Saturday, September 29, 2018

Another "Wow"

E.P.A. to Eliminate Office That Advises Agency Chief on Science
A

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to dissolve its Office of the Science Advisor, a senior post that was created to counsel the E.P.A. administrator on the scientific research underpinning health and environmental regulations, according to a person familiar with the agency’s plans. The person spoke anonymously because the decision had not yet been made public.

The science adviser works across the agency to ensure that the highest quality science is integrated into the agency’s policies and decisions, according to the E.P.A.’s website. The move is the latest among several steps taken by the Drumpf administration that appear to have diminished the role of scientific research in policymaking while the administration pursues an agenda of rolling back regulations.

Asked about the E.P.A.’s plans, John Konkus, a spokesman for the agency, emailed a prepared statement from the science adviser, Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, in which she described the decision to dissolve the office as one that would “combine offices with similar functions” and “eliminate redundancies.”

In an email, Dr. Orme-Zavaleta referred questions to the E.P.A.’s public affairs office.

Dr. Orme-Zavaleta is an expert on the risks of chemicals to human health who has worked at the E.P.A. since 1981, according to the agency’s website. It was unclear whether she would remain at the E.P.A. once the decision takes effect.

Separately, on Tuesday, in an unusual move, the E.P.A. placed the head of its Office of Children’s Health, Dr. Ruth Etzel, on administrative leave, while declining to give a reason for the move. Agency officials told Dr. Etzel, a respected pediatric epidemiologist, that the move was not disciplinary. As the head of an office that regularly pushed to tighten regulations on pollution, which can affect children more powerfully than adults, Dr. Etzel had clashed multiple times with Drumpf administration appointees who sought to loosen pollution rules.

Michael Mikulka, who heads a union representing about 900 E.P.A. employees, said, “Clearly, this is an attempt to silence voices whether it’s in the agency’s Office of Children’s Health or the Office of the Science Advisor to kill career civil servants’ input and scientific perspectives on rule-making.”

The changes at the two offices, which both report directly to the head of the E.P.A., come as the agency’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, is overseeing a reorganization of the agency.

After dissolving the office of the scientific adviser, Mr. Wheeler plansto merge the position into an office that reports to the E.P.A.’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science, a demotion that would put at least two more managerial layers between the E.P.A.’s chief scientist and its top decision maker.

“It’s certainly a pretty big demotion, a pretty big burying of this office,” said Michael Halpern, the deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “Everything from research on chemicals and health, to peer-review testing to data analysis would inevitably suffer,” he said.

The move comes after several months in which the leaders of the E.P.A. have systematically changed how the E.P.A. treats science. The agency’s previous administrator, Scott Pruitt, who resigned in July amid allegations of ethical violations, in April proposed a regulation that would limit the types of scientific research that E.P.A. officials could take into account when writing new public health policies, a change that could weaken the agency’s ability to protect public health.

Last year, Mr. Pruitt significantly altered two major scientific panelsthat advise the E.P.A. on writing public health rules, restricting academic researchers from joining the boards while appointing several scientists who work for industries regulated by the E.P.A.

For more news on climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.

Wow

Drumpf administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100
By Juliet EilperinBrady DennisChris Mooney

September 28, 2018 at 3:55 PM
Firefighters from Brea, Calif., inspect and cut fireline on Aug. 1, 2018, as the Ranch Fire burns near Upper Lake, Calif. A day earlier, it and the River Fire totaled more than 74,000 acres. (Stuart W. Palley/For The Washington Post)

Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Drumpf administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous seven degrees by the end of this century.

A rise of seven degrees Fahrenheit, or about four degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe.

But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.

The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Drumpf’s decision to freeze federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.

“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.

The document projects that global temperature will rise by nearly 3.5 degrees Celsius above the average temperature between 1986 and 2005 regardless of whether Obama-era tailpipe standards take effect or are frozen for six years, as the Drumpf administration has proposed. The global average temperature rose more than 0.5 degrees Celsius between 1880, the start of industrialization, and 1986, so the analysis assumes a roughly four degree Celsius or seven degree Fahrenheit increase from preindustrial levels.

