Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 163

Mount Everest Is Covered In Human Poop. This Plan Could Turn It Into Energy.

Garry Porter remembers being at Mount Everest’s south base camp in 2003, watching Sherpa porters haul down blue barrels filled to the brim with human feces.

“What they do is, they have a poop barrel, and they haul it to a teahouse village,” Porter said, explaining how Sherpas in Nepal deal with the waste left behind by the estimated 700 climbers and guides who spend two months on Everest every climbing season. “When they get it off the mountain, they dig a hole, and dump it.”

Kami Diki Sherpa, owner of Yeti Resort and operator of a shelter for Everest porters.

CREDIT: Photo provided by Garry Porter

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Mount Everest’s poop problem. In March, the chief of Nepal’s mountaineering association said so much waste had accumulated that it’s threatening to spread disease. Right now, it’s estimated that climbers leave behind up to 26,500 pounds of human feces every year.

It’s a huge issue for the Sherpa guides, and others who live and work around the mountain. “It has a serious effect to our environment,” said Kami Diki Sherpa, who runs a shelter for the Everest porters, in a 2013 interview. “It has polluted our water source.”

But with all this talk about the problem, there hasn’t been much mention of proposed solutions. And that’s because as of now, there really aren’t any — except for one. To build an anaerobic digester in a small village near Everest’s base, and convert all that human poop to biogas, which can then be used by the Sherpas as an energy source.

If and when the digester becomes fully operational, it would prevent the nearly 14 tons of solid waste dumped in pits every year, with some additional growth capability for the waste already on the mountain. It would not address the excrement from the current tea houses, where thousands of trekkers arrive annually — but if it’s successful, a secondary digester could be built.

“It is kind of crazy,” said Porter. “But we’re doing it.”

Before he retired, Porter was a lead engineer at Boeing, where he managed a fleet of aircraft for NATO. But he was and is also a climber — he scaled Mount Everest back in 2003, making it all the way to the South Summit (that’s less than a mile away from the true summit, but he says he was forced down due to high winds).

When he returned to base camp, he noticed the porters carrying down the blue barrels of human excrement. He didn’t like it — it was “unceremonious,” he said. And when he talked to the Sherpas down in the small village of Gorak Shep at the base of the mountain, where the waste was dumped, he felt even worse.

“This mountain is sacred to them,” Porter said. “Us Westerners leave our crap on their mountain, and it just didn’t seem right.”

ThinkProgress.

This Is How The U.S. Plans To Tackle Climate Change In The Next Decade And Beyond

President Obama at the U.N. Climate Summit, Sept 23, 2014.

CREDIT: flickr/ John Gillespie

Tuesday, March 31 is the informal deadline for countries to submit their climate commitments to the post-2020 United Nations’ climate agreement — the latest, and one of the most important, steps toward the final round of talks to be held in Paris at the end of the year.

On Friday, Mexico formally submitted its post-2020 target, and the U.S. is expected to submit their plan by the end of the day Tuesday, according to White House officials. The plan will be very similar to the pledge the U.S. made late in 2014 in a joint statement with China to reduce emissions by roughly 28 percent by 2025.

By meeting the deadline, the U.S. can help indicate it is serious about international climate commitments, even as domestic progress is slowed due to congressional inaction and fossil fuel industry pushback.

“The U.S. is seen by the world as the country most needing to take on commitments on climate change, and until about two years ago, the least willing to do so,” Timmons Roberts, a climate change social scientist at Brown University, told ThinkProgress. “By resisting acting, the U.S. gave excuses to all the other foot-dragging nations to do as little as possible.”

On top of the American and Mexican commitments, the entire 28-member European Union, as well as Switzerland and Norway, are the only other countries to have put forth their commitments ahead of the deadline. Added up these countries account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. As Reuters reports, other major GHG emitters including China, India, Russia, Brazil, and Canada have indicated that they will wait until closer to the Paris summit in December to announce their targets.

Mexico announced it would reduce its GHG emissions by 22 percent and its emissions of black carbon or soot by 51 percent by the year 2030. It also said it would peak its emissions by 2026. The E.U. made the commitment early in March that it would reduce GHGs by 40 percent or more below 1990 levels by 2030.

The U.S.’s forthcoming commitment matches up with the joint pledge last November with China, the world’s largest GHG emitter, to reduce GHG emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. China, for its part, committed to peak CO2 emissions around 2030 and to increase its use of renewable energy to around 20 percent of the total energy mix by 2030.

Roberts said that the U.S.-China pledges were “very impactful” and showed how “ambition can look different for developing vs. developed nations.”

“By collaborating with developing nations like China and Mexico the U.S. is helping them ‘make the road by walking,'” said Roberts. Walking that road will be far from easy: after submitting pledges the U.S. has to show how it’s going to meet them as well as what happens if Republicans eventually take over the White House, according to Roberts.

