Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, has pledged to bring to a vote an amendment blocking the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate climate-warming gases for two years, Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat, says in a statement. “I hope we will have the opportunity to vote on this measure within the next day or so,” said Mr. Webb, an opponent of E.P.A. emissions rules for stationary sources like power plants. [Blue Virginia]
Carbon dioxide emissions in Britain grew by 4 percent in 2010, their fastest increase since 1990. The increase is attributed to an economic recovery after the recession and increased residential gas use during an unusually cold winter. [The Telegraph]
Deepwater corals living in the vicinity of BP’s blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico may be up to 2,000 years old, federal scientists said Wednesday. Samples of the black corals, collected before last year’s spill, were found 1,000 feet below the surface roughly 20 miles from the site of the blowout. Whether similar corals were harmed by the spill, which sent plumes of oil particles spreading through the deep sea, is unclear; a damage assessment is continuing. [The Associated Press]
Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAn aerial view of fields near Worcester, England, during floods in November 2000.
In Thursday’s paper, I reported on two new studies linking increases in extreme precipitation to greenhouse gases released by humans. As I mentioned in the piece, one of those studies was based on analysis performed with computer time donated by the public.
It strikes me that many Green readers who are not already aware of the project in question may want to know more about it. To learn more, follow this link, as well as this related link.
The project, called Climateprediction.net, is a distributed-computing scheme that harnesses the power of people’s computers at times they are sitting idle. It resembles many other such distributed-computing efforts, the most famous of which is probably SETI@Home, which analyzes radio signals from space for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. (Alas, no space aliens have been found.) Read more…
Conservative Party leaders in Britain abandon a controversial plan to sell off virtually all of the country’s publicly owned forests over the next decade. The proposal, which would have sold off even historic woodlands like the Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest, generated widespread public outrage that had shown no signs of abating. “I am sorry, we got this one wrong, but we have listened to people’s concerns,” Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman told the House of Commons. [The Guardian]
The Cambodian government grants approval for a titanium mine in the Cardamom Mountains, home to one of the region’s last major stands of intact rainforest. The area is home to a number of threatened and endangered species, and conservation groups say the mine will interrupt a migration route for the country’s largest remaining population of Asian elephants. [Monga Bay]
Singapore tops a list of Asia’s greenest cities because of ambitious energy efficiency programs, major investments in public transit, progressive waste and water policies and other sustainability initiatives. [Yale Environment 360]
Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKevin Costner and Craig Paul Taffaro Jr., president of St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana, testified before a House committee last fall on the federal response to the gulf oil spill.
The actor Stephen Baldwin sues the actor and director Kevin Costner, asserting that he cheated Mr. Baldwin out of profits from an oil-spill cleanup device licensed to BP during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year. In a federal complaint, Mr. Baldwin and a business associate claim they were duped into prematurely selling their interests in the company behind the technology, which was dubbed the “Costner solution” despite the machines’ minimal impact on the spill. Mr. Costner denies any wrongdoing and has sought to dismiss the complaint. [The Los Angeles Times]
In a meeting with conservative bloggers, the former Minnesota governor, Tim Pawlenty, who is expected to seek the 2012 Republican nomination for president, repudiates his former support of a cap-and-trade system for reducing carbon emissions. “Have I changed my position on it? Yes,” Mr. Pawlenty says. “It was a mistake. It was stupid. I was wrong.” [Hot Air]
Officials with Britain’s ruling Conservative Party say that a plan to sell off nearly all of the country’s publicly owned forests will continue, although a review process will be put in place to ensure that historic woodlands are preserved after being transferred to private hands. Critics say the review process does not go far enough to address public outcry over the proposal. “This partial U-turn will not be enough to silence the protests,” says the former environment minister for the Labor Party. [BBC]
In a bid to raise much-needed government cash, the British authorities are pushing forward with a controversial plan to sell or lease much of the publicly managed woodlands and forests in England over the next decade, an area of nearly 1,000 square miles.
The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest.
Among the lots to be transferred into private hands are parts of historic woodlands such as the Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest, the legendary haunt of Robin Hood.
The plan has stirred public protests and drawn widespread criticism from conservationists and ministers across the political spectrum, with one prominent British naturalist describing the move as “vandalism of the country.”
