Climate Files 61 / Question the EPA
I attended the EPA Townhall Meeting and asked a good question. Everyone should question the EPA. Mine was about that nasty Canadian tar sands oil and the pipeline that is spilling oil into the beautiful northern part of one of the Great Lakes states. The EPA must not care very much about that, because they wouldn’t answer a simple question: how does a dirty oil pipeline fit in with the new green economy being promoted in the Great Lakes states? I like this EPA so much better than the last one, but it’s hard to believe it’s so easy to stump the EPA.
Also in this episode, what U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders said about climate change deniers, and what President Obama said about energy and climate in his speech to the business roundtable in Washington DC. Some headlines were covered too, including the exciting news about Bloom Energy, a new company making a revolutionary new type of stand-alone power station. It sounds almost too good to be true — fuel cells that run on oxygen and biomass? Yes, and it’s already being used by companies in Silicon Valley. Here is what I wrote about it on Futurism Now.
The Delta Institute website is here.
The EPA video page where you can watch the entire Townhall meeting from February 23rd is here.
News covered:
- Poor Nations Could Be Paid to Preserve Marine CO2: UN (Reuters)
- Curbing Smokestack Emissions Tops EPA’s 2011-2013 Enforcement Goals (Greenwire)
- Groups ID Toxic Coal Ash Sites in 14 States, Demand Regulations (ENN)
- Tackling Climate Change ‘Urgent,’ President Hu Jintao Says (China Daily)
- Italy Delays New Solar Plan Again, Industry Worried
- World’s Temperature Record To Be Re-analyzed (The Independent)
- Check out the Enbridge Pipeline in my Backyard blog.
- Waste could fuel part of Spain – read here.
- Did you hear about the 126,000 gallon oil spill in northern MN, the 2nd in months?
You can download this episode here, or subscribe on Climate Files Radio.
Final song is by Galactic, “Heart of Steel feat. Irma Thomas” from the MPR song of the day podcast.
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Climate Files 60 Special / The Gates Equation
This is a special edition of Climate Files of a highly anticipated talk by Bill Gates, who has come up with an equation you see in this graphic. He presented this at the latest TED conference during a short talk on February 12th. This was followed by a short Q&A at TED and on livestream.com. Gates says he’s happy to get Twitter questions, so visit his website and fire off some questions to him.
Gates discussed energy, his “equation”, and his goal in life at the TED conference — getting us to zero carbon by 2050. He feels this is doable in a variety of ways. (These are his ideas and are not necessarily endorsed by myself or by Climate Files, but they are interesting.) He is getting a large amount of criticism from some environmentalists for saying that we need an “energy miracle” and lots of tech development to solve the climate problem. As he defines “miracle”, I mostly agree with his ideas on climate change. (Read an article discussing this here.) He is promoting nuclear power and not just any nuclear power but specifically, a “traveling wave” type of nuclear power, which is being developed by a company called TerraPower.
Is Gates just another T. Boone Pickens trying to cash in? Nope, Gates actually does understand and believe in the importance of climate change and is really seeking zero carbon solutions, unlike Pickens.
If you are wondering what Gates is up to besides caring what happens to the atmosphere, you should know that he is personally investing his own money into these ideas. He is spending quite a bit of thought and some of his great wealth on thinking about not just seeds and malaria, but also zero-carbon energy. Check out another article from last Monday for more on what Gates is doing to promote zero carbon energy. “When we talk about zero climate emissions, we sound crazy. When Bill Gates does it, bankers pick up the phone,” from Alternet.
(This episode of Climate Files is sans commentary from yours truly because I’m on a working break, and the plan is that this podcast will still return to weekly or bi-monthly episodes at some point.)
Download this episode here — it’s a short one — or listen here or subscribe on the right. For an interesting graphic I found of Bill Gates after he left Microsoft, click on more. I wanted to include it for the cover art for the podcast but it needed the equation on it to make sense!
