Hill Heat

U.S. Senators making the news on climate change and clean energy.

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)

E&E News Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) challenged Democrats for pushing a climate bill that he said would pick winners and losers in the energy industry. “I wonder why we have a national windmill policy instead of a national clean energy policy,” said Alexander, himself an outspoken advocate for nuclear power.

WSJ So much talk about wind turbines exhausted the patience of Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, who again called for a nuclear solution to America’s energy woes. “Is nuclear power renewable energy?” he asked Mr. Doerr.

Kit Bond (R-MO)

Reuters “My fear is that what the recession and faulty management decisions did to the auto industry, the U.S. Congress will do intentionally to the rest of Midwest manufacturing—kill U.S. jobs and drive many of them overseas to China,” said Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri.

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Politico Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who faces an uphill fight in shepherding the bill through the Senate, says she appreciates all the attention from up the street. “It’s really been a pleasure for me, because last time I did this, I had an administration that was fighting me at every turn,” she said. “Here, I have a very supportive administration, so it’s a very nice change for us.”

E&E News “I think it’s very important we understand that the approach we’re taking, we don’t pick winners or losers. We put a cap on carbon and let the marketplace do it,” Boxer said. She highlighted the U.S. EPA analysis of the House bill that estimates it could lead to 260 new 1,000 megawatt nuclear plants by 2050. After Alexander called on President Obama to support his proposal for more nuclear plants, Boxer replied: “It is very clear he doesn’t have to support your proposal. His [support of the House bill] results in more nuclear power plants being built.” Boxer added after a hearing yesterday, “I think if you look at Waxman-Markey, the prediction is there being well over 100 nuke plants. I don’t know that we’ll need to have more than that. But we’ll certainly look at all of these issues.”

IB Times “When we unleash the American innovative spirit, we will drive economic growth and create jobs and create whole new industries here at home. American entrepreneurs will create jobs,” Chairman Barbara Boxer said. Boxer also said the Senate will do “more than protect consumers.” “You are going to hear some widely different views on how much is going to cost consumers,” Boxer told the panel. “But we have the modeling and we know what it is, we know what the Waxman-Markey bill shows,” Boxer added.

Talk Radio News “At the end of the day, our competitiveness in the world economy will depend on how we face the challenge of global warming,” said Sen. Boxer (D-Calif.)

The United States is getting more heavy storms and major floods these days. Global warming is partly to blame for these heavy rainfall events. Warmer air simply can hold more moisture, so heavier precipitation is expected in the years to come.

National Wildlife Federation will release “Increased Flooding Risk: Global Warming’s Wake-Up Call for Riverfront Communities,” a mini-report detailing:

• How global warming has caused more heavy rainfall events
• America’s over-reliance on levees and other strategies for taming rivers
• Communities that are on the frontlines
• What must be done to confront the realities of global warming

Perspectives will be provided regarding the latest scientific research on global warming and flooding, the national flood insurance program, and recommendations for how to cope with projected changes and how to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

Call 1-800-944-8766 pin 39227# just before 11 a.m. (Eastern)

Speakers

• Dr. Amanda Staudt, climate scientist, National Wildlife Federation
• David Conrad, senior resource specialist, National Wildlife Federation, Conservation Programs
• Dr. Will Gosnold, University of North Dakota, professor of Geophysics, Chair of the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering

Dr. Staudt will talk about the latest science on heavy rainfall and increased flooding risk.

Mr. Conrad will talk about what needs to be fixed in national flood insurance program, so that we don’t make the situation even worse.

Dr. Gosnold will explain why flood protection plans should take the implications of more frequent and extreme floods into account, based on his more than 20 years of studying climate change.

Contact: Aileo Weinmann, National Wildlife Federation, 202-538-5038 cell, [email protected]

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) and the Office of Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) invite you to a briefing to learn about state climate actions related to agriculture, forestry and waste management, and how they can inform the current Congressional debate on energy and climate policy. States have developed a range of approaches for promoting bioenergy and biobased products as well as managing agriculture, forestry and other land use to enhance carbon sequestration and minimize greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these approaches are “win-win” solutions that simultaneously address employment/economic stimulus, energy security, climate mitigation and other environmental objectives while garnering broad consensus among diverse stakeholders. At this briefing, agriculture and forestry experts from the South and Midwest will share experiences about policy development and implementation in their states, and offer perspectives on how the federal government and states can best partner to implement effective policies. Speakers for this event include:

• Joe James, Chief Executive Officer, Corporation for Economic Opportunity; Member, South Carolina Climate, Energy and Commerce Advisory Committee
• Richard Leopold, Director, Iowa Department of Natural Resources
• Dennis Hazel, PhD, Associate Professor and Extension Specialist, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University
• Tom Peterson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Center for Climate Strategies (CCS)

Over the past six years, more than 30 states have addressed climate change through comprehensive development of mitigation measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while also creating jobs and addressing energy needs within their states. This includes a full suite of policies in the agriculture, forestry and waste sectors and specific actions that support land protection, conservation practices, renewable energy and products, and waste recovery. Some states have developed adaptation plans as well to respond to climate change impacts on natural resources and other systems.

