Climate Progress

Climate Progress

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• The Biggest Loser: Incredible, shrinking Chamber of Commerce goes from 3 million members to just 300,000 in one day!
• New report finds 31 states have the renewable resources to be "energy self-reliant"
• Energy and Global Warming News for October 15: Arctic to be ice-free in summer in 20 years — scientist
• Entergy CEO: "We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man's activities. We're virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad."
• Error-riddled 'Superfreakonomics', Part 2: Who else have Nathan Myhrvold and the Groupthinkers at Intellectual Ventures duped and confused? Would you believe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett?
• Saudis redefine chutzpah: After decades of overpricing, and with trillions of dollars in future revenues, they want aid if world cuts oil use in climate deal
• Breaking: Murkowski praises Kerry-Graham climate plan. The Washington Times writes, "Her remarks signal the potential for a major turn in the climate change debate in Congress."

The Biggest Loser: Incredible, shrinking Chamber of Commerce goes from 3 million members to just 300,000 in one day! Posted: 15 Oct 2009 10:14 AM PDT The exodus of leading companies from the Chamber has been downsizing the denial-pushing industry group (which most certainly does not speak for the business community).  But Think Progress has the story (first posted here) of rapid weight loss that easily beats any of the winners of the reality show, "The Biggest Loser." As Mother Jones reported yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce consistently says that its membership is 3 million, even though it's actually closer to 200,000. The reason for the artificial inflation is that the organization is counting the memberships of 2,800 state and local chambers around the country, even though many of these businesses have no relationship with the national organization. Some of these members are now protesting the Chamber's numbers game: – "They don't represent me," says Mark Jaffe, CEO of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, which is a dues-paying member of the national group. … Jaffe also scoffed at the US Chamber's oft-repeated claim to "represent 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions." … "They are playing games" with their numbers, Jaffe said. "They don't have half the businesses in America as registered, dues-paying members." – Jaffe's objections to the US Chamber's policies were echoed by Rob Black, vice-president of public policy for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. "We take a fundamentally different approach than the US Chamber," he said, adding that while the national Chamber opposes the Waxman-Markey climate bill, "we support a market-driven cap-and-trade system." A day after this public scrutiny began, the Chamber is quietly backing down. At a press conference this morning, Chamber officials "repeatedly cited a membership of 300,000. That's a tenth as many members as the Chamber claimed a day earlier." http://thinkprogress.org/ 2009/ 10/ 14/ chamber-membership/

New report finds 31 states have the renewable resources to be "energy self-reliant" Posted: 15 Oct 2009 09:59 AM PDT A new report from the New Rules Project finds that over 60% of all U.S. states have the renewable energy resources to be "energy self-reliant." ("Energy self-reliance," as defined in the report, is a measure of how self-sufficient in energy generation a state could be if it relied entirely on its own renewable resources). The New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, released its findings last week. The report, "Energy Self-Reliant States: Second and Expanded Edition" describes how 31 states have the capacity to independently meet their states' electricity demands by using wholly renewable energy sources, already at their disposal. Several states, the report notes, could use their renewable energy resources to produce electricity that meets over ten times their statewide demands. An additional ten states could generate enough electricity to meet well over half of their annual demands—again, solely from renewable sources. The report's analysis and projections only incorporates renewable energy resources that are currently commercially deployable: These sources include geothermal, onshore and offshore wind, combined heat and power, traditional geothermal, rooftop solar PV, and micro hydro powers. Enhanced geothermal power, for example, is examined in the report yet not included in the final projections because the resource is considered an "immature renewable energy technology" in need of further improvement. With the development of such nascent technologies, an even greater amount of electricity demands could be met from renewable resources, especially in those states listed in the report as not energy self-reliant. The New Rules Project's estimates are quite promising. The report is conservative—it excludes various budding energy technologies in reaching its estimates and it does not even anticipate any advances in energy storage or efficiency. Nonetheless, while the data are compelling, the authors of the report hastily conclude that their findings indicate the need for a decentralized renewable energy transmission network. They argue that such a system should be supplanted by state and local networks. This conclusion does not line up. Rather than local networks, a comprehensive and robust national clean-energy smart grid has the potential to maximize the economics, efficiency, and reliability of a renewable energy system. First, as seen in the report's estimates of state-by-state renewable energy production, most of the nation's renewable energy resources currently lie in more remote areas of the country. Many of the states identified as "energy self-reliant" earn that title because they have both vast renewable resources and lower electricity demands. With a national clean-energy smart grid, we can better harness the enormous renewable energy potential that exists in remote states and transmit that energy to major energy markets. Second, a national smart grid with reliable and profuse sources of energy can reduce any problems that result from rising grid congestion in regional markets, such as blackouts and subsequent costs. The authors of the study argue for state and local transmission networks, ignoring technical difficulties that could arise. We cannot afford more New York City style blackouts, and we do not need to create that risk. The report finds that there are many states that have the renewable energy potential to produce enough clean-electricity that exceeds their own demands. This finding only strengthens our need for a national clean-energy smart grid. We should put the full potential of the renewable resource-rich states to work. In doing so, we can create more jobs in those very states by letting them serve the national market through a national transmission network. Though the authors of the report offer policy recommendations that might not be the most beneficial for a future clean-energy economy, the estimates from which they induce those recommendations indicate that the United States has ample renewable resource potential—one that must be harvested to its fullest capacity. Related Post: EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus! An introduction to the core climate solutions

