news20100131lat

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[Environment]
By Andrew Malcolm and Johanna Neuman
January 31, 2010
TOP OF THE TICKET

Sen. Blanche Lincoln: Endangered in the political kingdom
A conservation group is now going after the Arkansas Democrat.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln is one of the most endangered Democrats on the political landscape this year.

The two-term Arkansas moderate is getting only 38% or 39% against any of her little-known Republican opponents, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. Politico is putting her "at the top of the list of vulnerable Democrats."

And providing President Obama with his 60th vote for healthcare reform in the Senate hasn't helped in a state where public opinion is running strongly against it.

To stretch a metaphor, she's more endangered than that infamous snail darter that delayed Tennessee's Tellico Dam.

Now, the League of Conservation Voters is going after Lincoln for her opposition to a climate-change bill. Putting her on its “Dirty Dozen” list of prime targets, the league -- which spent $1.5 million battling opponents in the last election cycle -- is pledging to put up megabucks to defeat her.

"Most regrettable is the fact that Sen. Lincoln is walking away from her previous support for climate legislation -- and given the scope, urgency and magnitude of this issue, she has more than earned a spot on LCV's Dirty Dozen," said Gene Karpinski, the group's president.

Asked whether the organization wasn't in danger of hurting Obama's agenda by robbing the Senate of another Democratic vote, Karpinski told The Ticket that the league is not a "Democratic organization, we are a nonpartisan issues-based organization, and our issue is the environment."

He added:

"The fact of the matter is that we support the president's agenda that he reiterated in the State of the Union -- passing bipartisan comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation -- and unfortunately Sen. Lincoln does not."

Gibbs in Fox News territory

Remember that White House war on Fox News?

Well, forget it.

Looks like reaching Fox News' winning audiences -- fully a third of whom are . . . shhhh, Democrats who denounce Fox News at work and parties and then go home to secretly watch the channel -- ended up making more sense to White House strategists than trying to freeze out that alleged arm of the Republican Party.

As The Ticket previously reported, on Jan. 19 during the Massachusetts Senate race coverage, Fox News drew in 6.8 million viewers, about four times the audience sleeping over at CNN.

And now the liberal Air America radio network has silenced itself due to a lack of listeners, creating a lack of advertisers, creating a dearth of dough.

So President Obama's chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs, went on "Fox News Sunday" last week all by himself. To face the dark empire's death star Chris "No, Luke, I Am Your Father" Wallace.

Of course, Gibbs didn't make any grand pronouncements. The press secretary's job is to dodge while appearing to elaborate.

But the Obama crowd was on defense all week and had to get some of its folks out to play down the predictable OMG D.C. chatter about the upset election win by Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Nothing special going on there -- same anger as before, move along.

Now, why would a president, who just a few years ago was a nobody state senator in Illinois before getting elected to the U.S. Senate, be worried about a nobody state senator in Massachusetts getting elected to the U.S. Senate just a few years before the 2012 presidential election? Gee, beats us.

Anyway, Gibbs told Wallace several things, not necessarily in this order.

So what about the election of a Republican senator for the first time since 1972 in Massachusetts?

Gibbs: "There's no doubt there's anger and frustration in this country -- we saw it manifest itself in Massachusetts. . . . What people want in this country is they want us to focus on getting this economy moving again. They want us to work together."

So what about the president's sinking poll numbers and Democratic defeats in Virginia and the former party strongholds of Massachusetts and New Jersey? Will that change White House strategy on healthcare, etc.?

Gibbs: "Well, right now, we're working with leaders on Capitol Hill to try to figure out the best path forward. We don't know what that is quite yet."

So with things going so swimmingly well politically for Obama in recent months, how should we read the president bringing 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe back into his political operation?

Gibbs: "He will help supplement an already good political staff led by Patrick Gaspard in the White House in helping us watch the 2010 elections, the gubernatorial, the Senate and the House elections, that will obviously be important to the direction of the country."

andrew.malcolm@latimes.com

Neuman writes for The Times.

Top of the Ticket, The Times' blog on national politics ( www.latimes.com/ticket "> www.latimes.com/ticket ), is a blend of commentary, analysis and news. These are excerpts from the last week.


[Environment]
By Curtis Morgan
January 31, 2010
Winter chill takes toll on Florida Keys coral
Scientists begin early assessments of the damage on marine life, but initial reports are bleak.

Reporting from Miami - January's bitter cold may have wiped out many of the shallow-water corals in the Florida Keys.

