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Posts Tagged ‘Global Warming’

News Roundup – Scary Yuletide Ghost of Christmas Future edition

Posted in Coal, Efficiency, Energy, Global Warming, Renewables, Toxics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 23, 2008 |

The real question is, will we at Texas Vox run out of holiday references before tomorrow or not?

christmas-future-1

Some scary, scary stuff out there in the past few days we wanted to show you, plus some extra holiday snark for all of you.

  • The EPA also released their list of Sooty Cities (and you thought soot was stuff from only back in the days of Charles Dickens!), and, of course, Houston made the list.  Merry Christmas, Houston!  You got… soot!  Also ending up on the list were my old home towns of Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah.
  • And finally, California is buying our cow gas.  Seriously.  Pacific Gas and Electric plans to buy a methane-based substitute for natural gas created right here in Texas from, of all things, cow manure.  Just shows you that one man’s treasure is another man’s… never mind.

~~Citizen Andy

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Oh, FUUUUUUUUDGE!

Posted in Coal, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2008 |

fudge1

The EPA’s newest decision definitely brought the dreaded “F-dash-dash-dash” word to mind.

Reports Grist.org:

Coal-fired power plants’ greenhouse-gas emissions shouldn’t be taken into consideration when determining whether to approve their construction, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson ruled this week. The ruling could clear the way for at least a handful of new coal plants to be approved in the final days of the Bush administration. “The current concerns over global climate change should not drive EPA into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls,” Johnson wrote.

Just as I was getting into the holiday spirit, Stephen Johnson has to hit us with this.

In case you’re not quite as obsessed with carbon dioxide regulation and coal plants as we are here at Texas Vox, let me provide a little background.  In November the EPA’s governance board ruled that its regional office had been too hasty in approving  a new coal-fired power plant in Bonanza, Utah because the plant didn’t include carbon dioxide emissions or control techniques in their permit application.  The Sierra Club helped secure this victory by filing a suit against Utah’s Deseret Power Electric Cooperative for not controlling carbon dioxide. Their argument was based upon the landmark Massachusetts v EPA case, which required the agency to regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

The Bonanza decision was, in a word, wicked awesome (okay, two words).  It gave environmentalists a great new tool for stopping coal-fired power plants and signalled a sea change in the government’s willingness to take action over carbon dioxide emissions.  So the fact that the EPA is now telling permitters that they cannot consider greenhouse gas emissions when processing applications  is a major kick in the pants.  It could mean slated plants that wouldn’t have been approved could get the green light during these last weeks of the Bush administration. In a New York Times article, Vickie Patton, from the Environmental Defense Fund estimates that as many as 8,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants could skate through as a result of this ruling.

I’m still rather uncertain of what this decision means for the incoming administration.   Lisa Jackson, Obama’s new pick to head the EPA, is considerably more progressive on greenhouse gas emissions than Johnson, and could theoretically reverse this decision.

Reports the Washington Post:

It was unclear yesterday what the ruling’s real-world impact will be. The EPA says that about 50 plants — either new or significantly remodeled — must obtain a permit under this provision every year. But Meyers said he does not know if any are positioned to receive final approval before President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Jan. 20.

The Obama administration is likely to review the case, and Democratic officials close to the president-elect’s team say that the Supreme Court ruling and the EPA’s power to regulate carbon dioxide can serve as powerful levers to bring corporations and other parties to a bargaining table about broad framework for controlling greenhouse gases.

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Bad news for Old St. Nick…..

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , on December 16, 2008 |

The fossil fuel industry should get a lump of coal this holiday but I’m sure they’d be happy with that. Scientists at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco this week are giving us some alarming news about polar ice cap melt, glacier loss, and other threats from climate change.

Global warming is causing massive ice melting at the poles of over 2 trillion tons of ice this year. This creates even more warming as less of the sun’s rays are reflected off the white ice cap and are absorbed by the dark ocean. Scientists are incredibly alarmed at this rate. This amount of arctic warming and ice loss was predicted to occur decades from now, meaning we are warming much faster than scientists had expected. One article in the UK Times this morning even asked Has Arctic Melt Passed the Point of No Return?

