The current crumbling fleet of nuclear power plants demonstrate how the current version of nuclear power is not a sane and safe climate solution.  No facility shows this more clearly than the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

Responding to CLF’s requests, the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) issued an order opening an investigation into whether Vermont Yankee should be shut down immediately, in light of continuing radiation leaks at the facility. The investigation will also consider whether Entergy’s license to operate the plant should be revoked or any penalties should be imposed for violations of Vermont law. (See the Order at pg. 9). A prehearing conference is scheduled for March 10, 2010 at the Public Service Board in Montpelier.

This news follows Wednesday’s historic decision by the Vermont State Senate not to extend the plant’s license beyond 2012. As they reaffirmed on page 6 of the order the VT PSB has the authority to take action – including a shut down – when a nuclear power facility in its jurisdiction is improperly managed.

CLF Senior Attorney Sandra Levine said it best:  “Wednesday’s Senate vote was a positive step toward putting this aging facility out of its misery, but it did not address the immediate problem: Vermont Yankee is continuing to leak radiation with impunity. We commend the Public Service Board for stepping up to hold Vermont Yankee accountable for its actions. The plant is not being managed responsibly. It should be shut down.”

1. Stop the Leaks

The continuing leaks of radiation at Vermont Yankee must stop. It is outrageous that our regulators are refusing to act.  Nearly a month ago, CLF called on the Public Service Board to shut down Yankee until the leaks stop. It only makes sense. You can read our filings here.

2. Shut down now

Any other business spewing dangerous radioactive waste into our water and ground would be shut down in a minute. The Health Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are refusing to act. It seems regulators would rather see New England have another superfund site than close down the leaky, rust-bucket that is Vermont Yankee.

3. Regulatory Collapse

Our financial markets collapsed because regulators were asleep at the switch and refused to act. Let’s not make the same mistake with our nuclear industry where the consequences of poor oversight are far more dire.

4. New Nuke Plants Unwise

New nuclear plants are expensive, dirty and unwise. Without responsible regulation in place, how can we even think about building new plants? We don’t have anywhere to store the waste that will be dangerous for thousands of years. Taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for more dirty and expensive power – especially when the plants we have are leaving a dirty and expensive legacy for our children.

Join CLF in calling for responsible regulation of nuclear power. No more leaks. No more lies. No more lax oversight.

Be sure to read CLF’s article Vermont Yankee, The Costs of Nuclear, in the Summer 2009 edition of Conservation Matters.  To get involved or receive more information please contact the author of this post–Sandra Levine, CLF Senior Attorney at slevine@clf.org.

Our friend Mike Tidwell, the Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (and definitive climate policy blogger Joe Romm) directs attention to the thoughts of Jeff Masters, head meteorologist at Weather Underground on how the current spate of East Coast blizzards is the kind of phenomena that climate science tells us to expect as the globe warms:

A major new winter storm is headed east over the U.S. today, and threatens to dump a foot or more of snow on Philadelphia, New York City, and surrounding regions Tuesday and Wednesday. Philadelphia is still digging out from its second top-ten snowstorm of recorded history to hit the city this winter, and the streets are going to begin looking like canyons if this week’s snowstorm adds a significant amount of snow to the incredible 28.5″ that fell during “Snowmageddon” last Friday and Saturday. Philadelphia has had two snowstorms exceeding 23″ this winter. According to the National Climatic Data Center ^[9], the return period for a 22+ inch snow storm is once every 100 years-and we’ve had two 100-year snow storms in Philadelphia this winter. It is true that if the winter pattern of jet stream location, sea surface temperatures, etc, are suitable for a 100-year storm to form, that will increase the chances for a second such storm to occur that same year, and thus the odds have having two 100-year storms the same year are not 1 in 10,000. Still, the two huge snowstorms this winter in the Mid-Atlantic are definitely a very rare event one should see only once every few hundred years, and is something that has not occurred since modern records began in 1870. The situation is similar for Baltimore and Washington D.C. According to the National Climatic Data Center ^[10], the expected return period in the Washington D.C./Baltimore region for snowstorms with more than 16 inches of snow is about once every 25 years. This one-two punch of two major Nor’easters in one winter with 16+ inches of snow is unprecedented in the historical record for the region, which goes back to the late 1800s.

