Climate news this week: 3/12

The discussion about climate change is sure heating up in Washington!

The Department of the Interior weighed on climate-related topics this week. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar strongly expressed his support for renewable energy in an interview with AP.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday that the waters off the Atlantic coast hold some of the country's greatest wind energy potential, and he promised to move aggressively to develop plans to exploit the resource.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Salazar called for the creation of "renewable energy zones" to smooth development of offshore wind projects and to spur solar energy in the Southwest and onshore wind energy in the Great Plains.

"The scientists tell me that when you look at the wind energy potential off the Atlantic it may be greater than we have onshore," Salazar said. "But what we don't have in place at this point is the rules to move forward with energy offshore."

Salazar said that states like New Jersey and Delaware are "raring to go" with wind energy projects. But he acknowledged that officials in other coastal states, such as Massachusetts, are divided.

A $1 billion project to erect 130 giant wind turbines off Cape Cod has long been opposed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who has argued it would kill birds, endanger sea life and imperil the area's tourism and fishing industries. The state's Democratic governor, Deval Patrick supports it.

Salazar on Monday said the project "makes sense."

In other news, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed his optimism that the international community, with strong U.S. support, will reach a global climate deal this year.

The U.N. chief predicted Thursday that a new global climate deal — with U.S. backing — will be reached this year.

"With U.S. leadership, in partnership with the United Nations, we can and will reach a climate change deal that all nations can embrace," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters.

The complex effort to replace the last climate treaty, the U.N.-brokered 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, has risen to the top of Ban's priorities this year.

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But Ban, speaking to a monthly news conference at U.N. headquarters, said he was encouraged by new U.S. approaches to global warming after meeting in Washington with President Barack Obama and congressional leaders earlier this week.

"On climate change, we agree. It is an existential threat. We know what we must do," the secretary-general said. "President Obama and I share a fundamental commitment: 2009 must be the year of climate change. That means reaching a comprehensive agreement in Copenhagen by year's end."

On the other side of New York City (politically, if not geographically), more than 600 climate skeptics gathered for an international conference to dispute the scientific and political consensus on climate change, even as they face a loss of support from former champions like Exxon-Mobil.

The three-day International Conference on Climate Change — organized by the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit group seeking deregulation and unfettered markets — brings together political figures, conservative campaigners, scientists, an Apollo astronaut and the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus.

Organizers say the discussions, which began Sunday, are intended to counter the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers, who have vowed to tackle global warming with legislation requiring cuts in the greenhouse gases that scientists have linked to rising temperatures.

But two years after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with near certainty that most of the recent warming was a result of human influences, global warming’s skeptics are showing signs of internal rifts and weakening support.

The meeting participants hold a wide range of views of climate science. Some concede that humans probably contribute to global warming but they argue that the shift in temperatures poses no urgent risk. Others attribute the warming, along with cooler temperatures in recent years, to solar changes or ocean cycles.

But large corporations like Exxon Mobil, which in the past financed the Heartland Institute and other groups that challenged the climate consensus, have reduced support. Many such companies no longer dispute that the greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels pose risks.

After another coal ash spill sent toxic byproducts towards the nation’s capital, coal has certainly been on our minds this week. So it’s great to hear that West Virginia State Senator Randy White is taking some creative action to highlight this issue.

Introducing a bill Thursday in the Senate chamber, the Democrat from Webster County chugged from a plastic bottle filled with a cloudy brown liquid that he said was coal slurry.

He asked his fellow senators to pick up similar bottles he had set on their desks and join him in a drink.

"It was certainly to make a point," White said later Thursday night.

White is the only sponsor of a bill that would temporarily bar companies from injecting coal slurry into any additional underground sites until studies are completed about how the practice affects water quality in surrounding areas.

Slurry is a mixture of water, coal particles and often dozens of chemicals.

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"The bottles from the senators' desks and the bottle I drank out of, it's the same thing the people who live around those slurry-injection sites are drinking every day," White said. "It's an unknown substance, an unknown liquid. It's unknown water with possible contaminants in it."

White wouldn't reveal exactly what was in his concoction. He said that's part of the point -- people don't know exactly what they're drinking.

That wraps up this week’s news roundup! As always, we encourage you to post other stories the comments section!