Assessing Federal Programs for Measuring Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks

Posted by Brad Johnson Thu, 23 Jun 2022 14:00:00 GMT

Hearing page

Witnesses:
  • Dr. Eric K. Lin, Director, Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology
  • Dr. Ariel Stein, Acting Director, Global Monitoring Laboratory and Director, Air Resources Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  • Dr. Karen M. St. Germain, Earth Science Division Director, Science Mission Directorate, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • Dr. Bryan Hubbell, National Program Director for Air, Climate, and Energy, Office of Research and Development, United States Environmental Protection Agency

Atmospheric methane continues to rocket up at record rates

Posted by Brad Johnson Fri, 08 Apr 2022 17:34:00 GMT

Atmospheric methane continues to rocket up at record rates, NOAA reported yesterday. As fracking booms, methane levels increased by 17 parts per billion in 2021, breaking the 2020 record of 15.3 ppb. Concentrations of this powerful greenhouse pollutant are now 162 percent of their pre-industrial levels, as the Biden administration pushes for more natural gas production and export.

I will take this moment to remind readers that the EPA is undercounting methane pollution by 77 percent.

The essential Kate Aronoff castigates the incoherence of Democrats in Congress who claim to care about the climate crisis begging oil CEOs to increase fossil-fuel production, instead of acting to take their billions in windfall profits and stop their greenhouse pollution:

Appealing to these CEOs’ better angels is pointless. Although they hand fossil fuel companies billions in subsidies each year, American policymakers mostly confine themselves to begging or berating them into doing what they want.

As Adam Tooze writes in his review of three recent books by Andreas Malm:

To harp on the climate crisis while doing nothing about it is, in the long run, intolerable. Liberals’ failures make Trump look honest. He may deny the science, but at least he’s true to himself.

Committee Print to comply with the reconciliation directive included in section 2002 of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2022, S. Con. Res. 14

Posted by Brad Johnson Thu, 09 Sep 2021 14:00:00 GMT

The hearing will be conducted via teleconference.

Text of the Science Committee Print and the Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute by Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson.

The proposed $45.4 billion Science Committee ANS includes:

Department of Energy ($20.6 billion)
  • $5 billion for regional innovation initiatives
  • $10.4 billion for the Department of Energy Office of Science laboratories, including $1.3 billion for the ITER fusion project
  • $349 million for the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for NREL projects including the new EMAPS program and ARIES grid simulation
  • $408 million for the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy
  • $20 million for the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management
  • $1.08 billion in general funds for Department of Energy National Laboratories, including
    • $377 million for Office of Science
    • $210 million for Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
    • $40 million for Office of Nuclear Energy
    • $190 million for Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management
    • $102 million for the Office of Environmental Management
  • $2 billion for fusion research and development
  • $1.1 billion for Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy demonstration projects, including wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, vehicles, bioenergy, and building technologies
  • $70 million for a new Clean Energy Manufacturing Innovation Institute
  • $52.5 million for university nuclear reactor research
  • $10 million for demonstration projects on reducing the environmental impacts of fracking wastewater
  • $20 million for the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity
  • $50 million for the Office of the Inspector General
Environmental Protection Agency
  • $264 million to conduct environmental research and development activities related to climate change, including environmental justice
FEMA
  • $798 million for Assistance to Firefighters Grants
NASA ($4.4 billion)
  • $4 billion for infrastructure and maintenance
  • $388 million for climate change research and development
NIST ($4.2 billion)
  • $1.2 billion for scientific and technical research, including resilience to natural hazards including wildfires, and greenhouse gas and other climate-related measurement
  • $2 billion for American manufacturing support
  • $1 billion for infrastructure and maintenance
NOAA ($4.2 billion)
  • $1.2 billion for weather, ocean, and climate research and forecasting
  • $265 million to develop and distribute actionable climate information for communities in an equitable manner
  • $500 million to recruit, educate, and train a “climate-ready” workforce
  • $70 million for high-performance computing
  • $224 million for phased-array radar research and development
  • $1 billion for hurricane hunter aircraft and radar systems
  • $12 million for drone missions
  • $743 million for deferred maintenance
  • $173 million for space weather
National Science Foundation ($10.95 billion)
  • $3.4 billion for infrastructure, including Antarctic bases – $300 million for minority-serving institutions
  • $7.5 billion for research grants, including at least $400 million for climate change research and $700 million for minority-serving institutions
  • $50 million for Office of the Inspector General
Introduced amendments:

Examining the President’s Fiscal Year 2022 Budget Proposal for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Posted by Brad Johnson Wed, 21 Jul 2021 14:00:00 GMT

On Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 10:00 A.M. EDT, in room 1324 Longworth Hearing Room and online via Cisco Webex, the Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife will hold a hybrid oversight hearing titled, “Examining the President’s Fiscal Year 2022 Budget Proposal for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.” This hearing will also be streamed on the Committee’s YouTube.

