Climate Change, Pollution, Clean Energy, and the Environment

[LFC]

[pnwguy]

Perhaps Manchin can redeem himself?

www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/07/manchin-schumer-inflation-reduction-climate/670981/

[jackd]

"Perhaps" is the operative word. As the article points out, without Sinema and other developments, it isn't a done deal but it certainly is a cause for hope.

[Bact PhD]

Deal! Far, far smaller in scope than what was in the original BBB, but something.

www.npr.org/2022/08/04/1115841297/sinema-says-she-will-move-forward-with-senate-democrats-climate-health-and-tax-b

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced late Thursday she will "move forward" with Democrats' massive climate, prescription drug and spending bill, after Democrats appeared to reach an agreement about Sinema's concerns with the legislation.

Sinema's announcement all but locks in the bill for Democrats, who need all 50 Democratic votes on board in order for the bill to pass, with a tie-breaker vote from Vice President Kamala Harris. The legislation solidifies key portions of President Biden's domestic agenda.

In a statement, Sinema said, "We have agreed to remove the carried interest tax provision, protect advanced manufacturing, and boost our clean energy economy in the Senate's budget reconciliation legislation. Subject to the Parliamentarian's review, I'll move forward."

[LFC]

Sinema single-handedly killed the fix for carried interest, also known as "the hedge fund loophole." Who paid her for THAT delicious slice of wealthy welfare?

[pnwguy]

Aug 5, 2022 18:13:19 GMT LFC said:

Sinema single-handedly killed the fix for carried interest, also known as "the hedge fund loophole." Who paid her for THAT delicious slice of wealthy welfare?

The Roberts court, and Citizens United.

[jackd]

Might want to look at her contributors.

[LFC]

Kentucky floods were exacerbated by strip mines the coal companies never bothered restoring the mountain tops like they were required to by law. What a shock.

www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna41716

[pnwguy]

Aug 7, 2022 1:41:47 GMT LFC said:

Kentucky floods were exacerbated by strip mines the coal companies never bothered restoring the mountain tops like they were required to by law. What a shock.

www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna41716

I flew over eastern Kentucky at around 5000 ft elevation in a Forest Service DC-3, fall of 1977 I think. It was like looking at the lunar surface with strip mines everywhere. I can only imagine how much worse it became.

[Bact PhD]

After much wrangling in the “vote-a-thon” phase, the bill that might be characterized as “BBB, the VERY skinny version” has passed the Senate.

www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/08/07/senate-inflation-reduction-act-climate/

The Senate on Sunday approved a sweeping package to combat climate change, lower health-care costs, raise taxes on some billion-dollar corporations and reduce the federal deficit, as Democrats overcame months of political infighting to deliver the centerpiece to President Biden’s long-stalled economic agenda.

The party-line vote marked a key milestone in a tumultuous journey that began last year when Democrats won control of Congress and the White House on a promise to bring financial relief to average Americans. With a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Harris, the 50-50 Senate sent the bill to the House, which aims to approve it and send it to the White House for Biden’s signature later this week.

Dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the package would authorize the biggest burst of spending in U.S. history to tackle global warming — roughly $370 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the economy 40 percent by the end of this decade. The package also would make good on Democrats’ years-old pledge to reduce prescription drug costs for the elderly.

[snip]

For Senate Democrats, though, the outcome marks the latest victory in a spate of legislative accomplishments, including bipartisan efforts to rethink gun laws, improve veterans’ health care and boost the manufacture of much-needed high-tech computer chips. It comes two days after a federal labor report showed the U.S. economy had recovered all the jobs it had lost since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, a positive sign for the president as fears about a recession linger over Washington.

The developments offer fresh political fuel for Biden and Democratic leaders as they make their case to voters ahead of the this year’s midterm elections. The fast-approaching November contest serves as a referendum on Democratic control of Washington over the past two years — injecting urgency into Democrats’ once-defunct push to pass an economic package.

