Barack Obama’s advocacy group, Organizing for Action, has been calling out Republican climate skeptics in Congress, but climate activists are not impressed. They’re planning to crash OFA events and push the group to fight the Keystone XL pipeline.

350.org and CREDO Action, the political arm of the company CREDO Mobile, are leading the charge. OFA is bracing for it. From BuzzFeed:

OFA circulated a set of talking points to its members for use in dealing with unruly activists. The document, obtained by BuzzFeed, includes information on the science behind climate change and the president’s environmental positions, and ends with a section titled “Keystone Talking Points.” …

The talking points come with a warning: “Volunteers from Credo Action or other organizations may attend your planning session and want to demand that we work on the Keystone XL pipeline.” …

“We understand that there are groups and individuals who would like to work to influence the President and the State Department on a variety of environmental decisions, but OFA’s plan is to do great organizing on building clean energy locally, turning up the heat on Congress and helping individuals and communities switch to clean energy,” the document reads. “They are more than welcome to work with those groups, but we encourage all volunteers to be part of our work and the mission of changing the conversation on climate!”

OFA asks its members to point to the State Department review process when asked about the pipeline.

Organizing for America defended itself to The Washington Post:

In an e-mail, OFA spokeswoman Katie Hogan noted the group already mobilized its members to both engage lawmakers on global warming and press for confirmation of Environmental Protection Agency administrator-designate Gina McCarthy.

“It has been made clear since our first day as an organization that we support the President’s plans from comprehensive immigration reform, to reducing gun violence to climate change, including the completion of the State Department [Keystone XL] review,” Hogan wrote. “Just last week OFA held almost 100 action planning sessions on climate change in communities across the country to talk about the action that can be taken right now to call out members of Congress for denying that climate change is a man-made problem.”

Um, Hogan, pointing out that you’re pointing out that Republicans aren’t taking climate change seriously is kinda missing the point.

“Oops.”

Gulf Coast oil refiners and chemical processors say that a lot, but regulators are doing precious little to rein in what the industry euphemistically calls “upset” emissions.

Upset emissions are inadvertent releases of chemicals by industrial operations when something goes awry. And things seem to go awry awfully frequently. An ExxonMobil refinery in Baton Rouge, La., was averaging two accidental releases every week during one grim stretch.

That’s according to an analysis by The Center for Public Integrity, which found that upset emissions are more prevalent than industry admits or government knows. Some highlights from the center’s investigative report:

[A 411-barrel chemical leak last year] has played out again and again at the sprawling, 2,400-acre ExxonMobil Baton Rouge complex, which encompasses an oil refinery and a chemical plant, and dwarfs the Standard Heights community. The leak marks the 1,068th upset emissions event at the compound in the last eight years, according to a database of incident reports compiled by the Bucket Brigade. Of these events, 172 involved benzene, a carcinogen that can trigger headaches, dizziness and rapid heart rate.

Exxon’s chemical plant had 265 of all incidents. At the refinery, the data show 803 accidental releases over these years; at its height, the facility averaged two a week. …

The steady hazards extend far beyond Baton Rouge. In the Gulf states of Texas and Louisiana, the vast number of plastics, power and gas plants provide an on-the-ground case study of a national problem.

“Non-routine” upset emissions have become regular occurrences at oil refineries, chemical plants and manufacturing facilities.

The upset emissions can pose serious health risks, but the oil and chemical companies say there’s nothing to worry about.

Dr. Mark D’Andrea, at the University of Texas Cancer Center, began tracking 4,000 residents exposed to the poster child of all upsets — the “40-day Release” at the BP refinery, in Texas City, which belched 514,795 pounds of benzene and 20 other pollutants throughout the spring of 2010. Earlier this year, D’Andrea unveiled preliminary data showing the residents have “significantly higher” white-blood cell and platelet counts than their Houston counterparts. The data suggests BP’s release may have increased their risk of developing such cancers as leukemia, the doctor says.

In a statement, BP says it does “not believe any negative health impacts resulted from” its 40-day release. “To our knowledge, the University Cancer Centers’ pilot study does not support a claim for any plaintiff alleging injury from that flaring and has no relevance to those claims,” the company wrote, referring to pending litigation filed by 47,830 residents and workers against BP alleging health ailments caused by the release. D’Andrea has not been hired as an expert witness for either side in the case, but has testified in pre-trial discovery.

