Analysis: Obama under pressure to delay EPA carbon rules

Reuters, 6 Jan 2011, Ayesha Roscoe

Congress failed last year to pass a climate change bill and into this vacuum has been thrust the Environmental Protection Agency -- a symbol of government excess for the political right but an institution of last resort for environmentalists.

President Barack Obama has long vowed that the EPA would enforce legal requirements to keep the air clean if Congress was not up to the task. Some lawmakers, mainly Republicans, have vowed to stop the EPA in its tracks.

"Until this issue is settled it will be almost impossible to pass any energy legislation," said Daniel Weiss, of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The EPA has already begun regulating emissions with new rules for power plants and refineries that went into effect on January 2. Last month the EPA also released its schedule for more rules over the coming months.

But Obama will have to walk a fine line as the agency set up in 1970 by the Nixon administration faces a rising tide of opposition.

On one hand, the White House must contend with a vocal and increasingly powerful opposition arguing that new regulations will harm a fragile economy. At the same time, it must deal with supporters who say the EPA is legally bound to act and that Obama should stick to his campaign pledges.

"The Obama administration is fighting business and fighting environmentalists," said Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, LLC. "They don't have the luxury of being able to neglect their obligations ... to the environmentalists."

CARBON DIOXIDE THREAT

The EPA began moving to regulate emissions causing global warming after the agency designated carbon dioxide a threat to human health and welfare more than a year ago.

Republicans, who now control the House of Representatives in Congress, are moving to block EPA action.

Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who will head the powerful House Energy and Commerce committee, called the EPA's carbon rules an "unconstitutional power grab" in a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

Saying that the rules will kill millions of jobs, Upton called on Congress to pass legislation barring the EPA from carrying out carbon regulations until courts have decided on the legality of the rules.

The EPA also faces a slew of lawsuits from states and industries attempting to block the climate regulations, as well as lawsuits from states and organizations pressing the agency to move forward with the rules.

While the Obama administration has said it opposes moves impeding the EPA, the real test will come when such measures are attached to unrelated pieces of "must pass" legislation.

Republicans will likely attempt to tie proposals attacking the climate rules to a major budget bill Congress will need to pass in March to keep the government running.

But that is where the dealmaking could begin. Obama could agree to some delay in the EPA's moves in return for a few concessions.

Similar to the fight over extending the Bush tax cuts, the White House could then say Republicans forced a compromise by holding important legislation "hostage" over the EPA rules.

"If the Republican House essentially starts the process ... the administration is no longer responsible for disappointing the left and no longer forced to essentially impose costly regulations on emitters," Book said.

Pat Parenteau, an environmental law professor at Vermont Law School, said he does not think the White House is going to roll over without winning some climate concessions.

A compromise that postpones some of EPA's climate rules in the short-term, in exchange for a renewable power standard or more energy efficiency measures could produce immediate environmental benefits, he said.

"There could be a deal in there that gets quicker greenhouse gas reductions than you get through the rules," Parenteau said.

An extended fight over climate rules could potentially hamper other administration energy priorities such as promoting natural gas and nuclear power.

Researchers find “alarming” decline in bumblebees

Reuters, 4 Jan 2011, Maggie Fox

They documented a 96 percent decline in the numbers of the four species, and said their range had shrunk by as much as 87 percent. As with honeybees, a pathogen is partly involved, but the researchers also found evidence the bees are vulnerable to inbreeding caused by habitat loss.

"We provide incontrovertible evidence that multiple Bombus species have experienced sharp population declines at the national level," the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calling the findings "alarming."

"These are one of the most important pollinators of native plants," Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois, Urbana, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

In recent years, experts have documented a disappearance of bees in what is widely called colony collapse disorder, blamed on many factors including parasites, fungi, stress, pesticides and viruses. But most studies have focused on honeybees.

Bumblebees are also important pollinators, Cameron said, but are far less studied. Bumblebees pollinate tomatoes, blueberries and cranberries, she noted.

"The 50 species (of bumblebees) in the United States are traditionally associated with prairies and with high alpine vegetations," she added.

"Just as important -- they land on a flower and they have this behavior called buzz pollination that enables them to cause pollen to fly off the flower."

POLLINATING TOMATOES

This is the way to pollinate tomatoes, Cameron said -- although smaller bees can accomplish the same effect if enough cluster on a single flower.

Several reports have documented the disappearance of bumblebees in Europe and Asia, but no one had done a large national study in the Americas.

Cameron's team did a three-year study of 382 sites in 40 states and also looked at more than 73,000 museum records.

"We show that the relative abundance of four species have declined by up to 96 percent and that their surveyed geographic ranges have contracted by 23 percent to 87 percent," they wrote.

