For the first time the U.S. Government is moving to manage, and reduce, the amount of Greenhouse Gas emissions from Heavy and Medium Duty vehicles (which means trucks and buses).  These regulations “have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by nearly 250 million metric tons and save approximately 500 million barrels of oil over the life of vehicles sold during 2014 to 2018”

One of the two public hearings on this proposal will be right here in our backyard at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, 575 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, (their fair city) Massachusetts 02139–4896.  More information on the hearings are available online.

In the movies the best tools for fighting off zombies are torches, flamethrowers or the odd chainsaw.  When confronting climate zombies a more sophisticated approach is called for.

Political and financial tools, like the massive clean energy business mobilization that saved the California Global Warming Solutions Act, are very important. So are efforts to bring to bear unexpected and powerful cultural forces, like military leaders, on the problem.

Information and evidence rebutting nonsense, like the ideas that scientists have swung from thinking there is global cooling to global warming or that climate science is all new and manufactured, is essential as well.  Joe Romm, who runs the influential Climate Progress blog has an excellent compilation of material pushing back on those myths.   Some highlights:

Yes, I know everybody used to think we were headed toward an ice age.  Well, except Dr. Frank Baxter (and Frank Capra) in 1958. And except for James Hansen for three decades, of course. And the National Research Council along with the vast majority of climate scientists from the 1970s on.

. . .

The myth never dies that “In the 1970’s all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming” (as Crichton has one of his fictional ‘environmentalists’ say in the novel State of Fear).  Any climate hawk must be able to quickly and assuredly respond to this myth because it continues to live on thanks to the deniers’ and delayers’ clever strategy of ignoring the facts.

I still recommend an excellent review article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) by Thomas Peterson, William Connolley, and John Fleck, which concluded:

There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then.

The BAMS piece examines the scientific origins of the myth, the popular media of the 1970s who got the story slightly wrong, the deniers/delayers who perpetuate the myth today, and, most importantly, what real scientists actually said in real peer-reviewed journals at the time.

and check out the really excellent video presenting audio from the 1950′s that Romm links to from Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Be prepared and fully armed !

The following is a special edition of CLF’s e-News.  To receive this kind of carefully screened (no spam here!)  information and to support CLF join today.

We at CLF watched last Tuesday’s elections with great interest, and in some cases, trepidation. Our ability to be effective in our work is greatly enhanced when there is real leadership on environmental issues at the state level, especially when federal leadership is lacking. With some exceptions, New Englanders chose with their votes to continue the environmental progress we are making in our region. Now that the dust has settled, we are pleased to bring you this special post-election edition of our e-news. Below, you will find a state-by-state forecast of how the election results are likely to help or hinder our and others’ efforts to address the most pressing environmental challenges affecting our region, namely reducing our carbon emissions from energy and transportation, planning for and mitigating the impacts of climate change, supporting clean energy development that creates good, local jobs, and protecting our natural resources – all in the interest of a healthy, thriving New England for everyone.

An overarching challenge that every governor and legislature will face is how to strike a balance between budget pressures and appropriately staffing and supporting environmental protection agencies. Maintaining a balanced budget can lead a state government into making “penny wise and pound foolish decisions,” like underfunding stormwater and sewage infrastructure projects needed to meet federal mandates and protect public health. In a closely related vein, building up jobs and the economy will mean that environmental permitting must be fair and timely; underfunded agencies without adequate staffing and resources will not be able to meet that goal.

Maine

The election of Paul LePage, a Republican who, for the first time in four decades, will be a governor of that party with majorities from his own party in both the Maine House and Senate, is potentially a shift of deep significance. On the campaign trail, Governor-elect LePage questioned the fact of climate change, indicated support for offshore oil and gas exploration and new nuclear power plants, stated that wind power was still too unreliable to focus much attention on and suggested folding the Departments of Environmental Protection, Marine Resources, Conservation and Inland Fisheries and Wildlife into the Department of Agriculture.

