Month: April 2015

This is the future the fossil fuel industry has in mind for you and your children.
Only minus blue skies, birds, fish, animals, clear water, soil and food.

Wall Street Journal:

The number of U.S. oil drilling rigs—a proxy for activity in the oil industry—has fallen sharply since prices headed south last year. There are now 54% fewer rigs compared with a peak of 1,609 in October, and Friday’s report marks the 19th-straight week of declines.

Business Insider:

North America experienced an unprecedented decline in drilling activity during the first quarter, which drove pricing pressure and margin compression across all product lines. First quarter revenue declined 9% and operating income declined 54%, year-over-year, compared to a 21% reduction in the United States land rig count. Activity has dropped approximately 50% from the peak in late November and we expect to continue to see pricing pressure for our services until the rig count stabilizes.

Active rig counts will keep plunging until at least July, when Morgan Stanley forecasts the counts will bottom. On Friday, data from oil driller Baker Hughes showed that the number of US oil rigs in use fell by 26 to 734 during the prior week, the lowest oil-rig count total since November 2010.

RawStory:

Downtown, clutches of men pass their time at the Salvation Army, watching movies or trolling Craigslist ads on desktop computers. The main branch of the public library is full, all day, every day, with unemployed men in cubbyholes. And when the Command Center, a private temporary jobs agency, opens every morning at 6am, between two and three dozen people are waiting to get in the door.

Some of these job seekers are sleeping in their trucks, in utility sheds, behind piles of garbage by the railroad tracks, wherever they can curl up.

Only a year ago, Williston’s shale oil explosion was still gushing jobs. From 2010 to 2014, thanks to the Bakken shale oil patch, it was the fastest growing small city in the nation. Williston nearly tripled in size, from 12,000 to 35,000 people. But the number of active rigs used to drill new wells in the Bakken dropped to 111 in March, the lowest number since April 2010, according to state figures. Low oil prices have prompted drilling to slow down, and companies big and small have been laying off workers and cutting hours.

City officials paint a rosy picture. They cite North Dakota Job Service reports that maintain there are 116 jobs in Williston for every 100 residents, point to North Dakota’s ranking among oil­-producing states (number two, after Texas), call the oil production slowdown a blip and say the oil patch is still growing.

But the city’s job numbers do not match the reality on the ground. At the Command Center, oil jobs have dropped by 10 percent since last Fall, said Kyle Tennessen, the branch manager. Compounding the job shortage, laid-­off oil workers were competing with others for construction jobs and everything else, Tennessen added.

Some migrants have already left, or are planning to, according to the local U­Haul companies. They report fewer people renting vans and trucks to move into town and more laid­-off workers renting vehicles to move out.

The rest are becoming Williston’s version of day laborers. They compete for low­-paying jobs such as picking up trash, doing laundry and mopping floors, that make enough for them to eat, but not enough to afford a place to live. (The average one­-bedroom apartment in Williston costs $2,395 a month.)

Continue reading “Dakota Oil Patch Hitting the Skids”

Here in the midwest, passionate hunters and fishermen make up a powerful voice for issues of conservation and wildlife protection. But this group has been somewhat absent in the conversation about climate change. I’ve spoken to a number of outdoor journalists and leaders in a new movement among outdoorsmen to speak out.
Now, a new film will be touring the country to raise this discussion with a critical audience.

Conservation Hawks:

BIGFORK, Mont. – Conservation Hawks, Inc., a group of hunters and anglers working to defend America’s sporting heritage, will release an important new film to the public on April 21. Cold Waters, a 10-minute film shot on a spectacular southwestern Montana spring creek, celebrates the joy and passion of fly fishing while educating anglers about the looming threat of climate change. 

 
In October 2014, five respected fly fishermen – Craig Mathews of Blue Ribbon Flies, Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, Steve Hemkens of Orvis, Tim Romano of Angling Trade, and Todd Tanner of Conservation Hawks – came together to fish for wild trout and share their thoughts on angling and climate change. Cold Waters, which is a collaboration between Conservation Hawks and the cinematic team at Conservation Media, focuses on our responsibility to protect cold, clean waters and healthy landscapes, and to stand up for future generations of Americans. The movie has been touring the U.S. as part of the 2015 Fly Fishing Film Tour. 

Cold Waters was made with unprecedented support from the fly fishing industry. The film’s sponsors included iconic brands, businesses and organizations like Patagonia, Orvis, Scientific Anglers, Costa, Winston, Sage, RIO, Redington, Abel, AFFTA, National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, TroutHunter, Linehan Outfitting Co., Sweetwater Travel Co., WorldCast Anglers, Emerald Water Anglers, Hatch Magazine, The Lodge at Palisades Creek, Angling Trade Magazine and Blue Ribbon Flies.

Continue reading “CO2ld Waters: Anglers and Climate Change”

With Jeb Bush equivocating from the standard GOP full-frontal denial of climate change, opposing presidential candidate Marco Rubio throws in with the Know Nothing wing of the party, which exerts great influence in early selection process.
Prediction: Rubio “evolves” after the South Carolina primary.

