Monday, October 26, 2009

Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Nature: "Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized"

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 09:21 AM PDT

The most detailed satellite information available shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica are shrinking faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode, a new study found….

Using 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to the study….

"To some extent it's a runaway effect. The question is how far will it run?" said lead author Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey. "It's more widespread than we previously thought."

That's from "Study: 'Runaway' melt on Antarctica, Greenland," the pull-no-punches MSNBC story last month.  The full study, "Extensive dynamic thinning on the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets," was published in Nature (subs. req'd, excerpted below).

NASA Ice Satellite Maps Profound Polar Thinning

The British Antarctic Survey put out a news release with graphics.  Here are some satellite tracks, from NASA's ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite), revealing areas of dynamic thinning (red) in Antarctica and Greenland [click to enlarge].

The release notes that this "dynamic thinning":

  • reaches all latitudes in Greenland
  • has intensified on key Antarctic coastlines
  • is penetrating far into the ice sheets' interior and
  • is spreading as ice shelves thin by ocean-driven melt.

The authors conclude "Ice shelf collapse has triggered particularly strong thinning that has endured for decades."  More of the MSNBC story:

Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 percent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003.

These new measurements confirm what some of the more pessimistic scientists thought: The melting along the crucial edges of the two major ice sheets is accelerating and is in a self-feeding loop. The more the ice melts, the more water surrounds and eats away at the remaining ice.

What's going on in Antarctica may be even more worrisome than what's happening in Greenland, as I've noted (see Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: "Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier" and "Q: How much can West Antarctica plausibly contribute to sea level rise by 2100?" [A:  3 to 5 feet]).

Antarctica is disintegrating much faster than almost anybody imagined.  In 2001, the IPCC "consensus" said neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are.  As Penn State climatologist Richard Alley said in March 2006, the ice sheets appear to be shrinking "100 years ahead of schedule."

The warming of the WAIS is most worrisome (at least for this century) because it's going to disintegrate long before the East Antarctic Ice Sheet does — since WAIS appears to be melting from underneath (i.e. the water is warming, too), and since, as I wrote in the "high water" part of my book, the WAIS is inherently less stable:

Perhaps the most important, and worrisome, fact about the WAIS is that it is fundamentally far less stable than the Greenland ice sheet because most of it is grounded far below sea level. The WAIS rests on bedrock as deep as two kilometers underwater. One 2004 NASA-led study found that most of the glaciers they were studying "flow into floating ice shelves over bedrock up to hundreds of meters deeper than previous estimates, providing exit routes for ice from further inland if ice-sheet collapse is under way." A 2002 study in Science examined the underwater grounding lines–the points where the ice starts floating. Using satellites, the researchers determined that "bottom melt rates experienced by large outlet glaciers near their grounding lines are far higher than generally assumed." And that melt rate is positively correlated with ocean temperature.

The warmer it gets, the more unstable WAIS outlet glaciers will become. Since so much of the ice sheet is grounded underwater, rising sea levels may have the effect of lifting the sheets, allowing more-and increasingly warmer-water underneath it, leading to further bottom melting, more ice shelf disintegration, accelerated glacial flow, and further sea level rise, and so on and on, another vicious cycle. The combination of global warming and accelerating sea level rise from Greenland could be the trigger for catastrophic collapse in the WAIS (see, for instance, here).

You can read every thing a laymen could possibly want to know about what the recent study on Antarctic warming does and doesn't show at RealClimate here.

The authors of the Nature article find:

In Antarctica, we find significant dynamic thinning of fast-flowing ice at rates greater than plausible through interannual accumulation variability for drainage sectors….  On the glacier scale, thinning is strongest in the Amundsen Sea embayment (ASE), where it is confirmed as being localized on the fast-flowing glaciers and their tributaries (Fig. 3 [below]. The area close to the Pine Island Glacier grounding line thinned in the period 2003–2007 at up to 6 m yr-1, neighbouring Smith Glacier thinned at a rate in excess of 9 m yr-1 and Thwaites Glacier thinned at a rate of around 4 m yr-1. These rates are higher than those reported for the 2002–2004 period.