Witnesses
  • David Palumbo, Deputy Commissioner of Operations, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
  • Dr. Don Cline, Associate Director, Water Resources, U.S. Geological Survey
  • Dr. Richard W. Spinrad, Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
  • Stephen D. Guertin, Deputy Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Letter from Ben Santer in Support of Tom Karl, Climate Scientist Under Attack by Lamar Smith

Posted by Brad Johnson Thu, 19 Nov 2015 02:15:00 GMT

Message from Ben Santer: Here is a message of support I sent to Tom Karl on November 17, 2015. I remain deeply concerned by the unwarranted Congressional scrutiny that the 2015 Karl et al. Science paper continues to receive.

I have no concerns about public distribution of this letter.

Dr. Thomas R. Karl
Director, National Center for Environmental Information
Veach-Baley Federal Building
151 Patton Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801-5001

Dear Tom,

I just wanted to express my gratitude and scientific appreciation for the critical research you and your NCEI colleagues have performed over the last several decades. You have been pioneers in many different areas: in producing observational estimates of global-scale changes in land and ocean surface temperatures, in identifying non-climatic artifacts in temperature measurements, in developing rigorous scientific methods of adjusting for such artifacts, and in accounting for the incomplete, time-varying coverage of observations.

NCEI has made its surface temperature data sets freely and openly available to the entire climate science community, thus enabling important research on the nature and causes of climate change, climate variability, and climate model evaluation. NCEI staff have clearly and thoroughly documented each surface temperature data set that NCEI has released – in scientific publications, in presentations to policymakers and professional societies, and in extensive online material. No scientific organization has done a more thorough or transparent job in developing and analyzing observations of 20th and early 21st century changes in Earth’s climate.

I am deeply concerned that NCEI’s science is now being subjected to Congressional scrutiny and criticism. Such scrutiny and criticism is not warranted. The leadership of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology should understand that science is dynamic rather than static. All observational temperature data sets have evolved in important ways over time, in tandem with improvements in the ability to identify and adjust for inhomogeneities introduced by changing measurement systems, changing measurement practices, and changes in the spatial coverage of measurements. This is true not only for surface temperature data sets, but also for measurements of the heat content of the world’s oceans, and for satellite-based estimates of temperature change in Earth’s lower and upper atmosphere. Evolution of observational temperature data sets is a normal, on-going scientific process. It is not evidence of non-scientific behavior.

If our country is to take informed decisions on how to address problems arising from human perturbations to the climate system, we need access to the best-available scientific information on how Earth’s climate has actually changed. NCEI provides such critically important information to the scientific community, policymakers, and the public. You and your NCEI colleagues deserve our sincere thanks and our continued support.

With best regards,

Ben Santer

Distinguished Member of Scientific Staff, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
Member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences

NOAA Director: Undersea Cloud of 'Highly Toxic' Oil in Gulf 'Is Undoubtedly Poisonous'

Posted by Wonk Room Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:04:00 GMT

From the Wonk Room.

The undersea cloud of “highly toxic” oil emanating from BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster “is undoubtedly poisonous,” according to President Obama’s federal oceans chief. Marine scientist Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) director, described the threat posed by the “hidden” plumes of oil and dispersants diffusing into the Gulf of Mexico to its valuable ecosystem at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Tuesday. She told interviewer Andrea Mitchell that NOAA and independent scientists have identified “not a lake of black ooze” but a “cloud of very fine droplets spread over an area in the general vicinity of the well,” a prime spawning ground for bluefin tuna. This oil cloud “is undoubtedly poisonous” to the marine life in the Gulf:

As that oil, which is highly toxic, comes into contact with small larvae, with eggs, fish for example, or other creatures, it is undoubtedly poisonous to them.

Watch it:

“This truly is an environmental disaster but more a human tragedy,” Lubchenco said in her opening remarks. “Its impact is likely to be considerable,” she said of the oil hidden undersea, “but we don’t yet know what it will be.”

An Incomplete List of Senate Holds on Obama Administration Nominees 1

Posted by Brad Johnson Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:02:00 GMT

Active holds are bolded.

White House
  • Nancy Sutley, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman – John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
  • Cass Sunstein, OIRA director – Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)
  • John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), anonymous
Department of Energy
  • Richard Newell, administrator of the Energy Information Administration – John McCain (R-Ariz.)
  • Ines Triay, assistant secretary of environmental management – Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)
  • Kristina Johnson, undersecretary for energy – Kyl
  • Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science – Kyl
  • Scott Blake Harris, general counsel – Kyl
Environmental Protection Agency
  • Lisa Jackson, administrator – Barrasso
  • Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for air and radiation – Barrasso
  • Robert Perciasepe, deputy administrator – George Voinovich (R-Ohio)
Interior
  • David Hayes, deputy secretary – Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
  • Hilary Tompkins, solicitor – Bennett, Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), and other anonymous Rs
  • Jon Jarvis, National Park Service director – Coburn
  • Wilma Lewis, assistant secretary for land and mineral management – McCain
  • Robert Abbey, Bureau of Land Management administrator – McCain
  • Joseph Pizarchik, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement – anonymous D
State
  • Harold Koh, legal adviser to the State Department – Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)
  • Susan Burk, Special Representative for Non-Proliferation – DeMint
  • Thomas Shannon Jr., ambassador to Brazil – DeMint, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
  • Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security – Kyl, released June 25
  • Arturo Valenzuela, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs – DeMint
Labor
  • Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor – anonymous R
  • Craig Becker, National Labor Relations Board – McCain
Commerce
  • Jane Lubchenco, director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Menendez, anonymous
Federal Emergency Management Agency
  • Craig Fugate, director – David Vitter (R-La.), released May 12
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
  • Gary Gensler, chairman – Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), released May 14

Menendez Blocks Obama's Scientists Over Unrelated, 'Deeply Offensive' Cuba Policies

Posted by Wonk Room Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:26:00 GMT

From the Wonk Room.

