From: Climate Progress <jromm@americanprogress.org>
To: Start_Loving@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 1:03:46 PM
Subject: Climate Progress
Climate Progress |
- eSolar launches power tower concentrated solar thermal plant — live video cast today, 1 pm EDT
- Cash for Clunkers is a double economic stimulus that pays for itself quickly in oil savings while generating CO2 reductions for free
- 'Fragile compromise' of power plant CEOs in doubt as Senate debate approaches
- Newsweek's Science Editor explains why climate change is "even worse than we feared" and how "a consensus has developed during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear."
- Having taken Watts down, Sinclair takes on EPA's Alan Carlin in his latest Crock of the Week video
- South Korea, a 'developing' country, embraces 2020 emissions cap, with important implications for a global deal in Copenhagen
- NYT's Revkin persists in selling spin from long-wrong deniers that the IPCC overestimates the danger from warming, when the reverse is true
- Despite its many flaws, EIA analysis of climate bill finds 23 cents a day cost to families, massive retirement of dirty coal plants and 119 GW of new renewables by 2030 — plus a million barrels a day oil savings
| eSolar launches power tower concentrated solar thermal plant — live video cast today, 1 pm EDT Posted: 05 Aug 2009 09:17 AM PDT
Below is a fascinating video from a recent episode of National Geographic's World's Toughest Fixes: "In this episode, discover the engineering feats behind the development of the eSolar Sierra SunTower power plant." Of course, concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) aka solar baseload is indeed a core climate solution. I asked the company whether future systems will have storage — no reply yet. CSP with storage is going gangbusters elsewhere (see "World's largest solar plant with thermal storage to be built in Arizona — total of 8500 MW of this core climate solution planned for 2014 in U.S. alone"). Here is more detail on eSolar from its press release:
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| Posted: 05 Aug 2009 07:32 AM PDT Seth Borenstein, the AP science writer I admire greatly, has a long piece explaining that Cash for Clunkers is a very cost-ineffective way to save CO2. Duh*. "As a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, this "cash for clunkers" deal is probably among the least cost-effective uses of federal dollars one could imagine," as I wrote back in May. *BUT as a stimulus that saves oil while cutting CO2 for free — it has turned out to be a slam dunk, far better than I had expected. Indeed, Borenstein points out that "America will be using nearly 72 million fewer gallons of gasoline a year because of the program." At $3 a gallon — hardly what the price is likely to average over the next decade — that is $216 million a year in gasoline savings. So the billion dollar program pays the taxpayers back in oil savings in 5 years. That means the CO2 savings are for free! So quoting a cost of more CO2 saved at more than $100 a ton misses the point, I think. The primary purpose of the program was NOT CO2 savings. It certainly wasn't the primary reason the Center for American Progress put a (tougher) version of the idea forward back in November (see here). We saw it as an economic boost with efficiency and environmental gains (not just CO2 but urban air pollution). And it isn't how Obama described the program last week when he thanked the House for passing a $2 billion increase in funding:
The program has multiple benefits — and obviously we wouldn't even be doing it were we not in a major economic downturn that has crushed the auto industry. And it's hard to argue the program's stimulus benefits: And there is a second stimulus from the program. The majority of the $200+ million a year in gasoline savings would have left the country, since we import nearly 2/3 of our oil (and probably a higher fraction of marginal increases in oil use). Now that money stays in the pockets of consumers, who will save some of it and spend the rest of it, circulating most of the money in this country rather than overseas. As a CO2-saver only, sure, Cash for Clunkers wouldn't be a wise investment. And I understand the media's need to criticize everything, even the most successful-seeming government program. My father — a newspaper editor for 30 years — had a wall hanging (crocheted by my mother) over his desk that said, "Nothing can stand the light of day." Still, some ideas turn out better than anyone expected and deserve praise. This program stimulates the economy in two ways and helps a key industry in trouble while delivering multiple energy and environmental benefits that save the taxpayers more than the program cost. What more can you ask? | ||
| 'Fragile compromise' of power plant CEOs in doubt as Senate debate approaches Posted: 05 Aug 2009 06:42 AM PDT
So begins a long story in E&E Daily (subs. req'd) on one of the big, but little told stories of the compromise that gave us House passage of a climate and clean energy bill. The key point is that a deal was crafted that got utilities representing the overwhelming majority of US ratepayers to support the bill — or, in other cases, at least to not lobby against it. I suspect this will not be a bill-killer in the end and that most of the original deal will survive with some tweaking — since the disgruntled utilities aren't big and therefore could presumably be appeased with a pretty small shift in allocations. But for those who are interested in this important albeit complicated subject, I will excerpt the E&E story at length below with comments:
True, but the small size of the disgruntled utilities does mean that only a modest tweak in the deal should be needed to satisfy them.