Currently the mayor of Waterville and general manager of Marden’s, a discount department store, LePage has indicated that his primary focus will be on making it easier to do business in Maine. His generally moderate record in Waterville and the long tradition of bi-partisan consensus around environmental issues in Maine provide some suggestion that forces may be at work that will temper negative campaign rhetoric. But it will be a challenge to advance a science-based agenda in Maine that looks to energy efficiency and clean renewable resources as the building blocks of both environmental protection and economic development.

Maine voters returned its two members to the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Chellie Pingree and Rep. Mike Michaud. Both have solid records as leaders on environmental issues.

For more on Maine’s election results, read CLF Maine Director Sean Mahoney’s blog post on CLF Scoop.

Massachusetts

Governor Deval Patrick’s re-election on a platform of clean energy and economic development was a hopeful sign for Massachusetts, with potential for positive reverberations beyond the Commonwealth. The Patrick campaign bucked conventional wisdom by emphasizing the need to make longer term investments, like building Cape Wind and putting in place long-term contracts that use such projects to provide electricity at a stable and predictable price.

The continued efforts to implement legislation enacted over the last two years – including the Massachusetts Green Communities Act, the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act and the Massachusetts Oceans Act – will provide ample opportunities to press forward with that affirmative agenda of building a clean energy economy.

On the federal front, it is notable that the only newly elected member of Congress from Massachusetts (filling a seat to be vacated by retiring Rep. Delahunt), U.S. Representative-elect Bill Keating from the 10^th Congressional District, is a supporter of Cape Wind and received a state-wide award as “Environmental Legislator of the Year” when he was in the Massachusetts State Legislature, primarily for his water pollution work.

New Hampshire

The election resulted in a massive shift in the political landscape in New Hampshire. Prior to Tuesday, Democrats controlled both houses of the Legislature and the Executive Council under a Democratic governor. With the exception of Governor Lynch, who retained his office, Republicans swept other areas of the government. In the New Hampshire House and Senate, Republicans not only became the majority, but also achieved veto-proof majorities. In the Executive Council, which confirms nominations to offices in the executive branch and which approves government contracts, a Democratic majority not only was erased, but all five Council members are now Republican.

While it is important not to automatically assume that Republicans will oppose all effective and affirmative action on the environment, it is fair to note that New Hampshire’s Republican party adopted a platform that espouses positions that represent a retreat from state and regional efforts to tackle climate change. Whether there will be a serious attempt to translate these positions into policy remains to be seen.

On the federal level, Kelly Ayotte (R) won the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Judd Gregg. She defeated Democrat Paul Hodes, who vacated the Congressional District 1 seat to run for Senate. While in Congress, Hodes had been a strong ally on a variety of environmental issues. Republican Frank Giunta defeated incumbent Democrat Carol Shea Porter, also a strong ally on environmental issues, for the Congressional District 2 seat. Charlie Bass (R) won New Hampshire’s second Congressional seat (District 1), defeating Democratic candidate Anne McLane Kuster. Rep. Bass has shown leadership around key environmental issues before in Congress, including re-establishing passenger rail in New Hampshire, and has the potential to become an ally on future initiatives, including advancing renewable energy in the state.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island elected Independent Lincoln Chafee as governor. Among the three candidates running for governor, Lincoln Chafee was widely viewed as the candidate who was most likely to understand environmental issues and advance a pro-environmental agenda. Chafee advanced environmental issues as a U.S. senator and as the “new urbanist” mayor of Warwick, RI, where he championed a rail-based vision for development around T.F. Green Airport that is now coming to fruition.

David Cicilline, most recently mayor of Providence, was elected to replace Congressman Patrick Kennedy in the 1^st Congressional District. Cicilline’s strong record on environmentally sound urban development and energy efficiency as mayor of Providence suggests he will be an important voice in Congress. His successor as mayor of Providence, Angel Tavares, is widely expected to provide leadership in that key city that will build on the renaissance of the last decade.