Heavy snow events–a contradiction to global warming theory?
Global warming skeptics regularly have a field day whenever a record snow storm pounds the U.S., claiming that such events are inconsistent with a globe that is warming. If the globe is warming, there should, on average, be fewer days when it snows, and thus fewer snow storms. However, it is possible that if climate change is simultaneously causing an increase in ratio of snowstorms with very heavy snow to storms with ordinary amounts of snow, we could actually see an increase in very heavy snowstorms in some portions of the world. There is evidence that this is happening for winter storms in the Northeast U.S.–the mighty Nor’easters like the “Snowmageddon” storm of February 5-6 and “Snowpocalypse” of December 19, 2009. Let’s take a look at the evidence. There are two requirements for a record snow storm:

1) A near-record amount of moisture in the air (or a very slow moving storm).
2) Temperatures cold enough for snow.

It’s not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the globe warmed 0.74°C (1.3°F) over the past 100 years. There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming, with plenty of opportunities for snow. The more difficult ingredient for producing a record snowstorm is the requirement of near-record levels of moisture. Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events–the ones most likely to cause flash flooding–will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow. Groisman et al. (2004) found a 14% increase in heavy (top 5%) and 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events in the U.S. over the past 100 years, though mainly in spring and summer. However, the authors did find a significant increase in winter heavy precipitation events have occurred in the Northeast U.S. This was echoed by Changnon et al. (2006), who found, “The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity.”

The strongest cold-season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent for the U.S.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606), which called for “a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” This program has put out some excellent peer-reviewed science on climate change that, in my view, is as authoritative as the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. In 2009, the USGCRP put out its excellent U.S. Climate Impacts Report, summarizing the observed and forecast impacts of climate change on the U.S. The report’s main conclusion about cold season storms was “ Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent”.

The report’s more detailed analysis: “Large-scale storm systems are the dominant weather phenomenon during the cold season in the United States. Although the analysis of these storms is complicated by a relatively short length of most observational records and by the highly variable nature of strong storms, some clear patterns have emerged (Kunkel et al., 2008).

Storm tracks have shifted northward over the last 50 years as evidenced by a decrease in the frequency of storms in mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while high-latitude activity has increased. There is also evidence of an increase in the intensity of storms in both the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, with greater confidence in the increases occurring in high latitudes (Kunkel et al., 2008). The northward shift is projected to continue, and strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights”. The study also noted that we should expect an increase in lake-effect snowstorms over the next few decades. Lake-effect snow is produced by the strong flow of cold air across large areas of relatively warmer ice-free water. The report says, “As the climate has warmed, ice coverage on the Great Lakes has fallen. The maximum seasonal coverage of Great Lakes ice decreased at a rate of 8.4 percent per decade from 1973 through 2008, amounting to a roughly 30 percent decrease in ice coverage. This has created conditions conducive to greater evaporation of moisture and thus heavier snowstorms. Among recent extreme lake-effect snow events was a February 2007 10-day storm total of over 10 feet of snow in western New York state. Climate models suggest that lake-effect snowfalls are likely to increase over the next few decades. In the longer term, lake-effect snows are likely to decrease as temperatures continue to rise, with the precipitation then falling as rain”.

Commentary
Of course, both climate change contrarians and climate change scientists agree that no single weather event can be blamed on climate change. However, one can “load the dice” in favor of events that used to be rare–or unheard of–if the climate is changing to a new state. It is quite possible that the dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor’easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, thanks to the higher levels of moisture present in the air due to warmer global temperatures. It’s worth mentioning that heavy snow storms should be getting increasingly rare for the extreme southern portion of the U.S. in coming decades. There’s almost always high amounts of moisture available for a potential heavy snow in the South–just not enough cold air. With freezing temperatures expected to decrease and the jet stream and associated storm track expected to move northward, the extreme southern portion of the U.S. should see a reduction in both heavy and ordinary snow storms in the coming decades.

