Working For Jobs

by Joseph Romm.

The Chart of the Month comes from the Wall Street Journal (at right).

“The figure reflects a huge surge in U.S. oil drilling, up nearly 60 percent in the past year and the highest total since at least 1987, when oil services company Baker Hughes Inc. began keeping track,” notes the WSJ.

Poor Barack Obama. He opens up the country to a drilling spree—and
naturally progressives are pissed because, well, we care about things
like clean air, clean water, and a livable climate.

But conservatives are strangely ungrateful, too! They blame Obama’s supposed anti-drilling policies. So Mitt Romney said earlier this year, “People are hurting, gasoline’s expensive, and the policies
of this administration that have focused solely on green technologies
are not keeping the cost of gasoline down.”

Darn you, Barack Obama, for only quadrupling the number of oil drilling rigs in the U.S.!

The fact is, oil prices soared despite both record drilling and the
highest domestic oil production levels in almost a decade. It should be
obvious that yet more drilling can’t have any significant impact on
oil prices—particularly since the U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA) has been making that precise point for years now.

Here is an update from a chart we did earlier this year of U.S. oil production using EIA data, including the first six months of this year:

The only thing that can protect Americans from the inevitably increasing oil shocks of peak oil is an aggressive strategy to reduce the country’s oil consumption and
intensity (oil/GDP), including a steady increase in the fuel efficiency of
our vehicles—policies that conservatives have fought for decades,
but that Obama has made a reality.

Where is the drilling? The WSJ reports:

The drilling boom is being driven by a variety of
factors. New technologies have allowed companies to tap vast new oil
reserves in places like North Dakota, Texas and, most recently, Ohio.
High oil prices are making once-unprofitable fields more tempting …

All that drilling is helping to boost U.S. oil production. The U.S. 
pumped 3.9 million barrels a day from onshore fields in March, up 5.9 percent
from a year earlier, and the most in nearly a decade.

And yet gasoline prices remains stuck at much higher levels than a year ago. Where is the love from the oil companies?

The EIA’s 2009 report analyzed the difference between full offshore drilling (“Reference  
Case”)  and restriction to offshore drilling (“OCS limited case”). In 2020,
  there is no impact on gasoline prices. In 2030,
  U.S.  gasoline prices would be three cents a gallon lower. Woohoo!

I have previously written about the trivial impact of opening the outer continental shelf further to drilling. The oil companies already have access to some 30 billion barrels of offshore oil they have only begun to develop.

If you are concerned about the impact of high oil prices from Middle
  East instability, the only viable long-term strategy is one aimed at
ending our addiction to this climate-destroying fossil fuel. Even the
  once staid and conservative International Energy Agency understands
that. Obama has, thankfully, started to take aggressive action in this area, raising new car fuel efficiency standards to 35.5 mpg by 2016—and then 54.5 mpg by 2025—the biggest steps the U.S. government has ever proposed to cut oil use.

Related Links:

Secretary of Energy is a Keystone XL booster

In battle between fuel and food, food is losing worse than ever

Everything you’ve heard about the tar sands and energy security is wrong

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

Eco Brooklyn Inc. /Brooklyn, NY (United States)

This position teaches you how to perform media outreach for a green building company by producing, directing, filming, editing and publishing videos for a green building company. Duties include posting blogs on our site, doing video pod casts, doing book reviews and organizing tours of the show house.

Apply To Job

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C&C Building Automation.
CA – California, San Francisco
At C&C Building Automation, we design, install and service state-of-the-art building automation and security systems throughout the U.S. and abroad. We have established a solid reputation as a leader in…

Salary: non-disclosed. Date posted: 08/31/2011

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Recurrent Energy.
CA – California, San Francisco
The Senior Systems Engineer will be responsible for overseeing installation of SCADA systems, evaluating site and equipment performance, assisting in development and maintenance of applications to monitor the solar installations…

Salary: competitive. Date posted: 08/31/2011

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by Clare Leschin-Hoar.

