New report on climate change released today

[lpetrich]

Warren, Andy Levin, Markey, and Ocasio-Cortez Unveil the BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act to Jumpstart the Transition to Electric Transportation and Modernize Infrastructure | U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts

congress.gov now lists the Senate version though not the House version.

In the Senate, Elizabeth Warren D-MA with Edward J. Markey D-MA, Jeff Merkley D-OR, Alex Padilla D-CA, Richard Blumenthal D-CN, Cory Booker D-NJ, and Bernie Sanders I-VT.

In the House, Andrew Levin D-MI with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-NY, Jerrold Nadler D-NY, Jamie Raskin D-MD, Jan Schakowsky D-IL, Raúl M. Grijalva D-AZ, Gwen Moore D-WI, Pramila Jayapal D-WA, Brendan F. Boyle D-PA, Nanette Diaz Barragán D-CA, Chellie Pingree D-ME, Adriano Espaillat D-NY, Ayanna Pressley D-MA, Rashida Tlaib D-MI, Mondaire Jones D-NY, Jahana Hayes D-CT, and Jamaal Bowman D-NY.


Rep. Levin: "Electrifying our cars, buses and trains is a central pillar of the Green New Deal."

AOC: "The BUILD Green Act applies many of the Green New Deal resolution's transportation goals to grants provided by DOT. The bill helps ensure that our federal dollars are being invested in infrastructure that can sustain the impact of climate change and better prepares our communities for extreme weather events. We must stop spending billions of taxpayer money on infrastructure systems only for them to fail at the most crucial moment, as we saw recently in Texas."

The BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act would:

• jumpstart the transition to all electric public transportation, expand clean mass transit to underserved communities, and help modernize our crumbling infrastructure by covering up to 85% of costs for eligible state, local, and tribal projects, with an option for the Secretary of Transportation to cover 100% of costs;
• reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 21.5 million metric tons of CO2 annually or the equivalent of taking 4.5 million combustion engine cars off the road;
• prevent an estimated 4,200 deaths and avert $100 billion in health care costs annually by reducing significant sources of ambient air pollution that cause adverse health effects like asthma;
• start to correct decades of health disparities and environmental injustice by dedicating at least 40% of all funding to projects in frontline, vulnerable, and disadvantaged communities; and
• create up to 1 million good new jobs with strong labor protections.

 

[lpetrich]

It's the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development and Generating Renewable Energy to Electrify the Nation's (BUILD GREEN) Infrastructure and Jobs Act.

• Bill Summary (PDF)
• Bill Text (PDF)
• Memo: Electrifying America’s Public Transportation Systems - An Economic and Environmental Evaluation at Data for Progress
• Electrifying Transportation (PDF) at Data for Progress
• Data for Progress Survey for BUILD GREEN (PDF)

Buses will be the biggest targets. According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the US has 65,000 transit buses, 68,000 demand-response vehicles, and 470,000 school buses.

"In general, while EVs are more expensive upfront, fuel and maintenance spending are smaller than for diesel, compressed natural gas (CNG), and hybrid vehicles. Additional energy generation capacity costs are small compared to the costs above, while required storage costs are significant."

Urban-rail lines are almost all electrified, so it may be hard to make much improvement there.

Turning to commuter-rail lines, much of their trackage is non-electrified, meaning that the trains there use diesel locomotives or diesel railcars. "In the United States, there are currently approximately 26 commuter rail networks servicing 29 metropolitan areas and covering approximately 4,000 miles of tracks."

• Boston: diesel
• New York City: inner: electric, outer: diesel
• Philadephia: electric
• DC: diesel except for 1 line
• Chicago: diesel except for 2 lines
• Los Angeles: diesel

Several other US cities have commuter-rail lines, but usually only one or two.

The report's authors did not think that electrifying US freight-RR lines was worth doing, because they are long and the trains relatively slow.

They also did not discuss intercity passenger rail, except for one reference to Amtrak's Northeast Corridor as electrified.

The authors did discuss the health effects of going electric -- no more vehicle exhaust.

 

[lpetrich]

The bill itself: H.R.2038 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): To establish a green transportation infrastructure grant program, and for other purposes. | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

Introduced by Rep. Andy Levin D-MI-09, the bill has 17 cosponsors, all original, including AOC herself.

Its Senate companion: S.874 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): A bill to establish a green transportation infrastructure grant program, and for other purposes. | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

Introduced by Sen. Liz Warren, D-MA, the bill has 6 cosponsors, including Bernie Sanders I-VT and Ed Markey D-MA.

