Advanced Search
February 20, 2017
In California, Oroville Dam's emergency spillways were deemed at risk of imminent collapse, forcing the evacuation of 180,000 people. Aging dams across the country are in danger of being overwhelmed by more frequent and severe storms expected due to climate change. Photo courtesy of the California Department of Water Resources via wikimedia.org.
On February 16, Oklahoma District Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons ordered the prompt release of thousands of pages of documents detailing Scott Pruitt's interactions with the fossil fuel industry during his term as Oklahoma attorney general. Judge Timmons expedited the two-year old lawsuit brought by the Center for Media and Democracy, ruling, "There was an abject failure to provide prompt and reasonable access [to the documents]." The attorney general's office has until February 21 to comply. Prior reporting by the New York Times and other outlets uncovered documents suggesting close ties between Pruitt and the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile, Democrats requested Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delay the vote on Pruitt's nomination until these additional documents were released and reviewed. Democrats contested that Pruitt had "not been forthcoming with information [on his industry ties]." However, McConnell rebuked the requests, leading to Pruitt's approval by the Senate on February 17 by a vote of 52-46. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was the sole GOP vote against Pruitt, while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) declined to cast a vote. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp broke party ranks in supporting Pruitt.
For more information see:
The Hill, Inside Climate News
Massachusetts recently released a plan to comply with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's 2016 decision regarding state level greenhouse gas emission limits. However, environmental advocates fear that the plan, which calls for power plants to lower emissions 2.5 percent annually starting in 2018, could divert energy production to less efficient power plants located out of state that run on more polluting fuels, like coal and oil. While many environmentalists support the plan overall, they are proposing a revision to the rules to allow power plants to trade emission allowances, encouraging the construction of new efficient facilities. According to David Ismay, an attorney at the Conservation law Foundation, "[The plan] would be worth the possibility of a small rise in emissions, because we would be sending a clear, strong signal to the market that the future of power in Massachusetts will be clean and renewable." Power plant companies fear that the proposed rules threaten to shut down plants entirely, eliminating jobs before establishing replacements.
Boston Globe
On February 12, California state officials declared part of the Oroville Dam unstable and at risk of catastrophic flooding, ordering the evacuation of over 180,000 residents who may be caught in the water's path. The dam's emergency spillways, chutes that allow the dam to handle particularly heavy volumes of water, were found to be faulty and at risk of imminent collapse. Engineers assert that California has failed to adequately maintain its water infrastructure and that the state's 1,500 other dams may pose similar threats. In addition, the aging dams may not be capable of handling the extreme weather events that have already begun to occur more often due to climate change. "Most dams are almost 50 years old," said Lori Spragens, Executive Director of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. "Many of them are very behind in their rehabilitation and they need to be upgraded to current standards. It's the lack of money. The whole concern with infrastructure is just not there."
New York Times, Los Angeles Times
U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson headed to Bonn, Germany to join a February 16 gathering of the Group of 20 (G-20) to discuss climate change with other foreign ministers. Host-nation Germany ensured climate change would be on the agenda and indicated it was prepared to challenge the Trump administration on the issue. "You can't fight climate change by putting up barbed wire," said German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. The G-20 meeting took up climate talks begun at last year's meetings in China and also discussed Agenda 2030, a set of United Nations goals for global sustainability. Germany's tone marks a strategic shift as it inherits the group's rotating presidency. Exxon Mobil, of which Secretary Tillerson was CEO, declared the Paris Agreement a "monumental" achievement, contrary to some signals coming from President Trump. A German official indicated uncertainty as to how much influence Tillerson would have over the decidedly pro-climate assemblage. The February meeting precedes another G-20 summit in June, which heads of state typically attend.
Chicago Tribune
Climate change has begun to interfere with the livelihoods of small-scale farmers across Morocco, due to its impact on commercially valuable Argan trees. The products from Argan trees make up the primary source of income for many villagers, but decreased precipitation and increasingly arid land has made growing these trees difficult. Farmers have begun to adopt "climate-smart agriculture" methods to combat these hardships. The new approach involves reducing water consumption, planting resilient crops, diversifying yields, improving soil management practices, and promoting "green" infrastructure to store carbon and manage flooding. To start, the Moroccan government will plant drought-tolerant Argan trees across 95,000 acres of the country, which will pull over half a megaton of carbon dioxide from the air over a decade (equivalent to taking 130,000 cars off the road). Locals have also considered collecting small "green" donations from tourists to offset the carbon emissions from traveling to that area and to help finance local sustainable agriculture efforts.
Christian Science Monitor
The goals of the Paris Agreement have proven to be widely accepted and recognized as necessary by corporations and moderate Republicans alike, and many do not want to see the United States relinquish its current leadership role in mitigating the causes of climate change. Many believe that regardless of President Trump's actions, the United States as a whole will continue to embrace energy efficiency and renewable energy. Andrew Hoffman, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said, "The reason the Paris accord got signed is because so many companies wanted this." By reneging on the country's earlier commitment, Trump risks strong opposition from the more than 745 companies and investors who signed a letter of support for the Paris Agreement, as well as a confrontation with members of his own party. The agreement's goals are not viewed as particularly burdensome for the United States, which is currently on track to meet them due to more energy efficient technologies and a surge in electricity generation from wind, solar, and natural gas.
