Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 159

Why This New Study On Arctic Permafrost Is So Scary

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Greenland’s permafrost could be melting faster than expected due to active microbes, according to new research.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

Scientists might have to change their projected timelines for when Greenland’s permafrost will completely melt due to man-made climate change, now that new research from Denmark has shown it could be thawing faster than expected.

Published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research shows that tiny microbes trapped in Greenland’s permafrost are becoming active as the climate warms and the permafrost begins to thaw. As those microbes become active, they are feeding on previously-frozen organic matter, producing heat, and threatening to thaw the permafrost even further.

In other words, according to the research, permafrost thaw could be accelerating permafrost thaw to a “potentially critical” level.

“The accompanying heat production from microbial metabolism of organic material has been recognized as a potential positive-feedback mechanism that would enhance permafrost thawing and the release of carbon,” the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Permafrost, said. “This internal heat production is poorly understood, however, and the strength of this effect remains unclear.”

The big worry climate scientists have about thawing permafrost is that the frozen soil is chock-full of carbon. That carbon is supposed to be strongly trapped inside the soil, precisely because it’s supposed to be permanently frozen — hence, “permafrost.”

However, as temperatures in the Arctic have risen due to human-caused climate change, permafrost is thawing, and therefore releasing some of that trapped carbon into the atmosphere. It’s yet another feedback loop manifesting itself in Arctic permafrost regions — as climate change causes it to thaw, the thawing causes more climate change, which causes more thawing, et cetera, et cetera.

What makes this new research so important is that it adds to the urgency of stemming permafrost thaw. Because even without this new discovery of heat-producing microbes, estimates for carbon releases from thawing permafrost have been alarmingly large. According to the National Snow & Ice Data Center, there are about 1,700 gigatons of carbon currently frozen in permafrost — more than the total amount in the atmosphere now (Earth’s atmosphere contains about 850 gigatons of carbon, according to the Center).

Without considering microbes, the average estimate is that 120 gigatons of carbon will be released from thawing permafrost by 2100, which would raise the average global temperature 0.29 degrees. After 2100, if climate change worsens, total permafrost emissions roughly double. That’s confirmed by National Snow and Ice Data Center research scientist Kevin Schaefer’s research, which took the average of 15 peer-reviewed estimates of future carbon releases from thawing permafrost.

Schaefer, who was also one of the reviewers of the microbe study, told ThinkProgress that this is particularly alarming because emissions from permafrost are “completely irreversible.”

“These are permanent emissions,” he said. “Once you thaw out that material, there’s no way to put that organic matter back into the permafrost … you can’t re-freeze the permafrost.”

It’s also unclear whether the carbon that gets released once permafrost thaws will manifest itself as carbon dioxide or methane, which has a much greater impact on climate change — specifically, for each pound emitted compared with carbon dioxide, methane has a 20 times greater impact on atmospheric warming over a 100-year period, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The New Scientist reports that if the Arctic gets warmer and drier, the microbes trapped within the permafrost can be expected to produce carbon dioxide. But if the environment gets warmer and wetter, the microbes that thrive will tend to produce methane.

The discovery of heat-producing microbes only threatens to add more uncertainty to permafrost emissions projections. Because even though we do know they can accelerate thaw, we don’t know how much.

“One of the biggest uncertainties is how much heat do the microbes generate as they eat the organic material,” Schaefer said. “It will accelerate thaw, but the question is how much. I don’t think that has been answered yet.”

So, that’s a lot of bad news when it comes to global climate change. But the good news, Schaefer said, is that accelerated thawing of Arctic permafrost can be prevented if warming is limited to a global average of 2 degrees Celsius. That 2 degree limit is, incidentally, the objective of international climate negotiations scheduled to take place at the end of this year.

“If we limit the warming to 2 degrees, it will also limit the emissions from thawing permafrost,” Schaefer said. “But the more we dump into the atmosphere, the greater the emissions from permafrost will be.”

The post Why This New Study On Arctic Permafrost Is So Scary appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Greenpeace Activists Are Refusing To Leave Oil Rig Headed For The Arctic, Despite Legal Threats

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Greenpeace activists hold a banner that reads ‘The People vs. Shell’ as they scaled the Polar Pioneer drill rig in the Pacific Ocean.

CREDIT: Vincenzo Floramo / Greenpeace

On Monday, some 750 miles northwest of Hawaii, six Greenpeace activists boarded a Shell oil rig en route from Malaysia to the Port of Seattle in protest of the oil company’s plans for drilling in the Arctic. A mere 24 hours later, Shell filed a lawsuit in federal court, hoping to kick the activists off of the rig.

“These acts are far from peaceful demonstration,” Shell said in a press release following the injunction, which it filed in federal court in Alaska. “Boarding a moving vessel on the high seas is extremely dangerous and jeopardizes the safety of all concerned, including both the people working aboard and the protestors themselves.”

