The social cost of carbon regulations

via Climate Change Dispatch
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“If you could pick just one thing to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy,” Bill Gates has said. “Access to energy is absolutely fundamental in the struggle against poverty,” World Bank VP Rachel Kyte and Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen agree. The UN Development Program also calls energy “central to poverty reduction.” […]

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March 19, 2017 at 11:26PM

Understanding Global Temperature IX – the role of CO2

via Scottish Sceptic
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Summary Can I see anything except global greening that’s due to CO2? I can honestly say No. And anyone who says they can see any change due to CO2 is crackers. In contrast, I am now reasonably confident that Environmental … Continue reading →

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March 19, 2017 at 11:16PM

Infighting At EPA Drives Top Official To Resign

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

A senior member of the Trump administration’s beachhead team at the EPA unexpectedly resigned over concerns of the “integrity” of political appointees and career employees.

Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), speaks to employees of the agency in Washington, U.S., February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

David Schnare was expected to take a top post at EPA, but he abruptly resigned March 15. It wasn’t for personal reasons, but over what he called a “question of integrity.” Schnare resigned with the title of assistant deputy administrator.

“This wasn’t about me being angry or upset,” Schnare told The Daily Caller News Foundation, saying his resignation had a “much deeper story” than he was willing to disclose at the time.

Schnare didn’t go into detail, but said he would soon write about the events that led to his resignation. His comments, however, suggested infighting at EPA between transition officials, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s inner circle and career employees.

“When the time comes I will name names and go into specifics, “ Schnare said. When asked if the details would be “eye-opening,” he responded: “Oh, I think so.”

While Schnare gave few details to TheDCNF aside from agency officials lacking “integrity,” InsideEPA reported he’d become “increasingly frustrated with what he described as endless infighting at the agency.”

Schnare said the White House is looking into the circumstances surrounding his resignation. The EPA did not respond to TheDCNF’s request for comment.

Reports already suggested tension between President Donald Trump’s political appointees and EPA career staff.

An unnamed career staffer told Politico that EPA employees will “fight actions they deem ill-advised or illegal by quietly providing information of what is happening inside their agencies to advocacy groups and the media.”

A small group of EPA staffers began using encryption apps, like Signal, to communicate in a way that can’t be tracked by the White House. The actions may violate federal records law.

Other government employees may have started “rogue” Twitter accounts to attack the Trump administration over social media, and a former EPA official suggested agency employees would boycott Trump if he ever came to visit the agency.

Schnare’s resignation suggests infighting between EPA transition officials and Pruitt’s inner circle over the direction of the agency. He told InsideEPA Pruitt had frozen out members of the beachhead team placed at the agency by Trump’s transition team. As one of the most experienced members of the transition team, he’s an attorney and environmental scientist who previously worked at EPA for more than 30 years. Most recently, Schnare was general counsel for the Energy & Environment Legal Institute.

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via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 19, 2017 at 11:13PM

Lake Tahoe expected to fill up with biggest physical rise in recorded history 

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
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Lake Tahoe, California/Nevada

One official said “Tahoe is the defining factor. If we’re full at Tahoe, the drought is over.” Lake Tahoe trails only the five Great Lakes as the largest by volume in the United States.

Winter’s unrelenting storms built up a substantial Sierra snowpack and are expected to fill the lake for the first time in 11 years, reports Sott.net.

Many low-lying areas that were exposed when the lake level was declining during the drought will be inundated with water. The docks will be bobbing in crystal blue waters once again.

Straddling the California – Nevada border, Tahoe is the sixth largest lake in the United States, an outdoor playground for people around the world, and the main water source for the Reno-Sparks, Nevada, area.

The renowned ecological wonder is fed by 63 tributaries that drain 505 square miles known as the Lake Tahoe Watershed. With a vast surface area of 191 square miles, Tahoe requires an immense amount of water to fill, especially because roughly 100 billion gallons of water evaporates annually.

Lake Tahoe’s natural rim is at 6,223 feet above sea level. The lake can store an additional 6.1 feet in its reservoir and climbs up to 6,229 feet at full capacity, its legal maximum limit. The only outlet, a dam at Tahoe City, regulates the upper 6.1 feet above the low water mark, and this winter water is being released into the Truckee River as billions of gallons flow into the lake.

Tahoe’s water level reached 6,226.84 feet on Wednesday, and the lake needs some 88 billion gallons of water to jump up the 2.26 feet required to be completely full. That’s the equivalent of filling more than 133,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

“We feel really good right now,” said U.S. District Court Water Master Chad Blanchard. “We’re releasing 500 cubic feet of water per second, and trying to manage the elevation. The elevation has been flat for a couple weeks, but we don’t want to get too high because we have two-and-a-quarter feet of room. But we could still have as much as four to five feet of water to come into the lake in next five months. It’s a balancing act. We have to fill, but we don’t want to overfill. And the forecasts we get are just forecasts. They’re not perfect.”

If Tahoe reaches full capacity, as Blanchard expects the lake will do at the end of July, it would see its largest physical rise in recorded history going back to 1900.

Since the start of the rainy season on October 1, the lake level has shot up 4.5 feet. If the lake fills, it will rise a total of 6.5 feet, beating the 1995 record when it jumped up six feet in a single season, which runs Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. This is a huge milestone for a body of water that flirted with record-low levels amid a five-year drought.

At the same time last year, the lake level was a full 4.19 feet lower. This was discouraging in an El Niño year when storms expected to bring record-breaking snow and rain delivered only average precipitation, filling some reservoirs but making only a small dent in California’s drought conditions overall.

Continued here.

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop http://ift.tt/1WIzElD

March 19, 2017 at 09:10PM