 

[lpetrich]

Last Friday, AOC announced that she would be re-releasing her Green New Deal in this week. Earth Day, April 22, seems like a good day for doing so.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Ever wonder what a Representative does in a week, anyway?

Here’s what I‘ve been up to since Monday " / Twitter
noting
Ryan Sheales on Twitter: "Here’s another 90 second masterclass is authentic political communication from the absolute queen of the art, @AOC. (link)" / Twitter


Then this: Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to debate Green New Deal with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | TheHill

Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter: ".@AOC I’d like to challenge you to a debate on the Green New Deal economic policy. ..." / Twitter

.@AOC I’d like to challenge you to a debate on the Green New Deal economic policy.
Since you sponsored the Green New Deal and have a degree in Economics, I’m sure you are more than qualified.

I just have a degree in Business Admin and have owned a construction company for 20 years.
A debate between AOC and I on the Green New Deal economic policy would be informative for the American People.
They deserve to hear the two sides with pro’s and cons.

.@AOC you can choose one moderator and I choose a moderator.
Then we can negotiate a major news network to host the debate.
Let’s do this for The People.
What do you say?

@AOC people are excited about our debate about the Green New Deal economic policy!
People are saying they would pay money to see it.
We could debate pay per view style?
And the money raised could be split between us for our choosing of where it goes.
What do you think?

Green New Deal Economic Debate
#MTGvsAOC
Let’s do it for the People!
They deserve to know the pro’s and con’s and the policy from both side explained through debate.

That would be fun, although I doubt that AOC would ever want to debate some fruitcake like MTG.

 

[TSwizzle]

The climate is not broken;

Humans are "certainly influencing" the world's climate, but "the notion we've broken the climate is misplaced," Dr. Steven Koonin, who served as the chief scientist in former President Barack Obama's Energy Department, said Tuesday. "Human influences are growing as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere grows, but beyond the warming of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, we don't see many impacts on severe weather events," the New York University physicist said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "For example, heat waves are more uncommon today than they were in 1900 and they haven't gone up in 60 years." Further, he said, there have been no "detectible human influences on hurricanes," and wildfires have declined by about 25% globally since 2003. "Despite the terrible fires we saw in California and Australia in 2020, (that year) was one of the least active global fire years on record," said Koonin. Koonin, a theoretical physicist who now serves as the director of NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress, has outlined his viewpoint in his new book "Unsettled." He acknowledged Tuesday that his view on the climate has changed over the past 7 years after leaving the Obama administration.

NewsMax

Of course, scant coverage in the MSM.

Climate change/crisis/emergency, a Rapture like cult.

 

[Shadowy Man]

The climate is not broken;

Humans are "certainly influencing" the world's climate, but "the notion we've broken the climate is misplaced," Dr. Steven Koonin, who served as the chief scientist in former President Barack Obama's Energy Department, said Tuesday. "Human influences are growing as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere grows, but beyond the warming of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, we don't see many impacts on severe weather events," the New York University physicist said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "For example, heat waves are more uncommon today than they were in 1900 and they haven't gone up in 60 years." Further, he said, there have been no "detectible human influences on hurricanes," and wildfires have declined by about 25% globally since 2003. "Despite the terrible fires we saw in California and Australia in 2020, (that year) was one of the least active global fire years on record," said Koonin. Koonin, a theoretical physicist who now serves as the director of NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress, has outlined his viewpoint in his new book "Unsettled." He acknowledged Tuesday that his view on the climate has changed over the past 7 years after leaving the Obama administration.

NewsMax

Of course, scant coverage in the MSM.

Climate change/crisis/emergency, a Rapture like cult.

Does this one scientist hold views that are consistent with the consensus of the research community?

On almost any subject you can find at least one scientist who disagrees with the consensus. In astrophysics, there were a couple of scientists still publishing papers in peer reviewed journals stating that quasars were local objects moving at high speed and not high redshift active galaxies, even long after the actual host galaxies of quasars started to be imaged.

There was a scientist in England who believed that the changing distance to the sun was driving global warming patterns and it became clear that she didn't understand orbital mechanics and had made assumptions about how Earth moves relative to the Earth-Sun barycenter. Her paper had to be retracted from the literature after her mistakes were thoroughly analyzed and shown to be wrong.