The Center for Climate Strategies is a nonprofit that supplies technical and analytic services to states. This briefing is the second in a series co-sponsored by EESI and CCS. Information from the first briefing, which provided an overview of state energy and climate actions across all sectors, is available here. Future briefings will address topics including the economics of climate change, transportation, land use, and adaptation, and residential, commercial, and industrial energy use.

This briefing is free and open to the public. No RSVP required. For more information, contact Amy Sauer at (202) 662-1892 or [email protected].

From the Wonk Room’s Tom Kenworthy, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Farmers and those in the agriculture economy have a lot to lose if the trends in billion-dollar weather disasters continue – particularly when it comes to drought and water shortages, as recent news indicates. “Central and South Texas are in the midst of an epic drought that has sapped soils of their moisture, dried up stock ponds and turned cornfields from green to beige.” California’s “Central Valley farmers will receive an additional 100,000 acre-feet as part of a water loan to deal with the three-year drought plaguing the state.” As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee begins hearing testimony this week on climate change legislation, “Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters” – a catalog of 90 costly weather-related disasters dating back to 1980 assembled by the National Climatic Data Center – is a good place to start when considering the costs of inaction on global warming:

• In 2007, a severe drought with extreme heat across the Great Plains and the East brought some $5 billion in damages and costs. Wildfires in the West that same year cost more than $1 billion.
• In 2006, widespread drought affected the Great Plains, the south, and the far west, costing about $6 billion.
• In 2002, a broad drought cost $10 billion, affecting large parts of 30 states from the West to the Great Plains and much of the East. Western wildfires associated with the drought cost $2 billion.
• In 2000, a drought and heat wave centered on the south central and southeastern United States caused 140 deaths and cost $4 billion.
• In 1999, An eastern drought and heat wave brought “extensive agricultural losses” of more than $1 billion and cost 502 lives. *In 1998, “Very severe losses to agriculture and related industries” accompanied a drought affecting the central and eastern U.S. with estimated costs of $40 billion and 5,000 to 10,000 deaths.

The House’s narrow approval of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 on June 26 came only after House leaders satisfied some of the concerns of farm state lawmakers. Senators, too, will be sensitive to those interests, so it is critical they understand some of the stakes for agriculture if Congress fails to pass comprehensive clean-energy jobs and climate legislation.

Drought and changes in water supply will be one of the main challenges. Over the last half century, the recently released government report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” says, droughts associated with rising temperatures have become more frequent in much of the Southeast and Western regions of the country. That trend is expected to continue. “In the future, droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe,” particularly in the Southwest, according to the report.

Water shortages will likely affect a whole range of critical economic sectors, from limiting electricity production by nuclear and coal-fired power plants that have high water demands to increasing shipping costs on the Great Lakes and Mississippi River – as happened in 1988 when a drought stranded 4,000 barges on America’s most important commercial waterway. Drier conditions in the West will also increase the extent and cost of wildfires, which have already soared in the last decade.

These events and their impacts are not abstractions. They are costly, disruptive, and affect millions of Americans, including many who make their living raising food and livestock. Few lobbyists for these interests will mention these costly impacts to our already challenged rural economies.

Senators have a responsibility to protect farmers from more and worse droughts even if the farmers’ hired guns won’t.

Read more at the Center for American Progress, and view a map of past and projected droughts at Science Progress.

From the Wonk Room.

Fox News Channel’s Gregg Jarrett introduced a “very big story” that the Environmental Protection Agency “intentionally buried a study challenging some of Uncle Sam’s global warming research.” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) claimed the report, written by economist Alan Carlin of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, vindicates his belief that man-made global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”:

The thing is phony. I feel so good about being redeemed after all of these years, because they have been throwing this thing in my face since 1998 when we realized that all of those scientists that Al Gore had lined up – and I’m talking about Claude Allegre in France, David Bellamy in UK, and Nir Shaviv in Israel – all of them used to be on his side. They all said, “Wait a minute, this science is not right.” That’s exactly what Allen Carlin said. We’ve already started a investigation.

