The Wonk Room

In Sweltering DC, Political ‘Reality’ Trumps Actual Reality Again

As Washington, D.C. wilts in the global heat wave gripping the planet, the Democratic leadership in the Senate has abandoned the effort to cap global warming pollution for the foreseeable future, unwilling to test a Republican filibuster. Instead of testing the hypocrisy of climate peacocks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will instead attempt to pass a limited bill with new energy incentives and oil reduction policies next week. The decision was formally made at a meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus today. After the meeting, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), whose efforts to craft comprehensive climate legislation had foundered, focused on the challenge of overcoming a filibuster:

But we’ve always known from day one, that in order to pass comprehensive energy/climate legislation, you’ve got to reach 60 votes, and to reach those 60 votes, you’ve got have some Republicans. And as we stand here today, we do not have one Republican. I think that it’s possible to get there.

Although the top legislative body in the United States of America is yet again failing to defend our nation, the existential threat of global warming continues to worsen, and the coal and oil companies responsible for the pollution continue to reap profits from their rape of the earth. It is the ninth day of the latest 90-plus heat wave to hit Washington DC, part of the global heat wave caused by greenhouse gas pollution. Former vice president Al Gore responded to today’s announcement with a cold reminder of the actual realities the Senate is unable to face:

The need to solve the climate crisis and transition to clean energy has never been more clear. The oil is still washing up on the shores of the Gulf Coast and we’ve just experienced the hottest six months on record. Our troops are fighting and dying in the Middle East and our economy is still struggling to produce jobs. I continue to urge the President to provide leadership on this issue and urge the Senate to make this issue a priority for the remainder of this Congress. Ultimately — and sooner rather than later–these issues simply must be dealt with. Our national security, our economic recovery and the future of the United States of America — and indeed the future of human civilization on this Earth — depends on our country taking leadership. And that, in turn, depends on the United States Senate acting. The truth about the climate crisis—inconvenient as ever—must be faced.

Lieberman: Utilities Want A ‘Breather’ From Letting People Breathe

As negotiations on a stripped-down bill to limit global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants reach the final hour, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is sympathizing with the utility industry’s attempt to suspend Clean Air Act rules on pollutants that kill tens of thousands of Americans a year. At a meeting with environmentalists, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers “led the call for regulatory relief on a number of existing Clean Air Act programs dealing with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury, including a new EPA rule proposed last week that deals with interstate pollution.” However, thirty-one environmental and health organizations sent a letter to senators last week calling such rollbacks “simply unacceptable.” Center for American Progress senior fellow Van Jones called it a “literal poison pill.” Today, Lieberman made the ironic claim that polluters “just want a breather” from clean air rules:

That’s a tough one. They frame it in a different way. They just want a breather. And not an eternal pre-emption. These are all topics of negotiation. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Lieberman’s partner in developing a Senate climate bill, last Thursday said there was a little room for negotiation, but opposed any “rollback.” “If we put those requirements into a different form so that we are still adhering to them, that is a different issue and those are two different choices,” Kerry said. “But there is not going to be a rollback of current requirements.”

Other Democrats don’t find this one of the acceptable “topics of negotiation.” “I’d not want to see any weakening of the authority they have today,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said last week. “It’s been a major tool for cleaning up our air.”

The environmental and public health community — including NAACP and Green For All, Public Citizen and the American Lung Association, the Environmental Defense Fund and Environment America, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists — are united in their opposition, saying that “delaying the cleanup of these plants threatens the health of millions of Americans.” “I’m sure people throw everything on the table,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski. “But we’ve made it damn clear … that there are no trade-offs of any regulation of any [conventional] pollutants.”

In Memoriam: Stephen Schneider

Dr. Stephen Schneider, one of the greatest minds of the science of climate change, has died at the age of 65. Schneider advised every presidential administration since Nixon, founded the journal Climatic Change, was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and authored or co-authored over 450 scientific papers. He was also a unique voice, clearly expressing the threat of manmade global warming to the general public for over three decades. As he said in a 1979 appearance as a young scientist with an Eric-Bogosian mop of hair:

We’re insulting our global environment at a faster rate than we’re understanding it.

Watch it:

On September 2, 2005, as the Gulf Coast reeled from Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Schneider appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher:

Every time we try to talk about getting a tax on these emissions, we’re told it’s an interference in the free market, as if we should get our garbage collected for free.

Watch it:

In one of his last media appearances, the oft-smeared Dr. Schneider participated in a podcast with ClimateScienceWatch about his recent paper, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” co-authored with blogger Jim Prall, Jacob Harold, and lead author William Anderegg. A moon-faced Schneider vehemently explained that credible expertise is a life-and-death matter:

It really matters what your credentials are. If you have a heart arrhythmia, as I do, and I also have a cardiologist — and you also have an oncological problem, as I do, I’m not going to my cancer doc to ask him about my heart medicine and my cardiologist to ask about my chemo, I’m going to the experts. Who is an expert really matters. People with no expertise, their opinion frankly doesn’t matter much on complex issues, and in my opinion, shouldn’t even be quoted about complex details of science.

Watch it:

His most recent book, Science as a Contact Sport, is a delightful work reminiscent of Richard Feynman’s memoirs, full of amusing anecdotes and remarkable breakthroughs that reveal both a diamond-hard scientific mind and an effervescent joy for life.

I tried to catch him for an interview at the Copenhagen climate conference last December, but we couldn’t make our schedules mesh. Fortunately for myself and the rest of the human race, Dr. Schneider will live on through his great opus of work. Sadly, time is running out for us to honor his legacy by turning back the black tide of global warming.