While no crops are in immediate danger, the results show that experts need to pay attention, Cameron said. Pollinators such as bees and bats often have specific tongue lengths and pollination behaviors that have evolved along with the species of plants they pollinate.

Bumblebees can fly in colder weather than other species, and are key to pollinating native species in the tundra and at high elevations, Cameron said.

Genetic tests show that the four affected bumblebee species have a risky lack of genetic diversity and other tests implicate a parasite called Nosema bombi, Cameron said.

"This is a wake-up call that bumblebee species are declining not only in Europe, not only in Asia, but also in North America," she said.

Several bumblebee species in big trouble, US study finds

CNN, 4 Jan 2011

Their relative abundance, depending on the species, declined 88% to 96% in the last 20 to 30 years, and their geographic ranges have shrunk by 23% to 87%, according to the study led by University of Illinois entomology professor Sydney Cameron.

Though direct causes haven’t been confirmed, the study’s authors said declining bumblebee species are more likely than stable species to be infected with a certain parasite and are more likely to have lower genetic diversity.

The authors studied eight of North America’s 50 bumblebee species, and of those eight, "four ... are significantly in trouble," Cameron said in a University of Illinois press release. The study was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"They could potentially recover; some of them might. But we only studied eight. This could be the tip of the iceberg," Cameron said.

Populations of some bumblebee and honeybee species have reported to be on the decline in North America and elsewhere for years, but until now, no evidence for large-scale range reductions of bumblebees had been collected, the authors wrote.

"The wide-scale reductions in range and abundance of North American species, which also confirm earlier studies of decline at local levels, are striking and cause for concern," the authors wrote.

The researchers counted bumblebees of eight species at 382 U.S. sites from 2007 to 2009 and compared the count to historical data that was collected from 1900 to 1999 and held by natural history museums across the country.

One species that was once found throughout the eastern United States and northern Midwest saw its geographic range reduced by 87%, according to the study. One species with a historically broad presence in the West "was largely absent from the western portion of its range," and another historically wide-ranging species, while still abundant in the Gulf states and in the western Midwest, was "not observed across most of its historical northern and eastern range."

The declining species were more likely than the stable ones to be infected with the Nosema bombi parasite, which is known to afflict some bumblebee species in Europe, the news release said.

"But confirming a direct link between N. bombi and North American (bumblebee) decline will require further research," the authors wrote in the study.

Scientists previously have hypothesized that parasites, viruses, climate change and habitat loss could contribute to bumblebee decline.

Bumblebees' pollination style make them among the most efficient pollinators of certain crops, such as cranberries, blueberries and tomatoes. In Europe particularly, billions of dollars are invested in greenhouse bumblebee pollination of certain crops, especially tomatoes, Cameron said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Bumblebees also are important pollinators for wild plants in temerpate zones, particularly in mountainous areas, "because they can fly in lower temperatures when other bees can't fly - particularly in the early spring, the bumblebees are going to be the only bees that can fly that early," Cameron said.

Other causes aside, Cameron said loss and destruction of natural habitat such as prairies and forests "clearly is going to have an impact on all species of bees. She said the planting of more native flowers and shrubs, including on plots a small distance from crops, would be helpful to bees.

The research was published two weeks after a separate study proposed that viruses possibly causing the collapse of U.S. honeybee populations might be spreading from hive to hive through pollen, as reported by National Geographic.

AOL News, 4 Jan 2011, Mara Gay

Four species of bumblebees are in a rapid decline, possibly because of increased fungal infections and inbreeding. Researchers called the findings of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "disturbing" and said they were in line with findings in Europe.

"Disturbing reports of bumblebee population declines in Europe have recently spilled over into North America, fueling environmental and economic concerns of global decline," the authors wrote.
The bumblebee is wild, but it pollinates commercial crops from tomatoes to coffee, and its disappearance could have a dire effect on food sources. "People need to know that wild bees are an enormously important ecosystem service, just like honeybees," Sydney Cameron, the head author of the study and a professor at the University of Illinois, told AOL News by phone today.

To find and count the bees, teams of researchers across the United States visited fields of flowers where hives had historically been found and gently scooped up the insects in butterfly nets.

The disappearing bees have scientists somewhat perplexed. They think a disease-causing pathogen, Nosema bombi, as well as a "lack of genetic diversity" could be plaguing the insects, but they haven't been able to prove it yet. Cameron said the Nosema bombi pathogen seems to make it difficult for queen bees to survive the winter so they can reproduce.

Honeybees in the United States are also in trouble. They are suffering from a phenomenon called "colony collapse," a disorder that seems to kill massive numbers of a hive's worker bees. Scientists aren't entirely sure what's causing the disorder, but they suspect a virus may be to blame.

