Enviros, Democrats Respond to Polar Bear Delay

Posted by Brad Johnson on 11/03/2008 at 08:51PM

Sixty days have now passed since January 8, 2008, when the U.S. Department of the Interior failed to meet its legal deadline to determine whether the polar bear is endangered by global warming, triggering a joint lawsuit over this latest delay from the Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, and Greenpeace, pursuant to the notice of intent filed in January.

In the intervening months, U.S. Fish and Wildlife director Dale Hall took responsibility for the delay, but two weeks ago he told House appropriators that the decision had been given to Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of the Interior, for final review.

In addition, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the House global warming committee, today introduced legislation to block further activity in the lease sale area. This legislation, which does not yet have a bill number, is a revision of his proposed legislation from January, before the lease sale took place. The amended legislation would now prevent the Secretary of the Interior from authorizing any “related activity (including approving any seismic activity, offering any new lease, or approving any exploration or development plan)” until an ESA determination and critical habitat designation is made.

The threats and protections for the polar bear

Witnesses

Panel I

  • FWS Director Dale Hall

Panel II

  • Andrew Wetzler, Natural Resources Defense Council
  • Margaret Williams, World Wildlife Fund
  • Brendan Kelly, University of Alaska
  • Richard Glenn, Alaskan Arctic resident and sea ice geologist
  • J. Scott Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
406 Dirksen

30/01/2008 at 10:00AM

Rep. Markey Introduces Bill to Block Alaska Drilling Pending Polar Bear Decision

Posted by Brad Johnson on 17/01/2008 at 04:14PM

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has released the text of legislation which, if enacted, would forbid the sale of off-shore drilling rights in the Chukchi Sea, which includes polar bear habitat, until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service makes its long-delayed determination whether the polar bear is endangered and what its critical habitat is.

At today’s hearing, FWS director Dale Hill made it clear that he recognizes that the polar bear is definitely losing habitat and has been delaying his determination to make it “clear”; he also stated, “We need to do something about climate change starting yesterday.”

Minerals Management Service Director Randall Luthi admitted that if the lease auction goes forward, it would be impossible to revoke the leases even if they are found to be in conflict with a later endangerment listing of the polar bear.

On Thin Ice: The Future of the Polar Bear

Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will question members of the Bush Administration regarding the delay of a decision to list polar bears under the Endangered Species Act until after a controversial lease sale for oil drilling off of Alaska. The hearing will also feature experts on wildlife protection and oil drilling.

Earlier this week, the Interior Department announced it would miss the statutory deadline to reach a decision on listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), saying it would take up to a month more to reach the decision. That would put the listing decision one day after the sale of oil drilling rights in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, scheduled for February 6th. The Chukchi Sea is a sensitive polar bear habitat.

In the most thorough study to date, the Interior Department determined that under current trends, disappearing sea ice would result in a two-thirds drop in the world population of polar bears resulting in the disappearance of polar bears from Alaska by 2050.

PANEL I

  • Mr. Dale Hall, Director, Fish and Wildlife Service
  • Mr. Randall Luthi, Director, Minerals Management Service
  • Dr. Steven Amstrup, Polar Bear Team Leader, U.S. Geological Survey

PANEL II

  • Ms. Jamie Rappaport Clark, Executive Vice President, Defenders of Wildlife
  • Ms. Deborah Williams, President, Alaska Conservation Solutions
  • Ms. Kassie Siegel, Director, Climate, Air and Energy Program, Center for Biological Diversity
House Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee
2175 Rayburn

17/01/2008 at 09:30AM

Administration Misses Polar Bear Deadline; Conservation Groups to Sue

Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/01/2008 at 11:38AM


© 2006 by Yukon White Light

On Monday the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would miss today’s deadline on determining whether to list the polar bear as an endangered species due to global warming-induced polar sea ice loss. As noted in Hill Heat, last week the administration announced its intent to sell off-shore drilling rights in polar bear habitat off Alaska.

Today the Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, and Greenpeace announced they have filed a notice of intent to sue the administration.

This would be the second lawsuit filed over FWS delays; in 2005 the Center for Biological Diversity v. Kempthorne lawsuit to compel the FWS to respond to the request to start the polar bear listing process (the FWS ended up taking two years instead of the Endangered Species Act-mandated 90 days).