Ken Berlin, President & CEO of the Climate Reality Project, echoed Roberts statements, saying that in order to follow through on its commitment, the U.S. must issue “strong, final rules for reducing carbon emissions from new and existing power plants” and follow through on its $3 billion pledge to the Green Climate Fund.

The U.S.’s commitment “will assure the rest of the international community that the world’s biggest economy and second-biggest emitter is taking action, and that their own commitments will not be for naught,” Berlin told ThinkProgress. “If other nations were waiting for the U.S. to take the first step, they can now come forward.”

Berlin pointed out that since the U.S.-China pledge last year, “China has already committed to capping coal use by 2020, announced that they will open their national carbon market next year, and set a target of almost 18 GW of added solar power capacity this year.”

After Mexico made its announcement on Wednesday, the U.S. and Mexico also agreed to set up a joint task force on climate policy cooperation in which President Obama and President Enrique Peña Nieto reaffirmed their commitment to addressing global climate change, “one of the greatest threats facing humanity.”

Countries are submitting their post-2020 pledges to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Meant to help each country propose targets most suited to their needs, the INDCs vary for developed and developing countries and can include anything from from sector-wide emissions cuts to energy intensity goals to renewable energy targets.

According to the World Resources Institute, INDCs combine a bottom-up system in which countries put forward goals that fit within their national contexts, with the top-down system intended to reduce global emissions enough to limit average temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius.

Scientists have warned that the deadline to keep temperature increases below the agreed-upon goal of 2 degrees Celsius is fast-approaching and may have already passed. In any case, preventing further damage and more dire outcomes requires dramatic action, including a sustained shift to renewables and possibly the deployment of cost-effective carbon capture and sequestration. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report warned of the “high confidence” that “irreversible impacts” will occur even with action in the future. With these stark physical realities in mind, those at the climate talks must focus on the nuts and bolts of a politically plausible, economically feasible treaty.

“So far, based on INDCs that have come out and what we expect we know we’re going to get about halfway to 2 degrees under the best case scenario,” Rebecca Lefton, Director of Policy and Research at Climate Advisers, told ThinkProgress. “Which is not surprising, because this is just what countries can do unilaterally with self-financed pollution targets.”

A recent analysis by Climate Advisers found that a “strong set of pledges” on top of current commitments from the U.S., China and the E.U. would deliver around 50 percent of the emissions reductions need for a likely chance of limiting warming to 2°C.

Lefton said that bilateral international partnerships can help close the gap in these multilateral international agreements.

“That’s where we should scale up, and where the U.S. can do more,” she said.

India is another major concern in the talks, as rapid development and a growing population will make the country a top emitter in the near future. Lefton said that India’s INDC will likely include a conditional component — the country is banking on international investment to help spur renewable energy growth and both reduce GHGs and improve local air quality.

While Mexico and the U.S. step up with commitments, the third major North American country, Canada, is standing by the sidelines for the time being. A spokesperson for Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq recently told The Canadian Press that “Canada wants to ensure we have a complete picture of what the provinces and territories plan before we submit.”

These remarks are far from encouraging. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada has gone from a bastion of green politics to having the semblance of a petrostate as oil and gas developments have surged. Currently Canada is on track to badly miss its 2020 target for cutting GHG emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

This is the same target currently held by the U.S. — a target the Obama administration has been aggressively pursuing through its Climate Action Plan by doing everything from reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants, to promoting clean energy and fuel efficiency, to engaging in far-reaching conservation efforts.

According to the Obama Administration, U.S. carbon emissions have fallen by 10 percent from 2007 to 2013, representing “the largest absolute emissions reduction of any country in the world.”

Under Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s direction, Australia has followed Canada’s lead in distancing itself from the progressive environmental policies it was once heralded for. In the latest in what has been a long run of anti-climate actions, environmentalists are outraged over the Abbott government’s recent paper on its post-2020 emission reduction targets.

The document states that the government will release its post-2020 targets in mid-2015, however the anger comes not from the date, but the substance: the paper does not mention the 2C target, but rather pursues a scenario that could lead to 3.6C of warming.

“A world of four degrees warming would be disastrous for Australia’s economy, security and environment,” said John Connor, CEO of The Climate Institute in Australia, in a statement. “Current global policies do have us on the path but, unlike in Australia, other major emitters are moving to increase not decrease credible climate action.”

The post This Is How The U.S. Plans To Tackle Climate Change In The Next Decade And Beyond appeared first on ThinkProgress.

During Fracking Hearing, Nebraskan Challenges Oil And Gas Commission To Drink Wastewater

James Osborn pours a mystery concoction into water at a Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission meeting in March 2015.

