February 2016 Climate Change Summary Report

“White House seeks billions for Arctic climate change response”

February 29, 2016: Washington Examiner reports: “The White House said Tuesday that it will include funding to help Alaska and the Arctic cope with the challenging effects of climate change as part of its fiscal year 2017 budget request. The biggest piece of its climate spending proposal comes from a $2 billion fund to help coastal communities deal with sea-level rise. Of that, $400 million will be allocated over 10 years ‘to cover the unique circumstances confronting vulnerable Alaskan communities, including relocation expenses for Alaska native villages threatened by rising seas, coastal erosion and storm surges,’ according to a White House fact sheet issued ahead of the main budget release.”

“Will we ever stop using fossil fuels?”

February 29, 2016: MIT News reports: “In recent years, proponents of clean energy have taken heart in the falling prices of solar and wind power, hoping they will drive an energy revolution. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor suggests otherwise: Technology-driven cost reductions in fossil fuels will lead us to continue using all the oil, gas, and coal we can, unless governments pass new taxes on carbon emissions. ‘If we don’t adopt new policies, we’re not going to be leaving fossil fuels in the ground,’ says Christopher Knittel, an energy economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. ‘We need both a policy like a carbon tax and to put more R&D money into renewables.’”

“Mainstream scientists say a warming ‘slowdown’ occurred”

February 26, 2016: E&E News reports: “The global warming ‘hiatus,’ a controversy that spawned congressional hearings and thousands of skeptical blog posts before being curbed last year, is back. The ‘hiatus’ refers to the observation that global warming has slowed in the past 15 years. The planet is still warming, but just not as quickly as some climate scientists expected it to. The debate between researchers and doubters reached a crescendo last summer, when scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated their temperature records and concluded that global warming has not slowed down in the 2000s. Now, a group of prominent climate scientists are challenging NOAA’s conclusion in a commentary published this week in Nature Climate Change.”

“As gas and renewables grow, should there be concern?”

February 26, 2016: E&E News reports: “In a country where wind, solar and natural gas seemingly own the future of power generation, one question hung in the air here yesterday. ‘Are we losing fuel diversity, and should we be concerned about that?’ Doug Giuffre, the moderator for an electric market panel at IHS CERAWeek, posed the query and added that regional transmission organizations and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission largely are fuel-neutral. He wondered if there could be a place for markets to put a value on diversity. It was an important question at an energy conference stuffed with speakers who debated what many see as an inevitable push toward electricity fueled by gas and renewables in a lower-carbon future. There was talk of what this would mean for reliability.”

“GOP senator says signing climate deal is ‘reckless’ for Obama”

February 25. 2016: The Hill reports: “A Republican senator is chastising the Obama administration’s decision to sign the Paris climate agreement following the Supreme Court’s delay of its leading climate change rule.   ‘I find the administration’s decision on signing this, the Paris climate deal, to be nothing short of reckless,’ Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said during an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Wednesday. ‘It’s like signing a loan for a luxury car after you’ve already been laid off, lost your job. Sure, it’s possible that you’ll be rehired, but there’s a strong likelihood that you’ll be out of work when the bills come due.’ The Obama administration’s top climate negotiator, Todd Stern, last week said the United States will follow through on its commitment to cut its carbon emissions under the Paris deal, regardless of the Supreme Court’s order blocking Obama’s climate rule for power plants while litigation against it moves forward.”

“EPA defiant despite court’s decision on climate rule”

February 25, 2016: Washington Examiner reports: “The Environmental Protection Agency brought an air of defiance to the largest energy conference of the year in Houston on Wednesday, saying a recent Supreme Court decision to halt President Obama’s climate plan, though jarring, will not slow the administration. ‘I don’t think we’re going to lose one single ton of greenhouse gas reductions,’ said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at IHS CERAWeek. While she admitted her ‘head hit the table’ when the Supreme Court made its Feb. 9 decision, she said she remains optimistic that the Clean Power Plan will emerge unscathed, according to the website FuelFix that reported her remarks from the conference. The plan is the centerpiece of Obama’s climate change agenda, which requires states to cut greenhouse gas emissions a third by 2030. Many scientists blame greenhouse gases for driving manmade climate change.”