Keith Delaplane, the director of the University of Georgia's Honey Bee program, said that like honeybees, bumblebees seem to be having trouble generating new hives. He said pathogens can sometimes lower the sperm counts of both bumblebees and honeybees, making it difficult to reproduce.

"A bumblebee colony would be doing pretty good if it could simply replace itself," Delaplane told AOL News by phone today. "The study is telling us that fewer hives are able to do this, however. Colonies are becoming less and less successful at replacing themselves."

Cameron said the next step is to find out whether there's a direct link between the Nosema bombi pathogen and the decline of bees in the United States. She said scientists suspect that the disease may not be native to bees in North America and may have become a problem in the early 1990s when European beekeepers brought bees to the United States to help expand the honeybee industry.

Bumblebees taking a nosedive in North America

National Geographic, 4 Jan 2011, Rachel Kaufman

Within the past 20 years abundances of the bee species Bombus occidentalis, B. affinis, B. pensylvanicus, and B. terricola have plummeted by up to 96 percent.

The finding is based on a new analysis of more than 73,000 museum collections of bumblebees, which showed where bees had been found over the last century, as well as collections of wild bees across the United States. The study looked at 8 of the 50 known bumblebee species in North America. (

"We found that yes, indeed, [these four species] are seriously declining, but there are some other species doing very well," said study co-author Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois' department of entomology.

The discovery makes it harder to pinpoint pesticides or climate change as a cause for the bug die-off, because those factors wouldn't explain why other bumblebee species in the same areas have survived.

One possibility is that the four species in crisis may all be infected with the invasive Nosema bombi fungus, which was found in greater quantities on the dying bumblebees than on relatively healthy species studied by Cameron's team.

And bees reared in Europe, where the fungus is more virulent, were imported to California in the early 1990s—right before the bees began to die off.

But the link isn't certain yet.

"We're at this frustrating stage where there's a lot of circumstantial evidence to say that these species are declining because of this pathogen," Cameron said. "But we don't have direct evidence. We have no cause and effect."

Bumblebees Highly Efficient "Farmworkers"

Like honeybees, bumblebees rely on pollen as a source of protein. In addition to their wild work, bumblebees are widely used as pollinators for multibillion-dollar commercial crops, such as blueberries and tomatoes. (Related: "Bees Like It Hot—Pollinators Prefer Warm Flowers, Study Reveals.")

Theoretically, a bee imported from Europe carrying Nosema bombi could have escaped into the wild through a greenhouse vent and infected its wild brethren.

In fact, the bee die-off seen in the new study "look[s] very much like a pattern you'd find with a newly introduced disease," said Robbin Thorp, professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis. Thorp has been studying pollinators for decades and first noticed the decline of a fifth bumblebee species, B. franklini, in the late 1990s.

Although Thorp was not involved in the present study, he and Cameron will soon be working together to study more museum specimens "to see if we can pick up the fingerprint of the Nosema prior to and after this period of potential introduction," he said.

The researchers also studied the DNA of the bee species and found that the declining species had less genetic diversity than the species doing well—a trait often seen in species whose populations are isolated, or fragmented, resulting in increased inbreeding.

"They seem to be doing a lot of moving around," Cameron said of the bees. "They're not fragmented. But at the same time they have lower genetic diversity, and we don't know why."

Figuring out the exact cause of the bumblebee declines may be crucial for farmers, as bumblebees are even more efficient pollinators than honeybees. That's because the larger bees' high-frequency buzzing is just right for opening a flower's pollen-holding pores.

"You could use honeybees. You could throw thousands of colonies at [tomato plants]. But bee for bee, they're nowhere near as efficient," Cameron said. "A lot of flowers depend on this large, bumbly bee."
Four bumblebee species declining in North America

MSNBC, 3 Jan 2011, Wynne Perry

Although perhaps not as dramatic as the sudden disappearance of honeybees, a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder, reports of vanishing bumble bees have appeared in recent years in North America and Europe.

Until now, however, the North American reports were isolated and small-scale, according to Jeffrey Lozier, a study researcher and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois.  

"What we wanted to do is say 'If you look at the entire country, do these patterns hold up?'" Lozier said. "We picked these target species because they sort of were canaries in the coal mine."

What they found added credence to worries of coast-to-coast declines in some — but not all — bumblebees and more evidence of trouble for pollinators that fertilize both wild plants and crops. The cause remains unclear and may be complex.

"We need to keep a general view that pollinators seem to be declining, but each bumblebee species may be responding to different pressures that are causing declines," said James Strange, a study author and a research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Not all the bees are disappearing. It turns out there may be winners and there may be losers."

The study focused on the western bumblebee, the American bumblebee, the rusty-patched bumblebee, and the yellowbanded bumblebee. Collectively, their ranges span the continental United States, while the researchers trapped bumblebees at 382 locations across the country. They also collected data on four species of bumblebee believed to be stable, and their results indicated that these were indeed doing fine.