Opposition to a proposal to dump out-of-state fracking wastewater in Nebraska went viral over the weekend, after a community group posted a video of a man offering chemical-laden water to a Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

The commission was hearing public comment on a Terex Energy Corp. application to inject up to 10,000 gallons per day of wastewater from fracking in Colorado and Wyoming into an old oil well on a ranch in Sioux County, in the northwest corner of Nebraska.

In the video, James Osborn pours three cups of water for the commissioners, then pours a brown liquid into each cup, asking them, “Would you drink it?”

Watch the video by Bold Nebraskahere:



During hydraulic fracturing (fracking), large amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, is injected underground to crack shale rock and release pockets of oil or natural gas. The process produces a lot of leftover wastewater — in America, fracking produces an estimated 280 billion gallons of wastewater per year, according to a report by Environment America.

Because it is difficult to treat, fracking wastewater is usually stored in pits or underground. In the Midwest, fracking in Nebraska’s neighboring states has boomed in recent years, leaving millions of gallons of wastewater needing to be stored.

Nebraskans at the hearing were concerned about contaminating their groundwater, as well the increased traffic from trucks. In addition to concerns about drinking water, Nebraska has other reasons to worry about water. Agriculture is the state’s biggest business, valued at $21 billion a year.

“Everything about Nebraska runs on water,” Osborn says in the video. “There is no doubt that there will be contamination, there will be spills.”

Even treated wastewater from fracking has been found to have chemical contaminants that can be harmful to human health. Several eastern states have banned or are considering banning wastewater disposal from the fracking boom in Pennsylvania, both because of pollution concerns and because fracking has been linked to an increase in earthquakes.

“Knowing the earthquakes, the contamination of water, the destruction of land, we don’t want to see it happening in our state,” said Jane Kleeb, the founder of Bold Nebraska, the group that posted the video. “I know a lot of people see Nebraska as a flyover state, but we are not the country’s dumping ground.”

According to Bill Sydow, the director of the Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Nebraska already has 130 “salt water disposal” wells, including four or five commercial wells, like the project proposed. Several thousand gallons of post-fracking water are being injected in Nebraska every day, Sydow told ThinkProgress, and most of the water is from fracking projects in Wyoming.

“People have become fearful of hydraulic fracturing,” he said. “I feel it’s unfounded. It’s unwarranted.”

Sydow said the levels of contaminants in waste water from fracking were so low that a person’s body would be able to “handle” drinking it. He said he was not aware of any instances in which wastewater from fracking had contaminated drinking water.

“Nevertheless, it will be completely kept out of the environment at the surface,” he said. The injection well named in Terex’s application is an “excellent candidate” for water storage, Sydow said, because it is relatively new and has four layer of concrete protection.

In a letter to the commission, State Sen. John Stinner said he would introduce a resolution calling for a study on whether the commission has adequate authority to regulate waste disposal wells. “I am very concerned that the Commission has no means to fund the monitoring that would be required for the future to assure the safety of the groundwater,” he wrote. “Moreover, how would any repair of future environmental damage be accomplished and any clean-up funded?”

In January, Stinner introduced a bill authorizing the commission to monitor and regulate out-of-state wastewater disposal in Nebraska. Stinner did not respond Monday to questions from ThinkProgress.

The commission is required to make a decision in the next 30 days. If either the applicant or intervenors appeal, it would go to the Nebraska District Court.

The post During Fracking Hearing, Nebraskan Challenges Oil And Gas Commission To Drink Wastewater appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Report: BP Oil Spill Still Harming At Least 20 Animal Species

A Brown Pelican sits on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast after being drenched in oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill Thursday, June 3, 2010. Brown Pelicans are one of the species said to still be feeling the effects of BP’s oil spill, 5 years later

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

At least 20 animal species are still suffering from the effects of the largest oil spill in U.S. history nearly five years after it occurred, according to a National Wildlife Federation report released Monday.

The common loon, blue crab, red snapper, and sperm whale are among the animals named in the NWF’s report, Five Years And Counting: Gulf Wildlife in the Aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. Those animals only make up a small portion of the 13,000 species in the Gulf, the federation’s president told reporters on a phone call Monday, implying the difficulty of determining the spill’s total long-term impact on animals.

“Given the significant quantity of oil remaining on the floor of the Gulf and the unprecedented large-scale use of dispersal during the spill, it will be years or even decades before the full impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is known,” the report said. “It is clear that robust scientific monitoring of the Gulf ecosystem and its wildlife populations must continue — and that restoration of degraded ecosystems should begin as soon as possible.”

The report comes just a few days after BP filed papers in federal court arguing its businesses would be threatened by fines for its historic April 2010 spill, which saw an estimated 210 million gallons of oil gush into the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is currently weighing what that fine should be, and it could be as high as $13.7 billion — but BP is arguing that anything above $2.3 billion would put its U.S. business in serious trouble.