The international seafood labeling organization, Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) got some
boat-rocking news last week, when researchers discovered that a significant
portion of what had been labeled MSC-certified Chilean sea bass was in fact
something else.

Chilean sea bass, also known as Patagonian toothfish, became
enormously popular in the last decade because of it’s flaky texture and light,
buttery taste. But pressure on the slow-growing species made it especially
vulnerable to overfishing. Today, the fish tops the red “avoid” category on
the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch list. But, as is the case with most high-end seafood, there is a sustainable option; it comes from a fishery located in the remote waters near South
Georgia Island off the coast of Argentina, and it received the MSC nod-of-approval
in 2006.

In the study, published in Current Biology, Clemson University
population geneticist, Peter Marko, and his colleagues collected 36 samples of
MSC-certified Chilean sea bass from grocery stores across 10 different states,
and tested the fish for genetic markers. Marko says he chose the sea bass from the South Georgia Island fishery because it had already
been certified; because original samples from the fishery existed; and because the fish is
genetically distinct from other populations of Chilean sea bass due its
geographical isolation.

“The question we asked was: Did the sample of [certified] retail fish
come from the same population as the sample from the certified fishery?” says
Marko. Unfortunately for consumers who rely on the MSC label to help them
navigate the increasingly complex waters of sustainable sourcing, the answer
was no.

Of the original 36 samples collected, three turned out to
be other species: tuna, mackerel, and greenling. Of the 33 remaining fillets
confirmed to be Chilean sea bass, five had genetic markers that suggested they
came from somewhere other than the South Georgia Island fishery.

MSC reacted to the news quickly; deputy standards
director, Amy Jackson, issued a
statement expressing concern over the
report, and a pledging to conduct an investigation.

“We carry out regular DNA testing, done [by an
independent third party],” Simon Edwards, MSC spokesman
told Grist. “This is the first time it has ever come up negative. It took us by
surprise and it’s not welcomed news, but we have in place has an audit trail that will
let us remedy what’s gone wrong.”

Edwards says he’s not outright disputing the data, and is
careful not to toss around the term “seafood fraud.” He says DNA degradation or
poor results can occur, and that testing should be done through certified labs
with controlled systems to see if they can duplicate the results. “We need to find out what happened,” he says.

Dr. Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist at Oceana says
substitution in seafood is something that goes back for centuries, and that news
of mislabeling rarely surprises him. “Any time consumers are buying fish, they’re
at risk for having a substitute, especially when it’s something expensive,” he says. Besides, he adds, “People
have been skeptical for awhile about how it was possible that
so much Chilean sea bass could have been certified by the MSC.”

Concerns of mislabeling and fraud has been an ongoing
issue within the seafood industry. In May, Oceana released their own report on seafood
fraud: “Bait
and Switch: How Seafood Fraud Hurts Our Oceans, our Wallets and Our Health.” They found that seafood is mislabeled as often as 25-70 percent of the time,
especially for species like red snapper, wild salmon, and Atlantic cod.

On the other hand, detection of seafood mislabeling and fraud is gaining traction. Advances in
traceability from boat, through processing and distribution, are advancing, and
the U.S. government seems to be paying closer attention as well. The FDA is
currently creating a DNA
database for fish, and will compare those samples to an existing database known
as the Fish Barcode of Life.

Consumer guides also carry warnings for eaters. A peek at
the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch’s listing for Chilean
sea bass says:

Consumers wishing to purchase
MSC-certified Chilean sea bass must be very careful. All restaurants and
grocery stores that sell MSC products are required to have the MSC “Chain
of Custody” certification. Legitimate purveyors should be able to produce
this document when consumers ask. If the certificate is not available, assume
the fish is not certified and don’t make the purchase.