The world would have to make deep cuts in carbon emissions to avoid this drastic warming, the analysis states. And that “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels and would require the economy and the vehicle fleet to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

World leaders have pledged to keep the world from warming more than two degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, and agreed to try to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the current greenhouse gas cuts pledged under the 2015 Paris climate agreement are not steep enough to meet either goal. Scientists predict a four degree Celsius rise by the century’s end if countries take no meaningful actions to curb their carbon output.

Drumpf has vowed to exit the Paris accord and called climate change a hoax. In the past two months, the White House has pushed to dismantle nearly half a dozen major rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, deregulatory moves intended to save companies hundreds of millions of dollars.



If enacted, the administration’s proposals would give new life to aging coal plants; allow oil and gas operations to release more methane into the atmosphere; and prevent new curbs on greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air-conditioning units. The vehicle rule alone would put 8 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this century, more than a year’s worth of total U.S. emissions, according to the government’s own analysis.

Administration estimates acknowledge that the policies would release far more greenhouse gas emissions from America’s energy and transportation sectors than otherwise would have been allowed.

The statement is the latest evidence of deep contradictions in the Drumpf administration’s approach to climate change.

Despite Drumpf’s skepticism, federal agencies conducting scientific research have often reaffirmed that humans are causing climate change, including in a major 2017 report that found “no convincing alternative explanation.” In one internal White House memo, officials wondered whether it would be best to simply “ignore” such analyses.

In this context, the draft environmental impact statement from NHTSA — which simultaneously outlines a scenario for very extreme climate change, and yet offers it to support an environmental rollback — is simply the latest apparent inconsistency.

David Pettit, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who testified against Drumpf’s freeze of car mileage standards Monday in Fresno, Calif., said his organization is prepared to use the administration’s own numbers to challenge its regulatory rollbacks. He noted that NHTSA document projects that if the world takes no action to curb emissions, current atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide would rise from 410 parts per million to 789 ppm by 2100.

“I was shocked when I saw it,” Pettit said in a phone interview. “These are their numbers. They aren’t our numbers.”

Conservatives who condemned President Barack Obama’s climate initiatives as regulatory overreach have defended the Drumpf administration’s approach, calling it a more reasonable course.

Obama’s climate policies were costly to industry and yet “mostly symbolic,” because they would have made barely a dent in global carbon dioxide emissions, said Heritage Foundation research fellow Nick Loris, adding: “Frivolous is a good way to describe it.”

NHTSA commissioned ICF International Inc., a consulting firm based in Fairfax, Va., to help prepare the impact statement. An agency spokeswoman said the Environmental Protection Agency “and NHTSA welcome comments on all aspects of the environmental analysis” but declined to provide additional information about the agency’s long-term temperature forecast.

Federal agencies typically do not include century-long climate projections in their environmental impact statements. Instead, they tend to assess a regulation’s impact during the life of the program — the years a coal plant would run, for example, or the amount of time certain vehicles would be on the road.

Using the no-action scenario “is a textbook example of how to lie with statistics,” said MIT Sloan School of Management professor John Sterman. “First, the administration proposes vehicle efficiency policies that would do almost nothing [to fight climate change]. Then [the administration] makes their impact seem even smaller by comparing their proposals to what would happen if the entire world does nothing.”

This week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned leaders gathered in New York, “If we do not change course in the next two years, we risk runaway climate change . . . Our future is at stake.”

Federal and independent research — including projections included in last month’s analysis of the revised fuel-efficiency standards — echoes that theme. The environmental impact statement cites “evidence of climate-induced changes,” such as more frequent droughts, floods, severe stormsand heat waves, and estimates that seas could rise nearly three feet globally by 2100 if the world does not decrease its carbon output.

Two articles published in the journal Science since late July — both co-authored by federal scientists — predicted that the global landscape could be transformed “without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” and declared that soaring temperatures worldwide bore humans’ “fingerprint.”

“With this administration, it’s almost as if this science is happening in another galaxy,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program. “That feedback isn’t informing the policy.”

Administration officials say they take federal scientific findings into account when crafting energy policy — along with their interpretation of the law and Drumpf’s agenda. The EPA’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, has been among the Drumpf officials who have noted that U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants have fallen over time.

But the debate comes after a troubling summer of devastating wildfires, record-breaking heat and a catastrophic hurricane — each of which, federal scientists say, signals a warming world.