The protesters, who had been following the rig’s trans-Pacific journey on a Greenpeace ship named the Esperanza, used inflatable boats and climbing gear to approach the vessel carrying the rig — called the Blue Marlin — and scale the rig. The Esperanza, which has several other Greenpeace members on board, is continuing to follow the Blue Marlin, bringing protesters food and supplies as needed.

The 400-foot-tall rig, dubbed the Polar Pioneer, is intended to be staged for Arctic drilling once it reaches Seattle. It is one of two rigs eventually bound for the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska, an area that Shell — pending federal permits — intends to develop for offshore drilling.

“We are certainly prepared to stay here as long as it takes to get out message out loud and clear that Arctic drilling is unacceptable,” Aliyah Field, environmental activist and one of the protesters currently on the rig told ThinkProgress.

Field said that, despite wind and cold, “everyone is feeling pretty good.” The protesters haven’t had direct contact with the Blue Marlin’s crew, and Field said that the crew hasn’t displayed any clear hostility toward them.

Field had not heard about Shell’s lawsuit, but in an e-mailed statement, Greenpeace USA’s Executive Director Annie Leonard called the injunction “Shell’s latest attempt to keep people from standing up for the Arctic.”

“Shell wants activists off its rig,” Leonard said. “We want Shell out of the Arctic.”

The protest comes a week after the Obama administration reaffirmed Shell’s 2008 lease in the Chukchi Sea, essentially giving the company the green light to begin preparations for drilling in the Arctic as early as this summer. Shell has reportedly spent $4 billion in its effort to drill in the Arctic, but hasn’t been allowed to drill there since 2012, when a key piece of safety equipment used in cleaning up oil spills failed.

Environmentalists worry that, given the Artcic’s remoteness and extreme weather, an oil spill would be a near-certainty. An Environmental Impact Report released by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) — part of the Department of the Interior, which gave last week’s go-ahead — found that, under the current plan for drilling in the Chukchi Sea, there is a 75 percent chance of a major oil spill in the Arctic.

This isn’t the first time that Greenpeace has boarded vessels in an attempt to stop Shell from drilling in the Arctic. In February of 2012, actress Lucy Lawless and seven other activists boarded an Arctic-bound drilling ship while it was in port in New Zealand. A month later, in March of 2012, activists boarded two ice-breakers leased by Shell as they were preparing to sail from Helsikni, Finland to the Arctic.

Following those protests, Shell won a federal court injunction that required Greenpeace USA to stay away from any of their Arctic-bound drill rigs until October of 2012.

The post Greenpeace Activists Are Refusing To Leave Oil Rig Headed For The Arctic, Despite Legal Threats appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Western Canada May Lose 70 Percent Of Its Glaciers By The End Of This Century

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The Athabasca Glacier, North America’s most visited glacier, located in Alberta, Canada.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

If the rugged wilderness of Canada’s western provinces seems synonymous with mountain glaciers, that relationship might come with an expiration date: according to a study published this week in the journal Nature Geosciences, 70 percent of glaciers in Alberta and British Columbia could disappear by the end of the 21st century.

“What [glaciers] are telling us is that the climate is changing. The glaciers don’t respond to weather, so they don’t get confused about whether it was a cold winter or a hot summer,” Gary Clarke, lead author of the study and professor emeritus at University of British Columbia (UBC) told ThinkProgress. “When the glaciers are wasting away, we know that the climate isn’t helpful to them.”

Western Canada’s glaciers are vast, covering some 10,000 square miles — an area larger than the state of Vermont. But according to the study, which looked at glacier melt under 24 different climate scenarios, human-caused climate change is threatening to nearly wipe out the glaciers.

“According to our simulations, few glaciers will remain in the Interior and Rockies regions, but maritime glaciers, in particular those in northwestern British Columbia, will survive in a diminished state,” the paper reads, noting that the most substantial ice loss will most likely occur between 2020 and 2040.

Human-driven glacier melt is a visible consequence of global warming, and it’s happening all over the world. According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, there is “very high confidence that globally, the mass loss from glaciers has increased since the 1960s.” That loss can be seen in the Europe’s Alpine glaciers, which have lost half of their volume since the 1850s. It is also on display in Africa, where glaciers have declined by 60 percent since the 1900s, and Alaska, where glaciers are melting at more than double the rate of ten years ago.

And, as the study shows, Canada’s glaciers aren’t exempt from this trend, which means that the economy and ecology of glacier-heavy regions of the country could face changes. Unlike the glaciers of Central Asia, which are a crucial water resource for people living in the area, the glaciers in Alberta and B.C. directly impact a relatively small portion of the population. But water from Canada’s glaciers impacts industries that depend on a steady flow, including agriculture, mining, and hydroelectric power. With glaciers melting more rapidly, as well as earlier in the season, these industries will need to adjust — but Clarke notes that climate change might actually help with that.

