This morning the U.S. Department of the Interior released new draft regulations on oversight of natural gas drilling on public lands.  The rule specifically addresses  public disclosure of drilling chemicals, well-construction techniques, and “flowback” water that returns to the surface after drilling.

This rule will only apply to public lands, where about 3,400 wells per year are hydraulically fractured.  Public lands produce 20% of the nation’s natural gas.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued a press release today:

“…it is critical that the public have full confidence that the right safety and environmental protections are in place. The proposed rule will modernize our management of well stimulation activities – including hydraulic fracturing – to make sure that fracturing operations conducted on public and Indian lands follow common-sense industry best practices.”

The Interior Department should be commended for modernizing rules that were last updated in 1988 — in particularly for creating new provisions that strengthen the government’s ability to regulate the construction and oversight of wells.  However, the rule lacks a handful of basic public right-to-know measures.

It would require natural gas drillers to disclose the chemicals being used after the fracking has taken place, not beforehand.  This makes baseline testing of water quality nearly impossible, as local communities will be unable to know what exactly to test for.  As Center for American Progress Chairman and Counselor John Podesta put it:

“Disclosure after the fact not only jeopardizes public health but effectively cuts the public out of discussions that affect their communities.”

Additionally, the Interior Department is “working with” the Groundwater Protection Council to determine whether the actual public listing of chemicals can be done on its FracFocus.org website.  The Groundwater Protection Council is comprised of state oil and gas regulators, who often find themselves both promoting drilling and policing it.  A recent investigation by Greenwire found that 40% of state oil and gas regulators have financial ties to the industry.

Hydraulic fracturing is a natural gas drilling technique that involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals underground in order to help stimulate wells. Whether or not chemicals used in the drilling process can contaminate water has been the subject of intense debate.  The Environmental Protection Agency recently found at least one instance where hydraulic fracturing was implicated in drinking water contamination. That report was backed up by an independent analysis.

The Interior Department should require companies to disclose the chemicals that they will use before hydraulic fracturing takes place, as well as make the lists available on a public website.

In addition to these standards, long term natural gas development could be made more safe if exemptions from various federal environmental laws are repealed, the National Academy of Sciences conducts a lifecycle study of natural gas’ greenhouse gas emissions relative to coal, and EPA’s voluntary Natural Gas Star program for methane is made mandatory.

Jessica Goad is Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress.

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

by Anthony Swift, via NRDC’s Switchboard

The State Department announced that it has received an application from TransCanada for a Presidential Permit for the northern segment of its proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that the President rejected back in January.

Keystone XL would carry 830,000 barrels a day of tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. Tar sands are the world’s dirtiest form of oil, require a devastating process that lays waste to forests to extract tar sands bitumen, a thick low grade fuel that has significantly higher emissions that conventional crude.

Tar sands pipelines also appear to pose higher risks – both in number and severity of pipeline spills. Keystone XL would grant tar sands a route through America’s heartland on its way to the international market. It would raise U.S. oil prices, put our waters and farms in jeopardy of hard to clean up tar sands oil spills, and would increase our dependence on oil – worsening climate change and undermining efforts to move to clean energy.

A new application means a new review process. The environmental review for the Keystone XL process must evaluate climate, water, land, and health impacts not only of the pipeline, but of the tar sands extraction, refining and end use. The national interest determination for this transboundary energy project has to assess whether the pipeline is really needed to meet U.S. security, economic, environmental or other goals. The world of oil and our understanding of the dangers of tar sands have changed since the first time TransCanada applied for a permit for Keystone XL back in 2008. The process for evaluating this permit request needs to be thorough, rigorous, transparent and free from conflicts of interest.

So once TransCanada reapplies, what can we expect?

The process for considering whether to permit an international energy project like the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is governed by Executive Order 13337. This order empowers the State Department to consider applications for Presidential Permits, in consultation with other federal agencies and the public. The Executive Order instructs the State Department to only grant Presidential Permits for projects that are in the U.S. national interest.

However, before the State Department can make a Presidential Permit decision, it must first conduct a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review of the impacts of the pipeline and assess reasonable alternatives. NEPA requires that Federal agencies prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) before making a decision that would trigger significant environmental impacts. Keystone XL would have tremendous environmental impacts – from the expansion of destructive tar sands extraction, the risk of tar sands spills across U.S. rivers and aquifers and increased refinery and greenhouse gas emissions.

The first step in the NEPA process will be to consult with government agencies, Indian tribes and the public to determine the scope and content of the environmental review for Keystone XL.  This is an opportunity to correct issues of objectivity, transparency and conflicts of interest which plagued the first environmental review prepared by Cardno-Entrix. The environmental review for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline should have a broad scope – including a consideration of the need for the project given numerous recent infrastructure proposals, the impacts of increase tar sands extraction in Canada associated with Keystone XL, pipeline safety issues, increased refineries emissions, increased carbon emissions associated with replacing conventional crude with tar sands, and the economic costs of continued dependence on Canadian tar sands. The review should take a hard look at areas not considered in the narrow scope of the environmental review of the earlier Keystone XL application as well as consider information about pipeline safety, species, and other areas of impact that have come to light since the review was last done on the earlier application. The review should incorporate the results of other relevant assessments such as the upcoming National Academy of Sciences study of the impact of diluted bitumen or raw tar sands oil on pipeline safety.