Scientists have only begun assessments, but initial reports are bleak. The damage could extend from Key Largo through the Dry Tortugas islands west of Key West, a vast expanse that covers some of the prettiest and healthiest reefs in North America.

Given the depth and duration of the frigid weather, Meaghan Johnson, marine science coordinator for the Nature Conservancy, expected to see losses. But she was stunned by the devastation when she joined a dive team surveying reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The divers were looking for "bleaching," a telltale indicator of temperature stress in corals.

Star and brain corals, large species that can take hundreds of years to grow, were as white and lifeless as bones, frozen to death, she said. Dead sea turtles, eels and parrotfish also littered the bottom.

"Corals didn't even have a chance to bleach. They just went straight to dead," Johnson said. "It's really ecosystem-wide mortality."

The record chill that gripped South Florida for two weeks took a heavy toll on wildlife -- particularly marine life.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that a record number of endangered manatees had succumbed to the cold this year -- 77, according to a preliminary review. The previous record, 56, was set last year.

The warm Gulf Stream is believed to have protected deeper areas, but shallower reefs took a serious, perhaps unprecedented, hit, said Billy Causey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Coral-bleaching has struck the Keys in the past, most recently twice in the 1990s, preceding a die-off that claimed 30% of the reef tract. But those events, along with others that have hit reefs around the world, have usually been triggered by water hotter than corals typically tolerate.

Healthy corals depend on a symbiotic relationship between polyps, the living tissues that slowly build the hard outer skeletons that give species distinctive shapes, and algae called zooxanthellae that give corals their vibrant colors. But when ocean temperatures are too hot or cold for too long, corals shed that algae, turning dull or a bleached bone-white.

The effect usually doesn't kill coral immediately but can weaken it, slowing growth and leaving reefs more vulnerable to diseases, pollution and damage from boaters and divers.

Cold-water bleaching last occurred in 1977, when it snowed in Miami, killing hundreds of acres of staghorn and elkhorn corals across the Keys. Neither species has recovered, and in 2006, both became the first corals to be listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

This year's big chill, Causey said, shapes up worse.

"They were exposed to temperatures much colder, that went on longer, than what they were exposed to three decades ago," he said.

Typical winter lows in-shore hover in the mid- to high 60s in the Keys. During this cold spell, a Key Largo reef monitor recorded 52.

Morgan writes for the Miami Herald.

news20100131gdn

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Renewable energy]
Green energy firms fear new feed-in tariffs will be too low
Campaigners fear government's cashback offer for microgeneration will not be enough to stimulate renewables industry
Ashley Seager
The Observer, Sunday 31 January 2010 Article history

The government will tomorrow publish the long-awaited levels of remuneration it will offer for renewable energy generated by households and communities and fed back into the national grid.

It hopes the new tariff will boost the growth of "micro-generation" by small-scale wind turbines, solar panels or hydro power. But there are fears in the renewable energy industry that the Department of Energy and Climate Change will make little or no upward adjustment to the tariff levels for clean electricity it proposed last year.

The DECC has been heavily lobbied by the big energy firms, and tomorrow's announcement has been delayed several times. The Clean Energy Cashback, or feed-in tariff, will reward households, businesses or communities by paying above-market rates for the electricity they produce and feed into the grid.

When the tariffs were unveiled last year, they were criticised for offering rates of return too low to encourage people to install micro-generation plants. Germany introduced feed-in tariffs a decade ago offering double-digit rates of return and sparked a green revolution.

But Alan Simpson, special adviser to energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband, fears the battle to get higher tariffs has been lost and believes the DECC will stick to its aim of getting just 2% of the UK's electricity from smaller scale renewables by 2020. He says three times that would be easily achievable at an additional cost per household energy bill of £1.20 a year.

"Germany needed starting rates that gave a 10% return on investment to kickstart their leap to the top of the renewables league. Britain needs to do the same," he wrote in a letter to Gordon Brown last week. "At the moment, we don't have a renewables industry. We have survivors; firms that exist despite government policy rather than because of it.

"A coalition of groups – from farmers to the fuel-poor, environmental NGOs to eco-builders, ethical bankers to engineers and installers – has been lobbying DECC officials for all they are worth. But little seems to be working."

Andrew Melchior, head of the EIC Partnership, which is setting up the Horizon energy co-operative in Manchester, said his business was only viable because of an EU grant. The feed-in tariff would not be enough, he warned.

"The Germans created an efficient industry that is able to provide solar installations at competitive prices. The UK does not have this industry, more a collection of enthusiasts experimenting with new technologies or proponents well versed in the pragmatics and dark arts of exploiting pots of grant funding.

