Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Climate Progress

Climate Progress


SuperFreaks claim book doesn't have "a moral or policy perspective." Yet they wrote, "Any religion, meanwhile, has its heretics, and global warming is no exception" and warming is "at the forefront of public policy."

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:37 AM PDT

Yesterday, SuperFreakonomics co-author Steven Levitt said his book's erroneous statement on recent global temperature trends was just an attempt at "irony" (see Caldeira — "To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous." Levitt "said he does not believe there is a cooling trend"!!).

He and coauthor Stephen Dubner also continued their national media disinformation tour on public radio's Diane Rehm Show.  I couldn't stomach listening to their efforts to either walk back or obfuscate key errors and misrepresentations in their book error-riddled book.  Wonk Room's Brad Johnson has a stronger digestive system than I do, so he listened to the show and I'll repost his response.

Levitt and Dubner dismissed the widespread criticism of their book by Nobel Prize-winning economists and climate scientists as the "work of an activist," evidently referring to physicist and former Department of Energy official Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Levitt and Dubner even tried to laugh off the on-air criticism of Dr. Peter Frumhoff, a global change ecologist who is the director of Science and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The authors represent their book as merely a quizzical look at interesting issues, without "a moral or policy perspective":

Just in case you're happening upon this conversation in the middle and haven't grasped the kind of perspective that we're coming from — we don't write about prostitution, or terrorism, or global warming or any of these things, really, from a moral or policy perspective. We just try to lay out what's going on and from that let people proceed how they want to think about it or how they want to draw conclusions. So this is not meant to be an endorsement or a condemnation of any of these things. We're just trying to figure out what's going on.

[JR:  In short, readers can safely ignore all of their conclusions.]

Listen here:

This depiction, like most of the SuperFreaks' defense of their work, bears little resemblance to the actual text. The authors discuss global warming explicitly through a "policy perspective":

It is this specter of catastrophe, no matter how remote, that has propelled global warming to the forefront of public policy. . . . So how should we place a value on this relatively small chance of worldwide catastrophe? . . . One good reason for waiting is that we might have options in the future to avert the problem that cost far less than today's options.

The authors condemn a broad array existing policy efforts: to limit carbon dioxide emissions ("not the right villain"), to establish carbon pricing ("all we can say is good luck"), expand renewable energy ("cute"), limit deforestation (trees are an "environmental scourge"), clean up transportation ("not that big of a sector"), or reduce coal use ("economic suicide").

They also discuss global warming explicitly through a "moral perspective," condemning "the movement to stop global warming has taken on the feel of a religion," with a "high priest," "patron saint," and "doomsayers" responsible for a "drumbeat of doom." The authors quote Microsoft billionaire Nathan Myhrvold, who accuses advocates of policies other than geo-engineering of being "global-warming activists" who want to "do a set of things that could have enormous impact — and we think probably negative impact — on human life."

On the other hand, the SuperFreaks provide a strong endorsement for pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere forever as a "cheap and simple solution" that is "practically free" with a "proof of harmlessness." Its biggest problem, they claim, is that it is "too simple and too cheap." They claim climate scientist Ken Caldeira has endorsed this policy "solution," but policymakers only listen to "people like Al Gore," who think "it's nuts." Somehow Levitt and Dubner fail to mention that Caldeira himself has actually said the SuperFreaks' policy perspective is ridiculous:

As a long-term strategy, it's nuts.

Bizarrely, Levitt and Dubner never once mention the one policy area that is universally recognized as being "cheap and simple" by economists and scientists alike — boring energy efficiency. Guess they were too busy chatting with call girls and mosquito-laser billionaires.

Update:  During the interview, Levitt dismisses ocean acidification as something that isn't "an incredibly big problem," concedes that geo-engineering "isn't a perfect solution" and admits that "we won't solve this without dealing with the carbon issue," but then calls geo-engineering "a solution to a particular problem" (namely, the warming of the earth).
– Brad Johnson
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Energy and Global Warming News for October 27: Climate change endangers human health

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:42 AM PDT

Ailing planet seen as bad for human health

Climate change will make Americans more vulnerable to diseases, disasters and heat waves, but governments have done little to plan for the added burden on the health system, according to a new study by a nonprofit group.