But that warning was not intended to be a fraud alert,
says Allison Barratt of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. “Our intent was more to try to
alert consumers to the fact that very little of the overall catch is certified
to the standards of the MSC and most of the Chilean sea bass you see
is to still to be avoided,” writes Barratt in an email. “It’s always tricky,
messaging-wise, when there’s a segment of any fishery that’s a better choice
than the rest of it.”

Whole Foods, which has been carrying the MSC-certified
Chilean sea bass, reacted to the news with this statement from Carrie
Brownstein, global seafood quality standards coordinator:

Whole Foods Market sources Chilean sea bass (Patagonian
toothfish) only from MSC-certified fisheries and can trace all shipments back
to the fishing vessel that caught it via a lot code on its shipping box. In
addition, Whole Foods Market purchases the fish only partly processed (headed
and gutted) so that buyers can see that the fish sourced is actually Patagonian
toothfish, which eliminates the risk of other species being substituted.

For consumers who care about sustainable seafood, news of
mislabeling or fraud, especially for products that carry certification is
frustrating.

“It’s a big issue,” says Ken Peterson, spokesman for the
Monterey Bay Aquarium, who believes the MSC is still trustworthy.

“The process they’ve committed to is supposed to ensure
chain of custody, from the minute the fish comes out of the water to [the
minute] you buy it. They’re the
most aggressive in analyzing the steps of the process to see if something breaks
down.” If it does, he says, “that’s a much bigger problem than Chilean sea bass.”

Related Links:

Whole Foods will tell you how to eat healthy, for a price

Four dirty secrets hiding in your tuna can

The great oyster crash

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

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by Tim De Chant.

Not content with bringing the gears of government to a
grinding halt or holding the global economy hostage, the Tea Party now aims its
sights on another target: regional planning commissions. 

Three years ago California passed SB 375, a bill which
calls on cities and metropolitan regions to reduce vehicle emissions by
fostering denser urban areas, linking transit systems, and coordinating
land use. As you might imagine, this made many Tea Partiers both apoplectic
with rage and filled with fear. The rage comes from the government trying
to do anything productive; the fear comes from a United Nations effort
that encourages sustainable development, otherwise known as Agenda 21. 

Agenda 21 is the conspiracy theory du jour among
less-grounded libertarians. The voluntary effort, they say, say proves the
United Nations is out to strip our nation of its sovereignty. Naturally, this is the first step towards
a worldwide totalitarian government. Organizers of planning meetings in
the San Francisco Bay Area discovered regional planning is
apparently a key part of this nefarious global plot. And though the Bay Area and its
plan to implement SB 375 (known as One Bay Area) seems to have borne the brunt
of Tea Party aggression so far, vocal and occasionally disruptive members have been popping
up at planning sessions across the state.

From Josh Stephens well-researched article at the
California Planning & Development Report:

At the One Bay Area meeting in Concord,
they questioned presentations from the audience. An activist who goes by the
username “cvminutemen” posted on YouTube a two-hour video of the entire
meeting, with a preface suggesting that One Bay Area is part of a comprehensive,
global conspiracy. The preface to the video characterizes smart growth,
liveable communities, and social justice as attacks on “freedom,” “your
prosperity,” “your property rights,” and “the American dream.” And it
ironically questions planning that claims to serve “the greater
good.”

But that’s not the only irony. The Tea Party activists
also fear that One Bay Area, and SB 375 in particular, will do irreparable
damage to their suburban and exurban lifestyles. In reality, the bill will likely
have the opposite effect, encouraging people to stay in cities, thus freeing
the suburbs from the travails of population growth—  something Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation commission, pointed out.

“The people who reside in less dense
areas would probably have figured out, if they had allowed themselves, that
we’re not planning on doing anything to Clayton,” said Rentschler, in reference
to a city on the edge of the Central Valley. “The cities are taking things that
you don’t want.”

That simple logic doesn’t seem to have fazed the ironclad Kool-Aid of Tea Partiers,
though. Their distrust of the government has trickled down to the local level
(if it wasn’t there already). Hopefully planners can still hear the voices of reason above the
noise.