They conclude:

In Antarctica, dynamic thinning has accelerated at the grounding lines of the major glaciers of the Amundsen Sea embayment, and in places has penetrated to within 100 km of the ice divides. Ice-shelf-collapse glaciers show particularly strong thinning that has persisted for years to decades after collapse and in places has penetrated to their headwalls. Although losses are partly offset by strong gains on the spine and western flank of the Antarctic Peninsula, numerous glaciers feeding intact Antarctic Peninsula, West Antarctic and East Antarctic ice shelves are also thinning dynamically. We infer that grounded glaciers and ice streams are responding sensitively not only to ice-shelf collapse but to shelf thinning owing to ocean-driven melting. This is an apparently widespread phenomenon that does not require climate warming sufficient to initiate ice-shelf surface melt. Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized.

Did I mention the time to act is now!

Related Posts:

Energy and Global Warming News for October 26: Markey expands "clean coal" forged letter investigation

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 08:34 AM PDT

Markey expands "clean coal" forged letter investigation

A House committee is investigating whether the coal industry's largest influence group failed to accurately report its lobbying spending to Congress.

The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has expanded its investigation into forged letters sent to lawmakers and their ties to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, according to documents viewed by E&E.

In an Oct. 21 letter, Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked ACCCE whether its lobbying disclosure for 2008 and the first half of 2009 should have included work conducted by the Hawthorn Group, a public relations firm hired in part to coordinate efforts to fight the House climate bill.

Markey directed ACCCE to detail how much of the $10 million it paid Hawthorn Group during that 18-month period went toward work aimed at influencing U.S. climate legislation. ACCCE paid Hawthorn Group more than $7 million in 2008 and nearly $3 million in the first half of 2009, according to documents it gave the committee.

"It does raise some questions," said Markey spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder. "What are these activities? They're to influence a member of Congress to vote a certain way."

The committee will hold a hearing Thursday on forged letters that came from ACCCE subcontractor Bonner & Associates. The hearing also could delve into the issue of ACCCE's lobbying spending. ACCCE was told to answer Markey's questions by Thursday.

Lawmakers received at least 199 letters and more than 4,000 phone calls on the House climate bill because of work by Bonner & Associates and fellow Hawthorn Group subcontractor Lincoln Strategies LLC, according to documents ACCCE gave the committee. Some of those letters urged House members to vote against the bill crafted by Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Markey.

At least 12 of those letters were fraudulent, purporting to be from groups opposed to the bill. ACCCE has blamed that on one Bonner & Associates employee. The committee's letter also seeks more information surrounding the fraudulent letters.

An alliance of coal companies, utilities and railroads that ship coal, ACCCE is one of the best-funded trade groups in the energy sector.

For more background, see "Dirty coal group's 14th forgery impersonated American veterans" and "ACCCE takes on water: Alstom quits scandal-ridden coal industry front group, joining Duke and Alcoa — time for GE and Caterpillar to jump ship, too."  The story continues:

But in an interview last week on ACCCE's lobbying disclosures, Ronald Jacobs, an attorney with Venable LLP who works for ACCCE, said the letter-writing campaign by Hawthorn Group's subcontractors does not count as lobbying under the congressional definition in the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which passed in 1995. Another law passed in 2007 beefed up disclosure rules but also exempts grassroots efforts, he said. ACCCE considers the Hawthorn Group-driven letter writing in that category.

"A letter by a third party is not a letter from ACCCE," Jacobs said, "even if the work to create (that letter) is paid for by ACCCE."

ACCCE's lobbyist "was not walking that letter up to members of Congress and delivering it," said ACCCE spokeswoman Lisa Camooso Miller. "That was not how we delivered our message."

Others versed in lobbying law disagreed with ACCCE's view. Hawthorn Group should have filed paperwork listing itself as a lobbying shop and detailing ACCCE as a client, said Lee Mason, director of nonprofit speech rights with OMB Watch, a government watchdog organization. Any attempt to influence a lawmaker's vote, Mason said "would be considered lobbying.

"If they're telling them to take some very specific action, once you tell Congress to take a position on it, you have actively engaged in a lobbying activity," Mason said.