I'm sure many other examples can be found.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The climate is not broken;

Humans are "certainly influencing" the world's climate, but "the notion we've broken the climate is misplaced," Dr. Steven Koonin, who served as the chief scientist in former President Barack Obama's Energy Department, said Tuesday. "Human influences are growing as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere grows, but beyond the warming of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, we don't see many impacts on severe weather events," the New York University physicist said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "For example, heat waves are more uncommon today than they were in 1900 and they haven't gone up in 60 years." Further, he said, there have been no "detectible human influences on hurricanes," and wildfires have declined by about 25% globally since 2003. "Despite the terrible fires we saw in California and Australia in 2020, (that year) was one of the least active global fire years on record," said Koonin. Koonin, a theoretical physicist who now serves as the director of NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress, has outlined his viewpoint in his new book "Unsettled." He acknowledged Tuesday that his view on the climate has changed over the past 7 years after leaving the Obama administration.

NewsMax

Of course, scant coverage in the MSM.

Climate change/crisis/emergency, a Rapture like cult.

That's Newsmax. There's no reason to think this has anything to do with reality. Not to mention the right's habit of paying people to say things that aren't true. Is that perhaps why his views have "changed"?

Besides, some of this is obviously garbage: Of course there's no detectable influence on hurricanes, hurricane data is very noisy, to see a change you need a pretty darn big effect. (And in this case you can't even overcome that with time--we don't have enough baseline records to compare it to.)

As for wildfires, that's pretty obviously deceptive. Why 2003? It's not an even year. It's not an even number of years in the past. It's not the start of records, or the start of good records. Without even looking at Google I'm confident that it's the same thing the deniers keep doing in regard to global warming: Measuring from the previous record high. I'm not having much luck coming up with global data to confirm this, but I did find that 10% of Portugal's forests burned in 2003.

 

[TSwizzle]

Does this one scientist hold views that are consistent with the consensus of the research community?

It’s not the climate that is broken, it’s the consensus.

A Rapture like cult.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Does this one scientist hold views that are consistent with the consensus of the research community?

It’s not the climate that is broken, it’s the consensus.

Prove it.

 

[TSwizzle]

Does this one scientist hold views that are consistent with the consensus of the research community?

It’s not the climate that is broken, it’s the consensus.

Prove it.

You prove it isn’t broken fella.

The “consensus” was bogus from the start and the “scientists” in this “consensus” are just activists at this point cheered on by the corrupt and bias media.

A rapture like cult.

 

[southernhybrid]

If you're a bit open minded and don't think that Climate science is a rapture like cult, the NYTimes article that I'm going to link gives a lot of detail as to how scientists came to the conclusion that it has been human activity that is causing the rapid warming of the planet. Hopefully, anyone who is interested can access the link one way or another. It's very long and has a lot of interesting information in it.


https://www.nytimes.com/article/climate-change-global-warming-faq.html

There is so much information in the article that I won't bother to quote much of it, but it is obvious that most scientists now agree that climate changes are due to human activity. According to one of our posters, most scientists are members of a rapture like cult.

There’s no denying that scientists love a good, old-fashioned argument. But when it comes to climate change, there is virtually no debate: Numerous studies have found that more than 90 percent of scientists who study Earth’s climate agree that the planet is warming and that humans are the primary cause. Most major scientific bodies, from NASA to the World Meteorological Organization, endorse this view. That’s an astounding level of consensus given the contrarian, competitive nature of the scientific enterprise, where questions like what killed the dinosaurs remain bitterly contested.

Scientific agreement about climate change started to emerge in the late 1980s, when the influence of human-caused warming began to rise above natural climate variability. By 1991, two-thirds of earth and atmospheric scientists surveyed for an early consensus study said that they accepted the idea of anthropogenic global warming. And by 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a famously conservative body that periodically takes stock of the state of scientific knowledge, concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.” Currently, more than 97 percent of publishing climate scientists agree on the existence and cause of climate change (as does nearly 60 percent of the general population of the United States).

That's right folks. We have a member here who claims that more than 97% of climate scientists are members of a rapture like cult. Deny the evidence. Call people names. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Sometimes denial is a good defense mechanism when one doesn't want to face reality. I get it, but as a realist, I'd rather know the truth, even if the truth is ugly.

Btw, I'm one who seriously doubts that we will be able to do much to turn things around. It would require too much cooperation among world leaders, and too many of us Westerners would need to make some serious changes to our lifestyles. I don't see that happening.

If there are any optimists in the house, please help change my mind by explaining how we will turn things around. We've known that the planet was warming since around the start of the industrial revolution. We've known that the warming is related to human activity since the 1980s. We've done almost nothing to try and turn things around. I think it's probably too late, but I can at least accept the evidence and support any efforts that might make a difference.

