Activist

by Dr. James Hansen

"How did you become an activist?" I was surprised by the question. I never considered myself an activist. I am a slow-paced taciturn scientist from the Midwest. Most of my relatives are pretty conservative. I can imagine attitudes at home toward "activists".

I was about to protest the characterization – but I had been arrested, more than once. And I had testified in defense of others who had broken the law. Sure, we only meant to draw attention to problems of continued fossil fuel addiction. But weren't there other ways to do that in a democracy? How had I been sucked into being an "activist?"

My grandchildren had a lot to do with it. It happened step-by-step. First, in 2004, I broke a 15-year self-imposed effort to stay out of the media. I gave a public lecture, backed by scientific papers, showing the need to slow greenhouse gas emissions – and I criticized the Bush administration for lack of appropriate policies. My grandchildren came into the talk only as props – holding 1-watt Christmas tree bulbs to help explain climate forcings.

Fourteen months later I gave another public talk – connecting the dots from global warming to policy implications to criticisms of the fossil fuel industry for promoting misinformation. This time my grandchildren provided rationalization for a talk likely to draw Administration ire: I explained that I did not want my children to look back and say "Opa understood what was happening, but he never made it clear."

What had become clear was that our planet is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, on Greenland and Antarctica, and on mountain glaciers worldwide. Many species are stressed by environmental destruction and climate change. Continuing fossil fuel emissions, if unabated, will cause sea level rise and species extinction accelerating out of humanity's control. Increasing atmospheric water vapor is already magnifying climate extremes, increasing overall precipitation, causing greater floods and stronger storms.  Continued...

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New Yorker: Koch Brothers Waging War Against Obama

by Janet Ritz

Jane Mayer, reporting on The New Yorker Magazine, has written a comprehensive article entitled: Covert Operations, The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.  In it, Mayer gives an exhaustive report on the Koch brothers'  funding of extreme right-win opposition to the current administration.

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

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Nationwide Egg Recall: Recall expands to more than half a billion eggs (LIST)

The recall from U.S. factory farms has expanded to more than half a billion eggs. The recalled lots (list) are confirmed to have been tainted with Salmonella and have sickened more than one thousand people. The enormity of the contamination has renewed concerns about the dangers of factory farming:

Dr. Marion Nestle of the department of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, and the author of "Food Politics" and "What to Eat", is a member of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. She toured several factory farms last year.

"It's hard to explain unless you actually see one of these places," she tells CBS News. "Try to imagine an enormous warehouse, as long as two or more city blocks, packed with hundreds of thousands of chickens. And that's 'free range.' Otherwise they are caged six to nine in a cage. If one gets sick, they all get sick."

Links and lists follow with recall information. One possible way to avoid the consequences of factory farming is to buy local, small farmed and, where possible, organic.

Farmer's markets (worldwide): Link.

The egg recall is expected to continue to grow with reports of illness expanding as the Centers for Disease Control record more incidents. Continued...

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Study: Up to 79 Percent of Oil Remains in Gulf

The University of Georgia, working with the Georgia Sea Grant, has released a report that concludes up to seventy-nine percent of the oil remains in the Gulf and that it is a threat to the ecosystem. This is contrary to more optimistic reports from BP and the government.

Athens, Ga. – A report released today by the Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia concludes that up to 79 percent of the oil released into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon well has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem.

The report, authored by five prominent marine scientists, strongly contradicts media reports that suggest that only 25 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill remains.

“One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless,” said Charles Hopkinson, director of Georgia Sea Grant and professor of marine sciences in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade. We are still far from a complete understanding of what its impacts are.”

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What Global Warming Looks Like...So Far

Dr. James Hansen

Contrary to a popular misconception, the rate of warming has not declined. Global temperature is rising as fast in the past decade as in the prior two decades, despite year-to-year fluctuations associated with the El Nino-La Nina cycle of tropical ocean temperature. Record high global 12-month running-mean temperature for the period with instrumental data was reached in 2010.

The July 2010 global map of surface temperature anomalies (Figure 1), relative to the average July in the 1951-1980 period of climatology, provides a useful picture of current climate.

Figure 1.

It was more than 5°C (about 10°F) warmer than climatology in the eastern European region including Moscow. There was an area in eastern Asia that was similarly unusually hot. The eastern part of the United States was unusually warm, although not to the degree of the hot spots in Eurasia. There were also substantial areas cooler than climatology, including a region in central Asia and the southern part of South America. The emerging La Nina is now moderately strong, as evidenced by the region cooler than climatology along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean.

The global average July 2010 temperature was 0.55°C warmer than climatology in the GISS analysis, which puts 2010 in practically a three way tie for third warmest July. July 1998 was the warmest in the GISS analysis, at 0.68°C.  Continued...

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World Climate Roundup: Jet Stream's Stall Over Asia Causes Chaos, Heat Builds in the West

The world is experiencing the climate in stark, unforgiving and eye opening ways. The jet stream has locked in place over Asia, producing extreme weather, day after day, while a dome of high pressure over the middle of the U.S. drives temperatures up in the Western hemisphere.