There isn’t much good news to be had, but at least melting arctic sea ice doesn’t add significantly to sea level rise. Melting ice from Greenland’s glaciers, however, does– and they lost a piece of ice last year more than twice the size of Manhattan. Scientists are concerned because Greenland lost three times more ice this year than only a few years ago, showing the speed at which warming is accelerating.

NOAA has shown just how bad this ice melt has been in the last few years:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXhcKyYOb9Y]

And why is this bad news for Mr. Claus? Continued ice melt like this, will, most likely, put Santa’s workshop underwater, which I guess will look something like this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHgYYc20Pws]

So what do we do? The most recent climate conference in Posnan left a lot of people hoping for more. We need to plot a course that will keep climate change from under 2 degrees worldwide, which probably means stabilizing CO2 at 350 parts per million or less. That would require strong federal legislation in this next year which will cut our emissions by at least 80% by mid century and 25% by 2020.

~~Citizen Andy

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Sparkle, Sparkle, little coal plant…

Posted in Coal, Energy, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , on October 8, 2008 |

Corpus Christi – October 7, 2008

The “Sparkling City by the Sea” has been losing its sparkle through the years, as more and more refineries pollute its air and water. Now a new threat looms to increase the pollution that is damaging and degrading what should be the glistening jewel of the Texas Gulf Coast.

A by-product of the refining industry is petroleum-coke (or pet-coke). It is the toxic-filled waste that is left over after the refining industry gets all it wants out of crude oil. The Las Brisas Energy Center is a proposed facility that will burn this waste in what is, basically, a coal plant on the shores of Nueces Bay.

I attended a public meeting held by the TCEQ on Tuesday that allowed for comments and questions to be asked of the TCEQ and representatives of Las Brisas. Many concerns were raised by concerned citizens and few, if any, of the questions were answered satisfactorily.

The main proponents of the facility seemed to be, as usual, those who were happy at the proposed jobs this facility would create. One of the points I brought up was how green jobs (jobs from energy efficiency programs and from renewable energy generation) would provide far more employment opportunities for the area: permanent jobs (as opposed to temporary construction jobs) which couldn’t be outsourced.

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Letting Go of Ethanol

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , on September 24, 2008 |

I’ve been wanting to write a piece arguing that just because ethanol isn’t a complete solution to global warming and oil prices, it is still an alternative to oil and therefore good. Unfortunately, I can’t honestly say that because ethanol isn’t even a partial solution; it’s just a bigger problem.

I really wanted to like ethanol because corn is good.  And I really wanted to quote Hardin from his 1968 article in Science magazine where he said: “. . .we can make a rational decision which will not involve the unworkable assumption that only perfect systems are tolerable.” I love the quotation, however, I sadly cannot honestly say that it applies to ethanol. In my mind I hear that blind Native American in the Oliver Stone film U-turn.

I’m generally wary of arguments purely rooted in economics, so I wanted to address some of those. But it turns out there’s pretty much no good argument in favor of ethanol and if there were one, I wouldn’t want to make it.  Turns out, according to Nobel prize winners and writers for Science and world news sources, ethanol has a pretty big carbon footprint when you take into account the carbon emissions released from burning forests to plant crops for use as diesel fuel. Turns out the amount of nitrogen needed to grow corn or switchgrass for fuel emits atmospheric nitrous oxide in levels that are worse for the planet than ozone. Turns out that the production of corn-based ethanol results in “dead zones” in our water sources, like a huge swath of the Mississippi. Turns out that people starve in-part because selling the crops for fuel rather than food reaps more profit. Turns out that hungry people are rioting around the world. Turns out that the nitrogen reaction used to grow the corn is produced using natural gas, which is not only a non-renewable carbon-based resource but which, in Texas, dictates prices on the energy markets. Yes, ethanol from sugarcane works for Brazil, but who knows what the lasting effects of massive deforestation will be and should we encourage the potential loss of more?

I asked a friend of mine why U.S. and E.U. legislators aren’t doing less to prop up the crop-fuel industry, like halting the subsidies and mandates, and doing more to find real solutions to global problems in the face of the evidence. He said, “They don’t want to find solutions. They want to sell corn for high prices.”

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Abandon All Hope…

Posted in Coal, Diesel, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 24, 2008 |

…ye who enter the Turk plant.Turk Site

Last Thursday in Hope, Arkansas there were two meetings. One was widely attended, the other was not… mostly because hardly anyone had heard of it.