“EPA emissions tally might affect Paris deal, methane rules”

February 25, 2016: E&E News reports: “A draft U.S. EPA inventory of greenhouse gas emissions has implications for the Paris climate deal and future U.S. regulations, industry and environmental observers said. One consultant warned that the inventory, by adjusting emissions calculations for previous years, showed there was an even bigger gap than previously thought between current U.S. emissions and reductions necessary for meeting the Paris agreement. The draft inventory is also significant concerning future methane emission regulations. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy today pledged the agency would not ignore that prior analyses lowballed methane emission estimates from the natural gas sector. However, environmentalists and industry leaders have strikingly different views on whether the inventory signals regulations are necessary for existing oil and gas operations.”

“No Time to Stay Quiet: the Clean Power Plan is Critical to Protect Public Health”

February 24, 2016: Kim Knowlton of the Natural Resources Defense Council writes: “The Clean Power Plan (CPP) has everything to do with limiting carbon pollution that causes climate change. Climate change is already harming human health, right in our backyards. Burning fossil fuels is the #1 source of heat-trapping carbon pollution that causes climate change. The added benefit of CPP is trimming other nasty health-harming pollution emitted at the same time as carbon pollution. There’s an enormous body of scientific evidence that connects the dots between climate change and our health. The Third US National Climate Assessment makes this clear. There’s people’s personal experience – with 2015 the hottest year ever recorded globally, and 15 of the 16 hottest years ever having occurred in the 21st century. In recent years, we’ve witnessed (or lived through) extreme heat, precipitation extremes from drought to heavy downpours, historic wildfires, emerging infectious diseases, sea level rise and coastal storms flooding cities and towns.”

“EPA: US greenhouse gas emissions increased slightly in 2014”

February 23, 2016: The Hill reports: “American greenhouse gas emissions increased by less than 1 percent in 2014, according to new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data released this week.  In the draft version of the EPA’s annual greenhouse gas report, the agency said emissions in the U.S. increased by 0.9 percent between 2013 and 2014 after a 2.2 percent increase the previous year. The EPA blamed the increase on higher fossil fuel consumption in the energy and transportation sectors. A cool winter in 2014 lead to more residential and commercial heating needs, the agency said, and a rise in industrial production meant more emissions there. Americans travelled more miles in vehicles, the agency said, which coincided with a small bump in emissions in the transportation sector.”

“Most Canadians don’t think climate change is manmade”

February 23, 2016: Washington Examiner reports: “Most Canadians do not believe climate change is the result of human activity, such as from the burning of fossil fuels, according to new research released Monday. The joint study by Canadian and U.S. researchers showed that 56 percent of America’s northern neighbors aren’t convinced that the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere is manmade, although 79 percent of the country believes climate change is occurring. Many scientists believe greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is causing the Earth’s temperature to rise, resulting in more severe weather, droughts and sea-level rise. The poll, the first to be conducted across all the country’s provinces, is being released ahead of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate change summit early next month, according to Montreal University.”

“What Would The Administration’s $10 Oil Tax Do To The Economy And Federal Revenue?”

February 23, 2016: The Tax Foundation reports: “In its newly released budget plan, the Obama Administration calls for an additional tax on oil of $10 per barrel. A budget document explains that the tax would actually be the ‘equivalent of $10.25 per barrel of crude oil” and that the tax rate would be indexed to inflation. The tax would be assessed on domestic and imported oil but exempt exported oil. The Administration says much of the oil tax’s revenue would be used to help fund a proposed ‘21st Century Clean Transportation Plan” and 15 percent of the revenue would finance expanded federal aid to low-income families with high energy costs. According to an Administration Fact Sheet, the 21st Century Clean Transportation Plan is based on the premise that, in the President’s words, ‘no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.’”

“UN links climate change to Zika, Ebola”

February 22, 2016: The Hill reports: “The United Nations is urging action on climate change as a way to prevent the spread of diseases like Ebola and the Zika virus.  In a speech this week, the executive director of the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP) said officials should take a more aggressive stance toward climate change, highlighting studies that show nearly a quarter of premature deaths around the world can be attributed to environmental problems.  ‘The spread of Zika, just as with Ebola, has sent a strong signal to the international community that there is a need for increased attention to the linkages between environment and health,’ UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said on Thursday.”

