” sapiens — at least until we see whether we are smart enough to save ourselves from ourselves.

If humans destroy a livable climate — which means “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse” — and are renamed just plain Homo, then in fact we will have demonstrated we are dumber than frogs.

At that point, we will be brainless frogs.

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CREDIT: Tom Toles (reprinted from the with permission)

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Here’s How The White House Plans To Curb Staggering Honeybee Losses

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A bee works on collecting nectar from a fruit tree in West Bath, Maine on Monday, April 30, 2012.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach

The White House announced a national strategy to combat pollinator losses Tuesday, an effort that comes on the heels of a report showing more than 40 percent of managed honeybees were lost last year.

The White House strategy lays out a goal to reduce winter losses of managed honeybees to no more than 15 percent in the next 10 years. Winter losses of managed honeybees for the 2014-2015 season topped 23.1 percent, according to a survey released last week. Beekeepers say that the maximum level of losses they can experience and still remain economically viable is 18.7 percent. Part of the White House’s strategy to reduce bee losses will be ramping up research and surveying efforts on honeybees, in an attempt to determine what stressors are most dangerous to bees and what are the best ways to manage bees’ habitat.

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CREDIT: AP Photo / Marco Ugarte

The strategy, which grew out of a pollinator task force created by executive order last year, doesn’t just tackle managed honeybees — bees that are kept by beekeepers to pollinate crops around the country. It also singles out monarch butterflies, another pollinator that has been facing serious declines over the last several years.

Over the last two decades, monarch populations have declined by 90 percent, a drop that has been precipitated in part by removal of milkweed — a key food source for monarch larvae — along with changing weather patterns, and deforestation. The White House wants to increase the eastern monarch butterfly population to 225 million butterflies by 2020, a goal it aims to accomplish through public-private partnerships and actions in both the U.S. and Mexico, where the butterflies spend the winter.

The strategy also spells out a goal to “restore or enhance” seven million acres of pollinator-friendly habitat over the next five years. That goal will help native pollinators, such as wild bees and butterflies, as well as managed honeybees. Last year, summer losses for managed honeybees exceeded winter losses for the first time, and Dennis VanEngelsdorp, assistant professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, told ThinkProgress that poor bee nutrition due to meadows being plowed under for crops might have contributed to the summer losses.

Increased habitat for both managed and wild bees is the part of the report that Sam Droege, a native bee expert and U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist, is most excited about — though he said he thought that, in general, the fact that there’s a White House strategy on pollinators at all is “actually pretty amazing.”

“Habitat is the big key here,” he told ThinkProgress. Humans are “neat and tidying” the world so much, Droege said, that some monoculture crops — though important for food production — “might as well be a small step away from pavement” as far as habitat quality goes.

Still, Droege said that finding ways to conserve native bee species — many of which we haven’t identified yet — will be tricky. It’s easy to find ways to boost the health of some insect populations – planting more milkweed for monarchs, for instance — but there are thousands of species of native bees, and they’re varied in their ecological niches.

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CREDIT: shutterstock

More research and enhanced habitat are big parts of the White House’s strategy to curb pollinator losses, but the report also singles out pesticide use as a possible contributor to recent bee losses. A particular class of pesticides — neonicotinoids — have been found by researchers to affect bees’ nervous systems, causing them to forget what food smells like or suffer from short- and long-term memory loss.

“Mitigating the effects of pesticides on bees is a priority for the Federal government, as both bee pollination and insect control are essential to the success of agriculture,” the White House strategy reads. “Through actions outlined in this strategy, the federal government seeks to create physical and temporal space between the use of pesticides and those areas and times when pollinators are present.”

The strategy notes that the Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing the risks posed by neonics and plans on issuing its assessment of the pesticides at the end of 2015. The agency’s taken a few small steps already to reduce use of the pesticides: In April, the agency announced that it was unlikely to approve any new outdoor uses of neonics.

The White House strategy’s discussion of neonics wasn’t enough for some environmental groups, which want the federal government to suspend use of the pesticides altogether.

“President Obama’s National Pollinator Health Strategy misses the mark by not adequately addressing the pesticides as a key driver of unsustainable losses of bees and other pollinators essential to our food system,” Friends of the Earth Food and Technology Program Director Lisa Archer said in a statement.

For Droege, it’s not that simple. It is becoming clearer from research that there are “clear negative signs” from neonics, and that like DDT, these negative impacts could accumulate over years. But there’s still more to be learned about neonics, he said.

“At this point I’m not sure that it would be beneficial to ban it,” he said, though he did say that there were “logical places to restrict” neonics, like personal use in yards.

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