Mashable:

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who announced his presidential candidacy last week, told Bob Schieffer of CBS News on Sunday that he does not believe in manmade global warming. Instead, Rubio said he recognizes the climate is changing, but that scientists have not determined what percentage of such changes are due to human activities, such as burning coal, oil and gas for energy, compared to natural climate variability.

Unfortunately for Rubio, scientists have been quite clear that the majority of warming during the past few decades is due to manmade global warming.

In an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, Rubio said that if the government implements policies such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it would be “devastating” for the economy, and scientists can’t say precisely what the climate benefits would be.
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Rubio’s comments are out of step with the scientific community, which is nearly unanimous in finding that the majority of recent climate change is largely due to manmade activities, and that if action is not taken soon to slow the pace of global warming, potentially devastating consequences may occur.

The senator’s views also put him in opposition to the majority of voters in his home state, which is considered to be ground zero for sea level rise. A recent study from Yale University shows that 64% of Floridians believe global warming is occurring, and 50% think that climate change is mostly due to human activities.

Below, see my recent video on the impact of sea level rise on Rubio’s home state of Florida: Continue reading “GOP Contender Marco Rubio Doubles Down on Denial”

For those that caught my newest “This is Not Cool”  video of last week, Trouble at Totten Glacier, you saw clips of my recent interview with Jamin Greenbaum of the University of Texas Center for Geophysics.
I’ve selected some more in depth clips to share here for some deeper understanding. This is part one, about 4 minutes.

Below, the Totten video for anyone that missed it. Continue reading “Jamin Greenbaum on Totten Glacier: Part One”

The highest goodness is like water.
Water benefits all things and does not compete.
It stays in the lowly places which others despise.
Therefore it is near The Eternal.

– Lao-Tzu

As drought pressures build on economies of the West and Southwest US, inevitably the conversation arises, once again, of diverting resources from more water-rich areas of the country.
Population changes of recent decades have tipped the political power balance away from the moist midwest,  in the direction of the West and South.  In a partched future, when agricultural breadbaskets begin to collapse, is it that far-fetched to imagine?

ClimateProgress:

“According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh.

It’s worth another look at projected days above 100°F on
our current emissions path, via the National Climate Assessment (NCA):

Days above 100°F in higher emissions (business as usual) scenario.

Yes, absent a sharp and deep reduction in national and global emissions, much of Kansas (!)
by century’s end could well be above 100°F for nearly the whole summer. Labor Day will mean a return to those pleasant mid-to-upper 90s.

By century’s end, much of the Southern U.S. will see temperatures above 90°F for five months of the year or more, which is just a stunning change from just the recent past (again via NCA):

It truly will be an endless summer over much of the South (see also NASA’s Hansen: “If We Stay on With Business as Usual, the Southern U.S. Will Become Almost Uninhabitable”).

Business Insider:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California water regulators on Saturday revised a still-tentative drought plan by easing cuts for Los Angeles and San Diego and bumping up reduction targets in the areas that consume the most water.

Continue reading “Will the West Look to the Great Lakes for Water?”

Telegraph:

Forget floods, droughts, sea-level rise and even the melting polar ice caps. Here’s a really compelling reason to worry about global warming. Spiders.

Research has already suggested that there will be more of them – and they will grow bigger – as temperatures rise. Now a new study, published in the journal Experimental Biology, has concluded that they are likely to be able to run faster and therefore, be harder to catch.

It all comes down to how the arachnids move. Instead of using muscles, they rely on fluid to move their limbs. And as it heats up, the fluid’s ebb and flow gets faster. So the researchers found that while they moved sluggishly at a cool 59F (15C), they sprinted around at three times the speed when the thermometer rose to a stifling 104F (40C).

They sped up mainly by taking more steps, which also made them clumsier because they were unable to control their limbs so well. So there you have it: more bigger, speedier spiders, which are more liable to stumble into your bath.

Continue reading “I, for One, Welcome Our New Giant, Hairy, Eight Legged, Super Fast Overlords”

Naturally, utility executives are watching nervously.

New York Times:

HONOLULU — Allan Akamine has looked all around the winding, palm tree-lined cul-de-sacs of his suburban neighborhood in Mililani here on Oahu and, with an equal mix of frustration and bemusement, seen roof after roof bearing solar panels.

Mr. Akamine, 61, a manager for a cable company, has wanted nothing more than to lower his $600 to $700 monthly electric bill with a solar system of his own. But for 18 months or so, the state’s biggest utility barred him and thousands of other customers from getting one, citing concerns that power generated by rooftop systems was overwhelming its ability to handle it.

Only under strict orders from state energy officials did the utility, the Hawaiian Electric Company, recently rush to approve the lengthy backlog of solar applications, including Mr. Akamine’s.

It is the latest chapter in a closely watched battle that has put this state at the forefront of a global upheaval in the power business. Rooftop systems now sit atop roughly 12 percent of Hawaii’s homes, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, by far the highest proportion in the nation

Heard the one about how in the ’70s, “everyone said we were going to have an ice age”?

Watch this.

And if you’re not familiar with the larger story, watch this: Continue reading “This Day in 1973: Soylent Green Released in US”

It means something when the President of the US makes this kind of statement.

Below, my video about the US/China climate agreement.

Continue reading “Obama Weekly Address: We Can No Longer Ignore Climate Change”