To get a sense of how the abundance and distribution of the bees may have changed, the researchers looked at bumblebees preserved in museum collections from 1900 to 1999, compiling a database of more than 73,000 historical specimens.

Their findings revealed that among the bees collected in the field from 2007 through 2009, the four target species made up much smaller portions of the total catches than they had historically. These changes in relative abundance began to appear within the last 20 to 30 years, according to the research published Jan. 3 in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Based on this data, the researchers estimated that the four target species had also seen their ranges decline. For example, the researchers collected western bumblebees in the Rocky Mountains and the intermountain west (between the Rockies and the Pacific coast), but it was largely absent from the western portion of its historical range, closer to the Pacific coast.

The survey found only 22 rusty-patched bumblebees and 31 yellow-banded bumblebees.

While these findings indicate an association between the fungus and declining populations, they don't necessarily show that the fungus is driving the declines, Lozier said.

For the American and western bumblebee, researchers found that populations also had less genetic diversity than stable species. (Once again, too few samples were collected from other two species.) This is significant because genetic diversity enables a population to respond to changing environments or novel threats like disease, according to Lozier.

"The amazing thing we did find is gene flow appears very high," Lozier said. For example, American bumblebees caught in Texas were genetically indistinguishable from those from South Dakota, suggesting the bees are reproducing (and spreading genes) across wide swaths of the United States.

"If gene flow is really this high, it could prove a potential mechanism for the spread of the pathogen," he said.

The puzzle of pollinator declines
The origin of the fungus and how it spread isn't completely clear, but there are theories. It has been theorized that, after decimating commercial bumblebee facilities in California,N. bombi escaped and became responsible for declines among wild populations in the Pacific Northwest, according to these researchers.

The elevated N. bombi infections among struggling bumblebees, and the possibility that the fungus was introduced from Europe, calls to mind reports of other introduced fungal pathogens decimating species — like the chytrid fungus killing amphibians on multiple continents and Geomyces destructans, which is wiping out some North American bats, they write.

Two papers published in December in the journal PLoS ONE explored the plethora of infections faced by honeybees. One paper found that a certain type of virus implicated in colony collapse disorder may be transmitted by pollen and can infect other pollinators such as bumblebees and wasps. Another study linked a viral-fungal tag team to the disorder. The researchers of those studies found that infection becomes more lethal when the virus and fungus infected the same bee together.

Bumble bees in US suffer sharp decline, joining countless other species disappearing worldwide

Huffington Post, 4 Jan 2011, Travis Walter Donovan

Honey bees have long been known to be in decline, suffering from the enigmatic colony collapse disorder, and the latest research on U.S. bumble bees only exacerbates concerns over future food production, as bees are responsible for pollinating 90 percent of the world's commercial plants, from fruits and vegetables to coffee and cotton.

While a correlation between the Nosema bombi fungus infection and the declining bumble bee populations was discovered, the culprit isn't clearly defined. One of the study's researchers told LiveScience that the data doesn't necessarily verify that the disease is driving the decline, and other factors -- like reduced adaptability to environmental changes as a result of inbreeding -- are likely at play.

The bees join other pollinating insects that have been suffering increasing declines since the end of the 20th century, including moths and hoverflies, and the U.S. findings mirror similar studies examining bee declines around the world, with everything from increasing city development to pesticide use suggested as contributing causes.

Unfortunately, insects aren't the only creatures suffering drastic losses to their populations. Tigers could be extinct in 12 years if efforts to protect their habitats and prevent poaching aren't increased. A recent study across three continents showed snakes to be in rapid decline due to climate change. Overfishing and changing weather patterns have left 12 of the world's 17 species of penguins experiencing steep losses in numbers. A recent World Wildlife Fund report found that all animals in the tropics have declined by 60 percent since 1970, with everything from gorillas to fish thinning out.

While the alarming drop in U.S. bumble bee populations is the latest news suggesting disastrous consequences from unpredictable climate change and environmental degradation, it is only a small portion of the bigger picture. Countless species are dying out at increasing rates, and the unforeseen effects from such losses could likely be devastating to the environment.

USA Today, 3 Jan 2011, Doyle Rice

"The abundance of four species has declined by up to 96 percent in the last 10-15 years," says study lead author Sydney A. Cameron, an entomologist at the University of Illinois. Also, she reports the bees' geographic ranges have contracted by anywhere from 23 to 87 percent.

This isn't just an academic exercise: Bumblebees pollinate about 15% of all crops grown in the nation, worth about $3 billion. They are excellent pollinators, the study reports, thanks to their large body size, long tongues, and high-frequency buzzing, which helps release pollen from flowers.