"We must provide a decent incentive so that the public begin to accept the concept of economically viable solar energy in the UK."


[Environment > climate change scepticism]
Ed Miliband declares war on climate change sceptics
Climate secretary Ed Miliband warns against listening to 'siren voices', in an interview with the Observer
Juliette Jowit, environment editor
The Observer, Sunday 31 January 2010 Article history


The climate secretary, Ed Miliband, last night warned of the danger of a public backlash against the science of global warming in the face of continuing claims that experts have manipulated data.

In an exclusive interview with the Observer, Miliband spoke out for the first time about last month's revelations that climate scientists had withheld and covered up information and the apology made by the influential UN climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which admitted it had exaggerated claims about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

The perceived failure of global talks on combating climate change in Copenhagen last month has also been blamed for undermining public support. But in the government's first high-level recognition of the growing pressure on public opinion, Miliband declared a "battle" against the "siren voices" who denied global warming was real or caused by humans, or that there was a need to cut carbon emissions to tackle it.

"It's right that there's rigour applied to all the reports about climate change, but I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it's somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that's there," he said.

"We know there's a physical effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to higher temperatures, that's a question of physics; we know CO2 concentrations are at their highest for 6,000 years; we know there are observed increases in temperatures; and we know there are observed effects that point to the existence of human-made climate change. That's what the vast majority of scientists tell us."

Mistakes and attempts to hide contradictory data had to be seen in the light of the thousands of pages of evidence in the IPCC's four-volume report in 2007, said Miliband. The most recent accusation about the panel's work is that its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, may have known before the Copenhagen summit that its assessment report had seriously exaggerated the rate of melting of the Himalayan glaciers.

However, Miliband was adamant that the IPCC was on the right track. "It's worth saying that no doubt when the next report comes out it will suggest there have been areas where things have been happening more dramatically than the 2007 report implied," he said.

The danger of climate scepticism was that it would undermine public support for unpopular decisions needed to curb carbon emissions, including the likelihood of higher energy bills for households, and issues such as the visual impact of wind turbines, said Miliband, who is also energy secretary.

If the UK did not invest in renewable, clean energy, it would lose jobs and investment to other countries, have less energy security because of the dependence on oil and gas imports and contribute to damaging temperature rises for future generations. "There are a whole variety of people who are sceptical, but who they are is less important than what they are saying, and what they are saying is profoundly dangerous," he said. "Every­thing we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle; to take what the sceptics say seriously would be a profound risk."

The Copenhagen conference in December ended with no formal agreement to make deep cuts in global emissions, or even set a timetable, but Miliband warned activists against "despair".

The UN conference was a "disappointment", he said, but there were important achievements, including the agreement by countries responsible for 80% of emissions to set domestic carbon targets by today. "There's a message for people who take these things seriously: don't mourn, organise," said Miliband, who has previously called for a Make Poverty History-style mass public campaign to pressure politicians into cutting emissions.

Lord Smith, the Environment Agency chairman, said: "The [Himalayan] glaciers may not melt by 2035, but they are melting and there's a serious problem that's going to affect substantial parts of Asia over the course of the next 100 or more years."

news20100131reut

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
BERLIN
Sat Jan 30, 2010 9:32am EST
Merkel says Germany committed to nuclear fusion

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is committed to research into nuclear fusion as a clean and abundant source of alternative energy but international cooperation is vital, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday

"Nuclear fusion could provide endless energy without producing radioactive waste," said Merkel in a podcast.

"It is worth investing in such a technology of the future, but no one country can do this alone, you need international scientific cooperation."

In 2006, more than 30 countries signed a deal to build the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactor, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

The objective of ITER is to demonstrate the feasibility of producing electricity from a fusion reaction, which involves fusing atomic nuclei at extremely high temperatures inside a giant electromagnetic ring.

Critics argue however it could be at least 50 years before a commercially viable reactor is built, if one is built at all.

Merkel said her government was increasing funds available for research this year and was committed to developing renewable energy sources. (Reporting by Sarah Marsh)


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Sat Jan 30, 2010 8:03pm EST
IMF working on plans for "green fund"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund is working on proposals for a multibillion dollar "green fund" to help countries tap funds to deal with the effects of climate change, the head of the institution said on Saturday.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that developing countries would need financial help to tackle climate change while rich nations have taken on higher debt in reaction to the global financial crisis.

Global talks on a new climate change pact have mostly looked to industrial powers to help finance efforts by developing countries to deal with climate change.

In remarks in Davos that were published on the IMF website, Strauss-Kahn said the world needed to "think outside the box and come up with innovative ways to provide the money."