“It’s our national forest and most people in Europe treasure their national forests,” David Bellamy, a botanist and author, told the Northern Echo, a newspaper in northeastern England. “Why is a national treasure up for sale?” Read more…
Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWildfires spread through Russia’s Ryazan region last August as a result of smoldering heat.
New figures issued on Thursday in Britain show that 2010 was the second-warmest year in the historical record. That comes on the heels of reports last week from two American agencies that 2010 was tied for the warmest year in the record books.
All three sets of numbers come from scientific programs that conduct rigorous analysis of the surface temperature of the earth, using thermometers and other instruments distributed across the globe.
Despite slight differences in the three reports, they all show pretty much the same thing: that the earth is warming, that most of the warmest years in the historical record since 1880 have come in the past decade or so and that 2010 was so warm it came close to setting the all-time record.
Bloomberg NewsA holiday shopper awaiting checkout out a Best Buy store in Houston.
In Sunday’s paper, I write about initiatives in Britain to cut down on excessive or unnecessary packaging on consumer goods. Regulations there now mandate that packaging be held to the minimum needed for “safety, hygiene and consumer acceptance.” Concerned government officials become so serious about tackling the problem that one county, Lincolnshire, began legal proceedings over an overpackaged piece of meat this year.
Some studies suggest that as much as half of household trash is extraneous packaging. Trash that ends in landfill produces local pollution and ultimately releases methane, a greenhouse gas.
Since I was writing this article around the holidays, it influenced my own shopping. If two brands offered similar products, I bought the one with less packaging attached. But today, having just hauled a trash bag of various bits of wrapping paper, boxes and protective plastic sleeves down to the basement for recycling and disposal, I thought it might be a good time for some personal and group reflection.
Why did my new running shirt come swathed in tissue paper, placed in a cardboard box and then finished off in wrapping paper? Could those new computer speakers have come in a few less layers of plastic wrap? Or, since I bought them close to home, should I have been able to leave the oversize box at the store? Read more…
A group of 26 senators have called for the extension of a renewable power grant program created by the 2009 stimulus law, which they describe as an effective job-creation tool. In a letter Monday to leaders of both parties, the 25 Democrats and one Republican requested a two-year extension of the program, which provides direct cash grants to renewable energy developers in lieu of tax credits, which have become difficult to use during the economic downturn. [The Hill]
Deepwater drilling moves full speed ahead off the coast of Brazil. [The Wall Street Journal]
Iran declares a two-day public holiday in Tehran, closing offices, banks, schools and universities in a bid to lower dangerously high levels of air pollution. A weather inversion has been blamed for trapping automotive and industrial emissions over the metropolis. [Reuters]
Landlords will face fines of up to $8,000 for renting energy-inefficient properties under a new British law. Previous efforts to encourage private landlords to better insulate their properties and take other efficiency measures have largely met with failure. [The Guardian]
BP beats a profit forecast, earning $5.53 billion this quarter, up 18 percent from the same period in 2009. Meanwhile, the company has upped its estimate of the total cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to $40 billion. [Reuters]
Heavy rainfall from a tropical depression continued to drench southern Thailand on Tuesday, causing major floods and leaving tens of thousands of residents and hundreds of tourists trapped in homes and hotels, Thai authorities said. The deluge follows Thailand’s worst flooding in decades, which killed more than 100 people in early and mid-October. [Bangkok Post]
Virginia’s attorney general, an outspoken climate change skeptic, continues his investigation of the former University of Virginia climate researcher Michael Mann, issuing a second civil subpoena demanding documents related to a state-funded grant application, which he contends was marred by fraud. A previous subpoena had been rejected by a state judge, who concluded that Attorney General Ken T. Cuccinelli had failed to provide any justification for suspecting that fraud had been committed. [Washington Post]
Associated PressKen T. Cuccinelli
Mr. Mann asserts that the state grant Mr. Cuccinelli has focused on had nothing to do with his climate change research, which was the original impetus for the investigation. “All Virginian citizens ought to be extremely concerned that he is using their tax dollars to pursue a partisan witch hunt,” Mr. Mann says in an e-mail. [The Virginian-Pilot]
The Washington Post’s editorial board slams Mr. Cuccinelli’s investigation. “The attorney general’s logic is so tenuous as to leave only one plausible explanation: that he is on a fishing expedition designed to intimidate and suppress honest research and the free exchange of ideas upon which science and academia both depend — all because he does not like what science says about climate change,” the paper writes. [Washington Post]
Chile creates a vast new marine preserve centered around Sala y Gomez Island, more than a thousand miles off the country’s central coast. The new sanctuary will protect about 58,000 square miles of biodiverse waters around the tiny, uninhabited island. [National Geographic]
What will be the long-term impact of BP’s disastrous gulf oil spill on American oil supplies?