Energy and Global Warming News for October 15: Arctic to be ice-free in summer in 20 years — scientist Posted: 15 Oct 2009 09:38 AM PDT Arctic to be ice-free in summer in 20 years: scientist Global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free during the summer within 20 years, raising sea levels and harming wildlife such as seals and polar bears, a leading British polar scientist said on Thursday. Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, said much of the melting will take place within a decade, although the winter ice will stay for hundreds of years. The changes will mean the top of the Earth will appear blue rather than white when photographed from space and ships will have a new sea route north of Russia. Scientists say evidence of melting Arctic ice is one of the clearest signs of global warming and it should send a warning to world leaders meeting in Copenhagen in December for U.N. talks on a new climate treaty. "The data supports the new consensus view — based on seasonal variation of ice extent and thickness, changes in temperatures, winds and especially ice composition — that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years," Wadhams said in a statement. "Much of the decrease will be happening within 10 years." Wadhams, one of the world's leading experts on sea ice cover in the North Pole region, compared ice thickness measurements taken by a Royal Navy submarine in 2007 with evidence gathered by the British explorer Pen Hadow earlier this year. Hadow and his team on the Catlin Arctic Survey drilled 1,500 holes to gather evidence during a 280-mile walk across the Arctic. They found the average thickness of ice-floes was 1.8 meters, a depth considered too thin to survive the summer's ice melt. Sometimes referred to as the Earth's air-conditioner, the Arctic Sea plays a vital role in the world's climate. As Arctic ice melts in summer, it exposes the darker-colored ocean water, which absorbs sunlight instead of reflecting it, accelerating the effect of global warming. Dr Martin Sommerkorn, from the environmental charity WWF's Arctic program, which worked on the survey, said the predicted loss of ice could have wide-reaching affects around the world. "The Arctic Sea ice holds a central position in our Earth's climate system. Take it out of the equation and we are left with a dramatically warmer world," he said. "This could lead to flooding affecting one-quarter of the world's population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emissions …. and extreme global weather changes." Britain's Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said the research "sets out the stark realities of climate change." "This further strengthens the case for an ambitious global deal in Copenhagen," he added. For more on declining Arctic ice volume, go here. US aims for bilateral climate change deals with China and India The Obama administration is hoping to win new commitments to fight global warming from China and India in back-to-back summits next month, the Guardian has learned, including the first Indian emissions trading scheme. The US hopes the new commitments will breathe life into the moribund negotiations to seal a global treaty on climate change in Copenhagen in December, by setting out what action each country will take. But many observers say such bilateral deals also risk seriously weakening any Copenhagen agreement by allowing the idea of a global limit on greenhouse gas emissions to be abandoned. The US's twin diplomatic push will see Barack Obama meeting China's president Hu Jintao in Beijing on November 16-17 before playing host to India's prime minister Manmohan Singh at the White House on November 24. The visits appear timed to provide a much-needed boost to a proposed law to reduce US emissions now before the Senate, as well as to the Copenhagen talks. At preparatory UN talks in Bangkok earlier this month, the US and other rich countries were accused by a group of 131 nations of trying to "fundamentally sabotage" the Kyoto protocol, which the group said must be the basis for its successor. Kyoto — which made no demands on developing countries and which the US refused to ratify — remains political kryptonite in Washington. The US wants to move away from a legally binding global agreement to one where individual countries pledge cuts in their national emissions. The state department envoy, Todd Stern, believes strongly that separate bilateral agreements with countries such as China, India, Russia and Brazil are the building blocks to an agreement at Copenhagen. But adoption of national action plans is hazardous say others, as there would be little clear idea of whether together they would avoid dangerous global warming. US officials are hopeful that breakthroughs with India and China could still provide the underpinnings for at least a limited deal at Copenhagen. "China and India are both critically important to achieving our international goals on carbon reduction. We need them as part the system," said Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who serves on the foreign and environment and public works committees. "There has already been a lot of work done between US and China, and there is going to be more work done next month with President Obama going to China." US climate bill will have modest economic impact: report Cutting greenhouse gases along the lines of a climate bill pending in Congress would modestly impact the US economy over the next few decades, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Wednesday in a report. "Reducing the risk of climate change would come at some cost to the economy," CBO director Douglas Elmendorf told a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, two weeks before the Senate takes up the climate change bill. "Over the next few decades the economic losses from policies to avert climate change would exceed the economic gains in terms of climate change," he added. The House of Representatives passed its own version of the climate bill in June. Elmendorf said the Cap and Trade initiative it includes would reduce US gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.25 percent to 0.75 percent in 2020 and by 3.5 percent in 2050. However, he added, CBO projects that inflation-adjusted GDP growth will be two-and-a-half times larger than today's, "so those changes will be comparatively modest." He also said the House climate bill would have little impact on the standard of living of Americans — CBO projections see purchasing power dropping 0.1 percent in 2010 and 0.8 percent in 2050, averaging out to 455 dollars per year. Carbon Emissions See Big Two-Year Drop Reducing emissions of carbon dioxide may be a little easier than most people think. Between 2007 and 2009, domestic emissions could drop by 9 percent — a massive decline due in part to the economic downturn, and in part to a new push to improve efficiency and develop renewable fuels — according to the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental group. "We've been hearing for years that it was nearly impossible to make substantial cuts in carbon emissions," said Lester R. Brown, the group's president. "In fact, it is not that difficult." Energy usage has dropped rapidly in the past two years in the United States, mostly as a result of the recession, which has crimped economic activity and pushed up unemployment figures. But Mr. Brown said that recent policies are firmly putting the nation on a path of lower carbon emissions, even in the absence of federal legislation. These include boosting fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, investing in renewable power generation, and an "energy efficiency revolution" that will save power from buildings and appliances. On a conference call this morning, Mr. Brown pointed out that 22 coal-fired plants in 12 states were being made more efficient, or replaced altogether by wind farms, natural gas plants or wood chip plants. Over 130 geothermal plants are also under development, he pointed out, and 102 wind farms came online in 2008. Another 49 were completed in the first half of this year and 57 are now under construction, Mr. Brown said. Amazingly, 300,000 megawatts of wind projects are awaiting access to the grid, which is the equivalent of roughly 300 coal plants. He also said the American car fleet is expected to shrink by 2 percent this year, a trend that is likely to continue for years. Adding all of this together means that the goal to reduce emissions by 17 percent or 20 percent by 2020, as Congress is currently debating, should not be too much of a stretch. The trouble, said Mr. Brown, is that 20 percent will not be enough to prevent some of the worst aspects of global warming. Preventing ice sheets from melting in Greenland or in the Himalayas will require cuts much deeper than those envisaged either by Congress or by negotiators ahead of the global climate summit on Copenhagen later this year, Mr. Brown said. That would require cutting carbon emissions by more than 80 percent by 2020, and need something like a "wartime mobilization" of the economy, Mr. Brown said. "What we are hearing is not nearly enough," he said. Related post:  "EIA stunner: By year's end, we'll be 8.5% below 2005 levels of CO2 — halfway to climate bill's 2020 target." Navy secretary seeks greener fleet Teddy Roosevelt had the Great White Fleet. Ray Mabus envisions a "Great Green Fleet." The secretary of the Navy on Wednesday outlined five energy goals for the Navy and Marines in the next decade. Four involve reducing the consumption of fossil fuels, increasing use of alternative energies and factoring energy costs into the price tag of every new ship, engine or building. The fifth might be the most radical: Mabus committed to