Massey Miners Disabled Methane Monitors Before Killer Explosion

Directed by supervisors, miners at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine commonly disabled monitors that could detect methane gas before the explosion that killed 29 in April. An investigation by NPR has “documented an incident in February 2010 in which an Upper Big Branch electrician was ordered to circumvent the automatic shutoff mechanism on a methane detector installed on a continuous mining machine.” Ricky Lee Campbell, a 24-year-old coal shuttle driver and roof bolter who witnessed the incident, told NPR they circumvented the safety device so that they could “continue to run coal”:

Everybody was getting mad because the continuous miner kept shutting off because there was methane. So, they shut the section down and the electrician got into the methane detector box and rewired it so we could continue to run coal.

There were dozens of such incidents, NPR reports. Maintenance foreman Clay Mullins told NPR he “believed miners could run mining machines temporarily with disabled monitors because that’s what the mine’s foreman and superintendent told him.”

Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy, was caught with a 2006 memo that told workers faced with safety rules, “you need to ignore them and run coal” because “coal pays the bills.”

Gov. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) special investigator has found that the April 5 explosion “was so large and powerful that it ripped through more than 2 1/2 miles of underground tunnels ‘in an instant.’” No charges have yet been brought against Massey Energy or its management for the fatal incident.

Meanwhile, four activists — 22-year-old Kathryn Huszcza, 22-year-old Colin Flood, 20-year-old Sophie Kern and 22-year-old James Tobias — “are in jail following a protest in which two chained themselves to a highwall miner at a Massey Energy surface mine in Raleigh County.” Massey Energy is the largest mountaintop removal company in the United States.

Bobby Jindal’s ‘Barrier Islands’ Are Washing Away

Erosion threatens 1,000-foot sand berm, July 7.

As experts warned, Bobby Jindal’s “obvious” response to the BP oil disaster is failing. Since the beginning of May, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has pushed a crash effort to build artificial “barrier islands” from dredged sand to prevent BP’s toxic oil from reaching Louisiana’s fragile coastline. He and other Louisiana politicians excoriated the federal government for waiting until June 3 to authorize the $360 million project, even though “categorically, across the board, every coastal scientist” questioned its wisdom. In mid-May, Jindal justified the barrier-island construction by saying it was the “obvious” thing to do:

It makes so much sense. It’s so obvious. We gotta do it.

“We know it works, we have seen it work, but if they need to see it work, they need to do that quickly,” argued Jindal. On May 27, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) attacked President Barack Obama, calling his administration’s caution “absolutely outrageous“:

Here the president doesn’t seem to have a clue. His decision on the emergency dredging barrier island plan is a thinly veiled ‘no.’ Approving two percent of the request and kicking the rest months down the road is outrageous, absolutely outrageous.

In fact, the first artificial island project is already showing serious signs of erosion, with heavy equipment sinking into the ocean. Photographs released by Louisiana scientist Leonard Bahr and the US Army Corps of Engineers show that the artificial island E-4, intended to reach an 18-mile length, is struggling to survive at 1,100 feet:

Berm E-4, June 25	Berm E-4, July 7
Berm E-4, July 8

“You don’t want to destroy the village to save the village,” Tom Strickland, the U.S. Interior Department’s assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, explaining on June 23 the federal government’s decision to only provisionally approve the construction of forty miles of sand berms along the Chandeleur Islands. Strickland estimated the berms would last “probably no more than 90 days.”

Jindal is pressing for the federal government to approve the emergency construction of 125 miles of sand berms, arguing the 0.2 miles constructed are “are doing what they were intended to do.”

The Enlightened Eight: GOP Can Vote For Cap-And-Trade And Not Get Tea Partied

Our guest blogger is Heather Taylor-Miesle, Director of the NRDC Action Fund.

On June 26, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 219-212 in favor of HR 2454, the Americ an Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). Only eight Republicans – we’ll call them the “Enlightened Eight” – voted “aye.” These Republicans were Mary Bono-Mack (CA-45), Mike Castle (DE-AL), John McHugh (NY-23), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Leonard Lance (NJ-7), Mark Kirk (IL-10), Dave Reichert (WA-8), and Christopher Smith (NJ-4).

Republicans voting for cap and trade in the year of the Tea Party? You’d think that they’d be dumped in the harbor by now. Instead, they’re all doing fine. In fact, to date, not a single one of these Republicans has been successfully primaried by tea partiers. Instead, we have two — Castle and Kirk — running for U.S. Senate, one — McHugh — who was appointed Secretary of the Army by President Obama, and five others — Bono-Mack, LoBiondo, Lance, Reichert, Smith — running for reelection.

Lance actually was challenged by not one, not two, but three tea party candidates. One of Lance’s opponents, David Larsen, even produced a nifty video, helpfully explaining that “Leonard Lance Loves Cap & Trade Taxes.” So, did this work? Did the Tea Partiers overthrow the tyrannical, crypto-liberal Lance? Uh, no. Instead, in the end, Lance received 56% of the vote, easily moving on to November.

Meanwhile, 100 miles or so south on the Jersey Turnpike, LoBiondo faced two tea party challengers – Donna Ward and Linda Biamonte — who also attacked on the cap-and-trade issue. According to Biamonte, cap and trade “is insidious and another tax policy… a funneling of money to Goldman Sachs and Al Gore through derivatives creating a carbon bubble like the housing bubble.” You’d think that Republican primary voters in the year of the Tea Party would agree with this line of attack. Yet LoBiondo won with 75% of the vote.

Last but not least in New Jersey, Christopher Smith easily turned back a tea party challenger — Alan Bateman — by a more than two-to-one margin. Bateman had argued that cap and trade is a internationalist plot:

Obama knows he can count on Smith to support the United Nations’ agenda to redistribute American wealth to foreign countries through international Cap & Trade agreements and other programs that threaten our sovereignty.