Some Democratic elected officials, such as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, said Americans are starting to recognize these events as evidence of climate change. On Feb. 25, Inslee met privately with several Cabinet officials, including then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt, and Western state governors. Inslee accused them of engaging in “morally reprehensible” behavior that threatened his children and grandchildren, according to four meeting participants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of the private conversation.

In an interview, Inslee said that the ash from wildfires that covered Washington residents’ car hoods this summer, and the acrid smoke that filled their air, has made more voters of both parties grasp the real-world implications of climate change.

“There is anger in my state about the administration’s failure to protect us,” he said. “When you taste it on your tongue, it’s a reality.”
A woman looks at rising floodwaters from the garage of a home in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018. (Doug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press/Associated Press)

Read more

Related: Interior lifts limits on methane leaks from oil and gas drilling on federal land

Related: Making sense of Drumpf’s tweets on what caused California’s 2018 wildfires

Related: Climate change could render many of Earth’s ecosystems unrecognizable

Friday, September 28, 2018

Quiz Oct 1

M1 - Klein 9-10, Post your alternative quiz questions, discussion questions, links, and comments.
Midterm report presentations beginpost your quizzes, Kari & Tanner.

1. What has Betsy DeVos devoted her life to?

2. What's Jeff Sessions' objection to consent decrees?

3. What's the Koch brothers' goal?

4. What's Blackwater's connection to the Trump administration?

5. Who says the nuclear threat once again seems real?

6. What's the link between war and oil prices? How are preventing war and averting climate chaos one and the same fight?

7. What's the lag time between the release of CO2 and warming, with what implication for any particular administration?

8. What confidence is shared by Trump's inner circle? 

9. "What good is utopia?"

10. What did her family experience teach Klein about how humans can respond to a shock?

11. What was the problem with our national response to 9/11, if not that we'd had no experience of such shocks in the past?

12. What did the Day Without Immigrants highlight?

13. What were protesters demanding on Earth Day 2017 and a week later?

Discussion Questions:

  • Add your DQs
  • Would privatizing education have implications for our effectiveness in combating climate change?
  • What's objectionable about keeping the Justice Department and federal courts from intervening in state and local police affairs?
  • Is there any defensible rationale for "back-channel lines of communication"? 166
  • Is there any constitutional way of preventing a president from engaging in reckless talk of nuclear warfare?
  • How can we prevent politicians and business interests from exploiting economic crises? Was Dodd-Frank on the right track? 175
  • Is there an analogy between politicians whose own children don't participate in war and the wealthy who expect not to be harmed by the worst climate shocks ahead?
  • Have you experienced shocks in your life that have corroborated Klein's optimism?
  • Who does Jose Maria Aznar remind you of?  194-5
The Conversation US (@ConversationUS)
Crash tests show that fuel-efficient cars can also be very safe (despite what the Trump Administration claims) bit.ly/2InFxB7
The New Yorker (@NewYorker)
Silicon Valley is investing billions into research on living forever. And young blood is just one of the methods: nyer.cm/3kCwwX7 pic.twitter.com/Q0TVIk7YYc

A world without work? What would we do? Letters in the Times...

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Cheaper Battery Is Unveiled as a Step to a Carbon-Free Grid

A rechargeable zinc-air battery made by Patrick Soon-Shiong’s company, NantEnergy. He says such batteries can store power at far less than the cost of lithium-ion counterparts.CreditCreditAlex Welsh for The New York Times

Lithium-ion batteries have become essential for powering electric cars and storing energy generated by solar panels and wind turbines. But their drawbacks are also by now familiar: They use scarce minerals, are vulnerable to fires and explosions, and are pricey.

A plentiful, safe and more affordable alternative would be worth a lot.

On Wednesday, an energy company headed by the California billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong announced that it had developed a rechargeable battery operating on zinc and air that can store power at far less than the cost of lithium-ion batteries.

Tests of the zinc energy-storage systems have helped power villages in Africa and Asia as well as cellphone towers in the United States for the last six years, without any backup from utilities or the electric grid, Dr. Soon-Shiong said.