Humans have a very long history of destroying their own habitats and taking the animals along with them. We seem to be headed that way again and I'm highly skeptical that we will somehow change human nature and find a way to work together to slow things down until some realistic solutions can be found.

 

[TSwizzle]

That's right folks. We have a member here who claims that more than 97% of climate scientists are members of a rapture like cult.

What, you think that scientists are not susceptible to religion/cults ? But in any event, the "rapture like cult" is not so much aimed at the "scientists" (they mostly aren't actual scientists but are full blown activists) but people like you who think the world is on fire. It's nonsense. The cult of Greta indeed.

Deny the evidence.

Evidence ? That's a laugh. The "evidence" is deceit, propaganda and downright lies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Prove it.

You prove it isn’t broken fella.

The “consensus” was bogus from the start and the “scientists” in this “consensus” are just activists at this point cheered on by the corrupt and bias media.

A rapture like cult.

Huh? You want him to prove your position??

The reality is the scientific community has no doubt there's a big problem, the only question being just how bad how fast. There is no meaningful argument for the other side, it's all a matter of playing games like the creationists do. Delay, delay, delay until it's too late to avoid catastrophe.

(And note that even the worst-case estimates might be way below reality. We do not have a good enough picture of what the methane hydrates will do to incorporate them into the model--but the worst-case estimates there are worse than the worst-case IPCC estimates--and they'll add.)

You have also never addressed the 30+ degrees of greenhouse effect Earth has had for a very long time. Turn the greenhouse effect up even 10% and bad things happen.

 

[starwater]

So - I'm a scientist and I don't belong to a cult, rapture or otherwise. Nor do any of my scientific colleagues. I own a business that provides scientific and engineering consulting. If we did not follow scientific principals we would be out of business. As with the 97% of climate scientists, I agree that the evidence is overwhelming that the climate is changing and it has changed due to human influence.

I have strong science based debates with my colleagues every day. The one thing we all agree on is climate change.

So our member here who continues to deny (as the River in Egypt), is looking for attention and contrarywise that must float his boat. So be it.

 

[repoman]

TSwizzle, keep your powder dry for REAL scientific corruption, most of it involving pharmaceuticals. That stuff involves rigging clinical trials and papers, which is very doable compared to rigging climate and weather data, which is basically impossible.

This climate change stuff is very real and has been known for a very long time, especially since 1896.

I have posted this before, but I urge you to watch this, TSwizzle

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's right folks. We have a member here who claims that more than 97% of climate scientists are members of a rapture like cult.

What, you think that scientists are not susceptible to religion/cults ? But in any event, the "rapture like cult" is not so much aimed at the "scientists" (they mostly aren't actual scientists but are full blown activists) but people like you who think the world is on fire. It's nonsense. The cult of Greta indeed.

Deny the evidence.

Evidence ? That's a laugh. The "evidence" is deceit, propaganda and downright lies.

The average temperature of an object in Earth's orbit: -18C

Earth's average temperature: 16C.

Where's that coming from other than the greenhouse effect?

 

[southernhybrid]

I seriously doubt that our denier has ever read much of the evidence. It's much easier to cover your ears and call other people names than it is to face the reality that certain aspects of human activity have had a big impact on the environment, eventually impacting the climate. If one is open minded, then one studies the evidence and if one doesn't agree with the evidence, one must give valid reasons why the evidence isn't convincing. Calling other people names is just childish. I'm not here to argue. It's a waste of my time to try and convince a fool that he's wrong. I just like to post interesting articles on this subject when I find them.

It's very obvious that our denier only comes here to name call and act like a child. If name calling is all one can do, that's kind of pitiful.

 

[Patooka]

I must say, I'm loving the irony of the one guy ignoring all evidence and scientific consensus on climate change whilst getting all their "facts" from Newsmax is accusing the rest of the planet of being part of a cult. If someone in the morning tries to explain the dangers of lizard people, they're crazy. If by the evening you're convinced it's everyone around you who are nuts, it's you who is fucked.

 

[blastula]

July was hottest month on record, it's not just you.

[TWEET]https://tawitter.com/NOAASatellitePA/status/1426196992934518799?s=20[/TWEET]

 

[Loren Pechtel]

July was hottest month on record, it's not just you.

[TWEET]https://tawitter.com/NOAASatellitePA/status/1426196992934518799?s=20[/TWEET]

Look at that blue! That's cooling! Warming is over, the Earth is cooling!