The impartiality of original EIS for Keystone XL prepared by Cardno-Entrix on TransCanada’s behalf has been too undermined by conflicts of interest to recycle. In the case of Keystone XL, the environmental review was done by a company that was both paid for and under contract to TransCanada to provide an EIS. It is true that federal agencies often hire third party contractors to conduct an environmental review and the costs are ultimately paid for by the project applicant. In this case, however, TransCanada appears to have largely cut the State Department out of the entire process, having selected, paid for and contracted to Cardno-Entrix to provide an environmental review for Keystone XL.

While an Inspector General (IG) investigation of conflicts of interest between the State Department and TransCanada didn’t find evidence of illegal activity, doing a job well enough to avoid going to jail is not always the same thing as doing a job well.  The IG found that the State Department’s “limited technical resources, expertise and experience impacted the implementation of the NEPA process,” forcing the Department to rely more on its third party contractor to address environmental issues. Given that its third party contractor was actually under contract to TransCanada, the problems with the EIS quickly become apparent. Ultimately, the IG concluded that EIS was not effective. Given the concerns with Keystone XL, the State Department should start from the drawing board and conduct a rigorous environmental review in which  the American public can have confidence.  This argues for a more major role being given to the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies with specialized experience in different aspects of the assessment process.

After the scope of the environmental review has been determined, the State Department will begin to prepare a draft EIS. This review should include a rigorous review of environmental and cultural impacts of the Keystone XL project. Throughout this process, the State Department must take diligent efforts to involve interested stakeholders – and that means public meetings along the pipeline route that allows affected communities to provide input during the scoping process and comment on the draft EIS.

After the environmental review process, the State Department will consider the whether the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is in the U.S. national interest. The National Interest Determination process is governed by Executive Order 13337 and should consider the significant environmental impacts of tar sands extraction, the risk of pipeline spills, higher refinery emissions, and the economic consequence of dependence on tar sands. The world of oil supply and transportation has changed rapidly in the United States even over the last year with additional U.S. oil reserves coming online and new pipelines being built within the United States. Both the environmental review and the national interest determination will need to consider new factors that go directly to the question of whether we need Keystone XL and whether it is actually in the U.S. national interest.

A rigorous review of Keystone XL will show that this tar sands pipeline is not in the U.S. national interest. It is not a pipeline to the United States but a pipeline through it, putting America’s heartland, rivers and aquifers at risk so tar sands producers can sell their product to international buyers at higher prices. While that may be in the interests of tar sands producers and their financial backers, it’s not in the interest of the American public.

Anthony Swift is an attorney with the international program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. This piece was originally published at NRDC’s Switchboard and was reprinted with permission.

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

Felipe Calderón stands in front of a wind farm in Mexico.

by Jeffrey Cavanagh

Since Mexico’s legislative body passed sweeping climate change legislation on April 19, Mexico joins the UK as the only two countries in the world with legally binding emissions goals to combat climate change.

The new law will reduce the country’s carbon emissions, end fossil fuel subsidies, and establish a voluntary carbon trading market. This law builds on Mexico’s previous commitments to action on climate change, and reflects on the country’s green leadership on the international stage it prepares to host the upcoming G20 leaders’ summit in June.

Adrián Fernández, a consultant for the Latin American Initiative and former President of the National Ecology Institute, recently discussed the importance of Mexico’s new climate change law during a briefing 2012 by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington DC:

[Mexico] now has a framework that allows governments at national and local levels to set aside budgets with clear earmarks towards climate change, and to create new investments for climate mitigation and adaptation … pushing [Mexico] into the spotlight and, under international scrutiny, [Mexico] will be held accountable to its people and the international community.

After several years of debate and revision, the bill passed Mexico’s lower house on April 12, with a vote of 128 for and 10 against. Mexico’s Senate unanimously passed the legislation on April 19, and President Felipe Calderon, who has championed immediate action to stop global warming, is expected to sign the bill into law soon.

As President Calderon prepares to host the next G20 summit in June, his administration will make climate change and sustainable development “priorities” during the meeting under a broad Green Growth theme. With 75 percent of the world’s GDP, the G20 is responsible for 75 percent of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Bringing together finance ministers from these countries is essential for putting sustainability at the core of economic recovery and for figuring out how to mobilize significant resources for international climate finance.

Today, Mexico is the only developing country in the world to have passed binding climate change legislation.

While the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) designates Mexico a “non-Annex I country,” or a developing country — thus not requiring it to make greenhouse gas reduction targets — Mexico’s non-Annex I status is not reflective of its economic size (11th) or contribution to global greenhouse gasses (also 11th).

Given its size and commitment to sustainable growth, Mexico is well positioned to facilitate cooperation among major developing countries such as China and industrialized countries like the United States as they seek consensus on international climate finance during the upcoming summit.