They hadn’t heard of it because it snuck in under the wire, with barely (if at all) the proper notices and alerts. It was a quorum court meeting, and on the agenda was a motion to approve a bond issuance “not to exceed” $185,000,000. Aside from one dissenting voice of sanity, the motion was passed.

It was passed without allowing anyone to comment, and upon only one reading.

Hempstead County and Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation are now investors in the Turk Coal Plant, meaning residents and taxpayers are now on the hook for nearly 200 million dollars.

Why do they need this public backing? Coal’s dirty little secret is that it is on the way out, and everybody knows this. Power plants are constructed with a budget to pay off the cost of the plant over 20 or 30 years. Coal will soon become so economically unviable that these plants will be forced to close, leaving taxpayers and bondholders to pick up the check. How incredibly irresponsible.

Meanwhile, across town at the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope, I and a few hundred other people were cramming ourselves into the library to listen and submit comments to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ). They were holding a public hearing regarding mercury and other HAPs that the Turk plant will be emitting.

Employees from the plant were there, wearing florescent yellow t-shirts that said “Support Turk” on them. I wonder how many of those “employees” were contractors: temporary workers who don’t even live in Hempstead County, or possibly even Arkansas. Adding evidence to my suspicions was a documentary film maker present at the hearing who had filmed most of them leaving the plant earlier that day.

There was one local employee of SWEPCO who did give comments, and spoke at length about how much they all needed the plant because he had six kids and he needed his job with SWEPCO to take care of them.

He got the loudest applause of anyone the entire evening.

This same, poor, hard-working employee so concerned with supporting his kids has no concern for the destruction coal is wrecking on the futures of those same children. And not just the future of their health, but their economy too. Carbon legislation is going to happen during the next president’s term, and it will make coal so expensive that many coal plants will have to be shut down. Why, then, are we building new coal plants?

(Read the Entire Original Post on Coal Block)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This reminded me a lot of a BBC special I saw about Chinese coal plants and how the people knew the coal was making them sick but felt they needed the jobs.  Watch it below.  ~~Citizen Andy

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/MoBv9FC7WAM]

(BBC report on a coal plant in China)

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The Threatdown on Global Warming – Tyson Slocum on Colbert!

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , on September 17, 2008 |

Many of us here at Public Citizen love The Colbert Report. We had to give a brief shout-out to our very own Tyson Slocum who works in our DC office for appearing on Stephen Colbert’s eponymous Report last night.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/184943/september-16-2008/tyson-slocum

Listen to Tyson explain how energy companies are fleecing us while people run amock at the Department of the Interior. Also, stick around for the Threatdown and how global warming is getting rid of the threat from icebergs……

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More effects of global warming! (and some solutions)

Posted in Consumers, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 11, 2008 |

Sneezing, sniffling?  The culprit may be global warming according to this report. Experts are also warning us that allergy season may be extended or aggravated as the climate warms.

An article in the Austin American Statesman also discusses how climate change is spreading previously exotic diseases to places like Texas.

While you’re at it, watch out for your 401(k) and retirement savings, as some of Wall Street’s biggest funds and companies are not preparing adequately for climate change and may end up losing your money!

As if that weren’t enough, climate change is also affecting growing seasons, decreasing the pollination window for corn from 10 down to only three or four days.  This will eventually mean higher prices on everything from ethanol to beef or anything that contains corn-byproducts.

So what do we do?  Thomas Friedman, the noted economist and best-selling author, talked about how dealing with climate change is a huge economic winner with none other than Dave Letterman earlier this week:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVmJpM_UFVs]

Meanwhile, Google’s CEO Eric Scmidt has some ideas of his own, saying the United States could save $2.7 trillion dollars by switching to smart grids, efficient buildings, and renewable energy. So when’s the beta test coming out for “Google House”?

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The Silver Bullet

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , on September 5, 2008 |

The big coal interests have a favored saying: “There is no silver bullet.” This old adage suggests there is no single solution to the growing energy needs and concerns of this country. While this is obviously true, the only solution (or “silver bullet”) that these charlatans ever talk about is “clean” coal. Ironically enough, “clean” coal is a fantasy notion as mythical as the werewolves and other monsters silver bullets were reputed to destroy.

