The environment thread

[Balta1701]

I realize there will always be a bunch of these startups that fall out, but... this will happen more often now because this country elected to go to war in Iraq instead of getting out in FRONT of these technologies. Now, China and other countries are already producing technology that is better and cheaper..

Since you pointed it out, I'll add the data backing it up.

[Balta1701]

FU White House.

President Obama abruptly pulled back proposed new national smog standards Friday morning, overruling the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to compel states and communities nationwide to reduce local air pollution in the coming years or face federal penalties.

 

The move represented a win for the business community, which had lobbied to postpone new restrictions on ground-level ozone—known as smog—until 2013 in light of the current economic downturn.

 

In a statement, Obama praised EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s effort to improve the nation’s air quality, but said he had asked her to withdraw the draft standards since they were scheduled to be reconsidered two years from now anyway.

 

“Work is already underway to update a 2006 review of the science that will result in the reconsideration of the ozone standard in 2013,” Obama said. “Ultimately, I did not support asking state and local governments to begin implementing a new standard that will soon be reconsidered.”

[StrangeSox]

You've changed your tone quite a bit lately.

[Balta1701]

You've changed your tone quite a bit lately.

Ground Level Ozone and I really don't get along. This one is kinda personal.

[StrangeSox]

sure, sure, you obamapologist.

[BigSqwert]

His hands are tied by those Republicans!

[Balta1701]

So let's see...science was originally proposed in 2008, Bush Administration said no and kicked can down the road, EPA redoes plan under this administration, comes up with a 20 year horizon for implementation (read that again), scheduled to renew the standard in 2013, can gets kicked down the road again to past 2013.

 

How will businesses ever hire with this kind of regulatory uncertainty!?!

[StrangeSox]

The only certainty is no regulations, no taxes.

[StrangeSox]

Balta - can you put this into laymans terms?

 

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gapin...-192334971.html

 

s***ty study? Interesting twist? Will this new data "dramatically alter the global warming debate?"

 

The editor of Remote Sensing resigned as a result of the publication of the Spencer and Braswell paper

[StrangeSox]

Ground Level Ozone and I really don't get along. This one is kinda personal.

 

a thought just occurred to me: why the hell did the WH announce this before his big "jobs speech?" You know there's going to be a big fight over this again if they want to get anything short of big tax cuts and massive deregulation passed. This WH really is just full of terrible policy and incompetent politicians.

 

lol had to post this image from Reuters:

 

Edited September 2, 2011 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

The American Lung Association has had a lawsuit against the government over those regulations on hold for about 3 years. They originally filed suit when the Bush Administration wouldn't add in a rule based on the 2008 review, but they backed the suit off based on the promise that the Obama admin would follow the new recommendations.

 

Keep in mind, the Bush 2008 regulations were for 75 ppb ozone. The country prior to that was operating on the 1997 standard, 80 ppb. The EPA review says 60-70 should be the maximum range. If the ALA had just accepted the Bush 2008 Proposed standard, then we'd be at 75. The Obama administration has decided to stick with 80.

Sue their lungs off. The ALA lawsuit immediately went back on today.

[StrangeSox]

How can I make that image my avatar?

[BigSqwert]

my controls > edit avatar settings

 

and then enter the image url in the appropriate box

[StrangeSox]

I thought I'd have to resize it, glad soxtalk has an auto-resize feature.

[StrangeSox]

 

 

The correct answer is ~98%, btw.

[Balta1701]

Actually the right answer is pretty much 100% given how the question was asked. It's just 98%+ that say it is mostly caused by human carbon emissions.

[StrangeSox]

Good catch. Either way that's still pretty alarming. I wonder how much is motivated reasoning. It's pretty funny that the group that is the most confident and feels the most knowledgeable about global warming, the tea partiers, are the most wrong. Dunning-Kruger in full effect.