UNFCCC talks have previously stalled with industrialized and developing countries “locked into definitions” that hinder global cooperation. Mexico can use the G20 Summit to build on its previous success from the 2010 UN talks in Mexico that resulted in the Cancun Agreements.  By passing climate law legislation, Mexico is acting demonstrating continuing leadership on sustainable development on the international stage.

According to Rodrigo Gallegos, the Director of Climate and Technology at the Mexico Institute for Competitiveness, and representative for the business community who also participated in the briefing, the climate legislation will simplify emissions regulations throughout the country and set a new institutional and regulatory framework that will create more certainty for Mexico’s business environment. As a result, Mr. Gallegos notes, Mexico’s business sector is supporting the climate change law:

Most of the private sector and chamber are in favor of the law and have changed positions over the last two years. So, having said that, there is a very positive sense of perception of the law among businesses.

Mr. Gallegos believes that with reduced long-term investment uncertainty, Mexico can become a destination for green technology and innovation.

As a backdrop to Mexico’s G20 summit and climate change legislation, the country is concurrently dealing with one of the worst droughts on record for several areas of the country. More than half of Mexico’s territory is experiencing drought, and over 3.7 million acres of farmland have been lost. The federal government has spent billions of dollars on food, water, and other aid relief in some of the most afflicted areas in 19 of Mexico’s 31 states. Severe drought is one of the most pressing problems caused by climate change — likely severely hindering global food production over the coming decades.

Mexico’s climate legislation may not bring sorely needed rain in the immediate future. But it is a great step in the right direction for international climate sustainability.

Jeffrey Cavanagh is an intern with the international climate team at the Center for American Progress. Policy analyst Rebecca Lefton contributed to this report.

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post extra links below.

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted. [ProPublica]

Scientific models are failing to accurately predict the impact of global warming on plants, says a new report. [BBC]

Tariffs enforce WTO rules and protect U.S. solar manufacturers, but could also drive up solar costs or touch off a U.S.-China trade war. Center for American Progress China energy and policy analyst Melanie Hart and Grape Solar founder Ocean Yuan debated the wisdom of tariffs at the GTM solar summit. [Greentech Media]

If the mainstream media won’t connect the dots, then it’s up to the rest of us to try. This Saturday, 350.org’s global network of volunteers, activists, and organizations are hosting over 1,000 events in more than 100 countries to “connect the dots” between extreme weather and climate change. [Huffington Post]

South Korea’s Parliament approved Wednesday a long-delayed bill to start trading carbon-dioxide emissions in 2015, paving the way for Korea to become one of the first Asian countries to implement a nationwide cap-and-trade system. [Wall Street Journal]

A new paper in the prestigious science journal Nature assesses one of the big questions in ecology today: How do species extinctions rack up compared to other global change issues like global warming, ozone holes, acid rain, and nutrient pollution (overfertilization)? [Mother Jones]

Another long, stupefyingly hot summer is looming for Japan just as it shuts down its last operating nuclear power reactor, worsening a squeeze on electricity and adding urgency to calls for a green energy revolution. [Washington Post]

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

Headlines are important because research shows that most newspaper readers don’t get much beyond them. And NY Times headlines sweep across the internet through twitter, facebook, news aggregators and search engines.  Probably 10 to 50 times as many people see the headlines as read any substantial portion of the story.

So when the New York Times publishes a front-page piece eviscerating Dr. Richard Lindzen and his “discredited” theory — the NYT’s word — that the cloud feedback could somehow save us from catastrophic global warming, it ought to have a better headline than “Clouds’ Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters.”

Even worse, the heavily-trafficked front page of the NY Times website has this teaser for the piece:

Again, far more people are going to read this teaser — written by the editors, not the reporter — than actually read the story. What they are going to come away with is the notion that climate skeptics aka deniers aka disinformers have legitimate arguments that might “save us.”

Obviously nothing could be further from the truth, especially when it comes to the discredited Dr. Lindzen. As the article notes:

When Dr. Lindzen first published this theory, in 2001, he said it was supported by satellite records over the Pacific Ocean. But other researchers quickly published work saying that the methods he had used to analyze the data were flawed and that his theory made assumptions that were inconsistent with known facts. Using what they considered more realistic assumptions, they said they could not verify his claims.

Today, most mainstream researchers consider Dr. Lindzen’s theory discredited. He does not agree, but he has had difficulty establishing his case in the scientific literature. Dr. Lindzen published a paper in 2009 offering more support for his case that the earth’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases is low, but once again scientists identified errors, including a failure to account for known inaccuracies in satellite measurements.

Dr. Lindzen acknowledged that the 2009 paper contained “some stupid mistakes” in his handling of the satellite data. “It was just embarrassing,” he said in an interview. “The technical details of satellite measurements are really sort of grotesque.”

Last year, he tried offering more evidence for his case, but after reviewers for a prestigious American journal criticized the paper, Dr. Lindzen published it in a little-known Korean journal.

The reporter, Justin Gillis, has done a fine job here. What could be clearer than “most mainstream researchers consider Dr. Lindzen’s theory discredited”?