He said the IMF would begin discussions with central banks and finance ministers on whether such a fund was possible.

Strauss-Kahn said resources for the fund, "which could climb to $100 billion a year," could be raised through an allocation to IMF member countries of IMF special drawing rights, or SDRs.

SDRs are international reserve assets and the fund's unit of account. They are disbursed in proportion to each member's IMF quota, or subscription, and can be exchanged for hard currency such as U.S. dollars, yen, euros or pounds.

Last year IMF member countries agreed to issue $250 billion worth of SDRs to boost global liquidity at a time countries' foreign exchange reserves were being depleted by the financial crisis,

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Xavier Briand)


[Green Business]
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO
Sun Jan 31, 2010 7:41am EST
Copenhagen climate deal gets low-key endorsement

OSLO (Reuters) - Nations accounting for most of the world's greenhouse gas emissions have restated their promises to fight climate change, meeting a Sunday deadline in a low-key endorsement of December's "Copenhagen Accord."

Experts say their promised curbs on greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 are too small so far to meet the accord's key goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

The U.N. Climate Change Secretariat plans to publish a list of submissions on Monday. That may put pressure on all capitals to keep their promises.

Countries accounting for at least two-thirds of emissions -- led by China, the United States and the European Union -- have all written in. Smaller emitters, from the Philippines to Mali, have also sent promises or asked to be associated with the deal.

The Secretariat says the January 31 deadline is flexible.

"Most of the industrialized countries' (promises) are in the 'inadequate' category," said Niklas Hoehne, director of energy and climate policy at climate consultancy Ecofys, which assesses how far national commitments will help limit climate change.

"The U.S. is not enough, the European Union is not enough. For the major developed countries it's still far behind what is expected, except for Japan and Norway," he said.

Some developing nations, such as Brazil or Mexico, were making relatively greater efforts, he said.

FLOODS, DROUGHTS AND WILDFIRES

The accord's goal of limiting warming to below 2 C -- meant to help limit floods, droughts, wildfires and rising seas -- is twinned with promises of $28 billion in aid for developing nations from 2010-12, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020.

Ecofys reckons that the promised curbs will set the world toward a 3.5 degrees Celsius rise in temperatures, not 2.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said that on current projections the world would exceed an estimated "carbon emissions budget" for the first half of this century by 2034, 16 years ahead of schedule.

The European Union plans to cut emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 30 percent if others make deep cuts. The United States plans a cut of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, or 4 percent below 1990 levels.

"Carbon prices look set to remain relatively low until economic growth picks up or until a more ambitious target is adopted," Richard Gledhill, a climate expert at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said of the EU goal.

"This will continue to delay major capital investment in low carbon technology," he said in a statement.

The Copenhagen Accord, reached after a summit on December 18 in Denmark, was not adopted as a U.N. plan for shifting from fossil fuels after opposition by a handful of developing nations such as Venezuela and Sudan.

One possible complication is that some countries, including China and India, have written to the United Nations giving 2020 targets but without explicitly backing the Copenhagen Accord. The U.N. has asked all to take sides by January 31.

An Indian document sent to the U.N. Secretariat does not mention the accord, for instance, but says it is giving details of plans to 2020 "in view of the current debate under way in the international climate negotiations."

(Editing by Andrew Roche)


[Green Business]
NEW DELHI
Sun Jan 31, 2010 4:16am EST
India reiterates carbon goals for climate accord

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has reiterated a goal of slowing the rise of its carbon emissions by 2020 as part of pledges due by Sunday under a "Copenhagen Accord" to fight climate change, an official statement said.

Many other nations have also reiterated existing goals for slowing global warming before a Sunday deadline for making commitments under the "Copenhagen Accord," which sets an overriding goal of limiting a rise in world temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F).

The statement said India will "endeavor" to reduce its carbon emission intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 in comparison to the 2005 level.

Carbon emissions intensity refers to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of gross domestic product.

The statement said India's actions will be legally non-binding and its carbon intensity cut target will not include emission from the agriculture sector.

Last week, China reiterated a voluntary domestic target to lower its carbon emissions intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005 level while also stepping up the use of renewable energy and planting more trees.

The non-binding accord was described by many as a failure because it fell far short of the Copenhagen conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to prevent more heat waves, droughts and crop failures.

So the more top emitters such as China and India there are committing numbers to the accord, the better its chances of survival.

China, India, South Africa and Brazil met in the Indian capital on January 24 and expressed support for the "Copenhagen Accord," while urging donors to keep promises of aid.

(Reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee; Editing by David Fox)