Vermont

Vermont elected Democrat Peter Shumlin to serve as the state’s next governor. For many years, Governor-elect Shumlin served as President pro tempore of the Vermont Senate. As the leader of the State Senate’s majority over the past several years, Mr. Shumlin has led initiatives to address climate change, electric energy efficiency, renewable energy development, and to protect the state’s air, water and forests. However, the Shumlin administration has its work cut out for it to adopt strong environmental and energy policies in the face of record budget deficits.

Vermonters elected Republican Phil Scott, also a former state senator, to serve as the state’s lieutenant governor. While this post holds primarily ministerial responsibilities, Mr. Scott’s views on important environmental issues remain to be seen.

At the federal level, Vermonters voted to send Democrats Congressman Peter Welch and U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy back to Washington for another term. Both members of Congress are considered to be pro-environmental and in favor of progressive energy policies, with Rep. Welch serving as a leader in the House on energy efficiency. Senator Leahy has now become Vermont’s longest serving senator and will play a key role in the leadership in Congress.

Lastly, Democrats gained unprecedented majorities in both houses of the Vermont State House, giving Governor-elect Shumlin the opportunity to work with friendly faces on crafting a legislative agenda.

Connecticut

The election of Democrat Dan Malloy, who won by a slim margin, is a cause for great hope and optimism in climate and energy circles. During the campaign, Malloy, the former mayor of the City of Stamford, articulated progressive and powerful ideas about the importance of confronting global warming, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building up both clean energy and broad transportation choices that build walkable and livable communities and presided over an exciting, sophisticated and innovative “microgrid” project.

The federal scene in Connecticut, including the election of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to the Senate, was characterized by preservation of a powerful delegation who will provide a strong voice in Congress for sensible energy policy and for investment in urban neighborhoods, a voice that will be critically needed given the larger makeup of the new Congress.

(Photo credit: David Moisan)

There has been a significant development in the long running saga of the Salem Harbor power plant, one of the major targets of CLF’s Coal Free New England campaign. On October 5, Dominion Energy, the plant’s owner, quietly filed what is known as a Permanent Delist Bid with ISO New England (ISO-NE), the operator of the New England electricity system and markets. The filing commits Dominion to permanently withdraw Salem Harbor Station from the forward capacity market, the key market where power plants, and other resources like energy efficiency, are paid to be present, available and ready to meet the electricity needs of the region.

What does this mean?

By filing to permanently withdraw Salem Harbor Station from the forward capacity market, Dominion is signaling that it does not believe the market will be able to provide sufficient revenue to run the plant profitably and that it cannot maintain the plant going forward.

According to Paul Peterson, senior associate at Synapse Energy Economics, Inc., “The delist process was created specifically to allow power plants to withdraw from the forward capacity market, either temporarily or permanently, depending on their economics. A power plant that enters a permanent delist bid – an irrevocable decision that it will no longer try to earn revenue from that key market – is laying the groundwork to shut down.”

Although there are alternative scenarios that could allow Dominion to re-enter the market at a future date, the barriers to re-entry are extremely high and the process for doing so is complex.

Excessive ratepayer burden

Dominion’s move puts additional pressure on ISO-NE to implement a plan by June 2014 that does not rely on Salem Harbor Station to keep the lights on – ever. On October 14, CLF filed a protest with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission citing ISO-NE’s failure to develop such a plan following the 2009 and 2010 auctions, keeping Salem Harbor Station available for “contingency” needs at enormous cost to area ratepayers. In our protest, CLF pointed to insufficient planning and loopholes in the ISO-NE process that have allowed Dominion to receive more than $30 million dollars in above market payments just to continue to exist, even while Dominion’s own filings indicated its intentions to leave the market. The company filed “static delist bids” for the past two years, a temporary exit measure that allows a company to receive above market payments if it is deemed necessary for reliability. Dominion’s ability to repeatedly game the system has forced ratepayers to bear the cost of maintaining an obsolete and polluting coal plant well beyond its useful life.

Buckling under pressure?