Robert MenendezObama’s climate scientists are collateral damage in an unrelated fight over Cuba policy with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). Menendez is responsible for an anonymous hold on the nominations of Dr. John Holdren and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, both world-renowned experts on climate change and the physical sciences. Holdren and Lubchenco “sailed through” their confirmation hearing on February 12. But as the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin reports, Menendez has anonymously blocked their full Senate confirmation “as leverage to get Senate leaders’ attention for a matter related to Cuba rather than questioning the nominees’ credentials.” Menendez, a Cuban American, took to the Senate floor last night “to deliver a withering denunciation” of proposed changes to U.S.-Cuban relations included in the budget omnibus:

We should evaluate how to encourage the regime to allow a legitimate opening – not in terms of cell phones and hotel rooms that Cubans can’t afford, but in terms of the right to organize, the right to think and speak what they believe. However, what we are doing with this Omnibus bill, Mr. President, is far from evaluation, and the process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that it puts the Omnibus appropriations package in jeopardy, in spite of all the other tremendously important funding that this bill would provide.

Menendez points to a memo prepared by the staff of Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) as recommending a policy change that Menendez worries could “rescue the regime by improving its economic fortunes,” namely giving Cuba “financial credit to purchase agricultural products from the U.S.”

These picks have in fact languished for months, having been put forward by President Obama on December 20. Lubchenco’s nomination to be administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has been stalled in part by the turmoil over finding a Secretary of Commerce, whose department includes NOAA. NOAA career staff are gamely working to draft a spending plan for the $830 million in the recently passed recovery act, and energy adviser Carol Browner is managing climate policy from the White House with a skeleton staff. But the Office of Science and Technology Policy is a key White House office, and its director Holdren is meant to be the top science adviser to the president. The “wise counsel” of Holdren and Lubchenco is irreplaceable, especially given the scope of the challenges our nation faces.

Menendez spokesman Afshin Mohamadi declined to comment on the putatively anonymous hold. “He takes a back seat to no one on the environment,” Mohamadi discussed by telephone, saying the senator’s “record best reflects his feelings on the urgency of combatting climate change.” When asked if Sen. Menendez hopes to have climate legislation on President Obama’s desk before the end of 2009, Mohamadi explained that Sen. Menendez believes it “would be helpful to have it in place going into the December international climate change conference in Copenhagen.”

Next NOAA Chief: Dr. Jane Lubchenco

Posted by Brad Johnson Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:42:00 GMT

President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly selected Dr. Jane Lubchenco, “an environmental scientist and marine ecologist who is actively engaged in teaching, research, synthesis and communication of scientific knowledge,” as the next director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Lubchenco, like Obama’s science adviser John Holdren, is a MacArthur Fellowship winner and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1998, Lubchenco founded the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program at the Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment, the “first formal effort in North America to train mid-career academic environmental scientists to communicate effectively to non-scientific audiences.”

In an interview with the New York Times, Lubchenco strongly advocated holistic efforts to limit human impacts on marine ecosystems:

Networks of no-take marine reserves, for example, can protect habitat, biodiversity, the BOFFS (big old fat female fish) that provide the bulk of the reproductive potential for future generations, and they can provide insurance against mis-management and environmental change. Networks of no-take areas may well provide the most resilience to climate change by protecting as much genetic and biological diversity as possible and allowing adaptation to occur.

NOAA: Global Warming Has Damaged Our Weather

Posted by Wonk Room Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:40:00 GMT

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

The traditional media rarely discusses extreme weather events in the context of global warming. However, as the Wonk Room Global Boiling series has documented, scientists have been warning us for years that climate change will increase catastrophic weather events like the California wildfires, the East Coast heatwave, and the Midwest floods that have been taking lives and causing billions in damage in recent days.

Today, the federal government has released a report that assembles this knowledge in stark and unequivocal terms. “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate,” by the multi-agency U.S. Climate Change Science Program with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the lead, warns that changes in extreme weather are “among the most serious challenges to society” in dealing with global warming. After reporting that heat waves, severe rainfall, and intense hurricanes have been on the rise – all linked to manmade global warming – the authors deliver this warning about the future:

In the future, with continued global warming, heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity. Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity, and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights.
Unfortunately, some of the cautions in this long-delayed report have come too late for the victims of the Midwest Flood:
Some short-term actions taken to lessen the risk from extreme events can lead to increases in vulnerability to even larger extremes. For example, moderate flood control measures on a river can stimulate development in a now “safe” floodplain, only to see those new structures damaged when a very large flood occurs.

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