I haven't yet asked for the rationale, but the finance committee of the Alaska Senate nixed funding this morning that would have gone toward a contract with the Center for Climate Strategies to come up with ways to economically reduce emissions and deal with impacts of climate change. It was a $230,000 appropriation; most of it would go to CCS, but with a big bang for the buck, as CCS would be required to match the money many times over with private contributions.
The money was cut in a substitute version of the supplemental budget, but it could get put back in.
The other climate-related appropriation -- $1.1 million, mostly for planning grants for communities dealing with climate change -- is in the capital budget, which hasn't yet had a hearing.
Stay tuned.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
oh, juneau!
Thanks to Chris at AP, I've got my photos now if not my waterlogged camera. These are from the trip a few weeks ago up Mount Jumbo. Juneau is the little city down below and across the channel.Oh, and that's Peter, Toby, and Laura.
kivalina makes the ny times
You saw it here first! So yesterday I wondered whether the Kivalina suit would be ignored as a stunt or covered in the New York Times. It was the latter, and not just in the Times but in the Canadian Press, United Press International, AP, Guardian Unlimited, etc. Apparently some of the lawyers involved helped sue U.S. tobacco companies in the 1990s.
On another note, the picture used on the NY Times Web site was taken by Mary Sage, the very kind woman who showed me and John around when we went to Barrow in September. Her husband Joe has also had his pictures play well -- of polar bears specifically. His Web site is called Eskimo Joe's Photos.
On another note, the picture used on the NY Times Web site was taken by Mary Sage, the very kind woman who showed me and John around when we went to Barrow in September. Her husband Joe has also had his pictures play well -- of polar bears specifically. His Web site is called Eskimo Joe's Photos.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
kivalina v. exxon
Here's an interesting one. The city and Native village of Kivalina are suing Exxon, Peabody, Chevron, Shell, Duke Energy Co. and whole list of other oil companies and power producers for causing the coastal erosion that is putting the village at risk.
"Kivalina faces imminent destruction from global warming due to the melting of sea ice that formerly protected the village from coastal storms during the fall and winter," reads a press release sent out today.
The village is represented by two non-profit legal organizations and six law firms, according to the release, and its suit seeks relocation of the village, which is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of the firms is the Center on Race, Poverty, & the Environment, which is already helping Kivalina residents sue the Red Dog Mine over pollution of drinking water.
The case is reminiscent of an effort in 2004 by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference to get a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the U.S. was threatening their existence by contributing to climate change. Not sure how that one panned out.
I can't imagine this new case will get far, but it's certainly an interesting legal argument. It invokes the federal common law of public nuisance, and the complaint includes information on the companies' emissions, global warming, and specific impacts in Kivalina. I suppose its not new that a scientific understanding gets picked apart by the legal process, but this seems big. Do IPCC's "very likely"s amount to a "preponderance of the evidence?"
The suit also seeks damages for "defendants' acts in furthering a conspiracy to suppress the awareness of the link between [their] emissions and global warming."
"Kivalina faces imminent destruction from global warming due to the melting of sea ice that formerly protected the village from coastal storms during the fall and winter," reads a press release sent out today.
The village is represented by two non-profit legal organizations and six law firms, according to the release, and its suit seeks relocation of the village, which is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of the firms is the Center on Race, Poverty, & the Environment, which is already helping Kivalina residents sue the Red Dog Mine over pollution of drinking water.
The case is reminiscent of an effort in 2004 by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference to get a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the U.S. was threatening their existence by contributing to climate change. Not sure how that one panned out.
I can't imagine this new case will get far, but it's certainly an interesting legal argument. It invokes the federal common law of public nuisance, and the complaint includes information on the companies' emissions, global warming, and specific impacts in Kivalina. I suppose its not new that a scientific understanding gets picked apart by the legal process, but this seems big. Do IPCC's "very likely"s amount to a "preponderance of the evidence?"
The suit also seeks damages for "defendants' acts in furthering a conspiracy to suppress the awareness of the link between [their] emissions and global warming."
climate commission nears the end
The Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission, which was created by the Legislature in 2006 and for a long time carried the torch on climate change for the whole state, will finish its final report some time next week and, for all intents and purposes, start closing up shop.