Related Links:

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View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

Farnsworth Group/Peoria, IL

Farnsworth Group, Inc. is a full-service engineering and architectural firm that offers our valued clients over 300 employees located in a nationwide network of offices. We are also one of the nation’s leaders in sustainable design initiatives. Farnsworth Group is an employee-owned company with a rich 100-year history that offers an impressive benefits and compensation program in addition to excellent career development opportunities. We have the following position available:

Structural Engineer
Peoria, IL

We have an immediate opening in our Peoria, IL office for a Structural Engineer. Qualified candidates will work with the Building Structural Engineering team in the structural design, detailing, and construction administration of building projects. This position is responsible for performing design calculations, developing construction documents, performing construction administration tasks, coordinating with the project team, mentoring engineering interns and performing other tasks as assigned by the structural manager.

Specific Requirements include:
• B.S. in Civil or Architectural Engineering
• Licensed Structural Engineer in the state of IL
• 7-10 years of structural engineering experience
• Experience in structural design and construction administration of steel, concrete, masonry, and wood buildings
• Experience with seismic design
• Experience with progressive collapse and blast resistance design, preferred
• Experience with structural inspections and condition assessments, preferred
• Experience leading projects, preferred
• Excellent communication skills, required
• Experience with Revit and AutoCAD, preferred
• Experience with structural design software (RAM), preferred

We offer a competitive salary and benefits program that includes:
• Medical/Dental Plans
• Prescription Drug Program
• Vision Plan
• 401(k) with Company Match
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Flexible Spending Account
• Time-off Benefits

For immediate consideration:

Please Apply Online, by clicking on the “Apply Online†link or visit the Farnsworth Group website at www.f-w.com and click on the careers link.

Farnsworth Group, Inc. is proud to be an EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V.

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by Miles Grant.

Just a month after New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used it as a backdrop for his $50 million donation to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, officials in Alexandria, Va., announced a plan to close the GenOn coal-fired power plant:

The City of Alexandria and GenOn Energy have reached an agreement to permanently close the company’s Potomac River Generating Station, which began operating in 1949. To facilitate the retirement of the plant, the city of Alexandria will release approximately $32 million currently held in escrow, which was set aside to pay for the additional environmental controls at the station as a result of a 2008 agreement between the city and GenOn.

“Today’s announcement is a path forward for both Alexandria and the power company that works for everybody, and truly reflects the interest of both parties,” said Alexandria’s Mayor William D. Euille. “Both the Alexandria City Council and community have worked extremely hard toward this goal, and we are very proud of the final result. This news strengthens Alexandria’s future and opens the door to an enhanced quality of life for our residents.”

Under the terms of the agreement, GenOn has agreed to retire the generating station by October 1, 2012, or, if the plant is needed beyond that date for reliability purposes, as soon as it is no longer needed.

The news comes in the wake of a report that the polluting plant isn’t necessary to meet the D.C. area’s energy needs. And as David Roberts has detailed, the site on the banks of the Potomac River could be reborn as something much better than a crappy old coal plant.

I visited the site in April with the National Wildlife Federation’s Joe Mendelson, using the GenOn facility as an example of a dirty coal plant that could go unregulated in the face of a government shutdown.

Considering how long Alexandria public health and environmental advocates have been fighting to close this dirty coal-fired power plant, and in one of America’s most coal-friendly states, this is a historic victory. A long list of elected officials and conservation groups, from Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) to the Sierra Club, deserve credit.

Related Links:

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View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

by Ben Strauss.

Cross-posted from Climate Central.

New York
City dodged a bullet with Irene, but big trouble passed more closely than most
people think. If the storm surge had
pushed New York Harbor about one inch higher, it could have been enough to
overcome some of Lower Manhattan’s outer defenses and flood the subway system, FDR
Drive, PATH, and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, if history is a guide.