The study, released Monday by the Trust for America's Health, an advocacy group focused on disease prevention, examines the public-health implications of climate change. In addition to pushing up sea levels and shrinking Arctic ice, the report says, a warming planet is likely to leave more people sick, short of breath or underfed.

Experts involved with the study said that these threats might be reduced if the federal government adopts a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. But no legislation could stop them altogether, they said. Emissions already in the atmosphere are expected to increase warming — and the problems that come with it — for years to come.

"That [a cap on greenhouse gases] really is not enough," said Phyllis Cuttino of the Pew Environment Group, which funded the study. "We can see all these problems coming, but as a country, we haven't done enough to prepare for them."

The idea that climate change will be bad for people as well as polar bears is not new: It was explained in detail by a United Nations panel that won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work on climate in 2007.

For more on the health impacts of climate change, see

Fleeing drought in the Horn of Africa

For centuries, Adam Abdi Ibrahim's ancestors herded cattle and goats across an unforgiving landscape in southern Somalia where few others were hardy enough to survive.

This year, Ibrahim became the first in his clan to throw in the towel, abandoning his land and walking for a week to bring his family to this overcrowded refugee camp in Kenya.

He's not fleeing warlords, Islamist insurgents or Somalia's 18-year civil war. He's fleeing the weather.

"I give up," said the father of five as he stood in line recently to register at the camp. After enduring four years of drought and the death of his last 20 animals, Ibrahim, 28, said he has no plans to return.

Asked how he proposed to live, Ibrahim shrugged. "I want to be a refugee."

Africa is already home to one-third of the 42 million people worldwide uprooted by ethnic slaughter, despots and war. But experts say climate change is quietly driving Africa's displacement crisis to new heights. Ibrahim is one of an estimated 10 million people worldwide who have been driven out of their homes by rising seas, failing rain, desertification or other climate-driven factors.

Norman Myers, an Oxford University professor and one of the first scholars to draw attention to the unfolding problem, estimated that by 2050 there will be more than 25 million refugees attributable to climate change, which will replace war and persecution as the leading cause of global displacement.

Micro loans bring light to rural poor

When night falls in remote parts of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, hundreds of millions of people without access to electricity turn to candles or flammable and polluting kerosene lamps for illumination.

Slowly through small loans for solar powered devices, microfinance is bringing light to these rural regions where a lack of electricity has stymied economic development, literacy rates and health.

"Earlier, they could not do much once the sun set. Now, the sun is used differently. They have increased their productivity, improved their health and socio-economic status," said Pinal Shah from Sewa bank, a micro-lending institution.

Vegetable seller Ramiben Waghri took out a loan to buy a solar lantern which she uses to light up her stall at night. The lantern costs between $66-$112, about a week's income for Waghri.

"The vegetables look better by this light, and it's cheaper than kerosene and doesn't smell," said Waghri, who estimates she makes about 300 rupees ($6) more each evening with her lantern.

"If we can use the sun to save some money, why not?"

In India, solar power projects, often funded by microcredit institutions, are helping the country reduce carbon emissions and achieve its goal to double the contribution of renewable energy to 6 percent, or 25,000 megawatts, within the next four years.

Off-grid applications such as solar cookers and lanterns, which can provide several hours of light at night after being charged by the sun during the day, will help cut dependence on fossil fuels and reduce the fourth biggest emitter's carbon footprint, said Pradeep Dadhich, a senior fellow at energy research institute TERI.

Obama to detail stimulus spending on 'smart grid'

President Obama and administration officials today will announce $3.4 billion in spending projects to modernize the nation's electric power system.

The president will offer details on funding for the "smart grid" during an appearance at a solar plant in Arcadia, Fla. White House officials said the projects would create tens of thousands of jobs in the near term and lay the groundwork for changing how Americans use and pay for energy.