fielding by 2012 a "green" strike group compo sed of aircraft powered by biofuels, surface ships that operate on hybrid power supplies, and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. The "green" fleet won't just be for show, Mabus said. The strike group will deploy by 2016. Coalition calls on 14 CEOs to drop chamber memberships The CEOs of Air Products & Chemicals, Alcoa, American Electric Power and 11 other companies were urged to withdraw their memberships from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Associations of Manufacturers over disagreements on climate change, according to a statement from a group of 43 institutional investors and related organizations. "Each of the companies has publicly stated that it supports action on climate change, which the chamber and NAM strongly oppose," the statement said. Letters from the group, which were sent Tuesday to the CEOs, ask the companies "to address their disagreement with the chamber and NAM on climate change policy by withdrawing membership, publicly disclosing their disagreement, or asking the associations to refund the portion of their dues used to lobby on the issue," according to the statement. Institutional investors in the investment coalition include Boston Common Asset Management, Catholic Health East, Catholic Healthcare West, Clean Yield Asset Management, Domini Social Investments, Green Century Capital Management, MMA Praxis Mutual Funds, Pax World Management Corp., The Russell Family Foundation, Trillium Asset Management and Walden Asset Management Melissa McHenry, AEP spokesman, said, "We do disagree with the chamber's and NAM's position and we actually supported" the American Clean Energy and Security Act that was passed by the House earlier this year and favor climate legislation being considered in the Senate. US climate bill will have modest economic impact: report Cutting greenhouse gases along the lines of a climate bill pending in Congress would modestly impact the US economy over the next few decades, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Wednesday in a report. "Reducing the risk of climate change would come at some cost to the economy," CBO director Douglas Elmendorf told a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, two weeks before the Senate takes up the climate change bill. "Over the next few decades the economic losses from policies to avert climate change would exceed the economic gains in terms of climate change," he added. The House of Representatives passed its own version of the climate bill in June. Elmendorf said the Cap and Trade initiative it includes would reduce US gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.25 percent to 0.75 percent in 2020 and by 3.5 percent in 2050. However, he added, CBO projects that inflation-adjusted GDP growth will be two-and-a-half times larger than today's, "so those changes will be comparatively modest." He also said the House climate bill would have little impact on the standard of living of Americans — CBO projections see purchasing power dropping 0.1 percent in 2010 and 0.8 percent in 2050, averaging out to 455 dollars per year.

Entergy CEO: "We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man's activities. We're virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad." Posted: 15 Oct 2009 06:42 AM PDT Last week I reported on the White House Clean Energy Economy Forum — see "Carol Browner says clean energy bill without carbon cap would be a 'big mistake'; Nobelist Chu agrees, warning we otherwise face catastrophe, with St. Louis above 90°F for 1/3 the year."  In this repost, Wonk Room has a video and transcript of some key remarks. Last week, over a hundred CEOs of American companies broke with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to lobby Congress to "pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year." The U.S. Senate is now considering the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, which would set a market-based limit on global warming pollution. Participants in a Clean Energy Economy Forum at the White House included J. Wayne Leonard, the Chairman and CEO of Entergy Corporation, the utility giant based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Speaking at the White House event, Leonard called for action on climate change and clean energy not just for economic reasons but starkly moral ones: We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man's activities. We're virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad. There's no good things that's going to come of this. But what's uncertain is exactly which one of those things are going to occur and in what time frame. In the probability distribution curve is about a 50% probability that about half of all species will become extinct or be subject to extinction over this period of time. What we will never know on an ex ante basis is whether or not man be one of those casualties or not. We condemn Wall Street for taking risks with our economy — risks that all of you are trying very hard to reverse — but at the same time we're taking exactly the same kind of risks, with no upside whatsoever, with regard to our climate, failing to practice even the basic risk management techniques in terms of climate change reduction. In a powerful speech, Leonard called a national system to cap carbon pollution "an investment that by all facts, figures and analysis pays back many times over," and warned that "history will judge us if we don't pass comprehensive climate and energy reform now" for "cheating [our children] out of their future." Entergy serves "two-and-a-half million customers in the mid-South and the Gulf South portion of the country, some of the poorest people in the country," Leonard noted. These customers already suffered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which global warming likely fueled. Although Entergy's website warns that the "ramifications of global climate change, while uncertain, paint a devastating portrait of an unsustainable world" and that what "the United States does now is critical to eliminating or at least reducing the possibility of catastrophic outcomes for future generations," the corporation is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is spending millions of dollars to fight the regulation of climate pollution. Entergy plans to remain in the climate-denial organization in an attempt to "convince other members to agree to emissions limits." Transcript: LEONARD: Good morning. We are a broad base of businesses across America. We represent some 37 states. We touch all aspects of the economy. And we have come together this morning unified in one particular request. And that is that we pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year. We are prepared as business to invest, to innovate, to transform the energy sector of this country and of the world — the way we source energy, the way we deliver energy, the way we use energy. We want to get America back in the business of exporting technology instead of dollars. In order to do that, we need comprehensive legislation. We need to know what the rules are going to be with regard to energy and with regard to climate, and particularly with what the price on carbon is going to be in the United States, if we're to move around the world and export technology to other countries. And we need legislation in order to do that. I'm the CEO of Entergy. We have nuclear plants around the country. We also serve two-and-a-half million customers in the mid-South and the Gulf South portion of the country, some of the poorest people in the country. People that have been through Katrina, Gustav, Ike, Rita. You name it, they've been through it. Nobody should ever have to suffer through a Katrina. Last night, I was talking to Secretary Salazar. And he asked me, "What happens to New Orleans when sea level rise is not an inch from thermal expansion but meters, due to land ice melt in west Antarctica and Greenland?" I said, "Well, we have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen, but we do have some protections, because we're working on New Orleans. What we haven't given enough thought to is what happens to everybody else." What happens to all the coastal cities. What happens to the East Coast of the US with the slightly tilt of the planet on its axis as we melt those ice caps. There's no protection for them. And we're not talking about hurricanes any more, we're talking about potentially tsunami-type of events like we've seen in Asia, like we've seen most recently in American Samoa. A completely different set of events than