Apparently, Republican voters in NJ-4 didn’t buy that argument.

Across the country in California’s 45th District, Mary Bono-Mack won 71% of the vote over tea party candidate Clayton Thibodeau on June 8. This, despite Thibodeau attacking Bono-Mack as “the only Republican west of the Mississippi to vote for Cap and Trade.” Thibodeau also called cap and trade “frightening,” claiming that government could force you to renovate your home or meet requirements before you purchase a home. Thibodeau’s scare tactics on cap-and-trade didn’t play in CA-45.

Finally, in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert has drawn a Tea Party challenger named Ernest Huber, who writes that Reichert voted to “enslave” people in a “Soviet-style dictatorship“:

This is widely viewed as an attempt at Soviet-style dictatorship using the environmental scam of global warming/climate change. This bill was written by the communist Apollo Alliance, which was led by the communist Van Jones, Obama’s green jobs czar. It’s a nation-killer due to the multi-$trillion false tax bill it would impose on all of our activities, the massive destruction of jobs, and the loss of our freedoms to government employees who would regulate our every move through the EPA, Departments of Ecology, HUD, and Sustainable Communities. It passed the House 219-212. Bottom line: Reichert and seven other RINOs voted to enslave you and me.

We’ll see how this argument plays with voters in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, but something tells us it’s not going to go over any better than in the New Jersey or California primaries.

In sum, it’s quite possible for Republicans to vote for comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation and live (politically) to tell about it. The proof is in the primaries.

Obama’s Path To A Green Economy Is Covered In BP’s Oil

During the hottest year global civilization has ever seen, as BP’s oil disaster spreads across the Gulf, a sense of malaise has gripped climate advocates in Washington D.C., the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin argue:

Traditionally, American environmentalism wins its biggest victories after some important piece of American environment is poisoned, exterminated or set on fire. An oil spill and a burning river in 1969 led to new anti-pollution laws in the 1970s. The Exxon Valdez disaster helped create an Earth Day revival in 1990 and sparked a landmark clean-air law. But this year, the worst oil spill in U.S. history — and, before that, the worst coal-mining disaster in 40 years — haven’t put the same kind of drive into the debate over climate change and fossil-fuel energy.

Political observers are confused why environmentalists and green economy advocates are struggling to build the case for sweeping action to end our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and protect us from their toxic pollution. As the Post reporters note, “53 percent of people said they were worried about climate change” in a mid-May poll by academic researchers, “only slightly different from January, and still down from 63 percent in 2008.” However, for the first time, the pollsters found a majority of the public said that “most of my friends are trying to act in ways that reduce global warming.”

To get from the BP disaster to comprehensive climate legislation requires not just an understanding of the catastrophic risks of fossil fuels, but also a belief in the need for a strong, decisive government that protects its citizens. Without public desire for government to regulate the failures of the free market, there can never be an effective campaign to move Congress to action. In April, on the eve of the oil disaster, tea-party anti-government ideology had reached a fever pitch, with nearly a third of the American public who believed that “government is a major threat to their personal freedoms and want federal power reined in.” Energy lobbyist Rich Gold, who is “trying to work out a compromise climate bill that is more amenable to the industry,” said the disillusionment in government that came from Bush’s failures is a major roadblock:

There’s a feeling: “The government really can’t control all this stuff. They can’t keep us safe.” After Katrina and 9/11, we’re in the post-”government can fix it all” world.

Obama needs to prove to the American public that government can work in times of crisis — starting with the BP disaster. The Gulf disaster is a fundamental threat to our national interests requiring a national response, a point made by the likes of Chris Matthews, Russell Honore, and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). Unfortunately, the Obama administration has not decisively taken over the spill response, as the Center for American Progress and many others have recommended (despite right-wing ravings that CAP has “more influence on spill policy than the president’s in-house advisers”).

Obama has decided to let BP manage a secretive network of private contractors, instead of asserting authority over the foreign oil giant. Although approval of Obama’s presidency has stabilized around 50 percent, public confidence in his ability to “make the right decisions for the country’s future” have declined to 43 percent in a new Washington Post/ABC poll. Meanwhile, public support for a government takeover of the spill response grew from 28 percent in May to 45 percent in June. A strong majority of the American public believes the administration should “pursue criminal charges against BP and other companies involved in the oil spil.”

President Obama can’t pass comprehensive green economy legislation on his own — the U.S. Senate must break from the shackles of industry inaction. However, he can restore confidence in the government of the United States by taking on the sins of toxic polluters, starting with BP and the Gulf Coast. If his administration can prove itself in this crisis, the American people will trust his leadership on the path to a cleaner future.

Meet Polaris Applied Sciences, BP’s Shoreline ‘Eyes And Ears’ »

This post is part of the Wonk Room’s exclusive investigation of the private contractors working under BP’s control to respond to the foreign oil giant’s Gulf Coast disaster. The results of the investigation are being tracked at BP’s Contractor Army.

“I am confident that we’re going to be able to leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before,” President Barack Obama declared after visiting the oil-soaked region in June. The long-term restoration of the coast will require radical changes in waterway management, land use, and reversal of the global warming that threatens to inundate the subsiding shores — challenges independent of the toxic black tide of BP’s oil. However, cleaning up the toxic sludge is the first task on the path to restoration.

