USA > History > 2010 > Environment (I)

Obama to Open Offshore Areas

to Oil Drilling for First Time

March 30, 2010
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

The environmentally sensitive Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected and no drilling would be allowed under the plan, officials said. But large tracts in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska — nearly 130 million acres — would be eligible for exploration and drilling after extensive studies.

The proposal is to be announced by President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Wednesday, but administration officials agreed to preview the details on the condition that they not be identified.

The proposal is intended to reduce dependence on oil imports, generate revenue from the sale of offshore leases and help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation.

But while Mr. Obama has staked out middle ground on other environmental matters — supporting nuclear power, for example — the sheer breadth of the offshore drilling decision will take some of his supporters aback. And it is no sure thing that it will win support for a climate bill from undecided senators close to the oil industry, like Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, or Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana.

The Senate is expected to take up a climate bill in the next few weeks — the last chance to enact such legislation before midterm election concerns take over. Mr. Obama and his allies in the Senate have already made significant concessions on coal and nuclear power to try to win votes from Republicans and moderate Democrats. The new plan now grants one of the biggest items on the oil industry’s wish list — access to vast areas of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling.

But even as Mr. Obama curries favors with pro-drilling interests, he risks a backlash from some coastal governors, senators and environmental advocates, who say that the relatively small amounts of oil to be gained in the offshore areas are not worth the environmental risks.

The Obama administration’s plan adopts some drilling proposals floated by President George W. Bush near the end of his tenure, including opening much of the Atlantic and Arctic Coasts. Those proposals were challenged in court on environmental grounds and set aside by President Obama shortly after he took office.

Unlike the Bush plan, however, Mr. Obama’s proposal would put Bristol Bay, home to major Alaskan commercial fisheries and populations of endangered whales, off limits to oil rigs.

Actual drilling in much of the newly opened areas, if it takes place, would not begin for years.

Mr. Obama said several times during his presidential campaign that he supported expanded offshore drilling. He noted in his State of the Union address in January that weaning the country from imported oil would require “tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.”

Perhaps in anticipation of controversy, the new policy has been closely held within the administration. White House and Interior Department officials began briefing members of Congress and local officials in affected states late Tuesday.

It is not known how much potential fuel lies in the areas opened to exploration, although according to Interior Department estimates there could be as much as a three-year supply of recoverable oil and more than two years’ worth of natural gas, at current rates of consumption. But those estimates are based on seismic data that is, in some cases, more than 30 years old.

The first lease sale off the coast of Virginia could occur as early as next year in a triangular tract 50 miles off the coast that had already been approved for development but was held up by a court challenge and additional Interior Department review, officials said.

But as a result of the Obama decision, the Interior Department will spend several years conducting geologic and environmental studies along the rest of the southern and central Atlantic Seaboard. If a tract is deemed suitable for development, it is listed for sale in a competitive bidding system. The next lease sales — if any are authorized by the Interior Department — would not be held before 2012.

The eastern Gulf of Mexico tract that would be offered for lease is adjacent to an area that already contains thousands of wells and hundreds of drilling platforms. The eastern Gulf area is believed to contain as much as 3.5 billion barrels of oil and 17 trillion cubic feet of gas, the richest single tract that would be open to drilling under the Obama plan.

Drilling there has been strongly opposed by officials from both political parties in Alabama and Florida who fear damage to coastlines, fisheries, popular beaches and wildlife. Interior Department officials said no wells would be allowed within 125 miles of the Florida and Alabama coasts, making them invisible from shore.

The Interior Department and the Pentagon are discussing possible restrictions on oil and gas operations in some areas off Virginia and Florida, home to some of the nation’s biggest Navy and Air Force facilities. States are also likely to claim rights to the revenues from oil and gas deposits within 3 to 12 miles of shore and to some portion of lease proceeds, officials said.

Mr. Salazar developed the offshore drilling plan after conducting four public meetings over the past year in Alaska, California, Louisiana and New Jersey. The Interior Department received more than 500,000 public comments on the issue.

Mr. Salazar has said that he hoped to rebalance the nation’s oil and gas policy to find a middle ground between the “drill here drill now” advocacy of many oil industry advocates and the preservationist impulse to block oil exploration beneath virtually all public lands and waters.

He has called the offshore drilling plan a new chapter in the nation’s search for a comprehensive energy policy that can open new areas to oil and gas development “in the right way and in the right places,” according to an aide.

In many of the newly opened areas, drilling would begin only after the completion of geologic studies, environmental impact statements, court challenges and public lease sales. Much of the oil and gas may not be recoverable at current prices and may be prohibitively expensive even if oil prices spike as they did in the summer of 2008.

At the Wednesday event, Mr. Obama is also expected to announce two other initiatives to reduce oil imports, an agreement between the Pentagon and the Agriculture Department to use more biofuels in military vehicles and the purchase of thousands of hybrid vehicles for the federal motor pool.

    Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time, NYT, 30.3.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/earth/31energy.html

New York Cancels Classes

as Storm Hammers Northeast

February 26, 2010
The New York Times
By JACK HEALY

Hundreds of thousands of people across the Northeast were left without power and scores of school districts — including all New York City public schools — shut down on Friday morning as a lumbering late-February storm lashed the area with driving snow.

The slow-moving system — the third major snowstorm of the winter — was expected to deposit as much as 20 inches of snow in New York City by Saturday morning, with forecasts of 30 inches in some of the city’s northern suburbs.

The storm left wind-whipped snowdrifts of a foot or more throughout New York City and transformed Broadway into a cross-country ski track as it shut down highways, toppled trees and snapped power lines across the Northeast.

Some 237,000 homes and businesses in New Hampshire lost power. In New York, about 225,000 people — most of them in the Hudson Valley — were without power, said James Denn, a spokesman for the New York State Public Service Commission.

The Associated Press reported there were another 100,000 outages each in Massachusetts and Maine, as well as outages in parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Vermont, and utilities said it could be days before all service was restored.

The thick, wet slush that pelted much of the area on Thursday had turned into confectioner’s sugar by Friday morning, and the powdery snow was still pelting much of the Northeast. Although the snow was expected to ease off through the day, forecasters warned of winter-storm conditions through Saturday morning.

Harriman, N.Y. had already topped the area with a walloping 29 inches recorded by 7:30 Friday morning, while Central Park registered 16.9 inches and parts of Long Island only saw about 6 inches. Still, the snow was not about to stop soon. Matt Scalora, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y., said the storm was roosting, noisily, in the Northeast, instead of being pushed out of the region by prevailing wind currents. “It’s pretty stationary,” he said. “It’s just kind of sitting there and spinning down.” More than 1,000 flights in and out of New York’s three major airports were canceled on Friday, and the city’s more than 1 million students got another snow day.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg decided to cancel classes at 5 a.m. Friday morning, reversing his decision from Thursday when he awoke and saw that the conditions were unsafe for transportation. It was only the ninth snow day since 1982 for New York City public schools, and the second one this year since Feb. 9.

What began as innocuous precipitation on Thursday deteriorated as the winds increased and the temperatures dropped into the night. Throughout the region, snow-loaded trees fell onto cars, roads and power lines, blocking traffic and cutting off electricity. A Brooklyn man was killed Thursday afternoon when a tree limb fell on him in Central Park.

New Jersey Transit trains and buses were reporting delays throughout the state, slowed by unplowed roads or backlogged work to remove snow from tracks. As the last workday of the week dawned, subway lines plodded along at slower speeds throughout the city, city buses plowed through thick meringues of snow and most commuter rail lines from Long Island and the northern suburbs were running late — some by nearly an hour as crews worked to clear fallen trees from the tracks.

Service on the Port Washington branch of the Long Island Rail Road, for example, was delayed as one westbound train was emptied of its passengers so it could be dispatched to push another stuck train out of the way.

