Hill Heat

From the Wonk Room.

Although Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made it clear he “likes coal,” the Interior Department “said on Monday it will try to overturn a Bush administration rule that made it easier for coal mining companies to dump mountaintop debris into valley streams.”

As Arctic carbon dioxide levels are growing at an “unprecedented rate,” an “area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month.”

Speaking about the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill, Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) called for free pollution permits to petroleum refiners and Rep. G. K. Butterfield called for free pollution permits to electric distribution companies. These companies have given more than $375,000 to energy committee members in the first three months of 2009.

From the Wonk Room.

“Windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, the coal-fired power plants in the United States,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday. “It is not technology that is pie-in-the sky; it is here and now.”

In a letter to Science not available to the public, prominent climate scientists argue “it is imperative we improve the exchange of information between scientists and public stakeholders.”

As Antarctic ice shelves crumble at the end of the southern summer, the northern summer begins with the Arctic “on thinner ice than ever before,” with 90 percent of sea ice less than three years old.

Many of the consequences of climate change such as warmer winters and shifting rainfall patterns are becoming increasingly apparent here in the United States, but it is in remote reaches of the planet that some of the most rapid and potentially catastrophic changes are occurring. Millions of cubic kilometers of water are locked up in Greenland’s ice sheet, and the data indicate that it is melting at an unexpectedly rapid rate. Substantial melting of Greenland’s glaciers would cause significant sea level rise, affecting the cities and populations that are concentrated near the coast. This briefing will highlight efforts to study changes in the Greenland ice sheet, capture both its beauty and demise and explore the consequences for U.S. citizens as well as people around the globe.

Moderator

• Brendan Kelly, Arctic Natural Sciences Program, National Science Foundation

Panelists

• James Balog, Extreme Ice Survey
• Robert Bindschadler, Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• Konrad Steffen, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder
• James E. Neumann, Industrial Economics, Incorporated

Limited Space Available

RSVP by Wednesday, September 3 to [email protected] or 202/872-4556. Please provide name, affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address.

09/09/2008 at 12:00PM

This forum was aired on C-SPAN.

Is the Arctic sea ice cover melting faster than expected? If so, what are the contributing factors and why was the rate of melting unanticipated? How much sea ice cover has been lost in terms of extent and volume? What are the implications of both the loss of sea ice and the rate of loss? Is the Greenland ice sheet losing its mass faster than anticipated? If so, what are the contributing factors and why was the rate of loss unanticipated? What are the implications of continued accelerated ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet with respect to Sea Level Rise? Is the Antarctic Ice Sheet getting bigger or smaller and by how much and how fast? Are there parts of the Antarctic ice sheet that are gaining mass and parts that are losing mass? If so, what are the contributing causes? What are the implications of continued ice mass loss in Antarctica, especially the decay of ice shelves?

Speakers:

• Dr. Mark Serreze, Senior Research Scientist, NOAA National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
• Scott B. Luthcke, Geophysicist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory, Greenbelt, MD
• Dr. Konrad Steffen, Professor of Climatology and Remote Sensing and Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado, Boulder, CO Program Summary

26/11/2007 at 12:00PM