Salem Harbor Station is under increasing economic and environmental pressure. In June 2010, CLF filed a federal lawsuit against Dominion for repeatedly exceeding smokestack emissions limits at Salem Harbor in violation of the federal Clean Air Act. The suit would hold Dominion responsible for paying millions of dollars in penalties retroactively. Meanwhile, new EPA regulations on the near horizon will mean tougher pollution controls and multi-million dollar investments needed to comply with them. The permanent delist bid is a clear indication that Dominion doesn’t believe it can continue to wring dollars out of ratepayers for its obsolete plant for much longer, and we are making sure they won’t. Stay tuned.

A satellite image of the Oct. 26 storm.

Dr. Jeff Masters, the co-founder of the Weather Underground website is the voice of climate sanity in the meteorologist world.    He has consistently noted, as he did in this post from last March,  how the models used by climate scientists make predictions about how winter storms are going to change in a warming world that are deeply consistent with what we are seeing unfold before us:

General Circulation Models (GCMs) like the ones used in the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report do a very good job simulating how winter storms behave in the current climate, and we can run simulations of the atmosphere with extra greenhouse gases to see how winter storms will behave in the future. The results are very interesting. Global warming is expected to warm the poles more than the equatorial regions. This reduces the difference in temperature between the pole and Equator. Since winter storms form in response to the atmosphere’s need to transport heat from the Equator to the poles, this reduced temperature difference reduces the need for winter storms, and thus the models predict fewer storms will form. However, since a warmer world increases the amount of evaporation from the surface and puts more moisture in the air, these future storms drop more precipitation. During the process of creating that precipitation, the water vapor in the storm must condense into liquid or frozen water, liberating “latent heat”–the extra heat that was originally added to the water vapor to evaporate it in the first place. This latent heat intensifies the winter storm, lowering the central pressure and making the winds increase. So, the modeling studies predict a future with fewer total winter storms, but a greater number of intense storms. These intense storms will have more lift, and will thus tend to drop more precipitation–including snow, when we get areas of strong lift in the -15°C preferred snowflake formation region.

Masters referenced these observations in a recent post about the unprecedented storm (which some are calling a “landicane“) that ripped across the Continental United States.  As Masters notes:

We’ve now had two remarkable extratropical storms this year in the U.S. that have smashed all-time low pressure records across a large portion of the country. Is this a sign that these type of storms may be getting stronger? Well, there is evidence that wintertime extratropical storms have grown in intensity in the Pacific, Arctic, and Great Lakes in recent decades.

And as always, Masters is tracking storms in the parts of the world more accustomed to this kind of activity.  However, he notes that it is “unprecedented” to have a hurricane of the magnitude of Tomas appear this late in the season.

The climate is changing.  The effects are real.  The need for action is urgent – and  the zombie armies of climate denial are approaching.

An exciting start to the big offshore wind energy conference in Atlantic City New Jersey came in the form of an announcement that a lease for the Cape Wind project would be signed by the Secretary of Interior and a public signing of that lease.  The folks back home at CLF posted a timely statement about that on this blog, illustrated by my debut as a breaking news photographer (if I had as nice a smartphone as my wife it would be a better picture).

As it often has been, Atlantic City is an odd mix of the artificial (including the eerie artificially lit and climate controlled casinos where you literally can’t tell if it is day or night) and the natural (the crash of the Ocean waves is as real as it gets).  And into this odd mix (and it doesn’t get much odder than “your room is in the Centurion Tower, walk past the giant statue of Caesar and make a left”) we now stir in offshore wind.

So here is a reality check – the wind turbines on the Atlantic City wastewater treatment plant are a tourist attraction and folks redeveloping the historic “Steel Pier” on the Boardwalk are seeking to put wind turbines in place there.

Of course, New Englanders don’t like to think that they can learn from anyone.  We generally like to be a model for others – a way of thinking that has been around for many years.

Building a healthy and thriving New England will mean that we learn from Europe, where offshore wind is real and growing.  And yes, we should follow the lead of other places like New Jersey that are moving forward.

We need to do this right.  We need to be very conscious of the need to protect our Ocean flora and fauna – and to put in place true marine spatial planning, planning smart and thoughtful use of our submerged public lands.  But we need to do it.