The group was supposed to have its report done by Friday, but early next week is more likely, in large part because of the scope of the work involved. Expect to see both a compilation of climate-related impacts already happening and some recommendations for how to proceed. Don't expect anything in the way of mitigating climate change -- reducing emissions, embracing alternative energy, or anything else. The commission made it clear from the start that it wasn't going to consider what was causing the changes, and it looks like it will stick to its promise despite the fact that much if not most of the public and expert testimony included calls for mitigation measures.
Whatever its final product -- and whatever the limits of its approach -- the commission has done an incredible thing. By providing the only statewide, public forum on the issue for the last year, the commission has allowed a compilation of public testimony on everything from permafrost depth to changing saltwater fish. Testimony has come from PhD. scientists and commercial fishermen, hunters and whalers, students and local officials. It's come with the backing of decades of formal research or as the observations of laypeople affected by the changes. And it's come from people in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau, Kotzebue, Barrow, and places in between.
The legacy of the commission likely will not be the recommendations that come from it, but the body of evidence that it gathered, which is dutifully, wonderfully public. The commission's Web site has Powerpoint presentations given by experts, documents and reports, and audio files of public testimony given by hundreds of Alaskans (I'm guessing here, but it must be at least 200).
When the commission ends, its duties will de facto fall to the governor's sub-cabinet on climate change, which is already well underway and which even some commissioners argued was the better vehicle for action on the issue.
P.S. The forming resolution states that the commission will be available for legislative hearings on its report and recommendations, and that continuing the commission will be reevaluated during this legislative session, so it might not be closing up shop just yet...
The group was supposed to have its report done by Friday, but early next week is more likely, in large part because of the scope of the work involved. Expect to see both a compilation of climate-related impacts already happening and some recommendations for how to proceed. Don't expect anything in the way of mitigating climate change -- reducing emissions, embracing alternative energy, or anything else. The commission made it clear from the start that it wasn't going to consider what was causing the changes, and it looks like it will stick to its promise despite the fact that much if not most of the public and expert testimony included calls for mitigation measures.
Whatever its final product -- and whatever the limits of its approach -- the commission has done an incredible thing. By providing the only statewide, public forum on the issue for the last year, the commission has allowed a compilation of public testimony on everything from permafrost depth to changing saltwater fish. Testimony has come from PhD. scientists and commercial fishermen, hunters and whalers, students and local officials. It's come with the backing of decades of formal research or as the observations of laypeople affected by the changes. And it's come from people in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau, Kotzebue, Barrow, and places in between.
The legacy of the commission likely will not be the recommendations that come from it, but the body of evidence that it gathered, which is dutifully, wonderfully public. The commission's Web site has Powerpoint presentations given by experts, documents and reports, and audio files of public testimony given by hundreds of Alaskans (I'm guessing here, but it must be at least 200).
When the commission ends, its duties will de facto fall to the governor's sub-cabinet on climate change, which is already well underway and which even some commissioners argued was the better vehicle for action on the issue.
P.S. The forming resolution states that the commission will be available for legislative hearings on its report and recommendations, and that continuing the commission will be reevaluated during this legislative session, so it might not be closing up shop just yet...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
not in the news: walter
Despite Stevens' lauding, public introduction during his speech, and other promotion, Katey Walter didn't make it into the news stories today about Stevens' address to the Legislature. Or rather news story. As far as I can tell, my paper, the ADN, and the Juneau Empire all went with the AP story. Chalk it up to reporters steering clear of subjects we just don't understand, I guess. IMHO, the fact that he spent so much time talking about her and her work (on the release of methane in Alaska lakes) merited at least some mention, but then, I could have written a story myself.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
stevens and walter
Sen. Ted Stevens gave his annual address to the state legislature today, and he spent a good chunk of time talking about UAF's Katey Walter and her research on the release of methane from Alaska lakes and ponds. He called her "one of Alaska's brightest young scientists" and gave a synopsis of her research and his idea.