“Climate rule opponents blast ‘audacious assertion’ of EPA’s authority”

February 22, 2016: Washington Examiner reports: “The Environment Protection Agency’s climate rules for power plants are the most ‘audacious’ in the history of the agency, argued more than two dozen states, industry, unions, trade groups and others in a massive legal brief filed Friday night in federal appeals court. The brief is the opening shot in a legal process that will ultimately decide the fate of President Obama’s climate legacy. ‘EPA’s audacious assertion of authority in this rule is more far-reaching than any previous effort by the agency,’ the mega-brief reads in opposing the agency’s Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the president’s climate agenda. The plan directs states to cut greenhouse gas emissions a third by 2030, which the plaintiffs say is next to impossible to meet, and will result in the shuttering of much of states’ fossil fuel power plants, to be replaced by renewables.”

“Obama climate envoy warns against pulling out of Paris deal”

February 19, 2016: The Hill reports: “There will be ‘diplomatic consequences’ if the next president pulls the United States out of the Paris climate deal, President Obama’s top climate negotiator said on Thursday. Speaking in London, Todd Stern compared that prospect to when former President George W. Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol, a Clinton-era climate deal designed to slice emissions around the world. ‘There was a lot of blowback that the U.S. got, generally, diplomatically across the range of diplomatic concerns, and I have no doubt that it would be very significant if the U.S. were to do that with regard to Paris, probably much, much more significant than what happened before,’ Stern said, according to BBC News. ‘There is a record there that you can look at to have a pretty good sense that there would be diplomatic consequences,’ he said.”

“Why the U.S. is cutting carbon emissions no matter what happens with the Supreme Court”

February 18, 2016: Washington Post reports: “Last week, the Supreme Court threw U.S. and international climate policy into turmoil by freezing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan while it is being challenged before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. But matters took a turn over the weekend with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose absence from the high court could mean that the plan will ultimately survive. ‘If Scalia’s seat remains vacant when the Clean Power Plan reaches the high court, a 4-4 vote would result in an automatic affirmance of the D.C. Circuit’s decision on the rule,’ says Jack Lienke, an attorney with the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, by email. “We can’t know what the D.C. Circuit will decide, but supporters of the Clean Power Plan are optimistic — both because the D.C. Circuit panel, unlike the Supreme Court, denied motions to stay the rule and because the three-judge panel includes two Democratic appointees.’”

“Carbon capture and storage has a future”

February 18, 2016: An op-in the Daily Texan by Jackson School of Geosience writer Juli Berwald states: “We know that carbon dioxide can be injected and stored underground safely. Carbon dioxide has been injected into more than 100 locations globally over the past four decades; many of these locations have been extensively studied. In scientific, peer-reviewed literature, results published reveal the carbon dioxide is retained where it is stored. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, federal and state laws regulate site characteristics and operational practices for all injection wells in the U.S., including those that inject carbon dioxide. There are few failures in correctly implementing these requirements, but these errors have been sparse, non-catastrophic, successfully remediated and build confidence that underground storage of carbon dioxide can be conducted safely under existing regulation.”

“Op-Ed: The Benefits of Fossil Fuels”

February 16, 2016: An op-ed in Penn Energy by Brandt Energy president Geoff Mitchell states: “It is becoming increasingly evident in the media there is an ideological and political war going on against civilization’s use of fossil fuels. A war that has escalated to a ‘takes no prisoners’ stage and is solely focused on leaving the raw forms of extractable fossil fuels such as coal, crude oil and natural gas ‘in the ground.’ The ‘alternative energy sources’, wind, solar and tidal, being proposed by the anti-fossil fuel warriors for ‘a sustainable energy future’ are in reality expensive to build, have a low energy density and have intermittent availability. Further, they are generally assumed by many to be reliable and ‘free energy’ when energy from wind that blows 30-35% of the time, the sun with solar energy available in the northeast only 13-15% of the time, and, wave/tidal current sources that only reach full output capacity for a few hours each day.”

“Backers of Obama carbon rule see window in Supreme Court rebalancing”

February 16, 2016: E&E News reports: “The death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has sparked a tidal wave of speculation over what a rebalancing of the court and political chaos around Scalia’s replacement means for U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Scalia, 79, was famous for his strict interpretation of the Constitution and aversion to programs aimed at expanding the reach of the executive branch. He stuck with the court’s conservative wing last Tuesday in a 5-4 decision freezing the Obama administration’s landmark climate program while legal challenges move forward in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.”