“It could change and create completely new economies using purely the power of the sun, wind and air,” Dr. Soon-Shiong, a surgeon and a biotechnology entrepreneur, said in an interview in Los Angeles before the announcement... (continues)

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Consensus misunderstood

Most Americans think is a scientific issue, but how many recognize the scientific consensus behind it?:

Hope

What gives me hope the future? Smart, engaged kids like those I met today. So great to talk w them about energy, climate, and, of course, flying cars.



Andrew Revkin (@Revkin)
Same here. Everywhere I go I meet engaged, creative, fearless (of failure), connected, empathic, patient, urgent kids of all ages determined to bend, stretch, reach, teach, reveal, reflect, rejoice, repeat. dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/ben… twitter.com/jeffgoodell/st…

Lakes leaking methane

I saw this very phenomenon--methane bubbling out of arctic ponds--a couple weeks ago in northeastern Siberia. It is the worst news I know of in terms of exacerbating global warming.

Monday, September 24, 2018

Quiz Sep 26

Klein 7-8 (This will not be covered on Exam 1)

1. Why did Klein endorse Bernie Sanders in 2016?

2. What would Bernie's policies have tried to make affordable again?

3. What's the tragedy of Trump?

4. What dots did Bernie fail to connect, with what result?

5. What's the only agenda Klein thinks can solve inequality and the crises in democracy? What's our "only hope of avoiding radical change to our physical world"?

6. Where does Klein say she's seen politicians and others exploiting chaos and profiting from disaster before?

7. What widespread perception did Paul Bremer confirm? How?

8. What clear pattern do "shock tactics" follow?

9. On the whole, what do people like their taxes to pay for?

10. What rosy version of history did many of us grow up with?

11. What has Rebecca Solnit described about disaster?

12.

Discussion Questions:

  • Can private military companies infringe upon the national rights of the countries and rights
  • Add yours HERE
  • Was Bernie a spoiler or vote-splitter?
  • Do you favor "free" higher education?
  • Are you a democratic socialist? (See quiz below*)
  • Can a president, or a presidential candidacy, succeed in turning climate change into a "generational mission"?
  • Do you ever vote for "establishment candidates" even while rejecting the status quo, on the grounds of "pragmatism"? 123
  • Is reparations a bold issue that might be a winner for some as-yet unidentified presidential candidate? 125
  • Is it still possible to avoid radical change to our physical world?
  • Would you willingly pay more taxes in exchange for universal health care and free college tuiton? Anything else?
  • Is there any way to legislate against shock doctrine politics? 140
  • Is there any appropriate place for the "crush/screw the opponent" mentality, beyond the wrestling ring?
  • Should there be "for-profit jails"?
  • Should people who work with private military contractors (security firms for example) be allowed to pass through a revolving door between government and the private sector? 149
  • Are you as appalled as Klein by Mike Pence's response to Katrina?


Candidates are running as socialists, even in Tennessee
HOUSTON — There was no question on primary night in Texas last month that Franklin Bynum would win the Democratic nomination to become a criminal court judge in Houston. The 34-year-old defense attorney had no challengers.

But for his supporters who packed into a Mexican restaurant that evening, there was still something impressive to celebrate. Many in the crowd were members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or D.S.A., a group that has experienced an enormous surge of interest since the election of President Drumpf, even in conservative states. And Mr. Bynum was one of their own — a socialist who, along with at least 16 others, appeared on the ballot in primary races across the state of Texas.

“Yes, I’m running as a socialist,” Mr. Bynum said. “I’m a far-left candidate. What I’m trying to do is be a Democrat who actually stands for something, and tells people, ‘Here’s how we are going to materially improve conditions in your life.’”

Rather than shy away from being called a socialist, a word conservatives have long wielded as a slur, candidates like Mr. Bynum are embracing the label. He is among dozens of D.S.A. members running in this fall’s midterms for offices across the country at nearly every level. In Hawaii, Kaniela Ing, a state representative, is running for Congress. Gayle McLaughlin, a former mayor of Richmond, Calif., is running to be the state’s lieutenant governor. In TennesseeDennis Prater, an adjunct professor at East Tennessee State University, is running to be a county commissioner... (continues)
==
*Are you a democratic socialist? Take a quiz to find out...
==
Bending to the law of supply and demand, some colleges are dropping their prices...