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Climate Files 59 / Wild Weather Wild Climate
The weather seems crazy everywhere, but what does that mean? 49 states in the U.S. got snow in the last week! It means climate change is happening right now and things are going to get much wilder. Find out how we know this and hear Todd Stern, U.S. climate envoy, talk about where the U.S. is going in dealing with climate change.
The Guardian on world-wide wild weather, article here.
Remember this? From NOAA at the end of January: December Global Ocean Temperature Second Warmest on Record. Scientists reported the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the eighth warmest on record for December.
In this episode you can hear excerpts from the Daily Show, the Rachel Maddow show, and the Thom Hartmann show. The bottom line on our wild weather is that it is to be expected, due to a warmer ocean, and moisture and energy in the atmosphere.
But as a result of recent storms, the Utah legislature passed a resolution (HRJ012) which basically states the climate change in a conspiracy and efforts to stop it will bankrupt the nation! Obviously this is not true, but science seems to be having a strange effect on some U.S. lawmakers.
As Scientific American says, “No single weather event proves or disproves the fundamental science of climate change, but extreme weather is what scientists expect from global warming.”
American Progress link to the whole Todd Stern presentation here. He talks about U.S. climate policy and what happened at Copenhagen. The new government climate change website is at Climate.gov and the EPA website where you can weigh in with the new Open Government Directive.
Download this episode here or subscribe on the right.
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Climate Files 58 / Climate Change Science
This episode is a presentation of climate science and how we know global warming is happening. The 3 speakers are all scientists and climate experts. This was titled the Science of Climate change, and was presented last week by the Center for American Progress. You can see the entire video at the CFAP website here. You can download their slides there also. (Michael MacCracken’s slides were especially good.)
Basically, they discuss climate change science and risk management, as well as some of the finer points on how the IPCC publishes its data. There is a question and answer session at the end. They write on the CFAP site:
An overwhelming quantity of direct observations and analyses published by scientists in various disciplines around the world demonstrates that human activity has warmed the planet and altered the climate. The severity of the projected impacts of continuing on our current greenhouse gas emissions path has only increased in recent years.
The speakers are Christopher Field, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, and a coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment. The second is Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute, and co-author/contributing author for various chapters in the IPCC assessment reports. The event was moderated by Joe Romm, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress and prolific blogger at ClimateProgress.org.
Some of their initial points about how we know climate change is happening:
- Average ground temperatures are going up
- Ocean temperatures are going up
- Sea ice cover is decreasing
- Mountain glaciers and permafrost are melting
- Sea level is rising
- A lot of plant and animal species are moving
- Arctic sea ice is retreating
You can download this episode here, or listen below or subscribe on the right.
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Climate Files 57 / Hacking the Climate
Mt. Pinatubo erupting in 1991
In his State of the Union Speech Obama last week, President Obama focused on Nukes, Offshore Drilling and Biofuels. A lot of people were bothered that he didn’t focus more on renewables. It seems that we can’t depend on the U.S. government to come to the rescue of the climate because they aren’t communicating the danger of climate change and they aren’t talking about how to stop it. In fact, they are mostly talking about jobs and the economy. So that leaves us with the same climate crisis we started with before the last election.
Ross Gelbspan is an author (his website here) and journalist who feels that it’s already too late to stop climate change. Based on his 15 years of research, he has released a recent video that tells us we need to act now and plan to adapt and survive. According to Gelbspan,
As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, are preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.
This brings up the idea of using geoengineering to help in a climate emergency. People involved in geoengineering research stress that it’s not a substitute for mitigating carbon emissions but that it’s tool of last resort. The question is, what kind of tool will it be, how can it be safely tested, and who should be making these decisions. They emphasize this is not a substitute for mitigation. Whether you think it’s good or bad, the research is expanding and growing right now.
CDR (carbon dioxide removal) and SRM (solar radiation management) are discussed in this episode according to recent articles in the journal Science. (Articles here and here). What are the risks of solar radiation management actions, which scientists feel would be potentially dangerous?
Bill Gates has been writing about climate change lately, and he’s putting his money where his keyboard is. He’s investing in stopping hurricanes with his new patent and is talking about what our climate change targets should be. (more info after the break)
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