Methane is bubbling up out of lakes -- potentially faster now as permafrost thaws with warming temps -- and into the atmosphere, where it has a strong greenhouse gas effect, he said. If the state and the feds can assess the supply and figure out how to use it, they could address climate change and high rural energy costs at the same time.
After his address, Stevens took questions from the press in the House Speaker's office. He sat on the table like he always does, and he had Walter sit next to him.
Walter said there's a tremendous amount of methane already coming out of lakes, and gas hydrates and natural gas on top of that. She explained that farmers in the Netherlands were already using methane in groundwater by bringing it to the surface and separating out the water with a low-tech, sprinkler-type system. The sprinklers are topped with heavy caps that "naturally" pressurize the gas enough to pipe it into homes, where it can be used for heating and cooking.
"They don't pay heating bills," she said.
Stevens said he's already asked high-ups in the Bush administration about having NASA do spectral analysis of methane hotspots by satellite, or aerial surveys at least. The state could chip in to test the feasibility of the gas as an energy source, he added.
When someone asked why the state hadn't looked into this before, Stevens said no one even knew about leaking methane before Walter's research. "She discovered it."
(I wrote a bit about her research in November.)
He said Walter is working on a pilot project to heat homes in one place and possibly generate power in another.
She said the technological trick will be figuring out a way to harness the gas bubbling up from lakes rather than the gas contained in subsurface pools.
The whole thing amounted to an impressive endorsement of Walter's research -- Stevens had little flyers Walter wrote distributed to every legislator -- that pretty much came out of the blue.
It left me and the other reporters a little befuzzled. How big a deal is this? How new is it? And how does lake methane relate to coal-bed methane? (Or natural gas, I might add, which is mostly methane.)
Stevens presented Walter's idea as something of a panecea -- a solution to the rural energy crisis that's doubly good for climate change. Capturing and burning the gas would replace another (potentially carbon-heavy fuel source), and it would release carbon dioxide to the air rather than methane, which has the stronger greenhouse gas effect.
Walter made that last point about how burning the gas was actually better (in terms of climate change) than letting it escape, but I'm skeptical without knowing how much CO2 you'd get from a given amount of methane.
In any case, Go Katey!
Methane is bubbling up out of lakes -- potentially faster now as permafrost thaws with warming temps -- and into the atmosphere, where it has a strong greenhouse gas effect, he said. If the state and the feds can assess the supply and figure out how to use it, they could address climate change and high rural energy costs at the same time.
After his address, Stevens took questions from the press in the House Speaker's office. He sat on the table like he always does, and he had Walter sit next to him.
Walter said there's a tremendous amount of methane already coming out of lakes, and gas hydrates and natural gas on top of that. She explained that farmers in the Netherlands were already using methane in groundwater by bringing it to the surface and separating out the water with a low-tech, sprinkler-type system. The sprinklers are topped with heavy caps that "naturally" pressurize the gas enough to pipe it into homes, where it can be used for heating and cooking.
"They don't pay heating bills," she said.
Stevens said he's already asked high-ups in the Bush administration about having NASA do spectral analysis of methane hotspots by satellite, or aerial surveys at least. The state could chip in to test the feasibility of the gas as an energy source, he added.
When someone asked why the state hadn't looked into this before, Stevens said no one even knew about leaking methane before Walter's research. "She discovered it."
(I wrote a bit about her research in November.)
He said Walter is working on a pilot project to heat homes in one place and possibly generate power in another.
She said the technological trick will be figuring out a way to harness the gas bubbling up from lakes rather than the gas contained in subsurface pools.
The whole thing amounted to an impressive endorsement of Walter's research -- Stevens had little flyers Walter wrote distributed to every legislator -- that pretty much came out of the blue.
It left me and the other reporters a little befuzzled. How big a deal is this? How new is it? And how does lake methane relate to coal-bed methane? (Or natural gas, I might add, which is mostly methane.)
Stevens presented Walter's idea as something of a panecea -- a solution to the rural energy crisis that's doubly good for climate change. Capturing and burning the gas would replace another (potentially carbon-heavy fuel source), and it would release carbon dioxide to the air rather than methane, which has the stronger greenhouse gas effect.