Edited September 7, 2011 by StrangeSox

[southsider2k5]

Solyndra, a solar-cell maker in California and recipient of over $500m in federally guaranteed loans as well as $1b in private funding, closed its doors an filed for Chapter 11.

 

It gets more fun...

 

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=n...&id=8346168

 

FREMONT, Calif. -- FBI agents executed search warrants on Thursday at the headquarters of California solar firm Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan from the federal government before filing for bankruptcy last week.

 

Agents executed multiple search warrants at the company's headquarters in Fremont as part of an investigation with the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General, according to FBI spokesman Peter Lee. Lee said he could not provide details about the investigation.

 

Solyndra LLC is a solar-panel manufacturer once touted by President Barack Obama as a beneficiary of his administration's economic policies. It announced last week that it was laying off 1,100 workers and filing for bankruptcy.

 

The company was held up as the model for government investment in green technology. In addition to the $535 million loan guarantee, it received visits from the president and other state and federal officials.

 

It filed bankruptcy amid hard times in the nation's solar industry. The price for solar panels has tanked, in part because of heavy competition from Chinese companies, dropping by about 42 percent this year.

 

In a blog posting, Energy Department spokesman Dan Leistikow said Solyndra was a once promising company that had increased sales revenue by 2,000 percent in the past three years. The $535 million loan guarantee was sought by both the Bush and Obama administrations, he said, and private investors also put more than $1 billion into Solyndra.

 

Republicans have been looking into the Solyndra loan for months. The House Energy and Commerce Committee subpoenaed documents relating to the loan from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

 

The company is also being sued by workers who were abruptly laid off after last week's announcement.

 

A Solyndra spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

 

(Copyright ©2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[Balta1701]

It filed bankruptcy amid hard times in the nation's solar industry. The price for solar panels has tanked, in part because of heavy competition from Chinese companies, dropping by about 42 percent this year.

No one else reads that and goes "Awesome!!!"

[Balta1701]

The editor of Remote Sensing resigned as a result of the publication of the Spencer and Braswell paper

Here's the "Nail in the coffin" graph showing, I think, what exactly the Spencer paper did.

Figure 1: Dessler (2011) reconstruction of Spencer & Braswell's Figure 3, showing relationship between top-of-atmosphere (TOA) net flux and surface temperature, as a function of lag between them. The blue line is the observational data chosen by Spencer and Braswell. The red lines show other available observational data. The black lines show climate model results. The black lines with crosses show the climate model runs chosen by Spencer and Braswell in their paper.

 

Dessler found that these three model runs excluded by Spencer which best matched the data were also among those which best simulate El Niño and La Niña, which is not surprising, given that much of the temperature change over 2000-2010 was due to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Thus Dessler concludes, like Trenberth and Fasullo, that

"since most of the climate variations over this period were due to ENSO, this suggests that the ability to reproduce ENSO is what's being tested here, not anything directly related to equilibrium climate sensitivity."

 

Spencer's claim of low sensitivity and negative feedbacks is based on this test, which is actually a test of models' ability to reproduce ENSO. Thus Spencer's claim of low sensitivity and negative feedbacks is not supported by the empirical observational data.

[Balta1701]

We've broken through the Arctic sea ice all time low volume again this year, and we're still a week or two away from this year's minimum point.

[BigSqwert]

We've broken through the Arctic sea ice all time low volume again this year, and we're still a week or two away from this year's minimum point.

I'm sure this is part of the conspiracy to get more funding dollars to these scientists.

[Balta1701]

But what we can't do — what I won't do — is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades.

 

Unless they have asthma. F*** those people.

[southsider2k5]

It just gets better. The DOE had people on the board and still didn't see this coming, key Democrats blocked trying to get information on the company, and one of Obama's top fundraisers was one of the lead investors.

 

So when we get to hear the same sorts of disclosures with green energy as we do with fossil fuels on the Republicans? It seem key members of the left have the same sorts of personal financial interest here.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/obama-offici...rL9BM8.facebook

 

Federal agents have expanded their examination of the now-bankrupt California solar power company Solyndra, searching the homes of the company's CEO and two of its executives, examining computer files and documents, iWatch News and ABC News have learned.