Something is better than nothing, something is better than nothing…

[goldenvalley]

Aug 7, 2022 19:45:52 GMT Bact PhD said:

After much wrangling in the “vote-a-thon” phase, the bill that might be characterized as “BBB, the VERY skinny version” has passed the Senate.

www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/08/07/senate-inflation-reduction-act-climate/

The Senate on Sunday approved a sweeping package to combat climate change, lower health-care costs, raise taxes on some billion-dollar corporations and reduce the federal deficit, as Democrats overcame months of political infighting to deliver the centerpiece to President Biden’s long-stalled economic agenda.

The party-line vote marked a key milestone in a tumultuous journey that began last year when Democrats won control of Congress and the White House on a promise to bring financial relief to average Americans. With a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Harris, the 50-50 Senate sent the bill to the House, which aims to approve it and send it to the White House for Biden’s signature later this week.

Dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the package would authorize the biggest burst of spending in U.S. history to tackle global warming — roughly $370 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the economy 40 percent by the end of this decade. The package also would make good on Democrats’ years-old pledge to reduce prescription drug costs for the elderly.

[snip]

For Senate Democrats, though, the outcome marks the latest victory in a spate of legislative accomplishments, including bipartisan efforts to rethink gun laws, improve veterans’ health care and boost the manufacture of much-needed high-tech computer chips. It comes two days after a federal labor report showed the U.S. economy had recovered all the jobs it had lost since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, a positive sign for the president as fears about a recession linger over Washington.

The developments offer fresh political fuel for Biden and Democratic leaders as they make their case to voters ahead of the this year’s midterm elections. The fast-approaching November contest serves as a referendum on Democratic control of Washington over the past two years — injecting urgency into Democrats’ once-defunct push to pass an economic package.

Something is better than nothing, something is better than nothing…

This is a lot better than nothing.  Not sure why it passed except...Manchin and Sinema remain mysterious to me. 


I note the insulin portion of the package was sliced out and therefore did not pass.  Don't know why...lots of people need insulin no matter what party they claim.

[jackd]

As you say, something is better than nothing!

[andydp]

Aug 7, 2022 20:48:00 GMT goldenvalley said:

Aug 7, 2022 19:45:52 GMT Bact PhD said:

I note the insulin portion of the package was sliced out and therefore did not pass.  Don't know why...lots of people need insulin no matter what party they claim.

The insulin costs have been reduced for Medicare people.  The reason it was removed for others, the Parliamentarian had questions about the legality of the reduction for non Medicare people.  This will minimize legal challenges.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 8, 2022 12:40:00 GMT andydp said:

Aug 7, 2022 20:48:00 GMT goldenvalley said:

I note the insulin portion of the package was sliced out and therefore did not pass.  Don't know why...lots of people need insulin no matter what party they claim.

The insulin costs have been reduced for Medicare people.  The reason it was removed for others, the Parliamentarian had questions about the legality of the reduction for non Medicare people.  This will minimize legal challenges.

Yeah but as a separate piece the Senators could have voted it in...with 60 votes instead of 51 but nooooo.  Can't do that.

[LFC]

Aug 8, 2022 14:37:49 GMT goldenvalley said:

Yeah but as a separate piece the Senators could have voted it in...with 60 votes instead of 51 but nooooo.  Can't do that.

And in fact Republicans have a history of not doing that. When Trump was in office they killed Elijah Cumming's prescription cost reduction bill. They offered their own crappy bill as a replacement which explicitly did not allow Medicare to negotiate drug costs. They are determined not to turn off that Republican created tap of corrupt money that's been flowing for nearly 20 years. Buying the GOP has paid off massively for Big Pharma.

[LFC]

That's just ... great.

Climate change can exacerbate a full 58% of the infectious diseases that humans come in contact with worldwide, from common waterborne viruses to deadly diseases like plague, our new research shows.