LA Times
Groups across the country are attempting to protect earth science data collected by the Department of Energy and NASA by archiving the information beyond government servers. The collaborative effort is driven by fears that the Trump administration may revoke public access to the data. The process consists of two parts: half the group deploys archival applications to government pages, sending the found data to the public Internet Archive, "a digital library made up of hundreds of billions of snapshots of webpages." The other half of the group "bags" the information by writing custom scripts to pull data from a patchwork of different federal sites. This process of securing information poses unique challenges. "All these systems were written piecemeal over the course of 30 years. There's no coherent philosophy to providing data on these websites," stated Daniel Roesler, chief technology officer at Utility API and guide for UC Berkeley's data group. The groups are monitoring ongoing changes to government websites to create a record of what's being removed and when.
Wired
With Louisville, Kentucky becoming the fastest warming "urban heat island," environmental and faith-based organizations are coming together to combat the issue. A growing number of faith-based groups, including Evangelical Protestants in the Louisville area, are "squaring their faith with science's climate warnings." A large body of research has shown that keeping urban tree canopies healthy is one of the best ways to curb the urban heat island effect. A partnership between the Nature Conservancy and the Center for Interfaith Relations, with the help of participants from other local religious institutions, located hot spots around Louisville and launched a four-part landscape audit to understand how people can overhaul their landscaping practices to help reduce the urban heat island effect. "Faith-based organizations are the places people look for direction," said Sikander Chowhan, chief strategic officer at Muslim Americans for Compassion, "So hopefully we'll get folks seeing what we're doing to make things more beneficial, and becoming more aware of their own properties."
CityLab
In an effort to protect its popular skiing industry against warming temperatures, Norway is developing a less energy-intensive means of producing artificial snow. The project is a partnership between the Norwegian Ministry of Culture, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and the region's largest research center, SINTEF. The device, which researchers hope will be more energy-efficient than the current technology, would make snow in above-freezing weather conditions. The machine cools ambient air by transferring the heat to ski resort buildings, with the resultant snow used to cover the resort's slopes. Petter Nekså, an energy research scientist with SINTEF, says that because conventional snow machines "[have] no 'hot side', that means we need a heat pump that has the properties of a refrigeration plant." He explains that "we have to adapt components, such as an evaporator and condenser, to get them to work together." Once developed, Norway believes this climate resilient technology can replace its existing snow makers, which use significant amounts of fossil fuels.
Climate Home
A NASA mission titled "Oceans are Melting Greenland," or OMG for short, has produced two new reports on how glaciers interact with oceanic currents. OMG is an ongoing study of the effect on glaciers and sea level rise as warming waters enter the fjords that connect to Greenland's ice sheets. Currently, Greenland's ice sheets are the largest global contributor to rising sea levels, adding around 1mm per year. However, the vast ice sheets hold the potential to cause over 7.36 meters (24 feet) of sea level rise if all the ice is lost. Researchers have found that the deeper waters tend to be warmer, meaning the largest and thickest glaciers that extend to those depths are experiencing the most severe effects. While the mission does not yet have enough data for modeling predictions, Josh Willis, the principal investigator for this mission, said, "I think these papers suggest that the glaciers as a whole are more vulnerable than we thought they were. These kinds of results suggest that we could be in for more sea level rise than we thought."
Washington Post
Florida's coastal Everglades are a crucial wildlife habitat and a significant carbon sink, but new research shows the system is nearing a "tipping point" that could mark its decline. Rising sea levels are increasing the salinity of the water and altering its flow, causing mangroves along the coast to move inland and disrupt freshwater marshes. Periphyton algae is also disappearing, leaving a significant gap in the Everglades' food chain. The combination of organic pollution from fertilizers and rising sea levels has led to altered growth patterns, threatening to upend the way a healthy ecosystem would normally function. The sudden appearance of large, open-water lakes has alarmed scientists. Lead investigator Evelyn Gaiser of Florida International University said, "Once you lose that soil, it's gone. You create a place where nothing can effectively grow." According to Gaiser, this can present a major climate impact: "We're changing the system from one that is very good at sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to one that's very rapidly losing it."
Miami Herald
Federal Judge Rejects Tribes' Latest Request to Halt Dakota Access Pipeline Construction
Congressional Review Act Used to Overturn Rule Protecting Mountain Streams from Mining Waste
Science Advisers to Obama and Clinton Sound Alarm on Suppression of Science Communications Under Trump Administration
Bi-partisan Coalition of Governors Urges Trump to Support Wind and Solar Power
Warming Climate Compounds Stress on Mexico City's Residents and Its Water Supply
Writers: Emma Dietz, Ben Topiel, and Andrew Wollenberg Editor: Brian La Shier
Advancing science-based climate solutions
Top-Rated Climate Nonprofit – 4-Star Charity