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America’s EPA head announces pullout from a global pact to cut emissions

U.S. will change course on climate policy, says former EPA transition head Reuters, By Nina Chestney |30 JAN 17  LONDON The United States will switch course on climate change and pull out of a global pact to cut emissions, said Myron Ebell, who headed U.S. President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team until his inauguration.

Ebell is the director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a U.S. conservative think tank, and helped to guide the EPA’s transition after Trump was elected in November until he was sworn in on Jan. 20.

Trump, a climate skeptic, campaigned on a pledge to boost the U.S. oil and gas drilling and coal mining industries by reducing regulation.

He alarmed nations that backed the 2015 Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gases by pledging to pull the United States out of the global deal agreed by nearly 200 countries. However, Trump told the New York Times in November that he had an “open mind” on the agreement.

Trump’s administration has asked the EPA to halt all contracts, grants and interagency agreements pending a review, sources said.

“The U.S. will clearly change its course on climate policy. Trump has made it clear he will withdraw from the Paris Agreement. He could do it by executive order tomorrow or he could do it as part of a larger package,” Ebell told reporters in London on Monday.

The top energy official for the European Union, meanwhile, said he hoped that Trump would stick to the Paris deal……..http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-epa-idUSKBN15E1MM

February 1, 2017 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Joint Statements on Climate Change from National Academies of Science Around the World

climate-change
Skeptical Science 27 January 2017  This is a re-post from Significant Figures by Peter Gleick

National academies of sciences from around the world have published formal statements and declarations acknowledging the state of climate science, the fact that climate is changing, the compelling evidence that humans are responsible, and the need to debate and implement strategies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Not a single national science academy disputes or denies the scientific consensus around human-caused climate change. A few examples of joint academy statements since 2000 on climate are listed here. Many national academies have, in addition, published their own reports and studies on climate issues. These are not included here.

The Science of Climate Change (Statement of 17 National Science Academies, 2001)

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/292/5520/1261

Following the release of the third in the ongoing series of international reviews of climatescience conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chang (IPCC), seventeen national science academies issued a joint statement, entitled “The Science of Climate Change,” acknowledging the IPCC study to be the scientific consensus on climate changescience.

The seventeen signatories were:

  • Australian Academy of Sciences
  • Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
  • Brazilian Academy of Sciences
  • Royal Society of Canada
  • Caribbean Academy of Sciences
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • French Academy of Sciences
  • German Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina
  • Indian National Science Academy
  • Indonesian Academy of Sciences
  • Royal Irish Academy
  • Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy)
  • Academy of Sciences Malaysia
  • Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
  • Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
  • Turkish Academy of Sciences
  • Royal Society (UK)

Joint science academies’ statement: Global response to climate change(Statement of 11 National Science Academies, 2005)

http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf

Eleven national science academies, including all the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, signed a statement that the scientific understanding of climate change was sufficiently strong to justify prompt action. The statement explicitly endorsed the IPCC consensus and stated:

“…there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities (IPCC 2001). This warming has already led to changes in the Earth’s climate.”………

Joint science academies’ statement: Global response to climate change(Statement of 11 National Science Academies, 2005)

http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf………

 

Joint science academies’ statement on Growth and responsibility: sustainability, energy efficiency and climate protection (Statement of 13 National Science Academies, 2007)

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/aktuelles/nachrichten/dateien/G8_Academies%20Declaration.pdf……..

A joint statement on sustainability, energy efficiency, and climate change(Statement of 13 individual National Science Academies and the African Academy of Sciences, 2007)

http://www.interacademies.net/File.aspx?id=4825………..

 

Zmian klimatu, globalnego ocieplenia i ich alarmujących skutkow: “Climate change, global warming and its alarming consequences” (Statement of the Polish Academy of Sciences, December 2007)

http://bit.ly/2jwgtNL………

 

Joint Science Academies’ Statement: Climate Change Adaptation and the Transition to a Low Carbon Society (Statement of 13 National Academies of Sciences, June 2008)

http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/climatechangestatement.pdf……..

 

Climate change and the transformation of energy technologies for a low carbon future (Statement of 13 National Academies of Sciences, May 2009)

http://www.leopoldina.org/en/press/press-releases/press-release/press/713/………

Health Effects of Climate Change (Statement of the Inter Academy Medical Panel/42 National Academies of Sciences, 2010)

http://www.leopoldina.org/de/publikationen/detailansicht/publication/health-effects-of-climate-change-2010/………

Climate Change: Evidence and Causes (Joint Statement of the Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, February 2014)

http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/events/a-discussion-on-climate-change-evidence-and-causes/……..

Position de l’Académie sur les Changements Climatiques (Statement of the Académie Royale des Science, des Lettres & des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, November 12, 2014)

https://t.co/SZT9VvU8vx………

 

U.K. Science Communiqué on Climate Change (Joint Statement of the Royal Society and member organizations, July 2015)

https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/Publications/2015/21-07-15-climate-communique.PDF…….