The task of deciding where the Gulf Coast shoreline needs to be cleaned of the Deepwater Horizon oil falls to BP contractors and government employees known by the jargon of Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment Team (SCAT) personnel. Working as rapidly as possible, teams survey contaminated beaches and marshes before cleanup crews are deployed, recommend the cleanup methods, and determine whether the cleanup has been as successful as possible. The work of the SCAT teams is a first step in the long-term natural resource damage assessments overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which determine the liabilities of BP for damage caused to the United States. This conflict of interest should be resolved by taking BP out of the loop — SCAT contractors should work directly for the government, using BP funds.

Incident Command organizational chart. Click to expand.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shoreline assessment manual, last updated in August 2000, the shoreline assessment teams are usually led by a Team Coordinator from NOAA Scientific Support, from the Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R), Emergency Response Division. Field teams divide the shoreline with a grid, use overflights and direct examination to judge the degree of contamination, and establish the cleanup guidelines used by the hazardous waste cleanup contractors, from mechanically plowing oiled sand off beaches to dabbing oil off of marsh reeds with sorbent booms.

Under the guidelines of the Incident Command System, SCAT personnel are part of the Planning Branch, whose guidelines direct the cleanup workers in the Operations Branch. (The other branches of the Incident Command System are Logistics and Finance.)

In an exclusive email interview, Greg E. Challenger, Principal Marine Scientist of Polaris Applied Sciences, told the Wonk Room how his company is “working to help coordinate the effort of assessing shorelines and recommending cleanup out of Houma, Mobile and Miami.” Polaris, a private company of scientific experts based in Washington state, has worked for governments and the oil industry on dozens of oil spills, coral reef groundings, research projects, and disaster exercises since its founding in 1998. Mr. Challenger explained how SCAT are the “eyes and ears” of the coastal spill response:

SCAT systematically segments the shoreline by habitat type and oiling zones and characterizes the oiling conditions for Operations. After the recommendations and instructions go to Operations, SCAT will re-survey when it has been cleaned and make further recommendations or sign a shoreline off as complete. This sign off can only occur after oil is off the water and overall is process meant to prioritize sensitive or heavily areas for cleanup in a systematic way. Essentially the “eyes and ears” of operations on the shoreline.

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BP Contractor: ‘What This Company Is Doing To This Country Right Now Is Just Wrong’

A former contractor has come forward to denounce foreign oil giant BP and the “cutthroat individuals” running the oil disaster response. On Friday, contractor-turned-whistleblower Adam Dillon told New Orleans television station WDSU he was fired “after taking photos that he believes were related to the use of dispersants and to the cleanup of the oil.” As a BP liaison, he had rebuffed reporters’ attempts to observe cleanup operations in Grand Isle, LA, in June, before being promoted to the BP Command Center near Houma, LA. At the command center BP manages the private contractors running practically every aspect of the spill response. Dillon, a former U.S. Army Special Operations soldier, “has lost faith in the company in charge”:

There are some very great, hardworking individuals in there. But the bottom line is just about money. There are some very cutthroat individuals. They’re not worried about cleaning up that spill as it is. . . .

I will never have loyalty to this company. I will always have loyalty to my country. And my country comes first. What this company is doing to this country right now is just wrong.

Watch it:

Before he was fired, Dillon was “confined and interrogated for almost an hour.” WDSU’s Scott Walker will air more of his interview with Adam Dillon on Monday night.

Dillon’s troubling firsthand account joins other reports from the likes of wives of Gulf Coast fishermen and independent scientists who are breaking the media blackout on BP’s private army of contractors.

Lubchenco: ‘Highly Toxic’ Undersea Cloud Of Oil ‘Is Undoubtedly Poisonous’

The undersea cloud of “highly toxic” oil emanating from BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster “is undoubtedly poisonous,” according to President Obama’s federal oceans chief. Marine scientist Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) director, described the threat posed by the “hidden” plumes of oil and dispersants diffusing into the Gulf of Mexico to its valuable ecosystem at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Tuesday. She told interviewer Andrea Mitchell that NOAA and independent scientists have identified “not a lake of black ooze” but a “cloud of very fine droplets spread over an area in the general vicinity of the well,” a prime spawning ground for bluefin tuna. This oil cloud “is undoubtedly poisonous” to the marine life in the Gulf:

As that oil, which is highly toxic, comes into contact with small larvae, with eggs, fish for example, or other creatures, it is undoubtedly poisonous to them.

Watch it:

“This truly is an environmental disaster but more a human tragedy,” Lubchenco said in her opening remarks. “Its impact is likely to be considerable,” she said of the oil hidden undersea, “but we don’t yet know what it will be.”

Bush MMS Director Defends Tenure: ‘When I Was There It Seemed To Work Well’ »

Johnnie Burton, former MMS director

Johnnie Burton, the director of Bush’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) from 2002 to 2007, has no regrets about her tenure, saying in an interview that she found no problems within the agency, now disbanded in disgrace. Burton — at 70 now a case worker for Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) — defended her record to the Caspar, WY, Star-Tribune. Under Burton, the “mismanaged, unaccountable” agency was so corrupt that even pro-drilling Republicans like Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) bashed the agency. Burton responded with insouciant calm, telling the Star-Tribune “when I was there it seemed to work well“:

As for allegations of lax enforcement at the Minerals Management Service, grossly inadequate spill response plans and other regulatory shortfalls, Burton said that as MMS director she was unaware of those problems. “I can’t answer all these questions at this point because when I was there it seemed to work well,” Burton said.

The agency worked so “well” that investigators found evidence of “cronyism and cover-ups of management blunders; capitulation to oil companies in disputes about payments; plunging morale among auditors; and unreliable data-gathering that often makes it impossible to determine how much money companies actually owe.”