For those unfamiliar with monster lore and mythology, silver bullets were capable of destroying everything from werewolves to vampires – creatures that had no other weakness or vulnerability. This metaphor is quite fitting to our dilemma of increasing energy demand while preserving the ecosystem, for it is a dilemma that seems insurmountable and unsolvable. Our civilization is built upon electricity and the idea of continuing our lifestyles without it is unfathomable to many Americans. But, as with the legendary monsters of old, a silver bullet does exist to address and conquer this problem – at least metaphorically.

It is not wind power, or solar power, or even energy efficiency, nor is it some yet-to-be-discovered technology that we hang unreasonable hopes upon. It is a mindset. A way of viewing the world free from the burdensome fear and closed-mindedness of the energy industry’s status quo. The simple knowledge, which (more…)

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Washington’s off-shore oil drilling policy: Spew

Posted in Energy, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , on August 5, 2008 |

Gas prices are abominably high. The good news? It’s time to kick the oil habit. When i lived in New York City and the price of cigarettes went up to $10, my smoker friends took the hint and kicked the butt.

We face the same problem with gas prices, and with the overwhelming sentiment to “Drill here! Drill now!” overtaking our debate on national energy policy, I’m reminded again of my smoker friends. What if they had simply decided that it was time to start buying their cigarettes in bulk from New Jersey or Connecticut? They would have missed the added health benefits of quitting smoking.

STOP SMOKING NOW!

STOP SMOKING NOW!

Global Warming is coming to a crisis point, and we are already seeing the effects: flooding along the Mississippi, record-breaking heat and drought across Texas, and increasing food prices due to lower crop yields are only the leading edge of a climate disaster if we do nothing. Unfortunately, offshore drilling is worse than doing nothing. The saying goes that when you find you are digging yourself into a hole, STOP DIGGING! By increasing production of oil we can only guarantee that we will put more pollution into the atmosphere and hasten the arrival of catastrophic climate change.

But proponents say we have to bring down the price of gas. True– my family is hurt by having to spend $50-$60 every time we fill up our car. But according to the Bush Administration’s Department of Energy, offshore drilling will not affect gas prices at all. It will be 8-10 years before we see any real production out of these wells. Further, the amount they would produce would not help make us more energy independent, as the relatively small supplies would be gobbled up by international demand. Their quote is “Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.”

But that hasn’t stopped Congress from “acting.” Congressman Gene Green (D-Houston) announced a bi-partisan energy plan that includes more drilling, co-sponsored by Ruben Hinojosa (D-Corpus Christi), Solomon Ortiz (D-Corpus Christi), Charlie Gonzalez (D-San Antonio), Ciro Rodriguez (D-San Antonio), Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo), and Nick Lampson (D-Houston). Considering the proximity to the Gulf Coast of most of these districts, I would think these Congressmen would be more concerned about offshore oil spills ruining the coastlines or about the sea level rise, even a small amount of which would put Galveston, South Padre Island, and the Houston Ship Channel under water.

Since our oil problem is essentially one of increased demand driving up prices, the best answer to decrease oil prices is to demand less by using less. So, offshore drilling means more global warming, and no easing of the pain at the pump. Efficiency means less global warming, lower prices, and we’re using less gas to begin with. That way, if we did manage to tackle climate change and wanted to drill decades from now when oil is $300 / barrel, we will have left that resource to our children and grandchildren instead of simply greedily drinking that milkshake now.

Sounds like a no-brainer: the type of solution no one in Washington DC would ever consider.

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8 miles of ice break off in Arctic

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , on July 31, 2008 |

An 8 mile chunk of ice broke off from the arctic icecap according to satellite photos of the region. This is truly disturbing as we come closer to a summer where the Arctic icecap completely disappears. The ice cap is not only an indicator of global warming, but a feedback mechanism as well: ice reflects heat and without our “white cap” the ocean and surrounding land will absorb more heat, increasing the greenhouse effect significantly.

We must immediately work to change the trajectory of our greenhouse gas emissions so that we don’t do any further damage. Otherwise we will very soon face an arctic with no ice. This would lead to more and faster global warming, sea level rise of several feet from other land-based glacier melt, and a severe threat to our water supplies, agriculture, and way of life.

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Oil in the Arctic!