The spending is aimed at improving the efficiency and reliability of the U.S. power supply, and helping to create markets for wind and solar power, officials said. They also said it would create "smart meters" to help consumers use electricity when demand is low and when rates are cheaper — for example, by running dishwashers and other energy-thirsty appliances in the middle of the night.

The money will be released in the form of grants to applicants and must be matched dollar for dollar by private funding.

The clean-energy push comes as the administration is working to respond to a national unemployment rate hovering near double digits. Vice President Joe Biden today will announce the reopening of a former General Motors plant in Delaware to produce more efficient cars. And several Cabinet secretaries are scheduled to testify before a Senate panel in support of sweeping legislation to curb emissions that contribute to global warming and to encourage renewable energy development.

The president's announcement comes after comments last week by a key Obama economic advisor, Christina Romer, who said the economic gains from the administration's signature $787-billion stimulus plan had probably peaked.

China's Water Needs Create Opportunities

The staggering economic growth in China has come at a heavy cost, paid in severe contamination of the country's air, soil and water. But now the Chinese government is aggressively pursuing more stringent environmental regulation, with a particular focus on water distribution and wastewater treatment.

Recent stimulus spending has opened up the Chinese market to green initiatives. And Canadian companies are responding to the call for advanced water treatment and reuse technology.

"It's not well known that China has set aside more money for the adoption of clean technologies than any other country on the planet," said Dallas Kachan, managing director of Cleantech Group in San Francisco, which tracks global investment in clean technologies.

The Chinese economic stimulus package of 4 trillion yuan, or $585 billion, announced a year ago, focused nearly 40 percent of its spending on environmental and energy-efficient projects.

The climate change meeting in Copenhagen in December is likely to prompt policy shifts that further drive the market for clean technologies in China, Mr. Kachan said. "This is possibly the best time to be doing business in China as a clean-tech company," he said. "It's important to get in now and form relationships."

Since 2006, the clean-technology market in China has "gone from niche to mainstream," and it is growing at an annual rate of more than 20 percent, according to Tsing Capital, one of the country's first clean-technology venture capital firms.

Canada has a strong track record for innovation and investment in clean water technology and already has a foot in the Chinese market. "Canadian companies like Zenon Environmental that are world leaders in ultraviolet technology have benefited a lot of the emerging companies looking to enter China," said David Henderson, managing director of XPV Capital, a Toronto-based investor in emerging water industry companies.

Alan McMillan is managing director of Omazo Ventures, a technology incubator firm also based in Toronto, and chairman of BX Jishu, a Chinese clean-technology distributor. Omazo, through BX Jishu, distributes in China equipment manufactured by UV Pure Technologies, also of Toronto, that purifies water using ultraviolet light.

This summer, Omazo struck a deal with a Shanghai-based hotel chain to supply 1,000 Chinese hotels with UV Pure's purification units. Omazo declined to name the buyer but said that on average, each unit would cost $2,000 and hotels would typically need 2 to 10 units, depending on their size.

Omazo is focused on the commercial property market — and specifically, on bringing clean water to China's burgeoning hospitality industry. "That's our penetration strategy," Mr. McMillan said. "We see the hotel industry as being one of the first to demand clean water. Hotels have extreme water needs for their pools, restaurants, showers. And the people who stay in them have high expectations."

Asia, Africa Are 'More Vulnerable' to Climate Change

Developing nations in South Asia and Africa including India may face greater threats from heat- trapping pollution if nations fail to reach a new climate agreement at Copenhagen, a United Nations official said.

"The unfortunate coincidence is that developing countries are located in the tropical belt and are more vulnerable to the impact of climate change," said Marcel Alers, a climate change mitigation adviser to the United Nations Development Program.

South Asia and Africa may be "hit first and hit harder" because they have fewer resources than developed nations to meet the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions such as floods, droughts and water shortages, Alers said in an interview at the Carbon Asia Forum in Singapore yesterday.

India requires $5 billion a year between 2012 and 2017, in addition to its current investment plans, to support a transition to low-carbon energy generation, the United Nations Development Program said in its Human Development Report, citing research by the Energy and Resources Institute.