Burton was in charge during the development of the offshore drilling plan that expanded drilling to the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Her Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program 2007-2012 included 2008’s Lease Sale 206, in which BP purchased Mississippi Canyon Block 252 (MC252) for $34 million. MC252, also known as the Macondo Prospect, has been flooding the Gulf of Mexico with oil for months now. Burton’s plan dismissed the environmental threat of that sale, primarily because no huge disasters had taken place since the Ixtoc I blowout in 1979, as these excerpts show:

The analysis above shows that with regard to potential oil spill impacts, areas that contain wetlands and marshes such as the Central GOM are particularly sensitive. However, lessees have been producing oil and gas from the Central Gulf and other areas for over 50 years with a remarkable record of environmental safety. For more than 30 years, there have been no significant oil spills from platforms anywhere on the OCS. [p. 92]

No Environmental Justice impacts from accidental oil spills are expected because of the movement of oil and gas activities further away from coastal areas and, also, the demographic pattern of more affluent groups living in coastal areas. [p. 60]

The Central Gulf coastal area ranks second in marine primary productivity only to the Mid-Atlantic. The marine primary productivity of the Central Gulf does not appear to have been appreciably diminished by offshore exploration and production activities. The same is true of other areas of the OCS with existing operations and production. Thus, the size, location, and timing of lease sales in the PFP are consistent with the marine primary productivity of the areas in which lease sales will be held. [p. 95]

Overall, impacts on national parks, national wildlife refuges, national estuarine research reserves, and national estuary program sites due to routine operations are expected to be limited under the proposed action because these areas are restricted from development. Impacts from oil spills are unlikely because it is anticipated that 75 percent of the hydrocarbons developed, as a result of the 2007-2012 leasing program in the GOM area are expected to occur in deep water (>330 m) usually located far from the shoreline. [p. 57]

Any single large spill would likely affect only a small proportion of a given fish population within the GOM, and it is unlikely that fish resources would be permanently affected. [p. 57]

In areas with a large proportion of impact-sensitive industry, such as tourism, the potential incremental impacts of oil spills would likely result in a one-time seasonal decline in business activity. [p. 59]

Impacts of accidental releases to water quality would depend on the size of the spill, type of material or product spilled, and environmental factors at the time of the spill. However, there would be no long-term, widespread impairment of marine water quality. [p. 60]

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Majority of Judges Hearing Oil Drilling Appeal Attended Oil-Funded Junkets »

Last month, Judge Martin Feldman, a federal trial judge in Louisiana, handed down a poorly-reasoned opinion lifting the Obama Administration’s temportary moratorium on new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Judge Feldman’s most recent financial disclosure form indicates that he is heavily invested in oil companies.

Today in New Orleans, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will consider whether to stay Feldman’s decision. According to a new report by the Alliance for Justice, however, it is unlikely that these Fifth Circuit judges will approach the case without the perception of bias.

Judges Jerry Smith and Eugene Davis, both of whom are assigned to today’s panel, attended expense-paid “junkets for judges” sponsored by an oil-industry front group:

[Judge Smith] attended a seminar hosted by the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE) in Big Sky, Montana, for which he was reimbursed transportation, lodging, and meal expenses. FREE is a think-tank that promotes free-market environmentalism rather than environmental regulation and is funded largely by corporations like ExxonMobil and conservative foundations. FREE hosts industry-funded seminars for judges, often including leisure activities such as golf and horseback riding, to “explain why ecological values are not the only important ones.” The year that Judge Smith attended the seminar, FREE received $70,000 from ExxonMobil, of which $20,000 was for “Federal Judicial Seminars,” $30,000 was for “General Operating Support,” and $20,000 was for a “Climate Seminar.” . . .

Additionally, in 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008, Judge Davis attended the same seminar as Judge Smith run by the FREE Foundation, the free market environmentalism group described above, and sought corresponding reimbursement for transportation, food, and housing. Judge Davis has attended another of other judicial seminars, and in fact, was ranked tenth in the country on a list of judges who accept free trips.

Both men also worked as oil-industry litigators before their appointments to the federal bench, and Judge Davis owns as much as $30,000 in oil investments. The third judge on the panel, Judge James Dennis, has not received any free trips from the oil industry, but he is heavily invested in oil stocks with investments that may total as much as $305,000.

Should this oil-soaked panel nonetheless decide to reinstate the drilling moratorium, the industry may appeal that decision to the full Fifth Circuit. Of the sixteen active judges eligible to hear such an appeal, ten of them have oil investments, including the court’s Chief Judge. In addition to owning as much as $330,000 in oil investments, Chief Judge Edith Jones ranked fourth of a list of judges who have attended junkets.

A full list of the Fifth Circuit’s judges and the extent of their financial holdings in oil companies is copied below: More »« Less

Climate Scientist: Even Without ‘Very Likely’ Feedback Loops, Warming Will Be ‘Substantial And Critical’

As the United States, like much of the rest of the world, bakes in record, killer heat, climate scientists continue to refine our understanding of the dire future of global warming in the years to come. The United Nations has named the 831 scientists who will author the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, to be published in 2013 with new model runs and observations of the ongoing destruction of our habitable environment. They do this work despite the endless assault from the fossil-fueled right wing, weathering death threats and media and politicians who ignore, downplay, distort, or lie about the science.

In yet another instance of this criminal deception, the First Post, a website of Great Britain’s The Week run by Tim Edwards, has claimed that new climate research from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry “is set to rock the boat again.” Edwards’ headline, promoted by climate propagandist Marc Morano, blares:

‘Runaway climate change’ ‘unrealistic’, say scientists

“Climate change skeptics might say the new study is yet another nail in the coffin of the IPCC report,” Edwards writes.