BP is also arguing that Monday’s report is unsubstantiated. The company’s senior vice president of communications, Geoff Morrell, said in a statement that the findings are “a work of political advocacy by an organization that has referred to the Deepwater Horizon accident as ‘an historic opportunity’ to finance its policy agenda.”

In recent months, Morrell has led BP’s effort to communicate that the Gulf of Mexico has “inherent resilience” when it comes to oil spills, and that environmentalists are overreacting about its impacts. In October, Morrell authored an article in Politico Magazine titled “No, BP Didn’t Ruin The Gulf,” which among other things argued that the “unprecedented” clean-up response “greatly minimized the spill’s impact on wildlife and their habitats.”

The National Wildlife Federation’s report argues the contrary. It blames the spill for the deaths of 12 percent of the brown pelican population in the northern Gulf, and 32 percent of the laughing gulls in the same area. It notes that compounds from both oil and the dispersant used to clean up the oil have been found in white pelican eggs in Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois.

The report also cited 2014 research which found two new coral reefs in the deep ocean that were impacted by the Deepwater Horizon spill, indicating a possible impact on marine ecosystems in the hard-to-analyze deep sea. It also cited the unusual string of bottlenose dolphin deaths which have been linked the the BP spill, though BP adamantly denies culpability.

BP itself has countered claims that its spill is harming wildlife by releasing its own 5-year impact report, which asserts that the Gulf “is returning to its baseline condition.” It claims there was no long-term impact to bird populations; that affected areas are recovering faster than predicted thanks to its massive spill response; and that most of the light crude oil evaporated before it could make a lasting impact.

Though it is true that much of the spilled oil evaporated on the ocean’s surface, scientists recently discovered a 1,235-square-mile “bathub ring” of oil on the deep ocean’s floor. In addition, the dispersants used to break up the oil were dangerous, holding carcinogenic pollutants that are soaked up by human skin. Possibly because of those dispersants and the oil itself, the workers that participated in the massive spill response that helped save thousands of animals and ecosystems now face higher risks of sickness and cancer.

The post Report: BP Oil Spill Still Harming At Least 20 Animal Species appeared first on ThinkProgress.

The Endangered Animal Bracket, Round 8: Moose Vs. Narwhal

Click image to expand. Now updated with Friday’s winners: Seahorse and Sea Otter!

CREDIT: Dylan Petrohilos

We’re halfway through the Sweet Sixteen in March Sadness, our bracket tournament of animals impacted by climate change and other environmental threats. You likely know this by now, but 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. Read the rules here.

Last round was a toughie. Both our winners won by less than four votes. Seahorse pulled ahead of Whale in a last-minute victory, while Sea Otter was able to maintain its one-vote lead against Penguin.

Today, winners of our Hooves and Horns category will go head-to-head in a battle for your curiosity. We’ll tell you more about what’s threatening Elephants, Mountain Goats, Moose, and Narwhals — but only your votes can decide who moves on for a chance at a feature story. Vote in the embedded tweets below, on Twitter with the hashtag #CPMarchSadness, or on our Facebook page.

Elephant vs. Mountain Goat

CREDIT: Shutterstock

Elephant: The tragic decline of both Asian and African elephants has been well-documented over the years. In Africa, demand for ivory and changes in land-use pose a serious threat to the species, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Asian elephants face similar threats from a growing human population, which is slowly taking away the animal’s forest habitat.

For this already-vulnerable animal, climate change is the nail in the proverbial coffin. Asian elephants are in grave danger of dying of heat stroke in Myanmar if temperatures raise even a few degrees higher than average, according to a 2013 study. Both Asian and African elephants are also threatened by water shortages brought on by drought, and hot, dry weather is particularly risky for elephants, since they rely on splashing water on themselves to help regulate their temperature.

Mountain Goat: Alpine chamois mountain goats are shrinking, and it’s because of climate change. They’re not just shrinking a little, either — they’re shrinking a lot. Specifically, the animals weigh, on average, about 25 percent less than they did 30 years ago, according to a 2014 paper published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology.

How is this climate change, exactly? Well, as average temperatures have risen 5° to 7° Fahrenheit in the goats’ Italian Alps habitat, scientists speculate that the goats spend more time resting in an attempt to avoid overheating — therefore, they’re eating less food. As of now, though, it’s unclear how the shrinkage will affect the goats. It could help them better withstand hotter summers, but it may may also mean the goats aren’t as prepared for harsh Alpine winters.

Which horned mammal will go to the next round?

