Climate Change -- Democratic vs Republican Perspective

Two massive fires in California forced thousands of evacuations over the weekend and continue to rage into Monday. (Photo: AP)

Democrats describe climate change as a “real and urgent threat,” and they call for setting a price on greenhouse gas emissions. “Climate change is too important to wait for climate deniers and defeatists in Congress to start listening to science,” and government officials must take any steps they can to reduce pollution, the platform says. It calls for the country to generate half of its electricity from clean sources in the next decade and for cleaner transportation fuels, more public transit and a tax code that creates incentives for renewable energy. The platform also beats back suggestions that protecting the environment would be bad for business. “Democrats reject the notion that we have to choose between protecting our planet and creating good-paying jobs,” it says.

Republicans say “climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue,” as Democrats have labeled it. They oppose international accords like the agreement crafted in Paris last year that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow the climb in global temperatures. The platform also blasts President Obama’s “clean power plan,” which would cut emissions by shifting away from coal-powered power plants. The initiative has been put on hold by the Supreme Court; Republicans vow to do away with it entirely. They also pointedly describe coal as a “clean” energy resource, a description environmentalists have roundly rejected.
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http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-democrats-republicans-platforms-20160727-snap-htmlstory.html

The West's Water Woes -- Wealthy Californians Water Their Golf Courses and Polo Grounds

Water, water, not everywhere, but if you're wealthy, you'll find it somewhere.

Climate Change Has a High Price

The Wenatchee World, July 17, 2014
by By Steven Ghan and Alex Amonette

Much as we may hate to admit it and don’t want to think about it, our burning of fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect.
This results in climate change. It costs us. Local costs include the loss of agriculture in the Yakima Valley as less summer snowmelt is available for irrigation because more winter precipitation falls as rain in a warmer climate. National costs include the billions of dollars the U.S. government spends annually on imported oil and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and the trillions of dollars of property value that will be lost as sea level rises, subsidized by National Flood Insurance.

The costs keep rising, and are rising with interest. The costs of climate damage are higher than the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As time marches on, it will only become more and more expensive to pay for these costs and mitigate these effects.

The administration is moving ahead with EPA rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions at power plants and the Supreme Court has already upheld EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Most of the solutions, such as cap and trade, proposed to mitigate global warming involve an economic penalty. As an alternative, a number of conservatives, like former Secretary of State George Shultz, are urging fellow conservatives to support a market-based approach as an insurance policy to solve the problem by using a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

In this system, as proposed by Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a $15 per ton fee is placed on fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — at their source — well, mine, port of entry/refinery. There are about 2,000 entities involved at this point on whom the fee is placed. The fee rises $10 per ton per year annually in a predictable manner until we reach a safe level of emissions. Then, 100 percent of the revenue is returned to every American household. Not one dime goes to the government. Administrative costs are miniscule and no new bureaucracy is created. Domestic manufacturers and producers are protected through a border tax adjustment.

The Citizens' Climate Lobby Fee & Dividend Approach

 The American people get a monthly dividend check or automatic deposit in their bank account. This provides cash to pay for any price hike in fuel costs. We will also have more money to spend on food, insulation, a more fuel efficient vehicle, health care, etc.. By 2025, if this system had been implemented in 2015 each household would have $300 a month as a steady dividend.

A study commissioned by CCL showed that the economy would grow, millions of jobs would be created, thousands of lives saved, emissions would be reduced and we would begin the gradual transition off of fossil fuels onto low- or zero-carbon energy sources that will eventually help us stabilize our climate system.

Each of us would have an incentive to reduce emissions because the taxes we pay decrease as we use less carbon energy. Other countries would have an incentive to reduce emissions because the border adjustment depends on whether they tax carbon energy.

In 2008, British Columbia began a carbon tax, with the revenue returned to citizens through lowered income taxes. A new peer-reviewed study reported on British Columbia’s emissions and economy through 2012. The results are impressive. Polls show that public support for the British Columbia carbon tax has grown to 64 percent.

We can do the same in the United States. Because CCL’s carbon fee and dividend is revenue-neutral, it offers the most effective first step for us to both stabilize our climate and stimulate our economy. It beats cap and trade and government regulations.