The storm affected a wide swath of the Northeast when a low pressure system off the coast turned slowly northward and circulated over the area, and rain turned into snow. In Philadelphia, which already surpassed its snow record for the winter with the back-to-back storms earlier this month, the new storm was expected to add up to 12 inches to the 73-inch tally this season.

“It’s nice to see when it first starts, but just like everybody else, we’re tired of it,” said Capt. Kenneth Coalson of the Chester Township police in the Philadelphia suburbs.

John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and LaGuardia reported more than 1,000 cancellations, and train service between Albany and New York was disrupted.

Captain Coalson said his officers would be out handling accident reports on Interstate 95, and issuing citations for certain recalcitrant snow shovelers. Local laws prohibit the common practice of pushing or dumping shoveled snow in the street for passing plows to deal with; fines for violations can range from $25 to $600. “We don’t enforce it until two, three days down the road,” he said.


Liz Robbins, Anahad O’Connor, Al Baker and Andy Newman contributed reporting from New York.

    New York Cancels Classes as Storm Hammers Northeast, NYT, 26.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/us/27snow.html

Editorial

Climate Change

February 22, 2010
The New York Times

Yvo de Boer’s resignation on Thursday after nearly four tumultuous years as chief steward of the United Nations’ climate change negotiations has deepened a sense of pessimism about whether the world can ever get its act together on global warming. Mr. de Boer was plainly exhausted by endless bickering among nations and frustrated by the failure of December’s talks in Copenhagen to deliver the prize he had worked so hard for: a legally binding treaty committing nations to mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.

His resignation comes at a fragile moment in the campaign to combat climate change. The Senate is stalemated over a climate change bill. The disclosure of apparently trivial errors in the U.N.’s 2007 climate report has given Senate critics fresh ammunition. And without Mr. de Boer, the slim chances of forging a binding agreement at the next round of talks in December in Cancún, Mexico, seem slimmer still.

Yet his departure is hardly the death knell for international negotiations. It is not proof that such talks are of no value or that the U.N. negotiating framework in place since 1992 should be abandoned. Even Copenhagen, messy as it was, brought rich and poor nations closer together than they had been. And more than 90 countries representing 83 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases promised, at least notionally, to reduce their emissions.

But his resignation does remind us that the U.N. process is tiring, cumbersome and slow. It reinforces the notion that some parallel negotiating track will be necessary if the world is to have any hope of achieving the reductions scientists believe are necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

The Copenhagen pledges, even if all of them are met, will merely stabilize global emissions by 2020. What really matters is what happens after 2020, whether the world can achieve reductions of at least 50 percent by midcentury. That won’t happen without big cuts by big emitters like the United States, the European Union, China, India and Brazil.

Even before Copenhagen, global leaders were exploring parallel tracks. Former President George W. Bush brought together some of the big emitters, and President Obama has expanded on this idea with the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, a group of 17 countries that plans to meet regularly. The Group of 20 has put climate change high on its agenda, and bilateral efforts — technology exchanges between China and the United States, for instance — are under discussion.

The underlying thought is that the ultimate goal is a safe planet, and that absent a top-down global treaty, that goal is probably best achieved by aggressive, bottom-up national strategies to reduce emissions. Not that these are a sure thing; the United States, embarrassingly, has no national strategy. Until it gets one, it can hardly lecture anyone else. Nor will the world stand a ghost of a chance of bringing emissions under control.

    Climate Change, NYT, 22.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/opinion/22mon1.html

Clearing Roads in Winter Requires Snowphistication

February 16, 2010
Filed at 6:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO (AP) -- The forecast: a mighty winter blizzard sure to dump a record-setting blanket of snow that will grow from inches to feet overnight, just in time for rush hour.

When it happened this month in Washington, they called it ''Snowpocalypse'' and an overwhelmed city couldn't keep its streets clear. When it happened last week in Chicago, they called it ''Tuesday'' and kept the blacktop black from first flakes to final drifts.

''I'd take my plow drivers and put them up against anyone in North America,'' said Bobby Richardson, Chicago's snow removal boss. ''Ten inches, a foot of snow? That's nothing for us. Nothing.''

That's not the case outside of Chicago and other cities in the American snow belt, where the strategy for cleaning the streets of winter's wrath is often based on a calculated risk that snow won't fall where snow usually doesn't. Most years, that gamble pays off. But this winter, historic blizzards have struck cities where traffic-snarling snowfalls are rare or even unheard of, exposing the dangers of counting on the Big One not to hit.

''You won't see bare pavement for at least three weeks -- and that's if we don't get another snow next week,'' Steve Shannon, an operations manager at the Virginia Department of Transportation, said late last week about suburban Washington's Fairfax County.

To be fair, the one-two punch of storms that socked the East Coast this month were record-setting, with snow falling so fast and deep Washington pulled its plows from the road. A quarter were knocked out of commission entirely by the struggle of trying to move so much snow off the streets.

And yet Richardson and his legendary snow-clearing legions argue that keeping a city moving during such a blizzard isn't an insurmountable task. Should as much snow fall on Chicago as it did in Washington this month, more than 500 plows and 1,000 workers -- hardened by years of work in tough Midwestern winters -- are prepared to wipe it all away.

''Chicago would get through such a storm, and while it would not be total normalcy, the city would still function,'' said Matt Smith, a spokesman for the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Buried by snow this month, cities across the Mid-Atlantic states were forced to scramble to locate plows, hiring hundreds from private contractors and seeking help from neighboring states. No place seemed more unprepared for the weather than the Washington area: The federal government shut down for days as District residents complained of a spotty, haphazard response that left some streets all but abandoned.

And in the South, where even a light dusting is enough to paralyze commuters until the weather warms up and melts away the problem, most major cities have only a handful of plows -- if any at all. In Dallas, a city of 1.2 million people but not a single dedicated snow plow, authorities count on snowflakes melting the minute they touch the ground.

That didn't happen last week, when the worst storm in nearly five decades dropped more than a foot of snow in northern Texas. All the city could do was send reconnaissance teams to identify slick spots and direct trucks to spread sand.

''Historically, that has handled every situation we face,'' city spokesman Frank Librio said.

So, which city is best at cleaning up after the Big One? Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y., or some other snowy locale? Those who study the business of providing such services say looking at comparable data is the only way to credibly assess whether one snow removal strategy beats another. But not only does such information not exist, the hundreds of variables involved complicate any effort to devise a master strategy.

For example, St. Paul, Minn., is far hillier than its Twin Cities counterpart of Minneapolis, which is filled with more alleys and more cars -- obstacles plows must dodge. Each snowfall is different, too: light, powdery snow falls when the temperatures drop close to zero, and wet, heavy snow comes when the temperature hovers around freezing.

''The snow and ice community has struggled with this topic for years as the methods, equipment, availability of resources and most importantly, level of service and winter severity, vary enormously from state to state, region to region,'' said Caleb Dobbins, a state maintenance engineer at the New Hampshire Department of Transportation.

What can be measured is preparation. With an annual average snowfall of 38 inches, Chicago maintains a fleet of 300 trucks specifically designed for removing snow, 200 others that can be fitted with plow blades and budgeted $17 million for the work this winter. Washington, with an average of 19.4 inches of snow each year, has 200 trucks that can be fitted with blades and a snow budget of $6 million.

Some Washington residents say the district is in a no-win situation: slammed for not being prepared when the Big One hits, but likely to face criticism if it spent much more on snow removal.

''I don't know how prudent it would be to throw millions of taxpayer dollars at a problem that may not rear its head in a century,'' said Mike DeBonis, a columnist for the Washington City Paper.

If the already cash-strapped city wanted to spend more on snow, he added, it would be forced to cut other, arguably higher priority services, such as garbage collection or tree trimming.

