Perry takes aim at CO2 regulation (again)
June 19, 2009
The intensifying effort to pass the Waxman-Markey climate change bill in the U.S. House of Representatives provided an understandable occasion for Gov. Rick Perry and other top Texas officials to reiterate their longstanding opposition to federal regulation of carbon dioxide emissions.
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Rick Perry
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When they did so last week in an event held in Perry’s office, the criticism of the cap-and-trade bill (and of the Obama administration’s move to regulate greenhouse gases under an existing law, the Clean Air Act) seemed designed to mesh with a broader legislative strategy reportedly adopted by opponents of Waxman-Markey in Washington.
On June 9, The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, reported that critics of the climate bill “are moving to weaken support by emphasizing that it will raise energy costs in some states more than in others.” Reporter Jim Snyder elaborated:
By focusing on state-by-state disparities, opponents hope to divide Democrats based on the regions they represent.
One of the measure’s chief critics, Republican Joe Barton of Texas, said at a House panel hearing on Tuesday that the bill as written would result in a “wealth transfer” from the Southeast, which relies heavily on coal to produce electricity, to the Northwest, which uses more hydropower.
“It’s not fair,” said Barton, who also disputed the contention that humans were the principal cause of global warming.
Two days later, Perry’s office invited reporters to a meeting where a closely complementary theme was dominant – in the governor’s words, the Waxman-Markey bill “could wreck our traditional energy economy” and “devastate some Texas companies and their ability to compete.” More►
A&M study: Worse hurricane flooding ahead
June 2, 2009
To mark the start of the 2009 hurricane season on Monday, Texas A&M University researchers released a new study projecting that rising seas and stronger hurricanes caused by global warming will considerably increase flooding damage from such storms in the Corpus Christi area.
Texas State Aquarium at Corpus Christi |
Warnings about the Texas coastal impacts of sea-level rise accompanying manmade climate change are nothing new, but the A&M study provided a particularly localized and detailed focus.
“Flooding and damage from major hurricanes will be more severe,” said Jennifer Irish, the study’s lead author. “And the worse global warming gets, the more severe the consequences for the Texas coast.”
Irish is an assistant professor in the Coastal and Ocean Engineering Division of A&M’s Zachry Department of Civil Engineering. The study’s sponsor was the Washington-based National Commission on Energy Policy.
In making their calculations, the A&M researchers used projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change related to expected sea-level rise and hurricane intensity. The IPCC bases its projections on future scenarios with different levels of worldwide emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
An announcement about the study issued by the commission listed these key findings:
Sea level in the Corpus Christi area is projected to rise by about 2.6 feet by the 2080s under a high-emissions scenario that does not include the potential for still higher seas because of increased ice-sheet melting. “This would come on top of the 1.7 feet of sea-level rise already experienced over the past 100 years in this area. Higher sea level means higher flood levels. It also affects the barrier islands, reducing the protection they provide.” More►
Texas voices on cap-and-trade
May 28, 2009
It can fairly be said that Texas took at least an indirect licking in last year’s presidential campaign and election.
It wasn’t just that the Republican candidate, John McCain, won a sizable majority of Texans’ votes but was thumped in the national tally. Besides that, the winning Democrat waged a campaign brimming with criticism of the Texan in the White House, who was ending his second term with exceptionally low public-approval ratings. Targets of President Barack Obama’s campaign criticism included outgoing President George W. Bush’s stance on climate change.
Bush resolutely opposed any mandatory limits on heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Obama took office in January after promising to sign what is known as a cap-and-trade bill to do just that. The cap-and-trade concept would limit (and thereafter reduce) emissions of CO2 by creating a market for tradeable emission permits, some of which would be sold by the government.
Last week, the House Energy and Commerce approved just such a bill, on a largely party-line vote of 33-25, but other formidable challenges that lie ahead mean its fate is far from clear.
Notwithstanding the big political changes in Washington on the climate issue that greatly reduced Texas clout there, influential Texas voices continued to make themselves heard during, and leading up to, the maneuvering over the cap-and-trade bill’s form and in the House committee debate itself.
For instance, James Baker, a Houston attorney who was secretary of state and then White House chief of staff in the 1989-1993 administration of President George H. W. Bush, weighed in on the issue in an opinion column published May 7 in the British newspaper Financial Times. More►
A difference of opinion
May 15, 2009
No one ever said Texas’ government officials and academics were all on the same page when it comes to global warming.