For more, read the full report in all its grotesque glory.

Scientists used modern genetic sequencing and rotten old museum samples to peer back in time at the cause of the potato blight that led to more than 1 million deaths in Ireland in the 1840s.

The fungus-like water mold that ravaged the country’s potato crop sent hungry Irish survivors fleeing for far-flung new countries — which is why so many people now justify getting wasted every St. Patrick’s Day, saying they’re sure they have an Irish ancestor somewhere in their family tree.

What the scientists found was a strain of Phytophthora infestans that is different from similar water molds that are still ravaging the world’s crops. From the BBC:

Researchers in the UK, Germany and the US analysed dried leaves kept in collections in museums at Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, UK, and Botanische Staatssammlung Munchen, Germany.

High-tech DNA sequencing techniques allowed them to decode ancient DNA from the pathogen in samples stored as early as 1845.

These were compared with modern-day genetic types from Europe, Africa and the Americas, giving an insight into the evolution of the pathogen.

“This strain was different from all the modern strains that we analysed — most likely it is new to science,” Prof Sophien Kamoun of The Sainsbury Laboratory told BBC News.

“We can’t be sure but most likely it’s gone extinct.”

Thing is, the scientists can’t figure out what made the water mold so devastating. From an article in Nature:

[Plant Geneticist Detlef] Weigel’s team also found nothing in the nuclear genomes of the famine strains to explain their ferocity. In fact, the strains lack a gene found in modern strains of P. infestans that overcomes the plant’s resistance genes. And, surprisingly, the famine strain seems less lethal than the P. infestans strains that now cause US$6 billion in crop damage per year. “It seems rather that the potatoes were unusually susceptible,” he says.

OK, all very interesting. But given that the mold strain responsible for the Irish famine appears to have gone extinct, we have some advice for the scientists who are done analyzing the infected old potato leaves: Burn them.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) opposed using federal money to help the victims of Superstorm Sandy rebuild their homes, roads, and tattered lives.

That’s because he’s a fiscal grinch who thinks disaster victims should fend for themselves, Lord of the Flies-style. Right? Well, perhaps not.

Residents of Inhofe’s own state are about to receive a bounty of heartfelt help from the federal government in the wake of Monday’s epic tornado, which killed at least 24 people and leveled buildings across five counties.

And Inhofe is good with that. He has adopted the very reasonable position that aid money should flow in from federal coffers to help rebuild Oklahoma’s shattered neighborhoods.

But this is not some watershed moment wherein, seeing his own people mired in tragedy, the senator suddenly comes to value cooperation and collective action. Rather, Inhofe claims the situation is “totally different” from Sandy because his constituents are more trustworthy and less wasteful than those money-grubbing East Coasters.

Inhofe was questioned on MSNBC about his support for federal aid given his past opposition to the Sandy aid bill, which he had described as a slush fund. In his response, Inhofe displayed startling ignorance about the differences between a tornado, which causes highly localized damage, and a hurricane, which can cause havoc across a whole region.

“That [Sandy aid bill] was totally different,” Inhofe told MSNBC. “That was supposed to be in New Jersey; they had things in the Virgin Islands, they were fixing roads there. They were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

Inhofe wasn’t the only Oklahoma lawmaker to oppose the Sandy aid bill; ABC reports that a number of Republicans from the state “may be forced to reckon with their past votes against emergency disaster funding.” From the article:

Oklahoma’s two Republican senators, Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, opposed a bill that provided more than $60 billion in emergency aid after Superstorm Sandy devastated the East Coast. In addition, three members of Oklahoma’s House delegation joined with most Republicans in opposing the legislation.

Nearly all of the lawmakers have pledged that whatever assistance Oklahomans need will be provided, but the devil will be in the details.

Salon’s Joan Walsh weighs in on the apparent Republican hypocrisy:

There’s something so typical about today’s GOP in the way Inhofe can dismiss comparisons between tornado aid and Sandy aid while Coburn grandstands for his long-term demand that new spending, even on disaster relief, must be “offset” by cuts elsewhere. Meanwhile, the notion that a new disaster relief bill should include funding to cope with future disasters isn’t lauded as common sense, it’s derided as pork. Like Inhofe, Coburn objected to the Sandy bill’s including funding for future disaster relief. …

Just as modern conservatism helped create categories of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, we now apparently have deserving and undeserving disasters. When tragedy strikes, most Americans tend to want to pull together, but many Republicans look to pull us apart, placing their own constituents’ needs above everyone else’s.

