Moon skims north of Orion on February 26

Tonight – February 26, 2015 – the waxing gibbous moon will be shining to the north of the constellation Orion the Hunter. At the same time, the moon will be south of the ecliptic – the sun’s path in front of the backdrop stars. The sky chart below helps to illustrate.

In the year 2015, the moon in its monthly travels moves to the north of Orion yet south of the ecliptic.

From northerly latitudes, you can use the constellation Aurgia to star-hop the June solstice point about midway between the star Betelgeuse and the star Theta Aurigae.

This evening, you can envision the ecliptic arcing to the north of Orion with the mind’s-eye. As seen from our northerly latitudes, the ecliptic arcs way up high above Orion in our southern sky. But from temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, the moon and ecliptic loom rather low in the northern sky, below an “upside-down” Orion.

On the June solstice – the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice and the Southern Hemisphere winter solstice – the sun reaches its northernmost point on the sky’s dome for the year, to the north of Orion’s red supergiant star Betelgeuse. In case you’re wondering, you can’t see Betelgeuse as the sun reaches its northernmost point on the June solstice, because Betelgeuse is lost in the light of the sun at that time of year.

However, since the moon reaches its northernmost point on the sky’s dome once every month (and sometimes twice), you can often watch the moon as it passes to the north of Betelgeuse during its monthly journey through the constellations of the Zodiac. Depending on the year, the moon can swing anywhere from 5^o north to 5^o south of the June (northern) solstice point (to the north of Betelgeuse). Incidentally, the moon at its northernmost point is sometimes called a northern standstill – the equivalent of the northern solar solstice in June.

Monthly lunar standstills: 2001 to 2100

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This year, 2015, is a minor lunar standstill year. Every month this year, the moon at its northern standstill point will swing maximally south (about 5^o) of the June solstice point. (See sky chart near the top of this post.) Because the sun at its northern solstice point reaches a declination of about 23.5^o north of the celestial equator, the moon’s monthly northern standstills will reach a maximum of about 18.5^o north (23.5^o – 5^o = 18.5⁰) during this minor standstill year.

The major standstill year of 2025, in stark contrast, will find the the moon swinging about 5^o north of the June solstice point every month. Thereby, the moon’s monthly maximum reaches a northern declination of about 28.5^o north (23.5^o + 5^o = 18.5⁰) throughout the year 2025. The sky chart below, for February 2025, highlights the moon’s northerly path during a major standstill year.

During the major lunar standstill year of 2025, the moon in its monthly travels will swing to the north of the ecliptic and the June solstice point.

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Bottom line: Watch for the waxing moon. On the evening of February 26, 2015 – and for a few nights afterwards – it arcs north of the constellation Orion and south of the ecliptic.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1LH4wsc

Tonight – February 26, 2015 – the waxing gibbous moon will be shining to the north of the constellation Orion the Hunter. At the same time, the moon will be south of the ecliptic – the sun’s path in front of the backdrop stars. The sky chart below helps to illustrate.

In the year 2015, the moon in its monthly travels moves to the north of Orion yet south of the ecliptic.

From northerly latitudes, you can use the constellation Aurgia to star-hop the June solstice point about midway between the star Betelgeuse and the star Theta Aurigae.

This evening, you can envision the ecliptic arcing to the north of Orion with the mind’s-eye. As seen from our northerly latitudes, the ecliptic arcs way up high above Orion in our southern sky. But from temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, the moon and ecliptic loom rather low in the northern sky, below an “upside-down” Orion.

On the June solstice – the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice and the Southern Hemisphere winter solstice – the sun reaches its northernmost point on the sky’s dome for the year, to the north of Orion’s red supergiant star Betelgeuse. In case you’re wondering, you can’t see Betelgeuse as the sun reaches its northernmost point on the June solstice, because Betelgeuse is lost in the light of the sun at that time of year.

However, since the moon reaches its northernmost point on the sky’s dome once every month (and sometimes twice), you can often watch the moon as it passes to the north of Betelgeuse during its monthly journey through the constellations of the Zodiac. Depending on the year, the moon can swing anywhere from 5^o north to 5^o south of the June (northern) solstice point (to the north of Betelgeuse). Incidentally, the moon at its northernmost point is sometimes called a northern standstill – the equivalent of the northern solar solstice in June.

Monthly lunar standstills: 2001 to 2100

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This year, 2015, is a minor lunar standstill year. Every month this year, the moon at its northern standstill point will swing maximally south (about 5^o) of the June solstice point. (See sky chart near the top of this post.) Because the sun at its northern solstice point reaches a declination of about 23.5^o north of the celestial equator, the moon’s monthly northern standstills will reach a maximum of about 18.5^o north (23.5^o – 5^o = 18.5⁰) during this minor standstill year.

