Category Archives: climate change

Well The Climate Accord Signed In Paris Is Great – But is it enough

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Unfortunately it will be several years before we know whether it will make a dent in emissions, but as everyone says, it is a start. I am particularly excited by the concept of “ratchet” and whether it can be implemented. What do you think?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/12/world/paris-climate-change-deal-explainer.html?_r=0

Paris Climate Talks

Inside the Paris Climate Deal

By CORAL DAVENPORT, JUSTIN GILLIS, SEWELL CHAN and MELISSA EDDY

The text of the climate pact establishes a commitment by 195 countries to take concrete measures to reel in planet-warming carbon emissions. Related Article

Paris Climate Agreement

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Temperature Increase

“Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”
Justin Gillis, climate science reporter:
This agreement adopts a more ambitious target for limiting global warming than in the past by mentioning 1.5 degrees Celsius as part of the concrete goal to stay well below 2 degrees. If that were to be actually achieved, it would likely ward off some of the most severe effects of climate change. For example, although we don’t know the exact temperature, there is a trigger point at which the whole Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic ice sheet will melt. There is a chance that staying below 2 degrees Celsius would avoid that trigger point, and an even better chance if we stay below 1.5 degrees.
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Preservation of Forests

“Parties are encouraged to take action to implement and support, including through results-based payments, the existing framework as set out in related guidance and decisions already agreed under the Convention for: policy approaches and positive incentives for activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries; and alternative policy approaches, such as joint mitigation and adaptation approaches for the integral and sustainable management of forests, while reaffirming the importance of incentivizing, as appropriate, non-carbon benefits associated with such approaches.”

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Coal Is Dangerous To Humans – Even when it stays in the ground

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When homosapiens invented fire did we doom ourselves? Because it seems fire will always come into contact with fire and global warming is the result. I think this implies that there is a limit on large animals ability to survive on Earth. I think it means that the Earth is locked into cycles of mass die offs. Finally, I think it means humans better get out of here soon. Yet, I wonder why that is just dawning on me at 60?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/fire-in-the-hole-77895126/?no-ist

Fire in the Hole

Raging in mines from Pennsylvania to China, coal fires threaten towns, poison air and water, and add to global warming

By Kevin Krajick
Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe

From the back kitchen window of his little house on a ridge in east-central Pennsylvania, John Lokitis looks out on a most unusual prospect. Just uphill, at the edge of St.IgnatiusCemetery, the earth is ablaze. Vegetation has been obliterated along a quarter-mile strip; sulfurous steam billows out of hundreds of fissures and holes in the mud. There are pits extending perhaps 20 feet down: in their depths, discarded plastic bottles and tires have melted. Dead trees, their trunks bleached white, lie in tangled heaps, stumps venting smoke through hollow centers. Sometimes fumes seep across the cemetery fence to the grave of Lokitis’ grandfather, George Lokitis.

This hellish landscape constitutes about all that remains of the once-thriving town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Forty-three years ago, a vast honeycomb of coal mines at the edge of the town caught fire. An underground inferno has been spreading ever since, burning at depths of up to 300 feet, baking surface layers, venting poisonous gases and opening holes large enough to swallow people or cars. The conflagration may burn for another 250 years, along an eight-mile stretch encompassing 3,700 acres, before it runs out of the coal that fuels it.

Remarkably enough, nobody’s doing a thing about it. The federal and state governments gave up trying to extinguish the fire in the 1980s. “Pennsylvania didn’t have enough money in the bank to do the job,” says Steve Jones, a geologist with the state’s Office of Surface Mining. “If you aren’t going to put it out, what can you do? Move the people.”Nearly all 1,100 residents left after they were offered federally funded compensation for their properties. Their abandoned houses were leveled. Today Centralia exists only as an eerie grid of streets, its driveways disappearing into vacant lots. Remains of a picket fence here, a chair spindle there—plus Lokitis and 11 others who refused to leave, the occupants of a dozen scattered structures. Lokitis, 35, lives alone in the house he inherited from “Pop”—his grandfather, a coal miner, as was Pop’s father before him. For fans of the macabre, lured by a sign warning of DANGER from asphyxiation or being swallowed into the ground, Centralia has become a tourist destination. For Lokitis, it is home.