Our team of environment and health scientists reviewed decades of scientific papers on all known pathogenic disease pathogens to create a map of the human risks aggravated by climate-related hazards.

The numbers were jarring. Of 375 human diseases, we found that 218 of them, well over half, can be affected by climate change.

Flooding, for example, can spread hepatitis. Rising temperatures can expand the life of mosquitoes carrying malaria. Droughts can bring rodents infected with hantavirus into communities as they search for food.

With climate change influencing more than 1,000 transmission pathways like those and climate hazards increasingly globally, we concluded that expecting societies to successfully adapt to all of them isn’t a realistic option. The world will need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change to reduce these risks.

[LFC]

The Arctic is warming faster than scientists realized.

The Arctic is warming like never before, nearly four times faster than the rest of Earth—and twice as fast as scientists previously thought. Finnish researchers drew from observed climate data from the past four decades and published their discovery of this systematic undercount on Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

“Numerous recent studies report the Arctic having warmed either almost twice, about twice, or more than twice as fast as the global average. However, the warming ratios reported in these

and many other studies have usually been only referenced from older, possibly outdated, estimates and have not included recent observations,” the authors wrote in the study.

The reason the Arctic warms faster than the rest of the globe—a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification—has to do with a number of factors we’re still trying to understand. Theorized about as early as 1896, Arctic amplification seems to rely in part on sea ice melting. When the bright ice gives way to darker-colored water, polar environments are less able to reflect heat from the sun and end up absorbing it at higher rates. Other factors that may contribute to Arctic amplification include a lack of heat-absorbing thunderstorms, the presence of pollution and soot on snow, and increases in cloud cover.

In the recent study, the researchers averaged observed temperatures over time from four different sources in a range of Arctic locations. Depending on where they considered the southern bound of the Arctic to be, their estimates for the average rate of warming compared to the rest of the globe varied from three to four times as fast. But they found the region of the Arctic Ocean near Svalbard to be warming seven times faster than the rest of the world, or up to 1.25ºC per decade.

[LFC]

Oh, look. Another "one in a thousand year" flood. Those plus one in 500, 100, and 50 year storms sure do seem to be happening with increased frequency.

Flash floods crashed through the Dallas-Forth Worth area late Sunday and into Monday, sweeping up cars and trucks along the highway as some areas of the sister cities accumulated as much a 10 inches of rain, with a record breaking 3.01 inches slamming the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, one of the world’s busiest airports, in just an hour. A video posted to Twitter by Dallas Texas TV shows vehicles peeled off to the side of an area highway while a river of water crashes down the highway, drowning some cars along the way. The National Weather Service called the flash flooding “life-threatening,” urging residents to stay off the roads or out of effected areas. The severity of the storm qualifies it as a “1-in-1,000-year flood,” according to The Washington Post, adding that over the last week, three 1-in-1,000 year rain events have hit the U.S., in St. Louis, eastern Kentucky and southeastern Illinois.

[LFC]

Sometimes pictures really are worth 1,000 words.

[LFC]

The day of water reckoning is nigh in large parts of the West. In fact the expert being interviewed says there are places in California that are on track to run out in 40-50 years because the groundwater has been drawn so hard. Agriculture is the primary user of water, consuming 80% in many areas of the West. The fact is that there's going to be a lot less farming in states like CA and AZ no matter how much the farmers whine about it. Between climate change and the foot dragging / outright refusal to change to more sustainable practices the water is disappearing fast.

As Colorado River Dries, the US Teeters on the Brink of Larger Water Crisis

The megadrought gripping the western states is only part of the problem. Alternative sources of water are also imperiled, and the nation’s food along with it.