But why should a reader have to wade through many, many paragraphs to learn that this “last bastion” is nothing more than a “Potemkin village”? Again, “bastion” is a very strong image that should not be applied to something as flimsy as the house of cards that is Lindzen’s discredited theory.

Indeed, the recent scientific literature includes multiple studies that conclude clouds are likely to be an amplifying feedback, not one that reduces impacts:

• Science: “Clouds Appear to Be Big, Bad Player in Global Warming” — an amplifying feedback (sorry Lindzen and fellow disinformers)
• Major Science study: Observations confirm “the short-term cloud feedback is likely positive”
• Journal of Climate: New cloud feedback results “provide support for the high end of current estimates of global climate sensitivity

Lindzen himself has been debunked by some of the leading climate scientists in the country (see Lindzen debunked again: New scientific study finds his paper downplaying dangers of human-caused warming is “seriously in error”). Climatologist Kevin Trenberth said in 2010 of one paper co-authored by Lindzen that the flaws “have all the appearance of the authors having contrived to get the answer they got.”

This is hardly the first time the NY Times has ruined a good climate story with a lousy headline — see “Crappy Headline” Ruins New York Times Story on Link Between Climate Change and Extreme Weather. In that case, the headline was “Scientists See More Deadly Weather, but Dispute the Cause.” The author of that piece, John Broder called it a “crappy headline.”  He said of the two scientists he spoke to and quoted — NOAA’s Thomas R. Karl and NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth — “they don’t dispute the cause.” Doh!

I get that even the NY Times is under pressure to write headlines that will appeal to the most people, headlines that suggest controversy and dispute. But such headlines are inappropriate for articles whose actual content does not reflect controversy and dispute. It is time for the paper to review its headline policy, at least on climate, and, I think, give reporters some sort of a veto power.

We’ve seen the lousy headlines. What headline would you suggest?

One final point. The other reason that only slashing greenhouse gas emissions — not having your head in the clouds — can “save us” is that there are many, many more documented amplifying feedbacks poised to kick in if we keep taking no action:

• NSIDC bombshell: Thawing permafrost feedback will turn Arctic from carbon sink to source in the 2020s, releasing 100 billion tons of carbon by 2100
• Stunning Peatlands Amplifying Feedback: Drying Wetlands and Intensifying Wildfires Boost Carbon Release Ninefold
• The destruction of the tropical wetlands
• Decelerating growth in tropical forest trees — thanks to accelerating carbon dioxide
• Wildfires and Climate-Driven forest destruction by pests
• The desertification-global warming feedback

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

by Brad Johnson

When the Discovery Channel aired “On Thin Ice,” its Frozen Planet episode documenting changes in the Arctic, it conveniently left out human causes. The show’s producer told the New York Times she didn’t want people saying “don’t watch this show because it has a slant on climate change” – illustrating everything wrong with the conversation around climate change in America. This afternoon, I and other members of Forecast the Facts delivered a petition to the Discovery offices with 10,000 signatures demanding the organization correct this unscientific self-censorship:

We are deeply disappointed by your decision not to explain the science, and human causes, of global warming in the “On Thin Ice” episode of the Frozen Planet series. As the world’s leader in environmental programming, your decision sends a dangerous message to media companies around the world — that it is better to censor yourself than risk criticism by global warming deniers. We call on you to immediately acknowledge this error and to conduct a review of all Discovery programming decisions to ensure no such self-censorship happens again.

As I and other members of Forecast the Facts, scientists Steve Scolnick and Clarence Maloney, entered the Discovery headquarters in Silver Spring, MD, we were greeted by a security officer in the vestibule. Corporate Security Manager David Sterner told us that no-one in communications, production, or viewer relations was or would be available to accept the petition, nor were we welcome even into the main lobby. However, he did personally guarantee that the 10,000 signatures and the letter addressed to Discovery chairman John Hendricks would be delivered on our behalf.

It is an essential fact that burning fossil fuels is the cause of the melting poles. As Bill McKibben noted, “On Thin Ice” is no different than a documentary on the ravages of lung cancer that censored mention of cigarettes. The pursuit of profit is not a valid excuse for the censorship of science. Neither is the fear of reprisal from well funded polluters.

Faced with a gross failure of leadership on climate pollution by those in power, average citizens are mobilizing to demand honesty and action. But they’re not the only ones. Today also marks the start of the inaugural science policy conference of the American Geophysical Union, a response by the leading organization of earth scientists to the increasing disconnect between the facts of science and the decisions made by politicians and corporations. The central topic of today’s sessions? The rapidly changing Arctic.

Brad Johnson is campaign manager for Forecast the Facts.

To add your voice to the petition calling on Discovery Communications to stop the self-censorship of climate science, click here.

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

by Francesco Femia & Caitlin Werrell, via The Center for Climate and Security

The world is suddenly paying attention to the oft-ignored North African country of Mali, as it is racked by its most recent in a long string of crises: a coup d’etat. This political and constitutional crisis sits atop an already extremely vulnerable situation – a volatile mix of climate change, drought, food shortages, migration and immobility, armed insurrection and heavy weapons proliferation that threaten to plunge the country into a state of instability not unlike Somalia. As the international community, including the UN Security Council, moves to act on this crisis, it will be important to consider all the identifiable sources of Mali’s insecurity in order to get the solutions right.