Asia's third-biggest economy is the world's fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide while China is the world's biggest emitter, according to the UN agency. Between 1990 and 2004, emissions climbed 97 percent, one of the fastest pace of gains in the world, it said.

Ads call for Metcalfe's resignation

Just a few days after he caused an uproar by calling some Iraq and Afghanistan veterans "traitors" for warning about climate change, radio ads are being run on Pittsburgh stations, urging listeners to call his office and demand that he resign from the Legislature.

But the Republican flame-thrower said he won't quit and blamed the harsh radio attacks on groups such as Operation Free, VoteVets.org and liberal billionaire George Soros, all of whom, Mr. Metcalfe claimed, have a "radical leftist" political agenda.

Mr. Metcalfe, a military veteran himself, contended that any veteran who lends their name "to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change, in an effort to control more of the wealth created in our economy … is a traitor to the oath he or she took to defend the Constitution of our great nation!"

The new radio ad, running on KDKA and other stations, opens with a narrator saying sternly, "Traitors — that's what state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe called decorated Iraq and Afghanistan veterans."

The announcer then says that Mr. Metcalfe had attacked "members of Operation Free, veterans whose goal is to make America more secure with clean energy and cut the flow of oil dollars to those who would do us harm."

The ad also has Pittsburgh veteran Chuck Tyler saying, "Rep. Metcalfe, a lot of my friends never made it home from Iraq. Dishonoring us dishonors their memory. We deserve better and so does Pennsylvania."

Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: "Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better."

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He predicted that people's attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. "I think it's important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating," he said. "I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food."

Lord Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank and now I. G. Patel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change.

Green Halloween tips you may not have thought of PLUS when you see kids out trick-or-treating tonight …

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 07:35 AM PDT

halloween-small.jpg

There's a whole website GreenHalloween.org.  And everybody's favorite green website, Treehugger, has a bunch of ideas (reprinted below).

But first, when you see kids out trick-or-treating tonight … please consider these lines from the nation's top climate scientist:

… the most serious effects will be visited upon the young and the unborn, the generations that bear no responsibility for the problem. The most important effects, I believe, will be those that are irreversible for all practical purposes, specifically (1) extermination of species, and (2) ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise. If we continue business-as-usual energy policy, using more and more fossil fuels, it is likely that we will have:  (1) rapid climate change that will combine with other pressures on species to cause the rate of extinction of plants and animals to increase markedly, leading in some cases to ecosystem collapse, snowballing extinctions, and a more desolate planet for future generations.  (2) meter-scale sea level rise this century, and ice sheets in a state of disintegration that guarantees future sea level rise in the 10-meter-scale, with a continual reworking of future global coastlines out of humanity's control.

I would add that the planetary desolation our continued inaction would leave our children includes the loss of the inland glaciers that provide fresh water for a billion people, irreversible ocean acidification and Dust-Bowlification across one third of the habited land mass (see "Hell and High Water ").

That should give a double incentive for a greener Halloween … "in ways you may not have thought of":

(1) Think outside the store-bought box.

Forget the costly, typical, polyester costumes that you find at those pop-up Halloween superstores. This year, recycle what's already in your house for a more eco and original approach.

Here are four ideas that I shared recently on CNN.com/LIVE

Skunk: Wear a black turtleneck & tights and paste a white strip down your back Spider: Wear black leotard & tights, and attach 4 extra sets of "legs" – tights stuffed with paper. Ragdoll: Wear a sleeper with patches, a stocking cap, rosy cheeks and freckles Jack in the Box: Wear bright tights and shirt. Attach a brightly painted box with a crank.

(2) Aluminum foil makes a costume and makes any costume better.

