The climate change news for this week is generally depressing because there is more evidence of the enormity of impacts that are not being addressed. President Obama and Congress are being held hostage by a minority of GOP teabagging deniers determined to prevent comprehensive climate change legislation.
However, there is also much hope. President Obama has worked on measures that don't need Congressional OK and measures not dependent upon climate science. I have discussed with friends how it really is irrelevant if someone is a denier or not because the measures that address climate change impacts also address crisis issues whose existence and validity is not dependent on climate science. Gov. Schwarzenegger brings it all together in a nice package as a good starting point.
Gov. Schwarzenegger's plan defeats the teabaggers because it is not dependent upon believing in climate change science but recognizing obvious related public crises: Energy independence or national security, economic crisis, public health and energy conservation and efficiency. While I did not vote for Schwarzenegger, California does have a climate change law that Attorney General Jerry Brown has been implementing for years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Congress needs to listen to Gov. Schwarzenegger, who recognizes that action on climate change reform does not depend on climate change science alone. Gov. Arnold says take out the climate change science and focus on what most all agree upon:
• Energy independence. Spiking oil prices, uncertain sources of oil, and sending money to countries that don't share our values are matters of national security.
Schwarzenegger directly tackles what too often remains unspoken: "What does it cost the state and what does it cost the country, that we have been fighting one war after the other in the Middle East because of oil?"
• Bringing back the economy. Schwarzenegger noted that in California, "the only area right now that has the biggest explosion in job creation, by 10 times more than any other sector, is the green sector."
• Public health. Reducing carbon pollution, Schwarzenegger said, is worthwhile: "We have 19,000 people in California dying every year because of smoke and smog-related illnesses, and nationwide it's 100,000 people that are dying. We have children that are running around in the Central Valley with inhalers, one out of six kids."
• Energy efficiency and conservation. Saving energy saves money on energy bills.
The world is not going to wait for the U.S. to lead the way when we keep stalling implementing measures to address climate change.
A UK climate economist warns US of trade boycott.
A British climate change economist at the heart of international negotiations seeking a greenhouse gas deal said Friday that the US faces a trade boycott if it fails to rein in its carbon emissions.
Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the British government's 2006 report on the economics of climate change, warned the US that many countries would shun its goods if they deemed them to be "dirty."
Instead of moving forward with an emphasis on green energy, lawmakers and industry insist on spending time and money on ways to maintain our fossil fuel addiction, with plans, such as carbon capture of fossil fuel emissions generated by coal-fired plants. Nevermind that carbon capture might render water supplies undrinkable with increased levels of pollutants.
But the technology may hold some unwelcome surprises if the carbon dioxide finds its way out and up to groundwater aquifers, a new study by Duke University researchers indicates. It could react with minerals there and increase levels of pollutants, perhaps so much that federal regulators would deem the water undrinkable, experiments suggest.
No problem. We have infinite water supply right? Check out this Earth Art of what the Sante Fe River could look like if it had water from snow melt:
Addressing our water crisis, which is related to climate change and will worsen as temperatures increase, can be addressed without having to accept the validity of climate science.
We cannot wait for comprehensive climate change legislation that is being obstructed and delayed by a minority of teabagging deniers. Some government officials and scientists recognize natural disasters happening now might be linked to climate change, such as floods in Pakistan, heatwave and related forest fires in Russia and mudslides in China. New Yorkers Learned this week that the Troubles Posed by Sea Level Rise Flow Far Beyond Manhattan, necessitating major changes along the coastlines from Long Island up to Hudson River Valley, affecting 62% of the state's population. California is also discussing how we must prepare for climate change impacts. Hurricane states must prepare as well: Not your imagination; study says hurricane seasons are getting longer due to warmer sea surface temperatures, but scientist says "he doesn’t think the increase in sea surface temperature is tied to global warming but since many scientists believe air and water temperatures will continue to climb, it is reasonable to think hurricane seasons may grow even longer."
Speaking of heatwaves, 17 nations set new record highs in 2010 as study finds that some heat waves can be more harmful than others. For all but 3 countries, the record high was from 102 to 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
Countdown to 'thermogeddon' has begun:
THERE may come a point, if the world warms enough, when parts of the tropics will become so hot and humid that humans will not be able to survive. Models predict that this could start to happen in places in as little as 100 years in the worst case scenario. Now, observations show the process is already under way.
...Eventually, some tropical areas could get so hot and humid on occasion that even someone standing naked in the shade in front of a fan would die.
This week a study confirmed that the Troposphere is warming too: "Not only is Earth's surface warming, but the troposphere — the lowest level of the atmosphere, where weather occurs — is heating up too, U.S. and British meteorologists reported on Monday."
Two issues coming up deserve our attention:
National monument status urged for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Forget healthcare reform, cap and trade, deficit reduction. For congressional stalemates, there's no more evergreen a fight than whether to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Don't expect it to get resolved next year. With the Republicans taking over the House, a new drilling bill is likely to get slightly more traction than an equally inevitable move to try to lock up the refuge as wilderness.
But with the 50th anniversary of the refuge coming up next month, some of the nation's biggest environmental groups hope to persuade President Obama to play a trump card, and designate the refuge as a national monument. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) headed a list of 25 senators in a letter backing full permanent protection for the refuge.
The media report that GOP teabagging deniers may have buried Obama's Plan A for a climate change bill, but there is still Plan B, new regulations to cut emissions from power plants and factories.
EPA starts regulating GHG from large stationary sources like power plants in January unless Congress stops it. Sen. Murkowski pledges to try to strip EPA of its authority to regulate GHG on the myth that EPA will be required by the courts to regulate small stores.
[EPA administrator Lisa] JACKSON: There is this myth—it is a myth—EPA will regulate cows, dunkin' donuts, pizza huts, your lawn mower, someone said to me kittens-- I like that one. And, it's overzealous and somehow misguided, and somehow, you know, strange unfurling of regulatory might that will happen any second now because nobody is putting the breaks on EPA. It is not true.
Other climate change news this week includes:
CLIMATE CHANGE POLITICS
WATER & NATURAL RESOURCES
- EPA tells states to consider rising ocean acidity when listing waters as impaired under the Clean Water Act: "The federal agency's memo Monday to states recognizes carbon dioxide as not only an air pollutant but a water pollutant, and notes the serious impacts that ocean acification can have on aquatic life."
- Leaking Siberian Ice Raises a Tricky Climate Issue. (Photo of ice and methane bubbles on surface of East Siberian Sea.)
Gas locked inside Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago.
...Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.
WILDLIFE & ENDANGERED SPECIES
- Scientists: Haiti's wildlife faces mass extinction.
Haiti may be headed for a massive extinction event, one comparable to the sudden disappearance of dinosaurs, a group of biologists from Penn State warns. The group is currently taking action to prevent this loss.
...One of the greatest threats to the frog population is the destruction of Haitian forests for the production of charcoal, the main fuel source for the country's 10 million residents.