At 8:42 a.m.
on Sunday morning, close to the peak of an unusually tall high tide, the water
reached 4.8 feet above the average high tide level, as measured by a gauge at the
Battery. It was the sixth-highest level
ever recorded for New York Harbor. The tallest
mark came in 1821, at 6.5 feet. The most
recent incident topping Irene was the December Nor’easter of 1992, which
reached about one inch higher at the Battery and caused enough area flooding to
shut down the entire subway system and PATH for several days. Unless the city has substantially raised its defenses,
4.8 feet put Irene in risky territory.

Lots of
things could have tipped the balance this time, but didn’t. If Irene had moved more quickly, or blown
more fiercely; if it had arrived about
12 hours earlier, during a slightly higher tide. But perhaps the most important element
shaping Irene’s outcome was the year it blew in.  

For more
than a century, sea level has been creeping up, about 16 inches since the Civil
War and still rising. If the great hurricane of 1821 had taken place today, it
would have reached about eight feet above the high tide line, obliterating all
records and a lot of infrastructure.

If Irene were
to repeat in 2021 instead of 2011, we could very likely be writing a different
story—because in 2021 the average sea level in New York Harbor will be an
inch or so higher than it is today, assuming trends continue. 

So why is sea
level rising? Mostly because of global warming, which is heating and expanding
ocean water, and collapsing glaciers and ice sheets. In New York, the land is also slowly sinking,
a few inches per century. 

Rising seas
are a process well under way, not mere speculation. The New York State Sea Level Rise Task Force recently
presented the legislature with metro area sea level rise projections of seven to 29
inches by mid-century, and 12 to 55 inches by the 2080s. The range of possibilities is largely due to uncertainty
around how rapidly the great polar ice sheets will decay.

Sea level
rise will amplify the impact of future hurricanes and Nor’easters. If we replay the 20th century, but
add an extra foot of sea level at the start (the extra foot we indeed started
with in 2000, compared to 1900), about six events would produce higher water
levels than the Nor’easter of 1992.

But this is
a very conservative estimate, because it assumes that sea level will rise this
century at the same pace it did last century—when in fact we expect much
more. If we crudely replay the 20th century, but add an extra two feet of
water at the start—overestimating floods early on but underestimating them
later—we would see about 30 critical events. 

This is how
coastal places everywhere will experience sea level rise: previously rare
floods will become common—soon—and the new rare floods will be outside of
anyone’s experience. It won’t be a
matter of just waking up one day to find the high tide at your doorstep.

New York City
workers piled sandbags on and around subway grates and other vulnerable areas. If Irene had crept much higher, these
measures might not have prevented major damage. 

The big
lessons from Irene: Invest in more significant defenses, and get a handle on
climate change. If not, we will be
measuring our future woes in feet, not inches.

Related Links:

Climate change makes hurricanes like Irene more destructive

Shining light on Obama’s tar sands pipeline decision

Here’s a quick roundup of the insane ways the right is reacting to Irene

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SIGA Cover Inc./Irvine, CA

In the following regions:
• California
• Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia (Canada)

Responsibilities:
• Developing a sales region (acquiring new customers, sales of our products)
• Advising architects and craftsmen off- and on-site
• Supporting existing and new building materialdistributors
• Organizing and conducting sales and training workshops
• Performing hands-on product training

Qualifications:
• Bachelor‘s or equivalent occupational degree
• Candidate must live within the local market
• 5 +years’ experience either in home building as a craftsman or selling high value products to homebuilders
• Architectural or building material sales experience beneficial
• Ability to learn new concepts of building envelope improvements and applying those concepts to current U.S. building standards
• Stable career history and interest in a long-term position
• Solid judgment and decision making skills,self-motivation, assertiveness
• Microsoft Office skills

Job Offer:
• Great upside potential in a growing builder’s market of energy efficient housing
• Independent and largely autonomous work from your home office if not on the road
• Extensive product and sales training overseas in Switzerland/Europe
• Base salary plus commission, company car,travel allowance and incentives
• Introduction to the latest technology in energy efficient home building

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