Talking with, writing or otherwise contacting lawmakers and their aides when it exceeds 20 percent of a person's work time in general is considered lobbying and must be reported to Congress.

Grassroots activity is work that is more general, Mason said, like educating people about an industry and its connection to federal laws and regulations. "When you actively engage with telling people to call their congressman, that's lobbying and should be reported," he said.

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative group, agreed. Spokesman Steve Carpinelli said even though the letter writing and phone calls were driven by a third party, they are lobbying and by law should have been detailed in a report to the Senate.

Ban Ki-Moon: We can do it

Every day, the critical December summit in Copenhagen grows closer. All agree that climate change is an existential threat to humankind. Yet agreement on what to do still eludes us.

How can this be? The issues are complex, affecting everything from national economies to individual lifestyles. They involve political trade-offs and commitments of resources no leader can undertake lightly. We could see all that at recent climate negotiations in Bangkok. Where we needed progress, we saw gridlock.

Yet the elements of a deal are on the table. All we require to put them in place is political will. We need to step back from narrow national interest and engage in frank and constructive discussion in a spirit of global common cause.

In this, we can be optimistic. Meeting in London earlier this week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the leaders of 17 major economies (responsible for some 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions) that success in Copenhagen is within reach—if they themselves engage, and especially if they themselves go to Copenhagen to push an agenda for change.

U.S. leadership is crucial. That is why I am encouraged by the spirit of compromise shown in the bipartisan initiative announced last week by John Kerry and Lindsey Graham. Here was a pair of U.S. senators — one Republican, the other Democratic — coming together to bridge their parties' differences to address climate change in a spirit of genuine give-and-take.

We cannot afford another period where the United States stands on the sidelines. An engaged United States can lead the world to seal a deal to combat climate change in Copenhagen. An indecisive or insufficiently engaged United States will cause unnecessary — and ultimately unaffordable — delay in concrete strategies and policies to beat this looming challenge.

Leaders across the globe are increasingly showing the engagement and leadership we need. Last month, President Barack Obama joined more than 100 others at a climate change summit at U.N. headquarters in New York — sending a clear message of solidarity and commitment. So did the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea, all of whom pledged to promote the development of clean energy technologies and ensure that Copenhagen is a success.

India leads with U.S. in solar power

The green energy revolution is not miles away from India. The country has emerged as the world's number one, along with the United States, in annual solar power generation.

In wind power production, India ranks fifth in the world. And when it comes to space, scope and facilities for renewable energy expansion, India ranks fourth in the world.

McKinsey & Company, in its survey ended in May 2009, has stated that India has one of the world's highest solar intensities with an annual solar energy yield of 1,700 to 1,900 kilowatt hours per kilowatt peak (kWh/KWp) of the installed capacity.

This is similar to the US and Hawaii, the two other countries which have been ranked first along with India. After India, US (mainly California state), Hawaii and Spain are the largest solar power producers with 1,500 to 1,600 kWh/KWp followed by Italy, Australia, China, Japan, and Germany

Similarly, in the BP statistical review of world energy, India has been ranked as fifth in the world. While United States contributes 20.7% of the total wind energy in the world, Germany produces 19.6%, followed by Spain (14%), India (8%), China (6%) and Denmark (3%).

According to Ernst & Young's renewable energy country attractiveness indices, which ranks countries based on regulatory environment, fiscal support, unexploited resources, suitability to different technologies and other factors determining renewable energy growth in a country, India maintains a ranking within the top five countries in the world.

Besides solar and wind, India's index for development of renewable energy resources in hydropower sector is the fourth topmost in the world after US, Germany and China. Similarly, the country's development index in biomass is ranked third in the world after US and Germany. Countries like Italy, UK, France, Canada and Australia lag behind India in this world index.

Copenhagen "back-up" group meets

Legislators from 16 major economies will meet on Saturday to seek consensus on a raft of climate-related policies ahead of December talks in Copenhagen.

The 120 delegates believe that the policies could address 70% of the emissions cuts necessary before 2020.

A consensus, if reached, could ensure the policies are put into practice regardless of the outcome of the landmark climate talks in December.