Who is moving on? RETWEET for Elephant or FAVE for Mountain Goat #CPMarchSadness http://t.co/5j9mc8K14W pic.twitter.com/RplyDhxCYK

— Climate Progress (@climateprogress) March 30, 2015

Moose vs. Narwhal

CREDIT: Shutterstock/WWF

Moose: Last round, we discussed how warmer, shorter northern winters pose concerns for moose in the form of more and more fleas and ticks surviving into the spring. This means that more moose suffer fates like some of those in Alaska and New England, who get weighed down by up to 100,000 blood-sucking ticks. Moose also require cool climates to thrive, overheating easily.

But it’s not just ticks and overheating that threaten moose. The U.S. Geological survey noted that because warming temperatures can increase the risk of infectious disease and parasite survival, they threaten potential hosts. Warmer temperatures increase the survival chances of the brain worm of the white-tailed deer, which can cause fatal neurological disease in moose should they eat the worm larva which overwinters in snails.

Narwhal: We noted last time that some scientists fear that narwhals face a singular threat from climate change because their diets and habitats could be reduced as Arctic oceans warm. Warmer waters could bring in not only more commercial fishermen to compete for food, but more killer whales, which hunt narwhals.

But it’s also shifting sea ice in a rapidly changing Arctic that threatens narwhals. Narwhals depend on cracks in the sea ice — called “leads” — to breathe between dives. These mammals are creatures of habit, so if winds, storms, or currents shift the usual locations of these leads, the narwhals risk drowning in crowded, small leads known as “entrapments.” Kristin Laidre is a marine mammal biologist at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center who began noticing a change in when and where narwhals were facing these risks.

Who will make it to the next round for a chance at a feature story?

Who's your favorite? RETWEET for Moose or FAVE for Narwhal #CPMarchSadness http://t.co/5j9mc8K14W pic.twitter.com/EYGWdgO3Xn

— Climate Progress (@climateprogress) March 30, 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 NOW OPEN)

Day 10 – 4/1: TBD

Day 11 – 4/2: TBD

Day 12 – 4/3: THE FINAL FOUR: TBD

Day 13 – 4/6: THE CHAMPIONSHIP: TBD

PAST ROUNDS:

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 The Endangered Animal Bracket, Round 8: Moose Vs. Narwhal appeared first on ThinkProgress.

California Snowpack Hits All-Time Low, 8 Percent Of Average

In this Jan. 28, 2015 photo chairs on a ski lift overlooking Donner Lake, sit idle at Donner Ski Ranch in Norden, CA.

CREDIT: AP/ Rich Pedroncelli

The rainy season is over in California before it ever really began.

As the state enters its fourth year of a prolonged and devastating drought, new snowpack estimates give Californians little to aspire to other than more hot and dry conditions. According to the Department of Water Resources, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is lower than any year since 1950, and at the end of March it is just 8 percent of the historical average.

This year’s paltry snowpack is less than one-third of the previous smallest size on record, which was 25 percent of average — an amount that was reached both last year and in 1977.

Winter is normally California’s rainy season, but the state has been parched since several big storms swept through late last year. And that looks like it’s going to continue — state climatologist Michael Anderson told the The Fresno Bee that there is “no significant precipitation in sight.”

“I think we’re done,” he said. “I see heat and more heat in the coming months.”

The impacts of the ongoing drought — which studies have shown is exacerbated by climate change — are being seen in everything from energy production to the survival of critical species like the Delta smelt.

According to a new report from the Pacific Institute, the ongoing drought is causing California to rely on natural gas to replace unavailable hydroelectricity power sources. The report states that the switch has cost California ratepayers $1.4 billion more for electricity than in average years, and has resulted in an 8 percent increase in carbon dioxide and other pollutants between 2011 and 2014.

With the first three months 2015 offering little respite from the drought, California Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed an expansive $1.1 billion emergency drought relief bill, the second such effort in as many years.

CREDIT: CA DWR

Snowpack usually provides about one third of California’s annual water use and 60 percent of the water that is captured in the state’s vast reservoir system. When snowpack was around one-quarter of average in 2014, it was expected to account for more like one-twentieth of that demand. Allocating the limited snow runoff this year to the many interested parties will be just as painful.

Marty Ralph, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told NBC News that “without that snowpack, it’s really hard for the reservoirs and water supply to be available during the very dry part of the summer.”

Those that rely on the snowpack for recreational reasons have also been dismayed by this season’s failure to deliver.

“This has been what I’m now calling the ‘cruellest’ [sic] winter I’ve ever seen,” wrote Tim Cohee, CEO of Central California’s China Peak Ski resort, in a Facebook post in mid-February when the resort was forced to close. “We have not only dealt with no snow, but also with incredibly marginal snowmaking conditions … In nearly four decades I have never worked for a resort that closed mid-winter; now I have.”