 

Facing critical decisions on climate change (Joint Statement of the European Academies Science Advisory Council and its 29 members, 2015)

http://www.leopoldina.org/de/publikationen/detailansicht/publication/facing-critical-decisions-on-climate-change-in-2015/

Facing critical decisions on climate change in 2015

The science of climate change reported by the IPCC Fourth Assessment (2007) and Fifth Assessment (2014) have been thoroughly evaluated by numerous national academies (e.g. Royal Society/National Academy of Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) and by international bodies. Advances in science and technology have increased our knowledge of how to mitigate climate change, uncertainties in the scientific analysis continue to be addressed, co-benefits of mitigation to health have been revealed, and new business opportunities have been found. EASAC remains concerned, however, that progress in turning this substantial evidence base into an international policy response has so far failed to match the full magnitude and urgency of the problem…

Even if emissions of GHG stopped altogether, existing concentrations of GHG in the atmosphere would continue to exert a warming effect for a long time. Whatever measures are put in place to reduce the intensity of global human-induced climate forcing, building resilience through adaptation will be necessary to provide more resilience to the risks already emerging as a result of climate change…

Signatories/Members of the European Academies Science Advisory Council

  • Academia Europaea
  • All European Academies (ALLEA)
  • The Austrian Academy of Sciences
  • The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium
  • The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
  • The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts
  • The Czech Academy of Sciences
  • The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
  • The Estonian Academy of Sciences
  • TheCouncil of Finnish Academies
  • The German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
  • The Academy of Athens
  • The Hungarian Academy of Sciences
  • The Royal Irish Academy
  • The Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
  • The Latvian Academy of Sciences
  • The Lithuanian Academy of Sciences
  • The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
  • The Polish Academy of Sciences
  • The Academy of Sciences of Lisbon
  • The Romanian Academy
  • The Slovak Academy of Sciences
  • The Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
  • The Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences
  • The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
  • The Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences
  • The Royal Society
  • The Federation of European Academies of Medicine (FEAM) (Observer)

 

[This list is not a complete summary of the many individual or joint statements of national academies of sciences. Please send additions and corrections to pgleick@pacinst.org) https://www.skepticalscience.com/joint-statements-on-climate-change-from-nas-around-world.html

January 30, 2017 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, Reference | Leave a comment

European Union will remain top investor against climate change, regardless of Donald Trump

poster-climate-Francehttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-eib-idUSKBN1581IT By Francesco Guarascio | BRUSSELS, 29 Jan 17   The European Investment Bank, the EU’s lending institution, will maintain a target of investing around 20 billion dollars a year to fight climate change over the next five years, it said on Tuesday, sending a warning to climate skeptics.

Climate investment is already about a quarter of EIB total loans. Last year the bank lent 83.8 billion euros ($90 billion), of which 19 billion went to projects to counter climate change.

“We, Europeans, must lead the free world against climate skeptics,” the EIB president Werner Hoyer said at a news conference in Brussels.

While he did not mention Donald Trump directly, the new U.S. president has promised to bolster the U.S. oil, gas and coal industries, in part by undoing federal regulations curbing carbon dioxide emissions. He has also suggested pulling out of a global climate change pact signed in Paris in 2015, calling it expensive for U.S. industry.

World temperatures hit a record high for the third year in a row in 2016, the World Meteorological Organisation said last week.

Hoyer said the bank would maintain ambitious targets against global warming. “We aim to provide $100 billion for climate action over the next five years, the largest contribution of any single multilateral institution,” he said.

Britain’s decision to leave the European Union is adding to EIB’s concerns, as it is one of the four main shareholders of the bank, holding about 16 percent of its shares.

Only EU member states can be EIB shareholders. Hoyer said the Brexit impact on the bank “is completely unclear” but he did not rule out the possibility of changing rules to allow Britain to remain a shareholder even after Brexit – an option that would need approval from London and the other 27 EU capitals.

Hoyer said in the two years of Brexit negotiations, expected to start in March, the bank will remain in “limbo”.

“We will be missed in the UK if we had to reduce our business there or disappear completely,” Hoyer added. Last year, the bank lent to Britain more than 7 billion euros.

He said that, contrary to other large EU states, Britain has no national promotional bank and “relies heavily” on EIB funding for certain investments in infrastructure and other projects. The EIB already now invests outside the EU, but its lending is mostly concentrated on Europe. Hoyer said Britain could remain a recipient of EIB lending after leaving the EU, but “it is a question of dimension”.

He urged negotiators to be constructive and avoid “further damage” to existing projects funded by the bank in Britain.

($1 = 0.9312 euros)   (Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Alison Williams)

January 30, 2017 Posted by | climate change, EUROPE | Leave a comment

People are tweeting ClimateFacts since EPA workers can’t

By John D. Sutter, CNN January 26, 2017 Source: Employees terrified by EPA lockdow  John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion who focuses on climate change and social justice. Follow him on Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook or subscribe to his email newsletter.