The group will present its results to the Danish PM who will host the talks.

The delegates will include a number of MEPs and former UK Foreign Office head Lord Michael Jay alongside people holding in climate- and environment-related posts in 16 nations.

The meeting has been organized by the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment (Globe).

'Real opportunity'

Issues to be discussed are standards for building and appliance standards, vehicle fuel efficiencies, renewable energy and forestry.

Together, the delegates hope to agree targets that they have committed to push through their own governments at home. In addition, they will band together to push for ambitious targets at the December COP15 (Conferences of the Parties) meeting.

Any deals that are agreed at the weekend meeting are particularly relevant in light of the claim made last week by Yvo De Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, that a comprehensive and binding treaty at the December talks was unlikely.

Danish Prime Minister and COP15 host Lars Lokke Rasmussen said of the meeting: "The Globe Copenhagen Legislators Forum…presents a very real opportunity to outline to national leaders where the political boundaries could be for an ambitious agreement at the formal negotiations.

"This will be a powerful and new intervention contributing to the international response to climate change."

China steps up, slowly but surely

At a gleaming new research center outside Beijing, about 250 engineers and researchers from the ENN Group are trying to figure out how to make energy use less damaging to the world's climate.

In a large greenhouse, hundreds of tubes hold strains of algae being tested for how much carbon dioxide they can suck from the air. Outside, half a dozen brands of solar panels are being matched for performance against the company's own. Next door, large blocks of earth, carved out of Inner Mongolia, have been trucked in to test for new methods of gasifying coal underground.

The private company is part of a growing drive by China to work out a way to check the rapid growth of its massive emissions of greenhouse gases. Seeking to transform an economy heavily dependent upon coal for electric power and industrial production, the government has closed down old cement and coal plants, subsidized row upon row of new wind turbines and taken other measures.

Among members of the U.S. Congress and negotiators preparing for a December climate summit in Copenhagen, China is often considered an obstacle because it has not committed to imposing a ceiling on its emissions of the gases that most scientists blame for climate change. China produces the most carbon emissions in the world, and the output is likely to continue growing for two decades. When President Hu Jintao pledged at the United Nations last month to lower the country's carbon intensity "by a notable margin," that was regarded as a step forward.

Yet, in visible and less visible ways, China has begun to address its emissions problem. The steps are driven in part by the parochial concern that climate change could worsen the flooding that plagues the country's low-lying coastal regions, including Shanghai, and cause water shortages in western areas as glaciers in the Himalayas melt away.

But China has also begun to see energy efficiency and renewable energy as ingredients for the type of modern economy it wants to build, in part because it would make the nation's energy sources more secure.

"We think this is a new business for us, not a burden," said Gan Zhongxue, who left a job as a top U.S. scientist for the giant ABB Group to head up research and development at ENN, the Langfang company that made its fortune as the dominant natural gas distributor in 80 Chinese cities.

China's automakers are "seeing green"

The rush to produce more energy-efficient automobiles is fueling aggressive efforts by China's automotive sector.

"The fuel-efficient and new energy vehicles should account for 10 percent of the total industry in 2012," Science and Technology Minister Wang Gang said recently in Beijing.

That expectation is twice the 5 percent share that the Chinese government called for in its automobile industry restructuring and revitalization plan announced in January.

With China's vehicle output expected to surpass 10 million units this year, domestic automakers are eager to produce green vehicles that also will allow them to better compete with global rivals in the industry.

Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation Group (SAIC), China's largest automaker, in July announced plans to invest 12 billion yuan in research and development of hybrid engines. SAIC plans to begin manufacturing its own brand of fuel-saving cars in 2010, the company said.

According to SAIC, the first model will be a hybrid Roewe 750, which consumes 20 percent less gasoline.

Altogether, the company will invest in 41 major projects, including hybrid and electric cars.

Dongfeng Motor Group, China's third-largest automotive company, will cooperate with the Dutch electric car startup Detroit Electric to research, develop and sell electric vehicles in China

Chongqing Chang'an Automobile Group recently announced that it is creating a new manufacturing base with an investment of 2.5 billion yuan for alternative energy vehicles.