The major standstill year of 2025, in stark contrast, will find the the moon swinging about 5^o north of the June solstice point every month. Thereby, the moon’s monthly maximum reaches a northern declination of about 28.5^o north (23.5^o + 5^o = 18.5⁰) throughout the year 2025. The sky chart below, for February 2025, highlights the moon’s northerly path during a major standstill year.

During the major lunar standstill year of 2025, the moon in its monthly travels will swing to the north of the ecliptic and the June solstice point.

EarthSky astronomy kits are perfect for beginners. Order today from the EarthSky store

Donate: Your support means the world to us

Bottom line: Watch for the waxing moon. On the evening of February 26, 2015 – and for a few nights afterwards – it arcs north of the constellation Orion and south of the ecliptic.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1LH4wsc

My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships [Stoat]

Or so says Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat in the colonies. In which case, he’s an idiot¹. He’s a politicain. He should be used to, he should expect, daily to be talked to, to be lobbied, by people with strong political motivations, some or many of which will be hidden from him. He should not be relying on the motives of those presenting information to him to be pure-as-the-driven-snow, he should be relying on his own ability to evaluate what’s said. Or if he’s too stupid to do that himself, get some staffers to do it for him. Or in the case of climate science, just read the IPCC report you bozo, its what its here for. Just how dumb are the congress critters?

So as well as chilling to academic freedom, and having distinct echoes of Republican dark deeds that all right-thinking people condemned, his quest is also deeply stupid. Presumably, its nothing but bandwagon-jumping: “hey look, Soon had “undisclosed funding”, I bet I could get some cheap PR by asking questions”. But in fact, whilst Soon indeed didn’t disclose his funding on the Monkers trash paper, his funding was by that point well know anyway.

Andrew Dessler, a mainstream climate researcher and a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, said that he had concerns about “fishing expeditions” by Congress into researchers’ work, especially drafts of testimony requested in the letters from Representative Grijalva.

“I like to apply the ‘what if it happened to me test,’ ” he said. And while asking hard questions about funding is worthwhile, “when you start asking for these other documents, it’s more difficult.”

Notes

1. Stronger language suppressed because soome of my readership are apparently sensitive about words.

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Or so says Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat in the colonies. In which case, he’s an idiot¹. He’s a politicain. He should be used to, he should expect, daily to be talked to, to be lobbied, by people with strong political motivations, some or many of which will be hidden from him. He should not be relying on the motives of those presenting information to him to be pure-as-the-driven-snow, he should be relying on his own ability to evaluate what’s said. Or if he’s too stupid to do that himself, get some staffers to do it for him. Or in the case of climate science, just read the IPCC report you bozo, its what its here for. Just how dumb are the congress critters?

So as well as chilling to academic freedom, and having distinct echoes of Republican dark deeds that all right-thinking people condemned, his quest is also deeply stupid. Presumably, its nothing but bandwagon-jumping: “hey look, Soon had “undisclosed funding”, I bet I could get some cheap PR by asking questions”. But in fact, whilst Soon indeed didn’t disclose his funding on the Monkers trash paper, his funding was by that point well know anyway.

Andrew Dessler, a mainstream climate researcher and a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, said that he had concerns about “fishing expeditions” by Congress into researchers’ work, especially drafts of testimony requested in the letters from Representative Grijalva.

“I like to apply the ‘what if it happened to me test,’ ” he said. And while asking hard questions about funding is worthwhile, “when you start asking for these other documents, it’s more difficult.”

Notes

1. Stronger language suppressed because soome of my readership are apparently sensitive about words.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1LGZFHq

Monster black hole at cosmic dawn

Artist’s impression of a quasar with a supermassive black hole in the distant and early universe. Image via Zhaoyu Li/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Misti Mountain Observatory.

The farther away we look in space, the deeper we are looking into the past. Astronomers looked 12.8 billion light-years from Earth – to a time only 900 million years after the Big Bang – to see what is currently the brightest quasar known in the early universe. They say it’s seven times brighter than the most distant quasar known. What’s more, it harbors a black hole with mass of 12 billion suns. So it’s the most luminous quasar, with the most massive black hole, among all the known very distant quasars. As if that weren’t enough, this quasar and its monster black hole are located at a special place and time in our universe, at what’s sometimes called the cosmic dawn. An international team led by astronomers from Peking University in China and the University of Arizona announced these findings February 26, 2015 in the journal Nature.

Astronomer Xiaohui Fan at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, who co-authored the study, described the massive size of the black hole in a statement. He said:

By comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy has a black hole with a mass of only 4 million solar masses at its center; the black hole that powers this new quasar is 3,000 time heavier.