Watch it:

When asked if there should be a criminal investigation, Inhofe replied, “There could be and there probably should be.” Continuing his attack, he claimed that the EPA “have been suppressing science and coming out with what they want people to say. You might remember – I talked to you about it on this station. When I first realized that this thing was a hoax and I made the statement that the notion that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2 cause global warming, it is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated.”

What Fox News, Inhofe, and right-wing bloggers are promoting as a suppressed EPA report is nothing of the kind. Carlin’s paper, released by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (“CO2: they call it pollution, we call it Life“), is a hodgepodge of widely discredited pseudoscience. Carlin was given permission by the NCEE to cobble the paper together even though he is not a climate researcher, and “the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists.”

The Carlin document cites the usual array of global warming deniers, including Joe D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, William Gray, Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer – all of whom worked with Sen. Inhofe’s former aide Marc Morano to disseminate denials of climate science. Carlin’s references come from denier blogs such as ICECAP.us and Watts Up With That, and plagiarizes publications from the Heartland Institute, the Science & Environmental Policy Project, and the Friends of Science Society, all conservative front groups. RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt summarizes the paper as “a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at.”

Similarly, although the 76-year-old botanist David Bellamy, 72-year-old geochemist Claude Allegre, and 32-year-old astrophysicist Nir Shaviv publicly question man-made global warming, they represent a steadily dwindling number of scientists, few of any of which actively study climate change, that argue fossil fuel emissions are not warming the planet.

From the Wonk Room.

During last year’s Democratic primary, Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) “relied heavily on Al Gore’s endorsement” despite having “never been out in front on global warming,” but is now threatening to “vote down” the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act.

Utah’s next governor, Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert (R-UT) told the Western Governors’ Association “it appears to him science on global warming is not necessarily conclusive.” He is replacing Gov. Jon Huntsman, nominated to be the ambassador to China, who entered Utah into the Western Climate Initiative.

“Aides to Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) are in southern West Virginia for what they call a three-day fact-finding tour about mountaintop removal mining,” meeting with “coal industry officials, environmentalists and citizens.”

From the Wonk Room.

Global warming “could lead to the greatest human migration in history” uprooting between 200 million and 700 million people by 2050, according to the International Organization for Migration.

“New green jobs sprouted faster than the overall workforce expanded across the nation from 1998 to 2007,”according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Charitable Trusts,” and “California led the nation in all categories measured.”

The Obama administration “plans to announce Thursday a proposal to eliminate the expedited reviews that have made it easier for mining companies to get approval” for mining “the Appalachians by blasting off mountaintops and discarding the rubble in stream valleys.”

From the Wonk Room.

Global warming has “virtually wiped out” the most complex Caribbean coral reefs, “compromising their role as a nursery for fish stocks and a buffer against tropical storms,” a new study finds.

“Badly outnumbered and months behind in the debate on energy and climate change, House Republicans plan to introduce an energy bill” drafted by global warming denier Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) today, “setting a goal of building 100 reactors over the next 20 years.”

“China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next decade and believes” it can achieve 20 percent renewable power by 2020,” even as the U.S. renewable standard in clean energy legislation has been whittled down to less than 15 percent by 2020.

From the Wonk Room.

“New York could create as many as 50,000 jobs by converting 45 percent of its electricity needs to renewable energy sources by 2015,” Governor David Paterson said on Monday.

“Environmental groups are urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to work with them on increasing the renewable electricity mandate in her chamber’s climate and energy bill to reach at least 20 percent by 2020 and to include more efficiency requirements, as well.”

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) expects his drilling amendment to “shrink the no-leasing zone around Florida’s gulf coast to 45 miles from shore” – “less than half the current buffer” – to be approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee today.

From the Wonk Room.

“We really can’t say we’re the Saudi Arabia of coal anymore,” says Brenda Pierce, head of the USGS team that found the estimates of a 240-year supply of coal in the United States to be grossly inflated, as “relatively little of it can be profitably extracted.”

The Congressional Budget Office has released its cost estimate of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), finding that it would reduce budget deficits “about $24 billion over the 2010-2019 period.”

In a mock hearing today, Republican senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), John McCain (R-AZ), and Jim Bunning (R-KY) “will propose building 100 new nuclear power plants over the next 20 years” instead of a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions.