NewsRack: newstrust/Global-Warming/Solutions/Strategies

Drumbeat: May 18, 2013 - The Oil Drum

Leanan — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Energy Department approves expanded LNG exports The Energy Department gave a terminal near Freeport, Tex., permission Friday to ship liquefied natural gas to Japan, providing a new outlet for rising U.S. production of shale gas despite qualms of environmentalists and many domestic manufacturers. The permit marks another step in the sudden reversal of fortune in the natural gas business. Less than five years ago, anticipating a worsening shortfall in domestic supplies of natural gas, the Freeport terminal on Quintana Island began operations as an import facility. But advances in hydraulic fracturing techniques have unlocked new supplies of natural gas from shale rock. Freeport, like other import terminals, now wants to spend $10 billion to retool the terminal so it can send gas abroad in liquefied form. The US Department of Energy has authorized Freeport LNG Expansion, L.P. and FLNG Liquefaction, LLC (Freeport) to export LNG to so called non-Free Trade Agreement (non-FTA) countries. Subject ...

Maps of the rare and unusual - Earth Times

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The protection of our fauna and flora is becoming one of the most important tasks of this generation, as more and more become endangered by human greed. Politics is part of the answer but initiatives such as those of the ZSL have a great part to play.

Top 5 Things You Need To Know About Immigrants And The Environment - Think Progres

Ahn Phan, Guest Blogger — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Top 5 Things You Need To Know About Immigrants And The Environment

May 17 News: Ernest Moniz Unanimously Confirmed As Our Next Energy Secretary - Think Progres

Ryan Koronowski — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

May 17 News: Ernest Moniz Unanimously Confirmed As Our Next Energy Secretary

Obama's Arctic strategy sets off a climate time bomb | Nafeez Ahmed - Guardian: Science

Nafeez Ahmed — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

US National Strategy for the Arctic Region prioritises corporate 'economic opportunities' at the expense of everyone else One week ago, the Obama administration launched its National Strategy for the Arctic Region , outlining the government's strategic priorities over the next 10 years. The release of the strategy came about a week after the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the President at the White House Complex hosted a briefing with international Arctic scientists . Despite giving lip service to the values of environmental conservation, the new document focuses on how the US can manage the exploitation of the region's vast untapped oil, gas and mineral resources in cooperation with other Arctic powers. US hinges success of Arctic strategy on diminishing sea ice At the heart of the White House's new Arctic strategy is an elementary but devastating contradiction between what President Obama, in the document's preamble, describes as seeking "to ...

Big tax incentives coming for specific Minnesota companies - MinnPost

Brian Lambert — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

It would hardly be the first time the concept has been applied. Tom Scheck of MPR reports: “A jobs and economic development budget bill headed to the Minnesota Senate cuts the unemployment insurance tax for businesses, provides funding for job training and spends taxpayer money to jumpstart business expansion in the state. It's a big part of a plan at the Capitol this year to foster economic development in Minnesota. Other parts of the strategy provide generous financial incentives to specific companies. This year's budget bills spend significant amounts of money to land or retain companies in Minnesota. The bills include money to help 3M expand in Maplewood, to pay for the second phase of development at the Mall of America and to help Rochester handle Mayo Clinic's expansion. Additionally, taxpayer funds are being used to encourage Baxter Healthcare to expand in Brooklyn Park and Emerson Technologies to set up shop in Shakopee.” Unfortunately, the lobbyist for The Glean LLC seems to be MIA. On ...

5 Major Scandals The Media Isn’t Obsessing About - Think Progres

Igor Volsky — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

5 Major Scandals The Media Isn’t Obsessing About

Drumbeat: May 17, 2013 - The Oil Drum

Leanan — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Avoiding the 'Energy Abyss' John Hofmeister doesn’t call it ‘peak oil,’ instead he calls it the ‘energy abyss,’ the point at which the global economy ceases to grow because the oil industry can no longer meet demand. Hofmeister is the former president of Shell Oil, the same Shell Oil that is preparing to drill the deepest hole yet drilled to reach oil and gas 200 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico in 9,500 feet (2,900m) of water, surpassing the working depth of Shell’s Perdido rig, also located out in the Gulf and producing around 100,000 barrels a day. The cost of that rig: $3 billion. In his 2010 book, Why We Hate The Oil Companies, Straight talk from an energy insider , he wrote the following: “It’s inevitable. The industry that produces oil can’t produce enough, unless the world doesn’t grow. It’s possible that we will have such expensive oil that we will stymie growth. How many people will suffer? How many poor will become poorer, while rich become richer because we have failed rational ...