Good old aluminum foil like Reynolds Wrap from 100% recycled aluminum is the obvious choice. It can become the star on your daughter's fairy godmother wand or the sword in your young Jedi hand. Simply cut a star or sword from cardboard and cover both sides with aluminum foil. For the star, attach it to the top of a short dowel rod, tie on some ribbon, and voila! It can become the face of your child's futuristic face mask. Cut out the mask from cardboard. Cut holes for eyes and the mouth, then cover the mask with foil and use paint, or glue on feathers or glitter to decorate. Cover 3 boxes in cascading sizes with foil to make a robot costume Cover cardboard fins for a Nemo-like shiny fish

(3) Carry two bags: one for treats and a bag for trash

Your treat bag doesn't need to be some synthetic polyester pumpkin. Instead use a reusable grocery bag or a decorated old pillowcase.

In addition to your treat bag, carry a second bag for litter. Each November 1st, people wake to streets and sidewalks littered with candy wrappers and discarded costumes. This Halloween, walk with a trash bag in hand and help keep our streets clean.

(4) Choose a walking neighborhood

Forget about stop-and-go trick-or-treat driving, walking is the more carbon-neutral, eco-friendly choice. If you don't live in a "walking" neighborhood, try carpooling, picking a different neighborhood where you can walk, or trick-or-treating at the mall.

(5) When it's all over, donate!

Take this year's costume and host a swap party with neighbors or school friends so you'll all have something new to wear next year.

Or, better yet, donate your costumes to a local children's hospital. They're always so grateful for any donated books, toys, and costumes for dress up days.

Sen. Kerry downplays prospect of floor debate on the climate bill this year; Sen. Alexander is still unaware of staggering cost of nuclear power

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 07:08 AM PDT

E&E News (subs. req'd) reports this morning:

International attention on the Senate's progress on the issue is heightened given the major U.N. climate summit to be held this December in Copenhagen, Denmark. Underscoring that point, Reid yesterday took a call from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

"The secretary general emphasized the urgency of trying to have some movement in the Senate" before the Copenhagen meeting, Kerry said. "I think we're going to deliver some movement because we're working in the EPW Committee to try to get the Kerry-Boxer bill and the chairman's mark out."

Meanwhile, Kerry also downplayed the prospect of floor debate on the climate bill this year, signaling instead that committee action is about as far as he expects the Senate can go before the two-week Copenhagen negotiations begin on Dec. 7.

"Bottom line, we're going to keep working this as hard as we can," Kerry said. "We're going to keep moving forward. I'm confident we'll have some kind of effort, whether it's out of committee, or out of all the committees, or the working group or whatever, before we go to Copenhagen. We're going to try to do as much as we can."

Not a big surprise, given how slow the overall legislative process has been moving in EPW and the molasses pace of health care reform.  Indeed, it bears repeating that back in early February, Greenwire reported (see "Breaking: Sen. Boxer makes clear U.S. won't pass a climate bill this year"):

"Copenhagen is December," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told reporters. "That's why I said we'll have a bill out of this committee by then."

I've blogged many times I don't think that the White House needs to have a signed climate bill — or even Senate passage — for Copenhagen to be successful in the sense of moving international negotiations forward.

I think it would be useful for Kerry and Graham to have fleshed out their breakthrough Senate climate partnership and their "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."

On July 7, Lamar Alexander (R-TN) called nuclear "the cheap clean energy solution," renews GOP call for 100 new nukes, which would cost some $1 trillion.

Since then, new nukes have gotten even more expensive — Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid. And more frought with legal danger — see The Nukes of (legal) Hazard, Episode 5: Areva threatens work stoppage at Finnish nuke.

But Lamar is still rerunning the same story.  Here is what "GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said during a conference call" yesterday:

Alexander urged Democrats to move on what he said was a lower cost alternative that promotes the expansion of nuclear power, offshore oil and gas drilling, carbon capture and storage, and the electrification of the nation's transportation fleet."If my house was about to burn down, I wouldn't buy the most expensive insurance," Alexander said.

Huh?  Well, I'm glad he acknowledges the imminent climate danger in that final quote.

But in any case the House and Senate bill aggressively pursues CCS and transportation electrification, and the Senate bill will have a nuclear title and drilling title.  But CCS is staggeringly expensive Harvard stunner: "Realistic" first-generation CCS costs a whopping $150 per ton of CO2 — 20 cents per kWh!