60 Minutes: The Dutch Solution

The Dutch Solution... Also: The Power of Google, Into the Wild|S50 E55| 43:30

How Dutch stormwater management could have mitigated damage from Hurricane Florence; then, Steve Kroft reports on how Google got so big; and, Anderson Cooper goes into the wild with Thomas D. Mangelsen
==
More on Dutch sustainability:


Ocean Energy (OTEC), sustainable construction, proteins in Insects, desalination with renewable energy and cocoon planting in the desert...

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Climate change increasingly "a reality of the present"

With Climate Change No Longer in the Future, Adaptation Speeds Up

In New York, designs are underway for a $203 million flip-up wall to protect Lower Manhattan from intensifying storm surges.

In China, companies building coal-fired power plants amid more frequent periods of drought are shifting to a more expensive technology that cools the plants’ equipment with less water.

In Bangladesh, rice farmers facing rising seawater are changing what they grow, some to more salt-tolerant varieties of the crop and others away from rice altogether, to shrimp.

All these shifts, experts familiar with them say, are in response to climate change.

Not long ago, climate change was seen as a threat for the future. Increasingly, it’s a reality of the present, a new normal spurring billions of dollars in annual spending as governments, companies and citizens scramble to adapt... (continues)

How to get some people to care

Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip for September 23, 2018

Saturday, September 22, 2018

Quiz Sep 24

1. Why can't Klein forgive Paul Krugman?

2. Klein says we should never underestimate what?

3. What "basest of insults" was Trump's response to questions about his previous sexist comments?

4. A vote for Trump might not betray active hatred, writes Klein, but it does reflect what?

5. What has increased by 500% in the past 40 years?\\

6. What tragic and troubling trend of failed expectations dates back to 1999?

7. What groups tripled in 2016?

8. What's Hillary Clinton's economic philosophy, according to Klein?

9. Who were the Central Park Five?

10. What's intersectionality?

11. What single issue drew union support to Trump?

12. What's a "better" deal, Trump?

13. What trade policies did Klein and her friends in the '90s object to?

14. How did environmentalists and trade unions succeed in defeating bad trade agreements?

15. What is the Davos class?


Discussion Questions:

  • We'll add yours here
  • Did you lose friends over the 2016 election? Is politics important enough for us to let that happen?
  • Is it a mistake not to endorse and support the less objectionable candidate in a presidentialk election, or any election?
  • Why do so many men AND women accept the notion that "women are not to be believed" when they report past sexual abuse/assault?
  • Do you agree that a vote for Trump indicates either hatred or indifference to the plight of the objects of others' hatred?
  • If we invested more in schools than in prisons, would we reduce the rate of incarceration? 
  • Is it wrong to make incarceration profitable for private contractors?
  • Do we focus too much on "identity" in our politics? 
  • Did the Clintons really "fully embrace" neoliberalism?
  • In retrospect, was Obama's early message that we're not red or blue states (etc.) naive? Or cynical?
  • Do we rely too much on "top-down" approaches to change, and on high-profile examples of "inclusion" like Obama to inspire young people's aspirations?
  • Why are so many people so eager to abandon public education?
  • Why doesn't Europe's rationale for generous social programs work here? 97
  • If past trade deals have been bad for American workers, is trade protectionism the solution?
  • Does Trump's first pick for Labor Secretary tell us everything we need to know about his attitude towards workers? 104
  • Could Bernie Sanders have beaten Trump with his "race to the bottom" message? 114 Can he, or anyone, in 2020?
  • What can be done to rectify our "staggering level of disengagement" in democracy? How do we get young people, in particular, to register and vote?
  • What's wrong with encouraging billionaires to be public-spirited in their philanthropy?
  • Is Trump a good guy?
  • What impact do you think Trump's strategy for reviving American manufacturing will have on the environment?
  • What do you think about the global movement Klein was apart of in the 90s? Do you agree with their objections/arguments? Would you have joined?
  • Do you think the decline of Klein's movement there have been any similar movements, focused on environmental and personal health, that have been able to establish the same success/far reaching and influential status?
Friends of the Earth (@foe_us)
“The Trump administration is turning Utah into a sacrifice zone to reward fossil fuel companies."

#KeepItPublic

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Royal Society of Literature (@RSLiterature)
'Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.' — Euripides, #BOTD in 480 BC pic.twitter.com/IZb8soWfx9