Head farther South and the preparation naturally gets even thinner. In Pensacola, Fla., there is no budget for snow removal. The city has a fertilizer spreader that can work with sand, but no snow-clearing master plan that in snowbelt cities typically includes target times for clearing streets.

''If we knew a cold front was coming in, I'd have to go to a pool company and buy some sodium chloride,'' said Pensacola public works director Al Garza. ''Every time we take precautions, (we) stockpile some masonry sands in different locations and end up not using it.''

Then comes a month like February, when snow covers some ground in 49 states; two-thirds of the nation's land mass had snow cover Friday. While Garza was safe, snow fell just 40 miles north of Pensacola last week. After brief respite over the weekend, it was snowing again in Washington on Monday.

The consequences of failing to clear that snow can be deadly. Each year, more than 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,000 injured in vehicle crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement, according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. A storm that shuts down roads also closes the door of business, costing communities hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales taxes and revenue from income taxes.

''The benefits of being better prepared far outweigh the costs -- because it costs so much when the Big One does hit,'' said Greg Cohen, executive director of the Roadway Safety Foundation, whose own street in Washington was still unplowed several days after the storms hit.

Then there's the politics of snow: Mayors know failure to remove it can cost them their jobs.

Every mayor knows the story of Chicago's Michael Bilandic, the incumbent who lost in the 1979 Democratic primary after the city failed to clear streets fast enough after a storm. These days, voters embrace Mayor Richard M. Daley in part because the crews at Streets and Sanitation keeps the city in business every winter: The city's public schools haven't had a ''snow day'' in more than a decade.

''I got more calls from mayors during snow storms than at any other time,'' said Tom Eggum, a retired public works director in St. Paul. ''It's probably because of what happened in Chicago.''

While nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population lives in an area that gets some snow each year, there's a consensus Chicago gets rid of it as well as any place else. The city received an A grade for clearing its main streets from the Illinois Policy Institute following last week's storm, which broke the single-day snowfall record for February by dropping more than a foot of snow on the city.

A cool confidence flows through Richardson's downtown snow command center, where the city's deputy streets commissioner sleeps on a cot so he can work around the clock during a storm. He oversees a dozen dispatchers who comb through satellite data, watch giant screens showing up to 1,000 live camera shots of major streets, and call plow drivers to let them know they've missed a spot or need to drop their blade a little lower.

The drivers at the other end of a dispatcher's call are often under the most pressure, intently focused for 12 or more hours at a time on the road ahead, anxious about clipping curbs, cars or even pedestrians as they clear Chicago's 9,500 miles of street lanes. They're helped by a merciless towing operation that clears illegally parked cars to make room for the plows.

Cohen, the Roadway Safety Foundation chief, said Washington and other cities ill-prepared for snow should heed the lessons of this February winter and start preparing for the next Big One by building up that kind of snow-fighting force. But he doesn't have faith it will happen: As voters, people might remember street-clearing failures, but as taxpayers, they tend to forget as soon as the snow melts.

''People say it should be done,'' he said. ''But then no one connects the dots that someone has to pay for it.''

------

Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko and Sarah Karush in Washington, Jeff Karoub in Detroit, Briana Bierschbach in St. Paul, Minn., Linda Steward Ball in Dallas, Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y., and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis., contributed to this report.

    Clearing Roads in Winter Requires Snowphistication, NYT, 16.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/16/us/AP-US-Winter-Weather-Clearing-the-Streets.html

East Coast Confronts Storm’s Aftermath

February 11, 2010
The New York Times
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

The blustery storm, as forecasters had predicted, walloped the Northeast, dropping a foot of snow in some places as it crawled up the eastern seaboard and then churned to oblivion over the Atlantic early Thursday.

But as the storm cleared, the Eastern seaboard was left to struggle Thursday through its lingering aftermath: snowbound airports; federal agencies in the nation’s capital shut down again, as they have all week; roads coated in sleet; and schools seemingly everywhere but New York City still shuttered or set to open hours behind schedule.

The powerful storm, which paralyzed the corridor from Washington to New York, also left behind a combination of strong winds, freezing temperatures and piles of snow that ensured a slushy, strenuous Thursday morning commute for the 50 million Americans left in its wake.

“Thursday morning is going to be tricky at best,” said Jack Boston, a senior meteorologist at Accuweather.com.

By early Thursday, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington had announced new annual snow records, and more than a foot of snow lay across parts of New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island. The National Weather Service said that 10 inches had fallen on Central Park, between 8 and 9 inches on LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports, and Great Kills in Richmond County, N.Y., received a startling 17 inches.

New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, announced that city schools would re-open Thursday morning and offered his sympathies to millions of children — and perhaps a few teachers — who were hoping for another day off. But his was a rare decision. Many schools throughout Long Island, New Jersey, and the rest of the Tri-State area remained closed, as was the case with the Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia school systems.

With Wednesday’s blizzard compounding the effects of last week’s storm in Washington, the federal government announced another snow day. For the fourth consecutive day, all non-emergency workers were told to stay home and stay off the roads in a city that has been paralyzed since Sunday from an earlier storm.

At the three major airports in the New York area, flights that were scheduled for Thursday morning were in limbo. Officials at LaGuardia and Kennedy airports said several airlines — including Southwest and Continental — had canceled all or many of their morning flights, and they warned passengers, even those with later flights, to call ahead before heading to the airport.

And Philadelphia International Airport, which had accumulated 14 inches by the end of Wednesday, said there was a good chance a large chunk of its flights would be scrubbed Thursday. Crews were working feverishly to clear snow from runways further south in Washington, but officials at Dulles International and Reagan National airports said many of their flights remained uncertain as well.

On the ground, Long Island Rail Road said that after a day of service disruptions and half-empty trains — the railway had only 46 percent ridership Wednesday — it was preparing for a normal morning rush hour. New Jersey Transit was set to restore its bus service and said customers should brace for rail and road delays.

In the aftermath of the storm, tens of thousands of homes and businesses along the east coast, from Virginia to Pennsylvania, were left without power late Wednesday through early Thursday. About 30,000 households in Southeastern Pennsylvania alone were struggling with outages by mid-day Wednesday, said Michael Wood, a spokesman for PECO, the local utility. Emergency crews there and in states all along the eastern seaboard were racing to correct the same problems: collapsed power lines, brought down by icing and wet, heavy snow.

In Pennsylvania, the snow was also to blame for a seven-car pileup that resulted in at least one death, on I-80 near Clearfield, in the central part of the state, the Department of Transportation said.

    East Coast Confronts Storm’s Aftermath, NYT, 12.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/nyregion/12storm.html

Climate Fight Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze

February 11, 2010
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — As millions of people along the East Coast hole up in their snowbound homes, the two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments.

Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt.

Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events.

But some independent climate experts say the blizzards in the Northeast no more prove that the planet is cooling than the lack of snow in Vancouver or the downpours in Southern California prove that it is warming.

As an illustration of their point of view, the family of Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, a leading climate skeptic in Congress, built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and put a cardboard sign on top that read “Al Gore’s New Home.”

The extreme weather, Mr. Inhofe said by e-mail, reinforced doubts about scientists’ conclusion that global warming was “unequivocal” and most likely caused by human activity.

Nonsense, responded Joseph Romm, a climate-change expert and former Energy Department official who writes about climate issues at the liberal Center for American Progress.

“Ideologues in the Senate keep pushing the anti-scientific disinformation that big snowstorms are evidence against human-caused global warming,” Mr. Romm wrote on Wednesday.

It is perhaps not coincidental that the snowstorm scuffle is playing out against a background of recent climate controversies: In recent months, global-warming critics have assailed a 2007 report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and have claimed that e-mail messages and documents plucked from a server at a climate research center in Britain raise doubts about the academic integrity of some climate scientists. Earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators made light of the fact that the announcement of the creation of a new federal climate service on Monday had to be conducted by conference call, rather than news conference, because the federal government was shuttered by the storm.