Bees pollinate hothouse crops such as tomatoes, peppers and strawberries, and field crops such as blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, squash and watermelon.

Cameron suggests two possible causes for the decline: The spread of a deadly fungus known as Nosema bombi and low genetic diversity, which renders the bees susceptible to other pathogens and environmental pressures.

The scientists conducted a three-year nationwide study of the changes in the distribution, genetic diversity, and health of eight species of North American bumblebees by comparing data from museum records and surveys. The population of four of the species were declining, and the other four were holding steady.

This is a separate issue from what's known as colony collapse disorder, a nationwide phenomenon that's causing honeybee populations to disappear.

Cameron says much more research is necessary to identify and understand the bumblebee problem. "Large-scale coordinated efforts to address the status of native pollinators in North America are ... in their infancy, and bumblebee research is at the forefront," the authors write in the study. "Future research on the

A 2007 National Academy of Sciences report blamed the decline of pollinators (such as bumblebees) around the world on a combination of habitat loss, pesticides, pollution and diseases spilling out of greenhouses using commercial bumblebees.

The Hill, 5 Jan 2011, Ben Geman

Upton told reporters Wednesday that he plans to fill out GOP subcommittee rosters as soon as today, but that the committee won’t get rolling in earnest until Jan. 19.

“I think the 19th is likely the earliest we can organize,” he told reporters just after the new Congress formally began on Wednesday under House GOP rule, adding that from there, meetings to craft the agenda will commence.

“EPA will be an early issue for us to consider,” said Upton, who has pledged "early, early" hearings on the matter.

Upton has called for repealing Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations outright using the Congressional Review Act. But in a Dec. 28 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he said another option is putting the rules on ice while legal challenges brought by industry groups and states work their way through the courts.

“The best solution is for Congress to overturn the EPA's proposed greenhouse gas regulations outright. If Democrats refuse to join Republicans in doing so, then they should at least join a sensible bipartisan compromise to mandate that the EPA delay its regulations until the courts complete their examination of the agency's endangerment finding and proposed rules,” he wrote.

The “endangerment finding” refers to EPA’s late 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gases are a threat to humans — the legal underpinning for EPA’s climate rules.

Asked Wednesday about which approach is in the offing, Upton replied, “it depends upon what precisely the regulations are.”

“We will keep you posted,” he added. “Don’t worry.”

EPA’s initial Clean Air Act permit rules for new or overhauled industrial plants with large greenhouse-gas emissions formally began taking effect this month on a case-by-case basis, and the agency plans to set national emissions standards for power plants and refineries specifically in 2012.

Politico, 5 Jan 2011, Darius Dixon

Jonathan Pershing, the deputy special envoy for climate change, defended the administration’s push for a deal for countries to make voluntary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions with the idea that deeper cuts will develop over time.

That process — first developed in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord — was distressing to some because it creates a path that differs greatly from the mandatory cuts outlined in the Kyoto Protocol.

“Under Kyoto, which is the old model,” Pershing said, “emissions between 1990 and 2007, from [carbon dioxide], climbed on the order of 40 percent.” “So, if you think that that was a successful model, then you should think again. It didn’t work.”

Noting that the Kyoto Protocol was never ratified in the U.S., Pershing said that despite its popularity abroad, “it is equally clear that the structures of Kyoto would not work for us.

“It is clear that we would not work politically; we couldn’t move forward under that framework,” he added. “We need a different process.”

Pershing said the international push could help convince lawmakers that all isn’t lost on global warming.

“The State Department is trying to get an agreement globally — which we got,” Pershing said. “The other things that I’m hopeful of is that the form and the structure of that agreement will make a difference here at home. I think it will.

“We’ve been told by many members of Congress that they want to see certain things as we move forward. And we made those elements among our priorities in our negotiations, and we got them,” he added.

“We’ve got support for all countries acting,” Pershing said, “and all countries are now doing so, including our big worry: China.”

USA Today, 6 Jan 2011

"Climate change is no longer a distant threat on the horizon," said Leda Huta, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition, a U.S. network of hundreds of conservation, scientific, religious, and other groups. "If we are serious about saving endangered species from global warming, then these are the places to start."

The coalition's report, "It's Getting Hot Out There," cites data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that estimate 20% to 30% of the world's species will face increased risk of extinction if global temperatures rise at least 3 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.

It calls on the Obama Administration and Congress to protect the following top 10 ecosystems:

1. 
   The Arctic Sea Ice, home to the polar bear, Pacific walrus and at least 6 species of seal.
   
2. 
   Shallow Water Coral Reefs, home to the critically endangered elkhorn and staghorn coral.
   
3. 
   The Hawaiian Islands, home to more than a dozen imperiled birds and 319 threatened and endangered plants.
   
4. 
   Southwest Deserts, home to numerous imperiled plants, fish, and mammals.
   
5. 
   The San Francisco Bay-Delta, home to the imperiled Pacific salmon, Swainson's hawk, tiger salamander and Delta smelt.
   