“We suspect rainfall will increase with the warming climate, so in a sense the glacier loss may be replaced by increased rainfall,” he said, noting that it might mitigate the impact that glacier loss has on these industries and stop it from “materializing into something horrendous.”

Fish and wildlife that depend on the glaciers directly, however, might not be as lucky. For mountainous ecosystems, glaciers serve as an important ecological water reserve, storing water in the form of ice and releasing that water during summer melts. This creates what Clarke refers to as a kind of “buffer for hot summers,” keeping mountain streams topped off and cold when they might otherwise run drier and warmer.

Potential losers in that scenario are salmon and trout, which depend on these cool, freshwater streams for reproduction.

“Losing [glaciers] will reduce the summer flows and also raise summer temperatures, and I don’t think either of those are advantageous to salmon populations,” Clarke said.

Losing glaciers could also affect Western Canada’s tourism industry. Last year, Parks Canada Resource Conservation Manager John Wilmshurst warned that Alberta’s Athabasca Glacier — which is believed to be the most visited glacier in North America — is losing ice at an “astonishing” rate of 16 feet per year, receding by almost a mile since 1980.

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A worst-case scenario for the Columbia Icefield in Alberta, home to the Athabasca Glacier.

CREDIT: Gary Clarke

“I do think that here we take the beauty of the landscape a bit for granted,” Clarke said. “It will be shocking for people if they look up to the mountains and don’t see the glaciers.”

The study looked at glacier loss under a variety of climate scenarios, including both best case and worst case scenarios as defined by the IPCC. In the best case scenario, where atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases peak around 2050 and the planet warms a maximum of 1.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, Clarke and his team were surprised to find that glacier loss could be lessened.

“There are quite appreciable differences in the outcome if we follow the good path,” Clarke says. “If we were to correct the course a bit now we would save glaciers in the mountains. However, there’s not a great deal of time.”

Because glacier loss is such a global problem, Clarke hopes that other researchers in the field will apply the techniques used in this study to simulating glacier loss around the world, perhaps in the Yukon or Central Asia, where loss of huge glaciers would likely mean huge disruptions .

Perhaps equally important to Clarke, however, is what glaciers can tell us about climate change.

“There’s quite a lot of confusion in press and public mind about the difference between climate and weather. People use the fact that there was a cold winter to refute climate change. The glaciers aren’t confused on this point,” Clarke said. “The glaciers are an unbiased observer of climate. As the climate gets worse, it’ll be worse for the glaciers.”

The post Western Canada May Lose 70 Percent Of Its Glaciers By The End Of This Century appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Surgical Anesthesia Is Contributing To Climate Change, Study Shows

You’re getting sleepy, and a little warmer too.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

Turns out waking up during surgery isn’t the only potential downside to general anesthesia.

According to new peer-reviewed research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the gases used to knock out patients before an operation are making a very small contribution to human-caused climate change. The gases — desflurane, isoflurane, and sevoflurane — have been detected in the atmosphere as far as Antarctica, the study showed. (Nitrous oxide is another common anesthetic, but it wasn’t included in the study because of how widely it’s used for other purposes.)

All three gases are greenhouse gases, meaning that like carbon dioxide, they trap heat in the atmosphere. But they’re also much more potent than carbon dioxide, meaning they trap more heat per pound emitted. In desflurane’s case, for instance, one kilogram (2.2 pounds) traps as much heat as 2,500 kilograms (5,512 pounds), according to a report in Phys.org.

Relative to other emissions sources, the research confirmed that anesthetic gases’ contribution to climate change is pretty minor. The amount of desflurane in the atmosphere, for instance, was measured as 0.30 parts per trillion (ppt). Isoflurane clocked in at .097 ppt, sevoflurane at 0.13 ppt, and halothane came in at 0.0092 ppt.

In all, emissions of those anesthetic gases in 2014 amounted to the equivalent of between 2.5 million and 3.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the same as the emissions of between 526,316 and 778,947 passenger vehicles. Comparatively, the U.S. coal industry produces 1,562 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent every year — the same as 329 million cars.

Still, that doesn’t mean anesthetic gases aren’t worth reducing, according to Yale University School of Medicine anesthesiologist Jodi Sherman. Sherman, who reviewed the study before publication, told ThinkProgress that she was alarmed to find her profession was contributing even in small part to climate change — especially when mitigation measures are widely available.

“From my perspective what makes it alarming is that it’s significant enough that it could be measured at all,” she said, “and that as population grows and number of surgeries increases, this can be expected to rise.”

It’s long been known that anesthetic gases were heat-trapping and could therefore potentially contribute to climate change. But prior to the release of this research, estimates of just how much has accumulated in the global atmosphere have been “highly speculative,” the study said.