Matt Drudge, who delights in tweaking climate-change enthusiasts, noted on his Web sitethat a Senate hearing on global warming this week was canceled because of the weather.

As the first blizzard howled last weekend, the Virginia Republican Party put up an advertisement on the Web — titled “12 Inches of Global Warming” — criticizing two Virginia Democrats, Representatives Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello, who voted for the federal cap-and-trade legislation last year. The advertisement urges voters to call Mr. Boucher and Mr. Perriello to ask if they will help with the shoveling.

Speculating on the meaning of severe weather events is not new. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a deadly heat wave in Europe in the summer of 2003 incited similar arguments about what such extremes might — or might not — say about the planet’s climate.

But climate scientists say that no single episode of severe weather can be blamed for global climate trends while noting evidence that such events will probably become more frequent as global temperatures rise.

Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who writes on the Weather Underground blog, said that the recent snows do not, by themselves, demonstrate anything about the long-term trajectory of the planet. Climate is, by definition, a measure of decades and centuries, not months or years.

But Dr. Masters also said that government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms because warmer air carries more moisture.

“Of course,” he wrote on his blog Wednesday as new snows produced white-out conditions in much of the Eastern half of the country, “both climate-change contrarians and climate-change scientists agree that no single weather event can be blamed on climate change.

“However,” he continued, “one can ‘load the dice’ in favor of events that used to be rare — or unheard of — if the climate is changing to a new state.”

A federal government report issued last year, intended to be the authoritative statement of known climate trends in the United States, pointed to the likelihood of more frequent snowstorms in the Northeast and less frequent snow in the South and Southeast as a result of long-term temperature and precipitation patterns. The Climate Impacts report, from the multiagency United States Global Change Research Program, also projected more intense drought in the Southwest and more powerful Gulf Coast hurricanes because of warming.

In other words, if the government scientists are correct, look for more snow.

    Climate Fight Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze, NYT, 11.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/science/earth/11climate.html

Storm Batters East, Closing Schools and Halting Flights

February 10, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES BARRON

A blustery snowstorm, the second to sweep across the Northeast in less than a week, swaggered into the New York area on Wednesday morning, closing schools, courts and the United Nations and threatening to play havoc with the rhythms and routines of everyone who did not simply stay home.

New York City had gone through a slow windup after days of forecasters’ warnings — and after largely missing out on the storm last weekend that stopped much of the rest of the East Coast in very deep tracks. By the time most New Yorkers turned out the lights and went to bed on Tuesday, only light snow was falling — a tease for what the meteorologists insisted was coming. But by 7 a.m., thick, wet flakes were sticking, even in places where snow almost never accumulates, like Times Square. By 8 a.m., the wind was swirling and the streets were glistening, as what had been slush flirted with turning slippery — and treacherous.

“It’s here,” said Brian Ciemnecki, a forecaster with the National Weather Service, and as early as 7 a.m., the measurements backed him up. He said 5.5 inches had fallen in Elizabeth, N.J., 1.5 inches in Central Park and between 2 and 4 inches on Long Island.

He said that New York would see 12 to 15 inches by day’s end — a lot, to be sure, but less than had piled up in places farther south during the storm last week. In New York itself, the worst was expected later in the day, potentially creating a nightmarish commute home. Some transit lines planned extra service for early afternoon, figuring that workers who made it into the city in the morning would abandon their desks before the regular quitting time.

The city had plowed most major roadways overnight, and transit agencies reported that trains and buses began the day on schedule. There were unusual precautions, taken to keep things moving: many city subway trains had been left in tunnels overnight to keep them from freezing, and New Jersey Transit promised to honor bus passes and tickets on its trains — an important consideration for homeward-bound commuters if the buses could not negotiate slippery roads.

“This storm is coming at precisely the wrong time to drive home tomorrow,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference on Tuesday. He urged people to use mass transit.

But officials hoped many people would take the day off, or work from home. Mr. Bloomberg took the rare step of ordering schools closed on Wednesday, as did officials in school districts in nearly every major city along the Eastern Seaboard, from Baltimore to Philadelphia to Boston. That guaranteed that Wednesday would be a day for hopping on sleds instead of school buses.

The courts in New York City and nearby counties — Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island, and Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Dutchess — shut down, from housing court to criminal court, except for arraignments, emergency hearings on motions for temporary restraining orders and orders of protection.

“The forecast was so definite,” said David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state court system. “Litigants, jurors and employees shouldn’t have to travel in a blizzard.” He said it was the first time in memory that the New York courts had taken such an advance precaution.

Transportation up and down the East Coast was already grinding to a halt. Several major airlines — including Southwest and Continental — announced that they had canceled all or many of their Wednesday flights from Washington, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. At the three major airports in the New York area, flights were “very minimal,” said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airports. “Most of the major airlines have canceled their entire schedules” for the day, he said. Amtrak said that it would continue its Northeast regional train service but warned of disruptions. Mr. Coleman of the Port Authority said there were few passengers on the PATH rail system, a sign that commuters had apparently decided to sit out the storm at home.

He said that the bridges and tunnels the Port Authority operates — including the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and the George Washington Bridge — were “fine.” The only major concern was a 20-mile-an-hour speed limit on three Port Authority bridges on Staten Island, the Outerbridge Crossing and the Goethals and Bayonne bridges.

In Washington, all but emergency workers were given the day off Wednesday; some suburban school systems in Maryland had already given up on classes for the rest of the week. The House majority leader, Steny H. Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland, said that the snow had created such a challenge for workers trying to clear streets in Washington that Congress would consider giving the city federal disaster assistance. New York suspended its alternate-side parking regulations for the day, although people still had to pay at parking meters and Muni-Meters. That word did not reach everyone. Scott Spector, who works for an investment firm, swept the snow off his sport utility vehicle and moved it to a new space because he had not heard that he did not have to.


He was happy about the new space, though. It was a tight fit, with little room for snow shoved aside by plows to wedge him in. He said that would serve him well when the time came to drive off.

For some New Yorkers, it was just another day. Tyrek Goggins, 26, went for his regular 12-mile run. He wore a ski mask, a thermal-lined shirt and shorts, the same as always, though as a concession to the snow and the cold he rubbed down his legs with petroleum jelly. “It’s like a layer over the skin,” he said as he bounded past the reservoir in Central Park.

The storm had originated in the Midwest, leaving behind as much as a foot of snow on Tuesday. It snarled traffic in the air and on the ground in Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit. “We’re used to it,” said Matt Smith, a spokesman for Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation.

But in places not accustomed to so much snow in such a short time, many people seemed to be straining to cope. Washington’s Department of Transportation said it had 750 people working 12-hour shifts using 250 pieces of snow equipment. Some of those machines broke down from continuous use, and crews were still far from finished clearing Washington’s streets three days after the last storm.

“I’m not sure what we could have done, except have more equipment, and because we don’t normally get this storm, it would be a waste of the taxpayers’ money,” said Karyn LeBlanc, a spokeswoman for the department. “People have to understand that this is unprecedented.”


Anahad O’Connor, Liz Robbins and Stacey Solie contributed reporting for this article.

    Storm Batters East, Closing Schools and Halting Flights, NYT, 11.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/nyregion/11snow.html

Snow Recovery Slow Going in Mid-Atlantic

February 8, 2010
The New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — Armed with plows, chain saws, bucket trucks and shovels, people took to the streets across the mid-Atlantic states Sunday to dig out from record snowfalls and try to restore electricity and mobility, but it seemed unlikely that life would return to normal by the beginning of the workweek on Monday.

