After 30 Years, Al Gore Still Advocates A Carbon Tax

Gore Derangement Syndrome Lives - But Not Here

The inimitable Dave Roberts of Grist had a good interview with Al Gore this month. The Climate Reality founder discusses "carbon taxes, natural gas, and the 'morally wrong' Keystone pipeline."

Since a carbon price is the sine qua non of reality-based climate policy, and Gore has been way, way ahead of the curve, I'll excerpt that portion. At the end, I'll also comment on Grist's comment policy and Gore Derangement Syndrome.

Q. Did you hear [White House press secretary] Jay Carney this morning?

A. No, God help us, what'd he say?

Q. He said, "We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one."

A. I don't think that comes as a big surprise to anyone. Those of us that hold out some hope that we will find a way to get a price on carbon, and know there are multiple ways to do it, have felt that the convergence of the fiscal cliff and the climate cliff could produce some surprising results. And there have been some private comments by some Republicans to that effect. But certainly that's something you wouldn't wanna bet money on in Vegas.

Q. What do you think of this idea of a revenue-neutral carbon tax?

A. I have proposed a revenue-neutral carbon tax for a long time, 30 years. I proposed it in my first book, Earth in the Balance.

I supported cap-and-trade because a lot of folks felt that it offered the opportunity for bipartisan consensus. And by the way, it may yet gain altitude globally - China, as you know, is implementing it in five provinces and two cities. They have indicated that they intend to use these pilots as a model for the nationwide program. Many are skeptical, but they often do follow through with what they say they're going to do. And [cap-and-trade] just started in California yesterday. Australia is now linking theirs to the E.U. system. South Korea's moving, British Columbia, Quebec - there are a lot of parallel developments that could converge, particularly if China does follow through. It's premature to write [cap-and-trade] off, even thought it's has been demonized and so many people are afraid to talk about it.

But from the very beginning, I preferred a carbon tax. (And by the way, I'd be in favor of both; I don't think they're inconsistent at all.) And yet, the political environment in the U.S. has not changed to the point where it's something you'd wanna bet on. But look, we've got to solve this. It's an irresistible force meeting an immovable object, and something's gotta give. I have enough faith in humanity to believe, against a lot of evidence, that we're going to solve this.

Q. Does this idea of a carbon/income tax swap make you nervous? The income tax is one of the only places we have progressivity in the U.S. tax code.

A. I have not proposed doing it on the income tax, I have proposed doing it on the payroll tax. I am also friendly to the notion of a rebate scheme, though I doubt they'll do that. It needs to be progressive - the rising inequality in the country is too serious to run the risk of worsening that.

Q.Do you worry that you getting out in front of this might brand it in a certain way -

A. Well, they come after anybody who speaks up in favor of doing something on climate. It's not going to surprise any of them that I'm in favor of it. I've said it on practically a daily basis for years and years.

Gore's last answer is dead on. The anti-science crowd demonizes all climate hawks. That is hardly a reason for silence by any hawk on any aspect of climate science, solutions, or policy - quite the reverse. Certainly the public opinion data makes clear that Nobel laureate did not polarize the climate debate - and every leading social scientists in the field I've spoken to agrees (see "Public Opinion Study Debunks Claim Al Gore Polarized the Climate Debate").

Despite the fact that the science continues to support a worse-case analysis than the one Gore advanced in An Inconvenient Truth, the vitriol against him continues to this day, so much so it has its own label "Gore Derangement Syndrome."

And if you want to see an epidemic of GDS, just go to the comments section of the Grist interview - but put on your head vise first. That may be the best argument I've seen in a while for moderating comments, which the overwhelming majority of blogs do. I'm a huge fan of Grist's - they reprint Climate Progress pieces and we reprint theirs - but I'd urge them to at least put an intern on that job. What really is the point of a comments section if it can be overwhelmed by those spreading disinformation and/or Gore Derangement Syndrome?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/climateprogress/lCrX/~3/jOAwpNWguwA/story01.htm

http://thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com/c/34726/f/638933/s/26073b1d/l/0Lthinkprogress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A120C110C270C12433510Cafter0E30A0Eyears0Eal0Egore0Estill0Eadvocates0Ea0Ecarbon0Etax0C/story01.htm

A startup that squeezes electricity out of city water

The water that sloshes through city pipes can both quench your thirst and generate electricity. However, the latter is far less common. But that's the proposition from startup Rentricity, which has developed equipment that uses water pressure to produce electricity and helps water suppliers reduce their energy costs.