The western United States is, famously, in the grips of its worst megadrought in a millennium. The Colorado River, which supplies water to more than 40 million Americans and supports food production for the rest of the country, is in imminent peril. The levels in the nation’s largest freshwater reservoir, Lake Mead, behind the Hoover Dam and a fulcrum of the Colorado River basin, have dropped to around 25% of capacity. The Bureau of Reclamation, which governs lakes Mead and Powell and water distribution for the southern end of the river, has issued an ultimatum: The seven states that draw from the Colorado must find ways to cut their consumption — by as much as 40% — or the federal government will do it for them. Last week those states failed to agree on new conservation measures by deadline. Meanwhile, next door, California, which draws from the Colorado, faces its own additional crises, with snowpack and water levels in both its reservoirs and aquifers all experiencing a steady, historic and climate-driven decline. It’s a national emergency, but not a surprise, as scientists and leaders have been warning for a generation that warming plus overuse of water in a fast-growing West would lead those states to run out.

I recently sat down with Jay Famiglietti, the executive director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, to talk about what comes next and what the public still doesn’t understand about water scarcity in the United States. Before moving to Canada, Famiglietti was a lead researcher at NASA’s water science program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and a member of the faculty at the University of California, Irvine. He pioneered the use of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites to peer into the earth’s mass and measure changes in its underground water supplies. The Colorado River crisis is urgent, Famiglietti said, but the hidden, underground water crisis is even worse. We talked about what U.S. leaders either won’t acknowledge or don’t understand and about how bad things are about to get.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start with the Colorado River because it’s in the news. The federal government has put some extraordinary numbers out there, suggesting water users cut between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water usage starting this year — roughly 40% of the entire river’s recent flow. How could that possibly happen?

It’s going to be really hard. We’re looking at drastically reduced food production and the migration of agriculture to other parts of the country and real limits on growth, especially in desert cities like Phoenix. My fear is that groundwater will, as usual, be left out of the discussion — groundwater is mostly unprotected, and it’s going to be a real shit show.

Remind us how that happens. States and farmers cut back on the Colorado River, and California and Arizona just start pumping all the water out of their aquifers?

Yeah. This started with the drought contingency plan [the 2018 legal agreement among the states on the Colorado River]. Arizona had to cut nearly 20% of its Colorado River water. To placate the farmers, the deal was that they would have free access to the groundwater. In fact, something like $20 million was allocated to help them dig more wells. So, it was just a direct transfer from surface water to groundwater. Right away, you could see that the groundwater depletion was accelerating. With this latest round, I’m afraid we’re just going to see more of that.

Some of that groundwater actually gets used to grow feed for cattle in the Middle East or China, right? There’s Saudi-owned agriculture firms planting alfalfa, which uses more water than just about anything, and it’s not for American food supply. Do I have that right?

There’s been other buyers from other countries coming in, buying up that land, land grabbing and grabbing the water rights. That’s happening in Arizona.

What about in California? Groundwater depletion has caused the earth to sink in on itself. Parts of the Central Valley are 28 feet lower today than they were a century ago.

California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014, which mandated an extraordinarily long time horizon: two years to form the Groundwater Sustainability Agencies and then five years for each GSA to come up with its sustainability plan. So that’s now: 2022. And then 20 years to come into sustainability. My fear is that the slow implementation will allow for too much groundwater depletion to happen. It’s sort of the same old, same old.

But could it work?

I don’t think we’re talking about sustainability. I think we’re talking about managed depletion. Because it’s impossible to keep growing the food that we grow in California. It’s agriculture that uses most of the groundwater. The math just isn’t there to have sustainable groundwater management. If you think of sustainability as input equals output — don’t withdraw more than is being replenished on an annual basis — that’s impossible in most of California.

Will we run out of water? Are we talking about 10 years or 100 years?

Yes. We are on target to. Parts of the Central Valley have already run out of water. Before SGMA, there were places in the southern part of the valley where I would say within 40 to 50 years we would run out or the water is so saline or so deep that it’s just too expensive to extract. SGMA may slow that down — or it may not. I don’t think the outlook is really good. Our own research is showing that groundwater depletion there has accelerated in the last three years.