From model to mayhem?

Mali has been described by some as a benchmark country in Africa, where democracy had put down healthy roots over the past two decades. Yet on March 21, a military junta seized control of the government in Timbuktu, ousting the democratically-elected President Amadou Toumani Toure from power. The rationale, according to military spokespersons, was that the government had failed to put a lid on the separatist Tuareg rebellion in the north (a situation we covered in a previous blog.) Soon after, on April 4, the UNSC issued a strongly-worded Presidential statement condemning the coup, and urging military leaders to restore power to civilian control. Since then, the coup leaders have committed to a framework agreement “for the restoration of constitutional order in Mali,” but a positive outcome remains uncertain.

Insecurities under the surface

Despite some previous descriptions of Mali as a success story, significant tensions were seething under the surface all along. The coup came amidst a backdrop of a series of old, perennial insecurities in Mali, and recent ones created by rapid political changes in North Africa.

The first is the aforementioned armed rebellion led by nomadic Tuareg tribesmen, which has been calling for separation from the south for over two decades. In October of last year, these militants formed the the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), and proceeded to violently wrest control of a significant swathe of northeastern Mali, with no signs of slowing down. A few weeks following the coup, the Tuareg managed to seize the “major garrison towns city of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu,” prompting a chastened Malian military leadership to promise a handover to civilian control once elections could be held. As of today, the Tuareg control most of the country’s northern territory.

The second is the recent arrival of the Algerian Salafist offshoot, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), onto the Mali political scene. On April 4, the UN Security Council expressed serious concern about this entity, warning that Islamist extremists from AQIM and the Tuareg could take advantage of the instability caused by the coup to sow further chaos and advance sharia law.

The third is the result of the recent political instability and revolutionary changes in both Libya and Côte d’Ivoire. As highlighted by the Economist, these changes have led to both a proliferation of heavy weapons from Libya into Mali, and an exodus of Malians who once lived and worked in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire back to their home country. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the latter phenomenon has led to a severance of remittances for the families of emigrants, who relied on that money to sustain themselves, thus creating an atmosphere of desperation for both returnees and their families. Furthermore, as Libya’s recently-deposed ruler Muammar Gaddafi had given refuge to Tuareg militants, many of them have fled back to Mali, adding fuel to the separatist fire.

A fourth insecurity is the extended drought in Mali and the broader Western Sahel, which looms over all of the above, threatening to multiply the security and humanitarian breakdown even further.

Drought, climate change and immobility

Though much of the world wasn’t paying attention to Mali before the coup, the humanitarian community was. Late last year, organizations such as Oxfam warned of a drought in Mali, similar to the one that has plagued countries in the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East. Concerns were raised over the lack of international support for the country because of fatigue over massive humanitarian relief efforts in the Horn – particularly Somalia. The drought has proceeded apace, driving hundreds of thousands of Malians away from drought-stricken villages between February and March, according to the UN. And though the humanitarian community did an outstanding job of preparing for the drought, through early-warning and well-coordination preparation, they could not have been prepared for the rapid deterioration of the country’s political condition.

Enter climate change. Security analysts often refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” or “accelerant of instability” – a phenomenon that exacerbates a range of existing problems. Mali is a textbook case of this. As we mentioned recently in another piece on the Sahel, and as highlighted in a recent report by Michael Werz and Laura Conley at the Center for American Progress, climate change has been identified as a probable factor in the recent drought:

According to at least six studies of this phenomenon, highlighted by UNEP in 2006 (see page 3), “the second half of the 20th century has witnessed a dramatic reduction in mean annual rainfall throughout the region.” A 2005 NOAA report attributed the low rainfall to changes in sea surface temperature (likely caused by a combination of natural variability and human-induced change), and both a NOAA study in 2006, and another by Shanahan et al in 2009, attributed drought in the West African Sahel to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which is responsive to sea surface temperature changes.

And though influxes of migrants from nearby states are raising tensions, the drought also threatens to worsen the less-explored phenomenon of “trapped populations” in Mali. Given that Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, many of its people neither have the money, nor the connections, to freely move either within, or out of, the country. According to geographer Dave Thomas at Oxford University, “The people we should really be thinking about are…those who stay behind, who may wish to migrate but can’t…They are trapped, they are the most vulnerable.” Though it is of course important to address the concerns of both refugees and the immobile, this is an important and often overlooked problem in Mali and elsewhere, and drought can quickly lead to famine for these trapped populations (we previously discussed this phenomenon in an article titled: “No Way Out: Climate Change and Immobility”).

Focusing solutions on all identifiable drivers of unrest

Mali is an example of where the humanitarian community was prepared to deal with the predictable, but could not have prepared for the unpredictable – the rapid collapse of the country’s government and the subsequent advance of the Tuareg insurgents. This kind of uncertainty will probably never go away. However, a number of the drivers of instability in Mali, such as certain long-standing political grievances, the free flow of heavy weapons and international terrorist organizations, drought and the climatic changes that exacerbate that drought, can now be identified with a reasonably high degree of certainty. These should be the focus of national, regional and international efforts to resolve the conflict in Mali, reconstruct its institutions of government, and improve the security and resilience of its population.

Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell are Founding Directors of the Center for Climate and Security. This piece was originally published at The Center for Climate and Security and was re-printed with permission.

Related Post:

• Must-Read: Tom Friedman On Climate Change And ‘The Other Arab Spring’

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

Arizona Tea Partier Judy Burges wants to kill clean energy programs.

A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post other links below.

An Arizona Tea Party-backed bill that would gut government-run green programs in the state may have the support it needs to go before Gov. Jan Brewer (R). [Huffington Post]

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson says the Obama administration plans to take further action to combat climate change. [Boston Globe]

The Sierra Club said Thursday it will try to block an energy company’s plan to export liquefied natural gas to find new markets for the drilling boom that has flooded the Mid-Atlantic with natural gas. [Associated Press]

A “perfect storm” of economic and regulatory factors is driving major United States utilities to rapidly switch from coal to natural gas as an electric power source, the top executive of one of the nation’s largest utilities said on Thursday. [New York Times]

Energy ministers from around the world met in London this week and got a scolding. The International Energy Agency warned the ministers that they are falling way behind in their efforts to wean the world from dirty sources of energy. Nations are nowhere near being on track to avert significant climate change in the coming decades. [National Public Radio]

Shell will not be joining David Cameron’s crusade to attract private sector investment into creating a North Sea wind revolution despite its commitment to turbines in the US. [Guardian]

Peru became the latest developing country to enact a domestic climate change initiative in the absence of a binding global pact, adopting a resolution on Thursday to lower carbon emissions in its fast-growing economy. [Chicago Tribune]

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

Guest Commentary by Chris Colose, SUNY Albany

It has long been known that characteristics of the Earth’s orbit (its eccentricity, the degree to which it is tilted, and its “wobble”) are slightly altered on timescales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Such variations, collectively known as Milankovitch cycles, conspire to pace the timing of glacial-to-interglacial variations.

Despite the immense explanatory power that this hypothesis has provided, some big questions still remain. For one, the relative roles of eccentricity, obliquity, and precession in controlling glacial onsets/terminations are still debated. While the local, seasonal climate forcing by the Milankovitch cycles is large (of the order 30 W/m²), the net forcing provided by Milankovitch is close to zero in the global mean, requiring other radiative terms (like albedo or greenhouse gas anomalies) to force global-mean temperature change.

The last deglaciation occurred as a long process between peak glacial conditions (from ~26-20,000 years ago) to the Holocene (~10,000 years ago). Explaining this evolution is not trivial. Variations in the orbit cause opposite changes in the intensity of solar radiation during the summer between the Northern and Southern hemisphere, yet ice age terminations seem synchronous between hemispheres. This could be explained by the role of the greenhouse gas CO₂, which varies in abundance in the atmosphere in sync with the glacial cycles and thus acts as a “globaliser” of glacial cycles, as it is well-mixed throughout the atmosphere. However, if CO₂ plays this role it is surprising that climatic proxies indicate that Antarctica seems to have warmed prior to the Northern Hemisphere, yet glacial cycles follow in phase with Northern insolation (“INcoming SOLar radiATION”) patterns, raising questions as to what communication mechanism links the hemispheres.

There have been multiple hypotheses to explain this apparent paradox. One is that the length of the austral summer co-varies with boreal summer intensity, such that local insolation forcings could result in synchronous deglaciations in each hemisphere (Huybers and Denton, 2008). A related idea is that austral spring insolation co-varies with summer duration, and could have forced sea ice retreat in the Southern Ocean and greenhouse gas feedbacks (e.g., Stott et al., 2007).

Based on transient climate model simulations of glacial-interglacial transitions (rather than “snapshots” of different modeled climate states), Ganopolski and Roche (2009) proposed that in addition to CO2, changes in ocean heat transport provide a critical link between northern and southern hemispheres, able to explain the apparent lag of CO2 behind Antarctic temperature. Recently, an elaborate data analysis published in Nature by Shakun et al., 2012 (pdf) has provided strong support for these model predictions. Shakun et al. attempt to interrogate the spatial and temporal patterns associated with the last deglaciation; in doing so, they analyze global-scale patterns (not just records from Antarctica). This is a formidable task, given the need to synchronize many marine, terrestrial, and ice core records.

The evolution of deglaciation

By analyzing 80 proxy records from around the globe (generally with resolutions better than 500 years) the authors are able to evaluate the changes occurring during different time periods in order to characterize the spatial and temporal structure of the deglacial evolution.

Shakun et al. confirm Ganopolski’s and Roche’s proposition that warming of the Southern Hemisphere during the last deglaciation is, in part, attributable to a bipolar-seesaw response to variations in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This is hypothesized to result from fresh water input into the Northern Hemisphere (although it is worth noting that the transient simulations of this sort fix the magnitude of the freshwater perturbation, so this doesn’t necessarily mean that the model has the correct sensitivity to freshwater input).