Walter made that last point about how burning the gas was actually better (in terms of climate change) than letting it escape, but I'm skeptical without knowing how much CO2 you'd get from a given amount of methane.
In any case, Go Katey!
Sunday, February 17, 2008
who needs pictures, anyway?
OK, so I sent my camera through the warm/gentle cycle. With a small miracle, the thing might work once its tiny electronics dry out, but here's an attempt to describe my weekend backcountry outing with words alone.
Imagine hiking up a mountain from 200 feet above the channel to 2,500 or 3,000 feet, to the shoulder of the highest mountain on the island across from Juneau. It's cloudy and windy just above treeline, but below you it's almost clear and across the water you can see the city below and the wall of mountains behind it. The sky is gray and white with clouds that look like smoke.
The snow on Mount Jumbo is crusty. There's snowmachine tracks most of the way up, icy and hard and fast for walking. In the woods, the crust is hard enough to keep the skiers on top and to keep me, on snowshoes, mostly on top. Once we bust out of the trees into the big open bowl below the summit, the snow changes again -- windblown and hard in places, soft and deep in others, so that each step for me involves sinking in, pushing off, sinking in again.
I went with friends who know a lot more than I about avalanche danger. We dug a deep pit in the snow a little ways down from the summit, checked the hard and soft layers, studied the snow crystals, measured the temperature change in the snowpack. I jumped on a carved-out block of snow harder and harder until I and my snowboard set off a foot-thick layer. The way I understand it, you're never completely safe in the mountains, but there's ways to reduce your danger by choosing the right path, staying off bad snow, and having the gear you need for a rescue as a last resort.
All went well Saturday -- in fact, glorious. We were out for about six hours and had probably 2 or 3 minutes total of real nice backcountry skiing (that's called earning your turns), plus a mostly scary slide down the narrow snowmachine trail to town. Wish I had some pictures to share . . .
Imagine hiking up a mountain from 200 feet above the channel to 2,500 or 3,000 feet, to the shoulder of the highest mountain on the island across from Juneau. It's cloudy and windy just above treeline, but below you it's almost clear and across the water you can see the city below and the wall of mountains behind it. The sky is gray and white with clouds that look like smoke.
The snow on Mount Jumbo is crusty. There's snowmachine tracks most of the way up, icy and hard and fast for walking. In the woods, the crust is hard enough to keep the skiers on top and to keep me, on snowshoes, mostly on top. Once we bust out of the trees into the big open bowl below the summit, the snow changes again -- windblown and hard in places, soft and deep in others, so that each step for me involves sinking in, pushing off, sinking in again.
I went with friends who know a lot more than I about avalanche danger. We dug a deep pit in the snow a little ways down from the summit, checked the hard and soft layers, studied the snow crystals, measured the temperature change in the snowpack. I jumped on a carved-out block of snow harder and harder until I and my snowboard set off a foot-thick layer. The way I understand it, you're never completely safe in the mountains, but there's ways to reduce your danger by choosing the right path, staying off bad snow, and having the gear you need for a rescue as a last resort.
All went well Saturday -- in fact, glorious. We were out for about six hours and had probably 2 or 3 minutes total of real nice backcountry skiing (that's called earning your turns), plus a mostly scary slide down the narrow snowmachine trail to town. Wish I had some pictures to share . . .
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
state steps up
To follow up again . . . I just talked with Mike Black from the department of commerce, who's one of the co-chairs of the immediate needs work group of Gov. Palin's sub-cabinet on climate change.
One of Palin's two climate-related budget requests is for $1.1 million in grant money to be distributed by the department. Black said the idea came from his work group and from Sen. Ted Stevens' comments at a round table last November. Stevens "basically challenged the state to be involved" if it wanted to get federal funds, Black said. Big picture, the grant request shows the administration believes it's time to get involved, and time to take a statewide approach, he said. "The state hasn't really been involved up till now other than just discussing it."
