Climate Change News Roundup starts off with some good news:
MIT researchers print solar cell on paper, turning everyday objects into current-producing devices.
Scientists ... have successfully printed thin-film solar on paper. By coating white sheets of paper with organic semiconductors, the researchers are, in effect, able to turn an everyday object into a current-producing device.
... The process is said to be similar to an inkjet printer. Just as an inkjet deposits ink onto paper fairly quickly and cheaply, the MIT scientists are depositing carbon-based dyes, used as organic semiconductors, to absorb the sunlight and then convert it into solar electricity.
"Bladeless" wind turbine firm aims to win over Nimbys: Manufacturing around the world starts next year.
A "bladeless" wind turbine that has been designed .... circumvents many of the objections to the traditional three-bladed wind turbine by reducing noise levels and avoiding any form of radar interference or injuries to wildlife.
UNDERWATER OIL VOLCANO
- News on impacts:
Oyster beds, shrimp areas closed by Louisiana Dept. of Health while NOAA closes some waters to fishing. The Florida Panhandle starts preparing by booming bays and environmentally sensitive areas. On Dauphin Island off Alabama, tar balls (shown in photo) wash up on island that officials will analyze but believe to be part of the oil spill.
Gulf Oil Spill Could Threaten Human Health: "Some people along the coast are already reporting headaches, nausea, coughing and throat irritation... ."
- Government's role in mess:
Federal regulators did not have protocol or simulations for oil volcanoes: "When the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, neither the oil companies nor their watchdogs in the Interior Department were ready."
There was no written protocol, no history of drills to simulate a disaster anywhere close to this size. Interior analysts had calculated that the chances of any spill exceeding 1,000 barrels were 3% to 5%. There are no records to suggest anyone had seriously considered the possibility of such a nightmare coming true.
- "A piece of machinery costing .004% of BP's 2009 profits might have prevented the Gulf of Mexico oil spill." An "acoustic valve designed as a final failsafe to prevent oil spills costs $500,000; the Wall Street Journal writes that the valve, while not proven effective, is required on oil rigs in Norway and Brazil, but not in the U.S.."
- Dark tales emerge of oil cesspool: US government workers accepted gifts and gratuities at least 135 times from oil and gas corporations --- Cheney link.
''So here's my question,'' asked Galston [fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington], citing evidence the MMS had become ''a cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interest'', with employees on at least 135 occasions accepting gifts and gratuities from oil and gas corporations.
''What is responsible for MMS's change of heart between 2000 and 2003 on the crucial issue of requiring a remote control switch for offshore rigs?
''What we do know is that unfettered oil drilling was to Dick Cheney's domestic concerns what the invasion of Iraq was to his foreign policy - a core objective, implacably pursued regardless of the risks.''
- Federal Regulators Deferred to Oil Industry on Rig Safety.
Federal regulators warned offshore rig operators more than a decade ago that they needed to install backup systems to control the giant undersea valves known as blowout preventers, used to cut off the flow of oil from a well in an emergency.
The warnings were repeated in 2004 and 2009. Yet the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency charged both with regulating the oil industry and collecting royalties from it, never took steps to address the issue comprehensively, relying instead on industry assurances that it was on top of the problem, a review of documents shows.
...Agency records show that from 2001 to 2007, there were 1,443 serious drilling accidents in offshore operations, leading to 41 deaths, 302 injuries and 356 oil spills. Yet the federal agency continues to allow the industry largely to police itself, saying that the best technical experts work for industry, not for the government.
- Yet, since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf to exempt from in-depth environmental analysis: This included waivers for "BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet."
- Investigations:
Democratic lawmakers take first steps toward creating independent investigatory commission. (Photo of oil-stained cattle egret.)
At the same time, Democratic lawmakers in Congress took the first steps toward creating an independent commission to investigate the disaster. Reps. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, and Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced legislation that would create a nonpartisan panel tasked with probing all aspects of the disaster.
The panel would have the power to subpoena documents from corporations and federal agencies as part of its fact finding.
- After oil disasters, lawmakers gave oil industry decades of delay to implement fixes.
After the Exxon Valdez catastrophe in 1989, when oil gushed from a ship ripped open on an Alaskan reef, Congress demanded that all oil tankers have double hulls.
You would think the change would have been almost automatic after such a disaster. But the oil industry was so powerful that Congress gave it until 2015 — 25 years — to comply. Even now, single-hulled oil tankers like the Exxon Valdez, which now operates as an ore carrier in Asia, can ply U.S. waters.
- Exclusive: BP worked with FreedomWorks, Chamber to build phony 'grassroots' support for more drilling.
While BP has spent hundreds of millions building its brand, it has offshored the dirty work of promoting expanded drilling to right-wing front groups and trade associations. In a 2007 PowerPoint presentation obtained by ThinkProgress, BP appears to have been interested in fighting to open up protected waters to new offshore drilling. The presentation, organized by the BP-funded front group "Consumer Energy Alliance," was delivered at the American Gas Association’s marketing meeting in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The presentation calls for a five-year plan to build grassroots support to open wide swaths of both the East and West coasts to new drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf:
...Slide 14 lists the groups involved in doing grassroots outreach. Under "affiliated groups," FreedomWorks — a right-wing "grassroots" group that helped plan the tea parties and continues to lobby aggressively against clean energy reform — is listed along with the 60 Plus Association, the American Conservative Union, and others. U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute are some of the trade associations involved. Slide 14 also shows that BP is one of the member companies supporting the campaign.
CLIMATE CHANGE & ENERGY
- Similar to some US lawmakers, the Scottish government wants to use carbon capture and storage (CCS) to cut climate pollution. However, rising cost of carbon capture is killing the great green hope. Add into mix infeasibility:
A report from two universities in Texas has argued that the difficulties in storing carbon deep underground have been hugely underestimated. It concluded that burial was "a profoundly non-feasible option for the ¬management of carbon dioxide emissions".
..."The doubts about carbon capture and storage are growing week by week, and it looks increasingly like an impractical and unaffordable technology.
"It is wildly irresponsible to use the mere hope of a viable CCS option as an excuse for new coal plants, as both Labour and SNP governments have been doing."
- Rare 114-Year Record, Kept by Generations, Logs Changing Climate.
Every day since Jan. 1, 1896, an observer has hiked to a spot at The Mohonk Preserve, a resort and nature area some 90 miles north of New York City, to record daily temperature and other conditions there. It is the rarest of the rare: a weather station that has never missed a day of temperature recording; never been moved; never seen its surroundings change; and never been tended by anyone but a short, continuous line of family and friends, using the same methods, for 114 years.
On top of that, observers have for decades recorded related phenomena such as first appearances of spring peepers, migratory birds and blooming plants. At a time when scientists are wrestling to ensure that temperature readings from thousands of divergent weather stations can be accurately compared with one another to form a large-scale picture, Mohonk offers a powerful confirmation of warming climate, as well as a compelling multigenerational yarn.
CLIMATE CHANGE POLITICS