After months of obstruction, Senate Republicans finally relented and consented to President Obama's appointment of the new Environmental Protection Agency director, Gina McCarthy, who has climate crisis cred and considers addressing it as her main mission--as does President Obama. According to the New York Times, "The president told Ms. McCarthy that his environmental and presidential legacy would be incomplete without a serious effort to address climate change. 'I’m so glad he said that, because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted this job,” she said. “It’s an issue I’ve worked on for so many years, and it just can’t wait.”
In the NYTimes interview cited in the last post, President Obama not only affirmed that his decision on the Keystone Pipeline will be "based on whether or not this is going to significantly contribute to carbon in our atmosphere. And there is no doubt that Canada at the source in those tar sands could potentially be doing more to mitigate carbon release." He also countered arguments that the Pipeline will lower gas prices (it may even increase them in the Midwest, he said) or that it is a job creator (a maximum of 2,000 temporary construction jobs, and maybe 50 permanent jobs.) He awaits a recommendation from Sec. of State John Kerry, who is also a strong advocate for action on the climate crisis.
Good news continues on progress in clean energy, especially in the key area of energy storage and reliable flow. Progress has been made in solar, and now in a new generation of wind turbines. This makes wind power more available to electrical grids. Though it is also important to note that one of the great advantages of wind but especially solar is its future as decentralized technology, not requiring all energy needs to be met by an immense grid.
But of course, the bad news also continues--as more evidence supports what many have been warning for years. And sometimes the news is even worse.
In the department of duh (studies supporting common sense), a study confirms that crime and violence increase with the heat, and throws in a provocative prediction: global heating will add 30,000 murders and 200,000 rapes to the expected US total by 2099. A survey shows that in the western US, intense heat means increased damage to infrastructure: everything from sidewalks and bridges to railroads and airport tarmacs. And the hotter temps for more of the year in more places is bringing disease-bearing insects to people and places without recent experience of them, or even any experience at all--such as a blood-sucking insect from Asia that may transmit dengue virus, or West Nile.
The worse news involves--no big surprise--the Arctic. There's of course ongoing concern about the general heating and melting of the ice. But there's also a lot of methane buried under the permafrost, and the damage it could cause if released is beginning to be quantified. A new study published in Nature concludes: "The release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russia, alone comes with an average global price tag of $60 trillion in the absence of mitigating action — a figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012 (about $70 trillion). The total cost of Arctic change will be much higher."
Let me clarify what "mitigating action" means in current envirospeak. It means addressing the cause, not just the effects. At least one assumes that's what it means in this context. And that doubt is one reason I find this mitigation/adaptation vocabulary so pitiful.
The study notes that while some businesses and business writers have been touting the economic benefits of a warmer Arctic, this effect is a far, far greater economic negative.
According to Prof Peter Wadhams from the University of Cambridge, there's increasing evidence that methane is now being released into the atmosphere. "When you look at satellite imagery, for instance the Metop satellite, that's gone up significantly in the last three years and the place where the increase is happening most is over the Arctic," he said.
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