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The quasar is called SDSS J0100+2802 by astronomers. The monster black hole at its heart powers this quasar’s luminosity of 420 trillion suns. The very existence of these objects puzzles astronomers. Fan said:

How can a quasar so luminous, and a black hole so massive, form so early in the history of the universe, at an era soon after the earliest stars and galaxies have just emerged?

And what is the relationship between this monster black hole and its surrounding environment, including its host galaxy?

This quasar and its super-supermassive black hole are in a place and time that astronomers call epoch of reionization – when the so-called dark ages of our universe ended. It’s literally a cosmic dawn, the point at which light from the earliest generations of galaxies and quasars filled the universe and transformed it into the sort of universe we see today. Prior to this time, the universe was opaque or “foggy,” astronomers say. There was light but not the same light we can now observe through telescopes.

This very early era in the history of our universe is not easy to study, but quasars, first discovered in 1963, are the key to understanding it. That’s because we can see quasars over great distances. Powered by the black holes in their cores, they beam vast amounts of energy across space, which astronomers use to study the early universe. Astronomers have discovered more than 200,000 quasars, with ages ranging from 0.7 billion years after the Big Bang to today. According to Xiaohui Fan, this quasar – SDSS J0100+2802 – and its monster black hole will:

… provide a unique laboratory to the study of the mass assembly and galaxy formation around the most massive black holes in the early universe.

The astronomers also say their discovery marks an important step in understanding how quasars have evolved from the earliest epoch, only 900 million years after the Big Bang, which is thought to have happened 13.7 billion years ago.

Read more about the discovery of this quasar and its black hole from University of Arizona

Bottom line: An international team led by astronomers from Peking University in China and the University of Arizona announced the most luminous known quasar, with the most massive known black hole, on February 26, 2015 in the journal Nature.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1wpUNVQ

Artist’s impression of a quasar with a supermassive black hole in the distant and early universe. Image via Zhaoyu Li/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Misti Mountain Observatory.

The farther away we look in space, the deeper we are looking into the past. Astronomers looked 12.8 billion light-years from Earth – to a time only 900 million years after the Big Bang – to see what is currently the brightest quasar known in the early universe. They say it’s seven times brighter than the most distant quasar known. What’s more, it harbors a black hole with mass of 12 billion suns. So it’s the most luminous quasar, with the most massive black hole, among all the known very distant quasars. As if that weren’t enough, this quasar and its monster black hole are located at a special place and time in our universe, at what’s sometimes called the cosmic dawn. An international team led by astronomers from Peking University in China and the University of Arizona announced these findings February 26, 2015 in the journal Nature.

Astronomer Xiaohui Fan at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, who co-authored the study, described the massive size of the black hole in a statement. He said:

By comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy has a black hole with a mass of only 4 million solar masses at its center; the black hole that powers this new quasar is 3,000 time heavier.

Enjoying EarthSky? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

The quasar is called SDSS J0100+2802 by astronomers. The monster black hole at its heart powers this quasar’s luminosity of 420 trillion suns. The very existence of these objects puzzles astronomers. Fan said:

How can a quasar so luminous, and a black hole so massive, form so early in the history of the universe, at an era soon after the earliest stars and galaxies have just emerged?

And what is the relationship between this monster black hole and its surrounding environment, including its host galaxy?

This quasar and its super-supermassive black hole are in a place and time that astronomers call epoch of reionization – when the so-called dark ages of our universe ended. It’s literally a cosmic dawn, the point at which light from the earliest generations of galaxies and quasars filled the universe and transformed it into the sort of universe we see today. Prior to this time, the universe was opaque or “foggy,” astronomers say. There was light but not the same light we can now observe through telescopes.

This very early era in the history of our universe is not easy to study, but quasars, first discovered in 1963, are the key to understanding it. That’s because we can see quasars over great distances. Powered by the black holes in their cores, they beam vast amounts of energy across space, which astronomers use to study the early universe. Astronomers have discovered more than 200,000 quasars, with ages ranging from 0.7 billion years after the Big Bang to today. According to Xiaohui Fan, this quasar – SDSS J0100+2802 – and its monster black hole will:

… provide a unique laboratory to the study of the mass assembly and galaxy formation around the most massive black holes in the early universe.

The astronomers also say their discovery marks an important step in understanding how quasars have evolved from the earliest epoch, only 900 million years after the Big Bang, which is thought to have happened 13.7 billion years ago.

Read more about the discovery of this quasar and its black hole from University of Arizona

Bottom line: An international team led by astronomers from Peking University in China and the University of Arizona announced the most luminous known quasar, with the most massive known black hole, on February 26, 2015 in the journal Nature.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1wpUNVQ

Obama Just Vetoed the GOP’s Keystone Bill

“Without drama or fanfare or delay,” the White House said.