The New York City-based company was the runner-up for the grand prize in this year's Cleantech Open competition and has seen its technology installed at two water treatment plants in the Pittsburgh region and one in Keene, New Hampshire. Its biggest project, its fourth one, is scheduled to come online in the first quarter of 2013 in the Palos Verdes area of Los Angeles County.

Finding multiple uses for the same resource is a good thing. It maximizes resources and reduces waste, especially if the resources are difficult to come by or finite. More advanced natural gas power plants, for example, use waste heat from gas turbines to generate steam and produce more electricity on site. Some solar technology also uses waste heat produced by solar cells to heat up water.

Rentricity's technology makes use of the highly pressured water that flows through pipes to be delivered to neighborhoods. After leaving the treatment plant, water typically goes through the water utility equivalent of substations (concrete underground regulator vaults) where the flow and pressure are reduced as the water gets ready to enter the smaller pipes of homes and businesses.

The company's technology includes a reverse pump, a generator, and controllers that would typically be installed at a water treatment plant or underground vaults. The pump harnesses the highly pressurized water and sends that through the generator to produce electricity. The controllers monitor and manage the valves and make sure the electricity moves on to the grid.

"We can monitor, control and optimize the pressure in the system so that we can get the most electricity potential out of the system," said Frank Zammataro, the company's CEO and founder.

The gear is designed to handle pipes from 10-inch to 36-inch in diameter; the generators range from 30 KW to 350 KW. Rentricity also has designed equipment in the 5-30 KW range in a partnership with water pump and treatment equipment maker Xylem. The two companies are looking at demonstrating the new gear in two sites, located in Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia, Canada.

Rentricity's intellectual property lies in the control system, Zammataro said. Rentricity also can install flow and pressure sensors that collect data and detect leakage for water utilities, particularly if the water treatment systems are located in remote areas.

The company is targeting selling its technology to water utilities at the moment, though it would like to see its equipment installed at industrial sites that use a lot of water, such as pharmaceutical plants, food and beverage factories or mining operations.

Knowing that the upfront financing is often a hurdle for new infrastructure technology - especially for municipal water utilities - Rentricity began offering financing options to customers earlier this year. The financing makes the company the sole or co-owner of the power generation equipment for the 30-40 years of expected lifespan of the gear or until the water utilities pay to own it. In return, Rentricity gets a share of the revenue from selling the electricity. Zammataro said he's talked with three fund managers who are interested in providing the money for the installations, but he declined to name them.

Rentricity has signed a letter of agreement to finance a 100 KW system with the city of Albany, New York, Zammataro said, and is now in the process of doing due diligence. The company hasn't finalized the budget for the project but estimates that it could cost somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million.

Rentricity, the name of which is a mash up of "renewable" and "electricity," was founded in 2003. But the company was a "part time project" for the three co-founders, Zammataro said. It wasn't until 2008 when the company began to market its technology to water utilities in earnest, he said, that the project became a full time gig. Rentricity has been self-funded and raised $1.5 million from friends, family and government grants. The company is working on raising a $3.5 million round.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/a-startup-that-squeezes-electricity-out-of-city-water/

Cost Of Superstorm Sandy, And Other 2012 Extreme Weather Events, On The Rise

by Jackie Weidman

Yesterday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that his state needs $42 billion to recover from Hurricane Sandy and to protect against future extreme weather events. Three quarters of this sum is just for damage repair and restoration of homes, businesses, and mass transit.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also announced that Sandy caused $29.5 billion in economic costs there, cautioning that the estimate will likely rise after next summer's tourism season and real estate values take a hit.

Cuomo urged that mitigating damage from future storms is essential, as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather. "There has been a series of extreme weather incidents," Cuomo said just days after Sandy's landfall. "We have a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns."

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) warned that obtaining federal funding for recovery efforts could be difficult, especially during the fiscal showdown. Schumer said that an emergency supplemental appropriations bill will be introduced in December and that it "will be an effort that lasts not weeks, but many months, and we will not rest until the federal response meets New York's deep and extensive needs."

Additionally, the House of Representatives hasn't been friendly to disaster relief. In both 2011 and 2012, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee proposed cutting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) budget by $87 million and an additional $182 million, respectively.

This isn't the first time that states have asked Congress for disaster funding, and it certainly won't be the last. FEMA only has $12 billion in disaster aid to provide annually. Yet in 2011 and 2012, the U.S. experienced at least $126 billion in direct costs just from extreme weather events that caused $1 billion in damages or more.