Artist finds inspiration in Canadian government's attempt to silence her - Guardian: Environment

Suzanne Goldenberg — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Visual essays by Franke James reveal how the 'troublesome artist' was targeted because her views on climate change clashed with the push to develop Alberta's tar sands Canada, under the government of Stephen Harper, has exhibited little patience for dissent. The government has muzzled government scientists , insulted Nasa climate experts , and dismissed environmental protesters as dangerous radicals . But there is apparently one woman whom the government can't shut up: the Toronto environmental writer, illustrator and activist Franke James , who turned the efforts to silence her into material for a new book. Banned on the Hill: A True Story about Dirty Oil and Government Censorship , released this week, shows how Canadian bureaucrats tried to silence James because her views on climate change clashed with the Harper government's push to develop Alberta's tar sands. The story is told through visual essays as well as official emails obtained by James, in which government bureaucrats ...

World Bank Turns to Hydropower to Square Development with Climate Change - International Rivers Sitewide RSS Feed

Zachary Hurwitz — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Howard Schneider, The Washington Post Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 World Bank President Jim Yong Kim attends the Fragility Forum this month in Washington. The forum discussed ways for fragile nations to improve their economies, their infrastructure and the well-being of their citizens. Michael Reynolds/European Photopress Agency The World Bank is making a major push to develop large-scale hydropower projects around the globe, something it had all but abandoned a decade ago but now sees as crucial to resolving the tension between economic development and the drive to tame carbon use. Major hydropower projects in the Congo, Zambia, Nepal and elsewhere — all of a scale dubbed “transformational” to the regions involved — are part of the bank’s fundraising drive among wealthy nations. Bank lending for hydropower has scaled up steadily in recent years, and officials expect the trend to continue amid a worldwide boom in water-fueled electricity. Such projects ...

Climate refugees? Where's the dignity in that? - Guardian: Environment

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

We need a new narrative in which we frame migration as a way for people to adapt to climate change This week the Guardian has been running a major series on "climate refugees" about the village of Newtok in Alaska, which faces an imminent threat to its existence from erosion. The term is problematic for a number of reasons. The first being that people who are facing movement do not like the term. The word "refugee" brings to mind a number of (not always accurate) images: tented camps, long lines of people walking, dangerous boat crossings. People facing the prospect moving hope that they will have some choice in the timing and circumstances of their movement and that when they arrive they will find work and become active members of their new communities. Their hope is that they will move with dignity. President Anote Tong of Kiribati, an island nation in the Pacific, told Australia's ABC Radio that the people of Kiribati do not want to leave as refugees but as skilled migrants . ...

The Great American Descent into Plutocracy (Kroll) - Informed Comment

Juan Cole — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Andy Kroll writes at Tomdispatch.com Billionaires with an axe to grind, now is your time. Not since the days before a bumbling crew of would-be break-in artists set into motion the fabled Watergate scandal, leading to the first far-reaching restrictions on money in American politics, have you been so free to meddle. There is no [...]

Australia's 'unpopular' carbon price isn't to blame for Labor's poor polling | Alexander White - Guardian: Environment

Alexander White — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Claims that Julia Gillard's unpopularity were linked to her introduction of carbon pricing in 2012 don't stack up Since the disappointment of Copenhagen in 2009 , Australia has witnessed a concerted scare campaign against action on global warming. The scare campaign has been led by senior commentators in (Murdoch owned) News Limited papers, by conservative radio shock-jocks on the airwaves, and in parliament by extremist opposition party leader Tony Abbott. From the moment Australia's carbon pricing legislation package, the Clean Energy Future Act, was announced Tony Abbott has barnstormed from one end of Australia to another, declaring a "blood oath" that repealing the carbon price would be his first priority if elected: "I am giving you the most definite commitment any politician can give that this tax will go. This is a pledge in blood." Behind this incendiary phrase is Abbott's own climate change policy, a mishmash of ineffective handouts to industry to "clean up" polluting power ...

Six Americans, 9 others killed by car bomb - Twincities.com: Nation

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Nation & World briefing KABUL, Afghanistan -- A car packed with explosives rammed a pair of U.S. military vehicles in the Afghan capital,

IHT Rendezvous: Scientists Agree Overwhelmingly on Global Warming. Why Doesn’t the Public Know That? - NYT > World

By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

IHT Rendezvous: Scientists Agree Overwhelmingly on Global Warming. Why Doesn’t the Public Know That?

CBS Evening News: Republican Sources Caught Doctoring Emails - Little Green Footballs

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Video SCOTT PELLEY: Also at his news conference today the president called for tighter security for U.S. diplomatic facilities to prevent an attack like the one in Benghazi, Libya, last year that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Of course, Benghazi has become a political controversy. Republicans claim that the Administration watered down the facts in talking points that were given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for television appearances while Mr. Obama was running for reelection. Republicans on Capitol Hill claim that they had found proof of this in White House e-mails that they leaked to reporters last week. Well, it turns out some of the quotes in those e-mails were wrong. Major Garrett is at the White House for us tonight. Major? MAJOR GARRETT: Scott, Republicans have claimed that the State Department under Hillary Clinton was trying to protect itself from criticism. The White House released the real e-mails late yesterday and here's what we found when we ...

