GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:

• The Environmental Protection Agency has created stricter standers for sulfur dioxide emissions. Through the Clean Air Act, the EPA has lowered the ceiling for acceptable levels of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere and is requiring large stationary emitters to record emissions on an hourly basis instead of a once-a-day basis. With the previous once-a-day rule, emitters could just take the daily sample during a time of low emissions and just never take readings during hours of high emissions.
• MotherJones reports on toxic ingredients in your household cleaners and pressures companies to disclose their full ingredients. MotherJones then provides a list of cleaners that have some part of their ingredients undisclosed. Their list covers almost all major cleaning products. I often wonder why we use such exotic cleaners when baking soda and vinegar are so effective and environmentally benign in non-concentrated amounts.
• MotherJones lists the top 12 ways you are ingesting toxic chemicals when you eat non-organic fruits and vegetables.
• The Guardian asks, what is the carbon foot print of the God’s Drink: Beer.
  Notice that 72% of the carbon emissions of beer comes from ingredients, electricity and equipment while transportation and freight are 17% of the carbon emissions. This ratio is a good approximation for most products. The Buy Local movement ignores this and touts global transporation as a great evil. We should really focus on increasing performance, and sometimes that will favor local products and sometimes it won’t.
• The Gulf Oil Spill is unveiling much about the business and politics of the oil industry. BP is showing us that oil extraction happens under a mirage of regulation and a tangle of responsibility that leaves all actors in extraction free to just blame the other company. The New York Times covers how “In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was In Charge of Rig.”
• Grist attempts to show the deserved proportion of blame owed to each actor in the Gulf Oil Spill.
  “The Rest of Us,” meaning you and me, were given 22% of the blame while Bush & Cheney and Obama are each given 9% of the blame. I think that Bush and Cheney are more responsible than Obama. Bush and Cheney spent 8 years making sure that operations such as the one that caused this disaster could exist. Obama, on the other hand, was elected at a time when the country’s problems were more than one administration can even acknowledge in 4 years. He is being blamed for not overhauling the entire Interior Department while dealing with Health Care, the Economy, two Wars, the USA’s global image, China, Iran, North Korea, Global Climate Talks and all the distractions created by the profit focused media industry. Obama, in my opinion, is not to blame.
  Furthermore, he is being criticized for not stepping in enough when he has all of his adversaries yelling at him for being too involved in business and the lives of the American public. Make up your mind, do you want the government to protect people from the activities of business, or not?
• MotherJones reports about their mole on the BP clean up team.
• Grist uses MotherJones’ coverage of their mole to tell Obama that BP is making a fool of him.
• A reporter from Grist highlights the importance for us to just get started on creating a more sustainable future instead of obstructing ourselves by reflecting on the inadequacies of our efforts.
• Cellulosic biofuel, fuel from agriculture waste, is supposed to be a growing industry, but commercial operations are finding it hard to follow through with expectations.
• Canada begins to use a new system for cleaning drinking water since we have polluted our water so much, and our water cleaning operations are beginning to become inadequate for the increasingly difficult task of delivering clean water to rich humans.
• A new way of burning fuel can increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles greatly. This is yet another relatively easy way for our society to reduce our impact on our environment.

In an effort to dissuade congressional leaders to halt their anti-science campaign opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding signed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson late last year specifying carbon emissions as a risk to human health and welfare, more than 500 scientists have signed a letter urging Congress to oppose resolutions seeking to reverse that finding.

Organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the letter says in part

Because the EPA’s finding is based on solid science, this amendment also represents a rejection of that science. The EPA’s endangerment finding is based on an exhaustive review of the massive body of scientific research showing a clear threat from climate change.”

The letter further urges Congress to…

…oppose an imminent attack on the Clean Air Act (CAA) that would undermine public health and prevent action on global warming.” Adding that “Because EPA’s finding is based on solid science this amendment also represents a rejection of that science.”

At least 10 international science academies and 18 scientific organizations within the US, including the National Academy of Sciences, support the underlying science upon which the EPA’s finding is based, scientists say in the letter.

Michelle Robinson, director of the Clean Vehicles Program for the UCS said:

These resolutions not only threaten public health, they would force Americans to spend more on gasoline by rolling back new vehicle standards that will save consumers billions of dollars at the gas pump” said Michelle Robinson, director of the Clean Vehicles Program at UCS. “Congress should be protecting public health and listening to the best science, not sending more money overseas for oil.”

Americans spend $13 million dollars every minute on foreign oil.

Following is the full text of the letter: (or see the pdf version with the complete list of signatories)

Protect the Clean Air Act:

A letter signed by 569 U.S. Scientists

Dear Congress,

We the undersigned urge you to oppose an imminent attack on the Clean Air Act (CAA) that would undermine public health and prevent action on global warming. This attack comes in the form of House and Senate resolutions that would reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) finding that global warming endangers public health and welfare. Because the EPA’s finding is based on solid science, this amendment also represents a rejection of that science.