(CNN)Climate change is real — and we’re causing it. That’s a basic fact.

But it’s also a controversial one in the Donald Trump era.
In its first week, the US President’s administration instituted a media blackout at the US Environmental Protection Agency, removed references to climate change on the White House website and posted an energy plan that calls for increasing our use of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, which are causing the Earth to warm with dangerous consequences.
“We want to push back … with reality,” 350.org climate activist Jamie Henn said in an email.
So activists, scientists, celebrities and journalists took to Twitter on Thursday. They posted under the #ClimateFacts hashtag — in solidarity with the government workers who can’t, Henn said.
Below you’ll find some of their tweets. The facts have been vetted for accuracy………….http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/sutter-twitter-climate-facts/index.html

January 28, 2017 Posted by | climate change, media, USA | Leave a comment

Trump Wants “Alternative Facts” on Climate Change. We Saved the Real Ones.

 trump-burning-booksDaily KosBy Paul Bland for Public Justice  Thursday Jan 26, 2017 ·”……Today, the new White House team is taking a deeply troubling step to hide the truth by shuttering the EPA’s climate change website and, by extension, deleting volumes of important scientific information. And it is part of a very troubling pattern: President Trump once famously proclaimed that climate change was an idea “created by and for the Chinese.” And, in an all-out assault on science and reality, he has nominated Scott Pruitt – a man so extreme that we broke 35 years of silence on cabinet nominees to oppose his nomination – to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

As a public interest law firm that brings a variety of cutting edge lawsuits that help fight the pollution that contributes to climate change, these issues are central to our mission.

The old saw that “the truth hurts sometimes” will prove especially true if we ignore the truth about the science on this issue.  As gigantic chunks of ice larger than several states are headed towards “calving” (i.e., breaking away) from Antarctica, as temperatures at the North Pole are frequently 30 and 40 degrees above normal, the actual world is changing, and pretending it isn’t happening is a recipe for disaster.

So until today, the EPA site has been filled with useful and important information on climate change.  But today, the new Administration is suppressing the truth and trying to erase three recent, and important, publications that the oil industry and polluters definitely don’t want the public to see.

The Administration can change the EPA’s website, but it can’t un-write the truth that was up there as of this morning.  And we think responsible Americans who care about science and our planet can handle the truth. So here are the 3 recent, comprehensive EPA reports on climate change that the new Administration is trying to make go away:

EPA Climate Change FAQs

The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment

Climate Change Indicators in the United States: 2016, Fourth Edition

These reports contain important information on the causes and effects of climate change, along with the scientific data to back them up. We think they’re too valuable to go missing, so we’ve given them a permanent home on the Public Justice website.

Because now is the time – when some insist that big is small, cloudy is sunny and fiction is reality – to step up, speak out and RESIST.

Update: We’ve also archived a series of climate change fact sheets that are no longer on the EPA website: How Will Climate Change Affect My Health?, Climate Change and the Health of Children, Climate Change, Health and Environmental Justice, Climate Change and The Health of Indigenous Populations, Climate Change and the Health of Occupational Groups, Climate Change and the Health of Older Adults, Climate Change and the Health of People with Disabilities, Climate Change and the Health of People with Existing Medical Conditions, and Climate Change and the Health of Pregnant Women.   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/25/1625065/-Trump-Wants-Alternative-Facts-on-Climate-Change-We-Saved-the-Real-Ones

January 28, 2017 Posted by | climate change, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Europe and northern hemisphere warming fast: Europe faces droughts, floods

poster-climate-FranceEurope faces droughts, floods and storms as climate change accelerates
Europe and northern hemisphere are warming at faster pace than the global average and ‘multiple climatic hazards’ are expected, says study, Guardian, , 25 Jan 17. Europe’s Atlantic-facing countries will suffer heavier rainfalls, greater flood risk, more severe storm damage and an increase in “multiple climatic hazards”, according to the most comprehensive study of Europe’s vulnerability to climate change yet.

Temperatures in mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Pyrenees are predicted to soar to glacier-melting levels, while the Mediterranean faces a “drastic” increase in heat extremes, droughts, crop failure and forest fires.

Europe and the entire northern hemisphere are warming at a quicker pace than elsewhere, to the extent that tropical diseases such as West Nile fever are expected to spread across northern France by mid-century.

Hans-Martin Füssel, one of the lead authors of the European Environment Agency report, said that scientific evidence was pointing increasingly to a speeding up in the pace of climate change.

We have more data confirming that sea-level rise is accelerating,” he said. “It is not a linear trend, largely due to increased disintegration of ice sheets. There is also new evidence that heavy precipitation has increased in Europe. That is what is causing the floods. The [climate] projections are coming true.”

Earlier this month, Nasa, Noaa and the Met Office confirmed that 2016 had broken the record for the hottest year ever previously held by 2015, which had itself broken the record that had been held by 2014.

