News Roundup
‘PRAGUE — The United States and Russia opened what they called a new era in their tumultuous relationship on Thursday as they signed an arms control treaty and presented a largely united front against Iran’s nuclear program, marking a sharp change since they broke over the Georgia war two years ago.’
via Russia and U.S. Sign Nuclear Arms Reduction Pact – NYTimes.com.
Paul Krugman’s recent climate piece in the New York Times is well written and relatively thorough at ten pages. While the articles’ outlook is insightfully bleak in its own right, the cap & trade / carbon tax sections are lacking the additional troubling point raised by UC Berkeley’s Severin Borenstein that the price of oil and coal can flexibly drop towards their low extraction cost in response to any added carbon penalties or emerging competitive green energy sources, which means that to keep fossil fuels from entering the market (and the atmosphere), either far higher carbon penalties must be considered or other mechanisms need to be added.
Krugman excerpt: ‘…this risk of catastrophe, rather than the details of cost-benefit calculations, makes the most powerful case for strong climate policy. Current projections of global warming in the absence of action are just too close to the kinds of numbers associated with doomsday scenarios. It would be irresponsible — it’s tempting to say criminally irresponsible — not to step back from what could all too easily turn out to be the edge of a cliff.’
via Magazine Preview – Climate Change – Building a Green Economy – NYTimes.com.
‘BILLINGS, Mont. – Glacier National Park has lost two more of its namesake moving icefields to climate change, which is shrinking the rivers of ice until they grind to a halt, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.’
via 2 more glaciers gone from Glacier National Park – Yahoo! News.
‘Worldwide, investors put $1.9 billion into clean tech startups in the first three months of 2010. That is an 83% increase from the same quarter last year and a 29% increase from the fourth quarter of 2009. Additionally, the number of deals hit a record high.’
‘(Reuters) – U.S. climate scientist James Hansen won a $100,000 environmental prize Wednesday for decades of work trying to alert politicians to what he called an unsolved emergency of global warming.’
Solar-powered plane soars above Switzerland
‘WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.’
via Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms – NYTimes.com.
‘WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.’
via Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time – NYTimes.com.
Today President Obama announced plans to open new coastal areas to offshore oil exploration and drilling, including in Alaska’s North Slope. He also called for development of “clean” coal.
Obama invoked science to mollify critics of offshore drilling: “We’ll be guided not by ideology but by scientific evidence”. However, this policy shift clashes with climate science. The extraction and use of fossil fuels moves carbon from safe long term underground storage up into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide where it acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping additional heat in the atmosphere.
‘The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.’