As far as these lawmakers are concerned, it should be everybody for themselves — except for the voters in their districts. Perhaps the support that the rest of the country provides for Oklahomans in their time of need will help these politicians see things in a new light. But don’t bet on it.

It’s not just thinking about climate change that can make you feel sick — climate change itself is bringing maladies upon us. Allergies, fungal infections, malaria, and other health problems are taking a growing toll as the climate shifts — and they are expected to grow worse.

Some members of Congress want the U.S. government to start preparing for these health hazards. On Friday, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and two other Democrats in the House introduced the Climate Change Health Protection and Promotion Act, which would authorize the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research climate change’s health impacts and would help public health officials better plan for the onslaught.

A statement from Capps:

“One of the most troubling and immediate impacts of climate change is its harmful effects on public health. Regardless of what one believes about its causes, climate change is very real. The heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather events that are happening with greater frequency and intensity have a profound impact on public health that we’re only beginning to understand. We have to provide our public health officials with the tools and resources they need to effectively track and prepare for these significant public health challenges.”

The legislation had previously been incorporated into the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, which was passed by the House in 2009 but died in the Senate. This time around, you can safely bet that the legislation won’t be passed by either chamber. But, as evidence mounts that climate change can be deadly, bravo to Capps et al for trying to keep the issue in the news.

Climate change is expected to boost homicidal heat waves in Manhattan, while cold snaps in the densely packed borough should become slightly less deadly.

Researchers from Columbia University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention used climate models and two emissions scenarios to project seasonal patterns in temperature-related deaths in Manhattan. In all 32 of the scenarios developed by the researchers, the spike in summertime heat-related deaths was forecast to more than outweigh the decline in deaths caused by cold weather.

The study was published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Monthly analyses showed that the largest percentage increases [in deaths] may occur in May and September,” the scientists wrote.

From Climate Central:

The study found that heat-related mortality may rise 20 percent by the 2020s, and in some worst-case scenarios, it could increase by 90 percent or more by the 2080s, and the net temperature-related mortality, which includes the drop in deaths related to cold weather, could jump by a third compared to current levels. …

Some other studies have claimed that as heat wave-related deaths increase, they will be offset by a reduction in cold weather-related deaths, keeping the net change in mortality low or possibly even resulting in fewer temperature-related deaths per year. This study, however, finds the opposite to be true.

Extreme heat is already the No. 1 weather-related killer in the U.S., killing an average of 117 people per year during the 2003-2012 period. Hot temperatures can contribute to cardiovascular disease, aggravate respiratory illness, and cause heat stroke, among other life-threatening conditions.

Even a small amount of global warming can have a large effect on weather extremes, as recent studies have shown.

City dwellers can expect to be hit particularly hard by the heat waves that are growing in frequency around the world, as The Guardian reports:

Last year, the hottest summer since record-keeping began in the US, saw a string of days on which the temperature hit more than 37.7C (100F) in a number of US cities.

The week-long heatwave killed 82 people, according to figures compiled by the Associated Press.

In large metropolitan areas, such as New York, the impact of those temperature extremes are compounded by densely built-up areas. Cities such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and St Louis have also recorded sharp rises in deaths due to heart attacks and strokes during heatwaves, according to the draft of the National Climate Assessment, which was released last year.

“Urban heat islands, combined with an ageing population and increased urbanisation, are projected to increase the vulnerability of urban populations to heat-related health impacts in the future,” the assessment said.

Hot enough for ya?

America passed a milestone on Monday, according to electric-vehicle advocacy group Plug-In America. That’s when the 100,000th EV was sold in the U.S., the group estimates.

From Plug-In America board member Barry Woods’ blog:

Based on the average US household size, this means that over a quarter million people are now being exposed regularly to the benefits of electric transportation.  The vehicles themselves are reaching an even greater number of people simply by being on the road — perhaps as many as 1 million or more people per day. While much work remains to be done, 100,000 vehicles means that we are ever closer to the tipping point for electric transportation.

