Barry Smitherman is the chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas, now running for Attorney General. He is skeptical of the science behind climate change.
‘Not Everyone Believes in Global Warming,’ Smitherman Says
Over 97 percent of climate change studies agree: the climate is changing, the world is warming and humans are the cause of it. But that does leave 3 percent of climate studies that are skeptical. And that sliver of skepticism is where Barry Smitherman, the head of Texas’ oil and gas drilling regulatory agency, has decided to plant his feet.
At a conference of utility commissioners in Colorado yesterday, Smitherman, chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas, and now a candidate for state Attorney General, took some time to trumpet his skepticism. “Don’t be fooled — not everyone believes in global warming,” Smitherman tweeted from the conference.
“Given the incredibly high percentage of fossil fuels used to make electricity in America and given electricity’s fundamental role in powering our U.S. economy, we should be 100 percent certain about CO2’s role – or lack thereof – in ‘changing the climate’ before President Obama, by Presidential directive, dismantles our power generation fleet,” Smitherman said.
To buttress those claims, Smitherman turned to Dr. William Happer, a climate change skeptic and Chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank that has received funding from the oil and gas industry. Happer was the only scientist on a panel at the conference, moderated by Smitherman, called ‘The Myth of Carbon Pollution.’ A press release from the Railroad Commission called it a “key panel” and “well-attended.” (In an interesting bit of scheduling, a panel titled ‘Learning from the Regions: Cap and Trade, Carbon Tax, and the Way Forward‘ immediately preceded it.)
But Happer is not a climatologist, rather his specialty is physics — he’s a professor at Princeton, where he studies atoms and nuclei. He does not appear to have authored any peer-reviewed studies on climate change. And his claims have been refuted by many in the climate science community. Continue Reading →
Dr. Joseph Levy / The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics
Research team member Jim O'Connor of the USGS inspects a block of ice calved off the Garwood Valley ice cliff.
New Research Shows Melting at Rates Comparable to the Arctic
Unlike the Arctic Circle up north, where once-permanent sea ice began melting and miles of permafrost began thawing decades ago, the ground ice in Antarctica’s Garwood Valley was generally considered stable. In this remote polar region near the iceberg-encrusted Ross Sea, temperatures actually became colder from 1986 to 2000, then stabilized, while the climate in much of the rest of the world warmed during that same period.
But now, the ice in Antarctica is melting as rapidly as in the Arctic.
That’s not because temperatures are rising. A team of researchers has discovered that increased solar radiation is thawing ground ice in Garwood Valley at an accelerated rate, disrupting normal seasonal ice patterns.
The cause of the increased solar radiation is, for now, uncertain, although it is related to changes in weather patterns. More research will be required to determine why it is happening.
“I’m a geologist—I look down,” explained Joseph Levy, one of two University of Texas at Austin scientists on the research team and co-author of the research paper in Scientific Reports. “The next step is to figure out what’s driving this change in sunlight patterns. It’s going to involve working with meteorologists and climate modelers.”
Antarctica is predicted to warm during the coming century. As a result, the ground ice could melt even more quickly, which would cause more serious sinking and buckling of the landscape. Continue Reading →
Turn one, with its steep hill, was a big challenge for the racers
The shell of a solar racing car is lifted up after a car comes into the pit for repairs.
The race isn’t about speed, it’s about endurance. Whichever team does the most laps in 3 days, wins.
Taking a look inside the car
If the teams race too fast, the batteries will drain too quickly
A solar car approaches the pit
The battery, up close
It’s a sweltering Texas summer day in late June, and here at the Circuit of the Americas Formula 1 race track in Austin, the stands are empty. Just last fall, they were filled with fans witnessing the deafening roar of cars going upward of 200 miles an hour.
But if you were to listen closely this summer day, you’d hear a barely audible zooming on the track. Peek down from the stands, and you’d see little pods zipping along the track at a brisk 45 miles an hour. They’re solar-powered cars, part of the annual Formula Sun Grand Prix competition, where several teams of college engineering students race against each other, and the constant drain of batteries.
Unal Okyay at the University of Houston analyzes satellite images of Utah indicating oil & gas seeps
It’s part of the popular lore of how to get rich by finding oil: all you have to do is look for it bubbling to the surface. That’s actually how some of the biggest oil fields were discovered many years ago.
Now, scientists are again trying to find oil and gas deposits by looking for them at the surface, albeit with sophisticated satellite and digital technology.
