Climate Progress | |
- Fighting back, several Senators are working to strengthen the climate and clean energy bill
- How do you beat the disinformers when progressives are lousy at messaging and big media is impotent?
- Front page of Climate Progress elongated
- Even fantasy-filled American Petroleum Institute study finds no significant impact of climate bill on US refining
- Energy and Global Warming News for August 24th: Updates on energy-efficient mortgages and Europe's huge Saharan solar power plan
| Fighting back, several Senators are working to strengthen the climate and clean energy bill Posted: 25 Aug 2009 05:41 AM PDT Guest blogger Brad Johnson has an excellent summary of efforts to make the American Clean Energy And Security Act stronger in a post first published here.
A number of senators have committed to passing strong climate and clean energy legislation, including Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), who is "optimistic we can turn energy potential into reality and help create new job opportunities at home by producing more clean energy in the United States." After telling a global warming skeptic that "climate change is very real," Stabenow was eviscerated by the right wing. Both Brown and Specter have committed to voting against a Republican filibuster of climate legislation — a key move for President Obama's progressive energy agenda. After Boxer introduces her draft of the legislation in the beginning of September, the bill must pass out of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which has a strong Democratic majority with many liberal Democrats. "The move on the Senate floor will be rightward," Sen. Whitehouse noted. "And therefore, we've got to do our job to keep as many possibilities open for the floor as possible." |
| How do you beat the disinformers when progressives are lousy at messaging and big media is impotent? Posted: 24 Aug 2009 07:34 PM PDT
The Washington Post's well-respected media critic Howard Kurtz made an impassioned case today that the the media isn't really to blame — "Journalists, Left Out of The Debate: Few Americans Seem to Hear Health Care Facts" — which is to say, the media is irrelevant:
Now the first thing to say is that it is a central rule of messaging, rhetoric, and psychology: Don't keep repeating a strong word the other side is trying to push (see "Memo to Gore: Don't call coal 'clean' seven times in your ad" for a brief discussion of the literature on that subject"). But from my perspective this is just another way of saying that once again, the progressive side doesn't have its own simple message on this issue — like so many others, including global warming. As the saying goes, you can't beat the horse with no horse, and right now, progressives have banned some of their best horses entirely (see here) and are running a few hapless ponies that get trampled out of the starting gate by the conservative thoroughbreds. Kurtz continues with his proof of the media's innocence impotence:
Of course, the conservatives and conservative-leaning independents who swallow the disinformation from their trusted sources can't be moved by journalists a don't watch or don't believe. Consider these stats from Gallup polling over the past decade (see "The Deniers are winning, but only with the GOP"): In 1997, some 52% of Democrats said the effects of global warming have already begun and 52% said most scientists believe global warming is occurring. In 2008, now 76% say warming had begun and 75% say most scientists believe warming is occurring. It would appear that Democrats believe most scientists. Few leading climate scientists or major scientific bodies would disagree with the assertion that the scientific case that the planet is warming and humans are the dominant cause of recent warming has gotten much stronger in the past 10 years. That is clearly seen in the scientific literature — as summarized in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and as amplified by studies and increasingly dire warnings since.. And yet for Republicans, in 1997 some 42% said warming had begun and 48% said most scientists believe warming is occurring — a modest 6 point differential. By 2008, the percentage of Republicans saying the effects of global warming have already begun had dropped to a mere 42% (an amazing stat in its own right given the painfully obvious evidence to the contrary). But the percentage saying most scientists believe global warming is occurring had risen to 54% — a stunning 12 point differential. In short, a significant and growing number of Republicans — one in eight as of 2008 — simply don't believe what they know most scientists believe. Now if you're not going to believe what you know scientists believe, you're certainly not going to believe what mainstream TV journalists say — as long as the right-wing media and pundits you do trust keep lying, which, as Kurtz makes clear, they do:
Well, a certain kind of impotence — let's call it factual impotence. For conflict and drama-driven stories, the media is on Viagra — or perhaps Cialis, for misdirection lasting more than four hours.
The only source of "information" that might change the views of Republicans is the leadership of the conservative movement itself — conservative politicians, conservative think tanks, conservative media, and conservative pundits. As I wrote last year, until they not only reverse their position completely but also actively spread this reversed position to the faithful, this country will find it almost impossible to adopt the very strong government-led policies needed to avert humanity's self-destruction aka Hell and High Water. I do think that messaging aimed at swaying conservatives is pointless and certainly nothing I attempt on this blog. What to do, then? Right now, elections and policy campaigns are being won or lost by the 10% to 20% of voters in the middle, assuming a party can keep its base mobilized. And right now, Dems are doing neither. We have only one stallion on the team who can break through the pack and deliver the messages to move both the middle and progressives. Having waited in vain for Obama to breakthrough with winning messages, I will trot out my messaging horses in the coming days. Saddle up! Related Post: |
| Front page of Climate Progress elongated Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:58 PM PDT So it now carries twice as many posts. Seemed like the thing to do if I'm going to add some shorter posts among the longer ones. Comments welcome. |
| Posted: 24 Aug 2009 03:39 PM PDT In addition to funding phony astroturf "Energy Citizen" campaigns against the climate bill, the American Petroleum Institute has just released a study purporting to show how devastating the House climate and clean energy bill would be to the refining industry. But if you ignore the fantastical elements, and focus on the real analysis, it's clear that the bill would have a minimal impact on petroleum refining through 2030, which is precisely what you would expect from a bill focused on achieving the maximum amount of emissions reduction at the lowest possible cost. And the API completely ignores peak oil, which will hit U.S. refineries so hard that the climate bill will almost certainly have no impact whatsoever on U.S. refineries. You can find the API's study here. If you want to understand what the real "worst-case" scenario is for petroleum refineries, focus on the "Basic Case" of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that the API models. As previously discussed, 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 (see "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"). Because the EIA is poor/dreadful at modeling natural gas, energy efficiency, and renewables, it's basic analysis is a worst-case for the petroleum industry because it overestimates the allowance cost over the next two decades while underestimating the amount of low-cost reductions possible in the utility sector. Here, then, is the worst-case for U.S. refining under a climate bill:
Note that even in the EIA's Basic Case, with a CO2 price in 2020 of $32 per metric ton, the refinery industry would be supplying more product than it does today — for all the stats on U.S. refinery production, go here. Heck, API projects that US domestic refined product will increase steadily under the climate bill, while imports drop steadily. Of course, even this chart shows what a fantasy world API lives in. Because of peak oil, the baseline is not steadily rising U.S. refining for two decades (see World's top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: "We have to leave oil before oil leaves us"). Let's bring a little reality about global oil production to this discussion. As Dr. Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently explained:
The IEA's work makes clear that for oil to stay significantly below $200 a barrel (and U.S. gasoline to be significantly below $5 a gallon) by 2020 would take a miracle — or rather 6 miracles see "Science/IEA: World oil crunch looming? Not if we can find six Saudi Arabias!" See also "Merrill: Non-OPEC production has likely peaked, oil output could fall by 30 million bpd by 2015," which noted,
Now the good news for the refining industry is that their profit margins and total profits typically soar when oil prices soar. The bad news for them is that when total US consumption of refined product drops significantly below current levels, then their total profits may start to decline. The key fact to remember is that: "$50 per tonne of carbon ($14/tonne of CO2) corresponds to 12.5 cents per gallon of gasoline. So the EIA's $32/tonne price for CO2 is a whopping 18 cents a gallon in 2020. Even the EIA's absurd price of $65/tonne in 2030 is only 36 cents a gallon. It is just hard to see how those prices are going to make a very big dent in oil consumption — even the EIA only projects a 5% reduction by 2030 in its Basic Case (and the EIA also live in the fantasy world of no peak oil). That's why the API's hired analytical gun included a scary case that has no basis in reality, the more extreme EIA scenario, called No International/Limited Case [NILC]:
Seriously. The EIA, whose modeling of key technologies even in the base case is absurdly lame, felt obliged to include an even more pessimistic scenario just so the fossil fuel industry types like API could cite it to scare people. That is just more analytical malpractice from EIA. In the out-of-this-world worst-case NILC analysis, the CO2 price is a whopping $190 a metric ton in 2030. Here's what's really amazing about even this absurd NILC case. As you can see from the rest of the slide on page 25 of the API "analysis" (which I cut off in the figure above), the domestic refining industry still supplies 15 million barrels a day of product in 2030, roughly what they are providing today (a point API cleverly obscures by only presenting the baseline numbers starting in 2015). The CO2 price in the fantasy NILC case would raise gasoline prices some $1.75 a gallon in 2030. And while there is no chance whatsoever that the actual climate bill would do that, I would say there is a very good chance that peak oil will raise gasoline prices that much higher in 2020.. If so, then the climate bill will add maybe 10% to that price hike and essentially be lost in the noise. The bottom line is that Obama and Congress have chosen to focus on the transportation sector through other policies than the climate bill — including Obama's big fuel economy announcement earlier this year and the 2005 and 2007 energy bills, which push biofuels into the marketplace. The climate bill will have only a small impact on the US refining industry, perhaps an order of magnitude smaller than the impact peak oil will have. Finally, yet one more reason for adopting my 'price collar plus' proposal is that while I'm sure it will have no significant impact on actual emissions reductions through 2030, it will make it much harder for the right wing and fossil fuel industry to put out their absurd analytical models that use wildly overinflated CO2 prices to scare people. |
| Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:55 AM PDT
Europe's Saharan Power Plan: Miracle Or Mirage?
This is a pretty good article on the massive CSP project being considered, which is certainly no slamdunk. For more on the technology, see "Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload — a core climate solution." Climate change opens Arctic route for German ships
Beetles, wildfire: Double threat in warming world
Reuters, Pass U.S. climate law, then strengthen – Waxman
GOP looks to put the Hurt on Rep. Perriello
Southern governors hear warning on climate change
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Even as some of their colleagues try to 
The stunning success of the right wing disinformation machine in the health-care debate should give all progressives pause about our messaging strategy.
One of the better articles on energy-efficient mortgages I've seen.| 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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