A recent Center for American Progress report called "Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower-Income Americans," finds that the vast majority of U.S. counties - 67 percent - were affected by at least one of the 21 billion-dollar extreme weather events in the past two years. The report found that lower- and middle- income households are disproportionately affected by the most expensive extreme weather events.

Although New Jersey and New York account for the lion's share of damages from Hurricane Sandy, they aren't the only states slammed by extreme weather. Sixteen states were afflicted by five or more extreme weather events in 2011-12. Households in disaster-declared counties in these states earn $48,137, or seven percent below the U.S. median income. These states were ravaged by hurricanes and tropical storms, tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, floods and crippling drought.

After Superstorm Sandy, droughts are the second and third most costly extreme weather events in 2011-12, respectively. Extremely dry conditions over the past two years resulted in long drought seasons that caused at least $40 billion in economic damages combined.

This year, the worst drought in decades continues to ravage the south-central United States. Drought conditions expanded and intensified this month after retreating in September and October, according to the November 20 drought monitor. Eric Luebehusen, a meteorologist with the Agriculture Department told E&E News that this could be the worst winter wheat season since 1995, as dry conditions deplete irrigation storage and stifle secondary root growth. A Purdue University economist estimates that the 2012 drought will cause up to $77 billion in economic costs, and experts at the University of Illinois predict that taxpayers will ultimately be responsible for at least $10 billion of them.

These are just some of the costs that extreme weather has inflicted on the U.S. economy in recent years. Lasting effects are felt on national, state, and local levels as families must rebuild destroyed homes, small business owners suffer from loss of business, and states scramble to come up with the funds for recovery.

Hurricane Sandy is the exclamation point on the warnings about climate change, after the deadly and expensive extreme weather events repeatedly struck the United States in 2011 and 2012. We are not helpless victims on the receiving end of a suddenly angrier climate; these recent weather events are a call to action and preparation.

Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/climateprogress/lCrX/~3/JF96oW3Yzh4/story01.htm

http://thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com/c/34726/f/638933/s/2606b122/l/0Lthinkprogress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A120C110C270C12440A210Ccost0Eof0Esuperstorm0Esandy0Eand0Eother0E20A120Eextreme0Eweather0Eevents0Eon0Ethe0Erise0C/story01.htm

Traffic Pollution Linked To Autism...Again

Autism is a cause of growing concern in the scientific community, with more and more children seemingly diagnosed with one of the many mental disabilities that fall under the autism label. While researchers have linked autism with obvious culprits like industrial food processing, a new study suggests a strong link between high amounts of traffic pollution and children born with autism.
The study, headed by Dr. Heather E. Volk of the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, showed that pregnant women exposed to high levels of traffic pollution were twice as likely to give birth to a child with a developmental disorder. Young children exposed to high levels of traffic pollution were also three times as likely to develop autism.
While the researchers are quick to point out this isn't conclusive evidence, it backs up previous findings by other researchers. The emissions coming out of the tailpipes of automobiles are indeed quite deadly. If anyone suggests otherwise, I tell them to stick their mouth over a tailpipe of a running car for five minutes.
This is just one more argument for a move away from a fossil fuel-based economy. We will all be better off when automobiles run cleaner, allowing everyone to breathe a little easier.
Source: Treehugger
The post Traffic Pollution Linked To Autism...Again appeared first on Gas 2.

http://feeds.importantmedia.org/~r/IM-gas2/~3/tfZHrq46Dq0/
http://gas2.org/2012/11/27/traffic-pollution-linked-to-autism-again/

First gas tanker crosses Arctic

A large LNG tanker is set to become the first such carrier to sail across the Arctic taking advantage of changing climate conditions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20454757#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

Acid oceans DISSOLVING sea life

British Antarctic Survey says CO₂ the villain behind bad news for tiny snails

The shells of tiny sea snails called pteropods, or "sea butterflies", are dissolving thanks to the acidification of sea water brought about to increasing levels of CO₂ in the ocean, according to researchers from the British Antarctic Survey BAS)....

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/26/acid_oceans_dissolve_pterepod_shells/

Most of Bhutan&#39;s <b>glaciers</b> could disappear - Little Bhutan

According to findings, amount of water coming from glaciers could drop by 30 percent. Precisely, her findings also indicated that within next few years, Bhutan's glacier would vanish by 10 percent. Apparently, local glacial ...

http://www.littlebhutan.com/blogs/most-of-bhutans-glaciers-could-disappear.html