Please contact our representatives. In the 4th District, Rep. Doc Hastings; In the 5th Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, in the 8th, Rep. David Reichert. Ask them to enact the Citizens’ Climate Lobby Carbon Fee and Dividend legislative proposal now. We reap what we sow.

Steve Ghan is a climate scientist. Alex Amonette is a trained geologist and chemist. They are volunteers with the Tri-Cities Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby.

Who Pays for Climate Change (You do and your children after you)

U.S. Taxpayers Outspend Private Insurers Three-to-One to Cover Climate Disruption Costs

 Natural Resources Defense Council

Sandy Storm Surge

Despite the lengthy debate on the federal budget in Congress, climate change rarely gets mentioned as a deficit driver. Yet paying for climate disruption was one of the largest non-defense discretionary budget items in 2012. Indeed, when all federal spending on last year's droughts, storms, floods, and forest fires are added up, the U.S. Climate Disruption Budget was nearly $100 billion.

The startling reality:

• America's taxpayers paid three times what private insurers paid out to cover losses from extreme weather.
• The federal government spent more taxpayer money on the consequences of 2012 extreme weather than on education or transportation.

Texas Drought

Overall, the insurance industry estimates that 2012 was the second costliest year in U.S. history for climate-related disasters, with more than $139 billion in damages. But private insurers themselves only covered about 25 percent of these costs ($33 billion), leaving the federal government and its public insurance enterprises to pay for the majority of the remaining claims.

In fact, the U.S. government paid more than three times as much as private insurers paid for climate-related disasters in 2012.

Cutting Costs By Addressing Climate Change Now

Fortunately, there is much that the president can do to fight climate change without waiting for the current Congress to act. NRDC has developed a groundbreaking plan to use the Clean Air Act to make big reductions in carbon pollution from power plants, America's largest source of global warming pollution. Our analysis shows that the EPA can set fair and flexible standards that cut power plant carbon pollution by 26 percent by 2020 and 34 percent by 2025 compared to 2005 levels. (Read our roadmap for cutting carbon pollution.)

We don't have to just accept an ever-increasing Climate Disruption Budget that our children will have to pay for. We can fight back with a more forward-looking approach, starting now.
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The Citizens' Climate Lobby has another approach to reducing emissions and creating jobs.

Maybe you don't give a damn, but you should

Colorado suffered the most destructive wildfire in state history

It’s hot! More than 1360 counties in 31 states have been declared natural disaster areas due to a drought the likes of which we haven’t seen since dust bowl days. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 55 percent of the nation’s pasture and rangeland is in poor to very poor condition. Wildfires have plagued the nation the last two years. Last year it was drought-plagued Texas that suffered the worst of the fires. This year it’s Colorado, which suffered the most destructive wildfire in state history. Some holdouts on the global warming issue are beginning to wonder if climate scientists might actually have it right. There’s nothing like climate effects hitting close to home to change minds about global warming. But climate scientists will be the first to tell you that weather isn’t climate.

Weather is what we have today (did I say “hot!”). And what we had a few weeks ago, thunder storms, with an impressive display of lightening. Weather is the wind blowing our 8-iron shot in the canal on the Canyon Lakes golf course, and the overcast days we experienced early in the year here in the Mid-Columbia.

Climate is what weather does in a particular region over the long term, usually 25 to 30 years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), when scientists talk about climate, they're looking at averages of precipitation, temperature, humidity, sunshine, wind velocity, fog, frost, hail storms, and other measures of the weather that occur over a long period in a particular place.

So do we really need to worry about all this hot weather this year? Well consider this:

• June 2012 was the fourth warmest June since records began in 1880
• The Northern Hemisphere land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2012 was the all-time warmest June on record
• The globally-averaged land surface temperature for June 2012 was also the all-time warmest June on record
• World-wide ocean surface temperature ranks as the 10th warmest on record
• Longer term, global surface temperatures have increased since the late 19th Century and the linear trend for the past 50 years is nearly twice that for the past 100 years

So the answer is, “Yes,” we have to worry, not because it’s hot this year, but because it keeps getting hotter year after year.