His headline and fevered speculation was based on a quote from the Max Planck researchers’ press release, which quoted Max Planck scientist Markus Reichstein saying, “Particularly alarmist scenarios for the feedback between global warming and ecosystem respiration (CO2 production) thus prove to be unrealistic.”

Via Twitter, Tim Edwards defended his piece as a “balanced story about an interesting development in climate change science.” However, by giving credence to conspiracy theorists who believe that mainstream science is a fraud, Edwards utterly misrepresented the research, which was published in a pair of papers in Science.

The researchers’ work in reality reduces uncertainties about how ecosystems respond to changes in temperature, precipitation, and solar input with respect to the carbon cycle, and will be very useful for improving the resolution of global climate models. Far from being “yet another nail in the coffin of the IPCC report,” this research is yet another building block in the vast edifice of climate science that underlies the IPCC work.

In an email interview with the Wonk Room, Dr. Reichstein excoriated the First Post story as a “very bad report,” saying that his research does not show that runaway climate change is “unrealistic.” In fact, Reichstein told the Wonk Room that “positive carbon-climate feedback is still very likely.”

This is indeed a very bad report about our research, strongly misinterpreted and with a unnecessarily sensational tone. In particular the statements in relation to the IPCC report are exactly opposite to what I said (and what is correctly reported in other newspapers). The 4th IPCC report is not challenged at all by our study, because it does not contain “alarmist” scenarios at all. On the contrary, the simulations therein still do not contain the carbon cycle feedback.

Our point is that now for the next IPCC report models are including this feedback and they are doing this in very different way, for example also with different temperature sensitivities. This will lead to a relatively large range of model predictions, a range which can hopefully be reduced by using our data for model improvement.

Reichstein’s research makes the speculative scenario of a feedback loop between warmer temperatures and faster CO2 production from plants less likely. However, as he explained to the Wonk Room, there are many other feedback loops that could give rise to runaway warming:

There are enough other feedbacks which are not touched in our studies. These include permafrost melting and subsequent CO2 and CH4 release to the atmosphere. The positive carbon-climate feedback is still very likely.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report’s predictions of climate catastrophe exclude these runaway feedback scenarios. “Even without a runaway feedback via the carbon cycle,” Reichstein said, agreeing with the IPCC assessment, “the warming will be substantial and critical.”

Toomey Says Sestak Is ‘Far To The Left’ For Supporting Mainstream Climate Policy »

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Richard Nixon would admire the latest smears levied by Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) against his opponent Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Toomey attacks Sestak’s support for climate legislation in a web video that falsely claims that his opponent is “far to the left of even most Democrats on cap-and-trade,” quoting Democratic senators and representatives who have raised concerns about proposals to reduce global warming pollution. “I pushed hard for the cap-and-trade bill” passed by the House last year, Sestak says in the Toomey video.

Watch it:

In fact, most of these legislators quoted in the video have actually voted for legislation to cap global warming pollution from power plants, oil-based fuels, and other large emitters. Joe Sestak’s support of American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), H.R. 2454 is well within the Democratic Party mainstream — 83 percent of House Democrats supported the bill. Seven out of Pennsylvania’s other eleven Democratic representatives — including Reps. John Murtha (PA-12) and Mike Doyle (PA-14) — voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), H.R. 2454, last year. Eight Republican representatives also voted for the bill, including current Republican nominees for U.S. Senate Mike Castle (R-DE) and Mark Kirk (R-IL).

A look at the positions of the eight Democrats quoted in the Toomey video demonstrate that Sestak’s support for pollution reduction is in the mainstream of the Democratic Party and in sync with the American people. More »« Less

New Clean Air Rule To Tame The Coal Plant Monster

Our guest blogger is Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch.

Today, the Obama administration proposed a sweeping plan to reduce power plant emissions that cross state lines and kill tens of thousands of Americans every year. The proposed Clean Air Transport Rule replaces the Bush administration’s so-called “clean air interstate rule” (CAIR) that was shot down by the courts because it permitted so much interstate emission trading that even some power companies filed suit. A federal court ordered EPA to fix the shaky legal grounds of the Bush plan. Power industry pollution remains so pervasive — and so often blows from one state to another — that it basically handcuffs state efforts to reduce pollution within a state’s borders. As EPA noted in a fact sheet:

Specifically, this proposal would require significant reductions in sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions that cross state lines. These pollutants react in the atmosphere to form fine particles and ground-level ozone and are transported long distances, making it difficult for other states to achieve national clean air standards.

Emissions reductions will begin in 2012. By 2014, “the rule and other state and EPA actions would reduce power plant SO2 emissions by 71 percent over 2005 levels,” and power plant NOx emissions “would drop by 52 percent.”

It has been nearly 40 years since passage of the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970. Since then, we’ve made significant progress towards cleaner air. Cars are dramatically cleaner. Lead is gone from gasoline. New trucks no longer belch out the familiar puff of smoke. And EPA statistics document the continuing overall trend of cleaner air with respect to traditional pollutants. Despite that progress, one major source of air pollution remains a notorious problem: the electric power industry. Indeed a recent assessment by Ceres, the Natural Resources Defense Council and several power companies described the footprint of fossil-fueled power plants:

In 2008, power plants were responsible for 66 percent of SO2 [sulfur dioxide] emissions, 19 percent of NOx [smog-forming nitrogen oxides] emissions, and 72 percent of toxic mercury emissions in the U.S. – not to mention that the electric industry also pumps out nearly 40 percent of the nation’s heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions.

A recent Clean Air Watch survey noted that no fewer than 40 states and the District of Columbia have experienced unhealthful levels of smog so far this year.

The Obama EPA hopes to put the cleanup concept on a sound legal footing by limiting the amount of emission trading. Anyone interested in clean air should hope this plan holds up in court. EPA projects the plan could prevent up to 36,000 premature deaths a year – and bring monetary benefits of at least $120 billion a year – at an annual cost of about $2.2 billion.