 

Agents visited the homes of CEO Brian Harrison and company founder Chris Gronet and a former executive, according to a source who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the legal sensitivity of the situation.

 

Gronet, reached at his home Friday morning, did not dispute that his home was searched by federal agents a day earlier.

 

"I'm sorry," Gronet said, "you probably understand full well that I cannot comment." The third executive could not be immediately reached.

 

Solyndra spokesman David Miller confirmed agents visited Harrison's home on the same day the FBI and Energy Department Inspector General seized boxes of records from the company's headquarters.

 

"Yeah, they did go to his house and speak to him briefly," Miller said. "I don't know what they may have taken. I believe they took a look at his computer."

 

Julie Sohn, a spokeswoman with the FBI in San Francisco, declined to discuss details of the raid or the government's investigation. "Unfortunately, our affidavits are still sealed so we can't go into any details," Sohn said.

 

The raid and visits come amid increasing evidence the Justice Department and Inspector General are exploring whether Solyndra mislead the government in securing its $535 million loan in 2009 -- and landing a vital refinancing of that loan earlier this year. Beginning in March, ABC News, in partnership with iWatch News/the Center for Public Integrity, was first to report on simmering questions about the role political influence may have played Solyndra's selection as the Obama administration's first loan guarantee recipient. One of the lead private investors in Solyndra was an Oklahoma billionaire who served as an Obama "bundler," raising money during the 2008 presidential campaign.

 

Members of Congress leading a House investigation of the DOE loan have focused specifically on visits Solyndra CEO Harrison made to Washington in July, when he said the company was on sound footing and expanding.

 

Less than two months after that visit, Solyndra fired 1,100 workers and filed for bankruptcy – a stinging collapse for the Obama administration, which made the Solyndra loan a showpiece as its first investment in green energy technology.

 

Republican members of the House have said that bankruptcy indicates the deal was doomed from the start. Now, even Democratic leaders are questioning whether Solyndra misled the government.

 

"Less than two months ago, Mr. Harrison met with us and other Committee members to assure us that Solyndra was in a strong financial position and in no danger of failing," Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Colorado, and Henry Waxman, D-California, wrote to Republicans leading the investigation. "These assurances appear to contrast starkly with his company's decision to file for bankruptcy last week."

 

Those questions reveal a significant turn, as DeGette and Waxman were among members to vote against subpoenaing the White House budget office for records on the loan. Now, they are among those posing questions -- as the House has called Harrison to testify next week.

 

Miller, the Solyndra spokesman, noted that Harrison was not with the company when it secured the loan in 2009. He was, however, the chief executive when Solyndra landed a government refinancing that extended its payment period.

 

When Harrison came to Washington in July, he said, the company was hoping to land more financing to stay afloat. "When we were there, the circumstances of the company, business was good, we had record shipments. We had momentum in the marketplace," Miller said.

 

The Energy Department was keeping a close eye on Solyndra during those crucial months – sitting in on board meetings as an observer as part of the loan restructuring, iWatch News and ABC reported Thursday. That raises key questions: Did DOE miss obvious warning signs of the company's troubles in the final months before its collapse?

 

In 2009, the Energy Department put Solyndra's application on a fast-track for approval, and announced the award with great fanfare. The generous terms of the government loan included the lowest interest of all the green projects benefitting from Energy Department help, iWatch News and ABC News found.

 

And as part of the deal, the Energy Department agreed that if the company went bust, private investors could recoup their losses before the government. Republicans in Congress called the investment "a bad bet" and said it "put taxpayers at unnecessary risk."

 

One of the lead private investors in Solyndra was an Oklahoma billionaire who served as an Obama "bundler," raising money during the 2008 presidential campaign.