Posted in Energy, tagged , , , , on July 24, 2008 |

We are like a child picking up sea shells on the exposed shoreline preceding a tsunami. Our eyes gloss over and the glint of the pretty thing shines in our eyes, and heedless of the gathering mountain of water we rush to gather as much as we can, ignoring the consequences of missing the bigger picture.

There is oil in the arctic, and it seems half the world is interested in getting it out of the earth (and into the atmosphere) as soon as possible. No one seems to care that the whole reason this oil is going to be accessible is because of global warming – caused in part by the very same fuel. For decades now we’ve been irresponsibly burning everything we can dig up, ignoring the scientists who have been warning us (for just as long) that this is going to have dire consequences.

Meanwhile, our amazing sun beats down its free energy all around us, in the form of direct solar and in the indirect form of biofuels. The wind continues to blow (mostly unharnessed), energy efficiency measures are minor and insubstantial, and geothermal and wave energy potential continues to be ignored by the energy companies.

In 1915, Nikola Tesla said “If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful, and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations.”

We are now addicted to fossil fuels, and like any addict with any addiction it will eventually kill us, unless we break the habit. The needed alternatives exist, but as long as we focus primarily on how to find more fossil fuels, the incentives to develop renewable energy resources will continue to be delayed. If we want any hope of continuing something resembling our current civilization we must abandon fossil fuels as soon as possible and replace them with renewables.

If not, the changing climate will give us a world in which our civilization cannot exist.

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Update on Netroots Nation 08 Day 3: Gore, Doggett, Lessig, and Courage

Posted in Campaign Finance, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , on July 19, 2008 |

Public Citizen is a national sponsor of this year’s Netroots Nation conference, and as the Austin Texas office of Public Citizen is happy to play host. We’ve met so many great people and been in so many excellent meetings. We’re also proud that we launched this, our Texas blog, in concert with NN08. Today has been incredibly busy and wonderful, so let me fill all of you in who weren’t here.

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Want some Kidney Stones to go with your Global Warming?

Posted in Global Warming, Renewables, tagged , , , , on July 18, 2008 |

A new study from Tom Brikowski, a geosciences professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, and Drs. Yair Lotan and Margaret Pearle, urology professors at UT Southwestern Medical School, printed in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, made an interesting conclusion. More global warming will mean more kidney stones. For those of us who are at risk for or have a family history of kidney stones (it’s because of all the Diet Coke I drink), this is even more worrisome.

The good news is we can easily change our diets and reduce other risk factors. Switching to non-carbon producing forms of energy and transportation may not be quite so easy. However, just like kicking a bad Diet Coke habit. we can get ourselves off of oil and especially coal by making new investments in renewable energy.

Kidney stones are just the beginning of the health problems we can prevent by stopping global warming. We can prevent the spread of previously tropical and exotic disease like malaria and West Nile virus that can migrate as the climate changes. By stopping greenhouse gas pollution we can also stop the pollution that leads to asthma, emphysema, and other lung ailments. And by investing in efficiency and renewable energy now, we can have cheaper energy and get more bang for our energy buck.

Read the story in the Dallas Morning News on this subject here.

~~Andy

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Cleaner cheaper energy for Texas? Coming soon! (We Won!!)

Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Renewables, tagged , , , , , on July 17, 2008 |

This article originally posted at citizenvox.org

Global warming is the singular environmental challenge of our generation. Some people claim you cannot be green without sacrificing economic development. Actually, we can create a greener energy future for Texas and reduce our electric bills at the same time by investing in our electric infrastructure.

This week the Texas Public Utility Commission met to decide on upgrading the power grid infrastructure to make sure that we can build new clean, renewable sources of energy in West Texas (where all the sun and wind is) and get it to the people in the major population centers in East Texas. Of three options, they chose the medium, compromise amount of investment. While not as large as we would have liked (the best option was an “electric superhighway” that would have saved Texans billions in their energy bills), the PUC chose to make a large investment in the clean energy future of our state.

Wind power in Texas is now a cheaper source of electricity than fossil fuel alternatives. Building newer transmission lines is the best way to quit our addiction to fossil fuels.

Want to learn more? Read our press release about our news conference, or read the study and policy paper here. You can also watch a video about renewable energy in Texas and how we can save $1.2 billion dollars here.

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