Alex Wong/ZUMA

We knew this was coming: About a month after the Senate narrowly passed a bill to force President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, the president vetoed the bill Tuesday afternoon, hours after the White House said he would do so “without drama or fanfare or delay.”

From the AP:

The contentious legislation arrived at the White House on Tuesday morning from Capitol Hill, where Republicans pushed the bill quickly through both chambers in their first burst of activity since taking full control of Congress….

The move sends the politically charged issue back to Congress, where Republicans have yet to show they can muster the two-thirds majority in both chambers needed to override Obama’s veto. Sen. John Hoeven, the bill’s chief GOP sponsor, said Republicans are about four votes short in the Senate and need about 11 more in the House.

The veto, which the White House has long promised on this or any other Keystone-approval bill, is the first one in the last five years. It essentially blocks what Republican leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) have called a top priority of this congressional session.

Obama’s beef with the bill isn’t necessarily with the pipeline itself. Instead, the president wants the approval process to go through the State Department, which normally has jurisdiction over international infrastructure projects.

In his memo to the Senate, the president said: “Because this act of Congress conflicts with established executive branch procedures and cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest—including our security, safety, and environment—it has earned my veto.”

The administration still hasn’t indicated whether it will approve the pipeline, even though there aren’t any more bureaucratic hurdles to clear. Early this month, the window for government agencies to weigh in closed. The most significant comment came from the Environmental Protection Agency, which said that if oil prices go much lower than they are, moving oil from Canada by truck or train could become too expensive. So a green-light for the pipeline would lead to greater greenhouse gas emissions than if it were not approved.

The final question now is whether the president agrees.

This post has been updated.

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1ALwSyH

“Without drama or fanfare or delay,” the White House said.

Alex Wong/ZUMA

We knew this was coming: About a month after the Senate narrowly passed a bill to force President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, the president vetoed the bill Tuesday afternoon, hours after the White House said he would do so “without drama or fanfare or delay.”

From the AP:

The contentious legislation arrived at the White House on Tuesday morning from Capitol Hill, where Republicans pushed the bill quickly through both chambers in their first burst of activity since taking full control of Congress….

The move sends the politically charged issue back to Congress, where Republicans have yet to show they can muster the two-thirds majority in both chambers needed to override Obama’s veto. Sen. John Hoeven, the bill’s chief GOP sponsor, said Republicans are about four votes short in the Senate and need about 11 more in the House.

The veto, which the White House has long promised on this or any other Keystone-approval bill, is the first one in the last five years. It essentially blocks what Republican leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) have called a top priority of this congressional session.

Obama’s beef with the bill isn’t necessarily with the pipeline itself. Instead, the president wants the approval process to go through the State Department, which normally has jurisdiction over international infrastructure projects.

In his memo to the Senate, the president said: “Because this act of Congress conflicts with established executive branch procedures and cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest—including our security, safety, and environment—it has earned my veto.”

The administration still hasn’t indicated whether it will approve the pipeline, even though there aren’t any more bureaucratic hurdles to clear. Early this month, the window for government agencies to weigh in closed. The most significant comment came from the Environmental Protection Agency, which said that if oil prices go much lower than they are, moving oil from Canada by truck or train could become too expensive. So a green-light for the pipeline would lead to greater greenhouse gas emissions than if it were not approved.

The final question now is whether the president agrees.

This post has been updated.

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1ALwSyH

How Screwed Are Your State’s Oysters?

A new map pinpoints when ocean acidification will become a big problem near you.

An oyster farm in California. Josh Edelson/ZUMA

When carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and cars rise into the atmosphere, they don’t always stay there. While the majority of these emissions hang around to create the greenhouse effect that causes global warming, up to 35 percent of man-made carbon falls into the ocean. When that happens, the pH level of the ocean drops, causing a phenomenon known as ocean acidification. Some scientists call this the “evil twin” of climate change.

Over the last century, the oceans have become about 30 percent more acidic, a faster rate of change than at anytime in the last 300 million years. That’s really bad news for any sea creatures that live in hard shells (shellfish) or have bony exoskeletons (i.e., crabs and lobsters), and for coral. Fish larvae and plankton can also be affected. And since many of these organisms are food for bigger fish and mammals, ocean acidification puts the whole marine ecosystem at risk.

Of course, humans depend on these critters as well, especially in coastal communities whose economies are deeply tied to the fishing industry. In the last few years, the threat to oyster harvests in the Pacific Northwest has been well documented. But every bit of the US coastline bears some level of risk, according to a new report in Nature . The study offers the first comprehensive projection of which parts of the US coast will be worst off, and when ocean acidification could reach dangerous levels there.