The new EEA report finds that land temperatures in Europe in the last decade were 1.5C warmer than the pre-industrial age, although near-surface temperatures – measured at a metre above ground level – were only 0.83C-0.89C warmer……..

In the Arctic, one of the most rapidly warming parts of the planet, many habitats for flora and fauna such as sea ice, tundra and permafrost peat lands have already been lost.

Oxygen-depleted ocean “dead zones” caused by agricultural fertilisers – particularly in the Baltic Sea – and ocean acidification fed by an influx of freshwater from melting continental ice will pose further threats to marine ecosystems, and the indigenous peoples who depend on them.

While retreating sea ice will open up the potential for greater resource exploitation, the report’s authors warn that “utilising Arctic oil and natural gas resources would challenge the transition to a low-carbon society, as it is recommended that two-thirds of known global fossil resources remain in the ground if the 2C warming limit of the UNFCCC [UN framework convention on climate change] is to be met.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/25/europe-faces-droughts-floods-storms-climate-change-accelerates

January 27, 2017 Posted by | climate change, EUROPE | Leave a comment

Sea level rise more rapid than expected

sea_levels_risingSea Level Rise Estimate Grows Alarmingly Higher in Latest Federal Report https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24012017/sea-level-rise-global-warming-federal-report-donald-trump

NOAA’s latest report arrives, predicting worst-case scenario of 8 feet of rise by century’s end, just as Donald Trump takes office with pro-fossil fuel policies. New federal estimates say global sea levels could rise faster than previously thought, and the rise may be even worse in many coastal regions of the United States.

A new report, written by scientists with several federal agencies and universities, says that under a worst-case scenario, climate change could raise the oceans an average of more than 8 feet by 2100, about 20 inches more than a previous federal estimate published in 2012. The best case now projected would be an average of about a foot.

The report was delivered just as President Donald Trump took office, immediately working to undo President Barack Obama’s climate policies. On his inauguration day, pages mentioning climate change on whitehouse.gov were removed. Trump has promised policies to increase fossil fuel development in the U.S., and to undo Obama’s major emissions-cutting initiative, the Clean Power Plan.

Sea level rise will likely be worse in some regions of the U.S. because of ocean currents, wind patterns and settling sediments. The authors examined six scenarios with a range of probabilities in an effort to help state and local governments plan for sea level rise. Under all of them, the Northeast should expect higher waters than much of the rest of the globe. The Pacific Northwest and Alaska would likely experience lower-than-average increases under the best-case scenarios.

“The ocean’s not flat,” said William V. Sweet, one of the authors and a scientist at NOAA. “It’s not going to rise like water in a bathtub.”

The six scenarios are based on United Nations models of future greenhouse gas emissions, depending on whether countries rapidly slash pollution or continue burning fossil fuels as usual. The authors determined that the worst-case rise of more than 8 feet has only a 0.1 percent chance of occurring by 2100, even under a business-as-usual emissions scenario, but a rise of more than 1.5 feet is near certain with high emissions.

The increase in the estimates for global sea rise was partly due to new research on the Antarctic ice sheet, which is melting faster and appears to be more fragile than previously estimated, suggesting that some of the more pessimistic scenarios are increasingly likely.

The report also warned that moderate coastal flooding will become 25 times more likely with a 14-inch rise in the seas. That level could come anytime from 2030 to 2080 for most coastal cities, depending on their location and the world’s emissions. It would mean that a flood that now comes once every five years would be expected five times a year.

Sea levels have already risen by more than 8 inches globally since 1880, with 3 inches coming since 1993. Tidal flooding “has increased by an order of magnitude over the past several decades,” the report says, “turning it from a rare event into a recurrent and disruptive problem.”

The authors note that 2 million Americans would likely see their homes permanently flooded if sea levels rise 3 feet. Twice that increase would inundate the homes of 6 million. Only the rosiest scenarios would avoid a 3-foot rise by 2100. The effects of global warming, of course, will continue long beyond that year.

“Even if society sharply reduces emissions in the coming decades,” the authors write, “sea level will most likely continue to rise for centuries.”

January 27, 2017 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, oceans | Leave a comment

Pope Francis has influenced USA Republicans to shift climate views

PopePope spurs Republicans to shift climate views, EurekAlert, 24 Jan 17  CORNELL UNIVERSITY After Pope Francis framed climate change as a moral issue in his second encyclical, conservative Republicans shifted and began to see environmental dilemmas in the same way, according to a new study led by Cornell University communication researchers.

“When Pope Francis issued his encyclical paper in June 2015, he emerged as a strong advocate for climate action,” said Jonathon P. Schuldt, assistant professor of communication. “He is in many ways uniquely positioned as a global moral authority – a religious authority – and his position is very visible.”