The summary at the top of this blog post sums it all up:

In 2009, Neil Young released Fork In The Road, an album which is dedicated to the Lincvolt project that transformed his classic Lincoln Continental into a hot zero emissions vehicle that gets 100 mpg. In this paean to the LincVolt project, Karen Barry also asks, if a 1959 vehicle can be green, what is stopping all current vehicles from achieving the same goal?

This is not the first time that Mr. Young has put himself out on the scene as an important environmental voice.  Back in the 1970′s on his classic album “On the Beach” he presented mankind as a vampire preying upon the earth in the song Vampire Blues.   A decade and a half later in his big hit “Rockin’ in the Free World” he sarcastically bragged about humanity having “Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer . . . fuel to burn and roads to drive”.

The explosion at a nearly-completed power plant under construction in Connecticut illustrates the direct dangers inherent in harnessing fuels like natural gas.  The accident occurred during the “purging” of the gas lines that were to provide the fuel for the plant – an activity of concern to some observers who believe it to be an unsafe practice, and even  has elicited investigation by the government regulators who oversee such plants.

The workers who lost their lives, or were injured, in the explosion, and their families, should be in the thoughts and prayers of all.

We should never forget that the power that we use to operate our homes, offices and wireless devices does not come free – and sometimes we pay that price with something more precious than mere money.  The implications and impacts of our flipping a switch and plugging in appliance are rarely visible but they are very real.

While the overarching environmental challenge of our time continues to be global warming we can’t loose sight of the need to confront the other air pollution that threatens the public health.  For those of us who fighting against dangerous pollution from coal fired power plants like Salem Harbor in Massachusetts this is not news – but the fact that a bi-partisan group of U.S. Senators (there is a phrase you don’t see much !!) have filed legislation to address this pollution is significant.   Exactly how good a bill is this?  We don’t know as they haven’t released the text and the devil (and god) are in the details.   But it is good to see our Senators paying attention to coal plant pollution !

Meanwhile, Tricia Jedele who runs CLF’s office in Rhode Island is helping to move ahead an effort to focus on the old school environmental value of waste reduction.  Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.  And she points out that the U.S. EPA have produced a very convincing report on how this classic brand of environmental action is good for the climate – bringing us back to global warming again . . .

If you’ve ever tried to calculate your “carbon footprint“–the measure of the greenhouse gas emissions you create directly or indirectly as you live your life–then you know that your footprint grows larger and larger with each trip you take on an airplane.  Like the cars we drive, the planes we fly in burn lots of fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases as a result. 

Scientists say jet airplanes also contribute to global climate change through the “contrails” they leave in their wake and the effect this has on how the sun’s earth-warming radiation is trapped in our atmosphere.

This photo from NASA shows how the particles and condensation--contrails--left in the wake of jet airplanes effect cloud formations that attract and trap the sun's radiation thereby contributing to harmful climate change.

 According to a forthcoming study from Standford engineering professor Mark Jacobson, “commercial aircraft flights have contributed between four to eight percent of global surface warming since air temperature records began in 1850.”  You can read more about the complex scientific interactions that cause this warming here.  In the meantime, let’s focus on the ways in which the professor thinks the airline industry and the flying public it serves can start to fix the problem.

First, we can reduce the amount of fossil fuels we need to burn per flight by reducing the weight of airplanes and the cargo they carry.  The lighter the plane, the less greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuel it needs to burn.

Second, airlines must switch to hydrogen-based fuels that result in emissions that don’t create the same contrail problems caused by carbon-based fuels in use today.  Hydrogen-based jet fuels are already being used for the space shuttle, but it will cost lots of $ and take some time before they can be safely developed and widely deployed in the world’s commercial airline fleet.

(Of course the third option is that we all fly a lot less, but that’s a topic for another post).

So what does this have to do with baggage fees?

