Uh oh

April 24, 2014April 24, 2014 ~ susie

Spring 2014 has been a quiet tornado season thus far, but that’s about to change this weekend, if the predicted forecasts that meteorologists are looking at hold true. Weather experts say conditions are lining up for a series of powerful tornadoes to hit an area ranging between Tennessee and Texas from Saturday through Monday. The National Weather Service predicts a “significant multi-day severe event” in the South plains on Sunday, moving into the Mississippi Valley on Monday.

The extreme warnings stem from an interaction between an East-moving low-pressure system over the Rockies mixing with wetness from the Gulf of Mexico. That will cause the creation of supercell thunderstorms, Slate’s Eric Holthaus explains, all kept in place in the South-Southwest by a high-pressure system in Canada. That makes the area ripe for a “big severe threat” this weekend, according to The Weather Channel, an extra level on top of today’s “severe threat.”

Holthaus notes that the best historical comparisons to a weather pattern like this point to some of the worst tornado outbreaks in U.S. history. That includes the April 26, 1991, stretch of tornadoes from Texas to Iowa that caused a billion dollars in damage and included a rare F5-strength tornado. For those in need of a refresher, here are FEMA’s guidelines for how to prepare for tornadoes.

The local fight to save the Chesapeake Bay goes national

April 23, 2014April 23, 2014 ~ susie

As you already know, I love the Chesapeake Bay. I remember how the waters were far too frequently too tainted for swimming, and how a moratorium on construction in the watershed brought the bay back to life. Now the contamination is creeping back, and of course big business will have its way:

So, in 2009, the Obama administration stepped in with an executive order, requiring the EPA to use a provision of the Clean Water Act to put together the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint. The Blueprint would set a “Total Maximum Daily Load,” or TMDL, an upper limit for the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution that can enter the Bay each day. The plan reduced nitrogen and phosphorus loads by about 25 percent and sediment loads by 15 percent from 2009 levels (though the exact goals vary by state).

The six states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed — Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia — as well as Washington, DC, submitted proposals to meet those TMDL deadlines by 2025. If they missed those deadlines, the EPA would take action against them. For the first time, regulators had an enforceable plan for reducing pollution in the Bay.

But then monied interests made their voices heard.
Continue reading “The local fight to save the Chesapeake Bay goes national” →

Kochs go after solar panels

April 22, 2014April 22, 2014 ~ susie

Can’t be cutting into their oil bidness, you know!

Homeowners and businesses that wish to generate their own cheap, renewable energy now have a force of conservative political might to contend with, and the Koch brothers are leading the charge. The L.A. Times, to its credit, found the positive spin to put on this: Little old solar “has now grown big enough to have enemies.”

The escalating battle centers over two ways traditional utilities have found to counter the rapidly growing solar market: demanding a share of the power generated by renewables and opposing net metering, which allows solar panel users to sell the extra electricity they generate back to the grid — and without which solar might no longer be affordable. The Times reports on the conservative heavyweights making a fossil fuel-powered effort to make those things happen:

The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation’s largest power companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy. The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the battle rapidly spreading to other states.

…The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a membership group for conservative state lawmakers, recently drafted model legislation that targeted net metering. The group also helped launch efforts by conservative lawmakers in more than half a dozen states to repeal green energy mandates.

“State governments are starting to wake up,” Christine Harbin Hanson, a spokeswoman for Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, said in an email. The organization has led the effort to overturn the mandate in Kansas, which requires that 20% of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources.

“These green energy mandates are bad policy,” said Hanson, adding that the group was hopeful Kansas would be the first of many dominoes to fall.

The group’s campaign in that state compared the green energy mandate to Obamacare, featuring ominous images of Kathleen Sebelius, the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services, who was Kansas’ governor when the state adopted the requirement.

What’s especially disappointing is that for a while now, we’ve been hearing about how solar power is actually gaining traction in red states, with conservatives switching the focus from that liberal scourge, renewable energy, to something their base hates even more: taxes. Even Barry Goldwater Jr. has spoken out against the idea of allowing utilities to charge a monthly fee to the owners of rooftop solar panels, or what he and other advocates refer to as a “solar tax.”

Perfect storm coming?