The bi-polar seesaw is usually associated with the higher-frequency abrupt climate changes (e.g., Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events) that are embedded within the longer, orbital timescale variations. However, numerous studies have indicated that it also sets the stage for initiating the full deglaciation process. In this scenario, the increase in boreal summer insolation melts enough NH ice to trigger a strong AMOC reduction, which cools the North at the expense of warming the South. The changes in Antarctica are lagged somewhat due to the thermal inertia of the Southern Ocean, but eventually the result is degassing of CO2 from the Southern Ocean and global warming. In particular, CO₂ levels started to rise from full glacial levels of about 180 parts per million (ppm), reaching 265 ppm 10,000 years ago (or ~2.1 W/m² radiative forcing), and with another slow ~15 ppm rise during the Holocene.


Figure 1: Simplified schematic of the deglacial evolution according to Shakun et al (2012). kya = kiloyears ago; NH = Northern Hemisphere

The evolution of temperature as a function of latitude and the timing of CO2 rise are shown below (at two different time periods in part a, see the caption). There is considerable spatial and temporal structure in how the changes occur during deglaciation. There is also long-term warming trend superimposed on higher-frequency “abrupt climate changes” associated with AMOC-induced heat redistributions.


Figure 2: Temperature change before increase in CO₂ concentration. a, Linear temperature trends in the proxy records from 21.5–19 kyr ago (red) and 19–17.5 kyr ago (blue) averaged in 10° latitude bins with1σ uncertainties. b, Proxy temperature stacks for 30° latitude bands with 1σ uncertainties. The stacks have been normalized by the glacial–interglacial (G–IG) range in each time series to facilitate comparison. From Shakun et al (2012)

What causes the CO₂ rise?

The ultimate trigger of the CO₂ increase is still a topic of interesting research. Some popular discussions like to invoke simple explanations, such as the fact that warmer water will expel CO₂, but this is probably a minor effect (Sigman and Boyle, 2000). More than likely, the isotopic signal (the distribution of ¹³C-depleted carbon that invaded the atmosphere) indicates that carbon should have been “mined’ from the Southern ocean as a result of the displacement of southern winds, sea ice, and perturbations to the ocean’s biological pump (e.g., Anderson et al., 2009).

This view has been supported by another recent paper (Schmitt et al., 2012) that represents a key scientific advance in dissecting this problem. Until recently, analytical issues in the ice core measurements provided a limitation on assessing the deglacial isotopic evolution of ¹³C. Because carbon cycle processes such as photosynthesis fractionate the heavy isotope ¹³C from the lighter ¹²C, isotopic analysis can usually be used to “trace” sources and sinks of carbon. A rapid depletion in ¹³C between about 17,500 and 14,000 years ago, simultaneous with a time when the CO₂ concentration rose substantially, is consistent with release of CO₂ from an isolated deep-ocean source that accumulated carbon due to the sinking of organic material from the surface.


Figure 3: Ice core reconstructions of atmospheric δ¹³C and CO₂ concentration covering the last 24 kyr, see Schmitt et al (2012)

Skeptics, CO₂ lags, and all that…

Not surprisingly, several people don’t like this paper because it reaffirms that CO₂ is important for climate. The criticisms have ranged from the absurd (water vapor is still not 95% of the greenhouse effect, particularly in a glacial world where one expects a drier atmosphere) to somewhat more technical sounding (like criticizing the way they did the weighting of their proxy records, though the results aren’t too sensitive to their averaging method). There’s also been confusion in how the results of Shakun et al. fit in with previous results that identified a lag between CO₂ and Antarctic temperatures (e.g., Caillon et al., 2003).

Unlike the claims of some that these authors are trying to get rid of the “lag,” Shakun et al. fully support the notion that Antarctic temperature change did in fact precede the CO₂ increase. This is not surprising since we fully expect the carbon cycle to respond to radical alterations to the climate. Moreover, there is no mechanism that would force CO₂ to change on its own (in preferred cycles) without any previous alterations to the climate. Instead, Shakun et al. show that while CO₂ lagged Antarctic temperatures, they led the major changes in the global average temperature (including many regions in the Northern Hemisphere and tropics).

It is important to realize that the nature of CO₂’s lead/lag relationship with Antarctica is insightful for our understanding of carbon cycle dynamics and the sequence of events that occur during a deglaciation, but it yields very little information about climate sensitivity. If the CO₂ rise is a carbon cycle feedback, this is still perfectly compatible with its role as a radiative agent and can thus “trigger” the traditional feedbacks that determine sensitivity (like water vapor, lapse rate, etc). Ganopolski and Roche (2009), for example, made it clear that one should be careful in using simple lead and lags to infer the nature of causality. If one takes the simple view that deglaciation is forced by only global ice volume change and greenhouse feedbacks, then one would be forced to conclude that Antarctic temperature change led all of its forcings! The communication between the NH and Antarctica via ocean circulation is one way to resolve this, and is also supported by the modeling efforts of Ganopolski and Roche. This also helps clear up some confusion about whether the south provides the leading role for the onset or demise of glacial cycles (it apparently doesn’t).