It is a big step towards taming the environmental monster known as the coal-fired power plant. But it is only the first step. EPA plans nest year to propose rules to limit mercury and other toxic emissions including arsenic, dioxins and hydrochloric acid. The power industry has been evading toxic pollution requirements for two decades.

EPA has also pledged to follow up with a subsequent interstate pollution rule, if needed, as it surely will be, to make further reductions in smog-forming power plant emissions after the agency moves to set tougher national health standards for ozone, or smog, as it plans to do by the end of the summer.

George Miller: Ban BP From US Drilling

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the former chairman of the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, is drafting legislation to prohibit the oil disaster giant BP from drilling in the outer continental shelf for the next five to seven years. In a hearing on Wednesday with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Michael Bromwich, the director of the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, Miller cited BP’s pattern of “dangerous, lethal behavior” in its refineries, pipelines, and drilling rigs in the United States. He noted that BP is expanding its offshore drilling not only into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico but also into pristine Alaska seas:

I’m sure they have the technical capabilities to do it. What I’m concerned about is the ethics of this company and how they have performed in the past, to measure their performance in the future. I think they should be debarred from participating in the outer continental shelf for five or seven years. It will have little or no impact on the supply of fossil fuels to this country.

Watch it:

“At some point, the American people are entitled to a standard,” Miller said. His legislation “would block the Interior secretary from issuing offshore leases to a company that is determined to be a danger to workers and natural resources based on a review of records for all subsidiaries and partnerships.”

House Republicans have come to the defense of BP and bashed Miller’s proposal: “Of course, this legislation would kill jobs and lower the supply of energy produced in the U.S. as companies are barred from developing American energy resources.”

Haley Barbour: ‘No One Has More To Lose In This Deal Than BP’

Although the BP oil disaster has killed 11 men, poisoned thousands of animals, and ruined the livelihoods of millions of Americans, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour (R-MS) still believes that the foreign oil giant has suffered the most. Gov. Barbour has dismissed this catastrophe from day one, comparing the toxic oil to “toothpaste” and worrying about the impact of paying damages on BP’s finances. In an interview with NPR on Thursday, Barbour brushed off the suggestion that the conservative ideology of deregulation should be reconsidered, saying that “the idea that more regulation is necessarily better, I think a very suspect idea.” In fact, Barbour cited the greatest environmental catastrophe in American history as proof that “the market system works,” saying that BP is the biggest victim “in this deal”:

I think right now every oil company in the world says, I don’t want to pay $100 million a day to cut corners on drilling a well. And that’s where I believe the market system works. Nobody’s got more to lose in this deal than BP.

Listen here:

“We’ve had a small amount of oil” reaching Mississippi, Barbour conceded, but he claimed that in “almost all the tourist areas, there hadn’t been one drop of oil.” Barbour’s fossil-fueled outlook is unhampered by the facts. Oil has been washing up on Mississippi’s barrier islands for a month now, and Barbour was at Republican fundraisers in Washington, DC, as major oil slicks reached Mississippi’s inner beaches last week. “Countless oil patties” have now washed ashore “along the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” including the major tourist beaches of Biloxi. Last night, “the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality closed the last open portion of Mississippi’s territorial marine waters” to all commercial and recreational fishing.

Unlike BP — whose 2009 revenues were $239 billion — Barbour’s constituents face the loss of their jobs, health, and homes. Fortunately, Barbour’s insensitivity is not shared by other Mississippi politicians. “The Gulf oil spill is devastating to Mississippi jobs and our way of life,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said Wednesday. “There are going to be long-term effects to be dealt with, that it is not just going to be oil on the beach today,” Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS) said Wednesday. “It is not just going to be this year’s shrimp, this year’s oyster crop.”

“I find myself dreaming of waves of brown oil,” said Kim Cheek, 47, a “social worker and musical director at Christ Episcopal Church in Bay St. Louis, MS,” who helped rebuild her church from the ground up after it was washed away by Hurricane Katrina five years ago.

“When you think about it all, how this has changed everybody’s life and how life here revolves around the water and the beach and the seafood — just even going to get a shrimp po-boy,” said Ocean Springs, MS marine scientist Harriet Perry after finding oil contaminating crab larvae, “it’s just overwhelming.”

(HT FireDogLake)

Meet Acadian Companies, The BP Disaster’s Private Medical Service

This post is part of the Wonk Room’s exclusive investigation of the private contractors working under BP’s control to respond to the foreign oil giant’s Gulf Coast disaster. The results of the investigation are being tracked at BP’s Contractor Army.

Although the public face of worker medical care has been the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and state agencies such as the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, the real work is being done by a private company working for BP and BP’s subcontractors. Anyone seeking treatment by the federal mobile medical unit run by HHS in Venice, LA, is “pre-screened by a private company hired by BP — Acadian Ambulance Services.”

Acadian Companies is an employee-owned company based in Lafayette, LA that runs Acadian Ambulance Service, the largest private rural ambulance service in the nation. Acadian’s subsidiaries — also including the health training service Safety Management Systems, the One Gulf call center, the Acadian Air Med Services helicopter fleet — have been deeply involved in the response to both the BP explosion and the cleanup.

Acadian’s Air Med, the One Gulf Offshore Emergency Call Center and Acadian Ambulance “played a key role in rescue efforts” after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, “transporting 18 of the workers injured in the blast to local New Orleans area and Alabama hospitals.”

