Climate change and energy update

Storm Warnings: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change

There are two key lines of evidence. First, it's not just that we've become more aware of disasters like North Dakota or last year's Nashville flood, which caused $13 billion in damage, or the massive 2010 summer monsoon in Pakistan that killed 1,500 people and left 20 million more homeless. The data show that the number of such events is rising. Munich Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, has compiled the world's most comprehensive database of natural disasters, reaching all the way back to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Researchers at the company, which obviously has a keen financial interest in trends that increase insurance risks, add 700 to 1,000 natural catastrophes to the database each year, explains Mark Bove, senior research meteorologist in Munich Re's catastrophe risk management office in Princeton, N.J. The data indicate a small increase in geologic events like earthquakes since 1980 because of better reporting. But the increase in the number of climate disasters is far larger. "Our figures indicate a trend towards an increase in extreme weather events that can only be fully explained by climate change," says Peter Höppe, head of Munich Re's Geo Risks Research/Corporate Climate Center: "It's as if the weather machine had changed up a gear.

First Half of 2011 Leaves an Astonishing Legacy

According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we've already seen eight billion-dollar weather disasters since January! This is an unbelievable number of events of this magnitude crammed into just six months.
For perspective, the most billion-dollar weather disasters recorded in one full year (since 1980) is nine in 2008. This was from a wide variety of weather events including tornadoes, floods, drought, wildfires and three hurricanes. 

Carmakers and White House Haggling Over Mileage Rules

The Obama administration and the auto industry are locked in negotiations over new vehicle mileage and emissions standards that will have a profound effect on the cars Americans drive and the health of the auto industry over the next decade and beyond.
Depending on the stringency of the standard, the deal could also reduce global warming emissions by millions of tons a year and cut oil imports by billions of barrels over the life of the program, cornerstones of President Obama’s energy policy.
The administration is proposing regulations that will require new American cars and trucks to attain an average of as much as 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025, roughly double the current level. That would require increases in fuel efficiency of nearly 5 percent a year from 2017 to 2025.
The standard would put domestic vehicle fuel efficiency on a par with that in Europe, China and Japan, saving consumers billions of dollars at the pump and creating for the first time a truly global automobile market.
The automakers say the standard is technically achievable. But they warn that it will cost billions of dollars to develop the vehicles, and they express doubt that consumers will accept the smaller, lighter — and in some cases, more expensive — cars that result.
“We can build these vehicles,” said Gloria Bergquist, vice president for public affairs at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the leading industry lobby in Washington. “The question is, will consumers buy them?”

...
A senior administration official, insisting on anonymity because the negotiations were continuing, said the 56.2 m.p.g. goal represented the government’s opening bid, and might not be the final figure. The official said there was still some disagreement within the government, and the final outlines are far from certain.
The United States has the world’s most lenient vehicle emissions and mileage standards, lagging as much as 10 m.p.g. behind the rest of the world. Europe is expected to reach about 60 m.p.g. by 2020.
...
The auto companies and the government are returning to a familiar battleground, which the industry dominated for three decades beginning in the 1970s, using its clout on Capitol Hill and within the federal bureaucracy to keep fuel economy standards low.
But two years ago, when Chrysler and General Motors were clinging to life and the rest of the industry was slumping, carmakers agreed to aggressive new nationwide fuel economy standards covering the years 2012 to 2016. That deal, announced by President Obama in May 2009 as a dozen auto executives looked on, raises the domestic car and light truck fleet fuel economy to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

Debris and Heavy Flow of Water Hamper Cleanup of Oil in Yellowstone River

Argentina Hopes for a Big Payoff in Its Shale Oil Field Discovery