April 16, 2014April 16, 2014 ~ susie

Allergy sufferers, beware:

Kate Weinberger, a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Health Sciences at Mailman School of Public Health in Columbia University studying the effects of climate change on pollen, said studies have shown that wet and warmer winters have resulted in earlier and longer allergy seasons and that the past few stormy months may be a sign that allergy sufferers will soon need to reach for the antihistamines.

“There were all of these storms and there’s been a lot of tree growth,” Weinberger said of the severe winter. “[Scientists] are theorizing that because we’ve had a wet winter the pollen season will be worse.”

Additionally, allergy seasons are usually separated into distinct seasons, with trees causing problems in the spring and grasses causing issues in the summer. However, Weinberger said there is a chance that if the weather warms very quickly it could mean plants that normally bloom at different times over a period of weeks to months will bloom all at once.

“[Trees] need to experience a certain amount of heat over a certain period before they will start flowering, so if it stays colder in the spring it will be later when they reach the threshold,” Weinberger said. “People are speculating that everything is going to show up all at once [as the plants flower] in the warm temperatures.”

Ho hum

April 11, 2014April 10, 2014 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

The highest levels in 800K years? Hmm. Maybe someone should pay attention, or something:

The concentration of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that drives climate change, hit 402 parts per million this week — the highest level recorded in at least 800,000 years.

The recordings came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which marked another ominous milestone last May when the 400 ppm threshold was crossed for the first time in recorded history.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels spike every spring but this year the threshold was crossed in March, two months earlier than last year. In fact, it’s happening “at faster rates virtually every decade,” according to James Butler, Director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division, a trend that “is consistent with rising fossil fuel emissions.”

400 ppm was long considered a very serious measurement but it isn’t the end — it’s just a marker on the road to ever-increasing carbon pollution levels, Butler explained in an interview on NOAA’s website. “It is a milestone, marking the fact that humans have caused carbon dioxide concentrations to rise 120 ppm since pre-industrial times, with over 90 percent of that in the past century alone. We don’t know where the tipping points are.”

When asked if the 400 ppm will be reached even earlier next year, Butler responded simply, “Yes. Every year going forward for a long time.”

While atmospheric CO2 levels never approached 400 ppm in the 800,000 years of detailed records scientists have, there is evidence that the last time the Earth experienced such high concentrations was actually several million years ago. Writing about the 400 ppm recording last year, climatologist Peter Gleick pointed to UCLA research “that suggested we would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels approaching today’s levels” and another article in the journal Paleoceanography “on paleoclimatic records that suggest CO2 concentrations (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) may have been around 400 ppm between 2 and 4.6 million years ago.”

From the newly insane state of North Carolina

April 9, 2014April 9, 2014 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Charlie Pierce:

There’s a lot of very weird stuff going on in the newly insane state of North Carolina. The state has a problem with coal ash, and with its groundwater, and with the reluctance of Duke Energy to clean up, among other things, the 39,000 fking pounds of the gunk that it spilled into the Dan River in February. The state’s Environmental Management Commission decided that Duke Energy needed a “reasonable amount of time” to correct the groundwater violations. (As should be obvious, you could sail a coal barge through that adjective there.) A Superior Court judge said to hell with that noise and reversed the commission’s findings, demanding that the clean-up begin immediately.

And you will never guess what the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission did.

No, really, you will never guess.

Give up?

They appealed the judge’s ruling.

Nothing’s rare anymore

March 31, 2014March 30, 2014 ~ susie

I don’t think we have any safe places anymore:

SAN FRANCISCO — Tornadoes touched down during storms in Northern California, including one twister near Sacramento that damaged a dozen homes and left a path of debris about 300 yards long.

Twelve houses suffered roof damage and six reported fence damage when a tornado hit near Roseville in Placer County shortly after 6:15 p.m. Wednesday, Division Chief Kathy Finney of the city’s fire department told the Merced Sun-Star. No injuries were reported and no residents were displaced.

The path of debris extended up to 300 yards, with a width of 10 to 20 yards, the newspaper reported.

A tornado also touched down in Ordbend, in Glenn County, the National Weather Service said. There were reports of at least four twisters, which are rare for California.