Then what happens? What does California or Arizona look like after that?

It looks pretty dry. Even among water users, there’s an element that doesn’t understand that this is going to be the end for a lot of farming. Farmers are trying to be really efficient but also magically want the supply of water to be sustained.
We focus on the big cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas, but it’s farms that use 80% of water. They grow crops that provide huge amounts of the winter fruits and vegetables and nuts for the entire country. Is there any way that farming in

California and Arizona can continue even remotely close to how it is today?

I don’t think so. It has to drastically change. We’ll need wholesale conversion to efficient irrigation and different pricing structures so that water is better valued. We’ll need different crops that are bred to be more drought tolerant and more saline-water tolerant. And we’ll probably have a lot less production.

What does that mean for the country’s food supply?

This is the big question. I don’t want to be flippant, but people don’t understand the food-water nexus. Do we try to bring more water to the southern high plains, to Arizona, to California, because if the food system’s optimized, maybe that’s the cheapest thing to do? Or does agriculture move to where the water is? Does it migrate north and east? It’s not just food production. What about the workers? Transportation? If we were to move all of our agriculture to northern California, into Idaho, into North Dakota over the next decade, that’s a major upheaval for millions and millions of people who work in the ag industry.

[LFC]

Cheeses, it sounds like we're already too late to halt some major melting. They're conservatively expecting a nearly 11" sea level rise due to the melting of Greenland's glaciers at the current temperature.

As a field glaciologist, I’ve worked on ice sheets for more than 30 years. In that time, I have witnessed some gobsmacking changes. The past few years in particular have been unnerving for the sheer rate and magnitude of change underway. My revered textbooks taught me that ice sheets respond over millennial time scales, but that’s not what we’re seeing today.

A study published Aug. 29, 2022, demonstrates – for the first time – that Greenland’s ice sheet is now so out of balance with prevailing Arctic climate that it no longer can sustain its current size. It is irreversibly committed to retreat by at least 59,000 square kilometers (22,780 square miles), an area considerably larger than Denmark, Greenland’s protectorate state.

Even if all the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming ceased today, we find that Greenland’s ice loss under current temperatures will raise global sea level by at least 10.8 inches (27.4 centimeters). That’s more than current models forecast, and it’s a highly conservative estimate. If every year were like 2012, when Greenland experienced a heat wave, that irreversible commitment to sea level rise would triple. That’s an ominous portent given that these are climate conditions we have already seen, not a hypothetical future scenario.

Our study takes a completely new approach – it is based on observations and glaciological theory rather than sophisticated numerical models. The current generation of coupled climate and ice sheet models used to forecast future sea level rise fail to capture the emerging processes that we see amplifying Greenland’s ice loss.

[LFC]

It seems like every year the situation of the Thwaites Glacier in the Antarctic looks worse and accelerating.

Antarctica’s so-called “doomsday glacier” – nicknamed because of its high risk of collapse and threat to global sea level – has the potential to rapidly retreat in the coming years, scientists say, amplifying concerns over the extreme sea level rise that would accompany its potential demise.

The Thwaites Glacier, capable of raising sea level by several feet, is eroding along its underwater base as the planet warms. In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists mapped the glacier’s historical retreat, hoping to learn from its past what the glacier will likely do in the future.

They found that at some point in the past two centuries, the base of the glacier dislodged from the seabed and retreated at a rate of 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) per year. That’s twice the rate that scientists have observed in the past decade or so.

That swift disintegration possibly occurred “as recently as the mid-20th century,” Alastair Graham, the study’s lead author and a marine geophysicist at the University of South Florida, said in a news release.

It suggests the Thwaites has the capability to undergo a rapid retreat in the near future, once it recedes past a seabed ridge that is helping to keep it in check.

“Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails, and we should expect to see big changes over small timescales in the future – even from one year to the next – once the glacier retreats beyond a shallow ridge in its bed,” Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist and one of the study’s co-authors from the British Antarctic Survey, said in the release.

[LFC]

Uh, OK. I'm no attorney but do court filings often contain this kind of ridiculous shit?

Big Oil wants you to believe that, because climate change was mentioned in children’s cartoons and a Batman movie in the 1990s, companies like Chevron hold no responsibilities for the current climate crisis.

That’s the gist of a brief filed by Chevron in Hawaii’s First Circuit Court, first reported Wednesday by E&E News. The massive brief was filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the oil giant by the city and county of Honolulu, which charges a number of oil companies for their role in contributing to sea level rise by spreading climate denial and misinformation about their product. In the brief, Chevron asks the court to dismiss the suit, which has been inching closer to a trial than many other similar cases brought by cities and states against oil companies.

“[The] Plaintiffs’ Complaint tries to construct a narrative that oil and gas companies had some unique knowledge about climate science and withheld it or misrepresented it in some way that impacted policy responses and consumer choices. That narrative is false,” the brief reads. “...Attempting to ‘fix blame’ on a handful of energy companies for a widely discussed phenomenon that is inherent to modern industrial society and the economic foundations of modern life is fundamentally misleading and improper and, more importantly, does nothing to address the problem of climate change.” The brief then goes out to construct an exhaustive list of the “cultural commentary” on climate change since the 19th century, as a way of trying to support this claim.

Some of the pop culture references contained in the brief are... pretty wild. There’s a cultural reference here for everyone. Did you like reading Calvin and Hobbes? There was a 1987 strip about climate change, so it’s not Chevron’s fault that the world kept using oil after that. A fan of the show Cheers? One character mentioned global warming in a joke in an episode in 1991, so don’t be mad at Chevron. Did you go see Prince of Tides, Batman Returns, and/or The American President when they were in theaters in the 90s? Those movies contained at least one reference to climate change, so clearly the world was paying attention to scientists’ warnings. Were you a 90s kid who watched The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Beverly Hills, 90210, Frasier, Alf, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Captain Planet, and/or Power Rangers? All those shows had a mention of global warming, so you really should have known better.

[LFC]

Just ... wow.

A billionaire has given away his multibillion-dollar company, and this time it isn’t to furtively advance conservative politics. Together with his family, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has offloaded the outdoor clothing business to a trust and a nonprofit, with the goal of fighting climate change and conserving land. The company, reportedly worth some $3 billion, will also donate all of its profits to those same causes. That could equate to an additional $100 million or so each year. “Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” Chouinard told The New York Times.

[goldenvalley]

Alexandra Petri's imagining of a meeting of billionaires trying to figure out how to advice the Patagonia founder on how to really behave in light of climate change.  Attendees include Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet, and Tim Cook.  

10:19 a.m.: The main subject of the meeting, persuading Mr. Chouinard to do something else with his money than donate his entire company to a trust and nonprofit dedicated to fighting climate change, is raised. Suggestions:

Invite him aboard yachts. This will change his mind! Mr. Zuckerberg emphatically says, “We should do a yacht party! I’ll bring the VR goggles!” No takers. It is agreed to put a pin in the yacht concept.

Bring him to space on the best and fastest space vehicle possible. Some disagreement as to which vehicle this is that becomes increasingly heated.

Charlie Munger suggests that instead of fighting climate change, he could “donate a really big building to a college with no windows that thumbs its nose at the fire code, let that fire code know who is boss, really sock it to the fire code.”

Buy Twitter.

Buy The Washington Post.

Host SNL.

Buy SNL.

Do the Billionaires’ Handshake many times over. [N.B. The Billionaires’ Handshake is when you wave 65 $100 bills at each other and then light them on fire.]

Settle sexual misconduct claims.

Join the climate change fight, but on the other side, against the climate, by way of corporate carbon output and one’s own personal emissions.