what we're used to. Some people say we can't do this because of the cost. As business, we all look at in terms of it's an investment. In this case it's an investment that by all facts, figures and analysis pays back many times over. It pays back with reduced adaptation costs in the future, reduced repair and damage from these type of events, and growth in the economy through transferring technology around the world and creating jobs at home. Some people say we can't do this because there are some things that are uncertain. But that is in large part precisely the reason that we need to act, because of the uncertainty, not necessarily because of the things that we do know. We do know a lot, as you all know. We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man's activities. We're virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad. There's no good things that's going to come of this. But what's uncertain is exactly which one of those things are going to occur and in what time frame. In the probability distribution curve is about a 50% probability that about half of all species will become extinct or be subject to extinction over this period of time. What we will never know on an ex ante basis is whether or not man be one of those casualties or not. We condemn Wall Street for taking risks with our economy — risks that all of you are trying very hard to reverse — but at the same time we're taking exactly the same kind of risks, with no upside whatsoever, with regard to our climate, failing to practice even the basic risk management techniques in terms of climate change reduction. We talk a lot about in this issue about "us" and "we." Just so all you know this is not about us. It's about our children. It's about our children's children. When our children are born, we know at that moment in time, that there isn't anything in the world that we wouldn't do for them. And as they grow, we know for certain that we would give up our lives for our children. For some reason we won't do this. We're cheating them out of their future, and we're doing it with our eyes wide open. And that's exactly how history will judge us if we don't pass comprehensive climate and energy reform now. Thank you. APPLAUSE

Error-riddled 'Superfreakonomics', Part 2: Who else have Nathan Myhrvold and the Groupthinkers at Intellectual Ventures duped and confused? Would you believe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett? Posted: 14 Oct 2009 04:54 PM PDT This post will shock you. The sheer illogic and "patent nonsense" of the new book Superfreakonomics discussed in Part 1 is just the tip of the iceberg.  What's most worrisome is 1) who exactly has been peddling much of the nonsense and illogic to the authors — Nathan Myhrvold, the former CTO of Microsoft — and 2) who else may have been persuaded by his bullshit.  The Myrhvold connection deserves special focus because it may help explain three puzzling things: Why does Bill Gates' Foundation mostly ignore global warming?  (see here) Why is Warren Buffett so wrong — and outspoken — about cap and trade? (see here) Why did Gates and Buffett visit the Athabasca tar sands — the biggest global warming crime ever — to satisfy "their own curiosity" but also "with investment in mind"? (see here). According to the Superfreaks, Gates and Buffett went to the visit the tar sands (and other energy producers) with Myrhvold, giving him plenty of time to spread his misinformation to them.  Moreover, the idea Myrhvold came away is simply stunning. And yes, one always needs the caveat, "according to Levitt and Dubner," because their reporting skills are so dreadful — they shoehorn everything they hear into whatever contrarian view they had decided to adopt.  You shouldn't take anything they say at face value.  As we've seen, the primary climatologist the book relies on, Ken Caldeira, says "it is an inaccurate portrayal of me" and is "misleading" in "many" places.  But I have reason to believe Myrhvold was given a draft to comment on — and if so, he was a willing participant in the defamation of his own reputation and that of his company "Intellectual Ventures."  Apparently, he really does push this piece of staggering illogic: "If you believe that the scary stories could be true, or even possible, then you should also admit that relying only on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions is not a very good answer," he says.  In other words:  it's illogical to believe in a carbon-induced warming apocalypse and believe that such an apocalypse can be averted simply by curtailing new carbon emissions.  "The scary scenarios could occur even if we make Herculean efforts to reduce our emissions, in which case the only real answer is geo-engineering." As I said in Part 1, not only is it not illogical, but I suspect most of the world's leading climate scientists believe that if you could curtail all new carbon emissions (including from deforestation) starting now (or even starting soon), you would indeed avoid apocaplyse.  In fact, as Caldeira makes clear, the reverse of Myrhvold's final statement is true:  ONLY if we make Herculean efforts to reduce our emissions, could geo-engineering possibly contribute to the solution. Note also that this certainty about something completely unproven (i.e. large-scale aerosol-based geo-engineering), comes from a guy who seriously questions the real science of human-caused climate change.  The Superfreaks describe their visit to IV this way: Everyone in the room agrees that the Earth has been getting warmer and they generally suspect that human activity has something to do with it. Good for them!  So they think maybe human emissions cause some of the warming, but that it's illogical to believe Herculean efforts to reduce emissions can avoid catastrophe, while we can be certain that geo-engineering will work (if it's needed of course).  How convenient. As discussed in Part 1, however, absent the Herculean effort, geoengineering is all but hopeless and leads to "a dystopic world out of a science fiction story" as Caldeira described it to me.  Myhrvold and the geniuses groupthinkers at IV, however, dismiss all of the solutions: In the darkened conference room, Myhrvold cues up an overhead slide that summarizes IV's views of the current slate of proposed global warming solutions.  The slide says: Too little Too late Too optimistic. Too little means that typical conservation efforts simply won't make much of a difference. "If you believe there is a problem worth solving," Myhrvold says, "then these solutions won't be enough to solve it.  Wind power and most other alternative energy things are cute, but they don't scale to a sufficient degree. At this point, wind farms are a government subsidy scheme, fundamentally."  What about the beloved Prius and other low-emissions vehicles?  "They're great," he says, "except that transportation is just not that big of a sector." [Pause for laughter.  Then for weeping.] No, I'm not making this up.  Go to the Amazon.com page for the book, and put "summarizes" in the search engine.  This guy was the CTO at Microsoft, and IV "controls more than twenty thousand patents" and they just make up crap like this and tell it to really important people who apparently swallow eat it up like pudding.  Has nobody in the room ever Googled?  I can't waste time debunking all of that crap, but how about this is from EPA: Globally "Transport accounts for around a quarter of total CO2 emissions."  In fact, transport is the key sector, because reducing carbon emissions in electricity generation is so damn easy (see "An introduction to the core climate solutions"). That's why I call Myhrvold and his ilk, F.A.K.E.R.s — Famous "Authorities" whose Knowledge (of climate) is Extremely Rudimentary [Error-riddled?].  I can only conclude IV is filled with yes-men and -women who specialize in some bizarre form of contrarian groupthink, which in any other setting would be an oxymoron. And, then we get this multi-whopper piece of nonsense: Too optimistic:  "A lot of the things that people say would be good things probably aren't," Myrhvold says.  As an example he points to solar power.  "The problem with solar cells is that they're black, because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12% gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat — which contributed to global warming." As discussed in Part 1, this may set the FAKER record for howlers in one paragraph and for most orders of magnitude error in a single global warming calculation.  