Russia is fighting smog from over 900 forest and peat bog fires that now threaten to go radioactive due to the dust leftover from the Chernobyl disaster. Pakistan is experiencing record flooding along the Indus River that has destroyed a significant number of crops and has left whole populations homeless with many dead. China's floods have presented themselves as massive slides of mud and rock. In Portugal, it's fires again. In Spain, it's jellyfish washing on shore in such massive numbers that over seven hundred beach goers were stung.

Long hot summer of fire and floods fit predictions

Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Pakistan and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.

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U.S. Energy Secretary: BP Oil Spill Update

by Steven Chu

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu
talks with President Barack Obama

As you may know, I’ve spent much of the last three months working to help contain the BP oil spill. I recently returned from my seventh trip to Houston, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to update you on our work to seal the damaged well in the Gulf.

My job has been to oversee the federal science team – a group of top scientists from the Department of Energy’s national labs, the federal government, and academia, along with outside industry experts. We have been working seven days a week to tackle this very challenging problem. Our focus has been on collecting as much data as possible and making sure we plot the best path forward based on the facts.

Because of the gravity of the situation, the Administration asserted its authority over BP’s actions. As we evaluated the scenarios for stopping the leak, BP was not allowed to move forward on a course of action without the government’s approval.

The results of the well integrity tests (including additional monitoring of the wellhead and the surrounding area, which we had insisted upon) indicated that the well was likely intact, and we saw no evidence that oil was leaking from the wellbore into the rock formation. This meant we would be able to safely pump fluid into the well to attempt to kill it.

After the science team reached a consensus that the static kill attempt could work with minimal risk, we gave BP the go-ahead to proceed. During the static kill, the damaged well was filled with mud, stabilizing the pressure within the well and relieving a lot of the excess pressure on the damaged blowout preventer and ceiling cap. I am pleased to tell you that it was completed successfully.  Continued...

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Huge Ice Island - 100 Square Miles - Calves Off Greenland Glacier

Greenland's ice sheet has calved (broken off) a one-hundred square mile island of ice off its Petermann Glacier, which will contribute to sea level rise. Dr. Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Institute has stated unequivocally that it is due to warming temperatures caused by rising C02 in the atmosphere.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off from one of Greenland's two main glaciers, scientists said on Friday, in the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

The ice island has an area of 100 square miles (260 square km) and a thickness up to half the height of the Empire State Building, said Andreas Muenchow, professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware. Muenchow said he had expected an ice chunk to break off from the Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest remaining ones in Greenland, because it had been growing in size for seven or eight years. But he did not expect it to be so large.

"The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson Rivers flowing for more than two years," said Muenchow, whose research in the area is supported by the National Science Foundation. "It could also keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days."

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Smog Blankets Moscow: ~900 Wildfires Rage in Record Heat

Russia is experiencing an unprecedented heat wave this summer. This has led to a record outbreak of nearly nine hundred forest and peat bog fires across the country. Moscow is blanketed inside and out in toxic smoke and smog. The forecast is for more record breaking heat to follow.

Russia's worst heatwave in more than a century has seen the mortality rate in Moscow soar by a third in July. There were 14,340 deaths in the capital over the month, 4,824 more than last July, an official has revealed.

Southeastern winds blew smoke from the areas worst affected by peat bog and forest fires. Weather experts said the winds are unlikely to change over the next few days.  The concentration of airborne pollutants such as carbon monoxide has further intensified and is at more than six times normal levels, according to city health officials – the worst seen to date in Moscow. The smog has seeped into buildings and the city's subway system.

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Climate: A "Plan B" for Team Obama

by William S. Becker

Congress’s failure to act on global climate change was one of the reasons the diplomatic atmosphere was so chilly last year in Copenhagen.

Congress has chilled the atmosphere again, four months before the international community meets in Cancun to resume its marathon crawl to a global climate treaty. From Bonn, where nations were attending five days of pre-Cancun negotiations this week, the Associated Press reported the Senate’s failure to act on a climate bill has “deepened the distrust among poor countries about the intentions of the United States and other industrial countries” to cut their emissions.

The response from members of the Obama team has been: a) the president is not backing off his commitment to legislation or a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; and b) there is more than one way to skin this cat. Hints of executive action are in the wind.

Also in the wind is a renewed discussion about the role states can play in cutting our carbon emissions. For example, the World Resources Institute concludes that if states are “go-getters” with the policies they already have in place, they can make a significant contribution to the President’s 17 percent goal.  Continued...

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Protection of the Public Interest: Senate Hearing on Industry Influence on Government Regulators

In light of the lax oversight that contributed to the BP oil spill, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) held a hearing Tuesday on the industry influence on government regulators. The concern is what is known as "agency capture," whereas the regulators themselves have been captured by industry to become an interest group of that industry.

This was most notably seen in the Minerals Management Service which has since been broken up by the Obama Administration to prevent a reoccurrence of the events that led to the catastrophic BP oil spill on the Gulf floor.

The entire hearing is available at this link (VIDEO).

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