 

The bundler, George Kaiser, has declined to comment. His firm, Argonaut Ventures and its affiliates have been the single largest shareholder of Solyndra, according to SEC filings and other records. The company holds 39 percent of Solyndra's parent company, bankruptcy records filed Tuesday show.

 

Energy officials have repeatedly denied allegations that Solyndra received special treatment, saying the selection process was even handed. Until two weeks ago, the Obama administration held out Solyndra as a model for its green energy program, which was devised to create jobs and spur investment in cleaner sources of energy. President Obama personally visited the Solyndra plant last year, and his Energy Department made it the first to win approval of a federal loan guarantee. The $535 million federal investment enabled the company to build a sprawling manufacturing facility.

 

Under terms of the bankruptcy filing, investors including Argonaut -- which led a $75 million round of financing for Solyndra earlier this year -- will stand in line before the federal government and other creditors to recoup its losses. Energy officials confirmed this arrangement, saying that after private investors including Kaiser recover $75 million, the U.S. government would have a chance to seek $150 million of its investment.

 

Kaiser has declined interview requests for months from iWatch News and ABC News. Calls went unreturned again on Thursday. HisTulsa-based George Kaiser Family Foundation, which in 2009 cited a $342 million investment value in Solyndra, issued a statement after Solyndra's collapse, citing "serious challenges in the marketplace, especially the drastic decline in solar panel prices during the past two years caused in part by subsidies provided by the government of China to Chinese solar panel manufacturers."

[Balta1701]

NYT with front page space about how weak the agency that regulates fuel pipelines is.

This summer, an Exxon Mobil pipeline carrying oil across Montana burst suddenly, soiling the swollen Yellowstone River with an estimated 42,000 gallons of crude just weeks after a company inspection and federal review had found nothing seriously wrong.

 

And in the Midwest, a 35-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Mich., once teeming with swimmers and boaters, remains closed nearly 14 months after an Enbridge Energy pipeline hemorrhaged 843,000 gallons of oil that will cost more than $500 million to clean up.

 

While investigators have yet to determine the cause of either accident, the spills have drawn attention to oversight of the 167,000-mile system of hazardous liquid pipelines crisscrossing the nation.

 

The little-known federal agency charged with monitoring the system and enforcing safety measures — the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — is chronically short of inspectors and lacks the resources needed to hire more, leaving too much of the regulatory control in the hands of pipeline operators themselves, according to federal reports, an examination of agency data and interviews with safety experts.

 

They portray an agency that rarely levies fines and is not active enough in policing the aging labyrinth of pipelines, which has suffered thousands of significant hazardous liquid spills over the past two decades.

 

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who oversees the pipeline agency, acknowledges weaknesses in the program and is asking Congress to pass legislation that would increase penalties for negligent operators and authorize the hiring of additional inspectors. That may be a tough sell in a Congress averse to new spending and stricter regulation.

 

“We need to know with great certainty that inspections and replacements have been done in a timely way that will prevent these kinds of spills from happening,” he said.

 

Federal records show that although the pipeline industry reported 25 percent fewer significant incidents from 2001 through 2010 than in the prior decade, the amount of hazardous liquids being spilled, though down, remains substantial. There are still more than 100 significant spills each year — a trend that dates back more than 20 years. And the percentage of dangerous liquids recovered by pipeline operators after a spill has dropped considerably in recent years.

 

The industry, however, believes the current system works and points with pride to what it considers a record of improvement.

 

“Data shows that releases from pipelines have declined over the last decade as the result of stringent regulation and the industry’s continued commitment to safety,” wrote Peter Lidiak, pipeline director for the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, in an e-mailed response.

 

Throwing more resources and money at the problem may not be the answer for the tiny agency, because there remain deeper concerns about how it works, especially its reluctance to mandate safety improvements or to level meaningful fines for wrongdoing.

The latter part of the article suggests some common-sense regulations...requiring automatic shutoff valves and leak detectors that could work together to dramatically cut the size of spills when they happen. Of course...that would somehow be a terrible thing for business.