But the crap goes on and on like a really bad case of dysentery: Although widespread conversion to solar power might seem appealing, the reality is tricky. The energy consumed by building the thousands of new solar plants necessary to replace coal-burning and other power plants would create a huge long-term "warming debt," as Myhrvold calls it.  "Eventually, we have a great carbon-free energy infrastructure but only after making emissions and global warming worse every year until we're done building out the solar plants, which could take 30 to 50 years." [Pause to tighten vise around cranium so it does not explode.] No.  No.  No.  A thousand times no. First off, the energy payback for building solar is currently only a few years and dropping steadily.  Second, the carbon payback or "warming debt" of every solution drops steadily over time as you reduce the carbon intensity of the overall energy system.  The point is that you do multiple solutions all at once, including a massive amount of energy efficiency, a massive amount of renewables (especially CSP, which the FAKERs seem unaware of), and even fuel switching from coal to gas.  The U.S. could easily cut its CO2 emissions deepling in two decades while building out the most massive low carbon energy system.  Finally, of course, if we don't build the low-carbon infrastructure, then we will be building carbon-producing infrastructure, which will generate even more staggeringly large amounts of carbon for Myhrvold's dystopia. But the Superfreaks think the FAKERs are geniuses: Intellectual Ventures is an invention company.  The lab, in addition to all the gear, is stocked with an elite assemblage of brainpower, scientists and puzzle solvers of every variety…. Myhrvold played a variety of roles at Microsoft: futurist, strategist, founder of its research lab, and whisperer-in-chief to Bill Gates.  "I don't know anyone I would say is smarter than Nathan," Gates once observed…. He is so polymathic as to make an everyday polymath tremble with shame. I'm going to it invent a new phrase for these FAKERs — idiotic savants. If this guy has Gates' ear, no wonder the Gates Foundation mostly ignores global warming.  And remember, Buffett is the other major contributor to the Gates Foundation.  It's multi-billionaire Groupthink. Now while the FAKERs are busy dissing all low-carbon technologies, which organizations as credible as the International Energy Agency, the National Academy of Sciences, the IPCC, and McKinsey say can be employed at scale and cost-effectively, their own solution is so risible even the media is starting to laugh at it.  The Independent writes: The answer that the geeks offer is an 18-mile-long rubber hose pumping liquefied sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. This, you might say, is where freakonomics starts getting a bit above itself…. And they never acknowledge any of the major problems that I discussed in Part 1.  Ironically, even though the Superfreaks rely heavily on Caldeira as a scientist who supposedly supports their geo-engineering strategy and even though they point out early on that Caldeira "coined the phrase 'ocean acidification," the process by which the seas absorb so much carbon dioxide the corals and other shallow-water organisms are threatened," Levitt and Dubner never mention it again, even though their geoengineering-only strategy would devastate the oceans for millennia (see "Imagine a World without Fish: Deadly ocean acidification — hard to deny, harder to geo-engineer, but not hard to stop — is subject of documentary"). As the UK's Guardian puts it: They profile Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, whose company, Intellectual Ventures, is exploring the possibility of pumping large quantities of sulphur dioxide into the Earth's stratosphere through an 18-mile-long hose, held up by helium balloons, at an initial cost of around $20m. The chemical would reflect some of the sun's rays back into space, cooling the planet, exactly as happened following the massive 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines. The primary objection to this plan, as with other "geoengineering" schemes, is that there's no predicting the unknown negative effects of meddling in such a complex natural system. And it's strange, given how much is made in both Freakonomics books of the law of unintended consequences, that they don't mention this in the context of Myhrvold's plan. But the Superfreaks say its all settled science: First of all, would it work? The scientific evidence says yes. It is basically a controlled mimicry of Mount Pinatubo's eruption, whose cooling effects were exhaustively studied and remain unchallenged. Do these guys even have the most rudimentary notion of what "scientific evidence" is?  Here's what Pinatubo did: Yeah, it solved global warming. The June 1991 eruption had a real, but very short-term impact.  We have no "scientific evidence" of what the medium-term or long-term impact would be of creating the equivalent of multiple simultaneous Pinatubos every year for decades and decades. It's like saying 2 aspirins cured my headache, so now that the doctors say I have a malignant brain tumor, the scientific evidence proves I can take 2000 aspirins every day for the rest of my life and be cured. As Caldeira says: If we keep emitting greenhouse gases with the intent of offsetting the global warming with ever increasing loadings of particles in the stratosphere, we will be heading to a planet with extremely high greenhouse gases and a thick stratospheric haze that we would need to main more-or-less indefinitely. This seems to be a dystopic world out of a science fiction story. First, we can assume the oceans have been heavily acidified with shellfish and corals largely a thing of the past. We can assume that ecosystems will be greatly affected by the high CO2 / low sunlight conditions — similar to what Earth experienced hundreds of millions years ago. The sunlight would likely be very diffuse — maybe good for portrait photography, but with unknown consequences for ecosystems. For more, see Science on the Risks of Climate Engineering: "Optimism about a geoengineered 'easy way out' should be tempered by examination of currently observed climate changes" and British coal industry flack pushes geo-engineering "ploy" to give politicians "viable reason to do nothing" about global warming. Is that why Lomborg supports such a smoke-and-mirrors approach? which has an analysis by Robock I'll repost at the end. But first, let me end with one final Myhrvold shocker, which may explain the answer to the questions I posed at the start.  Where does he want to put the 18-mile-long hose to pump large quantities of sulphur dioxide into the Earth's stratosphere? Myhrvold, in his recent travels, happened upon one potentially perfect site. Along with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, he was taking a whirlwind educational tour of various energy producers–a nuclear plant, wind farm, and so on.  One of their destination was the Athabasca oilsands in northern Alberta, Canada. Memo to Superfreaks: They ain't "oil sands." Billions of barrels of petroleum can be found there, but it's heavy, mucky crude. Rather than lying in a liquid pool beneath the earth's crust, it is mixed in, like molasses, with the surface dirt.  In Athabasca you don't drill for oil; you mine it, scooping up gigantic shovels of Earth and then separating the oil from its waste components. One of the most plentiful waste components of sulfur, which commands such a low price that the oil companies simply stockpile it. "There were big yellow mountains of it, like a hundred meters high by a thousand meters wide!" says Myhrvold. "And they stair-step them, like a Mexican pyramid. So you can put one little pumping facility up there, and with one corner of one of those sulfur Mountains, you control the whole global warming problem for the Northern Hemisphere." [Pause to clean up gray matter now scattered all over the vise.] It is interesting to think what might've happened if Myhrvold was around 100 years ago, when New York and other cities were choking on horse manure. One wonders if, while everyone else looked at the mountains of dung saw calamity, he might've seen opportunity. [Pause to think fondly about Myhrvold being around 100 years ago and not today -- then start worrying about the various unintended catastrophes we'd be dealing with now as a result.] Lord knows how many people besides Gates and Buffett and Levitt and Dubner — and the hundreds of thousands of people who will read Superfreakonomics (currently #4 on Amazon's sales ranking) — will be duped by Myhrvold et al. Since the Superfreaks don't report the work of any of the myriad climate scientists who have raised concerns about geo-engineering, since they have essentially adopted the exact same position as Bjorn Lomborg, let me end by reposting an outstanding response from RealClimate, "A biased economic analysis of geoengineering" by Prof. Alan Robock.  