Monkey Shares Lollipop With Puppy, Then Bonks Him With It - Little Green Footballs

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

YouTube

Via: Boing Boing

GOHMERT! - Little Green Footballs

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Bristling Gohmert The dumbest man in Congress, Texas Representative Louie " Terror Babies from the Future " Gohmert, got all lathered up yesterday because Eric Holder said, in so many words, that Gohmert didn't know WTF he was talking about when he asked a weird, pointless question about some tortuous Muslim-Christian persecution fantasy he apparently got from World Net Daily. So the hearing wasn't a complete waste. "Because of political correctness, there was not a thorough enough investigation of Tamerlan to determine this kid had been radicalized," Gohmert said of one of the Boston bombing suspects. "On the one hand, we go after Christian groups like Billy Graham's group - we go after Franklin Graham's group - but then we're hands-off when it comes to possibly offending someone who has been radicalized as a terrorist." Holder responded by saying that Gohmert didn't have access to all of the facts. "Unless somebody has done something inappropriate, you don't have access to the FBI ...

Glenn Beck's Crazy Crypto-Racist Rant of the Day: Whites Lynched by KKK Would Be Tea Partiers Today - Little Green Footballs

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

YouTube On his radio program today, Glenn Beck uncorked a bizarre rant about the NAACP and Martin Luther King and Booker T. Washington and by the way, 20 PERCENT OF KKK LYNCHINGS WERE OF WHITE PEOPLE! AND THEY'D BE TEA PARTIERS TODAY! Beck's strategy for defending himself against charges of racism seems to be confuse the issues so thoroughly that nobody can figure out what the hell he's trying to say. But yeah, he's still a racist pig. "They are a joke," Beck said of the NAACP, calling them "an affront" to everything that Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington stood for. "You are an affront to their memory. You really are." Somehow, that discussion then prompted Beck to declare that "20% of the lynchings [carried out] by the KKK were of white people ... and you know what, I contend [that] the white people that were lynched are exactly the kind of people that would be in the Tea Party today." Via: Right Wing Watch . ...

Skeptical Science flattens deniers: 97% of peer-reviewed papers say humans causing climate change - Daily Kos

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

In fact, not all scientists do agree that humans are causing global warming. As researchers under the guidance of John Cook at Skeptical Science discovered in a "citizen science" survey of 11,944 peer-reviewed articles, 1.6 percent of the authors expressing an opinion on the subject rejected or were uncertain about the consensus that the earth is undergoing anthropogenic (human-generated) global warming (AGW). And 97.1 percent of the nearly 4,000 articles in which the author(s) took a position endorsed the AGW consensus. (The survey was published May 15 in Environmental Research Letters as an open access article.) The survey will not, of course, persuade the professional deniers, several of whom have already weighed in with attacks on the credibility of Cook and Skeptical Science itself. What optimists might hope for, however, is that the media will finally get the message and stop implying that some significant proportion of scientists dispute the anthropogenic nature of global warming. If ...

'Green News Report' - May 16, 2013 - BradBlog

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hysterical Fox 'News' flip-floppery on Tesla; Consensus strikes again: 97% of climate scientists say global warming is man-made, but the public thinks it's evenly split; CO2 levels pass 400ppm; You're already paying a 'disaster tax'; PLUS: Thanks to renewable energy, one town now has too much ...

Senate confirms physicist Moniz as energy chief - Boston Globe: Massachusetts

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Senate confirms physicist Moniz as energy chief

Canada PM on pipeline plan: Oil to come anyway - AP Business

By CARA ANNA — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) -- A controversial oil pipeline to the U.S. Gulf Coast "absolutely needs to go ahead," Canada's prime minister said Thursday, and he warned that the oil will be transported through America one way or another....

Pickering and Mullen Don't Trust Darrell Issa - and They Shouldn't - Little Green Footballs

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, who oversaw the Accountability Review Board that reviewed the government's response to the Benghazi attack, are clearly unhappy with Republican hitman Darrell Issa and his distorted characterizations of their work: Pickering, Mullen Challenge Issa to Let Them Testify in Public . The dispute between Issa and the co-chairmen came to a head after neither Pickering nor Mullen attended a May 8 House Oversight Committee hearing on the attacks, sparking a heated back and forth about who was invited and when. The rhetoric intensified Sunday during a highly contentious joint appearance with Issa and Pickering on NBC's "Meet the Press" in which Issa maintained the two "refused to come before our committee." Pickering insisted that he was not invited despite expressing a willingness to testify. "Chairman Issa sent word back that he might want to take me up some time in the future" Pickering said. ...

China gains observer status on the Arctic Council - New Scientist: Being Human

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

China gains observer status on the Arctic Council