6. 
   California Sierra Mountains, home to 30 native species of amphibian, including the Yellow-legged frog.
   
7. 
   The Snake River Basin, home to four imperiled runs of salmon and steelhead.
   
8. 
   Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, home to the imperiled Whitebark pine, an important food source for animals, including the threatened Grizzly bear.
   
9. 
   The Gulf Coast's flatlands and wetlands, home to the Piping and Snowy plovers, Mississippi sandhill crane, and several species of sea turtles.
   
10. 
    The Greater Everglades, home to 67 threatened and endangered species, including the manatee and the red cockcaded woodpecker.
    

Washington Post, 3 Jan 2011, Juliet Eilperin

According a list of the top six priorities Issa has lined up for hearings , obtained by Politico, global warming is nowhere to be found.

Now, Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella assures Post Carbon that political observers shouldn't read too much into this: "Just because it isn't on our hearing list doesn't mean we're not looking at it."

But given incoming House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton's (R-Mich.) eagerness to take on the Environmental Protection Agency and its efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, it's a safe bet that much of the initial action will take place at Upton's panel, rather than Issa's.

New York Times, 5 Jan 2011, Andrew C. Revkin

.
In my year-end summary post over the weekend, I touched on some analysis showing, unsurprisingly, that after several years of heavy exposure, global warming, the greatest story rarely told, had reverted to its near perpetual position on the far back shelf of the public consciousness — if not back in the freezer.

The global trends in news coverage can best be seen in this graph from Max Boykoff of the University of Colorado and Maria Mansfield of Oxford University, who are monitoring global media coverage of global warming:

As with climate change itself, it’s important not to taint interpretations by using too short a time scale, so it’s useful to look, also, at a graph generated by Robert Brulle of Drexel University for a piece on declining news coverage by Douglas Fischer. The graph uses American network evening news coverage as a proxy for broader news interest, so it’s a sketch, akin to using borehole temperature or tree rings as substitutes for thermometers:

Here’s Brulle’s take on the data:

I think it is fair to say that the cycle of media interest in climate change has run its course, and this story is no longer considered newsworthy. Since we know that public opinion is heavily influenced by media coverage, this would imply that public concern or issue saliency of this issue would decline.

Media coverage doesn’t necessarily tell people what opinions they should have on a given issue. But it does influence what individuals are concerned about. So a decline in media coverage of an issue decreases its overall importance and standing on the public agenda. I think the polls pretty much bear this out. If you look at the Gallup most important problem data, the environment was seen as the most important problem by 5% of the population in January 2007. For the last 4 months of 2010, the percentage mentioning environment as the most important problem has remained steady at 1% or less. So while polls may reveal a significant proportion of Americans concerned about climate change, it is not an important issue in comparison to all of the other concerns.

As I’ve said before, the last few years of public discourse on climate has been akin to water sloshing in a shallow pan. [4:57 p.m. | Updated Here's analysis of the decline from Matthew Nisbet of Big Think and American University.]

The public has never been deeply engaged on this issue, Gallup and other surveys show quite clearly, and almost surely won’t be, with or without sustained media coverage, in time to make public opinion on climate the factor that drives shifts in energy norms that are needed in the next few decades (whether or not you worry about climate change).

Given that I’ve covered the causes and consequences of climate change since the 1980s, you might perceive this as me throwing in the towel. That’s not the case. Otherwise I wouldn’t be dealing with it at all here. The latest studies illuminating the human influence on climate, and the importance of climate to human affairs, are vital to track.

But it’s clear from the work of Dan Kahan and Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale, among others, that simply describing those findings more frequently or even more powerfully (on the front page or nightly news) doesn’t matter much, given the human tendency to sift and select information to suit preconceptions.

I’ll soon be posting (long overdue) a video interview I did with Brulle at the climate talks in Mexico in which he gives his rather dark forecast for how this will play out. It’s worth hearing him out on this, given his many years of experience studying how the human mind, and human communities, absorb information about the environment and respond — or don’t.

I’m not nearly as gloomy, for reasons I’ll make clear below.

There’s been both wailing and gloating over the declining coverage, with Joe Romm particularly (if not surprisingly) incensed at American newspapers, especially The Times, for neglecting the story of the century.

I’m trying not to use Dot Earth as a reactive tool, but once in awhile I’ve got to defend my newsroom colleagues. While climate pundits sit inside the Beltway dictating posts, Justin Gillis has been traveling to mountain peaks and ice sheets to tell the story of accumulating carbon dioxide and diminishing glacial ice. The reporters who produced this year’s outstanding “Beyond Fossil Fuels” series traveled the globe, as well, building on years of prior coverage that first crested with our multi-year Energy Challenge series.