This study claims to be the first to base an estimate off of actual measurements of the gases taken by scientists in the field. Before, scientists had estimated the amount of anesthetic gases in the atmosphere by calculating things like how much of each gas is sold every year, and how much is released through vents.

Sherman said there are potentially easy ways to significantly cut anesthetic gas emissions. Chief among them, she said, is cutting out the use of the most offending gases: nitrous oxide, which wasn’t measured by the study but is “probably the most prevalent,” and desflurane, the most potent of the bunch. Others have disagreed, arguing the drugs have clinical advantages. Still, the study noted that 80 percent of anesthetic gas emissions measured came from desflurane.

Sherman also suggested that anesthesiologists work to carefully minimize fresh gas flow rate — which refers to the total volume of gas that flows from the anesthetic machine into the breathing system per minute — and use alternatives to inhaled anesthetics when clinically possible. Alternatives that can sometimes be used when recommended include intravenous anesthesia, and regional anesthesia via either the spine or an epidural.

“This is a low-hanging fruit,” she said. “Behavior change would be very advantageous.”

The post Surgical Anesthesia Is Contributing To Climate Change, Study Shows appeared first on ThinkProgress.

White House Announces Plan To Tackle The Health Threats Of Climate Change

In this April 2, 2015, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. Obama will ask Americans on Tuesday, April 7 to think of climate change as a threat not just to the environment, but also to their health.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File

The White House is getting serious about tackling the health impacts of climate change, announcing Tuesday a suite of initiatives aimed at educating Americans about how climate change affects their health and addressing the most pressing impacts of a warming world.

The announcement includes a range of new public and private sector initiatives and projects, including health-related projects from companies like Microsoft and Google, the creation of a coalition to educate health care professionals on the risks climate change poses to health, and the release of two government reports on health and climate change.

On a press call, senior adviser to President Brian Deese said that though the White House has stressed the link between climate change and health in the past, these new initiatives are meant to “step up that effort.” He also said that tying climate change to health is an effective way to educate Americans about the threat.

“I think what we are seeing in the public debate is increasing awareness and acceptance … that not only is climate change real, the impacts are things that are affecting more and more people in their daily lives,” he said. “The most salient arguments around climate change are associated with health impacts and are ones that meet people where they are, and that requires making an argument about how climate change is affecting local communities and individuals.”

The White House says it plans to hold a series of meetings this week with health care professionals and other stakeholders, including one at Howard University Tuesday, during which the president will meet with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, health care professionals and educators, and the mother of a child with asthma. Later this spring, the White House says it plans to hold a White House Climate Change and Health Summit with the Surgeon General.

One theme in the White House’s plan to address climate’s threat to public health is data. Last year, the Obama Administration launched the Climate Data Initiative, which sought to increase Americans’ access to data on sea level rise and other climate impacts. On Tuesday, the administration announced that it would be entering 150 health-related datasets to its system. Those datasets will be used by organizations and companies to better understand and reduce the health impacts of climate change, the White House said.

The projects from private sector groups also rely on data. Microsoft’s research arm is undertaking a project that aims to reduce disease outbreaks by catching disease vectors, like mosquitoes, before they have a chance to infect people. The company is creating an automated system that will collect mosquitoes from an area by drone, and will then detect whether the mosquitoes are carrying pathogens. The system “has the potential to serve as an early warning system for vector borne disease outbreaks and may assist health officials in planning for the impacts of climate change on public health,” the White House said.

The Department of Defense also plans to start a project aimed at better understanding when and where diseases emerge: in May, the DOD will launch a pilot project that will seek to create predictions for outbreaks of diseases like dengue fever.

But it’s not just individuals who are at risk from climate change. Around the country, hospitals are threatened by extreme storms and sea level rise. To combat that, the White House announced that climate change-focused business Four Twenty Seven is planning on analyzing the vulnerability of 100 large American health care facilities, and will publish its findings online.

The company hopes the data will help decision-makers figure out how to make their health care facilities more resilient to climate change. Some hospitals are already taking major steps to help them stay operational during major storms and help them escape rising seas, but others haven’t yet taken these steps — and as power outages during Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina showed, lives are put at risk when hospitals can’t remain open during a disaster.

As Deese noted, this isn’t the first time the White House has emphasized the link between climate change and human health. Last year, the administration cited “billions of dollars in public health and climate benefits” as one of the outcomes of its Clean Power Plan, and said that the regulations on power plant emissions would help the U.S. avoid 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths and 140,000 to 150,000 child asthma attacks.

Before announcing the proposed rule, Obama noted that asthma is “aggravated by air pollution — pollution from the same sources that release carbon and contribute to climate change.”

In December of 2014, the White House released guidelines to help hospitals better prepare for climate change. And in its Champions of Change awards last year, the White House honored professionals that worked at the intersection of health and climate.