We need to rid ourselves of coal fired generation, we need to make our homes, factories and offices much more efficient, we need to drive more efficient and cleaner cars, we need to drive less and we need to fully develop solar power and we need to do so much more in order to build a healthy and thriving New England.

But all these things are additive – none of them are instead of the others.  And part of the pile of actions that are needed is making appropriate and timely use of our offshore wind resources – and the signing of the lease this morning and the many actions and approaches being discussed and developed at this conference are steps towards doing that.

I have updated my previous post about the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers to note that the two brothers who are major funders of the anti-progress and prosperity “Americans for Prosperity” are, as reported by the Albany Times-Union,  participating in the RGGI carbon allowance auction through their commodity trading business.

While they are certainly free to do this it is deeply ironic because their friends at the astroturf  anti-progress and prosperity “Americans for Prosperity”, as discussed in the original blog post, are in the midst of a campaign against the RGGI program.

(Updated 9/15/2010)

In a recent issue of the New Yorker staff writer Jane Meyer leads us all on a guided tour of the machinery, machinations and massive expenditures that the billionaire Koch brothers have poured into organizations like the Orwellian named “Americans for Prosperity” that, among other things, are dedicated to stopping progress in the war to protect our climate.

Not satisfied with having played a role in derailing (hopefully temporarily) sensible energy and climate policy in Washington DC these guardians of fossil fuel industry profits are seeking to halt good efforts in the states.  While their efforts in California have been the most noticed they are also busy laying astroturf in places like New Jersey where a “campaign” to roll back the mild, moderate and successful Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has been launched out of the corporate checkbooks supporting “Americans for Prosperity.”

This effort in New Jersey angrily rails that there is no clear line on electricity bills to show the price that consumers are paying for RGGI – ignoring the reality that there is not a bit of evidence that such a cost can be identified by anyone.  Indeed, the RGGI program is so mild and moderate that, as was anticipated when the program was created, the impact on consumers is so small that it is in fact invisible.   The fact that the New Jersey “anti cap and trade” website fails to actually describe a price impact for RGGI before ranting about the need to disclose such a cost is a clear signal that we are dealing with folks who are not playing straight.

And to add yet another bizarre twist to the tale, the Albany Times-Union reports that the company owned by the same Koch brothers who founded and have funded the organization protesting RGGI has been participating in the RGGI auction, presumably for profit and not just fun.

While David and Charles Koch, as detailed in the New Yorker article,  have focused their spending on nurturing “Americans for Prosperity” and similar national efforts their brother William Koch has been focused on local denial – heavily funding lobbying against the Cape Wind project which he apparently feels would damage the view from his vacation home.  But the Koch agendas are now converging as “Americans for Prosperity” levels a volley at an effort by the governor of New Jersey, a Republican who is generally regarded as conservative, for using RGGI funds to support offshore wind farm development.   Perhaps this is a result of the reconciliation between these brothers now that they have settled their infamous feud.

Ultimately, though this is about people who have made a lot of money from the current system of generating energy from fossil fuels fighting the future.  Not only are they tossing all of us, including their own families, under the bus of a dangerously changing climate but they are fighting against efforts like wind farms that generate stability in energy prices (something their fossil products simply can’t deliver) and programs like energy efficiency investments that generate real jobs and prosperity.  For example, the operator of the efficiency programs in New York State estimates, in their annual plan, that the programs funded by RGGI in that one state will create:

• Customer energy bill savings of more than $445 million
• 1.7 million barrel reduction in oil imports
• Creation or retention of approximately 1,400 jobs
• Greenhouse gas emissions reductions up to 2.0 million tons; equal to removing approximately16,500 cars from the road

Saving people money on energy bills and creating jobs – what a nightmare !!!

The ace web/online/blog/communications folks at CLF have installed the WordPress plug-in version of Online Leaf on this blog so if you are reading it and don’t do anything for a minute your screen will go black, reducing the electricity consumption of your computer.

Not a big deal but an important reminder of all the many little , medium, large and very large things we will need to do to fight global warming – and how the things we can do to aid that cause can also save us a bit of money at the same time.