Julia Ekstrom, a climate adaptation researcher at the University of California-Davis, combed through existing scientific literature for three key types of data: How ocean acidification is projected to change in different regions over the next century; how dependent individual local economies are on the shellfish harvest (the study focused only on bivalves like oysters—other critters could be the subject of future research); and social factors that could help communities adapt, like pollution controls (runoff from rivers can also affect local pH) or the availability of other jobs. That data, combined, led to the map below.

Purple indicates the time at which ocean acidification is expected to become serious enough to significantly affect shellfish (darker is sooner); red indicates how vulnerable a region would be to a drop-off in shellfish productivity. So Washington, for example, could see the impacts soon but is relatively well-prepared to handle them. Impacts to the Gulf Coast are expected much further in the future but could be more economically severe.

Ekstrom et al, courtesy Nature

The good news is that many of what could be the hardest-hit communities still have time to prepare. Then again, the outlook could be worse in some places (Maine, for example) if you conducted similar research on lobsters and other vital fisheries. Ekstrom said localized predictions like this are key to enabling communities to prepare and can also help scientists decide where to focus efforts to monitor and track acidification as it progresses.

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1ALwUGw

A new map pinpoints when ocean acidification will become a big problem near you.

An oyster farm in California. Josh Edelson/ZUMA

When carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and cars rise into the atmosphere, they don’t always stay there. While the majority of these emissions hang around to create the greenhouse effect that causes global warming, up to 35 percent of man-made carbon falls into the ocean. When that happens, the pH level of the ocean drops, causing a phenomenon known as ocean acidification. Some scientists call this the “evil twin” of climate change.

Over the last century, the oceans have become about 30 percent more acidic, a faster rate of change than at anytime in the last 300 million years. That’s really bad news for any sea creatures that live in hard shells (shellfish) or have bony exoskeletons (i.e., crabs and lobsters), and for coral. Fish larvae and plankton can also be affected. And since many of these organisms are food for bigger fish and mammals, ocean acidification puts the whole marine ecosystem at risk.

Of course, humans depend on these critters as well, especially in coastal communities whose economies are deeply tied to the fishing industry. In the last few years, the threat to oyster harvests in the Pacific Northwest has been well documented. But every bit of the US coastline bears some level of risk, according to a new report in Nature . The study offers the first comprehensive projection of which parts of the US coast will be worst off, and when ocean acidification could reach dangerous levels there.

Julia Ekstrom, a climate adaptation researcher at the University of California-Davis, combed through existing scientific literature for three key types of data: How ocean acidification is projected to change in different regions over the next century; how dependent individual local economies are on the shellfish harvest (the study focused only on bivalves like oysters—other critters could be the subject of future research); and social factors that could help communities adapt, like pollution controls (runoff from rivers can also affect local pH) or the availability of other jobs. That data, combined, led to the map below.

Purple indicates the time at which ocean acidification is expected to become serious enough to significantly affect shellfish (darker is sooner); red indicates how vulnerable a region would be to a drop-off in shellfish productivity. So Washington, for example, could see the impacts soon but is relatively well-prepared to handle them. Impacts to the Gulf Coast are expected much further in the future but could be more economically severe.

Ekstrom et al, courtesy Nature

The good news is that many of what could be the hardest-hit communities still have time to prepare. Then again, the outlook could be worse in some places (Maine, for example) if you conducted similar research on lobsters and other vital fisheries. Ekstrom said localized predictions like this are key to enabling communities to prepare and can also help scientists decide where to focus efforts to monitor and track acidification as it progresses.

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1ALwUGw

How Coal-Loving States Are Waging War on Obama’s New Climate Rules

ALEC is helping local lawmakers fight the Clean Power Plan.

Obama’s climate plan calls for power plants in Virginia like this to be closed or renovated. Ed Lallo/ZUMA

This week, representatives from the state-level agencies that manage electric grids met in Washington, DC, for a collective freak-out about President Barack Obama’s flagship climate policy. The Clean Power Plan, as it’s called, aims to slash the nation’s carbon footprint 30 percent by 2030. It would require every state to reduce the carbon “intensity” of its power sector—that is, how much greenhouse gas is emitted for every unit of electricity produced.

There’s a unique reduction target for every state, and a likewise diverse array of things for state regulators to hate: They argue the plan is a gross overreach of federal authority; that it will bankrupt utility companies, drive up monthly bills for ratepayers, and lead to power shortages; that states won’t be adequately credited for clean-energy steps they’ve already taken; and that the deadlines for compliance are just downright impossible to meet. And coal companies are justifiably worried that the plan could kill their business.

“They had the keys in their hand,” NRDC’s Haq said, “but instead they’re handing them over to the EPA.”

More than a dozen states (mostly coal-dependent states in the South, which could be hit hardest by the rules) are already raising hell in what’s shaping up to be the environmental version of state-level challenges to Obamacare. As our friend David Roberts at Grist highlighted this week, a number of states have joined a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. And across the country in those states and others, bills are cropping up that could make it hard or impossible for individual states to meet their mandated carbon targets. The idea is effectively to stonewall the EPA and hope the regulations get killed in court.