For example, when the world’s leading scientific body on climate change released its most recent multi-year assessment of the complex subject in late 2007, the 23 members of Texas A&M University’s atmospheric sciences faculty unanimously endorsed the reports with this statement:
We, the faculty of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences of Texas A&M, agree with the recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that:
1. It is virtually certain that the climate is warming, and that it has warmed by about 0.7 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years.
2. It is very likely that humans are responsible for most of the recent warming.
3. If we do nothing to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, future warming will likely be at least two degrees Celsius over the next century.
4. Such a climate change brings with it a risk of serious adverse impacts on our environment and society.
Another prominent faculty member at Texas A&M – Bryan W. Shaw, an associate professor in the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department, where many of his courses deal with air pollution engineering – has strongly dissented from the views of the IPCC, however. He serves as one of the three commissioners who oversee the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the state’s environmental protection agency. More►
Promoting Texas solar power via video
May 1, 2009
You might expect that the top prize in a contest to produce YouTube-friendly videos promoting solar power in Texas would be won by a 20-year-old college student.
If so, you would be wrong. The first-place winner of the Environment Texas group’s solar video contest was Ric Sternberg, a 64-year-old video producer-director based in the Austin area who works through his AiM Productions.
His winning entry was “Big Hot Texas Sun,” which clocks in at a tidy three minutes,12 seconds. It blends a fiddle-driven song with voice-over narration decrying Texas’ carbon footprint and touting its solar potential
Sternberg, whose video experience includes work at the original Woodstock Festival in 1969, told Texas Climate News that he’s a supporter of Environment Texas who learned about the video contest from one of the advocacy organization’s emails. He figured it was “right up my alley.”
He recruited Frank Meyer, a singer-songwriter and green builder with a vocal resemblance to the late Johnny Cash, to contribute the song for the video. Several other Austin musicians accompany him, and the band ends up marching down a street to finish the song in front of a house where fiddle player Phoebe Hunt is perched on a roof sporting solar panels.
Sternberg wrote, shot, directed and edited the video. He and his wife, Annie Borden, read the narration, and several other individuals helped out with recording and production work. More►
Extending the lead in wind power
April 14, 2009
Texas became the No. 1 state in wind-power generation in 2006. Last year, it lengthened that lead, according to an annual ranking report issued Monday by the American Wind Energy Association:
Texas once again installed the largest amount of new capacity in 2008— 2,671 MW (megawatts) — moving it into a league of its own. More new wind capacity was added in Texas during the year than in any country except China and the U.S. If Texas were a country, it would rank sixth in the world, behind Germany, the rest of the U.S., Spain, China, and India.
Iowa surged into second place in the U.S., behind only Texas. California, once the location of practically all the wind power activity in the U.S., now ranks third for wind project capacity.
Oregon moved into the club of states with more than 1,000 MW installed, which now numbers seven: Texas, Iowa, California, Minnesota, Washington, Colorado, and Oregon.
Overall, Texas had 7,118 MW of wind power installed, compared to No. 2 Iowa, with 2,791 MW, and No. 3 California, with 2,517 MW, according to the report.
Three Texas congressional districts were among the top five with the most installed wind power facilities, the association reported. They were the 19th, a Northwest Texas district including Lubbock and Abilene (No. 1); the 11th, which extends from Central Texas to New Mexico and includes Midland and Odessa (No. 2), and the 17th, stretching from Fort Worth’s suburbs to Bryan-College Station (No. 4). Iowa districts were in the No. 3 and No. 5 places on the list. More►
Texas girds for energy stimulus flood
April 4, 2009
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Everett Dirksen, the memorable Illinois Republican who served in the Senate from 1951 until his death in 1969, supposedly uttered that famous quip about the federal budget, though the Dirksen Congressional Center’s research has failed to confirm that he actually did.
In any event, probably no one would argue that the $61.3 billion in energy-related stimulus funding in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act isn’t “real money” in the (possibly apocryphal) Dirksenian sense.
Texas’ share of the part of that appropriation for energy-efficiency measures and weatherization of buildings was bumped up to $754.5 million last week with the announcement that the state would get $208.7 million through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program.
Earlier in March, federal officials said Texas would be getting $326.9 million through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program and $218.7 million through its State Energy Program.
Coming to grips with how to use all of that suddenly available money is clearly a challenge, and various efforts have been launched to help Texans do that. More►