Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter Statement on President Obama’s Climate Plan

Contact:  Kim Teplitzky, 412-802-6161, kim.teplitzky@sierraclub.org

Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter Statement on President Obama’s Climate Plan

Washington, D.C. – Today President Barack Obama announced his administration's next steps for building a legacy of action to fight the climate crisis. The plan includes new energy efficiency standards for federal buildings and appliances, scales up responsible clean energy production on public lands with an ambitious new commitment to power 6 million homes by 2020, and uses the full authority of the Clean Air Act to cut dangerous carbon pollution from power plants.

Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter Director Jeff Schmidt released the following statement in response:

"This is change Pennsylvanians have been waiting for on climate.  

“President Obama is finally putting action behind his words, which is what the Sierra Club, our 2.1 million members and supporters, and coalition partners have worked mightily to achieve. Today, we applaud him for taking a giant step forward toward meeting that goal.

"By committing to establish new energy efficiency standards for federal buildings and appliances, scale up responsible clean energy production on public lands with an ambitious new goal to power 6 million homes by 2020, and use the full authority of the Clean Air Act to cut dangerous carbon pollution from power plants, the President is stepping up to reduce climate-disrupting pollution that is destabilizing our climate while threatening our economy and endangering our communities and families with extreme weather and dramatic sea level increases.

“Here in Pennsylvania we know the benefits of increasing energy efficiency with our Energy Savings Act that has helped families and businesses save millions in electricity costs over the last two years. We have seen the good jobs created by the expansion of clean renewable energy sources.    We also know the threat of continuing our dependence on dangerous fossil fuels like coal and natural gas that have left a toxic legacy in our state that puts our air, water and land at risk. 

“We look forward to a day when the Administration sees fracked gas for what it is - a fossil fuel of the past and a threat to public health. Nevertheless, the President’s plan gives us hope that he will cement his climate legacy and protect future generations by ending destructive oil drilling in the Arctic, rejecting dangerous nukes, halting mountaintop removal, abandoning dirty fossil fuels in favor of clean energy - and by making the critically important decision to reject the dirty and dangerous Keystone XL pipeline.”

###

The Medieval Climate Anomaly

                                          Marlin Turby, member from Dillsburg, PA

To declare that climate change is due from natural climate variability acknowledges that there is observed global warming and the consequent change in climate. Does it not? The argument therefore is not concerning global warming and climate change as a physical reality; rather, it is whether it is of natural or human (anthropocentric) origin?

For each side of the argument the following is true: climatologists -- working as peer reviewed scientists and abiding by the scientific method -- have accurately measured the temperature of the planet, as well as the warming in the past century, and verified the change in world climates. 

I conclude that all people, institutions, and think tanks, which say that global warming and climate change are merely natural climate variability, are fully acknowledging that the planet is warming and the climate is changing. Likewise, they acknowledge that scientists and their methods of research are legitimate.

Yet, for some reason, when scientists, using identical scientific methods and peer reviewed protocols, determine that the carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are the primary cause of warming, suddenly, scientists are involved in a conspiracy. There is a contradiction in their language to which they appear oblivious.

One climatological event sighted as evidence for natural variability was the Medieval Warm Period, 850 to 1250 AD and the Little Ice Age, 1300 through 1800 AD. The North Atlantic Ocean was unusually free of sea ice during the warm phase, which allowed sailing through the region and settlement in Greenland. This warming was felt in many areas; yet globally, temperatures were slightly cooler than those of today.  Afterwards and extending to 1800 AD there was a substantial cooling in northern Europe known as the "Little Ice Age".  

Taken collectively the Medieval Warm Period, MVP, and the Little Ice Age, LIA, are termed "The Medieval Climate Anomaly." It has been discovered that the MVP had two distinct causes: (1) an increase in solar output and (2) a decrease in volcanic activity.

Volcanoes emit particulates that are suspended in the atmosphere and are circulated by upper level winds in the troposphere for a number of years. These particles, called "aerosols," reflect incoming sunlight back into space. thus reducing the amount of sunlight the planet receives.

Carbon dioxide is also emitted from volcanoes, which as we know, warms the planet. Volcanoes tend to cool the planet in the short term due to aerosols and warm it in the long term from the CO2 that remains in the atmosphere for centuries. It is not an entirely linear arrangement, with numerous variables and feedback mechanisms contributing to the final net result.  