Schuldt, along with Adam R. Pearson of Pomona College and Rainer Romero-Canyas and Dylan Larson-Konar, both of the Environmental Defense Fund, sought to understand a mechanism for changing public opinion about climate change. Their research, “Brief Exposure to Pope Francis Heightens Moral Beliefs About Climate Change,” was published online in the journal Climatic Change, Dec. 30.

The pontiff addressed waste, culture and modern day ills in the encyclical. Climate change is a global problem with grave environmental, social, economic and political implications, the pope wrote. Many of the world’s poor live in areas particularly affected by phenomena related to global warming, and their subsistence depends on keeping Earth healthy. They have few resources to help them adapt to climate change, the pope said.

For this research, more than 1,200 U.S. adults were asked for their moral beliefs about climate change. …….https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-01/cu-psr012417.php

January 27, 2017 Posted by | climate change, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s first White House website post – will scrap Climate Action Plan

trump-worldDonald Trump will eliminate landmark climate protection plan, says first post on White House website http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-white-house-president-global-warming-climate-change-environment-a7538206.html

The Climate Action Plan was introduced four years ago as a national strategy for tackling climate change Andrew Griffin  @_andrew_griffin  21 January 2017 Donald Trump’s first post on the White House website suggests destroying the US’s strategy to tackle climate change.

After President Trump took over the site, he posted six “Issues” to its home page. The first of those is an “America First Energy Plan”.

 The first proposal in that document suggests getting rid of “burdensome regulations on our energy industry”. Those include getting rid of “harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the US rule”.

President Trump doesn’t suggest a replacement for any of those regulations, and goes on to suggest that getting rid of them will save money and keep America secure.The Climate Action Plan was landmark legislation introduced by Barack Obama in June 2013. It served as a “national plan for tackling climate change”, according to the government.
The key parts of the plan were divided into three sections. Those outlined plans to cut carbon pollution in the US, actions to get the country ready for the effects of climate change, and plans for how to lead international efforts to address global warming.No part of the Mr Trump’s environmental document makes any mention of climate change or global warming – something that President Trump has in the past said was just a Chinese hoax. The only mention of the environment calls for “responsible stewardship of the environment”, but that refers only to keeping water and air clean. “Lastly, our need for energy must go hand-in-hand with responsible stewardship of the environment,” the document reads. “Protecting clean air and clean water, conserving our natural habitats, and preserving our natural reserves and resources will remain a high priority.”It also says that Donald Trump will focus the Environmental Protection Agency onto “protecting our air and water”, and presumably away from climate policies.

President Trump says that his environmental policies will join up with his economic ones, by encouraging more spending in the US economy. The document says that he will encourage the burning of coal, and the use of shale oil and gas in the US.By doing so, he will be able to use the revenues to pay for the rebuilding of “roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure” that he promised to his voters. It will also help stimulate the agriculture industry, he claimed. President Trump says that his environmental policies will join up with his economic ones, by encouraging more spending in the US economy. The document says that he will encourage the burning of coal, and the use of shale oil and gas in the US.That will also allow the US to achieve energy independence from the OPEC alliance of oil producing countries. But President Trump says he will continue to work with countries in the Gulf – many of which are in OPEC – “to develop a positive energy relationship as part of our anti-terrorism strategy”.The document also calls for a new focus on coal and a revival of the country’s coal industry. President Trump has claimed that he will do that by backing “clean coal” – but it’s not clear that such a thing would actually be possible and whether such thing as clean coal could actually exist.

January 23, 2017 Posted by | climate change, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Acadenics, volunteers, hasten to preserve climate data against climate information suppression by Trump

truthFlag-USAThe Scramble to Protect Climate Data Under Trump Fearing what might happen to the data that catalogues the details of climate change in an administration with so many climate deniers, researchers rush to save it. Inside Climate News Lisa Song   and Zahra Hirji, 22 Jan 17  More than 250 people gathered at the University of Pennsylvania last week for Data Rescue Philly, one of the latest examples of a grassroots effort to save environmental and climate  change data that scientists fear could vanish under the Trump administration’s many climate deniers.

Over two days, volunteers from academia, nonprofits and the tech industry were trained and then preserved data from more than 3,000 websites hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Bethany Wiggin, director of the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities (PPEH), said the idea emerged from conversations recalling how government data became less accessible during the George W. Bush administration. Wiggin said a scan of agency websites showed that some data sets were archived in multiple locations, while others were more vulnerable.

Those concerns prompted PPEH and Penn Libraries to launch DataRefuge, which approaches the problem like a libraries project, placing “multiple copies [of data] in multiple places,” Wiggin said.

“The main goal is to make sure climate change research doesn’t slow down.”

A recent move by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to remove references to climate change from its website adds urgency to scientists’ concerns. In December, researchers and software engineers held a “guerrilla archiving event” in Toronto that focused on preserving Environmental Protection Agency data, and the leader of that effort attended Data Rescue Philly to offer advice.

DataRefuge events took place this week in Chicago and Indianapolis. The project is open to anyone who wants to attend.