And like an EV driver who passes a gas station — and just keeps on driving — the nation is expected to sail past this milestone and keep on snapping up ever more of these clean-running cars. From Treehugger:

In 2011, the first full year with the current crop of plug-ins on the market, fewer than 20,000 were sold. In 2012, that number tripled to over 50,000. And it’s currently expected that more than 100,000 plug-ins will be sold in 2013 alone. Not a bad growth rate for a technology that is still maturing (like personal computers in the 1980s or cellphones in the 1990s).

How good is business for the nation’s electric-auto makers and sellers? A press release from Plug-In America says that the all-electric Nissan Leaf has been outselling all other Nissan models in some markets this year, and that Tesla’s Model S sedan is outselling the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the BMW 7 series, and the Audi A8. For another sign of the health of the EV market, check out Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweet from Monday:

Given govt loan repayment this week (prob Wed), Supercharger update will be next week. Work continuing independent of announcement.—
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2013

That’s about Tesla repaying a federal loan nine years before it comes due. From Bloomberg:

Loans for Tesla, Ford, Nissan and Fisker were all awarded from a program created under President George W. Bush in 2007 and implemented by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Tesla plans to use $452.4 million to pay off its Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan, with interest, the company said in a statement. … Based on the $25.4 million already paid to the Energy Department, taxpayers may see as much as a $12.8 million profit, based on company filings.

Despite some major hiccups, the electric-vehicle industry is now really starting to rev its engines.

Two foreign-owned mining companies, betting that the world will quickly forget the horrors of Fukushima, plan to sink a pair of shafts into the rugged New Mexico landscape near near Mt. Taylor and begin 0perating the nation’s biggest uranium mine.

If approved by the U.S. Forest Service and state agencies, the mine would be the first of its kind to operate in the state in more than a decade, extracting as much as 28 million pounds of the radioactive heavy metal and desecrating as many as 70 acres of land sacred to Native Americans that’s designated by the federal government as traditional cultural property.

Previous uranium mining left the state’s landscape scarred and workers sickened. But the Roca Honda joint venture of Canadian and Japanese companies says the industry has learned from past mistakes and now has the whole safe-isotope-extraction thing sorted out. From the Albuquerque Journal:

[Roca Honda Manager John] DeJoia said he would be the “first to admit there are legacy issues,” but that much has been learned in the industry.

“Were cars less safe 60 years ago? Of course they were … Do we know more about food? We certainly do, and that’s the case with uranium, coal, copper,” DeJoia said. “It is an evolving process and just because it wasn’t done properly 40 or 50 years ago doesn’t mean we can’t do it properly today.” …

He concedes that for now, neither spot market nor long-term sales market prices “support fervent development.”

“However, the nuclear-power situation in the world — in our country — indicates a true shortage and that the price will go up once the fervor over Fukushima and everything gets past us,” he said, noting that the U.S. itself produces only 7 or 8 percent of the 55 million to 60 million pounds of uranium used a year by the nation’s nuclear plants. “We will have to realize nuclear power is probably the most viable, cleanest power source we have.”

Needless to say, DeJoia’s glee is not shared by all of the neighbors of the proposed mine. From the same article:

[A] coalition of community organizations, including several Native American groups and an organization of former uranium miners, contends a mining operation would imperil the area’s water supply and quality. The group also believes it would severely impact an area designated by the Forest Service as a traditional cultural property that has great spiritual significance for indigenous people across the Southwest.

“It is essentially the same as proposing a huge uranium mine in the middle of the Vatican. There’s just no way to avoid the impacts,” said attorney Eric Jantz of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, which is representing the coalition, the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment.

Jantz said water pumped from the mine could result in significant drawdowns of surface water and springs. There is also concern waste piles and toxic heavy-metal materials could make their way into ground and surface water, he said.

The Forest Service could issue its approval this year, the newspaper reports, clearing the path for drilling to begin within the next several years. And once that happens, hoo-boy, is New Mexico in for an economic bonanza — the likes of which DeJoia can’t even describe to a reporter:

“I won’t run you through all the economics on that, but you can rest assured there is an awful lot of income tax paid on that,” he said. “There are a lot of New Mexico taxes in there.”