The post California Snowpack Hits All-Time Low, 8 Percent Of Average appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Florida’s Climate Denial Could Cause Catastrophic Recession

Miami streets see heavy flooding from rain in September 2014. Some neighborhoods flood regularly during deluges or extreme high tides.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

Governor Rick Scott (R-FL) has made Florida the punchline for countless jokes since we learned in early March he barred state officials from using the term “climate change.” As Jon Stewart joked last week holding a copy of “Roget’s Denial Thesaurus,” Florida is headed toward “statewide jacuzzification,” and “It appears by 2020, Miami will be involved in a surprise pool party.”

But the joke is on all of us: Florida has led the way in all but ignoring the growing twin threats created by human-caused climate change — sea level rise and superstorm surge — thereby creating a trillion-dollar real-estate bubble in coastal property. When the next superstorm like Katrina or Sandy makes its target Florida and bursts that bubble, the state can declare bankruptcy. So too could some insurance companies. But taxpayers — you and I — will get the several hundred billion dollar bailout bill.

And a bailout will be the best-case scenario for all of us. When the coastal property real estate bubble bursts, what measures do we have in place to stop another catastrophic recession like the most recent one, which was also driven by a real estate bubble bursting?

Let’s do the math. There is now at least $1.4 trillion in property within 660 feet of the U.S. coast, a detailed analysis of the data by Reuters found. Worse, “incomplete data for some areas means the actual total is probably much higher.”

While Florida is denying the very existence of climate change, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is here to remind us that, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” And what science told us in the last 12 months about likely sea level rise has been shocking. It’s the kind of news that should have stopped coastal development cold.

Last May, we learned that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) appears close to, if not past, the point of irreversible collapse. Relatedly, “Greenland’s icy reaches are far more vulnerable to warm ocean waters from climate change than had been thought.”

We also learned in August that Greenland and the WAIS more than doubled their rate of ice loss in the last five years.

Already this year, we learned two more stunners. First, a large glacier in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet turns out to be as unstable and as vulnerable to melting from underneath as WAIS is. This alone could “could lead to an extreme thaw increases sea levels by about 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) worldwide if the glacier vanishes.”

Second, two new studies find that global warming is weakening a crucial ocean circulation pathway in the North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream system, to a level “apparently unique in the last thousand years.” And if that circulation continues to weaken, it would also add another few feet of sea level rise to the East Coast. Indeed, this weakening is maybe one reason why large parts of the East Coast are already experiencing much faster sea level rise than the rest of the world.

A January study found that global sea level rise since 1990 has been speeding up even faster than we knew. “The sea-level acceleration over the past century has been greater than had been estimated by others,” explained lead writer Eric Morrow. “It’s a larger problem than we initially thought.”

The recent findings have led top climatologists to conclude we are headed toward what used to be the high end of projected global sea level rise this century: four to six feet or more. A 2013 NOAA study found that, under such sea level rise, the areas that received the very worst storm surges from Superstorm Sandy — such as devastated places like Sandy Hook and The Battery — will be inundated by such storm surges every year or two. In fact, in that scenario, the New Jersey shore from Atlantic City south would see Sandy level storm surges almost every year by mid-century

Worse, as discussed above, the East Coast of the United States is very likely headed toward considerably higher sea level rise over the next century than the planet as a whole. If we don’t take very aggressive action to slash carbon pollution, we could be facing a rise upwards of 10 feet. And considerably more than that after 2100 — sea level rise exceeding a foot per decade.

And so we are in a major coastal real estate bubble.

How big is the bubble, and who will pay when it bursts? The excellent Reuters series, “The crisis of rising sea levels: Water’s Edge,” has a sobering chart:

It’s a trillion-dollar bubble. And it looks like American taxpayers are on the hook for much of it.

Florida is ground-zero for this bubble for several reasons. First, as the chart shows, Florida’s $484 billion leads the country in “the value of property covered by the National Flood Insurance Program, often at below market rates.” Indeed, its covered property is three times as much as the next state, Texas.

Second, Florida’s topology makes some of its urban coastal areas especially vulnerable to warming-driven sea level rise and storm surge. Tampa Bay has unique geography that puts it atop Climate Central’s list of U.S. cities most vulnerable to a direct hit from a major hurricane. And Miami is second on the list!

The Miami area is so flat that even with a mere three feet of sea-level rise, “more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone.”

Third, Miami-Dade County by itself has some $94 billion worth of property along coastal waters — and the city can’t protect itself the way many coastal cities can. “Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,” explained Robert Daoust, who works at a Dutch firm specializing in designing responses to rising sea levels. Why? As Jeff Goodell noted in Rolling Stone:

South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. “Imagine Swiss cheese, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like,” says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily – it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below.

For all these reasons, Harold Wanless, chair of University of Miami’s geological sciences department, told National Geographic in 2013, “I cannot envision southeastern Florida having many people at the end of this century.” In 2014, he said, “Miami, as we know it today, is doomed. It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.”