The Penn project was in collaboration with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), an international group of university researchers and nonprofits that formed after Donald Trump’s victory to coordinate data rescue efforts. The amount of climate-related information stored on federal websites is overwhelming, and includes vital satellite imagery, sea-ice records, pollution inventories and decades of scientific studies. Wiggin said it’s impossible to save everything, and the goal is to prioritize the data most at risk of removal.

InsideClimate News spoke to Wiggin about the motivations, challenges and hopes for the project……… https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19012017/climate-change-data-science-denial-donald-trump?platform=hootsuite

January 23, 2017 Posted by | climate change, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s White House website distorts the figures on American wages

trump-liesTrump White House Distorts Wages Figure on First Day, Climate Central By  22 Jan 17 Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as president on Friday, the White House said that eliminating power plant climate rules, a clean water rule and other environmental regulations would “greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.”

The statement, included on the White House’s website to justify Trump’s drive to eliminate environmental rules affecting the energy sector, was a distortion.  And if it was true, it would represent wage gains equivalent to less than $20 per American every year. The figure was based on a paper produced by a Louisiana State University finance professor in 2015 on behalf of a fossil fuel industry nonprofit. The paper, which was not peer reviewed, investigated potential economic impacts if all protected federal lands were opened to unlimited oil, gas and coal mining.

The paper did not, however, analyze the potential impacts of other potential regulatory changes, such as eliminating Obama-era power plant climate rules, as the White House suggested.

“It seems that the White House mischaracterized the study,” said Ken Gillingham, a Yale economist who worked a year for the Obama White House. He also said the study was “problematic from start to finish.”

The paper assumed that lifting restrictions on fossil fuel extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and all other protected American lands would lead to an unfettered boom in production of coal and other fossil fuels. That assumption and others were disputed by Gillingham and other experts.

“The long-term trend in terms of our overall electricity sector is very much away from coal,” said Adele Morris, a researcher at the nonprofit Brookings Institute who reviewed the paper. “So I don’t see why opening up a bunch more land is going to necessarily generate a lot more mining activity.”

The paper examined how the economic benefits from such mining and drilling booms nationwide might spill into other industries. It estimated a $32 billion growth in wages across the American economy every year for the next seven years. The findings were also mischaracterized and cited in more detail by Trump’s campaign in August.

Not only did the new administration and the Trump campaign misrepresent the regulations that were analyzed in the paper, they also understated its findings by claiming the “more than $30 billion” in increased wages would accrue over seven years instead of every year for seven years.

Projecting the true economic impacts of eliminating America’s environmental protections would be exceedingly difficult to calculate……….

estimates by Obama’s EPA and academics have concluded that the overall economy-wide benefits from the rules, called the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, would quickly climb into the tens of billions of dollars a year.

Among other things, those analyses consider savings from reduced future impacts of rising seas, worsening droughts, intensifying storms and other effects of climate change caused by fossil fuel pollution. The past three years have broken global heat records, amplifying disasters.

“To be clear, the air pollution benefits alone justify the CPP,” said Michael Wara, a Stanford Law environment expert who co-authored a Science article in 2014 with Stavins and other academics that examined the economic costs and benefits of the rules.

Louisiana State professor Joseph Mason, the author of the paper that underpinned the White House’s claims on Friday, did not respond to emails or a voice message seeking comment. A spokesman for the Institute for Energy Research, the fossil fuel-backed nonprofit that commissioned the study, also did not respond, nor did Trump’s press team…….. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/trump-fabricates-wages-figure-on-first-day-21098

January 23, 2017 Posted by | climate change, politics, USA | Leave a comment

NASA warns: global warming has never paused, now could accelerate

global-warming1Global warming never ‘paused’ and could soon accelerate, warns Nasa scientist
Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, describes suggestions that climate change had slowed down or stopped as ‘delusional’ and ‘bunk’, The Independent, Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent  21 January 2017 The idea that global warming “paused” has been comprehensively refuted by the record warm temperatures over the last three years – and the rate of increase could soon start to accelerate, a leading Nasa scientist has warned.

Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said some people had been “confused” by temperatures that were below the average rate of increase, mistaking what was simply a blip as the sign of a long-term trend.

 But the last three years have each seen successive, record average global temperatures, according to Nasa’s figures, partly fuelled by the natural El Nino effect, but mostly because of human-induced climate change.

This, Dr Schmidt said, was “almost certainly” just another blip as random factors take temperatures above the average rising trend, which remains virtually the same as it has since the late 1990s.

But he also said the rising amount of energy being put into the atmosphere and oceans as a result of greenhouse gas emissions had led scientists to believe the pace of global warming would get faster over the next decades…….http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/global-warming-never-paused-acclerate-climate-change-nasa-scientist-gavin-schmidt-environment-a7538116.html

January 23, 2017 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change | Leave a comment

Most USA Republicans favour action on climate change

climate-changeFlag-USATrump supporters don’t like his climate policies, Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, 20 JANUARY 2017 Dana Nuccitelli   Recent surveys jointly conducted by Yale University and George Mason University found that a majority of Republicans (including a plurality of conservative Republicans) support US participation in international climate agreements like the Paris accords. They support regulating or taxing carbon pollution. And they want the United States to get much more of its energy from renewables, and less from fossil fuels.