My hope is that fees for extra bags help us rethink how much we take along on trips.  If we travel lighter to avoid paying the fees, then the plane doesn’t need to burn as much fuel to get us there.  Those extra outfits, pairs of shoes, etc. come with an environmental cost.  Confronting that cost in dollars and sense is one way to get us to start changing our habits and expectations surrounding airline travel

Airlines are thinking “green” with these new fees, but not necessarily in the environmental sense.  To them it is all about the $$$.  Nonetheless, if we are going to get serious about slowing global warming and all its disastrous effects, then airlines must be able to seize on new more efficient technology that will reduce the negative climate imapcts of air travel.  Let’s make a deal with the airlines: We’ll live with the higher fees, if they are willing to up investment in new cleaner technology.

The authors of the book The Rising Sea summarizes their conclusion that prudent planning for waterfront communities assumes a sea level rise of seven feet in a post on the Yale environment 360 website.

Chilling stuff, especially for those of us who remember when early iterations of this work nearly ten years ago labeled New Orleans as the American community most vulnerable to sea level rise and catastrophic storms.

They identify Florida as the most vulnerable place in the United States to sea level rise and aggressively argue that building new high rise developments on the waterfront is a big mistake.

In a web video interview (transcript) Rob Bradley, Director of International Climate Policy at the World Resources Institute, makes the following observation about the difficulties and challenges around the international climate negotiation process:

Well, some of the problems that occur are down to the sheer complexity of climate change as an issue. It’s too politically charged for the technocrats, but it’s way too technical for the politicians. You know, very often ministers come in and they’re handed, by their subordinates, simply too long and difficult a list of questions to get to grips with. But it’s true that the U.N. as a process offers a lot of challenges of its own and we saw some fairly ugly scenes really towards the end of Copenhagen. It operates by consensus. You’ve got every country in the world in the room and, in principle at least, if one of them disagrees with what’s happening they can block it more or less indefinitely. And so you have groups of countries, in many cases fossil fuel exporters who probably don’t see it in their interest to have a strong deal on climate change, objecting and preventing the process from moving forward. Confusingly, they were sometimes allied with countries like some of the small island states who objected on the grounds that the deal was not nearly ambitious enough and who obviously face an existential threat. But nevertheless, a process in which you’re trying to get all of that group of countries with such an incredibly diverse set of interests to agree on something is a process that is always going to raise problems.

It is worth reflecting on Bradley’s point that odd alliances have developed in the international climate negotiation process between fossil fuel exporting countries (like Saudi Arabia) who are trying to obstruct progress at every point and “small island states who objected on the grounds that the deal was not nearly ambitious enough and who obviously face an existential threat” (like the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati) and to think about the equivalent phenomena here in the United States.

In the United States House of Representatives, when the Waxman-Markey climate legislation came up for a vote there were two distinct groups who voted no – the largest group were members of the Republican party and a handful of Democrats who objected to the bill as either unneeded or too extreme.  The vocal leader of this group was Rep. Joe Barton of Texas.   Barton’s skepticism about climate science and the proposed mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is deeply reminiscent of similar sentiments coming from representatives of nations like Saudi Arabia in the international climate negotiating process (this is not just a Western view, an eloquent Lebanese blog has spoken out about Saudi Arabia’s approach to climate).    The other, much smaller, group of members of Congress (about 3  Democrats) who opposed the bill did so because it was not ambitious and aggressive enough. The most vocal of these Members of Congress is Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

The next stop for climate legislation in Washington is the floor of the US Senate.  There is little doubt that the science denying opponents of progress will be led there by Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, angry enemy of all climate legislation.  It is not clear if there will be a “left wing” in the Senate – objecting to the legislation because it doesn’t go far enough.  It is notable that some of the most aggressive supporters of climate legislation in the Senate have publicly supported the Kerry-Boxer legislation that most closely parallels the Waxman-Markey bill.  Whether that coalition can support the legislation that may emerge as a result of discussions between Senator Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Graham of South Carolina remains to be seen.

At the end of the day what really matters is that we take all the action we can to address this most systemic of economic, environmental and public health challenges as quickly as we can.   The debate and process needs to be truly and open and those with concerns about the science should be heard but the denial-for-denials-sake we see coming from Saudi Arabia and Messrs. Barton and Inhofe should not derail progress.  The desire for maximum action from the island nations is, in contrast, a truly admirable impulse and we must rise towards it as much as possible but not curse ourselves just because we can not do all that is needed immediately.