It is true that the health impacts of climate change are well-documented. One of the reports the White House released Tuesday states that a range of climate-related health impacts are already affecting the lives of Americans. It cites longer, more frequent, and more severe extreme weather events, expanding disease vectors, worsening air quality, and even worsening stress as the consequences of a changing climate.

“Every American is vulnerable to the health impacts associated with climate change,” the draft report, which is being submitted for peer review, states.

The post White House Announces Plan To Tackle The Health Threats Of Climate Change appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Don’t Let Rand Paul Fool You On Climate Change

CREDIT: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

At first glance, newly-declared Presidential candidate Rand Paul might seem like a breath of fresh air on climate change — at least compared to most other Republicans.

The junior Senator from Kentucky was, after all, one of only 15 GOP Senators who voted for an amendment earlier this year stating climate change is real and that humans contribute to it. What’s more, he told Bill Maher last year that he’s not necessarily against regulation of carbon dioxide, the main driver of human-caused warming.

On these matters, Paul’s stances are certainly strategic. The only other declared Republican Presidential candidate is essentially a climate conspiracy theorist, while the two others expected to run are aggressively skeptical of the overwhelming body of scientific literature that says human-caused carbon emissions drive climate change.

So, it’s safe to say that none of these guys would take action to fight climate change as President — except maybe, just maybe, Rand Paul. Right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe Paul would ever do such a thing. For one, his proclamation via Senate vote that humans do contribute to climate change was directly contradicted by a vote he made a couple months later on a resolution stating Congress should cut carbon pollution. Indeed, Paul has spoken against the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, deeming them “illegal” and vowing to repeal them.

It’s also questionable whether Paul actually believes the amendment he voted for in January stating humans cause climate change, as it’s contradictory to almost every other time he’s spoken in public about the phenomenon. Last year, he said in an interview that he is “not sure anybody exactly knows why” global warming is happening. He then called the idea that humans cause climate change “alarmist stuff,” explaining that the theory agreed upon by 97 percent of the climate science community is “not conclusive.”

This is not surprising if you consider his roots. Paul’s father — the two-time Republican presidential candidate and Libertarian darling Ron Paul — is a truly aggressive denier of climate science. In his 2011 book “Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom,” he wrote about the “radicalization of the country by environmentalists,” spearheaded by the “propaganda” and “psuedoscience” of climate change.

“Most Americans have been bamboozled into believing that all reputable scientists believe in global warming and that CO2 emissions are a major problem,” Ron Paul wrote. “The truth is there are just as many and even more qualified scientists refuting the sketchy and questionable evidence regarding global warming.”

As a U.S. Congressional Representative, Ron Paul even went as far as suggesting that the increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were actually beneficial to humans during a 2009 vote on cap-and-trade legislation, submitting testimony that stated “no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

Now, Rand Paul’s politics are markedly different from his father’s in a number of ways, but their stances on climate change are strikingly alike. The only difference, though, is that Paul seems to be trying to make us believe they’re not.

The post Don’t Let Rand Paul Fool You On Climate Change appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Vote For The Endangered Animal March Madness Champion: Elephant vs. Sea Otter

Click image to expand. Now updated with the Winners of the Final Four: Sea Otter and Elephant!

CREDIT: Dylan Petrohilos

We started with 32, and now we’re down to just two animals in March Sadness, ClimateProgress’ educational bracket tournament of animals impacted by climate change and other environmental threats. Our final contenders: the intelligent, weary-eyed Elephant, and the playful, kelp-loving Sea Otter.

For whichever animal wins, ClimateProgress will write a feature-length article exploring the story behind what’s ailing your chosen critter, and who is working to save them. You can read the rules here, or just go vote — do it in the embedded tweets below, on Twitter with the hashtag #CPMarchSadness, or on our Facebook page.

Elephant vs. Sea Otter

CREDIT: Shutterstock/Flickr

Elephant: Here’s what we’ve learned about elephants so far. First, it’s clear humans are not these animals’ friends — not only is ivory poaching a problem, but growing human population is taking away their forest habitat, as are changes in land-use. What’s more, once-domesticated elephants in Asia are being left to starve or mistreated as the use of domestication loses popularity. Finally, climate change is the nail in the proverbial coffin for this already-vulnerable animal — if temperatures rise even a few degrees higher than average in Myanmar, Asian elephants are in grave danger of dying of heat stroke, according to a 2013 study.

Sea Otter: A short re-cap: Sea Otters are being increasingly killed by toxic algae, which is expected to thrive in a warming world. And more severe weather is making it difficult for them to find food, contributing to starvation. That’s bad on its own, but what makes it worse is that the loss of sea otters due to climate change actually stands to make climate change worse. That’s because their main prey — sea urchins — like to eat kelp, so by keeping the sea urchin population at a sustainable level, they keep kelp forests lush. Kelp forests absorb a lot of carbon.