And E&E News itself notes nuclear is too:

"I think the biggest impediment of aggressive nuclear technology is its cost," said Ralph Izzo, chairman, president and CEO of the New Jersey-based utility Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. PSEG is waiting for the first new reactors to be licensed and built before making any decision about new nuclear plants, he said. "The cost is not within my comfort level right now," he said.

A June report by Moody's Investor Services maintained that the credit agency "is considering taking a more negative view for those issuers seeking to build new nuclear power plants," as most utilities are not adjusting their balance sheets to commence on such an endeavor and as a reflection of the high risk involved in a possible $6 billion to $8 billion investment.

The report notes federal loan guarantees will "only modestly mitigate increasing business and operating risk profile."

Nuclear power is the most expensive climate "insurance" you could possibly buy right now.

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New CNN poll finds "nearly six in 10 independents" support cap-and-trade

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 05:42 AM PDT

"Six in 10 Americans support a cap and trade" proposal to cut pollution, according to a new national poll," CNN reports (details at the end).  The recent Pew Research poll also found strong support for climate action:

graph of public supporting setting emissions limits

Of course, the Pew poll got a lot of attention for what it said about media miscoverage of the global cooling myth and the effectiveness of the disinformation campaign on climate science (see here).  But the more important news is that like a half-dozen recent polls, it made clear the public supports action on climate and clean energy:

And that's pretty impressive given that the fossil-fuel-funded opponents of action have in aggressively ramping up spending on their anti-action campaign to mislead the public about the low cost of action and the high cost of inaction.

A leading expert on public opinion analysis, Ruy Teixeira, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, writes of the Pew poll:

Health care reform is occupying almost everyone's attention these days, which is understandable given its level of importance and how close we are to big decisions in Congress. But other critical issues remain on Congress's agenda and will be taken up once the health care situation is resolved. On the top of that list is climate change. Just-released data from the Pew Research Center suggests the public is ready to move forward in this area….

… the public gives 50-39 support to "setting limits on carbon dioxide emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if it may mean higher energy prices" (emphasis added).

These findings indicate that legislators should not rest on their laurels even if they succeed in passing health care reform. The public appetite for change is clearly broader than that.

The poll also finds the public believes the United States "should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change" rather than "set its own standards to address global climate change."

It's a poorly worded question, but who can disagree with that choice?  A better phrased WashPost polling question from June found almost three-fifths (59 percent) said the United States should take action on global warming even if other countries such as China and India are doing less to address the issue, compared to 38 percent who thought either we should take action only if these countries take equally aggressive action (20 percent) or we should do nothing (18 percent).

Graph: Should the United States address global warming even if other countries do not?

As should become clear to the public over the next few months, we are in the process of joining with other countries — and passing a domestic climate bill is the first step to making that happen.

UPDATE:  CNN reports:

Sixty percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey say they favor 'cap and trade,' a Democratic sponsored plan in which the federal government would limit the amount of greenhouse gases that companies could produce in their factories or power plants. Thirty-seven percent oppose the proposal, which would penalize companies that exceed greenhouse gas limits with fines or by making those businesses pay money to other companies that producer smaller amounts of pollution.

The poll also suggests a partisan divide, with three in four Democrats backing the proposal and nearly six in 10 independents on board as well, but only four in 10 Republicans supporting "cap and trade."

"The support of independents will be crucial to any cap and trade proposal," Holland says. "Independents may not be red or blue, but they appear to be green. Earlier polls indicate that Independents believe in global warming and believe that the government can take steps to curtail the problem."

Rural Electric Cooperatives: Efficiency measures more important than allowance allocations

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 03:54 PM PDT

Here's a  stunner from Climate Wire (subs. req'd) today:

Rural electric cooperatives, which represent many small, coal-dependent utilities in the Midwest and raised a ruckus in the House debate, are eligible for a portion of allowances under the new draft.

But at a conference last week, the head of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Glenn English, said "the basis for a deal" on climate would not revolve so much around allowances, but around whether people in coal-dependent regions would get enough help with efficiency retrofits on homes so they can manage potential electricity spikes.