Yet they also voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, who pledged to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement (though he has since waffled), and to kill the Clean Power Plan and its carbon pollution regulations. And he seems to strongly prefer coal to wind and solar energy, which he has inaccurately described as “not working on large-scale” and “very, very expensive.”………

Republican support for climate-change mitigation policies is broad but shallow. They would prefer that the government take action to curb carbon pollution, but for most, the issue won’t impact their votes.

However, the fossil fuel industry is a major Republican Party donor. Which means that for many Republican politicians, the incentives are thus quite clear—if they obstruct climate policies, they’re rewarded with campaign donations, and they’re not penalized at the ballot box by conservative voters who only mildly disapprove of their actions.

Donald Trump didn’t receive particularly substantial fossil fuel funding during his presidential campaign, which may help explain his wobbly stance on climate change. He simply doesn’t seem to have put much thought into the subject or consider it a high priority, quite like most of his supporters. But many of his nominees to powerful government positions like Scott Pruitt have benefited from oil industry donations, and Trump even nominated the chief executive officer of the world’s largest oil company to be his Secretary of State.

It’s in those key government roles where the rubber meets the road. If Trump’s nominees are approved, the fossil fuel industry will have powerful allies in his administration, and if they do enough damage to America’s efforts to curb carbon pollution, Trump and the GOP may eventually pay the electoral price…….http://thebulletin.org/trump-supporters-don%E2%80%99t-his-climate-policies10411#.WINK_ptkX2s.twitter

January 23, 2017 Posted by | climate change, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Climate Central explodes the lies and omissions in Trump’s White House Energy Plan

trump-liesDecoding Trump’s White House Energy Plan , Climate Central, By  , 20 Jan 17 Just as President Donald Trump took the oath of office and the White House scrubbed its website of Obama climate change information, it posted Trump’s “America First Energy Plan,” which is replete with misinformation and specious claims about climate and energy policy.

The White House’s new energy plan repackages Trump’s campaign promises to reignite America’s declining coal industry, kill the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan and exploit all of America’s fossil fuel reserves to achieve energy independence — an idea that ignores that America’s oil and gas is part of a truly global fossil fuels market.

Throughout his campaign, Trump expressed contempt for the Obama administration’s climate policies, which were critical to the success of the Paris Climate Agreement — the international pact aiming to stop global warming from reaching what the world’s scientists agree are dangerous levels.

Obama’s climate and energy policies encouraged the development of low-carbon renewable sources and discouraged the use of coal for electricity as a way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.

Trump and his transition team called those policies job killers. He falsely claimed that Obama’s policies alone have forced the coal industry into decline. Coal has been on a long, steady decline since 2008 when natural gas was made cheap and abundant because of fracking. Natural gas overtook coal as America’s largest source of electricity for the first time in history in 2016.

The White House’s “America First Energy Plan” reflects those claims and Trump’s disdain for climate science and renewable energy. Here is a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the plan:

Energy is an essential part of American life and a staple of the world economy. The Trump Administration is committed to energy policies that lower costs for hardworking Americans and maximize the use of American resources, freeing us from dependence on foreign oil.

Few people question that energy is essential, but Trump’s statement that his administration is committed to low-cost energy and maximizing the use of American resources is seen by many as code for unfettered exploitation of oil, coal and natural gas in the U.S. Trump has called renewables “an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves,” and says a cheaper way to energy independence is through oil, gas and coal.

Fossil fuels are abundant in the U.S. thanks to fracking, which brought about the shale oil and gas boom of the past decade. But oil drilled in the U.S. isn’t necessarily staying in the U.S. and contributing to energy independence. Congress lifted a 40-year ban on oil experts a year ago, and now U.S. oil is being shipped all over the world, even as the U.S. is importing oil from Canada and the Middle East.

At the same time, the costs of renewables has been falling dramatically in recent years, and America’s largest oil refiner and carbon emitter — Texas — has become the nation’s leader in wind power production.

Trump’s skepticism of renewables contrasts starkly with Obama, who said that wind and solar power are a critical a component of energy independence. For too long, we’ve been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule. Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.

“Burdensome regulations” has long been Republican messaging for what they consider odious Obama-era climate policies and regulations that encourage the use of renewables and natural gas instead of fossil fuels to address climate change, or restrict the development of oil and gas on federally owned public lands and waters.

For example, one of Obama’s last-minute actions was to close off most of the Arctic Ocean off of Alaska’s North Coast for oil and gas development as a way to protect the seashore from oil spills and prevent more and more of the carbon pollution driving climate change. That followed a moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands and the closure of large swaths of the Atlantic coast to future oil drilling.