Which animal’s story would you most like to read? It all comes down to this. Vote below!

Who will be the champion? RETWEET for Elephant or FAVE for Sea Otter #CPMarchSadness http://t.co/dGuap832zY pic.twitter.com/q61XjPRnKZ

— Climate Progress (@climateprogress) April 7, 2015

***

TOURNAMENT UPDATES:

Day 1 – 3/19: Paws and Claws pt. 1 — Polar Bear vs. Wombat; Tasmanian Devil vs. Pangolin; (voting closed) WINNERS: Polar Bear and Pangolin.

Day 2 – 3/20: Paws and Claws pt. 2 — Lemur vs. Koala; Panda vs. Wolverine (voting closed) WINNERS: Koala and Wolverine.

Day 3 – 3/23: Fins and Flippers — Sea Lion vs. Sea Horse; Penguin vs. Manatee; Walrus vs. Sea Otter; Whale vs. Salmon (voting closed) WINNERS: Sea Horse, Sea Otter, Whale, and Penguin.

Day 4 – 3/24: Horns and Hooves — Elephant vs. Horned Lizard; Rhino vs. Narwhal; Saola vs. Moose; Mountain Goat vs. Reindeer (voting closed) WINNERS: Elephant, Narwhal, Moose, and Mountain Goat.

Day 5 – 3/25: Shells and Wings — Sea Turtle vs. Pelican; Sage Grouse vs. Peregrine Falcon; Oyster vs. Butterfly; Lobster vs. Red Knot (voting closed) WINNERS: Sea Turtle, Falcon, Butterfly, Red Knot.

Day 6 – 3/26: Polar Bear vs. Pangolin; Koala vs. Wolverine (voting closed) WINNERS: Polar Bear, Wolverine.

Day 7 – 3/27: Sea Horse vs. Whale; Sea Otter vs. Penguin (voting closed) WINNERS: Sea Horse, Sea Otter.

Day 8 – 3/30: Elephant vs. Mountain Goat; Moose vs. Narwhal (voting closed) WINNERS: Elephant, Narwhal.

Day 9 – 3/31: Sea Turtle vs. Red Knot; Butterfly vs. Peregrine Falcon (voting closed) WINNERS: Sea Turtle, Peregrine Falcon.

Day 10 – 4/1: Polar Bear vs. Wolverine; Sea Horse vs. Sea Otter (voting closed) WINNERS: Polar Bear, Sea Otter.

Day 11 – 4/3: Elephant vs. Narwhal; Sea Turtle vs. Peregrine Falcon (voting closed) WINNERS: Elephant, Peregrine Falcon.

Day 12 – 4/6: THE FINAL FOUR: Polar Bear vs. Sea Otter; Elephant vs. Peregrine Falcon (voting closed) WINNERS: Sea Otter, Elephant.

Day 13 – 4/7: THE CHAMPIONSHIP: Elephant vs. Sea Otter (voting NOW OPEN)

PAST ROUNDS:

Round 12: The Final Four

Round 11: Elite Eight, part 2

Round 10: Elite Eight, part 1

Round 9: Sweet Sixteen, part 4

Round 8: Sweet Sixteen, part 3

Round 7: Sweet Sixteen, part 2

Round 6: Sweet Sixteen, part 1

Round 5: Shells and Wings

Round 4: Horns and Hooves

Round 3: Fins and Flippers

Round 2: Paws and Claws, part 2

Round 1: Paws and Claws, part 1

The post Vote For The Endangered Animal March Madness Champion: Elephant vs. Sea Otter appeared first on ThinkProgress.

New York Just Quietly Raided Its Climate Program For Cash. It Might Destroy The Entire Effort.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Mike Groll

A relatively small provision buried in New York state’s $150 billion budget has got environmentalists in a bit of a tizzy.

In the budget passed last week, lawmakers agreed to take $41 million away from state’s climate change mitigation program and sweep that money into the general fund. The program is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, also known as RGGI (pronounced “Reggie”), and is essentially a cap-and-trade system operated by nine Northeastern states and Eastern Canada.

First, a primer on how RGGI works. Under the initiative, states agree to put limitations the amount of carbon that power plants can emit every year. If those power plants want to emit more than they’re allowed, they buy “allowances” — or simply, the right to pollute a little more — from other entities that did not pollute enough to meet their emissions limit. Part of the money from the sale is given to the state, and used to invest in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies.

The $41 million that is being taken away from RGGI is the money that was collected from those sales. Right now, according to the Times Union, New York has approximatively $760 million that it has collected from carbon auctions. So, instead of $760 million, the state now has $719 million to spend on energy efficiency and conservation and so on.