Across the globe, thousands of coal fires are burning.
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The Pope Makes It Official – Global warming is here and it has to be dealt with

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But how is the Catholic Church going to pitch in? His statement was aimed at policy makers, so politicians everywhere scrambled to comment. But what measures are the church(es) going to take. Solar panels on catholic churches? What?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/world/europe/pope-francis-in-sweeping-encyclical-calls-for-swift-action-on-climate-change.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Pope Francis, in Sweeping Encyclical, Calls for Swift Action on Climate Change

By and

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Thursday called for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront environmental degradation and climate change, as his much-awaited papal encyclical blended a biting critique of consumerism and irresponsible development with a plea for swift and unified global action.

The vision that Francis outlined in the 184-page encyclical is sweeping in ambition and scope: He described a relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment, for which he blamed apathy, the reckless pursuit of profits, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness. The most vulnerable victims are the world’s poorest people, he declared, who are being dislocated and disregarded.

The first pope from the developing world, Francis, an Argentine, used the encyclical — titled “Laudato Si’,” or “Praise Be to You” — to highlight the crisis posed by climate change. He placed most of the blame on fossil fuels and human activity while warning of an “unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequence for all of us” if swift action is not taken. Developed, industrialized countries were mostly responsible, he said, and were obligated to help poorer nations confront the crisis.

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Blankenship The Coal Mine Exploder Pleads Innocent – He needs to get the death penalty

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He killed over 20 people, so I think he needs to die. This is one arrogant son-of-a-bitch.

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2014/11/21/347725.htm

Blankenship Pleads Not Guilty to Charges Linked to Massey Mine Explosion

By Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk | November 21, 2014

Former Massey Energy chief Donald Blankenship pleaded not guilty to charges linked to the West Virginia mine explosion that killed 29 workers in the worst U.S. coal industry disaster in almost 40 years.

The former executive, 64, once a powerful figure in the coal industry and state politics, wore a gray business as he stood with four lawyers in federal court in Beckley, West Virginia, and said, “Not guilty.”

Blankenship is accused of hampering regulators’ safety inspections of the Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County where the explosion occurred in April 2010.

The judge set a trial for Jan. 26. About 50 spectators were in the courtroom.

If the former chief executive officer is convicted of the four charges, he faces a maximum penalty of 31 years in prison, according to prosecutors.

Blankenship is accused of setting hyper-aggressive coal- production quotas and instructing subordinates to ignore basic safety measures, such as controlling explosive coal dust and providing proper ventilation in the mines

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Obama Begins To Close The Door On Coal – But is it in time

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Ok so he promised this in both 2008 and in 2012 and it is really great that he did it. But the real question is, is it soon enough? We have gone passed the 400 ppm in carbon dioxide in the air mark. So we are now in global warming. Plain and simple. So the question is how far will we go and how hot will it get? Then the bigger issue is when will it start to kill off humans? I mean at one level it is but I mean in the developed world? Not just in the 2nd and 3rd worlds.

http://time.com/2806697/obama-epa-coal-carbon/

Politics White House

New Carbon Rules the Next Step in Obama’s War on Coal

For five years, the coal industry and its fossil-fueled allies in the Republican Party have accused the Obama Administration of waging a war on coal. They claim the administration’s new plan to limit carbon emissions at existing power plants is really about carbon emissions at existing coal plants. They see the carbon rules that the president announced Monday, like his previous rules limiting mercury, smog, and coal ash, as a thinly disguised effort to make coal power uneconomical.

They’re right, of course.

Obamaworld likes to portray its efforts to clean up power plants as a war on pollution in general, not a war on coal in particular, but it just so happens that coal spews most of the pollution from power plants. It’s America’s leading contributor to global warming, producing three-fourths of our carbon emissions from electricity, even though it generates just over one third of our electricity. It’s also the dominant source of mercury and other toxics that foul our air and damage our health. It’s filthy stuff. When Obama said Saturday that his carbon rules will prevent 100,000 asthma attacks in Year One, he wasn’t describing the health benefits of emitting less carbon dioxide; he was describing the health benefits of burning less coal.

So let’s face it: When Obama talks up his “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, he really means all-of-the-above-except-the-black-rocks-below. In the 21st century, any national leader that takes environmental protection and the fate of the planet seriously will need to launch a war on coal, and Obama takes it very seriously. He hasn’t advertised his war on coal—it would be questionable politics in swing states like Ohio or Virginia, and even his home state of Illinois—but he’s fought it with vigor.