Big utility trucks, “the ones that shouldn’t be getting stuck anywhere,” were getting stuck, said a spokesman for Pepco, an electric company that serves the Washington area. Snow plows have been working since Friday night to clear the airport runways, but have run out of places to put the snow. And the Pittsburgh Penguins, experts on ice, had to take a bus here from Newark, N.J., to make it in time for a game.

Washington officials were warning that even if they succeeded in moving the massive amounts of snow from the region’s thoroughfares and onto street corners, it could be weeks before drivers could see around them.

The city was filled with dramatic tableaux of trees and limbs bent in fantastic arcs, usually ending in traffic lanes. Bamboo, an exotic species that thrives here, was proving particularly good at blocking traffic.

But the immediate worry for many people was electricity, without which home heating systems usually do not work. Pepco, which serves the District of Columbia and most of two big suburban counties, Montgomery and Prince George’s, was so busy that it dropped its normal practice of first assessing the problem and then fixing it, and was simply telling its crews to do both simultaneously. As a result, officials could not estimate when everyone would have power back.

By Sunday, Pepco had restored electricity to 190,000 customers, a significant number since it has only about 776,000 in all, but many of those customers had power restored more than once. About 62,000 were out at midday Sunday, down from a peak of about 105,000. Andre Francis, a spokesman, said the company was working with local governments to get them to plow areas where its crews needed to make repairs, but with two feet of heavy snow, it was slow going.

Other mid-Atlantic utilities were trying to restore service to tens of thousands of others.

On the streets of the capital, vehicle traffic was light but competed with pedestrian traffic —there was nowhere else to walk but in the street —and everyone squinted in the brilliant sunlight reflected off the snow.

Senate leaders planned to reconvene Monday night, but much depended on the airports. Washington Dulles International Airport, which saw a record amount of snow, had managed to open one runway on Sunday, but Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport had run out of places to park the snow. “We’ve got the river on one side and the highway on the other,” said Courtney Mickalonis, a spokeswoman. Workers were taking snow off the runways and loading it on dump trucks, she said; prospects for opening the runways by Monday were uncertain.

On Saturday morning, the roof of a Dulles hangar for corporate jets collapsed, damaging several planes. No one was injured. But the number of airliners left there was small; the airlines mostly flew them out on Friday.

Amtrak trains were running between Washington and New York, but on a reduced schedule; Cliff Cole, a spokesman, said it appeared that few people in the Washington area could get to a train station. Traffic to the west was blocked by a freight derailment in Cumberland, Md., he said, and traffic to the south was severely curtailed. “They’ve got issues with downed trees and power lines,” he said.

The Pittsburgh Penguins, due in Washington for a hockey game with the Washington Capitols on Sunday, had to fly into Newark, N.J., from Montreal after their Saturday afternoon game against the Canadiens. The team then took a five-hour bus ride, arriving in Washington at 2:15 a.m., The Associated Press reported.

There were occasional elements of normalcy, however. Early Sunday morning, the day’s edition of The Washington Post was tossed into thousands of driveways, some plowed, most not.

    Snow Recovery Slow Going in Mid-Atlantic, NYT, 8.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/us/08snow.html

A Storm Part Crippling and Part Enchanting

February 7, 2010
The New York Times
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

A blizzard that had forecasters reaching for superlatives engulfed the nation’s capital and the mid-Atlantic states on Saturday with record snowfalls that paralyzed transportation, commerce and all but emergency services. But it transformed the weekend into an enchanted snowbound adventure for millions.

Halfway across the chasm of winter, the storm charged over the Appalachians, smothering cities and quilting the countrysides of a half-dozen states from Virginia to New Jersey. It obliterated Washington with over 20 inches, Baltimore with a record 30 inches and Philadelphia with 26.7 inches. Some sections of West Virginia were hit by nearly three feet of snow.

But the blow, which began Friday night and tapered off at midafternoon on Saturday, had sharply defined shoulders to the north and south. It generally spared New York City (no snow fell in Central Park) and Long Island with a mere 3 to 6 inches, and the Southeastern states got off with some rain.

The hard edges of Washington were softened as the snow recast the capital of monuments and malls into a postcard town of soft ice cream shapes that had been statues and aerodynamic blobs that had been parked cars: the buried machines of a lost civilization. The Capitol and the White House vanished in the whiteout, cross-country skiers appeared in parks and the Potomac was a grayish plate of pewter.

The National Weather Service said the blizzard did not challenge Washington’s 28-inch record, set in January 1922, a snowfall that collapsed the roof of the Knickerbocker Theater, killing 98 people and injuring 158. Nor did it rival the three-foot snowfall of 1772, long before record-keeping began, although it was noted in the diaries of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

President Obama, unlike the millions snowed in just in time for the Super Bowl, rode down the plowed driveway of the White House in a four-wheel drive sport-utility vehicle to the Capital Hilton Hotel, where he spoke to the Democratic National Committee. The president, a veteran of Chicago snows who has chided Washington for its timidity in modest storms, could not resist a quip: “Snowmageddon,” he said to loud applause.

In a region ill-equipped to deal with so much snow, meteorologists had dubbed it “Snowpocalypse,” and there was no doubt it was big and dangerous: a vast brindled nebula on the satellite pictures that stretched 400 miles along the Chesapeake coast and a bounding monster on the ground that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes, caused countless accidents and left at least two people dead.

Airports closed and flights across the region were canceled, many on Friday night in anticipation of the storm, and by Saturday the backlog had spilled back across the continent, raising concern about possible travel delays over several days. Amtrak and many local railroads canceled trains and interstate buses and transit systems in Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia were virtually shut down.

As snow fell in enormous sweeping curtains, piling up at a rate of several inches an hour, millions of people heeded warnings to stay home, and the ganglia of highways and back roads in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and much of Pennsylvania were at times strangely motionless and silent.

The governors of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania declared states of emergency, and the National Guard was deployed to assist the police and people trapped on roads. In Virginia, the state police said a father and son, who had stopped on Interstate 81 to help a motorist, were killed Friday when a tractor-trailer struck them.

The combination of wet heavy snow and winds that gusted as high as 50 miles an hour toppled trees and power lines in Washington and the mid-Atlantic states. Blackouts affected more than 150,000 homes and businesses in Virginia, 150,000 customers in Maryland, 160,000 in Pennsylvania and 90,000 in New Jersey. Utility crews were working around the clock, but power companies were not certain when service might be restored.

“We are battling Mother Nature here,” Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland said at a morning news conference in Baltimore. “Our main message is that no one with an ounce of common sense goes out on the roads today. We are going to be digging out of this for some days to come.”

Maryland’s major airport, Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, was closed. No public transportation was operating in the state, and many of the major highways had only one lane plowed. Some 300 members of the Maryland National Guard were mobilized to cope with the storm.

Matthew Kramar, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sterling, Va., ticked off some of the big regional snow totals, mostly in the higher elevations — 33 inches in Bayard, W. Va., and in Smith Crossroads in Morgan County, W. Va., 32 inches at Howellsville, Va., 29.5 at Frostburg, Md., 28.5 inches at Savage, Md., and 30.3 inches at Elkridge, Md., southwest of Baltimore.

At Union Station in Washington, Matthew Boucher, of Gorham, Me., was stranded. He was on his way to a construction job in South Carolina when the storm hit, and had waited nearly a day as train after train going south was canceled. “I don’t have the money to go to a hotel, so I’m stuck here,” he said.

Three New Jersey Counties — Atlantic, Camden and Ocean — banned all but emergency vehicles from the roadways as the snow piled up. Atlantic City’s casinos were open, but the boardwalk was adrift in snow, and much of the city was shut down. Thousands of businesses across the region were closed for the weekend. Shoppers had mobbed grocery stores on Friday, picking shelves almost clean and stock up with supplies for the storm and munchies for the Super Bowl on Sunday in Miami. Some people were already calling it the Super Bowl storm of 2010.