But environmentalists aren’t really worried about the reduction in funds, per se. What they’re worried about is the actual practice of using RGGI money for purposes not intended by the program. That practice could open up the program to lawsuits from anti-climate action groups.

That’s at least according to Peter Iwanowicz, head of the Albany lobbying group Environmental Advocates of New York. Iwanowicz is also a former acting commissioner of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, where he led the state’s participation in RGGI.

Iwanowicz told ThinkProgress that, if money collected from RGGI is now going to be spent on general budget matters, anti-climate action groups could attack the program in court as an illegal tax. That’s because, unlike in some other states, RGGI was adopted as an executive action by the governor — it was not passed by the Legislature. All taxes must be passed by the Legislature.

“New York has to be extremely careful about what they do with RGGI proceeds because the collection of proceeds has not been approved by the Legislature,” Iwanowicz said. “New York has prevented legal challenges in the past because they’ve used that money to drive down carbon pollution. It’s directly related. If they move away from that concept, they open up the prospect of legal action.”

There is some precedent to worry about a legal challenge to RGGI. In 2011, Americans for Prosperity — a group backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch — sued the state over its participation in the program, claiming it was an illegal tax. That lawsuit was thrown out in 2012.

So why is Iwanowicz so worried about a lawsuit challenging RGGI again? The main reason, he said, is because a successful challenge could undermine President Obama’s plans to fight climate change. Specifically, he said, Obama has held up the RGGI program as one way states can meet carbon reduction goals set out under his proposed Clean Power Plan. If New York is bumped out of RGGI, there’s no guarantee the program could continue to be as successful.

“Nearly 40 percent of the pollution reduced [under RGGI] comes from New York,” Iwanowicz said. “So a successful lawsuit would throw the entire RGGI program into chaos, because New York is such a big part of the entire regional market.”

If the program is thrown “into chaos” as Iwanowicz predicts could happen, then there would be no successful U.S. model for states to participate in cap-and-trade systems. And without that successful model, Obama would lose a key argument proving his aggressive carbon reduction goals can be feasibly met.

This doesn’t seem like it would be an intended consequence. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has generally been supportive of climate action, spearheading programs like a $1 billion solar power investment and pushing stricter emissions reductions under RGGI. New York’s attorney general is also fighting for Obama’s climate plan in court, arguing the President’s goals are legally sound and necessary to protect public health.

Unintended or not, however, Iwanowicz said the consequences could get very real.

“If New York’s participation in RGGI was invalidated because of Cuomo’s climate raid, it could make it much more difficult for Obama’s climate action plan to move forward,” he said. “Plain and simple.”

The post New York Just Quietly Raided Its Climate Program For Cash. It Might Destroy The Entire Effort. appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Despite Historic Drought, California Used 70 Million Gallons Of Water For Fracking Last Year

In this Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014, file photo, houseboats float in the drought-lowered waters of Oroville Lake near Oroville, Calif.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File

Even in the midst of its historic, ongoing drought, California used millions of gallons of water for hydraulic fracturing last year, according to state officials.

The state used nearly 70 million gallons of water to frack for oil and gas in 2014, Reuters reported last week. That amount is actually less than the 100 million gallons officials previously estimated the state uses for fracking operations every year.

Steven Bohlen, California’s oil and gas supervisor, noted to Reuters that not all water used for fracking operations is freshwater: some of it is produced water, which rises to the surface during the fracking process and can’t be used for drinking or irrigation. In all, Bohlen said, fracking uses the same amount of water as about 514 households each year.

But Patrick Sullivan, spokesperson for the Center for Biological Diversity and Californians Against Fracking, says that while this figure may be correct, using water for fracking isn’t the same as using water for household tasks, like brushing teeth or washing dishes. That water is cycled back into the overall water supply, while water used for fracking is typically too contaminated to be used again for things like irrigation or drinking.

“It is water that most likely cannot be put back into the water cycle,” he told ThinkProgress. “It’s water that is by and large gone for good.”

Sullivan also said that he didn’t think the figure included all forms of oil and gas development, including things like steam injection — a method commonly used in California oil production. Reuters reported last week that environmentalists estimate that the state’s oil and gas industry uses 2 million gallons of fresh water a day for oil production.

At a time when California is enduring a historic, four-year drought, the state shouldn’t be using its precious water resources to frack, Sullivan said. Last week, California Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order that contained the state’s first-ever mandatory restrictions on water use. The order requires the State Water Resources Control Board to reduce water use by 25 percent in the state’s local water supply agencies over the next year. The order also directs the state Department of Water Resources to lead an effort to replace 50 million square feet of lawns with drought-resistant landscaping, and requires that places like golf courses, cemeteries, and college campuses “immediately implement water efficiency measures.”

The order does not, however, restrict the use of water for fracking in the state. That’s something that California environmentalists weren’t happy about.