The most recent battle is playing out this week in Virginia, where a state representative with ties to the coal industry wants to make it more difficult for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to comply with the president’s climate goals.

First, a little background: The nation’s first anti-EPA bill came early last year in Kentucky, before the Clean Power Plan was even released. The proposed EPA rule would require Kentucky to cut its power-sector carbon emissions roughly 35 percent by 2030. That’s bad news for the coal industry, which supplies more than nine-tenths of the state’s power. So using a model bill developed by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (which has deep ties to the coal industry), Kentucky legislators passed a law that essentially prevents the state from complying with the Clean Power Plan. The new law bars the state from adopting any implementation plan that includes renewable energy or energy efficiency, or that encourages power plants to switch from coal to natural gas. With those restrictions, the EPA goal does indeed seem unreasonable; the state’s top climate official recently told Inside Climate News that he has no idea how to meet the EPA’s demands and stay within state law.

These days, rather than pushing bills that restrict a state’s options, ALEC has a new tactic of choice, says Aliya Haq, a Clean Power Plan specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ALEC is now pushing bills that require a state’s compliance plan to be approved its legislature, which would open up more opportunities for pro-coal lobbying than if the process was confined to the state’s environmental agency. Pennsylvania and Arizona have already passed laws along these lines. But Haq says such bills are likely to face stiff opposition from governors who don’t want their administration’s plans micro-managed by legislators, and also from electric utility companies that likewise want to keep control over their own investment decisions.

Which brings us back to Virginia. About a month ago, state Sen. John Watkins (R) introduced a legislative-approval bill along the lines of the ALEC model. Over the next few weeks, the bill was watered down to give the legislature input on, but not veto power over, any plan proposed by Department of Environmental Quality. Environmentalists like NRDC’s Virginia statehouse watchdog Walton Shepherd were excited, because the revised bill would have kept politics—and potential influence by the state’s powerful coal lobby—out of the planning process.

“They were frothing at the mouth, but now this is what they’ve come up with,” Shepherd said last week. “It’s turned into something pretty toothless.”

But on Friday, after the Senate bill had moved on to the state House, the story changed. Delegate Israel O’Quinn (R) successfully reintroduced the legislative approval mandate, and the bill passed the House. O’Quinn, who represents a rural county in far southwestern Virginia on the border with Tennessee, received more campaign financing from the mining industry ($61,950) than from any other industry, according to the Institute on State Money in Politics. That included more than $30,000 from coal companies and their executives. O’Quinn did not return a request for comment.

The bill now returns to the Senate for a second round of wrangling. A spokesperson for Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) declined to comment on whether the governor would sign the bill.

Cale Jaffe, Virginia director of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said he was disappointed by the reversal.

“The question for Virginia is: Are we going to put ourselves in a position to create jobs in a clean energy economy?” Jaffe said. “This amendment is obviously a distraction from that.”

Tying regulators’ hands makes little sense, Haq said, because it simply dooms a state to accept a plan designed by the EPA—if a state fails to supply an acceptable plan, the EPA can impose one of its own, which could be far more damaging than what the state could have devised. In other words, unless the Supreme Court says otherwise (pretty unlikely, given its lengthy history of ruling in favor of the EPA), state legislators shouldn’t plan to weasel their way out of the Clean Power Plan.

“They had the keys in their hand,” Haq said, “but instead they’re handing them over to the EPA.”

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1ALwSyq

ALEC is helping local lawmakers fight the Clean Power Plan.

Obama’s climate plan calls for power plants in Virginia like this to be closed or renovated. Ed Lallo/ZUMA

This week, representatives from the state-level agencies that manage electric grids met in Washington, DC, for a collective freak-out about President Barack Obama’s flagship climate policy. The Clean Power Plan, as it’s called, aims to slash the nation’s carbon footprint 30 percent by 2030. It would require every state to reduce the carbon “intensity” of its power sector—that is, how much greenhouse gas is emitted for every unit of electricity produced.

There’s a unique reduction target for every state, and a likewise diverse array of things for state regulators to hate: They argue the plan is a gross overreach of federal authority; that it will bankrupt utility companies, drive up monthly bills for ratepayers, and lead to power shortages; that states won’t be adequately credited for clean-energy steps they’ve already taken; and that the deadlines for compliance are just downright impossible to meet. And coal companies are justifiably worried that the plan could kill their business.

“They had the keys in their hand,” NRDC’s Haq said, “but instead they’re handing them over to the EPA.”