“World reacts to Obama power policy in limbo”

February 12, 2016: Climatewire reports: “The White House took a step away yesterday from the U.S. EPA rule it built its second-term climate agenda around, saying America could meet its Paris commitments even if the Supreme Court ultimately throws it out. In remarks the day after the high court unexpectedly stayed the Clean Power Plan — delaying it for a year or longer — White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One that Obama’s legacy rule is not the only way the United States could meet its commitments to the global climate deal. ‘There are driving forces that will allow the United States to meet its commitment outside of the Clean Power Plan rule,’ he said… But from Africa to the Indian Ocean, diplomats who negotiated in Paris reacted to news of the stay with concern. While some expressed optimism that the United States will meet its 2025 commitment, others said the suspended rule throws U.S. leadership into serious doubt.”

“Climate Change Confusion in the Classroom”

February 12, 2016: Scientific American reports: “Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change is driven by human action, but middle- and high-school teachers seem to have missed that message. The majority of teachers are not aware of this consensus and teach climate change as an ongoing debate in the scientific community. Research published in this week’s Science indicates that although climate change is widely covered by schools throughout the U.S., the novelty of the field combined with surrounding political tensions can leave teachers lost as to what, exactly, they need to teach.”

“Supreme Court climate fight shakes up Senate races”

February 11, 2016: The Hill reports: “The Supreme Court’s halting of the Obama administration’s chief climate rule is a new spark in the race for the Senate. Democrats and greens, who have long hoped to make climate change a flashpoint in November’s elections, say the court’s 5-4 stay order putting a hold on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan gives them a chance to make a strong case to voters in their push to win back the Senate this fall. Republicans and energy industry strategists say they’re equally enthusiastic to use the case — which hinges on whether the Obama administration exerted too much authority over carbon emissions — to make a point about executive overreach and its support among Democrats. The Senate is especially important for climate regulations. If the Supreme Court blocks the rule — a prospect for which opponents are bullish after the stay order — legislation would likely be the only way to go about instituting a carbon reduction plan.”

“With oil fee, Obama shows plan for sector-by-sector carbon price: Kemp”

February 11, 2016: Reuters reports: “…The administration’s oil fee looks very much like an increase in fuel tax, currently levied at the rate of 18.4 cents per gallon on motor gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel. Congress has repeatedly declined to raise fuel taxes, which have remained essentially unchanged since October 1993. The proposed fee seems to be a backdoor attempt to increase fuel taxes and has almost no chance of being enacted. Instead it should be seen as trialing the administration’s longer-term ambition to impose a series of sectoral carbon prices to discourage fossil fuel consumption, boost clean energy and cut emissions.”

“The Court Blocks Efforts to Slow Climate Change”

February 10, 2016: The New York Times editorializes: “The Supreme Court’s extraordinary decision on Tuesday to temporarily block the Obama administration’s effort to combat global warming by regulating emissions from power plants was deeply disturbing on two fronts. It raised serious questions about America’s ability to deliver on Mr. Obama’s pledge in Paris in December to sharply reduce carbon emissions, and, inevitably, about its willingness to take a leadership role on the issue… While the court’s action was not a ruling on the merits of the case, it will delay efforts to comply with the regulation and sends an ominous signal that Mr. Obama’s initiative, known as the Clean Power Plan, could ultimately be overturned.”

“A Supreme Carbon Rebuke”

February 10, 2016: An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal states: “When President Obama hasn’t had his way on climate, immigration and so much else, he’s rewritten the law and dared critics to stop him. Well, the Supreme Court has accepted his invitation with an extraordinary rebuke. On Tuesday the High Court put a legal stay on the Administration’s rules to control carbon emissions in the states, known as the Clean Power Plan, pending judicial review. Challengers seeking stays must overcome fearsome legal criteria, and they are rarely granted. Yet for the first time five Justices blocked what’s known as a ‘generally applicable regulation.’ The one-page order prohibits the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing the Clean Power Plan until the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on the merits, presumably with the Supreme Court as the final word. The Clean Power Plan nominally applies to power plants, but the EPA is instructing states to reorganize their energy economies across industries and even households.”