Supreme Court to Hear Climate Change Case

As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a decision that many new or upgraded factories, power plants or other facilities will have to get a permit under the Clean Air Act to emit carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases (Source: NY Times), the United States Supreme Court has decided to hear the case of American Electric Power Co., Inc. v. Connecticut. The SCOTUS blog says at issue is “Whether federal law allows states and private parties to sue utilities for contributing to global warming.”

Wired.com says, “The case was filed before the Environmental Protection Agency’s right to regulate greenhouse gases was established, and represents an attempt by citizens to control greenhouse gases in the absence of federal mandates.” You might remember, the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases, a process scheduled to begin early next year. But, Wired.com notes, “A New York court ruled against the states in 2005, saying the suit raised a “political question” beyond judicial scope. An appeals court  reversed that decision last year, noting that the link between greenhouse gas pollution and climate change is not a political question. As justification, they even cited Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., an obscure Supreme Court decision in which the high court supported Georgia’s right to sue two copper companies responsible for crop-destroying pollution.” It’s the appeal that the SCOTUS will hear.

Carbon Auction Yields $16.9 Million more for New York

While the Chicago Carbon Exchange (CCX) has pretty much shut down with a ton of CO2 trading for a nickel, the NY Times reports the state of New York “made $16.9 million in the latest auction of carbon dioxide credits, held this week under the cap-and-trade system known as Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative…New York has so far collected $282 million from RGGI (pronounced “reggie”), the most of any of the 10 participating Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states.” The Times article notes, “Under the program, the 10 states agreed to cap carbon dioxide emissions  from electric power plants and charge the plants for the emissions they produce. As an incentive for the plants to pollute less, the states allow those that cut their emissions below the cap level to sell or trade their excess carbon allowances through online auctions four times a year.”

Cancun shindig ends with a semblance of an agreement

Politico reports, “A year after U.N.-led talks all but collapsed in Copenhagen, delegates from countries large and small signed off on a package of low-hanging fruit that includes establishing a program to keep tropical rainforests standing, sharing low-carbon energy technologies and preparing a $100 billion fund to help the world’s most vulnerable cope with a changing climate…diplomats scarred by the chaos in Copenhagen accepted a deal that fails to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions anywhere close to scientific recommendations [and] fails to establish a firm date for negotiators to reach a conclusion on a new climate treaty.

The World Resources Institute jubilantly reported the Cancun climate talks concluded on 11 December 2010 with countries “agreeing by consensus to move ahead with an international agreement on climate change that includes “targets and actions, increased transparency, the creation of a climate fund, and other important mechanisms to support developing countries. Delegations also recognized the urgency of keeping global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, with the ability to strengthen the response in the coming years.”

Not everyone was quite so thrilled, Ronald Bailey at Reason.com said, “It would be cynical to call it a bribe, but the Cancun agreements were largely reached because the rich countries continued their vague promises to hand over $100 billion in climate aid annually to poor countries beginning in 2020. Basically the deal on emissions is that countries will agree to agree on cuts at the next climate change conference in Durban.” While Christopher Monckton wrote on the CFact blog, “The governing class in what was once proudly known as the Free World is silently, casually letting go of liberty, prosperity, and even democracy itself…The 33-page Note (FCCC/AWGLCA/2010/CRP.2) by the Chairman of the ‘Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Co-operative Action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’, entitled Possible elements of the outcome, reveals all. Or, rather, it reveals nothing, unless one understands what the complex, obscure jargon means…Western countries will jointly provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to an unnamed new UN Fund. To keep this sum up with GDP growth, the West may commit itself to pay 1.5% of GDP to the UN each year. That is more than twice the 0.7% of GDP that the UN has recommended the West to pay in foreign aid for the past half century. Several hundred of the provisions in the Chairman’s note will impose huge financial costs on the nations of the West…Hundreds of new interlocking bureaucracies answerable to the world-government Secretariat will vastly extend its power and reach.”

Mountain Gorillas on the Increase

A gorilla census in the 180 sq mi Virunga Massif of Rwanda reveals a 26.3 percent increase of the mountain gorilla over the last seven years. (source: allafrica.com) A story in the New York Times notes that increased economic standards in the area had led to a decrease in poaching. “Many of these communities now keep bees to make honey or make handicrafts for tourists — they don’t need to poach,” Martha Robbins, a primatologist with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told the BBC.

Californian Green Scene

Scientists: NASA’s arsenic bacterium paper “Should Not Have Been Published”

The Week: Last week’s much-heralded discovery of a new form of life is already being dismissed by independent scientists who call NASA’s research “sloppy”

“With great fanfare, NASA announced last week that it had discovered a new form of microbial life that can live on arsenic in a lake in California. Even if the discovery left some underwhelmed, it was generally greeted as a breakthrough, a paradigm shift in how we should think about life itself.” (Source: The Week)  RRResearch, A research blog run by Rosie Redfield has received lots of play for her criticism of the paper, “Bottom line: Lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable information.  The mass spec measurements may be very well done (I lack expertise here), but their value is severely compromised by the poor quality of the inputs.  If this data was presented by a PhD student at their committee meeting, I’d send them back to the bench to do more cleanup and controls.” Slate.com asks, “But how could the bacteria be using phosphate when they weren’t getting any in the lab? That was the point of the experiment, after all. It turns out the NASA scientists were feeding the bacteria salts which they freely admit were contaminated with a tiny amount of phosphate. It’s possible, the critics argue, that the bacteria eked out a living on that scarce supply. As [one researcher questioned by slate] notes, the Sargasso Sea supports plenty of microbes while containing 300 times less phosphate than was present in the lab cultures.”

DWP quietly scales back LA Mayor’s renewable energy goal

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has great plans for LA to make 40% of its power from renewable resources by 2020. The LA Times reports that Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power (DWP) has begun groundwork to dial that figure back.

Villaraigosa set the 40% renewable target during his second-term inaugural address, part of his bid to make Los Angeles “the greenest big city in America.” But [First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner] has dismissed that figure as “arbitrary,” and the DWP, faced with resistance to the higher electricity rates needed to obtain cleaner power, is looking to scale back the target, according to a draft plan being circulated by the utility.

Century-old oaks may make way — for a silt dump

An eleven-acre grove of oaks and sycamores in the city of Arcadia is the planned site to dump silt dredged from Santa Anita reservoir in the San Gabriel mountains. The LA Times reports, if an agreement with conservationists cannot be reached, a contractor in January will begin clearing the grove at the bottom of a wash abutting the handsome foothill subdivisions. “This is not something we take lightly,” said Bob Spencer, spokesman for the county Public Works Department. The county, he said, will sit down with residents and environmental groups to explore alternatives.

2 More Rare Red Foxes Confirmed in Sierra Nevada

Federal wildlife biologists have confirmed sightings of two more Sierra Nevada red foxes that once were thought to be extinct. Scientists say DNA samples show enough diversity in the Sierra Nevada red foxes to suggest a “fairly strong population” of the animals may secretly be doing quite well in the rugged mountains about 90 miles south of Reno. The first confirmed sighting of the subspecies in two decades came in August. (Source: CBS News)