Robock gave the best talk I ever heard on geo-engineering (here), and this post is an excellent primer with numerous links: Bjorn Lomborg's Climate Consensus Center just released an un-refereed report on geoengineering, An Analysis of Climate Engineering as a Response to Global Warming, by J Eric Bickel and Lee Lane. The "consensus" in the title of Lomborg's center is based on a meeting of 50 economists last year. The problem with allowing economists to decide the proper response of society to global warming is that they base their analysis only on their own quantifications of the costs and benefits of different strategies. In this report, discussed below, they simply omit the costs of many of the potential negative aspects of producing a stratospheric cloud to block out sunlight or cloud brightening, and come to the conclusion that these strategies have a 25-5000 to 1 benefit/cost ratio. That the second author works for the American Enterprise Institute, a lobbying group that has been a leading global warming denier, is not surprising, except that now they are in favor of a solution to a problem they have claimed for years does not exist. Geoengineering has come a long way since first discussed here three years ago. [Here I use the term "geoengineering" to refer to "solar radiation management" (SRM) and not to carbon capture and sequestration (called "air capture" in the report), a related topic with quite different issues.] In a New Scientist interview, John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, says geoengineering has to be examined as a possible response to global warming, but that we can make no such determination now. A two-day conference on geoengineering organized by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences was held in June, 2009, with an opening talk by the President, Ralph Cicerone. The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has just issued a policy statement on geoengineering, which urges cautious consideration, more research, and appropriate restrictions. But all this attention comes with the message that we know little about the efficacy, costs, and problems associated with geoengineering suggestions, and that much more study is needed. Bickel and Lane, however, do not hesitate to write a report that is rather biased in favor of geoengineering using SRM, by emphasizing the low cost and dismissing the many possible negative aspects. They use calculations with the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) economic model to make the paper seem scientific, but there are many inherent assumptions, and they up-front refuse to present their results in terms of ranges or error bars. Specific numbers in their conclusions make the results seem much more certain than they are. While they give lip service to possible negative consequences of geoengineering, they refuse to quantify them. Indeed, the purpose of new research is to do just that, but the tone of this report is to claim that cooling the planet will have overall benefits, which CAN be quantified. The conclusions and summary of the report imply much more certainty as to the net benefits of SRM than is really the case. My main areas of agreement with this report are that global warming is an important, serious problem, that SRM with stratospheric aerosols or cloud brightening would not be expensive, and that we indeed need more research into geoengineering. The authors provide a balanced introduction to the issues of global warming and the possible types of geoengineering. But Bickel and Lane ignore the effects of ocean acidification from continued CO2 emissions, dismissing this as a lost cause. Even without global warming, reducing CO2 emissions is needed to do the best we can to save the ocean. The costs of this continuing damage to the planet, which geoengineering will do nothing to address, are ignored in the analysis in this report. And without mitigation, SRM would need to be continued for hundreds of years. If it were stopped, by the loss of interest or means by society, the resulting rapid warming would be much more dangerous than the gradual warming we are now experiencing. Bickel and Lane do not even mention several potential negative effects of SRM, including getting rid of blue skies, huge reductions in solar power from systems using direct solar radiation, or ruining terrestrial optical astronomy. They imply that SRM technologies will work perfectly, and ignore unknown unknowns. Not one cloud has ever been artificially brightened by injection of sea salt aerosols, yet this report claims to be able to quantify the benefits and the costs to society of cloud brightening. They also imply that stratospheric geoengineering can be tested at a small scale, but this is not true. Small injections of SO2 into the stratosphere would actually produce small radiative forcing, and we would not be able to separate the effects from weather noise. The small volcanic eruptions of the past year (1.5 Tg SO2 from Kasatochi in 2008 and 1 Tg SO2 from Sarychev in 2009, as compared to 7 Tg SO2 from El Chichón in 1982 and 20 Tg SO2 from Pinatubo in 1991) have produced stratospheric clouds that can be well-observed, but we cannot detect any climate impacts. Only a large-scale stratospheric injection could produce measurable impacts. This means that the path they propose would lead directly to geoengineering, even just to test it, and then it would be much harder to stop, what with commercial interests in continuing (e.g., Star Wars, which has not even ever worked). Bickel and Lane also ignore several seminal papers on geoengineering that present much more advanced scientific results than the older papers they cite. In particular, they ignore Tilmes et al. (2008), Robock et al. (2008), Rasch et al. (2008), and Jones et al. (2009). With respect to ozone, they dismiss concerns about ozone depletion and enhanced UV by citing Wigley (2006) and Crutzen (2006), but ignore the results of Tilmes et al. (2008), who showed that the effects would prolong the ozone hole for decades and that deployment of stratospheric aerosols in a couple decades would not be safe as claimed here. Bickel and Lane assert, completely incorrectly, "On its face, though, it does not appear that the ozone issue would be likely to invalidate the concept of stratospheric aerosols." With respect to an Arctic-only scheme, they suggest in several places that it would be possible to control Arctic climate based on the results of Caldeira and Wood (2008) who artificially reduce sunlight in a polar cap in their model (the "yarmulke method"), whereas Robock et al. (2008) showed with a more realistic model that explicitly treats the distribution and transport of stratospheric aerosols, that the aerosols could not be confined to just the Arctic, and such a deployment strategy would affect the summer Asian monsoon, reducing precipitation over China and India. And Robock et al. (2008) give examples from past volcanic eruptions that illustrate this effect, such as the pattern of precipitation reduction after the 1991 Pinatubo eruption (Trenberth and Dai, 2007): With respect to cloud brightening, Bickel and Lane ignore the Jones et al. (2009) results that cloud brightening would mainly cool the oceans and not affect land temperature much, so that it is an imperfect method at best to counter global warming. Furthermore Jones et al. (2009) found that cloud brightening over the South Atlantic would produce severe drought over the Amazon, destroying the tropical forest. They also ignore a huge class of ethical and world governance issues. Whose hand would be on the global thermostat? Who would trust military aircraft or a multi-national geoengineering company to have the interests of the people of the planet foremost? They do not seem to realize that volcanic eruptions affect climate change because of sulfate aerosols produced from sulfur dioxide gas injections into the stratosphere, the same that is proposed for SRM, and not by larger ash particles that fall out quickly after and eruption and do not cause climate change. They dismiss air capture ("air capture technologies do not appear as promising as solar radiation management from a technical or a cost perspective") but ignore the important point that it would have few of the potential side effects of