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Global Warming Will Be Litigated – Really, it is all up to the courts and insurance companies

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Yep that’s right. Our fate as a species is left up to the Courts and the Insurance Companies. Somehow this seems fitting and yet unfair.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/koch-brothers-family-history-sons-of-wichita

 

In Landmark Class Action, Farmers Insurance Sues Local Governments For Ignoring Climate Change

By Ari Phillips  

Last month, Farmers Insurance Co. filed nine class-action lawsuits arguing that local governments in the Chicago area are aware that climate change is leading to heavier rainfall but are failing to prepare accordingly. The suits allege that the localities did not do enough to prepare sewers and stormwater drains in the area during a two-day downpour last April. In what could foreshadow a legal reckoning of who is liable for the costs of climate change, the class actions against nearly 200 Chicago-area communities look to place responsibility on municipalities, perhaps spurring them to take a more forward-looking approach in designing and engineering for a future made different by climate change.

“Farmers is asking to be reimbursed for the claims it paid to homeowners who sometimes saw geysers of sewage ruin basement walls, floors and furniture,” reported E&E News. “The company says it also paid policyholders for lost income, the cost of evacuations and other damages related to declining property values.”

Andrew Logan, an insurance expert with Ceres, told E&E News that there is likely a longer-term agenda in mind with this latest effort, and that the company “could be positioning itself to avoid future losses nationwide from claims linked to floods, sea-level rise and even lawsuits against its corporate policyholders that emit greenhouse gases.”

While these suits are the first of their kind, Micahel Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York, told Reuters that there will be more cases like them attempting to address how city and local governments should manage budgets to prepare for natural disasters that have been intensified by climate change.

 

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Coal Plants And Nuclear Plants Shutting Down – We are winning the war

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I have a saying. If you can’t make it work under capitalism and socialism is already leaving you voluntarily then you are pretty much done for this world. It looks like coals time has come and gone and it is the same with nuclear power too. Thank the gods that be. Now the question is, is it too late? We are walking a tight rope on that one. If we can come up with some remediations we just might pull out of this very steep climate dive. It is going to be close.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/flurry-of-coal-power-plant-shutdowns-expected-by-2016-17086

Flurry of Coal Power Plant Shutdowns Expected by 2016

  • Published: February 19th, 2014

Bobby Magill By

A flurry of coal-fired power plants — major sources of climate change-fueling carbon dioxide emissions — could be closed by 2016, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts.

New emissions regulations and low natural gas prices, partly because of the fracking boom throughout the U.S., are leading utilities to shut down coal-fired power plants and open new ones that burn natural gas. With new Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards limiting mercury, acid gases and toxic metals from coal-fired power plants taking effect in 2015, there is even more impetus for utilities to retire older coal plants, according to the EIA.

Because of those new standards, the EIA forecasts that 90 percent of the power plants expected to shut down by 2020 will actually be shut down by 2016. Those new standards include coal-fired power plants likely having to install flue gas desulfurization equipment, or “scrubbers,” which cost hundreds of millions of dollars each, depending on the size of the plant.

Utilities may decide to shutter a coal-fired power plant if coal prices, wholesale electricity prices and the costs of installing scrubbers do not make economic sense, according to the EIA.

Coal-fired power plants are feeling the heat about carbon emissions, too. Concern about coal plants’ carbon emission contributing to climate change are driving the EPA to write new carbon emissions rules unrelated to the new mercury standards. The EPA has proposed new regulations aiming to curb carbon emissions from future coal-fired power plants and is in the process of proposing similar regulations governing existing coal power plants.

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Frackers Got Special Chemicals – Anytime they want proprietory secrets imposed the industry is dirty

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Invariably it is to hide things that hurt people or hurt the planet. Usually both.

 

Day 38   12/22/13    

Today’s Topic:  Determining if water pollution has occurred

Comment:

Section 1-80 of the Act governing Water Quality Monitoring provides a list of indicator chemicals that would suggest water contamination has occurred but doesn’t limit what may be tested for.  In fact, this section of the law states that “Sampling shall, at a minimum, be consistent with the work plan and allow for a determination of whether any hydraulic fracturing additive or other contaminant has caused pollution or diminution for purposes of Sections 1-83 and 1-85 of this Act.”

Section 1-85 of the Act governing the presumption of pollution or diminution does not limit the sources of sampling data that may be used to prove the pollution or diminution has occurred.

