Month: November 2019

Here’s Why NOAA Under Trump Is in a “Holding Pattern”

This Mother Jones article discusses why NOAA is in a “Holding Pattern” – climate change denial and Trump.

After spending two years in confirmation purgatory, Barry Myers, the Trump nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), asked the White House last week to rescind his nomination. Myers explained that he needed to step down because of recent cancer surgery and chemotherapy, but his nomination has been stunted by controversy from the start. Now the 11,000-employee agency, which is part of the US Department of Commerce and charged with tracking the weather and collecting scientific data on the nation’s coastlines, will face its third year without a permanent director.

Former NOAA senior official Andrew Rosenberg, who now directs the the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says this means that the agency could remain paralyzed, its employees made wary by the fact that the interim head, atmospheric scientist Neil Jacobs, could be gone without warning. “NOAA people do their jobs really carefully and with great passion,” Rosenberg says. “But you want to know you have the backing of the agency to really deeply engage in your work. That becomes more difficult when you don’t have someone with the authority.” Especially after two years grappling with the troubling possibility of a Myers confirmation.

The head of NOAA has never been a particularly contentious presidential appointment—the two preceding directors were voted in by unanimous consent in the Senate—but Myers was a notable exception. Before his nomination by President Donald Trump, Myers was CEO of AccuWeather, a company that sells weather forecasting technology—much of which is sourced from NOAA’s raw data. The Washington Post reported that AccuWeather has consistently peddled climate denialism since at least the mid-1990s, when it worked with the fossil fuel–backed Global Climate Coalition. While CEO, Myers heavily lobbied to privatize NOAA’s data, largely to ensure his own venture could remain competitive in the face of NOAA’s free and easily accessible data. His lobbying raised initial concerns about his ability to run the government agency without injecting policies that would benefit the weather forecasting industry.

Study: 6 inexpensive ways for cities to become more sustainable

This Ensia article discusses relatively inexpensive ways cities can become more sustainable. Comprehensive plans are great, but small, low-budget changes can make a big difference, too.

Bold environmental goals are becoming a hallmark of city governance. Across the U.S., cities are unveiling clean energy plans, climate targets, sustainability road maps and other aspirational programs to guide themselves into a more environmentally friendly future. Making these kinds of plans, it seems, is relatively easy. Paying to achieve the goals they set, especially in resource-strapped communities, can be a major challenge, though.

But environmental goals don’t have to be expensive moon shots. Rather, there are many small steps cities can take to reduce their environmental impacts. Some can even help out a city’s bottom line. “There’s a lot of things that directly pay off,” says Cooper Martin, director of sustainability and solutions at the National League of Cities.

American Climate: A Shared Experience Connects Survivors of Disaster

This Inside Climate News article discusses how, in three U.S. communities devastated by disaster, themes of loss and survival resonate through the personal stories of the people who were there.

In the InsideClimate News documentary project American Climate, reporter Neela Banerjee and videographer Anna Belle Peevey share the stories of people trying to rebuild lives splintered by three weather-related disasters. Explore the videos and essays here. 

Study: Planting Native Prairie Could Be a Secret Weapon for Farmers

This Civil Eats article discusses how planting native prairie grasses could help farms be more productive. In Iowa, researchers and farmers are discovering that planting strips of native prairie amidst farmland benefits soil, water, biodiversity, and more.

Guthrie had help from the Iowa State University (ISU) STRIPS (Science-based Trials of Row-crops Integrated with Prairie Strips) program, which was founded in 2003 by scientists hoping study the effects of strategically planted native prairie for soil, water, and biodiversity benefits on farms. After 10 years, the team began to publish a series of papers laying out their results. They found that adding a prairie to a small fraction of a farm yields impressive benefits for water quality and nutrient retention, reducing erosion, providing habitat, and other benefits. In the years since, the ISU team has been working to help more farmers create native prairies.

Study: Farmers’ Experience of Climate Change Doesn’t Alter Politics

This article discusses why climate change problems doesn’t seem to affect some farmers political views.

Farmers see climate change as a business challenge, not a political cause that requires public action, according to a qualitative study in the Midwest.

Farmers understand that the climate is changing but don’t favor collective action to address it, according to a series of interviews conducted by researchers.

Instead, farmers tackle to the impact of climate change as a business challenge that they address through standard farming practices, like applying more fertilizer after heavy rains.

The report’s findings contradict a theory of change held by many social scientists that direct experience will change political opinions.

Report: Glass Half Full? Innovative Technologies Could Increase Global Water Security

This article discusses innovative technologies that could increase global water security.

By 2050, the UN estimates that 52 percent of the world’s population will be at risk for water insecurity. Climate change is threatening water availability through increased temperatures and drought, unpredictable rain, and the growing threat of more pollution. Globally, most wastewater reenters the water cycle without being treated, introducing dangerous unseen particles including pharmaceuticals, diseases, and larger waste products such as plastics.

Now more than ever, we need to use every tool at our disposal, both old and new, to manage, clean, and preserve our most precious resource. Innovative technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, alongside improved water treatment and reuse technologies can help us protect our water resources.

Emerging technologies such as Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT) devices in combination can be optimized to make managing water systems easier, more efficient, and more capable of making accurate predictions.

Coal Knew, Too

This Huffington Post article discusses how coal companies also new what their impact would be on the world. A newly unearthed journal from 1966 shows the coal industry, like the oil industry, was long aware of the threat of climate change.

In August, Chris Cherry, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, salvaged a large volume from a stack of vintage journals that a fellow faculty member was about to toss out. He was drawn to a 1966 copy of the industry publication Mining Congress Journal; his father-in-law had been in the industry and he thought it might be an interesting memento.

Cherry flipped it open to a passage from James R. Garvey, who was the president of Bituminous Coal Research Inc., a now-defunct coal mining and processing research organization.

“There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” wrote Garvey. “If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result.”

Report: Fifteen Va. Superfund sites threatened by climate change, watchdog agency says

This Virginia Mercury article discusses 15 of Virginia’s toxic Superfund sites, which are in danger because of climate change, based on analysis from a US watchdog agency.

The Government Accountability Office, an independent agency that works for the U.S. Congress, assessed how impacts of climate change — including flooding, storm surge, wildfires and sea level rise — might affect some of the most dangerous hazardous waste sites around the country. The agency looked at 1,336 “active” sites on U.S. EPA’s National Priorities List and 421 “deleted” sites where EPA had determined no further cleanup was needed.

Nationwide, about 60% of those sites are located in places that might be impacted by the effects of climate change, the report found. GAO looked only at non-federal sites, which means the agency excluded the roughly 10% of Superfund sites owned or operated by the federal government.

The New Climate Math: The Numbers Keep Getting More Frightening

This Bill McKibben article for Yale Environment 360 discusses how the new climate math is even more scary. Scientists keep raising ever-louder alarms about the urgency of tackling climate change, but the world’s governments aren’t listening. Yet the latest numbers don’t lie: Nations now plan to keep producing more coal, oil, and gas than the planet can endure.

Climate change is many things — a moral issue, a question of intergenerational justice, an economic threat, and now a daily and terrifying reality.

But it’s also a math problem, a point I’ve been trying to make for awhile now. Let’s run some new numbers.

First: 11,000, as in the number of scientists who just signed a manifesto that declares the world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society. “We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” the manifesto, released earlier this month, states. “To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.”