The atmosphere and world climates are influenced by the oceans. The "Thermohaline Circulation" is a massive river within the oceans that circulates globally. As the name indicates, it is driven by heat energy and saline density. This transfers tropical heat to the North Atlantic.

The melting in the North Atlantic during the MVP slowed the oceanic circulation thus contributing to the onset of the LIA. Today Greenland and the Arctic melt at alarming rates.

Does history repeat itself? We shall see.                  

IT’S SYMBIOSIS, STUPID

We, the people, get it.  Why not our leaders?

By Tom Church & Sheila Gallagher

        We were just back from the D.C. rally - Forward on Climate - attended with 40,000+ of our friends and neighbors. Marching past the White House, past the fence where several days before Sierra Club’s Executive Director Michael Brune, the Club’s President Alison Chen, 350.org’s Bill McKibben had hand-cuffed themselves.  How seriously do they take the concept of Global Warming?  These scary, awesome weather events and impacts to our homeland that continue to occur at astounding rates.

Bill was arrested last summer.  But this was the first time in the 120-year history of the Sierra Club, that the usually non-combative organization, went beyond their lobbying role … allowing Mike and Alison to take  “one giant step for mankind,” outside our legal system, and plunge themselves into civil disobedience.  Polls now show that most people believe, not only that the climate is changing, but that we humans are responsible and that we continue to dig a hole we may never be able climb out of.   Most of our “leaders” are still sitting on their hands.  They are not leading.  In fact, they are not even following.  Not following the science or common sense.  They were elected to protect the interests of the people they “serve”.  Who are they serving if not the “people?”  The “personification” of corporate business interests is affirmed by the Citizens’ United Case? Following their tails?  We don’t really know.  They don’t get IT!  Yet!

      Not too long ago, people, and yes, the corporations were asked to recycle.  Many dragged their feet.  Some even lay down and had tantrums. Others had to be dragged kicking and screaming.  Remember the TV ad that had an employee telling his boss being green by recycling saved his company money?  Saved money is made money.   Suddenly, the executive was growing leaves.  Getting on the bandwagon.  Getting with the program.  Getting IT.

      All over the world other governments are taking Global Warming challenges very seriously, making serious headway toward sustaining their futures.  Meanwhile our supposed “leaders” are stuck in their uncompromising gold-plated bubbles.  Or if they somehow believe that the ice caps are melting and the seas are rising, they also believe some miracle will preserve their status quo.

       Guess what?  We won’t beat Mother Nature.  We can’t even compete. We’re not in the same league.  We are the “wanna bes” and if we don’t join Her team we are surely gonna be the “has beens.”  We think we’re winning in a Universe we’re still struggling to understand?   Parasites sucking the bodily fluids, mining the minerals, and pumping toxic wastes into our host as She suffers, and eventually dies.  We continue to kill our pollinators and poison our food supply with pesticides, or worse.   Why?  Have we not learned anything from the ancient civilizations?  They succeeded in destroying themselves.  We study them, criticize them, and skip merrily down the same path.  But this time, it’s our planet Earth that’s at stake, not the Roman or the British Empires.  This is the only Earth we have.  Or are you counting on the one leader we haven’t found yet?  Do you expect to be transported to some other “pie in the sky” when we are done eating this one?

     In our house we’ve stopped reading the newspaper.  We’ve stopped listening to the politicians on the TV.   It’s akin to watching the Marx Brothers or the three Stooges make fools of themselves.  We liked watching the old comedians.  They were supposed to be fools. They made a great living being fools.   Well, come to think of it …. our leaders have too. As we marched down the street toward the White House, Tom spouted stories about working for a natural gas company back in the 1980s and 90s, experiences that that might have funny if they weren’t so dysfunctional and upsetting.

      It is time for all of us to transition from the parasites we’ve become.  It’s no longer a “want;  it’s now a “need.”. We need to be hanging out with others from around the world laughing and telling stories.  Real ones. Funny ones.  Sipping Margueritas cooled by our renewably, naturally powered refrigeration.  Getting it FREE because our energy links are harnessed to nature - the solar, the wind, the waves.    We can’t continue to exist on Mother Earth without consequences, without sacrifices on our part.  Sprinting toward disaster is stupid. If we aren’t aiming our incredible ability to solve problems to achieve a symbiotic relationship with our Host, that is insanity!

    Will we, with our “leaders” still be standing here in our dirty coveralls, screaming to be heard over the din of the drilling rigs, over the “dirty” politicians and the naysayers of the “Know Nothing” parties?