Well, Nelson has no bargaining power since he ain't gonna vote for the final bill. But it might be worth giving him something IF he would agree to vote for cloture.
Well, it's big to them — but it is peanuts in the grand scope of the bill, maybe 0.1% of the allowances.
Note that Buffett's MidAmerican made some bad decisions that they hope to use this bill to fix (see "Why Warren Buffett Is Wrong About Cap and Trade"). | ||
| Posted: 05 Aug 2009 05:17 AM PDT
So writes Newsweek's Sharon Begley in one of the most thoughtful climate pieces ever to appear in a major national publication. She makes the very case I did in my recent post (except without the hyperlinks — the Achilles Heel of MSM science writing). For more on the International Polar Year, see The IPY: "Arctic sea ice will probably not recover" and their website. The Begley piece is so outstanding — and so rare — I'm going to reprint it below:
Greenland disappear? How is that possible? That would be 15 to 20 feet of sea level rise by itself — just what "alarmists" like Nobelist Gore and James Hansen and Climate Progress have been saying for years. With that kind of flooding, there won't be any beaches left for sharks to attack humans on. Since Begley asked for it (well, maybe not this version), let's cue the music: | ||
| Having taken Watts down, Sinclair takes on EPA's Alan Carlin in his latest Crock of the Week video Posted: 05 Aug 2009 05:10 AM PDT Related Posts:
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| Posted: 04 Aug 2009 06:01 PM PDT This guest post is by Julian L. Wong and Dan Sanchez at the Center for American Progress. South Korea may not be outdoing the United States' clean energy commitments yet, but it has just announced intentions to adopt a 2020 emissions cap, the first developing (non-Annex I) country to do so. Reuters explains:
One might argue if South Korea is really a developing country—it is considered one under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was adopted in 1992, but was in 1996 subsequently admitted to the OECD, which is usually thought of as a club of the rich countries. One might also question the choice of a 2005 baseline rather than 1990, which all the targets in the Kyoto Protocol are keyed to. The reasoning behind the choice of a 2005 baseline is obvious from the quote above, which explains that South Korea's emissions have risen steeply in the years since 1990. The result is that none of the three choices will result in reductions from a 1990 level. Nevertheless, the symbolic significance of the announcement cannot be overstated–South Korea is the first non-Annex I country to indicate that it will adopt quantifiable emissions targets for 2020. While the article notes that South Korea's commitment could be "voluntary," the 2020 timeframe suggests that the country may be open to a binding emissions cap in the December round of international climate talks in Copenhagen, where a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, will be negotiated and likely to cover the period of 2013 through 2020. Why is South Korea doing this? There are at least three reasons why South Korea is being proactive on climate action. First, there is an economic stimulus motivation. This announcement comes on the heels of a recently reported "Green New Deal" that South Korea's President Lee Myung-Bak has been campaigning for. That effort will spend $85 Billion, or nearly 2 percent of Korea's GDP, over the next five years on initiatives that will encourage energy efficiency, renewable energy including solar and wind power, carbon credit trading, hybrid cars and biofuels. The desired outcome, according to FT, is that this spending will create 1.56 to 1.81 million new jobs, and "for South Korea to become the world's seventh most competitive country by 2020 in terms of energy efficiency." Second is energy security. South Korea is the world's second largest LNG importer, and the world's sixth largest petroleum importer. Given the country's heavy reliance on such fossil fiels it has also embraced several innovative technologies to achieve such a transition:
Third, the Reuters article mentions Korea's fear of 'climate tariffs' as one reason it has embraced this policy (See here):