Hundreds of churches across the region announced the cancellation of Sunday services. United States Postal Service operations were closed in Washington, Maryland and Northern Virginia.

It was the second big storm of the season for Washington, coming less than two months after a Dec. 19 snowfall of 16 inches. Snows of that magnitude — not to mention two in one season — are rare in the nation’s capital.

After the snow stopped falling Saturday afternoon, the skies turned blue in the remaining hours of daylight as the crowd in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of downtown Washington grew even larger with hundreds of people on hand. A giant snowball fight — with police cars and sport utility vehicles a common target — intensified.

But when a city police cruiser became lodged in the snow, the taunts and snowballs suddenly ended. “Push them out!” a man shouted and nearly a dozen people ran over to help get the police car on its way.

Young staffers from the administration and several from Capitol Hill were among the revelers who filled the streets when the snow ended and the calm before the cleanup began.

On the National Mall in Washington, cross-country skiers and children on sleds moved through the storm like ghosts, padded and muffled to the eyes. Sounds were distant and subdued. The trees were magical: dark limbed, looped and netted, with flourishes of white lace. And in the distance, the Capitol standing like a sentinel in the storm.

Reporting was contributed by Liz Robbins in New York; Scott Shane and Rebecca Corbett in Baltimore; Jeff Zeleny, Janie Lorber and Ron Nixon in Washington; Robert Strauss in Trenton, N.J.; and Lisa Bacon in Richmond, Va.

    A Storm Part Crippling and Part Enchanting, NYT, 7.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/us/07storm.html

'Snowmageddon' Blankets Mid-Atlantic in White

February 7, 2010
Filed at 12:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Skiers lapped the Reflecting Pool along the National Mall; others used the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a slope. Hundreds crowded Dupont Circle for a snowball fight organized online, while elsewhere the capital's famed avenues were all but desolate.

Washington took on a surreal, almost magical feel as it was buried under nearly 2 feet of snow Saturday in one of the worst blizzards in the city's history. The nearly 18 inches recorded at Reagan National Airport was the fourth-highest storm total for the city. At nearby Dulles International Airport, the record was shattered with 32 inches.

''Right now it's like the Epcot Center version of Washington,'' said Mary Lord, 56, a D.C. resident for some 30 years who had skied around the city.

''Snowmageddon,'' President Barack Obama called it. And even the president's motorcade -- which featured SUVs instead of limousines -- fell victim as a tree limb snapped and crashed onto a motorcade vehicle carrying press. No one was injured.

From Pennsylvania to New Jersey, south to Virginia, the region was under at least 2 feet of snow. Parts of northern Maryland had 3 feet.

And while the storm created serious inconveniences for many who were without power and faced with digging out, the monuments at Washington's heart seemed even more stately and serene.

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, soldiers' names were buried 16 rows deep, while higher up snow had settled into the letters so they stood out against the black background. The wreaths of the World War II Memorial looked like giant white-frosted doughnuts. The big attraction at the Lincoln Memorial was not the nation's 16th president, but rather a snowman with eyes of copper pennies bearing Lincoln's likeness.

Obama, a snow veteran from his days in Chicago, spoke at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting and thanked those for being ''willing to brave a blizzard. Snowmageddon here in D.C.''

But after that, the president went inside, hunkering down in the White House.

The snow fell too quickly for crews to keep up, and officials begged residents to stay home. The hope was everyone could return to work on Monday.

The usually traffic-snarled roads were mostly barren, save for some snow plows, fire trucks, ambulances and a few SUVs. People walked down the middle of New York Avenue near the Verizon Center without fear of being hit. The Wizards game to be played there had been canceled.

The Capital Beltway, always filled with cars, was empty at times. Metro, the area's rail system, shut down by 11 p.m., partly because of so-few riders.

''Our car is stuck. We're not even trying,'' said Tihana Blanc who was walking her dog in northwest Washington.

Philadelphia, the nation's sixth-largest city, was virtually shut down with a record of nearly 27 inches. The Philadelphia International Auto Show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center downtown was a ghost town.

''Last year when I came, there was a line getting in,'' said Walt Gursky, 28. ''Much more relaxing in here -- you can actually see what you want.''

Carolyn Matuska loved the quiet during her morning run along Washington's National Mall.

''Oh, it's spectacular out,'' she said. ''It's so beautiful. The temperature's perfect, it's quiet, there's nobody out, it's a beautiful day.''

The ugly side of the snow led to thousands of wrecks. Trees toppled and about a half-million people were left in the dark and cold. Still, only two people had died -- a father-and-son team who were killed trying to help someone stuck on a highway in Virginia.

Heavy, wet snow collapsed several roofs including at Joshua Temple Church Ministry and a private jet hangar at Dulles International Airport.

People tried to dig out the best they could, though the constant snow made it difficult. As Christine Benkoski in Ellicott City, Md., tried to clear her driveway, she said she uncovered how the storm had gone from snow, to ice, then back to snow.

''I feel like an archaeologist,'' said Benkoski. ''I've been out here for an hour, and my only goal is to get to the street.''

Shawn Punga and his wife, Kristine, of Silver Spring, Md., went to a hotel because they lost power and were concerned for their 2-year-old daughter, Ryder, who was bundled up in thick pink pajamas and slippers.

''I have just been watching the thermostat,'' he said. They left the house when it hit 60 degrees.

Trouble for some was business for others.

Angel Martinez and a small crew of contractors shoveled morning and night and plowed streets and walkways of a Silver Spring subdivision.

''Usually there is not a lot of work this time of year, so when I get the call I'm happy for the opportunity to work,'' said Martinez, 24, of Gaithersburg. ''But today there was too much.''

The snow comes less than two months after a Dec. 19 storm dumped more than 16 inches on Washington. According to the National Weather Service, Washington has gotten more than a foot of snow only 13 times since 1870.

The heaviest on record was 28 inches in January 1922. The biggest snowfall for the Washington-Baltimore area is believed to have been in 1772, before official records were kept, when as much as 3 feet fell, which George Washington and Thomas Jefferson penned in their diaries.

------

Associated Press writers Carol Druga, Sarah Brumfield, Christine Simmons and Philip Elliott in Washington, Kathleen Miller in Arlington, Va., and Alex Dominguez in Baltimore contributed to this report.

    'Snowmageddon' Blankets Mid-Atlantic in White, NYT, 7.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/07/us/AP-US-Winter-Weather.html

Obama Pushes Biofuels, Moves to Shore Up Support

February 3, 2010
Filed at 1:41 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama outlined a strategy to boost biofuels production on Wednesday, seeking to nudge the country toward energy independence while balancing the environmental costs of grain-based motor fuels.

The move is part of the administration's effort to gain more votes for a climate bill stalled in the Senate that will seek to boost production of clean, low-carbon energy and help the country reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels.

The climate bill faces further hurdles after the election last month in Massachusetts that gave Republicans a Senate seat long held by Democrats, depriving the president's party of 60 votes that could overcome procedural hurdles.

The biofuels strategy, which also aims to boost jobs as the country faces double-digit unemployment, is laid out in a report by the Biofuels Interagency Working Group, a body the president established to help spur investment in biofuels and make the industry more environmentally friendly.

The goal is straightforward: getting the country on track to meet a congressional goal of producing 36 billion gallons (136 billion liters) of biofuels a year by 2022.

"This is a substantial goal, but one that the U.S. can meet or beat. However, past performance and business as usual will not get us there," the report said.

The United States is far away from its target now, currently producing 12 billion gallons per year, mostly from corn ethanol.

The report offers solutions that would iron out problems in getting ethanol from producers in the U.S. Midwest to consumers near the coasts.