The EPA’s “endangerment finding” is based on an exhaustive review of the massive body of scientific research showing a clear threat from climate change. The 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global warming will cause water shortages, loss of species, hazards to coasts from sea level rise, and an increase in the severity of extreme weather events.¹

The most recent science includes findings that sea level rise may be more pronounced than the IPCC report predicted² and that oceans will absorb less of our future emissions³.

Recently, 18 American scientific societies sent a letter to the U.S. Senate confirming the consensus view on climate science and calling for action to reduce greenhouse gases “if we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.” The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and ten international scientific academies have also released such statements.⁴ Unfortunately, these resolutions would force the EPA to ignore these scientific findings and statements.

The CAA is a law with a nearly 40-year track record of protecting public health and the environment and spurring innovation by cutting dangerous pollution. This effective policy can help address the threat of climate change – but only if the EPA retains its ability to respond to scientific findings. Instead of standing in the way of climate action, the Senate should move quickly to enact climate and energy legislation that will curb global warming, save consumers money, and create jobs. In the meantime, I urge you to respect the scientific integrity of the EPA’s endangerment finding by opposing Senate and House attacks on the Clean Air Act.
Sincerely,

—————-
1 IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR4). S. Solomon et al. eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and NY, USA. More than 450 lead authors, 800 contributing authors, and an additional 2,500 reviewing experts from more than 130 countries contributed to AR4.
2 Stroeve, J. Marika M. Holland, Walt Meier, Ted Scambos, and Mark Serreze (2007) Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, L09501, Doi: 10.1029/2007gl029703
3 Canadell, J.G., C. Le Quéré, M. R. Raupach, C. B. Field, E. T. Buitenhuis, P. Ciais, T. J. Conway, N. P. Gillett, R. A. Houghton, and G. Marland. 2007. Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
4 A list of these scientific societies and academies and links to their statements is available at http://www.ucsusa.org/ssi/climate-change/scientific-consensus-on.html

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson held firm against lead climate pseudo-skeptic James Inhofe and his colleagues on Tuesday at an EPA budget hearing with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The GOP minority quickly turned the budget meeting into a battle of wills, saying that hacked emails from climate scientists at East Anglia Univesity showed bias against countervailing opinion disputing evidence that the principal driver of current climate change is from human activity. Inhofe also used errors in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report from the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to base his case that the entire body of scientific evidence is flawed.

GOP Senators also used the heavy winter snow in Washington last week as further proof that the EPA’s Endangerment Finding, signed by Jackson last December, that  carbon emissions pose a threat to human health and welfare is founded on what Inhofe often calls a “hoax.”

We’ve been told that the science still stands,” Inhofe said. “We’ve been told that the IPCC’s mistakes are trivial. We’ve been told that Climategate is just gossipy e-mails between a few scientists.

“But now we know there’s no objective basis for these claims,” he added. “Furthermore, Climategate shows there’s no ‘consensus;’ the science is far from settled.”

The science behind climate change is settled,” Jackson fired back, “and human activity is responsible for global warming. That conclusion is not a partisan one. Not only have America’s top scientific institutions come to that conclusion,” she added, “but so have numerous other industrialized countries.”

EPA continues to take meaningful, common sense steps to address climate change.” Jackson said. “Making the right choices now will allow the agency to improve health, drive technology innovation, and protect the environment; all without placing an undue burden on the nation’s economy.”

Reinforcing the the scope of the evidence, both scientific and empirical, that climate change is real and something which Congress should urgently act upon, committee chair Barbara Boxer urged Senators to lead instead of obstruct.

While the world is going green, the one place where we can’t seem to address climate change directly is here in the Senate,” said Boxer.

The Senator cited reports from the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program detailing independent research showing ongoing and projected consequences of climate change that is now clearly evident.

Of the accusation that EPA regulations will be a “job killer,” Boxer countered:

One of the reasons I am so pleased EPA is addressing climate change is that when we do so, we create millions of jobs. The efforts by some to bottle up clean energy and climate proposals in the Congress have caused firms to hold off on major investments, stifling job growth.”

Even with the wide consensus from independent scientific organizations around the world on the reality of and principal cause for climate change, administrator Jackson made clear her support for the overall conclusions and methods of the IPCC, saying that she does not “agree that the IPCC has been totally discredited in any way.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, angrily expressed his frustration with his Republican colleagues over their denial of climate science, and even science in general.

This country faces many many problems, not the least of which, we have national leaders rejecting basic science,” he said. “I find it incredible, I really do, that in the year 2010 on this committee, there are people who are saying there is a doubt about global warming. There is no doubt about global warming.”

Given the contentious nature of the issue among Senators, key allies say the announcement yesterday that the EPA does not plan to impose any regulations on stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions (like power and other industrial plants) until 2011 gives legislators some “breathing room” to move forward with climate legislation.

Additional sources and further reading
New York Times (Greenwire)
Media Newswire
Environmental News Service