More than a dozen states (mostly coal-dependent states in the South, which could be hit hardest by the rules) are already raising hell in what’s shaping up to be the environmental version of state-level challenges to Obamacare. As our friend David Roberts at Grist highlighted this week, a number of states have joined a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. And across the country in those states and others, bills are cropping up that could make it hard or impossible for individual states to meet their mandated carbon targets. The idea is effectively to stonewall the EPA and hope the regulations get killed in court.

The most recent battle is playing out this week in Virginia, where a state representative with ties to the coal industry wants to make it more difficult for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to comply with the president’s climate goals.

First, a little background: The nation’s first anti-EPA bill came early last year in Kentucky, before the Clean Power Plan was even released. The proposed EPA rule would require Kentucky to cut its power-sector carbon emissions roughly 35 percent by 2030. That’s bad news for the coal industry, which supplies more than nine-tenths of the state’s power. So using a model bill developed by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (which has deep ties to the coal industry), Kentucky legislators passed a law that essentially prevents the state from complying with the Clean Power Plan. The new law bars the state from adopting any implementation plan that includes renewable energy or energy efficiency, or that encourages power plants to switch from coal to natural gas. With those restrictions, the EPA goal does indeed seem unreasonable; the state’s top climate official recently told Inside Climate News that he has no idea how to meet the EPA’s demands and stay within state law.

These days, rather than pushing bills that restrict a state’s options, ALEC has a new tactic of choice, says Aliya Haq, a Clean Power Plan specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ALEC is now pushing bills that require a state’s compliance plan to be approved its legislature, which would open up more opportunities for pro-coal lobbying than if the process was confined to the state’s environmental agency. Pennsylvania and Arizona have already passed laws along these lines. But Haq says such bills are likely to face stiff opposition from governors who don’t want their administration’s plans micro-managed by legislators, and also from electric utility companies that likewise want to keep control over their own investment decisions.

Which brings us back to Virginia. About a month ago, state Sen. John Watkins (R) introduced a legislative-approval bill along the lines of the ALEC model. Over the next few weeks, the bill was watered down to give the legislature input on, but not veto power over, any plan proposed by Department of Environmental Quality. Environmentalists like NRDC’s Virginia statehouse watchdog Walton Shepherd were excited, because the revised bill would have kept politics—and potential influence by the state’s powerful coal lobby—out of the planning process.

“They were frothing at the mouth, but now this is what they’ve come up with,” Shepherd said last week. “It’s turned into something pretty toothless.”

But on Friday, after the Senate bill had moved on to the state House, the story changed. Delegate Israel O’Quinn (R) successfully reintroduced the legislative approval mandate, and the bill passed the House. O’Quinn, who represents a rural county in far southwestern Virginia on the border with Tennessee, received more campaign financing from the mining industry ($61,950) than from any other industry, according to the Institute on State Money in Politics. That included more than $30,000 from coal companies and their executives. O’Quinn did not return a request for comment.

The bill now returns to the Senate for a second round of wrangling. A spokesperson for Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) declined to comment on whether the governor would sign the bill.

Cale Jaffe, Virginia director of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said he was disappointed by the reversal.

“The question for Virginia is: Are we going to put ourselves in a position to create jobs in a clean energy economy?” Jaffe said. “This amendment is obviously a distraction from that.”

Tying regulators’ hands makes little sense, Haq said, because it simply dooms a state to accept a plan designed by the EPA—if a state fails to supply an acceptable plan, the EPA can impose one of its own, which could be far more damaging than what the state could have devised. In other words, unless the Supreme Court says otherwise (pretty unlikely, given its lengthy history of ruling in favor of the EPA), state legislators shouldn’t plan to weasel their way out of the Clean Power Plan.

“They had the keys in their hand,” Haq said, “but instead they’re handing them over to the EPA.”

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1ALwSyq

Exit Pachi, pursued by no-one [Stoat]

IPCC agrees on Acting Chair after R.K. Pachauri steps down said the IPCC press on the 25th. That PR is not merely coy but completely silent as to the reasons why he stepped down; coy but uninformative is the letter he sent to Bankymoon on the 24th which shyly refers to “the current circumstances” without specifying them, and announces that he has “taken the decision to step down”, which is what you say when you’re forced to resign but don’t have the courage to say “resign” (note also the somewhat wacky religion-and-dharma stuff, which has no place there, confirming that he was right to go, were confirmation needed; note also that the letter says that he had intended to “resign” in November 2014, but I don’t know whether to believe that or not). If you want to know what they’re being so coy about you can read IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri resigns: High profile head of the UN’s climate science panel steps down and denies charges of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female researcher from the Graun, or doubtless many more salacious versions elsewhere.