Alaska Drilling Sale Announced Before Polar Bear Endangerment Decision

Posted by Brad Johnson on 03/01/2008 at 12:29PM

The U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) will hold its first federal Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas lease sale since 1991 on February 6. It is leasing nearly 46,000 square miles in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska, with estimated conventional reserves of 15 billion barrels of oil. Waters within 25 miles of the coast are excluded from the lease area. This announcement comes just six days before the January 9 deadline for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether to list the polar bear as endangered because of the global-warming induced decline of Arctic sea ice, some of which covers the Chukchi Sea.

The MMS believes that environmental concerns will be sufficiently addressed by its stipulations, which do not consider the effects of climate change:

The sale area will not include nearshore waters ranging from about 25 to 50 miles from the coast, which includes the near-shore “polynya” through which the bowhead and beluga whales, other marine mammals, and marine birds migrate north in the spring, and in which local communities subsistence hunt. Leases issued from the sale will include stipulations to address environmental effects that may occur because of exploration and development of the area’s oil and gas resources. These stipulations call for protection of biological resources, including protected marine mammals and birds and methods to minimize interference with subsistence hunting and other subsistence harvesting activities.

Environmental organizations are livid. The World Wildlife Fund published a series of statements from Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, Audubon, and indigenous activists condemning the threat to the polar bear and other marine life from the planned sale.

In the fine print of its final notice of sale, the MMS does note:

Lessees are advised that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act and has initiated a comprehensive scientific review to assess the current status and future of the species. The FWS anticipates making a decision in early 2008 on whether to list polar bears under the ESA. Please refer to http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/polarbear/issues.htm for additional information. If the polar bears are ultimately listed under the ESA, then MMS will consult with FWS under Section 7 of the ESA, and may be required to apply additional mitigation measures on OCS activities to ensure appropriate protection.

Update: Sierra Club has launched a letter-writing campaign to “chill the drills” in what it calls the “Polar Bear Seas”.

Arctic Sea Ice Melt and Shrinking Polar Ice Sheets: Are Observed Changes Exceeding Expectations?

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
American Meteorological Society
106 Dirksen
26/11/2007 at 12:00PM

Disappearing Polar Bears and Permafrost: Is a Global Warming Tipping Point Embedded in the Ice?

On Wednesday, October 17, 2007, the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee will hold a hearing on the impacts of global warming on the Arctic. This hearing will provide the Committee with an opportunity to hear from witnesses on three interrelated matters: (1) the current situation in the Arctic, including the situation facing the polar bear, (2) ways in which warming in the Arctic may accelerate global warming, especially through the emission of more greenhouse gases, and (3) interim steps that could be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while the Congress weighs more elaborate carbon trade or tax proposals.

One of the themes that should emerge from this hearing is that, from a layman’s perspective, the models used to project climate change and its ramifications appear to be conservative in their projections. This is because any phenomena that are not understood well enough to be represented in models with confidence are excluded. These other phenomena may accentuate or depress warming trends. In the case of the Arctic, most of the phenomena that have been excluded from the models are believed to accentuate warming and its effects. Few will depress it. The modeling on polar bear survival, for example, uses projections from the IPCC models to estimate future changes in sea ice extent. Since the bears’ condition is very dependent upon both the extent of the sea ice and the duration of ice-free periods, projections of the bear survival are very dependent upon projections of sea ice. This summer the sea ice extent is far less than projected by the models.

The Center for Biological Diversity will appear to provide some advice on steps that can be taken to reduce warming, with particular emphasis on their efficacy in the Arctic. Among the steps they advocate are programs to reduce methane emissions and “black carbon.” Black carbon is soot that, in the Arctic, has a particularly pernicious effect. When it is deposited on snow and ice it decreases its reflectivity and increases its heat absorption leading to greater melting. As the Arctic comes under more and more industrialization with other warming, one could anticipate further production of black carbon. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, with an estimated global warming potential 23 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time frame. Methane is a precursor to tropospheric ozone. In that form, it traps shortwave radiation as it enters the earth’s atmosphere from the sun and then when it is reflected back again by snow and ice. As a consequence, its impact is strongest over the poles. Reducing global methane emissions would provide a particular benefit to the Arctic.

  • Dr. Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Geosciences
  • Dr. Glenn Juday, Professor, University of Alaska at Fairbanks, School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences
  • Dr. Sue Haseltine, Associate Director for Biology, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of Interior
  • Kassie R. Siegel, Director, Center for Biological Diversity, Climate, Air and Energy Program
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
   Oversight Subcommittee
2318 Rayburn

17/10/2007 at 10:00AM