Wow — somebody who would rather have smart policies than more allowances.

Interestingly, Boxer gave the Co-ops a real piece of the action:

Small Electricity Local Distribution Companies: For further consumer protection, small LDCs (including rural electric cooperatives) receive 0.5% of distributed allowances and will receive an additional 0.5% distribution of the supplemental allowance allocation described below each year from 2012 through 2025, phasing out by 2030.

I don't see electricity price spikes resulting from the bill, since it has numerous cost-containment features, including a price collar (ceiling and floor), and regulated utility rates in general simply don't move very quickly.

The good news is that stimulus bill had a massive amount of money for weatherizing homes — and the House bill devotes an astonishing amount of investment and incentives toward boosting efficiency ("The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030").  Assuming the final legislation keeps all of the efficiency measures from the House, then electricity bills will probably stay pretty darn flat for a long time — see "EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency — plus 22 GW of extra coal retirements and no new dirty plants."  One obvious improvement to the final bill would be to have part of the electricity allowances go toward, just as one third of the allowances for natural gas distributors do.

In any case, I hope that English spells out in more detail exactly what he would like to see, since NRECA was slow to support the House bill, and as a result some of the local coo-ps still are still fighting the bill.

Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — "To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous." Levitt "said he does not believe there is a cooling trend"!!

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 01:43 PM PDT

A terrific story by the AP's Seth Borenstein, "Statisticians reject global cooling," not only debunks that myth — it will make your head spin once again on error-riddled Superfreakonomics (coauthored by Levitt).

Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.

Only one problem: It's not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

The debunking will be no surprise to CP readers [see The BBC asks "What happened to global warming?" during the hottest decade in recorded history! and "NYT's Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!)], but the AP made three nice contributions.  First, the AP talked to NOAA:

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

Second, "In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented":

"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

Duh!

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.

Identifying a downward trend is a case of "people coming at the data with preconceived notions," said Peterson, author of the book "Why Did They Do That? An Introduction to Forensic Decision Analysis."

UPDATE:  AP details here "How temperature data was analyzed."

Third, the AP talked to Superfreakonomics coathor Levitt and top climatologist Caldeira, with an amusingly predictable outcome:

Apart from the conflicting data analyses is the eyebrow-raising new book title from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance."A line in the book says: "Then there's this little-discussed fact about global warming: While the drumbeat of doom has grown louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased."

That led to a sharp rebuke from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which said the book mischaracterizes climate science with "distorted statistics."

Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, said he does not believe there is a cooling trend. He said the line was just an attempt to note the irony of a cool couple of years at a time of intense discussion of global warming. Levitt said he did not do any statistical analysis of temperatures, but "eyeballed" the numbers and noticed 2005 was hotter than the last couple of years. Levitt said the "cooling" reference in the book title refers more to ideas about trying to cool the Earth artificially.

Yeah, the book is filled with such errors "irony" — see Error-riddled Superfreakonomics, Part 3: It takes a village to debunk their anti-scientific nonsense.

So Levitt now says he doesn't believe there is a cooling trend!  Awesome, because Dubner is baffled that Caldeira 'doesn't believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions.' and Nathan Myhrvold jumpsed ship on Levitt and Dubner (on their blog!) asserting: "Geoengineering is proposed only as a last resort to try to reduce or cope with the even greater harms of global warming! … The point of the chapter in SuperFreakonomics is that geoengineering might be good insurance in case we don't get global warming under control." Did he even read the book?

Does anybody associated with the book stand behind any part of it anymore?

Statisticians say that in sizing up climate change, it's important to look at moving averages of about 10 years. They compare the average of 1999-2008 to the average of 2000-2009. In all data sets, 10-year moving averages have been higher in the last five years than in any previous years.

"To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford.

Ben Santer, a climate scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Lab, called it "a concerted strategy to obfuscate and generate confusion in the minds of the public and policymakers" ahead of international climate talks in December in Copenhagen.

Kudos to the AP for such a thoughtful and informative story.

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