Such snags include filling stations that have been slow to adopt pumps to distribute a fuel blend that is mostly ethanol, called E85, and a lack of dedicated pipelines for biofuels.

In addition, loan guarantees for ethanol plants could be targeted more effectively to support new biofuels plants, the report said.

Obama and members of his cabinet are scheduled to meet with a handful of state governors to discuss energy policy on Wednesday.

ENERGY REVAMP

The president is pushing for the United States to overhaul its energy habits by switching to less-polluting fuels and reducing its dependence on foreign oil.

The departments of agriculture and energy and the Environmental Protection Agency will work together to create a regional supply chain to make sure all parts of the country will make biofuels markets more robust, the report said.

Coinciding with Obama's announcement, the Environmental Protection Agency also could issue new rules on measuring carbon dioxide emissions from biofuels such as ethanol.

Under a 2007 energy law, ethanol made from corn must emit less CO2 than gasoline over the life cycle of the fuel, from production to being burned. Cellulosic fuels, made from crop waste and the woody bits of nonfood crops, would have to be even cleaner.

The struggling biofuels industry is concerned that the Obama administration will move too quickly away from ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, to more difficult techniques using wood chips and other biomass.

Obama's push for ethanol could also shore up his support in farm states, where ethanol helps support demand for corn.

The president may touch on other energy policies, such as technology for capturing and storing carbon emissions, during the meeting with governors.

Since his State of the Union address last week, the president has embraced a range of fuel alternatives, including nuclear and clean coal technology, to help win support of some wavering Democrats in coal states and Republicans.

Some expect that Obama will seek to add the energy initiatives to a climate change bill to win broad bipartisan support for legislation to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

The biofuels working group was asked to develop a strategy to increase biofuels production, investment in the industry, and the use of "flex fuel" cars, which can run on either gasoline or fuel that is mostly ethanol.

Biofuels are mostly made from corn and other grains, while companies are beginning to make advanced cellulosic fuels from organic matter such as wood, and crop and animal waste.

Critics do not see them as the perfect replacement to high-polluting fossil fuels, however.

Environmentalists and some scientists say production of U.S. biofuels from corn and other grains can drive out production of other crops, prompting farmers in other countries to burn down forests and clear land to grow those crops -- creating new sources of CO2, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

    Obama Pushes Biofuels, Moves to Shore Up Support, NYT, 3.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/02/03/us/politics/politics-us-obama-biofuels.html

Heavy Snow, Ice Bury Southern Plains, Cut Power

January 29, 2010
Filed at 6:59 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A storm that toppled power lines, shutdown major highways and buried parts of the southern Plains in heavy ice and snow began moving into the South early Friday, leaving tens of thousands of people in the dark -- possibly for several more days.

Winter storm warnings were in effect from New Mexico to North Carolina after about 13 inches of snow fell Thursday in the northern Texas Panhandle, where Interstate 40 was closed from the Texas-Oklahoma line to New Mexico.

Heavy ice brought down electrical lines and trees limbs, leaving nearly 142,000 homes and businesses in Oklahoma without power early Friday, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.

''In some places, as far you can see there are hundreds of utility poles on the ground,'' said Andrea Chancellor, spokeswoman for Public Service Company of Oklahoma. She said it could be five days before electricity is restored to all customers.

More than two dozen flights were canceled Friday morning at Oklahoma City's main airport.

The snow, sleet and freezing rain were expected to crawl east through Friday. In Arkansas, as much as 10 inches of snow could fall near the Missouri border, northern parts of central Tennessee could see up to 8 inches and western North Carolina could get hit with a foot of snow, according to the National Weather Service.

More snow also was expected in Oklahoma, where dozens of shelters were opened for those who needed a warm place to stay, including First United Methodist Church in Hobart, about 120 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. Pastor Kyle Clark said downed trees and utility poles littered the slick roadways and most of the town of about 4,000 residents had no electricity.

''We've got gas heat and we are illuminating the place with candles,'' Clark said late Thursday.

Further southwest in Altus, home to about 7,000 residences and businesses, power was out except at the hospital and other emergency operations with generators, said emergency management director Lloyd Colston.

More than 100 flights were canceled at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City on Thursday due to concerns about ice buildup on planes, and more than two dozen flights were canceled Friday morning, according to the airport's Web site. Flights were also canceled in Tulsa and in Texas out of Lubbock, Amarillo and Wichita Falls, officials said.

The Texas Department of Transportation closed I-40 from the New Mexico state line to the Texas-Oklahoma border and a few other major roadways late Thursday after the region was buried in more than a foot of snow.

Downed power lines and icy, dangerous road conditions also temporarily closed a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 44 southwest of Oklahoma City and parts of I-40 in far western Oklahoma and eastern New Mexico.

National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Burke said another wave of precipitation would move up through Texas and into Oklahoma overnight, bringing colder air and additional chances for snow in areas already hit.

Up to 8 inches of snow in counties northwest of Lubbock was possible.

----------

Associated Press reporters Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas, and Heather Clark in Albuquerque, N.M., contributed to this report.

    Heavy Snow, Ice Bury Southern Plains, Cut Power, NYT, 29.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/29/us/AP-US-Winter-Storm.html

Editorial

The Case for a Climate Bill

January 24, 2010
The New York Times

The conventional wisdom is that the chances of Congress passing a bill that puts both a cap and a price on greenhouse gases are somewhere between terrible and nil. President Obama can start to prove the conventional wisdom wrong by making a full-throated case for a climate bill in his State of the Union speech this week.

Washington has been forecasting the likely death of a climate bill with renewed certainty since Massachusetts elected a Republican senator who promised to block pretty much anything Mr. Obama wants. But even before then we were hearing two reasons why a bill could not pass: The Senate won’t have any strength left when it finishes with health care, and the nation cannot afford a bill that implies an increase in energy prices.

The first reason is defeatist, the second greatly exaggerated. The climate change bills pending in the Senate would not begin to bite for several years, when the recession should be over. The cost to households, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would be small. A good program would create more jobs than it cost.

The list of reasons to pass a climate bill, on the other hand, is long and persuasive.

Start with timing. The long-term trend in greenhouse gas emissions is up (the decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record), and the sooner emissions decline, the better. The bill passed by the House last year calls for emissions in 2020 to be 17 percent lower than they were in 2005. This is the bare minimum required to give the industrialized world a fighting chance of achieving an 80 percent reduction by midcentury, which most mainstream scientists think will be necessary to avert the worst consequences of global warming.

Then there is the race for markets. China is moving aggressively to create jobs in the clean-energy industry. Beijing not only plans to generate 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, but hopes to become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy technologies. Five years ago, it had no presence at all in the wind manufacturing industry; today it has 70 manufacturers. It is rapidly becoming a world leader in solar power, with one-third of the world’s manufacturing capacity.

Finally there’s the question of credibility: Mr. Obama said in Copenhagen that the United States would meet at least the House’s 17 percent target. Success in the Senate is essential to delivering on that pledge. Failure would undo many of the good things he achieved in Copenhagen, and it would give reluctant powers like China an excuse to duck their pledges.

The jobs argument should impress the Senate. Yet many Democrats as well as Republicans seem willing to settle for what would be the third energy bill in five years — loans for nuclear power, mandates for renewable energy, new standards for energy efficiency. These are all useful steps. But the only sure way to unlock the investments required to transform the way the country produces and delivers energy is to put a price on carbon.

Some senators understand that. John Kerry, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are trying to forge a bill with a price on emissions as its core and enough other bells and whistles to attract the necessary filibuster-proof 60 votes. They will need help. Mr. Obama is the best person to provide it.

    The Case for a Climate Bill, NYT, 241.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/opinion/24sun1.html

The Nation's Weather

January 13, 2010
Filed at 5:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Active weather was expected to continue over the Pacific Northwest on Wednesday as a strong low pressure system over the Pacific Ocean advanced onshore and pulled in a cold front with abundant moisture.

