Saturday, August 8, 2009

Climate Progress


Climate Progress


Breaking: GOP Sen. Martinez to resign

Posted: 07 Aug 2009 09:43 AM PDT

Florida 2107Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida said Friday he will resign from the Senate as soon as a replacement can be appointed, leaving the seat more than a year before his term ends.

Probably not positive news for the climate and clean energy bill.  Martinez was, according to fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver, only a 6.89% "Probability of a Yes Vote" (see "Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?") — but most political honchos I know put him at a straight "undecided."  That said, we have no idea who his replacement will be …

His decision puts Republican Gov. Charlie Crist — who is running to replace Martinez — in charge of filling the seat in the interim….

… his resignation will be "effective on a successor taking office to fill out the remainder of my term."

Officials predicted that Crist, who faces a Republican primary challenge and a large field of Democratic contenders, would select a "placeholder" for the temporary assignment.

… except that he or she will be a placeholder chosen by one of the more climate-friendly GOP governors (see "Florida, Part 1: A 50% GHG cut by 2025 will SAVE the state $28 billion").

So that person will be relatively free to vote their conscience on the single most important public decision that person will ever makes in their entire life, the one they'll be remembered by for generations and generations to come — whether to try to save Florida from utter destruction.

The top 5 ways the 'birthers' are like the deniers

Posted: 07 Aug 2009 08:27 AM PDT

The people who refuse to accept the reality that President Obama was born in the United States share much in common with those who refuse to accept the reality that humans are dramatically changing the climate.

5.  Both groups are impervious to the evidence. During the campaign, "Obama released a certification of live birth, which is the official document you get if you ask Hawaii for a copy of your birth certificate," as Salon explains.  Further, "state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii."  Politico labels this "seemingly incontrovertible evidence."  Similarly, the reality of human-caused warming has been overwhelmingly demonstrated and affirmed by the peer-reviewed literature, the hundreds of scientists who review and report on that literature periodically as part of the IPCC process and the more than 100 world governments (including the Bush Administration) who approved the 2007 IPCC summary reports word for word (see "Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report: Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly" and "Can you PROVE to me that global warming is being caused by mankind?"*).

4.  Both come from the same group of people. The NYT explained that the birther movement "first took root among some staunchly conservative elements."  As Politico notes, "A whopping 58 percent of Republicans either think Barack Obama wasn't born in the US (28 percent) or aren't sure (30 percent)."  And it is conservatives and Republicans who make up the overwhelming majority of those who question climate science (see "The Deniers are winning, but only with the GOP").

3.  Both group get their disinformation from the same right-wing sources. The NYT wrote on June 24 that "Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country's most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama "has yet to have to prove that he's a citizen." "  Similarly, Limbaugh tells his listeners things like, "Despite the hysterics of a few pseudo-scientists, there is no reason to believe in global warming."

2.  Both groups have an underlying motivation — their desire to obstruct progressive government action. The birthers, of course, are trying to delegitimize Obama, to block his entire reform agenda.  NYT science reporter Andy Revkin noted about one huge conference of global warming deniers, "The one thing all the attendees seem to share is a deep dislike for mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gases."  As I explain at length in my book, a central reason that conservatives and libertarians reject the scientific understanding of human-caused climate change is that they simply cannot stand the solution.

1.  Both groups believe in a mammoth conspiracy theory.  The birthers not only believe that Obama's birth documents are forged and that current Hawaii state officials are lying about them.  They have to believe in a conspiracy dating back five decades, as Salon explains:  two Hawaiian newspapers carried announcements of Obama's birth in August 1961. (Read the Honolulu Advertiser's item from Aug. 13, 1961, nine days after Obama's birth, here.)….  The truth, though, is that the notices are even stronger pieces of evidence than that. Obama's family didn't place them — Hawaii did, as it does for all births. The announcements were based on official records sent to the papers by the state's Department of Health."

Deniers like Senator James Inhofe (R-OIL) or Anthony Watts proudly assert or repeat statements like "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American public" or "the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind" [see "Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome (ASS)"].  That hoax would require complicity among thousands of climate scientists, all of the leading scientific journals, the National Academies of Science around the world (including ours) and every major U.S. scientific organization (see "Yet more scientists call for deep GHG cuts").  Such statements accuses every major government, including ours, of participating in that conspiracy, since they all sign off on every word in the Assessment Report summaries.

The differences between the birthers and the deniers, however, are bigger than the similarities.  The birthers are relatively harmless, the mainstream media has mostly debunked them and relegated them to a side show.  The deniers, however, still get regular play in the MSM and are far, far more dangerous.  If enough Americans, opinion makers, and policymakers continue to listen to the deniers message of delay, delay, delay, we will destroy a livable climate, ruining the health and well-being of the next 50 generations to walk the planet.

The birthers are stuck in the past.  The deniers want to destroy the future.

Unemployment rate drops for first time in 15 months

Posted: 07 Aug 2009 06:39 AM PDT

Employers throttled back on layoffs in July, cutting just 247,000 jobs, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent, its first decline in 15 months. It was a better-than-expected showing that offered a strong signal that the recession is finally ending.

It may not be fair, but the likelihood of climate legislation passing the Senate in November (or later) depends critically on such seemingly unrelated matters as whether the Senate can pass health care reform and what the state of the economy is.  So the latest job report — along with other recent economic news like the better-than-expected GDP report from Monday — is a big deal:

The new snapshot, released by the Labor Department on Friday, also offered other encouraging news: workers' hours nudged up after sinking to a record low in June, and paychecks grew after having fallen or flat lined in some cases.

To be sure, the report still indicates that the jobs market is on shaky ground. But the new figures were better than many analysts were expecting and offered welcomed improvements to a part of the economy that has been clobbered by the recession.

We've till got a long way to go to dig ourselves out of the economic hole abyss Bush-Cheney put us in, but we appear to have bottomed — thanks in part to the stimulus — and I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to get 60 votes for ending the inevitable and immoral conservative filibuster the Senate will need to overcome to pass the climate and clean energy bill.

Is this the fastest rebuttal of a denier study in history?

Posted: 06 Aug 2009 06:40 PM PDT

The deniers have been trumpeting an atrocious study that made it into the July 23 edition of Journal of Geophysical Research, "Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature."  The top anti-scientific blog, WattsUpWithThat crowed, "Surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean":

A new peer-reviewed climate study is presenting a head on challenge to man-made global warming claims.

But let's not waste time quoting that "atrocious paper," as RealClimate puts it, with a couple of debunking links here.  The occasional atrocious denier paper sometimes makes it through the peer-reviewed process.  What's truly remarkable here is that some of the top climate scientists in the country already have a response submitted for publication in JGR — see full article here.

Last year saw "A new Olympic record for retraction of a denier talking point," but this would seem to be some sort of a world record for scientific rebuttal.

The 9 (!) rebuttal authors span the globe from Japan to the UK to New Zealand to Colorado and New York, reading like a who's who of global climate science:  G. Foster, J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, B. Mullan, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, and K. E. Trenberth.  Here's the abstract:

McLean et al. [2009] (henceforth MFC09) claim that the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as represented by the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), accounts for as much as 72% of the global tropospheric temperature anomaly (GTTA) and an even higher 81% of this anomaly in the tropics. They conclude that the SOI is a "dominant and consistent influence on mean global temperatures," "and perhaps recent trends in global temperatures". However, their analysis is incorrect in a number of ways, and greatly overstates the influence of ENSO on the climate system. This comment first briefly reviews what is understood about the influence of ENSO on global temperatures, then goes on to show that the analysis of MFC09 severely overestimates the correlation between temperature anomalies and the SOI by inflating the power in the 2–6 year time window while filtering out variability on longer and shorter time scales. It is only because of this faulty analysis that they are able to claim such extremely high correlations. The suggestion in their conclusions that ENSO may be a major contributor to recent trends in global temperature is not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in that paper, especially as the analysis method itself eliminates the influence of trends on the purported correlations.

Ouch!  One wonders how MFC09 made it through peer review in the first place.  JGR really, really screwed up.  Here is the conclusion of Foster et al.:

It has been well known for many years that ENSO is associated with significant variability in global mean temperatures on interannual timescales. However, this relationship (which, contrary to the claim of MFC09, is simulated by global climate models, e.g. Santer et al. [2001]) cannot explain temperature trends on decadal and longer time scales. The analysis of MFC09 grossly overstates the influence of ENSO, primarily by filtering out any signal on decadal and longer time scales. Their method of analysis is a priori incapable of addressing the question of causes of long-term climate change. In fact, the general rise in temperatures over the 2nd half of the 20th century is very likely predominantly due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [IPCC, 2007].

Doh.  Or is that Duh?

Either way, this won't silence the deniers — since they are not persuadable by evidence (see "Can you PROVE to me that global warming is being caused by mankind?"*).  But everyone else can rest assured that the scientific process works itself out, 99 peer-reviewed papers out of 100 make clear humans are already changing the climate, and, tragically, the threat to the health and well-being of the next 50 generations posed by human-generated emissions of GHGs remains unabated.

Very big hat tip to Andy Revkin (his twitter comments are here) for sending me the link to Foster et al.

China softens climate rhetoric, commits to emissions peak (again), shows flexibility on Western reductions

Posted: 06 Aug 2009 05:19 PM PDT

This guest post is by Julian L. Wong and Austin Davis at the Center for American Progress.

Multiple news outlets have been reporting that yesterday's news conference with China's top climate change ambassador, Yu Qingtai, marked a significant departure from China's established attitudes toward climate change. He also expressed a degree flexibility regarding China's previous demands that developed nations pledge to reduce their carbon emissions 40% by 2020 from 1990 levels at Copenhagen this December.

It's true: Wednesday's conference provided a more explicit explanation of China's position on climate change than had been offered previously. Yu reaffirmed China's commitment to eventually reducing its carbon emissions while giving more specific details as to China's position on the Copenhagen talks.

Great quotes like "there is no one in the world who is more keen than us to see China reach its emissions peak as early as possible" may have caused a stir among the western media, but this is not really news.

Influential Chinese scholars have been pushing for a peaking pathway for some time now. Hu Angang, a public policy professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and a prominent policy adviser for the Chinese government, has advocated for China to aim for a peaking of carbon emissions in 2030, while He Jiankun, deputy head of the State Council's Expert Panel on Climate Change Policy has projected that China's emissions are more likely to peak at 2035.  Similarly, a report (executive summary in Chinese only) by one of the most influential Chinese government think tanks, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has called for peaking between 2030 and 2040.

And just last month, China officially committed itself to establish a pathway for peaking by signing off on the July 9th Declaration of the Leaders of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which stated that "The peaking of global and national emissions should take place as soon as possible." While the relevant provision lacks a timetable and is laden with the caveat of the "overriding priorities in developing countries", the MEF declaration provides precedent for Yu's comments on emissions peaking.

So, what are the practical implications of China's new climate-engaged rhetoric? While they're opening two new coal plants per week, the Chinese are using the low energy demand caused by the recent recession as an opportunity to shut down their less efficient coal plants and replace them with some of the most efficient in the industry. Meanwhile, China has been making sincere investment and policy efforts to support clean energy technologies (see "China Begins Its Transition to a Clean-Energy Economy").

Yu stopped short of explicitly recanting China's previous demands for developed countries to cut 40% of their emissions by 2020:

Asked whether China had abandoned a demand for a 40 percent cut in rich nation emissions by 2020, Yu said that a target for developed countries should be agreed in the talks.

"As the developed countries have a historical responsibility for climate change, they should continue to implement large emissions cuts after 2012," Yu said.

"A concrete figure has to be decided by the negotiations; we will get a result in Copenhagen," he said, but added Beijing still considered the 40 percent sought by developing countries in previous talks a "fair and rational" target.

So while Yu maintained the developing world's rhetorical virulence against the historical climate injustices committed by the developed world, it seems clear that China's push for a real climate deal by the end of the year is to be taken seriously.

What is interesting about these new statements by Yu, which portray an increased willingness to engage in the international climate process, is how they coincide with recent actions of two fellow non-Annex I (or "developing") countries.  Earlier this week, South Korea surprised the world by pledging to set a 2020 carbon emissions target, while Mexico announced that it will offer a substantive plan to cut greenhouse gases for developing countries at Copenhagen. As the first non-Annex I countries endorsing a capping of emissions, South Korea and Mexico show that the developing world is paying attention to climate change even when many in America prefer not to (see "South Korea, a 'developing' country, embraces 2020 emissions cap, with important implications for a global deal in Copenhagen").

The media has missed a broader story — The shift in tenor of these major non-Annex I countries, as reflected in these announcements, should offer pause to the pessimists who think that the impasse between the developed and the developing world in reaching a global deal in Copenhagen is insurmountable.

Is a 4-day workweek inevitable? Utah cuts energy use 13%

Posted: 06 Aug 2009 04:07 PM PDT

Closing Utah state offices on Fridays has resulted in a 13 percent reduction in energy use according to an internal analysis of the nation's most expansive four-day workweek program.

Since last August, about 17,000 of the state's 24,000 executive branch employees have been working 10 hours a day, four days a week in an effort to reduce energy consumption and cut utility costs….

The state estimates that, collectively, employees will save between $5 million and $6 million annually by not commuting on Fridays and the initiative will cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 12,000 metric tons.

Even before we get desperate about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, even before the global Ponzi scheme collapses, gasoline prices are going to blow past $4 a gallon (see World's top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery: "We have to leave oil before oil leaves us").  So it seems inevitable that much of the nation will adopt the 4-day work week sometime over the next two decades — especially if the results of Utah's program are replicated by others.

"I can't even name all the places that have called us," said John Harrington, state energy manager.

Aaron Newton in an Oil Drum post, estimates that a national 4-day work week would save 5% to 10% of the more than 8 million barrels a day he calculates that U.S. commuters use.  And he notes there would be other environmental and health benefits

A recent study by the California EPA says "50% of a person's daily exposure to ultra fine particles (the particles linked to cardiovascular disease and respiratory illnesses) can occur during a commute." A report by the Clean Air Task Force in 2007 found diesel particle levels were between 4 to 8 times higher in commute vehicles than in the surrounding air. It makes sense when you think about it. The pollution coming from the tailpipe of a vehicle is mostly likely to affect you while you're sitting directly behind it, especially if you're stuck in slow moving traffic where the concentrations of such particles can build up.

Scientific American quotes John Langmaid, who is organizing an upcoming symposium on the issue for the Connecticut Law Review:

"If employees are on the road 20 percent less, and office buildings are only powered four days a week," Langmaid says, "the energy savings and congestion savings would be enormous." Plus, the hour shift for the Monday through Thursday workers means fewer commuters during the traditional rush hours, speeding travel for all. It also means less time spent idling in traffic and therefore less spewing of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. The 9-to-5 crowd also gets the benefit of extended hours at the DMV and other state agencies that adopt the four-day schedule.

And outgoing Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman explains "the cost savings will only grow if the four-day workweek is granted permanent status":

He says that's because the state could renegotiate its long-term leases, invest in equipment that would isolate cooling and heating to where its needed on nights and weekends and that utility costs will inevitably rise in future years, particularly if a proposed cap and trade system on carbon emissions is put in place.

And the folks in Utah seem to like it:

Employee surveys have also shown that most state workers like the new schedule — absenteeism and overtime are down and customer complaints have steadily dropped. Even wait times at the Department of Motor Vehicles have decreased under extended hours Monday through Thursday….

Some employees like the four-day workweek so much that they're using a voluntary peer pressure network to help the program meets its cost-saving, energy-cutting goals to help ensure the program — and employees' three-day weekends — survive.

Seems inevitable, no?

And the lighter side, from My25percent.com:

4-day work week

h/t TNR

Tony Blair, Climate Group, and CAP call for strong technology deployment policy driven by a carbon price, innovative financing, and serious technology standards

Posted: 06 Aug 2009 03:02 PM PDT

Tony Blair and the Climate Group have written an excellent report, "Breaking the Climate Deadlock: Technology for a Low Carbon Future (PDF)."

While they endorse strong investment in technology development — as the Center for American Progress (CAP) and virtually everyone else does — it is squarely focused on the crucial role that strong government regulations and standards play in achieving the rapid technology deployment needed to meet key 2020 greenhouse gas targets.  And it endorses a strong carbon price — as CAP and virtually all serious independent groups do (with a few strange exceptions) — as a necessary means of achieving emissions reductions sufficient to preserve a livable climate.

Let's start with Blair's detailed strategy for achieving significant global emissions reductions in 2020 — which is the cornerstone of any real plan to avert catastrophic global warming.  Here is the first conclusion from the executive summary:

1.We know the technologies we need, where to deploy them and the investment required.

To put ourselves on a path to meet our emissions goals, we need to reduce global emissions by 19 Gigatonnes (Gt) in 2020 and energy-related emissions by 48 Gt by 2050. In addition to slowing and eventually halting deforestation, the global roadmap for technology development and deployment must focus on four key sectors:

• Power: Approximately 38% of total savings to 2050. Renewable energy, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), nuclear power and biomass will all be critical areas.

• Transport: Approximately 26% of total savings to 2050. Key technologies include electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, improved efficiency and current and next generation biofuels.

• Buildings: Approximately 17% of total savings to 2050. Key technologies include improved efficiency in building appliances.

• Industry: Approximately 19% of total savings to 2050. Key technologies include CCS for industrial processes, and industrial motor systems.

The total required annual average investment to scale technology up to the required level is approximately $1 trillion between now and 2050. This is equivalent to 40% of global infrastructure investment or 1.4% of GDP . But much of this investment displaces business as usual spending on high-carbon alternatives and so the incremental cost of additional
investment is much smaller. Estimates suggest that a global incremental cost of additional investment of approximately $317bn annually in 2015, rising to $811bn in 2030, is required with an oil price of $60 per barrel. But if the oil price rises to $120 per barrel, this will reduce the cost by $700bn annually – making the incremental additional cost over the period very small or even zero.

The key point is that direct government funding can't possibly be the primary source of this enormous investment, as I've argued repeatedly (see "The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill").  And that's why Blair's second conclusion is one I've made many times:

2. The technologies required to meet our 2020 goals are already proven, available now and the policies needed to implement them known.

Over 70% of the reductions needed by 2020 can be achieved by investing in three areas: increasing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation and using lower-carbon energy sources, including nuclear and renewables. We also know that by implementing just seven proven policies these reductions can be delivered:

• Renewable energy standards: Regulation to require or feed-in tariffs to stimulate an increased production of energy from renewable sources, in particular wind and solar, could deliver 2.1 Gt of savings.

• Industry efficiency: Improved motors and other efficiency gains could deliver 2.4Gt of savings.

• Building codes: Improving standards for new build and modernising existing building stock could save 1.3 Gt.

• Vehicle efficiency standards: Driving up standards for vehicle efficiency could save 0.4 Gt.

• Fuel carbon content standards: Reducing the carbon content of fuels could lead to 0.3 Gt of savings.

• Appliance standards: Increasing the energy efficiency of white goods and other appliances could reduce emissions by 0.3 Gt.

• Policies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD ): could deliver close to 9 Gt of reductions. All seven policies have already been successfully implemented in countries around the world but need scaling up.  While cap and trade systems or other means of creating a carbon price can help provide incentives for businesses to invest in low-carbon solutions, in the short term at least, it is these seven policy measures and direct action and investment by governments that will achieve the targets.

Of course, that is precisely why the climate and clean energy bill passed by the House contains virtually every one of these provisions — except the vehicle and fuel standards, which Obama and Congress have dealt with separately.  Yes, the RES is too weak and should be strengthened — as CAP, for one, is trying to do — but the efficiency codes and standards and the REDD funding in the bill are tremendous.  As, of course, are Obama's vehicle efficiency standards (see "Obama to raise new car fuel efficiency standard to 39 mpg by 2016 — The biggest step the U.S. government has ever taken to cut CO2").

Bottom Line:  If you want the kind of fast climate action the climate crisis demands, you must combine aggressive government technology standards with a shrinking carbon cap that drives a rising carbon price.

In the long term, of course, you need steady technology advances plus a pretty high price for CO2.  As the Blair reports states:

The pathway for future technologies is clear. We need a global focus on four key sectors: power, transport, buildings and industry. We need to balance mid-term reduction with long-term investment. We need to create a global carbon price to leverage private sector action and provide public support to overcome market failures. The cost is realistic and affordable and will help drive future growth and job creation. The key to success will be finding the political will to make this happen.

How high a CO2 price?  The Blair report doesn't say explicitly, but if you read the report you'll see they rely heavily on the International Energy Agency's analysis:

The International Energy Agency's (IEA) BLUE Map Scenario suggests that 48 Gt of CO2 savings will be required by 2050.

The IEA is also the group that concluded "The total required annual average investment to scale technology up to the required level is approximately $1 trillion between now and 2050." Again that kind investment can only come from the private sector.

Also the marginal cost of CO2 — what the allowance price would have to rise to — is at least $200 a ton in the BLUE Map scenario, if the key technologies advance to the point where they are sufficiently cost-effective (otherwise the price could be much higher).  The IEA's good news is that:

… the average cost of the technologies needed for BLUE Map is much lower than the marginal, in the range of USD 38 to USD 117 per tonne of CO2 saved.

That's right, if the aggressive technology strategy turns out more successful than not, the average price of CO2 emissions reductions might be as low as $38/ton of CO2 in the 450 ppm case.  But there is no escape from a high marginal cost, a high permit price, certainly above $100 a ton, if you want to have a shot at avoiding catastrophic global warming.  You can read more about the IEA study here:

So I think the Blair report is another important contribution to climate policy — one that looks very consistent with everything the Center for American progress has argued.  You need a carbon price mechanism like cap-and-trade, one that ultimately leads to a serious carbon price post-2020.  But for near-term emissions reductions, you can combine a modest carbon price with strong government regulations and standards.

[And yes, I am aware that The Breakthrough Institute has utterly misrepresented the findings of this report and recent work by CAP.  What else is new?]

NSIDC: Arctic ice melts quickly through July

Posted: 06 Aug 2009 10:38 AM PDT

NSIDC July

Arctic sea ice extent for the month of July was the third lowest for that month in the satellite record, after 2007 and 2006. The average rate of melt in July 2009 was nearly identical to that of July 2007. A strong high-pressure system, similar to the atmospheric pattern that dominated the summer of 2007, brought warm winds and clear skies to the western Arctic, promoting ice melt.

You can read more of the National Snow and Ice Data Center's update here.  Breaking the 2007 sea ice area record seems unlikely, as NSIDC explains in the update.  But breaking the 2008 sea ice volume record is still a serious possibility (see "Will we see record low Arctic ice VOLUME this year?").