Thanks for sparing us the numbers. Nobody wants to be thinking hard when we could just be mindlessly digging for short-term profits.

The good folks at BP, Shell, and Statoil would never break the law and screw over their customers in a quest for inflated profits, surely.

Yet that is the very accusation coming out of Europe, where the industry giants are suspected of colluding to fix prices for crude, biofuel, and refined oil products at artificially high levels, allowing them to reap greater profits than the laws of supply and demand would dictate in a truly competitive economy.

Offices of the companies were raided last week by European Commission officials, and the Justice Department is being urged to investigate whether the alleged price fixing spilled over onto American shores.

From The Hill:

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman aired his concerns about the recent probe by EU officials into potential oil price manipulation in a Friday letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

[Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)] said price fixing in commodity markets “has been an area of abuse within the U.S. in the past,” noting the Enron power market scandal.

“It is critically important to determine whether or not similar efforts have been made to manipulate U.S. oil indices by these firms or others,” he added.

EU investigators raided the European offices of Statoil, BP and Shell earlier this week. The officials are looking into whether the firms submitted false information to Platts, a price-reporting organization owned by McGraw-Hill Financial.

The Economist puts the scale of the growing scandal in some perspective:

The volumes of oil and products linked to these benchmark prices [submitted to Platts] are vast. Futures and derivatives markets are also built on the price of the underlying physical commodity. At least 200 billion barrels a year, worth in the order of $20 trillion, are priced off the Brent benchmark, the world’s biggest, according to Liz Bossley, chief executive of Consilience, an energy-markets consultancy. The commission has said that even small price distortions could have a “huge impact” on energy prices. Statoil has said that the commission’s interest goes all the way back to 2002. If it is right, then the sums involved could be huge, too.

If true, the accusations wouldn’t just mean that motorists have been paying too much at the pump. Energy prices affect everything from food to consumer goods. From The Telegraph:

Ed Davey, the [U.K.] Energy Secretary, has promised companies will face the “full force of the law” if their behaviour is found to have “driven up” petrol prices.

However, his Department of Energy and Climate Change also acknowledged the impact of oil market rigging could be bigger than simply affecting petrol prices.

It said manipulation of the oil price could have driven inflation and pointed out that the market is an important benchmark for many financial transactions.

High oil prices also feeds through to bigger bills for food, clothes and other essentials because it pushes up the cost of transport and manufacturing.

A high oil price will also fuel inflation, which erodes the value of people’s savings, and can stifle economic growth, by pushing up businesses’ costs.

BP has gone crying to mummy over the big payouts it’s having to make because of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. It wants the U.K. government to ask the U.S. government to step in and give a hand.

BP says it’s being forced to make overly large payments to companies in the Gulf Coast region that claim to have lost business because of the spill, and it says those payments are jeopardizing BP’s own financial recovery and potentially putting the company at risk of a hostile takeover. The payments are being calculated by a court using a formula to which BP agreed.

But now BP has filed an appeal in court against that agreement, claiming that the compensation amounts are overinflated or, in some cases, entirely unnecessary. The company recently warned shareholders that the $8.2 billion it previously anticipated forking out in compensation was a significant underestimation.

From the BBC:

BP is so worried by the potential magnitude of alleged undeserved payments it is making to companies that it is planning to ask the British prime minister and chancellor for help in persuading the US government to intervene. It is hopeful that David Cameron will raise the issue at the G8 meeting of the governments of the world’s richest countries, which the UK is hosting next month.

The court filing warns that BP will be “irreparably harmed” unless the compensation system is reformed fast. According to BP sources, the rate at which cash is leaking from the company could turn into a serious new financial crisis for the company, putting at risk its dividend and making it vulnerable to a takeover by another oil company. …

BP says that the way its settlement is being implemented by the Courts Administrator, with the support of the Louisiana district court, is “poised to become a black mark on the American justice system”

Meanwhile, BP is defending itself in a huge federal lawsuit in New Orleans against states and other victims of the oil spill. The judge overseeing the case must ultimately decide whether the accident was the result of BP’s negligence – or its “gross negligence.”

Too bad BP opted not to do anything about the “big risk” of explosion it identified back in 2009 …