As a subcontractor to Oil Mop, Acadian’s Safety Management Systems established a Mobile Medical Command Center in Fourchon headed by Bob Black. Subcontracting to US Environmental Services, Safety Management Systems and Acadian Ambulance established a second Mobile Medical Command Center in Pascagoula, MS. USES have “also contracted SMS paramedics Tony Mooney and Gerald Chauvin on a pair of cleanup vessels based out of Venice, LA.”

In a telephone conversation, Acadian vice president of public relations and marketing Keith Simon refused to answer the Wonk Room’s questions about his company’s activities. Simon cited the incident command structure which he said funnels all information through designated public information officers.

Global Boiling: Record June Heat Fells Robert Byrd, 18 Other Americans

Coal pollution may have felled Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), the longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate, at the age of 92. The aged giant of the Senate had been in declining health for years, but died last week after suffering from “symptoms of heat exhaustion” during Washington’s record heat wave:

Mr. Byrd, a 92-year-old Democrat from West Virginia, was admitted to an undisclosed hospital late last week with symptoms of heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as temperatures in the Washington area approached 100 degrees.

The record mid-Atlantic heat wave is part of the global boiling enveloping the planet, caused by greenhouse gases from coal and oil pollution. The increasingly deadly heat waves fueled by man-made global warming are a real threat to the health of Americans, especially the vulnerable elderly. The record heat in June — continuing to make 2010 the hottest year on record across the globe — has been identified as the killer at least 18 Americans across the nation:

June 2: PENNSYLVANIA A 50-year-old man wearing a heavy three-piece wool suit was found dead on a South Philadelphia street. At 88 degrees, the high temperature was 15 degrees above normal.

TENNESSEE A 47-year-old North Memphis woman was found dead in her home. She had last been seen alive on May 29. The high temperature of 92 degrees was 7 degrees above normal.

June 3: PENNSYLVANIA A 77-year-old man died in in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Wynnefield. At 89 degrees, the high temperatures was 15 degrees above normal.

June 19: TEXAS Anna Iovine, 79, died on her couch in North Dallas. At 98 degrees, the high was 9 degrees above normal.

June 20: TEXAS Dallas police “found the body of 73-year-old Rosie Mosley on her sofa” in southern Dallas. At 99 degrees, the high was ten degrees above normal.

June 21: TENNESSEE 70-year-old Robert Murry was killed in his Memphis home in the middle of an ongoing 23-day 90-plus heat wave.

June 23: TENNESSEE An “88-year old man was found dead in his North Memphis home.” The “high temperature was 95 degrees with a heat index over 100 degrees,” part of an ongoing 23-day 90-plus heat wave.

June 24: ARKANSAS “State health officials have recorded Arkansas’ first heat death of the year,” but “the state Health Department did not release details about the victim in an announcement today, citing patient confidentiality.” Little Rock suffered this month from 27 days of 90+ plus weather, more than twice the average.

June 25: TEXAS Rose Staubus, 73, was found dead in her Richardson, TX home, of high blood pressure and hyperthermia. She died on the 15th consecutive day of a 90-plus heat wave. Richardson, which normally has four days of 90-plus weather in June, had 26. Another Dallas-area resident was declared dead earlier in the month from heat exposure.

June 26: MARYLAND “Three heat-related deaths were reported in Maryland this week, as 90-degree temperatures ruled in the Washington region, and a 100-degree reading on Thursday broke a record that had stood for 116 years. Each of the people who died in Maryland was 65 or older and all had underlying health conditions, according to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. One of the three died in Montgomery County, and the other two were Baltimore County residents.”

June 28: CALIFORNIA Alfonso Zarate, 56, died of heat stroke in Arvin, CA “on a day when temperatures climbed as high as 107 degrees,” about 11 degrees above normal.

PENNSYLVANIA A “46-year-old woman was found dead in a first floor bedroom at a home” in Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane neighborhood. The high temperature of 96 was 13 degrees above normal.

PENNSYLVANIA An “88-year-old man was found dead in a first floor bedroom of a house in Germantown,” outside of Philadelphia.

June 29: MARYLAND Two senior citizens in Maryland, one in Cecil County and one in Prince George’s County, died of hyperthermia “as the mercury climbed past 90 degrees for the 11th consecutive day and the mark for the hottest June on record was tied.” The average high temperature in the region is seven degrees cooler.

If greenhouse gas pollution is not sharply reduced, most of the United States will bake under 90-plus heat waves that last the entire summer, either killing thousands more people or overloading our decrepit fossil-powered electricial network as those who can afford air conditioners use them.

GOP Put Party Over Planet, Claim Pollution Is Energy

The habitability of our planet is threatened by fossil-fueled politicians who can’t tell the difference between pollution and energy. After a White House meeting on energy reform this morning, Republican senators rejected President Obama’s call for a price on carbon pollution, repeating the Newt Gingrich lie that it would be a “national energy tax”:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “As long as we take a national energy tax off the table, there’s no reason we can’t have clean energy legislation.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “A cap-and-trade energy tax will not sell at this time. We’ve got to find a path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who refused to attend the meeting: “I wish the president would focus his attention on stopping the spill and cleaning it up instead of trying to use this crisis as an opportunity to push for a new national energy tax.”

These senators know they’re lying when they equate greenhouse gas pollution with “energy.” Their states are being ravaged by our overheated climate system, including the freak flooding of Nashville and Kentucky and the melting of Alaska’s tundra.

Murkowski is being especially disingenuous about finding a “path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.” Right now, American taxpayers are paying the costs of fossil fuel pollution — the destruction of our health, our oceans, and our climate — while corporate polluters like oil disaster giant BP rake in the profits.

The rhetoric of these climate peacocks who put party over planet can’t hide their track record of playing the willing stooge for pollution profiteers.