Implications for Copenhagen South Korea's announcement has several implications for international climate negotiations. It suggests that the increasingly artificial distinction between Annex I and non-Annex I countries may be starting to break down. At the very least, it points to the notion that a purely binary categorization between the "developed" and "developing" countries is starting to evolve into a framework that can differentiate between various degrees of development. Just as importantly, South Korea's plan creates a model for how more industrialized developing countries might commit to global climate action—setting a pathway for a slow down in growth of emissions that eventually peaks at some future point, and then declines. This adds pressure to the likes of Mexico, which like South Korea, is classified as a non-Annex I country under the UNFCCC, but was subsequently admitted to the OECD in 1994. Indeed, Reuters is separately reporting that a senior Mexican environmental policy maker has indicated plans for Mexico to "put a detailed offer to cut the growth of its own greenhouse gas emissions on the negotiating table … in Copenhagen this year." Mexico has already previously announced voluntary goals to reduce carbon emissions by 8% by 2012 from 2002 levels, and to launch a carbon emissions trading scheme by 2012, so there is good reason to believe in Mexico's stated intentions. If South Korea and Mexico are the first non-Annex I countries which decide to play ball, which other transition economies will start to feel the heat to follow suit? Costa Rica has made some overtures to becoming "carbon neutral" (thought what that means and how serious they are is uncertain) by 2021. What about Singapore? Or South Africa? If we go down the list of relatively industrialized "developing" countries, how far down do we have to go before we reach Brazil or China? In addition to asking which other non-Annex I countries are "gettable" for a global deal, we should hone in on the question of how we are going to "get" them. To what extent can the same combination of economic opportunity, energy security benefits and fear of carbon tariffs be used as leverage to encourage other non-Annex I countries to commit to emissions targets? What about highlighting the co-benefits to public health of reducing other harmful air pollution like SOx and NOx in addition to CO2 reduction? It is certainly the case that developing countries would likely want to act on each of these different drivers for climate action, but stop short of wanting to frame those actions in terms of hard targets for quantified emissions reductions. China, with its ambitious commitments to energy efficiency and renewable energy is just such a country that sees the value in diversifying energy supply, creating new innovative industries and improving both the bottom line and public health through more efficient use of fossil energy, but is unwilling to commit to absolute carbon emissions to solve a problem it genuinely and understandably sees as being caused by the West. Perhaps an approach that quantifies the unilateral domestic green actions of developing countries in terms of effective emissions reductions, and that aggregates those reductions into a single figure that serves as a virtual "cap" that can be compared to caps from Annex I countries is one way to "get" the other non-Annex I countries on board. The Center for American Progress has previously described such a concept as the "carbon cap equivalents" approach, which could be just the mechanism the world needs to accelerate the shift away from a binary understanding of developed-versus-developing countries that is outdated and divorced from the reality, and that acknowledges the far greater diversity of development amongst the world's nations and their corresponding capacity to address climate change. Such a shift does not only not repudiate the concept of "common but differentiated responsibilities," but adds depth to its meaning because we are effectively calling for increased differentiation amongst countries, especially in the non-Annex I block. | ||
| Posted: 04 Aug 2009 03:13 PM PDT
Ah, journalistic "balance," how scientifically — and morally — inappropriate you have become. And quoting Long Wrong Christy? Say it ain't so. The above excerpt comes from the front page of today's NYT's "Science Times" section in a piece titled, "Nobel Halo Fades Fast for Climate Change Panel," by our old friend Andy Revkin. Now one can objectively accuse the IPCC of many things, but overestimating or overselling the threat of global warming is just not one of them. Quite the reverse. The world's emission path this decade quickly soared higher than their worst case-scenario (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: "Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised" — 1000 ppm). The IPCC has focused on a wide range of emissions scenarios without clearly explaining to the public the unmitigated catastrophe that faces us on the business as usual path:
As Dr. Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice for the Met Office's Hadley Centre explains on their website (here):
Instead of such clarity, the IPCC provides this sort of gobbledygook to the public and policymakers in its 2007 Fourth Assessment:
Oh yeah, Andy, that's "playing down levels of uncertainty about the severity of global warming." The IPCC's blather makes it easy for journalists and deniers and anyone else who wants to downplay the results to focus on the low scenarios — without any indication whatsoever of the massive amount of clean energy the world would have to accelerate into the marketplace to get into B1. In fact, we're headed toward 800 to 1000 ppm on our current emissions path — which Revkin knows — and the IPCC has few if any analyses of what that would mean for humanity, probably because most scientists simply can't believe humanity would be so stupid as to destroy the basis of its own civilization: A livable climate. Why does the IPPC lowball likely warming? Despite its claim of including "new information regarding the nature of feedbacks from the carbon cycle," virtually none of the IPCC models used in the 2007 report model most (if any) of the following positive, amplifying feedbacks:
Even Hadley's model only includes only or two of those. The IPCCs sea level rise estimate was so lowballed, so instantly out-of-date, that even the uber-lowballers of the Bush administration were forced to concede a mere one year later that the IPCC numbers were simply too out of date to be quoted anymore: Far from cherry-picking the scariest studies, the IPCC's policy of shutting down scientific input long before the writing begins and their consensus-based writing process means the reports are basically dead on arrival. Here's what we know about SLR now from the literature:
But the IPCC is too slow and unwieldy to even issue on updated report on any of these subjects. I do agree with part of Revkin's analysis — the part that warns the IPCC is becoming irrelevant. As I noted in April ("Has the IPCC rendered itself irrelevant?"), you can go to their website and learn: 2014? How useless is that? While glacial change may no longer be an apt term for what is actually happening to the world's glaciers, it is an ironically apt term for what has happened to the IPCC. Originally the IPCC's assessments of the state of understanding of the science were going to be every 5 years, then that slid to every 6 years, and now we are apparently at 7 years between reports. Pathetic for them. Tragic for us. Well, it would be tragic if the reports weren't so lame, so easily spun by deniers. And speaking of deniers, why is anyone still quoting John Christy these days? Isn't there any exception in the journalistic handbook for people who have been willfully wrong for so damn long. Christy, of course, is one of the nation's few remaining seriously credentialed deniers (or, more accurately, a delayer, inactivist, and denier-eq), who has arguably been wrong longer than any other serious denier-eq and thus deserves our inattention and scorn (see "Should you believe anything John Christy and Roy Spencer say?"). [A denier-eq is someone who pretends to accept the science as laid out by the IPCC, but who advances arguments and policy proposals that are no different from those who deny the science.] Is there any objective source in the world who might inform our opinion of Christy? Yes. In the Vermont case on the state's effort to embrace California's tailpipe GHG emissions standards, the car companies brought in Christy as an expert witness to rebut NASA's James Hansen (see here). In one footnote on the sea level rise issue, the judge noted, "it appears that the bulk of scientific opinion opposes Christy's position." By the way, for all you deniers/delayers/doubters/denier-eqs, let me quote further from the judge:
Christy is (mostly) a delayer or denier-eq these days, now that his denier disanalysis has been dissed and the real science is well verified by real observation. Indeed, Christy was wrong — dead wrong — for a very long time, which created one of the most enduring denier myths, that the satellite data didn't show the global warming that the surface temperature data did. As RealClimate wrote last year:
Amazingly (or not), the "serial errors in the data analysis" all pushed the (mis)analysis in the same, wrong direction. Coincidence? You decide. But I find it hilarious that the deniers and delayers still quote Christy/Spencer/UAH analysis lovingly, but to this day dismiss the "hockey stick" and anything Michael Mann writes, when his analysis was in fact vindicated by the august National Academy of Sciences in 2006 (see New Scientist's "Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong"). The Vermont judge concluded:
Can't the media be as objective as a judge? UPDATE: A commentor makes the point that Revkin pits environmentalists saying the IPCC is watered down vs. scientists who say it oversells the threat. Ironically Revkin quotes a top scientist, Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, in his piece on a secondary issue — "psychological and sociological research on how people act in the face of uncertain but substantial threats" when Field has been one of the most outspoken scientists on how the threat is much more dire than the IPCC says (see "AAAS: Climate change is coming much harder, much faster than predicted").