Now you might ask, “So what? Isn’t this a natural warming cycle, maybe caused by sun flares, or water vapor, or political Super PAC ads? Why should I worry. It’s not going to effect me, is it?”

Let me answer your question concisely: It’s not a normal warming cycle. It’s caused by human activities, including burning fossil fuels and forest destruction, and yeah, it’s going to effect you, but if you live here in the Mid-Columbia, it probably won’t effect you as much as it will people in say, Bangladesh, who you don’t give a damn about anyway, right? Right. It will almost certainly effect your grandchildren, but you don’t care enough about them to do anything about global warming either, right? Right.

Now here’s the kicker. If our climate reaches a “tipping point,” then all bets are off. The climate will destabilize; droughts will spread and persist, desertification will take place,  ice will melt, hurricanes will blow, wildfires will roar across the land, tornadoes will rip apart whole cities, oceans will rise and flood coastal cities, and, in short, all hell will break loose. At that point, global warming will effect you and you’ll complain, “Why wasn’t something done!”

"Is this scenario even possible?" you ask? Yeah, it is. I’ll explain in a future post.

Droughts, Floods, and Food

By PAUL KRUGMAN

We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs.

The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics. After all, the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Middle East isn’t so much why they’re happening as why they’re happening now. And there’s little question that sky-high food prices have been an important trigger for popular rage.

So what’s behind the price spike? American right-wingers (and the Chinese) blame easy-money policies at the Federal Reserve, with at least one commentator declaring that there is “blood on Bernanke’s hands.” Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France blames speculators, accusing them of “extortion and pillaging.”

But the evidence tells a different, much more ominous story. While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

Now, to some extent soaring food prices are part of a general commodity boom: the prices of many raw materials, running the gamut from aluminum to zinc, have been rising rapidly since early 2009, mainly thanks to rapid industrial growth in emerging markets.

But the link between industrial growth and demand is a lot clearer for, say, copper than it is for food. Except in very poor countries, rising incomes don’t have much effect on how much people eat.

It’s true that growth in emerging nations like China leads to rising meat consumption, and hence rising demand for animal feed. It’s also true that agricultural raw materials, especially cotton, compete for land and other resources with food crops — as does the subsidized production of ethanol, which consumes a lot of corn. So both economic growth and bad energy policy have played some role in the food price surge.

Still, food prices lagged behind the prices of other commodities until last summer. Then the weather struck.

Consider the case of wheat, whose price has almost doubled since the summer. The immediate cause of the wheat price spike is obvious: world production is down sharply. The bulk of that production decline, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, reflects a sharp plunge in the former Soviet Union. And we know what that’s about: a record heat wave and drought, which pushed Moscow temperatures above 100 degrees for the first time ever.

The Russian heat wave was only one of many recent extreme weather events, from dry weather in Brazil to biblical-proportion flooding in Australia, that have damaged world food production.

The question then becomes, what’s behind all this extreme weather?

To some extent we’re seeing the results of a natural phenomenon, La Niña — a periodic event in which water in the equatorial Pacific becomes cooler than normal. And La Niña events have historically been associated with global food crises, including the crisis of 2007-8.

But that’s not the whole story. Don’t let the snow fool you: globally, 2010 was tied with 2005 for warmest year on record, even though we were at a solar minimum and La Niña was a cooling factor in the second half of the year. Temperature records were set not just in Russia but in no fewer than 19 countries, covering a fifth of the world’s land area. And both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.

As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change.

The usual suspects will, of course, go wild over suggestions that global warming has something to do with the food crisis; those who insist that Ben Bernanke has blood on his hands tend to be more or less the same people who insist that the scientific consensus on climate reflects a vast leftist conspiracy.

But the evidence does, in fact, suggest that what we’re getting now is a first taste of the disruption, economic and political, that we’ll face in a warming world. And given our failure to act on greenhouse gases, there will be much more, and much worse, to come.

Severe Drought in Southern Russia

Severe Drought in Southern Russia
Severe and persistent drought held southern Russia in its grip in June and July 2010. Low rainfall and hot temperatures damaged 32 percent of the country’s grain crops.