Under these dire circumstances, a rational statewide response might be to stop all new coastal development, have insurance priced according to risk, and start doing some intense planning. Instead we have Rick Scott’s complete denial, and sharp cuts in the budget for the South Florida Water Management District. Chuck Watson, a disaster ­impact analyst with a great deal of Florida experience, has warned, “There is no serious thinking, no serious planning, about any of this going on at the state level.

“The view is, ‘Well, if it gets real bad, the federal government will bail us out,’ he said. “It is beyond denial; it is flat-out delusional.”

The state level denial, while easy to milk for laughs, is thus epically tragic — and not just for Floridians, but for all of us.

Significantly, the planning going on at the local level, while better informed, is still relatively blind to what’s coming and what the response needs to be. That is clear from a very recent article by WLRN, South Florida Public Radio, “An Idea To Mitigate Rising Seas In Miami Beach: Lift The Entire City.”

KLRN interviewed public works director for the City of Miami Beach, Eric Carpenter, who asserted “The only tried and true solution to combating rising sea levels is to raise with it.” Seriously.

KLRN asked Carpenter about the sea-level rise projections Miami uses:

“All we can really count on are the projections that are made by the people that do this for a living. The Army Corps of Engineers are a great source of information. They’re projecting anywhere between seven and 24 inches of sea-level rise over the next 50 to 75 years. … We’re kind of picking numbers that are in the mid to upper portion of that range to be on the conservative side.”

Two feet by 2090 is not conservative. As KLRN points out, South Florida task forces “projected seas to rise anywhere from two to six feet by the end of the century” — last decade. The new findings discussed above make clear that the worst-case scenarios for sea level rise from the last decade have now become simply the “business-as-usual” scenario. Generally people prepare for the plausible worst-case — buying catastrophic health insurance, for instance — since the consequences of underestimating what’s to come can be so ruinous.

Miami should be planning for sea level rise of 6 to 10 feet by century’s end and a foot per decade rise after that. And it’s hard to see how “raising the city” is the optimal response. Is the plan to turn Miami into Venice? Will the valuable parts of Miami simply keep elevating themselves until the place becomes an island disconnected from the rest of South Florida, which will be underwater?

And what about storm surge? What happens when the new island fortress of “Miami Beachless” gets devastated by a major hurricane post-2050, with a storm surge of 10 to 20 feet?

There is a trillion-dollar bill on its way, with no one stepping up to pay it.

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Mexico Commits To Reduce Emissions 22 Percent, Peak By 2026

Gwynne Taraska is a Senior Policy Advisor specializing in energy and climate policy at the Center for American Progress.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

On Friday, Mexico announced that it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions 22 percent below business-as-usual levels by 2030 and peak its emissions by 2026. It registered these commitments, among others, with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, making it the first developing country to formally submit its post-2020 emissions reduction goals.

Mexico’s announcement follows climate commitments from several other major economies. In October 2014, the European Union announced that it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent or more below 1990 levels by 2030. In November 2014, China announced that it would peak CO2 emissions around 2030 and increase its use of renewable energy to account for 20 percent of energy consumption by the same year. The United States simultaneously announced that it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

There is a common but misguided line of reasoning that the U.S. shouldn’t regulate carbon pollution because it would be ineffectual against a backdrop of unabated emissions from other countries. A variant of this argument recently emerged, for example, in reactions to the joint U.S.-China announcement. In submitting robust emissions reduction targets, Mexico provides further evidence that there is genuine participation from both developed countries and emerging economies in the effort to transition to a low-carbon world economy. Greenhouse gas emissions from China, the United States, the European Union, and Mexico—four of the ten largest emitters—account for almost half of emissions globally (see figure below).

Emissions data from 2011, including land-use change and forestry.

CREDIT: CAIT 2.0.

Mexico’s submission also serves as a model while other countries prepare their own post-2020 emissions reduction commitments in advance of December 2015, when the parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meet in Paris to strike a new multilateral climate accord. The submission is clear — it quantitatively defines its business-as-usual baseline, to take an example — and at least some of its commitments, such as the 22 percent reduction and the 2026 peak, are not conditioned on the actions of other countries. It also elaborates on the policies that will make it possible to achieve its commitments.

Switzerland, the European Union, and Norway have also formally submitted their post-2020 goals. The United States is expected to formally submit within the next several days.

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Antarctica Recorded Its Hottest Temperature Ever This Week

CREDIT: shutterstock

The coldest place on Earth just got warmer than has ever been recorded.

According to the weather blog Weather Underground, on Tuesday, March 24, the temperature in Antarctica rose to 63.5°F (17.5C) — a record for the polar continent. Part of a longer heat wave, the record high came just a day after the previous record was set at 63.3°F.