UPDATE 2: A reader emails me about the NYT headline, "Nobel Halo Fades Fast for Climate Change Panel," noting that in November 2007, the right-wing American Thinker wrote a piece beginning:
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| Posted: 04 Aug 2009 01:31 PM PDT Let's set aside for the moment that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) doesn't fully model the House climate and clean energy bill — they utterly ignore a major cost containment provision and the clean energy bank, while underestimating likely efficiency gains. The EIA analysis, "Energy Market and Economic Impacts of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009," still finds that the average cost to households from 2012 to 2030 (discounted) is $83! A fact sheet can be found here. As The Hill wrote in "EIA says costs of climate bill modest at first":
Reuters reports that EIA finds the clean energy bill would "increase the energy costs of the average family by $142 a year in 2020 and by $583 in 2030," adding:
In fact, the only reason the energy costs rise so much in 2030 compared to 2025 is that the allowance distribution to regulated utilities phases out after 2025. While the EIA is stuck in a relatively rigid analysis and reporting methodology, in the real world, the increased auction revenues would be given back to consumers, which would again offset their increased energy costs with tax cuts. So while energy costs might jump post-2050, net impacts on consumers would not. The EIA projects an allowance price of $32 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent in 2020 — about double what EPA and I project and 50% higher than CBO's projection. Very unlikely. The EIA has historically lowballed the prospects for energy efficiency, and here again they find a total drop in energy use under the climate bill of only about 3% in 2020 (3 quadrillion BTUs) and 6% in 2030 (6.5 quads). According to the EPA analysis of the bill, Waxman-Markey lowers demand 7 quads in 2020 compared to business as usual, and 10.4 quads in 2030 (see "New EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency — plus 22 GW of extra coal retirements and no new dirty plants"). That is similar to what the the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) calculates for the savings from W-M's efficiency provisions — 5 quads saved in 2020 and 12.3 quads in 2030 (see "The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030"). If EIA had a decent model of energy efficiency, and if they had calculated the tax reduction from returning auction allowances back to consumers, I am quite certain that they would have again found the net cost to American families of close to a postage stamp a day even in 2030. Even with all its flaws, the "total discounted GDP losses over the 2012 to 2030 time period" are a whopping 0.2%, which is pretty much what every major analysis of climate action finds ("Intro to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar"). EIA has some interesting findings of the bill's impact on how we use energy. Even though they lowball energy efficiency — and don't even model Obama's big fuel economy deal in their main case — they find a savings in liquid fuel use in 2030 of some 320 million barrels, nearly 900,000 barrels of oil a day. EIA finds that under W-M
The fact sheet notes:
Whether that is good news to you or not, it does suggest that the Senate bill doesn't need to put many nuclear incentives into the bill. New renewable capacity added from 2007 through 2030 under the bill is 119 GW — 38 GW higher than in the reference case. Two final points. First, EIA didn't even bother trying to model W-M's strategic reserve, which presumably would have helped lower costs. My guess is that it was just too darn complicated for them to figure out. It needs changing. Second, like EPA (but unlike CBO), the EIA concludes that large numbers of international offsets will be purchased in the early years, which simply defies logic. Since the EIA lowballs efficiency and fuel switching to natural gas in the bill, they overestimate allowance costs and hence offset purchases. Mysteriously, the EIA notes:
They never specify what recent analysis, but it is suspiciously similar to my conclusion here: "I doubt even 150 million tons of offsets will be used by emitters in 2020." Since I haven't seen anyone else use a similar 150 MMT figure, I guess EIA reads my blog, even if they ignore its conclusions. The bottom line: Yet another analysis makes clear the House climate and clean energy bill would dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the clean energy transition at a very low cost. And this from an independent, nonpartisan agency known for underestimating the potential and overestimating the cost of clean energy. |
Watch eSolar's launch live 
Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea how bad it was," and "reality is well ahead of the climate models." Yet in speaking to researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying harbingers of something that you really, really wish would go away.| You are subscribed to email updates from Climate Progress To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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