Before I launch into my major theme, I’d like to note how little RKP there is at www.ipcc.ch. Google “site:www.ipcc.ch Rajendra Pachauri” and you come up with almost nothing. There’s a bio of him at the IPCC site; a few speeches, but really very little. If you go to organisation or structure he’s not there, except that it notes, with no name, the existence of the role “Chair”. And that’s right, because the Chair doesn’t actually do very much that’s visible.

RKP wasn’t a successful head of the IPCC. Its not that he did anything particularly wrong (as head of the IPCC; I make no comment on the sexual allegations, against which his defence appears to be that someone hacked his email account and faked the messages; not especially plausible); and remember that the silly stuff about Himalayan glaciers was regrettable but trivia, as well as being misremembered by those who try to dredge it up. The problem was that he failed to address any of my concerns about the direction that the IPCC should take. Those were written waay back in 2010, so he has no excuse:

* The IPCC: dissolve it or not?

* What to do with the IPCC

And I was by no means alone in these opinions. But I think he had no taste for any such reform, and perhaps not even any interest in it. Ter be ‘onest wiv yer guv, I didn’t bother try to find out what he was like.

But he was clearly a creation of Bush<1>; which needs to be remembered, lest anyone feel themselves trapped or pressured into defending RKP. He was deliberately appointed by Bush to be an unsuccessful Chair (replacing the respected Robert Watson who, unlike RKP, had essentially organically grown into the role) and that particular piece of idiot cunning succeeded as it inevitably had to: the US wanted him, the Commies get the vice-chair, the Chinks were a bit out of the loop then, the Third World and India were ineviably in favour of this tit-bit being unexpectedly thrown their way, and presumably the Europeans just negotiated and were ignored as usual. So, a shoe-in. Bush won two ways: the IPCC was weakened, and the US respected it less, even though RKP was their creation.

Did I miss anything?

Notes

1. Dr Pachauri was the favoured candidate of the US Bush administration, which reportedly disliked Dr Watson’s willingness to tell governments what he believed to be the unvarnished truth.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1DqW26K

IPCC agrees on Acting Chair after R.K. Pachauri steps down said the IPCC press on the 25th. That PR is not merely coy but completely silent as to the reasons why he stepped down; coy but uninformative is the letter he sent to Bankymoon on the 24th which shyly refers to “the current circumstances” without specifying them, and announces that he has “taken the decision to step down”, which is what you say when you’re forced to resign but don’t have the courage to say “resign” (note also the somewhat wacky religion-and-dharma stuff, which has no place there, confirming that he was right to go, were confirmation needed; note also that the letter says that he had intended to “resign” in November 2014, but I don’t know whether to believe that or not). If you want to know what they’re being so coy about you can read IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri resigns: High profile head of the UN’s climate science panel steps down and denies charges of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female researcher from the Graun, or doubtless many more salacious versions elsewhere.

Before I launch into my major theme, I’d like to note how little RKP there is at www.ipcc.ch. Google “site:www.ipcc.ch Rajendra Pachauri” and you come up with almost nothing. There’s a bio of him at the IPCC site; a few speeches, but really very little. If you go to organisation or structure he’s not there, except that it notes, with no name, the existence of the role “Chair”. And that’s right, because the Chair doesn’t actually do very much that’s visible.

RKP wasn’t a successful head of the IPCC. Its not that he did anything particularly wrong (as head of the IPCC; I make no comment on the sexual allegations, against which his defence appears to be that someone hacked his email account and faked the messages; not especially plausible); and remember that the silly stuff about Himalayan glaciers was regrettable but trivia, as well as being misremembered by those who try to dredge it up. The problem was that he failed to address any of my concerns about the direction that the IPCC should take. Those were written waay back in 2010, so he has no excuse:

* The IPCC: dissolve it or not?

* What to do with the IPCC

And I was by no means alone in these opinions. But I think he had no taste for any such reform, and perhaps not even any interest in it. Ter be ‘onest wiv yer guv, I didn’t bother try to find out what he was like.

But he was clearly a creation of Bush<1>; which needs to be remembered, lest anyone feel themselves trapped or pressured into defending RKP. He was deliberately appointed by Bush to be an unsuccessful Chair (replacing the respected Robert Watson who, unlike RKP, had essentially organically grown into the role) and that particular piece of idiot cunning succeeded as it inevitably had to: the US wanted him, the Commies get the vice-chair, the Chinks were a bit out of the loop then, the Third World and India were ineviably in favour of this tit-bit being unexpectedly thrown their way, and presumably the Europeans just negotiated and were ignored as usual. So, a shoe-in. Bush won two ways: the IPCC was weakened, and the US respected it less, even though RKP was their creation.

Did I miss anything?

Notes

1. Dr Pachauri was the favoured candidate of the US Bush administration, which reportedly disliked Dr Watson’s willingness to tell governments what he believed to be the unvarnished truth.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1DqW26K