Tuesday’s temperature was taken at the Argentina’s Esperanza Base, located near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The Monday record was from Marambio Base, about 60 miles southeast of Esperanza. Both are records for the locations, however the World Meteorological Organization is yet to certify that the temperatures are all-time weather records for Antarctica. Before these two chart-toppers, the highest recorded temperature from these outposts was 62.8°F in 1961.

Setting a new all-time temperature record for an entire continent is rare and requires the synthesizing of a lot of data. As Weather Underground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, explains, there is debate over what exactly is included in the continent Antarctica, and by the narrowest interpretation, which would include only sites south of the Antarctic Circle, Esperanza would not be part of the continent.

According to the WMO, the official keeper of global temperature records, the all-time high temperature for Antarctica was 59°F in 1974. As Mashable reports, the verification process for these new records could take months as the readings must be checked for accuracy.

 

Departure of temperature from average for Tuesday, March, 24, 2015, over Antarctica.

CREDIT: University of Main Climate Reanalyzer.

 

Even in their unofficial capacity, the readings are stunning.

As Burt reports, these temperature records occurred nearly three months past the warmest time of year in the Antarctic Peninsula, December, when the average high is 37.8°F. The average high for March is 31.3°F, making this week’s records more than 30°F above average. Burt also points out that temperature records for Esperanza have previously occurred in October and April, so these spikes are not unheard of.

They should also not be unexpected: the poles are warming faster than any part of the planet and rapid ice melt is being observed at increased rates in Antarctica. According to a new study, ice shelves in West Antarctica have lost as much as 18 percent of their volume over the last two decades, with rapid acceleration occurring over the last decade. The study found that from 1994 to 2003, the overall loss of ice shelf volume across the continent was negligible, but over the last decade West Antarctic losses increased by 70 percent.

According to the British Antarctic Survey, since records for the Antarctic Peninsula began half a century ago, the average temperature has risen about 5°F, making it “the most rapidly warming region in the Southern Hemisphere – comparable to rapidly warming regions of the Arctic.”

While the polar regions are feeling the most severe temperature changes brought on by the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, areas across the globe are setting record highs at a much faster rate than record lows. Since 2010, 46 nations or territories out of 235 have set or tied record highs. Only four have set record lows. According to the Weather Underground, so far this year, five nations or territories have tied or set all-time records for their highest temperature: Antarctica, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Wallis and Futuna Territory, and Samoa.

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Ted Cruz Is Trying To Gut The Clean Air Act And Repeal All Climate Regulation

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

CREDIT: AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez

Just a few days before Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) became the first official candidate for president in the 2016 election, he introduced a bill which, if enacted, would repeal all federal climate change regulation in the United States.

The American Energy Renaissance Act, also sponsored in the House by Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), seeks to prevent the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions through any of its executive agencies, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency. It would do so by expressly forbidding any efforts to fight climate change under five laws — The Clean Air Act, The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, The Endangered Species Act, and The Solid Waste Disposal Act.

Additionally, if the bill became law, the government would not be able to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride. All current attempts to regulate carbon pollution by the EPA would be repealed. That includes controversial proposed rules to limit carbon pollution from new and existing power plants, but also seemingly includes highly successful and relatively uncontroversial measures like fuel economy standards for cars.

“Proposals to regulate greenhouse gases are very expensive and threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs,” a statement on Cruz’s website announcing the bill reads. “The authority to regulate such gases should only occur with explicit authority from Congress.”

Interestingly enough, all the laws that give executive agencies authority to regulate greenhouse gases were given that authority by Congress. Indeed, the Clear Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and all the other laws cited in the bill were passed by Congress. Republicans opposed to climate regulation have argued that the Clean Air Act does not allow for regulation of carbon emissions — however, the Supreme Court has affirmed that it does.

The American Energy Renaissance Act is a sprawling piece of energy legislation, and includes much more than just a few attempts to gut the Clean Air Act and U.S. climate policy. The bill also includes provisions to approve the Keystone XL pipeline; to increase drilling on public lands like national parks and forests; to prevent federal regulation of fracking; and to end the ban on crude oil exports. Cruz introduced a nearly identical piece of legislation last year.

Naturally, all these policies would have the effect of drastically increasing greenhouse gas emissions, which the vast majority of scientists agree cause climate change.

Cruz, however, has been consistently adamant that humans don’t cause climate change — a position that has only gotten more extreme since he announced his presidential run. Just this week, Cruz said that most climate scientists and those who accept their findings are “the equivalent of the flat-Earthers,” while comparing himself to Galileo for denying the data. Historians were not happy with the comparison.

Despite how far away Cruz’s views are from the scientific consensus, he currently holds a good deal of power over how climate change is researched in the United States. He is the chair of the Senate Space, Science, and Competitiveness Subcommittee, the duties of which include oversight of NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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