SRM. Air capture would just remove the cause of global warming in the first place, and the only side effects would be in the locations where the CO2 would be sequestered. For some reason, they insist on using the wrong units for energy flux (W) instead of the correct units of W/m^2, and then mix them in the paper. I cannot understand why they choose to make it so confusing. The potential negative consequences of stratospheric SRM were clearly laid out by Robock (2008) and updated by Robock et al. (2009), which still lists 17 reasons why geoengineering may be a bad idea. One of those important possible consequences, the threat to the water supply for agriculture and other human uses, has been emphasized in a recent Science article by Gabi Hegerl and Susan Solomon. Robock et al. (2009) also lists some benefits from SRM, including increased plant productivity and an enhanced CO2 sink from vegetation that grows more when subject to diffuse radiation, as has been observed after every recent large volcanic eruption. But the quantification of these and other geoengineering benefits, as well as the negative aspects, awaits more research. It may be that the benefits of geoengineering will outweigh the negative aspects, and that most of the problems can be dealt with, but the paper from Lomborg's center ignores the real consensus among all responsible geoengineering researchers. The real consensus, as expressed at the National Academy conference and in the AMS statement, is that mitigation needs to be our first and overwhelming response to global warming, and that whether geoengineering can even be considered as an emergency measure in the future should climate change become too dangerous is not now known. Policymakers will only be able to make such decisions after they see results from an intensive research program. Lomborg's report should have stopped at the need for a research program, and not issued its flawed and premature conclusions. References: Jones, A., J. Haywood, and O. Boucher 2009: Climate impacts of geoengineering marine stratocumulus clouds, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D10106, doi:10.1029/2008JD011450. Rasch, Philip J., Simone Tilmes, Richard P. Turco, Alan Robock, Luke Oman, Chih-Chieh (Jack) Chen, Georgiy L. Stenchikov, and Rolando R. Garcia, 2008: An overview of geoengineering of climate using stratospheric sulphate aerosols. Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. A., 366, 4007-4037, doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0131. Robock, Alan, 2008: 20 reasons why geoengineering may be a bad idea. Bull. Atomic Scientists, 64, No. 2, 14-18, 59, doi:10.2968/064002006. PDF file Roundtable discussion of paper Robock, Alan, Luke Oman, and Georgiy Stenchikov, 2008: Regional climate responses to geoengineering with tropical and Arctic SO2 injections. J. Geophys. Res., 113, D16101, doi:10.1029/2008JD010050. PDF file Robock, Alan, Allison B. Marquardt, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy Stenchikov, 2009: The benefits, risks, and costs of stratospheric geoengineering. Submitted to Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2009GL039209. PDF file Tilmes, S., R. Müller, and R. Salawitch, 2008: The sensitivity of polar ozone depletion to proposed geoengineering schemes, Science, 320(5880), 1201-1204, doi:10.1126/science.1153966. Trenberth, K. E., and A. Dai (2007), Effects of Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption on the hydrological cycle as an analog of geoengineering, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L15702, doi:10.1029/2007GL030524.

Saudis redefine chutzpah: After decades of overpricing, and with trillions of dollars in future revenues, they want aid if world cuts oil use in climate deal Posted: 14 Oct 2009 12:26 PM PDT Let's call it The Audacity of hOPEC.  AP reported last week: Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels. That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. The hypocritical chutzpah is staggering.  The head of the Saudi delegation Mohammad S. Al Sabban said: We are among the economically vulnerable countries…. Many politicians in the Western world think these climate change negotiations and the new agreement will provide them with a golden opportunity to reduce their dependence on imported oil….  That means you will transfer the burden to developing countries, especially to those highly dependent on the exploitation of oil. First off, for decades now, Saudi Arabia has led the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in using monopoly practices to keep oil prices higher than they would have been under strict market economics.  This caused pain for developed countries like ours, but hardly as much, relatively speaking, as that suffered by the non-oil-producing developing (i.e. poor) countries.  I don't remember Saudi Arabia commenting on the burden that cartel-driven oil prices created for other developing countries. Second, the Saudi logic about the future impact of a climate deal is exactly backwards from the broad perspective of the burden of all developing countries.  If the rich countries reduce their oil consumption, that will necessarily reduce the price of oil compared to what it would have otherwise been. The head of the Saudi delegation Mohammad S. Al Sabban dismissed the IEA figures as "biased" and said OPEC's own calculations showed that Saudi Arabia would lose $19 billion a year starting in 2012 under a new climate pact. The region would lose much more, he said. That is an old study by Charles River, which has done lots of dubious climate analysis for the fossil fuel industry. In fact, the Saudis will probably be making $200+ billion a year in 2012 from oil sales, and a little climate will not have any noticeable impact on oil consumption by then.  Moreover, peak oil is going to drive up prices and reduce demand faster than any climate deal (see World's top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: "We have to leave oil before oil leaves us"). Many inside and outside the Arab world were having none of the Saudis nonsensical, special pleading: An Arab environmental group IndyACT and the environmental group Germanwatch released a report Thursday accusing Saudi Arabia of blocking key elements of the negotiations. Among their tactics, the groups said, was slowing negotiations by insisting that the economic woes of oil producers be included in the text. "Despite the variability in the region, the current Arab position is mainly focused around protecting the oil trade rather than saving the planet form the adverse impacts of climate change," said Wael Hmaidan, the executive director of IndyACT. The NYT reports: Petroleum exporters have long used delaying tactics during climate talks. They view any attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by developed countries as a menace to their economies…. "It is like the tobacco industry asking for compensation for lost revenues as a part of a settlement to address the health risks of smoking," said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The worst of this racket is that they have held up progress on supporting adaptation funding for the most vulnerable for years because of this demand." Saudi Arabia is highly dependent on oil exports, which account for most of the government's budget. Last year, when prices peaked, the kingdom's oil revenue swelled by 37 percent, to $281 billion, according to Jadwa Investment, a Saudi bank. That was more than four times the 2002 level. At one point in 2008, the average gasoline price in the United States surpassed $4 a gallon. Saudi exports are expected to drop to $115 billion this year, after oil prices fell. American gasoline prices are hovering around $2.50 a gallon. The one-year swing in the kingdom's revenues shows that oil prices are likely to be a bigger factor in Saudi Arabia's future that any restrictions on greenhouse gases, said David G. Victor, an energy expert at the University of California, San Diego. Mr. Victor dismissed the Saudi stance as a stunt, saying that the real threat for petroleum exporters came from improvements in fuel economy and rising mandates for alternative fuels in the transportation sector, both of which would reduce the need for petroleum products. "Oil exporters have always, in my view, far overblown the near-term effects of carbon limits on demand for their products," Mr. Victor said. "For the Saudis this may be a deal-breaker, but the Saudis are not essential players. In some sense, one sign that a climate agreement is effective is that big hydrocarbon exporters hate it." Hear!  Hear!