Coming attractions: Food shortages, violent conflicts

March 31, 2014March 31, 2014 ~ susie

And this is the climate group known for being cautious and conservative! I suppose the PTB would rather use militarized police to stop hunger riots than to prevent hunger in the first place? Via ThinkProgress:

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued its second of four planned reports examining the state of climate science. This one summarizes what the scientific literature says about “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability” (big PDF here). As with every recent IPCC report, it is super-cautious to a fault and yet still incredibly alarming.

It warns that we are doing a bad job of dealing with the climate change we’ve experienced to date: “Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability.”

It warns of the dreaded RFCs (“reasons for concern” — I’m not making this acronym up), such as “breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes.” You might call them RFAs (“reasons for alarm” or “reasons for action”). Indeed, in recent years, “several periods of rapid food and cereal price increases following climate extremes in key producing regions indicate a sensitivity of current markets to climate extremes among other factors.” So warming-driven drought and extreme weather have already begun to reduce food security. Now imagine adding another 2 billion people to feed while we are experiencing five times as much warming this century as we did last century!
Continue reading “Coming attractions: Food shortages, violent conflicts” →

Obama to EU: Frack, baby, frack

March 29, 2014 ~ odd man out

Ukraine ‘crisis’ is a business opportunity.

From Common Dreams:

Speaking after a meeting with European leaders at the [European Union]-US summit in Brussels on Wednesday, President Barack Obama suggested that the U.S. is open to exporting fracked shale gas, once promised as the source of American “energy independence,” to the EU and urged the EU to open up its own fracking reserves amid energy fears related to the crisis in Ukraine. Environmental groups have warned these policies will do nothing by way of energy security and everything for global environmental destruction and climate chaos.

I showed the whole story to Swamp Rabbit, who was sitting by the wood stove, filing his teeth with a reed, waiting for spring. It’s still too cold for him to jump into the swamp.

“I don’t know, rabbit,” I said. “It’s hard to believe Obama thinks Russia annexing Crimea was as bad as — was even in the same league with — the United States invading Iraq and blowing it to hell. Maybe he’s just looking for an excuse to open up new markets for the fossil fuel industry.”

The rabbit rolled his eyes, I think. It’s hard to tell, they’re like little black marbles.

He said, “You really think so, Odd Man? I’ll bet there ain’t nobody else in the whole world had such thoughts. You must be one of them strategic geniuses. A Richelieu, or somethin’.”

I ignored his sarcasm and opened a window in the shack. I said, “What’s really depressing is that Obama used to talk about boosting wind and solar power. He called climate change a fact. He made speeches against fossil fuels. Now he sounds like a cheerleader for the fossil fuel industry — a fracker backer. Who is this guy? I thought I was voting for a Democrat, not a closet Republican.”

“That’s what’s great about this here country,” the rabbit said. “These days, when you vote for the one party, you get the other party, too.”

More socialized losses for the rich

March 28, 2014April 8, 2014 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Maybe if we could get the money out of politics, we might actually have FEMA policies that make sense:

GULF SHORES, Ala. — As homeowners around the nation protest skyrocketing premiums for federal flood insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has quietly moved the lines on its flood maps to benefit hundreds of oceanfront condo buildings and million-dollar homes, according to an analysis of federal records by NBC News.

The changes shift the financial burden for the next destructive hurricane, tsunami or tropical storm onto the neighbors of these wealthy beach-dwellers — and ultimately onto all American taxpayers.

In more than 500 instances from the Gulf of Alaska to Bar Harbor, Maine, FEMA has remapped waterfront properties from the highest-risk flood zone, saving the owners as much as 97 percent on the premiums they pay into the financially strained National Flood Insurance Program.

NBC News also found that FEMA has redrawn maps even for properties that have repeatedly filed claims for flood losses from previous storms. At least some of the properties are on the secret “repetitive loss list” that FEMA sends to communities to alert them to problem properties. FEMA says that it does not factor in previous losses into its decisions on applications to redraw the flood zones.

And FEMA has given property owners a break even when the changes are opposed by the town hall official in charge of flood control. Although FEMA asks the local official to sign off on the map changes, it told NBC that its policy is to consider the applications even if the local expert opposes the change.

“If it’s been flooded, it’s susceptible to being flooded again. We all know that,” said Larry A. Larson, director emeritus of the 15,000-member national Association of State Floodplain Managers. “FEMA is ignoring data that’s readily available. That’s not smart. And it puts taxpayer money at risk.”

H/t Karin Riley Porter.