Each of those moves angered fossil fuel boosters in the Republican Party and were motivated in part by Obama’s Climate Action Plan, which involved a variety of measures to help slash America’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump’s claim that lifting those and other restrictions would increase workers’ wages by more $30 billion wildly mischaracterizes the potential for workers to benefit from killing U.S. climate policy. The figure seems to come from a 2015 report by Louisiana State University banking professor Joseph R. Mason, which was released by the Institute for Energy Research, an oil-industry funded organization run by Trump’s energy transition team chief,Tom Pyle.

The report claims that $32 billion in annual worker wages over seven years would be earned if all of America’s public lands were opened to oil, gas and coal development — even the lands protected by law from energy development, including wilderness areas and national parks.

That means Trump is saying that if Yellowstone, the White House lawn, Yosemite Valley, the Great Smoky Mountains and Mt. Rushmore were opened to fracking, workers would reap billions in benefits.

Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own. We will use the revenues from energy production to rebuild our roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure. Less expensive energy will be a big boost to American agriculture, as well.

“Sound” energy policy is a play on “sound science” in an effort to lend it legitimacy.

It is true that the U.S. has vast untapped domestic energy sources — and that includes renewables. While fracking and the shale oil and gas boom led to discoveries of millions of barrels of oil that were once thought too expensive to reach, renewables are some of America’s largest untapped sources of energy.

For example, America’s offshore wind power potential is so huge that if fully developed, offshore wind farms could produce four times the electricity currently generated in the U.S. today, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. America’s first offshore wind farm was completed in December, with more expected to be built over the next five years.

Trump’s estimated $50 trillion in untapped oil and gas reserves is a huge mischaracterization of the fossil fuels that can be developed in the U.S., said Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

“The problem with numbers like this is that they do not tell the whole story,” Squillace said. “The United States certainly has vast oil and gas and coal reserves and if you just add them up and multiply by their market value you get a big number. But most of those reserves cannot be economically developed any time in the foreseeable future.”

He said the figure originates from Kathy Hartnett White, a Trump advisor affiliated with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, who told Fox Business in June that the U.S. is sitting on $50 trillion of oil and gas, “but the government is stopping us from getting it.”…….

President Trump will refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water………….Trump’s energy policy says nothing about climate change, which will be made drasticly worse if the U.S. develops as much oil, gas and coal as Trump suggests.

America’s air and water have been kept clean over the past 40 years because of environmental laws enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, which Trump previously said he wants to abolish. Trump has appointed one of the EPA’s most ardent foes to head the agency — Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has sued the EPA 14 times and is involved in a lawsuit aiming to kill one of Obama’s most sweeping climate policies.

During his confirmation hearing, Pruitt said he wants states to have more control over how they are regulated by the EPA, suggesting that the federal laws protecting America’s air and water would be applied unevenly from state to state. Some states are much more vigilant in enforcing environmental regulations and have more resources than others,

Trump has said nothing about how a weakened EPA would accomplish his goal of keeping America’s air and water clean.http://www.climatecentral.org/news/decoding-trumps-white-house-energy-plan-21097

January 23, 2017 Posted by | climate change, ENERGY, politics, USA | Leave a comment

As Trump takes over, White House website loses all reference to climate change, promotes coal industry

References to climate change disappear from White House website  https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/2017/live-updates/politics/live-coverage-of-trumps-inauguration/references-to-climate-change-disappear-from-white-house-website  WP, January 21 by Steven Mufson and Brady DennisThe energy page on the new White House website, which went up within moments of Friday’s inauguration, reiterates the priorities Trump had voiced during the campaign, from focusing on “energy independence” to promising to scale back the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency.

It also appeared to remove any reference to combating climate change, a topic that had been featured prominently on the White House site under President Barack Obama. The page that once detailed the potential consequences of climate change and the Obama administration’s efforts to address it vanished on Friday just as President Trump was sworn in. It now redirected to a broken link: “The requested page ‘/energy/climate-change’ could not be found.”

trump-world

In its place, listed among the top issues of the Trump administration, was a page entitled, “An America First Energy Plan.”

The incoming administration vows to eliminate “harmful and unnecessary policies” such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the United States rule. The first represents a variety of efforts Obama pursued to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, while the second is a rule issued by the EPA to protect not only the largest waterways but smaller tributaries that others believe should fall under the jurisdiction of states rather than the federal government.

The new White House site says that Trump would “refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water.”

It also says the incoming president will pursue “clean coal technology,” a reference to efforts to remove carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning plants and bury those emissions in the ground to use them to enhance oil recovery. The Obama Energy Department has already been funding a variety of projects in this area. Though, without nearby enhanced oil recovery projects, the technology is not economic. Trump’s White House site says the new administration would aim at “reviving America’s coal industry.”

January 21, 2017 Posted by | climate change, politics, USA | Leave a comment

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