Energy experts, for the most part, say it is too early to say. Much depends on how long a moratorium on new deepwater drilling will last. Last month President Obama extended an earlier moratorium, and the long-term future of deepwater drilling in the United States may depend on the findings of a new bipartisan commission studying ways to prevent future disasters.
But in a report [pdf] issued on Thursday, the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental group that studies energy policy for industrialized nations, put out some preliminary projections on the disaster’s impact. The group projects that a one- to two-year delay for all planned new deepwater oilfield projects in the gulf could reduce daily production by 100,000 to 300,000 barrels a day by 2015. At the high end, that would be nearly 18 percent of current production in the gulf and 5 percent of total domestic production, but less than 2 percent of total national oil consumption.
That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it’s not a game changer, at least not in the short term. Read more…
Many members of the new coalition government in Britain want more nuclear power – so long as it can be done without granting new subsidies.
But nuclear reactors are hugely expensive to build by comparison with conventional coal and gas plants. Cost overruns can stretch into the billions of dollars.
So how will new nuclear capacity ever be built?
A major part of the government’s answer to the riddle relies on making an existing European Union mechanism called the Emission Trading System work better.
Like the cap-and-trade systems proposed for the United States, the European system aims to make burning fossil fuels like coal and gas more expensive by putting a price on the carbon dioxide they emit. A carbon price benefits nuclear power because the process of splitting atoms to release energy emits no greenhouse gases. It also benefits other low-carbon energy technologies like wind and solar. Read more…
Another common criticism is that putting the same officials in charge of both overseeing natural resource extraction and ensuring its safety presents a conflict of interest — one that’s potent enough to have persuaded a number of countries to divorce the two functions.
In some cases, the dangers specific to offshore oil and gas work have prompted the creation of independent agencies sharply focused on ensuring the safety of that industry alone.
“When the P.S.A. was created, an important purpose was to create even clearer borders between the authority for resources in the petroleum activities and the authority concerning health and safety issues,” Norway’s Ministry of Labor said in an e-mailed statement.
The director general of Norway’s P.S.A., Magne Ognedal, was asked about the creation of the P.S.A. in a recent interview with Elmer P. Danenberger — chief blogger at Bud’s Offshore Energy and as it happens, the recently retired chief of offshore regulatory programs for the M.M.S.
Mr. Danenberger: In 2004, Norway separated its safety and resource management functions. The U.K. had done this after Piper Alpha, and Australia recently established a separate offshore safety regulator. Can you comment on the pros and cons of being an independent offshore safety regulator?
Mr. Ognedal: This is a good example of the influence of the political system of a country on safety regulatory matters. Not that I disagree, but the change made to separate safety and petroleum administrative matters was probably also aimed at reducing political risk. We have had no problems relating to that fact. Our role and mandate has now become much clearer and we have been given all the necessary authority to fulfill our mission. However, it has placed a big responsibility on the PSA. We must ensure we make the right decisions and be able to defend them. For myself, I think our oversight of safety in the petroleum industry has become both better and stronger because of this change. But others shall have to judge that.
Mark Kirby, an ecotoxicologist and top adviser on oil spills to the British government, said he had never heard of such a use before. Still, scientists are dealing with an unparalleled situation deep in the gulf, he said, and this novel approach might help. Read more…
A British advertising watchdog this week criticized a government poster campaign publicizing the dangers of climate change — the latest setback in efforts to raise awareness of the issue.
The “Act on CO2” campaign by the British government used poems for children including “Jack and Jill” and “Rub a Dub Dub” to alert viewers to how extreme weather conditions are linked to climate change.
One poster read: “Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub – a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change.”
On Tuesday, the Advertising Standards Authority, after receiving more than 900 complaints, ruled that the newspaper campaigns had ignored uncertainties in the scientific debate over global warming.
While federal firefighters explore the use of drones to map a wildfire’s size and speed, safety requirements of the F.A.A. is holding up testing and implementation.
How are climate change, scarcer resources, population growth and other challenges reshaping society? From science to business to politics to living, our reporters track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe in a dialogue with experts and readers.