“Governor Brown is forcing ordinary Californians to shoulder the burden of the drought by cutting their personal water use while giving the oil industry a continuing license to break the law and poison our water,” Zack Malitz of environmental group Credo told Reuters last week. “Fracking and toxic injection wells may not be the largest uses of water in California, but they are undoubtedly some of the stupidest,” he added.

Sullivan agrees.

“I know there are places in the Central Valley where the ground is literally sinking because so much groundwater is being pumped out,” he said, alluding to a problem in the Valley that’s been exacerbated by the drought. “It is inexcusable that we are continuing to use this precious water for fracking…we’ve got to protect our water supply in the state; we’re running dry.”

A ban or temporary moratorium in the state hasn’t happened yet, but it has received some interest from state lawmakers. Last year, California assemblyman Marc Levine (D) pushed for a moratorium on fracking, saying that the state had to “decide what our most precious commodity is — water or oil?”

Sullivan is among those who want the state to stop fracking altogether. He’s not just concerned about the industry’s high use of water resources; he’s also concerned about where the industry’s wastewater ends up. In February, a San Francisco Chronicle story revealed that California regulators allowed oil companies to dispose of their wastewater in drinking and irrigation aquifers, letting the companies drill a total of 171 wastewater injection wells into these freshwater aquifers. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, a new draft “underground injection control” plan would allow the state to continue polluting these aquifers for another two years.

The post Despite Historic Drought, California Used 70 Million Gallons Of Water For Fracking Last Year appeared first on ThinkProgress.

How The Oil Industry’s ‘Dr. Evil’ Is Running A Campaign To Sell Off America’s Public Lands

View of the Trout Run Valley from Tibbet Knob, in George Washington National Forest.

CREDIT: shutterstock

With a series of four nearly identical op-ed articles written by one of its front groups and published in western newspapers last week, the oil industry and its allies appear to be taking a more active and public role in a controversial campaign to seize and sell America’s national forests and public lands.

The op-eds were written by the director of a group called the Environmental Policy Alliance, a front group for the public relations firm of Richard Berman. Known as “Dr. Evil” for his aggressive fights against animal rights groups, labor unions, and environmental organizations, Berman has advised major oil and gas interests, including the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), a trade association headquartered in Denver.

The op-eds from Berman’s Washington, D.C.-based front group appeared with three different headlines in four newspapers — the Helena Independent Record and the Fairfield Sun Times in Montana, the Las Vegas Review Journal in Nevada, and the Deseret News in Utah.

The articles published argued in support of right-wing efforts in Utah and ten other western states to seize control of national forests and national monuments so they can be drilled, logged, mined, or sold off to private companies. ThinkProgress previously reported that another one of Berman’s other front groups, the Interstate Policy Alliance, has also published a number of reports supporting state efforts to seize and sell America’s public lands.

Legal scholars have noted that these so-called “land transfer” schemes are unconstitutional, economic analyses have found them to be fiscally reckless, and sportsmen’s groups argue that they would result in diminished public access for hunting and fishing.

But this type of rhetoric isn’t surprising for a group supported by Berman. In 2014, New York Times investigation reported that Berman had been caught on tape at a WEA conference last June urging oil and gas executives to hire his firm to wage an “endless war” against environmental organizations. In the recording, according to the New York Times, Berman promised oil executives who hired him that they would maintain “total anonymity.”

“We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors,” Berman told the group.

With the help of Berman’s groups — along with the oil-industry backed American Legislative Exchange Council and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and a surge in lobbying spending by proponents — land grab proposals have gained national attention in recent months, both in the media and in Congress.

In March, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) forced a vote on a nonbinding amendment to support state efforts to seize and sell off public lands, which narrowly passed 51-49 after Murkowski held the vote open to convince Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) to support the measure.

The Hill also reported last week that presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who has previously introduced proposals to force the federal government to sell public lands, “is making a play for the West in the 2016 race by touting his opposition to the federal government’s expansive land holdings.”

Despite Cruz’s strategic play, bipartisan public opinion research has shown that the majority of Western voters, from all political parties, oppose state efforts to seize and sell off public lands. The polling also shows that Western voters believe that transferring control of lands to state governments would result in the lands being opened up for increased drilling, mining and logging; would reduce access for recreation; and would create a high risk of lands being sold off and state taxes being raised to cover the extreme costs of management.

In the op-eds, the Environmental Policy Alliance criticized sportsmen’s groups that oppose right-wing land grabs for taking “out-of-state money” to “camouflage” their efforts.

“These groups claim to represent sportsmen when discussing land use, energy and other policy issues,” the op-ed in the Deseret News reads. “But they really ought to be called ‘Green Decoys.'”

None of the publications note that the Environmental Policy Alliance is a front group for Berman and his clients or that the op-ed’s author, Will Coggin, is himself “out-of-state.”

Claire Moser is the Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser.

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