Is Hydropower a Renewable Energy Resource?

Venezuela's Drought, the Worst in 50 Years

Republican politicians have for some time argued that hydroelectric power should be classified as a renewable resource. Their motivation is clear. If hydropower is renewable, then states like Washington, which require that public utilities generate a given percentage of their electricity (15% for Washington) from renewable energy resources by a certain date (2020 in the case of Washington), would effectively have to do nothing. About 87 percent of the electricity made in Washington state is produced by hydroelectric facilities. The State even sells some of its hydroelectric power to other states. But is hydropower renewable?

The situation in Venezuela today is instructive. Up to now, hydropower has been the major energy source in Venezuela — providing residents and industry with up to two-thirds of the total electricity produced. But a record lack of rainfall has resulted in low water flows and several power interruptions.

Venezuela imposed electricity and water rationing in December to prevent a collapse of the electricity grid as water levels behind the Guri Dam fell to critical lows. The dam supplies most of Venezuela's electricity.

Rolling blackouts lasting up to four hours are bring imposed throughout the country except the capital of Caracas as the country struggles with the severe drought.

Hugo Chavez is moving to build wind farms and is vowing to develop nuclear energy, whether the U.S. likes it or not. If Chavez’s nuclear bluster is just a lot of hot air, then at least he’ll have the wind turbines to harness it.

In the meantime, Republicans might want to rethink their energy platform.

Severe drought grips East Africa

Kenya’s Ewaso Nyiro River Dries

The Ewaso Nyiro River flows down from Mount Kenya to water the dry plains that stretch east from the Great Rift Valley in Kenya. The sparsely populated plains are a haven for wildlife, which rely on the Ewaso Nyiro River as a source of water.

The portion of the river that borders on the Samburu National Reserve had been dry for at least six months by the end of September, reported BBC News. The impact on wildlife was tragic. Samburu National Reserve and other reserves in the region support large herds of elephants, Grevy’s zebras, reticulated giraffes, buffalo, lions, leopards, cheetahs, wild dogs, gazelles, rhinos, and more. By the time this image was taken, at least 24 elephants had died in the region, reported BBC News. Zebras, buffalo, and carnivores were also dying, said Reuters. The impact was not limited to wildlife: many news reports describe decimated herds of goats, cattle, and other livestock among northern Kenya’s pastoralists. As of October 13, the World Food Program was providing food aid for 3.8 million people throughout Kenya.

Severe drought gripped much of East Africa when the rainy season in March through June produced very little rain. At the end of the first rainy season of 2009, satellite observations revealed that plant growth—both crops and natural vegetation—across Kenya was significantly lower than normal, a harbinger of the unfolding disaster. The next rainy period should settle over Kenya in October and last through November or December.

Drought

A combination of record-high heat and record-low rainfall has pushed south and central Texas into the region's deepest drought in a half century, with $3.6 billion of crop and livestock losses piling up during the past nine months. The heat wave has drastically reduced reservoirs and forced about 230 public water systems to declare mandatory water restrictions.

As Texas aquifers and reservoirs dip to record lows, threatening municipal water supplies, the biggest cities; Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and 230 others have implemented water restrictions on residents.

Across the nation, California is facing what some predict will be the worst drought in California's water challenged history. In fact, the entire West is seeing abnormal to severe drought conditions and has been suffering under these conditions for some time.

Coming in 2009 -- Continued Warming

An iceberg melts off Ammassalik Island in Eastern Greenland, July 19, 2007

A new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey, indicates that the United States faces the potential for abrupt climate change in the 21st century that could pose clear risks to society in terms of our ability to adapt. "Abrupt" changes can occur over decades or less, persist for decades more, and cause substantial disruptions to human and natural systems. Among its findings, the report concludes that:
• rapid and sustained arctic sea ice loss is likely
• an abrupt change in sea level is possible
• the SW United States may be beginning an abrupt period of increased drought
• the pace of methane emissions, a very powerful greenhouse gas, will increase, further hastening warming

Lake Mead lakebed near Las Vegas. The reservoir is down 50% or more since 2000.