Boy Scouts can earn merit badges in everything from Atomic Energy to Shotgun Shooting. But there has never been a badge for sustaining the planet, until now.
On July 15, the Boy Scouts of America introduced the Sustainability merit badge, a new award designed to teach scouts about conservation and natural resource management. The badge is particularly important since scouts will be required to get it in order to earn the Eagle Scout rank, the organization’s highest award.
Boy Scouts can earn merit badges in over 100 different topics. To earn a badge, scouts must learn certain skills and competencies related to that particular subject.
For the Sustainability badge, scouts have to develop and implement plans to reduce their family’s water and electric usage. They also must learn about topics such as climate change, species decline, and population concerns.
view of the dry bed of the E.V. Spence Reservoir in Robert Lee, Texas October 28, 2011.
Recent rains have brought some relief to some parts of Texas afflicted by drought, especially around Central Texas: reservoir levels are a little higher, and the moisture has greened vegetation that was previously tinderbox-dry, potentially reducing the risk of wildfires this summer.
Now for some bad news: national meteorologists expect the drought to continue or worsen through late summer and early fall in Texas, and ocean patterns are troublingly similar to those during the “drought of record” in the 1950s.
Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its latest drought forecast. It predicts the drought will persist or intensify in most of Texas from July through October. But there is one exception — in Far West Texas, August and September rains are expected to bring some relief to an area from Midland to El Paso, according to NOAA meteorologist Victor Murphy. Continue Reading →
The Department of Energy released a report recently looking at how climate change and extreme weather could make our power supplies more vulnerable. Given that it’s the nation’s leader in energy production, Texas was prominently featured.
The report looks at both current and future threats to the energy sector from climate change. There are three major trends, it says:
Air and water temperatures are increasing
Water availability is decreasing in certain regions
Storms, instances of flooding, and sea levels are increasing in frequency and intensity
Though the report stressed how different regions of the country are connected by the energy sector, StateImpact Texas found five key takeaways that relate to Texas. Let’s take a look: Continue Reading →
Jefferson County Court at Law Judge Tom Rugg listens to arguments in a property rights case.
This is part three of a three-part series devoted to looking at efforts to overhaul eminent domain in Texas and what may come next for landowners, pipeline companies, and the oil and gas industry. Read Part One here and Part Two here.
At the O’Keefe’s farm outside of Beaumont, Texas, Dick and his sister Margaret O’Keefe stood by their front door on a muggy day this summer and watch a truck pull up the long dirt road into their neighbor’s field.
The truck was headed to work on the Crosstex NGL pipeline. This is a project that had declared itself a “common carrier,” a pipeline with the right to claim private property.
But after the pipeline was in the ground, a Beaumont judge found otherwise.
“They just claim it, and it’s up to the individual landowners to challenge them,” Dick O’Keefe said. “That’s where I think the state could do a better job of policing what the pipeline companies are doing.”
For landowners like Dick O’Keefe, lawmakers’ failure to create a system in which pipeline companies prove their right to claim land is deeply frustrating. The pipeline industry was also upset by inaction at the legislature, but for different reasons. It wanted rules that freed it from the prospect of multiple landowner lawsuits.
Colorado now has what the drilling industry there calls “the most rigorous statewide mandatory groundwater sampling and monitoring rules in the United States.” Wyoming is considering similar regulations to make oil and gas well drillers test the groundwater on nearby property before they begin to drill.
Texas has over 800 rigs at work, far more than any other state, but has no such requirements for what’s called baseline water testing.
“I think it is a good idea to do baseline studies instead of figuring out ways to blame something or someone for something they might do. It might be better to figure what we have in our own backyard already,” said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, a former oil company geologist and now Director of Petroleum Geosience at the University of Houston.
Efforts to overhaul land rights failed in this years regular legislative session.
This is part two of a three-part series devoted to looking at efforts to overhaul eminent domain in Texas and what may come next for landowners, pipeline companies, and the oil and gas industry. Read Part One here.
At the outset of this year’s regular legislative session, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle filed a handful of bills to change how pipeline companies can take land in Texas. While the bills tackled the issue differently, they had one thing in common: they sought to move some of the debate over a pipeline’s use of condemnation from county courthouses to state agencies. In the end it was that commonality that became a sticking point in the debate over Texas land rights.
Along the way, some very big names in politics and industry got involved.
Right now, a company that wants to lay a pipeline in Texas can check a box on a form declaring itself a “common carrier.” The idea is that it will provide its services for hire to transport oil and gas. It’s that role  – which some say makes it similar to a utility – that gives it the right to take land.
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