The system was expected to bring another rainy day to Oregon, Washington and northern California, and heavy snow to higher elevations of the Western Rockies.

Between 16 to 22 inches of snow was anticipated in the Sierras, while up to a foot was expected to fall over the Cascades. Rainfall totals over the lower elevations could reach 2 inches in northern California and nearly an inch in Washington and Oregon.

A strong ridge of high pressure was forecast to continue building over the Central and Eastern U.S. Flow around the ridge was expected to pull warm air in from the South and allow for a warming trend over the Plains.

Another sunny and dry day was anticipated over the eastern half of the U.S. Temperatures in the Northern Plains could reach into the 30s, while the South was expected to remain in the 50s. Gulf states were expected to see another sunny day with highs near 50.

Flow from the North was expected to persist over the East Coast and bring a cool day to the Northeast. Temperatures were expected to remain in the 20s.

On Tuesday, temperatures in the Lower 48 states ranged from a low of negative 20 degrees at Kremmling, Colo., to a high of 86 degrees at Oxnard, Calif.

    The Nation's Weather, NYT, 13.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/13/us/AP-US-Weatherpage-Weather.html

Heavy Rains End Drought for Texas

January 9, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

HOUSTON — The worst drought to strike Texas in the last 50 years has broken, ending a year-and-a-half dry spell in which farmers and ranchers suffered devastating losses, climatologists and agronomists said this week.

Heavy rains since September have replenished reservoirs, filled stock tanks and quenched huge expanses of parched earth across Central and South Texas, where state officials estimate that farmers and ranchers suffered losses of around $4 billion.

John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist, said that while some pockets along the Gulf Coast and in the Panhandle remained drier than usual, most of the state had recovered.

“The back of the drought is broken,” Mr. Nielsen-Gammon said. “It’s still lingering in a few areas, but there aren’t any places right now feeling acute drought.”

The rains came too late for many ranchers in South Texas, who were forced to send to market most of their cattle, including breeding stock. Cotton farmers suffered, too. In Kleberg County, the entire cotton crop failed for the first time since 1904. The yields in two other nearby counties were barely 5 percent of normal.

“Nothing grew, zero,” said Jon Whatley, who grows cotton and sorghum in Odem. Mr. Whatley said the drought seemed worse than an infamous dry spell in the 1950s that his father had lived through.

“In the 1950s, they were always able to get the crop up and growing — the yields weren’t good — whereas in ’09, we couldn’t get it growing at all,” he said.

State officials say the period from September 2008 to September 2009 was the driest on record in the state.

Mr. Nielson-Gammon said the drought owed much to the two winters in which surface water temperatures along the equator in the Pacific Ocean were above normal, a phenomenon known as El Niño. In addition, the tropical storms that raked the Texas coast in 2008 dropped almost no rain inland.

But this winter the Pacific cooled off, producing the pattern known as La Niña, which generally brings wet weather to Texas, he said. The central region around Austin and San Antonio received 8 to 12 inches more rain than normal from August to October. Farther south, around Corpus Christi, a wave of storms in November and December dropped up to 10 inches more rain than usual, he said.

Austin Brown II, a third-generation rancher in Beeville, said he was so elated to see the rainfall this autumn that he sent out a Christmas card with a picture of his family standing in front of a full farm pond that had been desiccated the summer before.

But Mr. Brown said he and other ranchers were still in dire straits. He was forced to cull 75 percent of his cattle and, with beef prices remaining low because of the national recession, he was unsure when or if he would be able to rebuild.

“It was very devastating, and one that we may not ever get over because beef prices are terribly low right now,” he said. “I’m not anxious to rebuild. By the summer we should know if we are really out of the drought.”

Matt Huie, another Beeville farmer and rancher, planted 1,000 acres of cotton last spring, but the seeds failed to sprout. Now, Mr. Huie said, the ground is moist enough to engender hope of a good crop this year.

“It’s rained more in the last 90 days than it did in all of 2008 combined,” he said. “After two lousy years in a row — one really, really bad — this year had better be a home run, or there are going to be a lot of people out of business here in the ag industry.”

 

Rachel Marcus contributed reporting.

    Heavy Rains End Drought for Texas, NYT, 9.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/science/earth/09drought.html

Icy Hazards Persist Through US, Deep Into South

January 8, 2010
Filed at 9:46 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA (AP) -- The unyielding cold spell gripping much of the nation was expected to hang on tight over the weekend, though some areas that saw snowfall during the week were expected to have drier weather.

In Atlanta, more accustomed to winter temperatures in the low 50s, a glaze of ice coated roads Friday after light snow overnight melted and froze. And authorities said the continuing freeze called for renewed caution on the roadways.

Nearly 30 cars piled up in a pre-dawn crash near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

''I wanted to stay home today, but my boss never called me back, so I thought I should try to get in,'' said Beth Ament, 30, who was fueling her car so she could get to a nearby transit station to take the train to her job in downtown Atlanta.

In Alabama, packed shelters brought out extra cots and opened doors for people fearful of the deadly cold.

''You have to be inside the way it is now. If you're not, they'll find you stiff,'' said Elizabeth Austin, a homeless woman who sought warmth at an inner-city Birmingham church.

Multiple deaths have been blamed on this week's cold, including a 44-year-old man whose body was found face-down in the snow early Friday in Billings, Mont.

In Ohio, a winter storm warning was in effect until Saturday morning. That's on top of the snow that had already coated Interstate 70, where a tractor-trailer spun out of control Thursday, crossed the median and swerved into oncoming traffic, colliding with a small bus transporting adult disabled passengers, the Ohio Highway Patrol said.

Three passengers on the bus were killed, as was its driver. Six other passengers on the bus, which was carrying 11 people, were injured, as was the driver of the commercial truck, Sgt. Raymond Durant said.

Schools in at least 10 states were closed, as were many roads and government offices.

The National Weather Service said 5 to 7 inches of snow was expected Friday across western Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas, it had snowed every day since New Year's, a stretch that meteorologists say is unusual.

Travel was beginning to return to normal Friday at Chicago's airports, after a storm that dumped about 8 inches of snow. The Chicago Department of Aviation said there were still minor delays at O'Hare International Airport because crews had to deice aircraft before they could take off.

Some Nebraska cities were cut off because highways leading in and out of town were blocked or all but impassable.

Amtrak announced that its train between Chicago and Denver wouldn't operate Friday because of blowing and drifting snow in Nebraska.

Snowfall was heaviest in Minnesota and parts of South Dakota, where some drifts were too big for snowplow drivers to clear.

Nowhere was it colder than in Bismarck, N.D., where wind chills hit 52 below zero Thursday and the temperature reached 14 below. Wind chills were still near 50 below in the Dakotas on Friday.

While North Dakotans get plenty of practice bundling up, folks in other parts of the country were still learning the basics.

In Mobile, Ala., hit by a rare arctic chill on the coast, Salvation Army spokesman Stacey Killingsworth said shelters were ''filled to the brim.'' One that normally holds up to 28 homeless men a night has been averaging 115 in recent days, she said.

''We don't turn anyone away, including women and children. We've used cots and mats. We've put people in the auditorium and hallways,'' she said.

In Florida's Panhandle, vapor was rising off the Gulf as warm water met the frigid air.

''It's so cold that sparrows that have crawled under the plastic on our heated deck don't want to leave,'' said Scooter Montgomery, manager of Peg Leg Pete's Oyster Bar on Pensacola Beach.

----

AP Writers Melissa Nelson in Pensacola, Fla., and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., contributed to this story.

    Icy Hazards Persist Through US, Deep Into South, NYT, 8.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/08/us/AP-US-Winter-Weather.html