The new manufacturing base will help Chang'an Motors produce 300,000 alternative energy cars and 1 million engines per year after manufacturing begins in 2012, according to the company.

EPA: Climate bill could cost families $100

A Senate plan to tackle global warming would add about $100 a year to the energy costs for a typical household, according to an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The analysis released late Friday by the office of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, generally mirrors the cost projected by the EPA when it examined similar legislation that the House passed in the summer.

The Democratic bill calls for cutting greenhouse gases from power plants and large industrial facilities by shifting energy use away from fossil fuels, especially coal. It would cap emissions and allow trading of pollution allowances to mitigate the cost.

Boxer, D-Calif., has scheduled hearings this coming week on the bill. The committee will hear from Obama administration officials, including the EPA, on Tuesday.

President Barack Obama, in a speech Friday in Boston, said he believes "a consensus" is emerging in Congress on the climate issue. But he also accused some opponents of making "cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence" that the earth is becoming warmer in an attempt to derail legislation.

"There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy, when it's the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs," Obama told his audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Boxer said the bill provides "a clean energy future, creating millions of jobs and protecting our children from dangerous pollution."

The EPA analysis released by Boxer said while there are differences between the Senate and House bills, they are so small that the economic costs "would be similar" in the case of either bill. As a result, the EPA produced in detail the same numbers for household costs it issued earlier this year when examining the House legislation — and no revised numbers specifically for the Senate legislation.

It said the cost would add between $80 to $111 a year to households energy bills as a result of higher prices, although energy consumption was expected to decline slightly as a result of increased efficiency measures.

There have been widely conflicting price tags estimated for the climate bills. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the household cost of the House-passed bill at about $175 a year in 2020. It has not examined the Senate bill.

Sen. Boxer on "Telling the Whole Story on Global Warming" plus the witness list for her marathon hearings this week on the clean energy bill

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 07:48 AM PDT

The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works launches a full week of hearings this week on the climate and clean energy bill.  You'll certainly want to tune in (at the EPW website) for first hearing Tuesday, 9:30 ET to hear:

  • Energy Secretary Steven Chu;
  • Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood;
  • Interior Secretary Ken Salazar;
  • U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson; and
  • Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff.

Wellinghoff in particular may be the best Obama appointment you never heard of, who said in April of new nuclear and coal plants:  "We may not need any, ever." I'll repost the full witness list for Wednesday and Thursday at the end.

First, however, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), EPW chair, has a great piece on HuffPost on "Telling the Whole Story on Global Warming" — on making sure that we don't just talk about the cost of action but also talk about the cost of inaction:

Global warming is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. Addressing this challenge also represents enormous opportunities for economic recovery and long term prosperity.

But sometimes the big picture is lost when just a part of the story is told.

That's just what happened when Douglas Elmendorf, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, testified recently before the Senate Energy Committee about the economic impact of clean energy legislation recently passed by the House of Representatives.

Afterward, a few headlines gave a misleading impression about the implications of addressing the challenge of global warming.

But those reports largely missed what CBO left out of its analysis.

The CBO Director said it himself: "These measures of potential costs do not include any benefits from averting climate change."

Global warming is happening now. Ignoring the long-term costs of doing nothing to avert the most dangerous impacts of a changing climate results in a profoundly incomplete and distorted economic picture.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that more frequent and intense storms, wildfires in the West, heat waves across the nation, increased droughts and flooding, global instability and conflict, food shortages and more are all among the likely impacts of continued global warming.

Whether or not it was caused or worsened by climate change, the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina provide a window into the kind of world we can expect if global warming continues unabated.

Earlier this month, President Obama visited New Orleans. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina took an estimated 1,700 lives and displaced 1 million people. The total cost of the storm is estimated at well over $100 billion, with some estimates much higher. Four years later, the people of the region are still suffering, and it will take billions more to rebuild the Gulf Coast and protect coastal communities from future storms.

And that's just what one storm cost us. How many of these disasters can we withstand? We must take action to address these real and costly threats.

A closer look at CBO's testimony, and analyses by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows that the cost of action is dwarfed by steady growth in the economy.