A number of legitimate issues still remain in exploring the physics of deglaciation. For instance, the commentary piece by Eric Wolff references earlier deglaciations and points out that solar insolation may have increased in the boreal summer during the most recent event, but was still not as high as during previous deglacial intervals. It will be interesting to see how these issues play out over the next few years.

References

1. 
   P. Huybers, and G. Denton, “Antarctic temperature at orbital timescales controlled by local summer duration”, Nature Geoscience, vol. 1, 2008, pp. 787-792. DOI.
2. 
   L. Stott, A. Timmermann, and R. Thunell, “Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO2 Rise and Tropical Warming”, Science, vol. 318, 2007, pp. 435-438. DOI.
3. 
   A. Ganopolski, and D.M. Roche, “On the nature of lead–lag relationships during glacial–interglacial climate transitions”, Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 28, 2009, pp. 3361-3378. DOI.
4. 
   J.D. Shakun, P.U. Clark, F. He, S.A. Marcott, A.C. Mix, Z. Liu, B. Otto-Bliesner, A. Schmittner, and E. Bard, “Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation”, Nature, vol. 484, 2012, pp. 49-54. DOI.
5. 
   D.M. Sigman, and E.A. Boyle, , Nature, vol. 407, pp. 859-869. DOI.
6. 
   R.F. Anderson, S. Ali, L.I. Bradtmiller, S.H.H. Nielsen, M.Q. Fleisher, B.E. Anderson, and L.H. Burckle, “Wind-Driven Upwelling in the Southern Ocean and the Deglacial Rise in Atmospheric CO2″, Science, vol. 323, 2009, pp. 1443-1448. DOI.
7. 
   J. Schmitt, R. Schneider, J. Elsig, D. Leuenberger, A. Lourantou, J. Chappellaz, P. Kohler, F. Joos, T.F. Stocker, M. Leuenberger, and H. Fischer, “Carbon Isotope Constraints on the Deglacial CO2 Rise from Ice Cores”, Science. DOI.
8. 
   N. Caillon, “Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across Termination III”, Science, vol. 299, pp. 1728-1731. DOI.

This article was originally posted on Real Climate

The latest ad is based on a set of mistruths about green jobs that have been widely debunked.

In the ad, AFP explains that “billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries,” and uses four examples that supposedly prove that Obama’s clean energy stimulus created foreign jobs instead of domestic ones.

All four examples are either mostly or completely false.

1. The ad claims that $1.2 billion is being used to create solar jobs in Mexico. This point was completely made up by a random conservative blogger and has been repeatedly called out as a lie. This $1.2 billion loan guarantee was issued for a large, first-of-its-kind solar plant in California being developed by NRG. However, the blogger falsely wrote that the money was being used to create manufacturing jobs in Mexico.

In reality, the jobs created in Mexico had absolutely nothing to do with the loan guarantee. The only connection to Mexico was that some of the solar panels would be coming from a manufacturing plant located there. And even though the source of the panels had nothing to do with the decision to issue the loan guarantee, the company providing the panels, SunPower, explained that most of the panels were coming from America anyway.

2. The ad claims that a loan guarantee for an electric vehicle manufacturer went to jobs in Finland. This is also a made up story pushed by Fox News and conservative bloggers. In fact, all of the money used through the loan guarantee went toward building a U.S. manufacturing facility.

There were some jobs created in Finland during final assembly of the vehicles, but that was announced up front in 2009 when the loan guarantee was issued. According to the Department of Energy, all of the money set aside for Fisker’s next-generation vehicle manufacturing was issued for American operations.

3. The ad claims that tens of millions of dollars went toward building traffic lights in China. This is another murky claim that doesn’t hold up. In 2010, because of the lack of domestic manufacturing, the Department of Energy allowed some LED lighting technologies for stimulus projects to be sourced from overseas companies:

Federal agencies may waive the “buy American” requirement if they determine that a needed item is not available from domestic sources in sufficient quantities, that it would inconsistent with the public interest to comply, or that the cost is unreasonable.

The agency says that all of the investments made for lighting projects followed the Buy America requirements established in the stimulus package. To make the spin worse, the ad implies that the stimulus money went to install traffic lights within China. That is totally false.

4. The ad claims that $2.3 billion in clean energy stimulus incentives went to overseas firms. This figure is based on a 2010 Washington Times piece borrowing from an investigative story from American University that found stimulus dollars going to foreign companies developing projects within the U.S. The piece raised questions about how many jobs were being created overseas to build the technologies being deployed in the U.S.

After publishing that piece, investigative reporter Russ Choma told FactCheck.org that the numbers showed more jobs being created in the U.S.:

It should be noted there were no farms that we could find that used turbines entirely built in China, so we can’t say for sure how much of this stimulus money went to create jobs in China. Some money definitely did, but it is safe to say more money went to creating jobs in the U.S. and Europe.

This latest ad brings the total amount spent by pro-fossil fuel groups to more than $24 million in just the first few months of 2012, based on a ThinkProgress analysis.

Jobs in green goods and services accounted for 3.1 million jobs in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, a study found that every dollar put into clean energy creates three-times as many jobs as investing in fossil fuels.

Watch AFP’s ad:

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress