Monday, October 12, 2009

Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Breakthrough Senate climate partnership: Graham (R-SC) and Kerry (D-MA) join forces and assert they are "convinced that we have found both a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution."

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 06:50 AM PDT

Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation)

http://desertpeace.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/lets-make-a-deal-all-new.jpgThat is the stunning banner headline from a must-read op-ed in today's NY Times by two unlikely legislative partners — Lindsey Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina, an ally of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and John Kerry, Democratic senator from Massachusetts, lead author of the recently introduced Kerry-Boxer bill aka the "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act."

The two Senators have a powerful message to the naysayers — and the status quo media which has prematurely written the obituary for both domestic and international climate action:

The message to those who have stalled for years is clear: killing a Senate bill is not success….

We are confident that a legitimate bipartisan effort can put America back in the lead again and can empower our negotiators to sit down at the table in Copenhagen in December and insist that the rest of the world join us in producing a new international agreement on global warming. That way, we will pass on to future generations a strong economy, a clean environment and an energy-independent nation.

The odds of a Senate climate bill just jumped through the roof. Now the Senate needs to get off its butt and get this done.

If the deal they describe can be done, and I'm confident it can be, that would probably mean at least four GOP votes in the Senate — Graham, McCain, and Maine's Snowe and Collins.  But I suspect this deal brings within reach other gettable "Rs," like Lugar of Indiana and Voinovich of Ohio and maybe even Lisa "the fiddler" Murkowski (R-AK), if she understands, as Graham and Kerry do, that the best way to avoid the problems inherent in EPA regulation is to pass this bill:

Failure to act comes with another cost. If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration will use the Environmental Protection Agency to impose new regulations. Imposed regulations are likely to be tougher and they certainly will not include the job protections and investment incentives we are proposing.

The message to those who have stalled for years is clear: killing a Senate bill is not success; indeed, given the threat of agency regulation, those who have been content to make the legislative process grind to a halt would later come running to Congress in a panic to secure the kinds of incentives and investments we can pass today. Industry needs the certainty that comes with Congressional action.

Achieving that certainty is a key reason so many major businesses are fleeing the every-shrinking Chamber of Commerce.

If the bill can get 5 to 7 Rs then it should also be able to get virtually all of the Ds, hopefully at least 57, and maybe more for a cloture vote to stop the inevitable, immoral filibuster from the blinkered conservatives.  And it would be terrific if this bill were not just genuinely bipartisan, but could actually get, say, 62 or more votes for cloture and close to that for the actual bill.

I have described elements of the deal recently — see Lindsay Graham (R-SC): "If you had a bill that would allow for responsible offshore drilling, a robust nuclear power title, I think you could get some Republican votes for a cap-and-trade system." Having heard Kerry speak directly about the bill and his negotiations, seeing his passion to make this happen and his commitment to preserving a livable climate, I expect the final bill will have no deal-breakers for progressives.  Quite the reverse.  This is a deal-maker.

Here are more excerpts from this remarkable op-ed:

CONVENTIONAL wisdom suggests that the prospect of Congress passing a comprehensive climate change bill soon is rapidly approaching zero. The divisions in our country on how to deal with climate change are deep….

However, we refuse to accept the argument that the United States cannot lead the world in addressing global climate change. We are also convinced that we have found both a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution.

Our partnership represents a fresh attempt to find consensus that adheres to our core principles and leads to both a climate change solution and energy independence. It begins now, not months from now — with a road to 60 votes in the Senate.

It's true that we come from different parts of the country and represent different constituencies and that we supported different presidential candidates in 2008. We even have different accents. But we speak with one voice in saying that the best way to make America stronger is to work together to address an urgent crisis facing the world.

This process requires honest give-and-take and genuine bipartisanship. In that spirit, we have come together to put forward proposals that address legitimate concerns among Democrats and Republicans and the other constituencies with stakes in this legislation. We're looking for a new beginning, informed by the work of our colleagues and legislation that is already before Congress.

First, we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security. That is why we are advocating aggressive reductions in our emissions of the carbon gases that cause climate change. We will minimize the impact on major emitters through a market-based system that will provide both flexibility and time for big polluters to come into compliance without hindering global competitiveness or driving more jobs overseas.

Second, while we invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar, we must also take advantage of nuclear power, our single largest contributor of emissions-free power. Nuclear power needs to be a core component of electricity generation if we are to meet our emission reduction targets. We need to jettison cumbersome regulations that have stalled the construction of nuclear plants in favor of a streamlined permit system that maintains vigorous safeguards while allowing utilities to secure financing for more plants. We must also do more to encourage serious investment in research and development to find solutions to our nuclear waste problem.

While I wouldn't be thrilled with all conceivable provisions a nuclear title might have, the overwhelming majority are unlikely to have a significant impact or even cost the taxpayers much money, as long as nuclear power plants remain so damn expensive (see "Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid").

Third, climate change legislation is an opportunity to get serious about breaking our dependence on foreign oil. For too long, we have ignored potential energy sources off our coasts and underground. Even as we increase renewable electricity generation, we must recognize that for the foreseeable future we will continue to burn fossil fuels. To meet our environmental goals, we must do this as cleanly as possible. The United States should aim to become the Saudi Arabia of clean coal. For this reason, we need to provide new financial incentives for companies that develop carbon capture and sequestration technology.

In addition, we are committed to seeking compromise on additional onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration — work that was started by a bipartisan group in the Senate last Congress. Any exploration must be conducted in an environmentally sensitive manner and protect the rights and interests of our coastal states.

Again, as I've now been quoted in the media pointing out, oil prices are going to soar in the coming years, likely blowing past $100 a barrel in Obama's first term — and perhaps past $150 a barrel in what will hopefully be his second term (see "Deutsche Bank: Oil to hit $175 a barrel by 2016)."  When that happens, Dems are not going to be able to resist the demand for opening more area to drilling anyway — so they might as well get a climate deal in return now.

Fourth, we cannot sacrifice another job to competitors overseas. China and India are among the many countries investing heavily in clean-energy technologies that will produce millions of jobs. There is no reason we should surrender our marketplace to countries that do not accept environmental standards. For this reason, we should consider a border tax on items produced in countries that avoid these standards. This is consistent with our obligations under the World Trade Organization and creates strong incentives for other countries to adopt tough environmental protections.

Finally, we will develop a mechanism to protect businesses — and ultimately consumers — from increases in energy prices. The central element is the establishment of a floor and a ceiling for the cost of emission allowances. This will also safeguard important industries while they make the investments necessary to join the clean-energy era. We recognize there will be short-term transition costs associated with any climate change legislation, costs that can be eased. But we also believe strongly that the long-term gain will be enormous.

Even climate change skeptics should recognize that reducing our dependence on foreign oil and increasing our energy efficiency strengthens our national security. Both of us served in the military. We know that sending nearly $800 million a day to sometimes-hostile oil-producing countries threatens our security. In the same way, many scientists warn that failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will lead to global instability and poverty that could put our nation at risk.

One final note:  Ideally a bill would pass the Senate before the end of Copenhagen — and I urge all parties involved to work hard toward that — but logistically it may prove difficult.  This bipartisan deal could and should, however, be cemented in November, and that alone could, as Graham and Kerry conclude, "empower our negotiators to sit down at the table in Copenhagen in December and insist that the rest of the world join us in producing a new international agreement on global warming."

Kudos to Graham and Kerry for reaching across the aisle on this vital, yet divisive issue.

Going Green for the Team

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 05:42 AM PDT

Global warming, left unchecked, will have a huge impact on most sports, since a great many are played outdoors during the summer (for now) — or rely on cold weather and snow during the winter.  As this CAP post suggests, some sports teams are trying to green up the game.  The picture is a view from home plate at the Washington Nationals baseball stadium, Major League Baseball's first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified ballpark.

Major League Baseball's postseason playoffs began this week with Wednesday's match up between the Phillies and Rockies. But regardless of who wins the whole league has managed to come together for the environment's sake.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group, has worked with MLB on several sustainable initiatives. Through an online greening advisor the council has developed individualized green solutions for all 30 MLB teams. The MLB efforts range from using recycled paper to purchasing renewable resources like wind and solar power for ballparks. The league is showcasing its environmental work on the MLB website.

The Washington Nationals may not have made the playoffs, but they have MLB's first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified stadium, which was awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. The council awards bronze, silver, and gold certifications depending on how many sustainable elements are incorporated into a building's design. The Nationals stadium's high-efficiency field lighting, low-flow plumbing, and green roofs garnered it a silver ranking.

The National Basketball Association's first step toward sustainability came in April 2009 with Green Week, which featured community service projects, an online auction of autographed Spalding basketballs made from 40 percent recycled materials, and a footwear drive to donate gently worn athletic shoes to youth programs in southern Africa. And the Denver Nuggets, Charlotte Bobcats, and Chicago Bulls wore green uniforms made from 45 percent organic cotton during the week to raise environmental awareness.

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing is joining the action, too. The 1970 Clean Air Act barred the general public from purchasing cars that ran on leaded gasoline, but racecars were exempt. Still, the sport is phasing out leaded gasoline to show its support for the environment. NASCAR has also initiated a new tree-planting program that aims to offset the industry's carbon emissions: Every time a green flag is dropped at the beginning of a race 10 trees will be planted.

Unfortunately, many of the sports world's environmental efforts are out of necessity. In the past few years climate change has shortened ski season and outdoor summer football practices have become almost unbearable due to sweltering heat. Athletes from all fields are realizing that they need to join the environmental cause if they want to hold onto the sports—and the planet—they enjoy.

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Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It's the oceans, stupid!

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 01:13 PM PDT

The empirical data has spoken. Cancel the global cooling party. Global warming is still happening.

The planet is heating up, thanks to human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases.  But as a new NOAA-led study, "An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950" (subs. req'd, release here) concluded:

[S]ince 1950, the planet released about 20 percent of the warming influence of heat-trapping greenhouse gases to outer space as infrared energy. Volcanic emissions lingering in the stratosphere offset about 20 percent of the heating by bouncing solar radiation back to space before it reached the surface. Cooling from the lower-atmosphere aerosols produced by humans balanced 50 percent of the heating. Only the remaining 10 percent of greenhouse-gas warming actually went into heating the Earth, and almost all of it went into the ocean.

Note that this Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres study was done "without using global climate models."

Figure 1: "Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly] from 1950 (Murphy et al. 2009). Ocean data taken from Domingues et al 2008."

That figure comes from the first of two posts by the terrific website Skeptical Science, which I repost below.  Skeptical Science is an excellent, well-organized site to send convincible people for a shredding of the standard, long-debunked denier talking points.

Now I'm sure the deniers and delayers out there are shrieking, "There are peer reviewed analyses that document that upper ocean warming has halted since 2003!" — a claim I dealt with in my July post, "Like father, like son: Roger Pielke Sr. also doesn't understand the science of global warming — or just chooses to willfully misrepresent it."

Subsequently, however, another JGR article, "Global hydrographic variability patterns during 2003–2008" (subs. req'd, draft here) details an analysis of "monthly gridded global temperature and salinity fields from the near-surface layer down to 2000 m depth based on Argo measurements."  Background on Argo here.   Their findings are summed up in this figure:

Figure [2]: Time series of global mean heat storage (0–2000 m), measured in 108 Jm-2.

Still warming, after all these years!  And just where you'd expect it.  The study makes clear that upper ocean heat content, perhaps not surprisingly, is simply far more variable than deeper ocean heat content, and thus an imperfect indicator of the long-term warming trend.

UPDATE:  Yes, I am aware of the recent upper-ocean heat content data on the web.  Please note that plots of very recent, highly variable upper-ocean content heat data down to 700 meters from unpeer-reviewed sources do not trump peer-reviewed analysis of much longer-term data down to 2000 m.  Is it too much to ask people to actually read this entire post before posting comments?

What follows is a repost of two articles from Skeptical Science discussing these figures and the recent studies in more detail:

[I have renamed the figure in Part 2, "Figure 2" for the sake of clarity.]

How we know global warming is still happening, Part 1

Skeptics proclaim that global warming stopped in 1998. That we're now experiencing global cooling. However, these arguments overlook one simple physical reality — the land and atmosphere are only one small fraction of the Earth's climate (albeit the part we inhabit). Global warming is by definition global. The entire planet is accumulating heat due to an energy imbalance. The atmosphere is warming. Oceans are accumulating energy. Land absorbs energy and ice absorbs heat to melt. To get the full picture on global warming, you need to view the Earth's entire heat content.

This analysis is performed in An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950 (Murphy 2009) which adds up heat content from the ocean, atmosphere, land and ice. To calculate the Earth's total heat content, the authors used data of ocean heat content from the upper 700 metres. They included heat content from deeper waters down to 3000 metres depth. They computed atmospheric heat content using the surface temperature record and the heat capacity of the troposphere. Land and ice heat content (eg – the energy required to melt ice) were also included.

[See Figure 1 above.]

A look at the Earth's total heat content clearly shows global warming has continued past 1998. So why do surface temperature records show 1998 as the hottest year on record? Figure 1 shows the heat capacity of the land and atmosphere are small compared to the ocean (the tiny brown sliver of "land + atmosphere" also includes the heat absorbed to melt ice). Hence, relatively small exchanges of heat between the atmosphere and ocean can cause significant changes in surface temperature.