And yet, the IDNR Rules in Section 245.620 have narrowed the statutory basis for the presumption, treating Section 1-80’s list of “indicator chemicals” as a comprehensive list of what should be tested for.  The 1-80 parameters are intended to be INDICATORS of the presence of contamination from hydraulic fracturing, not an exclusive list of the possible contaminating constituents.  There are over 700 chemicals used in fracking.  1-80 lists only a handful of them.  A reasonable person would conclude that if a chemical other than those on the list of indicator chemicals was found and that chemical was part of the list of chemicals in the fracking operator’s work plan, then the operator would be presumed to be responsible for that contamination.

Revisions Needed:  Section 245.620 must reflect the intent of the law that the operator will be responsible for any pollution or diminution caused by fracking.  This responsibility will not be limited to a list of indicator chemicals but will include all chemicals used in the fracturing process.

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So Illinois Is Gona Protect Me From Fracking – Not the way it is going

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When we got in the faces of the 5 renegade environmental groups, they claimed that IDNR would tighten up things to take in our concerns. So far that ain’t been ahappening. We will just have to see what happens after the comment period closes.
Today (Tuesday, 12/10/13)  is Day 26 of the Comment Period of IDNR.   Getting tired of making comments?  We understand.  But if we don’t fight, the industry will win because their fingerprints are all over these rules.  Fight back.  Make a comment today.
Today’s Topic:  IDNR’s Duties and Responsibilities to Protect the Citizens of Illinois
Comment:
In Section 1-130 of the regulatory statute, the legislature granted IDNR authority to adopt rules to carry out the legislature’s purposes.
There are at least two legislative purposes in the regulatory statute:
  1. To allow horizontal fracking in Illinois,
  2. To approve horizontal fracking conditionally based on the safeguarding of public health and public safety, and the protection of the environment.
This purpose is set forth explicitly in two places in the regulatory statute–Section 1-75(a)(2) and Section 1-53(a)(4).  IDNR has acknowledged 1-75 verbatim, in Section 245.800(2) of the proposed rules: “All phases of high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing operations shall be conducted in a manner that shall not pose a significant risk to public health, life, property, aquatic life, or wildlife.”
But IDNR has changed the legislature’s language in Section 1-53(a)(4) of the proposed rules, lowering the standard explicitly created by the legislature.  Section 1-53(a)(4) of the legislation states: “The Department shall issue a high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing permit, with any conditions the Department may find necessary, only if the record of decision demonstrates that: the proposed hydraulic fracturing operations will be conducted in a manner that will protect the public health and safety and prevent pollution or diminution of any water source.”  The key phrase there is”will be conducted”.  Clearly the intent of the statute is that fracking will only be allowed if it is conducted in a safe manner.
IDNR’s proposed Section 245.300 changes the legislative words “will be conducted” to “as proposed, are reasonably expected to be conducted”.  This lowers the standard and is inconsistent with the legislature’s stated purpose.  “Will be conducted” is a mandate; “reasonably expected to be conducted” is not.
If hydraulic fracturing outcomes in Illinois mirror effects of other states, we can “reasonably expect” that the industry will cut corners and violate standards.  There have been over 3000 violations in PA since 2009 and they are not minor violations.  They involve infractions such as:
  • 224 violations of “Failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of residual waste.
  • 143 violations of “Discharge of pollutional material to the waters of Commonwealth.
  • 140 violations of “Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances.
The residents of Illinois are depending on IDNR to protect their health, their safety, and the safety of their water, air, and soil.  IDNR needs to return the legislation’s intent and mandate that hydraulic fracturing operations will only be conducted in a manner that will protect the public health and safety and prevent pollution or diminution of any water source.”
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Chevron Brings Good Fracks To You – Illinois is going to get the heck fracked out of it

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Will Chevron have wells in Illinois? Probably not.  They are to busy illegally fracking their wells off of California’s shoreline. But chatting them up can’t hurt.

Day 1 on 11/15/13

Topic: Who can and can’t testify and public hearings when fracking permits are requested. 

 

Go to:   http://www.dnr.illinois.gov/OilandGas/Pages/OnlineCommentSubmittalForm.aspx

Radio Button: Subpart B: Registration and Permitting Procedures (245.200-245.270)

 

Comment: Because air and water travel freely, IDNR should not limit comments during public hearings to individuals living within 1500 feet of wells.  Toxins can travel far beyond 1500 feet via air and water.  Therefore, any person, regardless of where they live, should be allowed to testify.

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