Energy and Global Warming News for February 25: Obama: ‘Price on carbon pollution’ key to ‘competitive America’; Projects across US turn landfill gas to energy; World warming unhindered by cold spells — scientists

Obama:  “Price on carbon pollution” key to “competitive America”

President Barack Obama reiterated his support for putting a price on carbon during an address to the Business Roundtable today.






World Warming Unhindered By Cold Spells: Scientists

The pace of global warming continues unabated, scientists said on Thursday, despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards. The bitter cold, with more intense winter weather forecast for March in parts of the United States, have led some to question if global warming has stalled.







Projects across US turn landfill gas into energy

Nationwide, the number of landfill gas projects, which convert methane gas emitted from decomposing garbage into power, jumped from 399 in 2005 to 519 last year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. President Obama, who is promoting wind, solar and nuclear power as ways to generate clean energy, has made Recovery Act funds available for the projects.

“There’s certainly an increasing interest in doing these projects,” says Rachel Goldstein, leader of EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program, which provides technical help to develop them. She says they are popular because they control energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As garbage decomposes, it creates gas that is half methane, which has 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. Instead of letting the gas escape into the air, these projects collect the gas and treat it so it can be used for electricity or upgraded to pipeline-grade gas. The projects power homes, buildings and vehicles.


Landfill gas provides constant power and doesn’t “require the sun to shine or the wind to blow,” says Wes Muir, of Waste Management, a Houston-based company that runs 115 of these projects and plans to have 160 to 170 by 2013.

His company worked on a $15.5 million, partly state-funded project in Livermore, Calif., that in November began producing 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas each day. Another project last year, which cost $45 million, is generating enough power that the University of New Hampshire has cut its natural gas usage by 80%, he said.

Study: Can Hurricanes Cause Climate Change?

Back in the Pliocene era, between 5 million and 3 million years ago, the average global temperature was about 7°F warmer than it is today, yet atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were about the same. If carbon dioxide were the sole factor in warming, that wouldn’t make any sense. It isn’t, of course; there are several other contributors, including the brightness of the sun and the location of the continents (whose positions dictate, among other things, where ice caps can form) “” but these were all pretty much the same in the Pliocene as well.

So what accounted for the higher global temperature? According to a new paper in Nature, one possible factor is hurricanes. Scientists have long suspected that global warming could make hurricanes more intense somehow, but the new study suggests the effect works both ways: tropical cyclones could help drive up temperatures in response. “We’re suggesting that hurricanes could have created a permanent El Ni±o condition,” says Yale’s Alexey Fedorov, lead author of the study.

Antarctic melting due to global warming; sea levels may rise

The ice shelves in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula appear to be disappearing because of climate change, according to a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey.

“The loss of ice shelves is evidence of the effects of global warming,” says USGS scientist and lead author Jane Ferrigno.

Melting of the West Antarctic part alone of the Antarctic ice sheet would cause a worldwide sea-level rise of approximately 18 feet. According to the report, “the resulting rise in sea level could severely impact the densely populated coastal regions on Earth.”

In the worst-case scenario, the potential sea-level rise if the entire Antarctic ice sheet melts is estimated to be 213 to 240 feet.

“The changes exhibited in the region are widely regarded as among the most profound and unambiguous examples of the effects of global warming yet seen on the planet,” the authors write in the report.

Since 1998, the ice lost from just one of the five ice shelves in the study totals more than 1,500 square miles, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Scientists used satellite and aerial photographs and maps dating back to the 1940s as sources for the report. The ice shelves are attached to the continent and already floating, holding in place the Antarctic ice sheet that covers about 98 percent of Antarctica.

The report acknowledges that while parts of the Antarctic ice sheet are thickening, on balance, it is probably becoming thinner overall.

The full report, “Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947″”2009” is available online.

Livermore Opens Its Doors to Outsiders

Livermore, home to two major U.S. weapons laboratories, existed as a city of fences and secrets during the Cold War and for years afterward. Now, some of those fences are receding. Both of the city’s weapons labs””Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories””are moving forward on plans to build a campus where government scientists and outside researchers can work together on clean-energy technology.

Dubbed the Livermore Valley Open Campus, the project is set to rise on a roughly 110-acre parcel on the labs’ sprawling property. The new facility is envisioned as a green-technology hub where scientists can apply weapons-making aptitude to other endeavors, such as renewable energy and fuel-efficient vehicles. The initiative is expected to receive financing from both the federal government, which operates the labs, and the private sector.

As part of the project, a new road is being built to connect the planned campus to the main Livermore road. Preliminary construction work has begun, and a comprehensive plan for the campus is expected by October.

“We’ve been hiding behind the fence for too long,” says Bob Carling, director of Sandia’s transportation energy center.

In Livermore, officials hope the new campus will give an economic lift to the city of 84,000 people. To complement the facility, Livermore has set up a regional incubator program involving neighboring towns, universities and businesses. The initiative is expected to create several thousand jobs and bring in an additional $500 million in investment over 10 years, according to city’s economic-development department.