In 1998, an abnormally strong El Nino caused heat transfer from the Pacific Ocean to the atmosphere. Consequently, we experienced above average surface temperatures. Conversely, the last few years have seen moderate La Nina conditions which had a cooling effect on global temperatures. And the last few months have swung back to warmer El Nino conditions. This has coincided with the warmest June-August sea surface temperatures on record. This internal variation where heat is shuffled around our climate is the reason why surface temperature is such a noisy signal.

Figure 1 also underscores just how much global warming the planet is experiencing. Since 1970, the Earth's heat content has been rising at a rate of 6 x 1021 Joules per year. In more meaningful terms, the planet has been accumulating energy at a rate of 190,260 GigaWatts. Considering a typical nuclear power plant has an output of 1 GigaWatt, imagine 190,000 nuclear power plants pouring their energy output directly into our oceans.

Figure 1 only goes as far as 2003 as the ocean heat data used (Domingues 2008) only goes that far. What has global warming been doing since then? Since 2003, ocean heat data has been measured by the newly deployed Argo network. However, there have been teething problems with the Argo buoys experiencing pressure sensor issues that impose a cooling bias on the data. Consequently there have been several data analyses on ocean heat since 2003. One reconstruction of ocean heat show  cooling since 2003 (Willis 2008). Other analyses of the Argo data show ocean warming (Levitus 2009, Leuliette 2009, Cazenave 2009).

How do we determine which analyses are more accurate? Ocean heat data can also be independently determined through other empirical means. Cazenave 2009 uses satellite gravity measurements to create two independent estimates of ocean heat – both find warming. Sea level has been inexorably rising since 2003. As a large portion of sea level rise is due to thermal expansion from ocean warming, this is an indirect confirmation of warming.

Lastly, the planet's energy imbalance is confirmed by satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation. Earth's Global Energy Budget (Trenberth 2009) examines satellite measurements for the Mar 2000 to May 2004 period and finds the planet is accumulating energy at a rate of 0.9 ± 0.15 W m−2. This is consistent with the amount of heat accumulating in the ocean. Preliminary analysis on the latest CERES satellite data shows an increasing energy imbalance from 2004 to the end of 2008 (although this data is yet to be published, more on this later).

So the point to remember when considering short term cooling trends in surface temperature records is that the atmosphere is only one small part of a planet which is in energy imbalance. Empirical measurements show the planet continues to accumulate heat. More energy is coming in than is radiating back out to space. Global warming continued past 1998 and is still happening.

How we know global warming is happening, Part 2

In our last post, we determined whether global warming was still happening by adding up all the heat content of the climate system.  Murphy 2009 performed this analysis and found that that planet has been accumulating heat up to 2003. Unfortunately their data ends there as the ocean data they used from Domingues 2008 stops at the end of 2003. So how do we find out what's happened from 2003 until now? Unfortunately, there is no time series (that I know of) of the planet's total heat content up to present time. However, we do have the next best thing.

Global hydrographic variability patterns during 2003–2008 (Schuckmann 2009) analyses ocean temperature measurements by the Argo network, constructing a map of ocean heat content down to 2000 metres (H/T to Chris for bringing it to my attention). This is significantly deeper than other recent papers that focus on upper ocean heat, only going down to 700 metres. They constructed the following time series of global ocean heat:

[See Figure 2 above.]

Globally, the oceans have still been steadily accumulating heat right to the end of 2008. Combined with the results of Murphy 2009 who finds the planet accumulating heat right to 2003, we now see a picture of unbroken global warming. Over the last 5 years, the oceans have been absorbing heat at a rate of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2.

So what is our planet's total energy imbalance? Indulge me as I perform some rough back-of-a-napkin calculations. Murphy 2009 found that about 5.6% of the planet's energy imbalance went into the land and atmosphere. In other words, 94.4% of global warming goes into the oceans. So if the ocean is absorbing 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2, this puts the total energy imbalance at around 0.82 ± 0.12 Wm−2. This is a slight underestimate as Murphy 2009 included ocean heat down to 3000m (remember this is back-of-a-napkin stuff).

How does this value compare to other estimates of energy imbalance? Hansen 2005, using ocean heat data, calculated the planet's energy imbalance around 2003 to be 0.85 Wm−2. Trenberth 2009 examined satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation for the March 2000 to May 2004 period and found the planet accumulating energy at a rate of 0.9 ± 0.15 Wm−2.

All these estimates are consistent with each other. Most importantly, all find a statistically significant positive energy imbalance. The empirical data has spoken. Cancel the global cooling party. Global warming is still happening.

Precisely.

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