Breaking: Murkowski praises Kerry-Graham climate plan. The Washington Times writes, "Her remarks signal the potential for a major turn in the climate change debate in Congress." Posted: 14 Oct 2009 11:36 AM PDT The climate train is leaving the station.  It is becoming increasingly likely Congress will pass a comprehensive energy bill that includes a shrinking cap and a rising carbon price (with a price collar).   Key swing Senators are moving away from obstructionism toward a bipartisan deal.  Those who stand on the sidelines not only risk ending up on the wrong side of history for this momentous bill, but they risk the more tangible benefits of sitting at the negotiating table. The Washington Times reported today: Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, praised the climate change legislation outlined Sunday by GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sen. John Kerry….. Her remarks signal the potential for a major turn in the climate change debate in Congress. She has been a leading opponent of the type of legislation that has been moving forward so far….. "I'm hopeful their column will mark a shift in the climate debate," Murkowski said at a hearing by the energy committee. "Instead of cutting emissions at any cost, we should be working on a policy that incorporates the best ideas of both parties, a policy that accounts for our near-term energy needs, limits costs and is flexible enough to work under different economic circumstances," she said. In the op-ed, the two Senators asserted they have developed "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." The framework includes, among other things, more offshore drilling and incentives for nuclear power, neither of which should be deal breakers for progressives as I have explained. Murkowski's office has now put out a press release reiterating her statements: Murkowski also noted that she hoped the framework for climate policy laid out by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., would mark a turning point in the climate debate…. Murkowski, the top Republican on the committee, supports addressing climate change in an economically safe and environmentally meaningful way. Yesterday, I pointed out that Nate Silver's "Probability of Yes" vote for Murkowski is 2.37%, putting her in the "Republican Hail Mary's & No-Shots," writing: But based on this op-ed, and her earlier statements, I'm going to put her at 50%.  Assuming Graham and Kerry come up with a compromise that, say, McCain can support, how exactly will Murkowski oppose it?  On grounds that it was not a "good faith" effort to address climate change? Silver himself has a column today "Can Offshore Drilling Save the Climate Bill?" on the subject.  I actually think his analysis focuses too much on the wrong element of the deal — the proposed nuclear provisions are probably more important for securing the 60 votes than the drilling provisions.  Indeed, you have no chance whatsoever of getting either Liebermann or Graham, let alone McCain and many others, without a strong nuclear title.  Here is his bottom line: …So what does this get the Democrats? It gets them Linsday Graham's vote, and possibly Lisa Murkowski's. It takes Mark Begich from a leaner to a likely yes. It might encourage Mary Landrieu, and possibly George LeMieux of Florida, to look more sympathetically at the bill. Then there are a whole host of more remote possibilities: Isakson of Georgia, and perhaps Cochran and Wicker of Mississippi or Burr of North Carolina; none of those votes are likely, but they become more plausible with offshore drilling in place. Overall, it seems to be worth something like 2-4 votes at the margin. I don't think it gets you any of the "more remote possibilities." That would give the Kerry-Graham bill a fighting chance, especially if an additional vote or two — possibly John McCain's — can also be picked up as a result of the nuclear energy compromise. Of course, that's assuming that no liberals would rebel against the new provisions, but the opposition to both offshore drilling and nuclear energy seems to be fairly soft in the liberal caucus. I would not place money on the climate bill passing this year, but the odds would seem to be a lot better with the drilling compromise in place. Again, I think he misses the point.  The nuclear provisions are probably more important.  Here, for instance, is a statement last month from the office of Senator Voinovich (R-OH): As both Chairman and Ranking Member on the Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee over the last eight years, Senator Voinovich has had oversight responsibility of the NRC, and has worked hard to ensure the NRC has the resources to fulfill their role in ensuring public safety. Sen. Voinovich continues to believe that nuclear power is the only real alternative we have today to produce enough low-cost, reliable, and clean energy to remove harmful pollutants from the air, prevent the harmful effects of global climate change and keep good jobs from going overseas. At a time when we are struggling to regain our economic footing, Ohio's manufacturing industry has an incredible opportunity when it comes to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy offers thousands of well-paying jobs in all stages of development and production. The Kerry-Graham deal certainly puts his vote for the bill in the "gettable" column.  And as the bill becomes more genuinely bipartisan, then Senators like Lugar (R-IN) become gettable too.  I think the final bill will 5 or more Rs and 62 or more total votes. Silver's finally sentence "I would not place money on the climate bill passing this year" is a tad too coy.  I myself would not place money on the climate bill passing the Senate this year.  But I would place money on it passing by next year, and I'd be interested to know whether Silver would, too.

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