In this series, Elisabeth Rosenthal reported what I consider the most exciting story on energy and development in years — a vivid description in words, video and photography showing how a single solar panel has had an utterly transformative impact on a household and village in rural Kenya. If you want to build climate resilience in poor places, bring people education (kids reading by electric lighting), information and paths to prosperity (The photo below is by Ed Ou/The New York Times.)

I alluded to this piece in my post on energy poverty and will return to it shortly in a piece on what is perhaps the most important frontier for energy innovators to attack — not improving the chemistry driving photovoltaic efficiency (although that’s important, too), but finding ways to do for distributed electricity generation what Vision Spring has done for cheap reading glasses.

The core of the climate problem lies in the reality that the world doesn’t have the energy options it needs for a smooth ride toward roughly 9 billion people by mid-century, all seeking decent lives.

So good reporters, those always eager to get to the root causes of a problem (being “radical” in the most precise sense of that word), will still track climate science. But they will devote more time and effort to diving deeper on energy policy, habits and innovations — whether unraveling counterproductive subsidies, pointing out the lack of money for path-breaking research, or revealing examples of social and financial innovations percolating around the world — any one of which could make a big difference if the information gets out and around.

I met dozens of such reporters at the last round of climate talks, hailing from Tanzania to Bhutan to Berkeley. They’re doing good work already, and trading ideas instantly via the Web to keep improving.

Those stories won’t show up in Google searches for “global warming” but could well be the stories that matter most.

Here are a couple of postscripts:

Tom Friedman left out a fourth, and most important, variable in the title of his book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded.” It should have been titled, “Hot, Flat, Crowded and NOISY.” And I mean “noise,” not of the happy fun party noise variety, but of the sort in the “signal to noise ratio” that will result in a breakdown of civilization.

Perhaps it’s just my bias as a communicator, but I think this is THE most important variable of the future. Things can be hot, flat, and crowded, yet still civil if there is effective leadership AND the people are able to hear the voices who know how to lead. But try starting a food fight in a crowded, NOISY lunch room and see what happens. Pretty hard to impose order.

I have a feeling that Al Gore would agree with this speculation. He tried to lead, but got shouted down by an already-noisy society. There is a coming “dark ages” of information excess accompanied by a “new stupidity,” that most people still have a hard time fathoming, but I swear I’m seeing it at every level of our society. For me personally, I’m involved with ocean conservation on the California coast right now and can’t believe the disinformation campaigns all the way down to the local coastal restoration projects. It’s getting to the point that any change you try to push for, there is an opposition group who knows how to immediately mimic your perspective and skew things in the opposite direction where the public can’t figure out who’s who. In the future, this is bound to only get worse. Just the growing ratio of blogging to news gathering alone shows us how willing we are to move from order to chaos.

The real struggle will be between the literal minded types, who lack the imagination to even grasp that the world they have come to know could ever change, versus the less literal minded types who are capable of both perceiving change as well as engaging in new and different thinking (i.e. true innovation). Unfortunately, the world of science (and especially science policy) is dominated by the former.

Just the idea that Friedman didn’t include “noisy” in his title shows how easily over-looked it is for the future. This is the real danger — the idea of a major threat that is seen as superfluous or even silly, which is the way media noise tends to be perceived. The rise of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show as possibly “the most trusted voice in television news” (as your newspaper called him) is symptomatic of the growing societal noise level.

And this is where boredom comes into play. What could be more stultifying to a society than to be overwhelmed by noise? The eventual result is that what was once interesting (i.e. “the end of the planet”) becomes so lost in the noise that it becomes boring. Which leads me to paraphrase Roosevelt with, “We have nothing to fear, but boredom itself.” When catastrophe becomes boring the possibilities have no bounds.

Quality Coverage
Finally, major media get good marks in a forthcoming paper assessing 20 years of news coverage of the projected rise in sea levels in a warming world by Ursula Rick, Maxwell Boykoff (of “balance as bias” fame) and Roger A. Pielke Jr., all at the University of Colorado. The reports largely tracked the scientific consensus at the time, according to the study, forthcoming in Environmental Research Letters. Also, I encourage you to check out Tom Yulsman’s post, “Environmental journalists: Are we really that awful?“
Green Power for the Empire State Building

New York Times, 6 Jan 2011, Tom Zeller Jr.

On Thursday, the building’s caretakers announced another milestone: it has become the largest commercial purchaser of renewable power in the state.

In a two-year deal brokered with Green Mountain Energy, a renewable power and carbon offset retailer recently acquired by NRG Energy of New Jersey, the Empire State Building will purchase 55 million kilowatt-hours worth of renewable energy certificates annually — enough to cover its yearly electricity consumption.