The $1.1 million would break down like this. Grants of $100,000 to $150,000 would go to communities identified as having critical needs to help them plan to mitigate impacts. Actually dealing with the impacts would take additional state or federal funds. Black said the communities that would qualify were already identified, and included Shishmaref, Kivalina, Unalakleet, Shaktoolik, Newtok, and Koyukuk. Smaller grants of $30,000 to $35,000 would go to other communities based on need (anyone could apply) to help those communities gather evidence of being impacted by climate change, whether by thawing permafrost, coastal erosion, or something else. That information could them be used to leverage state and federal funds.
The other request, for $230,000, would mostly be used to develop a statewide stakeholder approach to identify mitigation and adaptation measures. The question remains whether lawmakers will approve the two requests.
One of Palin's two climate-related budget requests is for $1.1 million in grant money to be distributed by the department. Black said the idea came from his work group and from Sen. Ted Stevens' comments at a round table last November. Stevens "basically challenged the state to be involved" if it wanted to get federal funds, Black said. Big picture, the grant request shows the administration believes it's time to get involved, and time to take a statewide approach, he said. "The state hasn't really been involved up till now other than just discussing it."
The $1.1 million would break down like this. Grants of $100,000 to $150,000 would go to communities identified as having critical needs to help them plan to mitigate impacts. Actually dealing with the impacts would take additional state or federal funds. Black said the communities that would qualify were already identified, and included Shishmaref, Kivalina, Unalakleet, Shaktoolik, Newtok, and Koyukuk. Smaller grants of $30,000 to $35,000 would go to other communities based on need (anyone could apply) to help those communities gather evidence of being impacted by climate change, whether by thawing permafrost, coastal erosion, or something else. That information could them be used to leverage state and federal funds.
The other request, for $230,000, would mostly be used to develop a statewide stakeholder approach to identify mitigation and adaptation measures. The question remains whether lawmakers will approve the two requests.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
putting the dollars in
First of all, I guess it's fair to say I won't be posting as often while I'm down here in Juneau covering the legislative session. And down here in Juneau while the state's biggest environmental conference is happening in Anchorage...
That said, there's fairly big news from the Gov's office these days. I've heard some grumblings from enviro folks that Palin's approach to dealing with climate change has been lots of talk and not so much action. Now that's a little harder to say. In a supplemental budget request for the current fiscal year, she's asking for $230,000 for her sub-cabinet on climate change and $1.1 million for planning grants for communities with immediate needs. It won't move villages, but it's a start.
Here's the story I wrote for today's News-Miner.
As a follow up, the state is formally proposing to go with the non-profit Center for Climate Strategies to develop a response plan. The state would chip in $180,000 (from the $230,000), and CCS would be responsible for raising the rest of the needed money (close to $1 million) from private charities.
CCS made its pitch to Palin's sub-cabinet last November. The group has done climate-related work in more than two dozen states, and has helped a number of them develop plans to reduce emissions in the most cost-effective manner (they argue many of the changes actually save money). Alaska would be somewhat different because it's already experiencing dramatic impacts from climate change. CCS is proposing one stakeholder process to work on mitigation measures -- emissions reductions -- and another to deal with adaptation. Here's what I wrote back then.
That said, there's fairly big news from the Gov's office these days. I've heard some grumblings from enviro folks that Palin's approach to dealing with climate change has been lots of talk and not so much action. Now that's a little harder to say. In a supplemental budget request for the current fiscal year, she's asking for $230,000 for her sub-cabinet on climate change and $1.1 million for planning grants for communities with immediate needs. It won't move villages, but it's a start.
Here's the story I wrote for today's News-Miner.
As a follow up, the state is formally proposing to go with the non-profit Center for Climate Strategies to develop a response plan. The state would chip in $180,000 (from the $230,000), and CCS would be responsible for raising the rest of the needed money (close to $1 million) from private charities.
CCS made its pitch to Palin's sub-cabinet last November. The group has done climate-related work in more than two dozen states, and has helped a number of them develop plans to reduce emissions in the most cost-effective manner (they argue many of the changes actually save money). Alaska would be somewhat different because it's already experiencing dramatic impacts from climate change. CCS is proposing one stakeholder process to work on mitigation measures -- emissions reductions -- and another to deal with adaptation. Here's what I wrote back then.
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