The new initiative””unveiled last summer by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration””has received national attention. President Barack Obama’s new budget proposal this month cited the open campus plan. Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office recently added Livermore’s incubator initiative, dubbed I-Gate, to the list of projects to receive funding under a new major state program.


  1. Leif says:

    ,,,” the potential sea-level rise if the entire Antarctic ice sheet melts is estimated to be 213 to 240 feet.

    It is interesting to note that the highest point in Florida is 345 feet.

  2. Barry says:


    Is this really the take home point the UK Met Office wants to convey about the future of UK weather from global warming? Don’t most people see a reduction in very cold winters as a good thing?

    The people of the UK would have been better educated about the future they are choosing/facing if the Met had talked about the threat from increasing precipitation.

    As Joe has repeatedly made clear, the climate science says that both total precipitation and extreme precipitation events will increase in a warmer climate. And until humans warm the climate so much that we abolish winter in the UK…then UK is likely to get more and bigger snow events in winter.

    It is the extreme levels of snow, not the cold so much, that really cause economic losses and shut down normal life for many folks. And these are predicted to keep rising as we keep warming the atmosphere with our fossil fuel pollution.

    Not sure the Met did a good job in this article of informing the UK public of the increasing weather threats they face — even in winter! — from AGW.

  3. Brewster says:

    Hmmm …

    Leif, where is that spot?

    Good place to build a Condo…

  4. Ryan T says:

    On the Pliocene warmth article, the title doesn’t seem to quite fit. According to the study, increased hurricane activity may have been an amplifying effect of a warmer planet, not a root “cause”. It’s that pesky forcing vs. feedback thing that applies to water vapor too. The article content eventually gets around to making it clearer, but “Can Hurricanes Reinforce Climate Change” might have been better.

    It would be interesting to see an estimate, if that’s even possible, of how rapidly these changes (both the forcing and the feedback) may have occurred. The rate of warming seems like a big concern with today’s holocene climate modification.

  5. James Newberry says:

    Heat released from oxidizing a ton of mined hydrocarbons (industrial power measured in Btu) may be trivial compared to multi-century radiative forcing planetary heating effect, called global warming. Has any work been done to estimate this discrepancy and how our economic philosophy has denied this reality, thereby leading toward cryosphere meltdown (seven million cubic miles of polar land ice) and associated ecosphere collapse? Additionally, permafrost and undersea clathrates seem poised to contribute billions of tons to atmospheric carbon as positive feedbacks.

  6. Leif says:

    Brewster, #3: A quick GOOGLE search… A place called Britton Hill, Lakewood Park, Walton County, Florida

    The mean elevation of the whole state is one hundred feet. (100 feet)

  7. Leif says:

    And for you Anti_Science folks:


    Notice how the “dumb scientists” don’t know within 10% of an answer. Recall that climate science tells us within 95 % that trouble looms on our present course.

  8. prokaryote says:

    Asia swelters in heatwave
    FEBRUARY is on track to become Singapore’s driest month, as well as one of the hottest on record.

    Peninsular Malaysia is experiencing water shortages, from the Kedah rice fields in the north to parts of Johor in the south, where taps ran dry over the Chinese New Year.

    China is reporting severe drought and a shortage of drinking water, affecting millions in the south-western part of the country.

    And in the Philippines, the largest corn-producing region is withering under a blazing sun.

    Weather experts say the region is once again grappling with the severe effects of the El Nino phenomenon, which sparked forest fires and the haze more than 10 years ago.

    This time, the parched conditions are causing grief to farmers and raising concerns about water shortages.

  9. ben says:

    Since some people will link every bad weather to global warming, so I will share with you a funny contest from that I received by email:: Since there is a large debate in the world if “humans are causing harmful Global warming” is true or false we decide to make a contest and in the same time you can save 15% your entire order at just add the promo code # Globalwarmingtrue or Globalwarmingfalse at checkout. Offer expires on 5/30/10.

  10. prokaryote says:

    “Since some people will link every bad weather to global warming”

    Ben this is not just “every bad weather”. It is “record breaking” and threatening millions of people.

  11. prokaryote says:

    Chinese Solar Firms Eye Fast-Growing Japanese Market
    U.S. Market Remains Fragmented but Future Bright
    “Some countries, when they put out a national goal, you don’t know whether they will achieve it, but Japan seems to have a good track record,” said Shawn Qu, CEO of Canadian Solar, a Chinese manufacturer of solar power modules.

    “If the [Japanese] government puts out the target, then they have the mechanism to make sure it happens.”

    Curbing Smokestack Emissions Tops EPA’s 2011-2013 Enforcement Goals

  12. paulm says:

    I think its almost time to by an Ark…

    Climate change: On the edge
    Author: By Jim Hansen

    But we can now see that the models are almost worthless.



  13. prokaryote says:

    Paulm, i second that and already working on a concept.