The certificates are sourced through NRG’s wind power facilities.

In a statement, Anthony E. Malkin, the president of Malkin Holdings, which supervises the Empire State Building, suggested that the move, along with the building’s other greening efforts, “gives us a competitive advantage in attracting the best credit tenants at the best rents.”

To be sure, trumpeting large-scale purchases of renewable energy certificates, or REC’s, has become increasingly common among businesses and institutions seeking to improve their green reputations.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which “supports the organizational procurement of green power” through its Green Power Partnership Program, is a prime mover along these lines. The program’s Green Power Leadership Awards for 2010 recognize a number of businesses and organizations, including the Indianapolis Zoo, which now covers 100 percent of its electricity needs — 14 million kilowatt-hours annually — through REC purchases.

The Intel Corporation, which buys 1.4 billion kilowatt-hours worth of REC’s — about half of its annual consumption in the United States — has been the national leader since 2008, according to the agency.

Of course, as popular as renewable energy certificates have become, their real-world impact in helping to advance green energy is notoriously difficult to measure — and a subject of much debate.

The E.P.A. provides a fair amount of explanation on just what REC’s are — essentially nontangible assets representing “the environmental, social, and other nonpower qualities of renewable electricity generation.” One REC is created for every 1,000 kilowatt-hours of renewable power generated, and the certificates can be sold with, or in some cases separately, from the power.

Ideally, the whole thing would work as Green Mountain Energy elegantly lays out in its “bathtub” analogy: Power from all sources, clean and dirty, is dumped and mixed into the grid, which might be thought of as a tub. Customers draw power from that tub as needed, but they can’t really separate the clean wind power, say, from sooty coal-based power.

Still, the company explains that demand for renewable energy — as expressed through voluntary purchases of certificates — will slowly increase the proportion of clean energy going into the tub.

Some skeptics caution that this is only true if the certificates help create new clean-energy facilities, rather than simply provide added profit to existing ones.

Matthew Freedman, a staff attorney with The Utility Reform Network, a California consumer advocacy organization, suggested that there are two scenarios where REC sales do make a difference:

(1) The REC’s are sold under a long-term contract and this long-term contract allows a new renewable generation facility to receive financing and achieve commercial operations. In this case, the long-term REC deal provides critical revenues that enable the project to be financed.

(2) The REC’s are sold by a facility with high operational costs and the facility would shut down without future REC revenues. It is possible that some high-cost biomass plants could meet this criteria if their fuel costs are significant and they lack a sufficiently lucrative energy off-take agreement. The key question is whether the facility is likely to continue to operate based only on energy market revenues (without any REC sales). In the case of an existing wind project, there is no chance that a REC deal makes a difference because the operational costs are low and most wind projects receive lucrative federal tax credits based on production over the first 10 years. Once a wind project is online, the facility will continue to operate with or without a REC deal.

“The bottom line,” Mr. Freedman added, “is that you need to investigate whether the REC transaction satisfies the principle of additionality. Otherwise, the transacting of REC’s serves only to provide the buyer with positive public relations value and increases profits for the seller.”

Whether or not the Empire State Building’s REC outlay will prompt NRG to build new wind farms — or will help shore up one of its existing facilities — is unclear. That aside, it still seems a notable milestone for New York’s most famous landmark. The purchase, according to Thursday’s announcement, is “more than double the amount of renewable power that any other commercial customer in New York City is currently buying.”

SF Chronicle, 6 Jan 2011, Kelly Zito

Unless people significantly alter the way they manage water supplies and fuel their cars and homes, the Sierra Nevada and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta will become increasingly hostile to already-dwindling wildlife and fish species, the Endangered Species Coalition said in a report released Wednesday.

Likewise for the Hawaiian Islands, Southwest deserts, Arctic sea ice and shallow-water coral reefs around the globe.

"Climate change is no longer a distant threat on the horizon," said Leda Huta, executive director of the Washington group. "It has arrived and is threatening ecosystems that we all depend upon, and our endangered species are particularly vulnerable."

In the report, "It's Getting Hot Out There," the coalition ranks the top 10 "hot spots" for vulnerable species, mostly within the United States with a few beyond. No. 1 on the list: the Arctic ice sheets where polar bears, seals, walruses and sea ducks make their home. Tropical coral reefs were second. The delta is No. 5 and the Sierra Nevada No. 6 on the list.

The group's message isn't necessarily a new one. But it comes during a particularly pivotal time in California, where policymakers are at the forefront of cutting heat-trapping greenhouse gases and under pressure this year to complete a long-term plan for the delta that restores the ecosystem and ensures water supplies for cities and farms.