CBO estimated an average monthly cost of about $13.00 per family in 2020. An EPA analysis estimated a price tag even smaller — less than a postage stamp per day.

The CBO has also estimated U.S. gross domestic product may be just slightly lower in 2050 (one to three percent) than it would be without comprehensive clean energy legislation, but they didn't put that in context.

Let's think about what that really means. Over the next four decades, our economy is projected more than double in size. According to CBO's estimate, if we act now to address global warming and invest in clean energy, the economy 40 years from now may be about 249 percent bigger, instead of 250 percent bigger. And we'll still get to 250 percent – in May instead of January 2050.

And a recent study from the University of California at Berkeley reports that comprehensive clean energy legislation, coupled with gains in energy efficiency, could produce nearly 2 million new American jobs by 2020.

The CBO director noted, "The uncertainties around the damage of climate change are also great … many economists believe that the right response to that kind of uncertainty is to take out some insurance … against some of the worst outcomes."

We are at a crossroads. We can choose a future in which we face the ravages — and the costs — of unchecked global warming, while other nations gain the jobs and the economic benefits of investing in clean energy technologies. Or we can act now to transform our economy, create millions of new American jobs, and lead the world in developing and exporting in clean energy technologies while protecting our children from dangerous pollution.

Comprehensive clean energy legislation like the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act that Senator Kerry and I have introduced in the Senate is not only the right choice to transform our economy, create jobs, and make America more secure. It is also our most effective insurance policy against a dangerous future.

For a more detailed analysis of the cost of stopping catastrophic climate change, see "Waxman-Markey clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill creates $1.5 trillion in benefits."
The witness list for the rest of this week's hearings, from E&E News (subs. req'd):

Witnesses for Wednesday's hearing: Panel I, Jobs and Economic Opportunities: Peter Brehm, vice president of business development & government relations, Infinia Corp.; Dan Reicher, director, climate and energy initiatives, Google Inc.; Dave Foster, executive director, Blue Green Alliance; Michael Nutter, mayor of Philadelphia; Kate Gordon, senior policy adviser, Apollo Alliance; Bill Klesse, chairman and CEO, Valero Energy Corp.; and Brett Vassey, president and CEO, Virginia Manufacturers Association.

Panel II, National Security: Former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.); Kathleen Hicks, deputy undersecretary for strategy, plans and forces, Defense Department; Retired Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn, U.S. Navy, member, Center for Naval Analysis Advisory Board; retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales; Drew Sloan, fellow, Truman National Security Project; and retired Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, deputy director, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation.

Panel III, Utilities: David Crane, president and CEO, NRG Energy Inc.; Ralph Izzo, chairman, CEO and president, Public Service Enterprise Group Inc.; Kevin Law, president and CEO, Long Island Power Authority; Nathaniel Keohane, director of economic policy and analysis, Environmental Defense Fund; Joel Bluestein, president, Energy and Environmental Analysis Inc., ICF International; Barry Hart, CEO, Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives; and Dustin Johnson, commissioner, South Dakota Public Utilities Commission.

Panel IV, Adaptation: Shari Wilson, secretary, Maryland Department of the Environment; Ronald Young, president, California Association of Sanitation Agencies; Peter Frumhoff, chief scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists; Larry Schweiger, president and CEO, National Wildlife Federation; Fawn Sharp, president, Quinault Indian Nation; Jim Sims, president and CEO, Western Business Roundtable; and Kenneth Green, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute.

Witnesses for Thursday's hearing: Panel I, Moving to a Clean Energy Economy: Preston Chiaro, CEO, Energy Product Group, Rio Tinto; John Rowe, chairman, president and CEO, Exelon Corp.; Willett Kempton, professor, marine policy, University of Delaware; Bob Winger, president, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Local 11; Fred Krupp, president, Environmental Defense Fund; Mike Carey, president, Ohio Coal Association; and Bob Stallman, president, American Farm Bureau Federation.

Panel II, Transportation: Former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), co-chair, Bipartisan Policy Center's National Transportation Policy Project; William Millar, president, American Public Transportation Association; Mike McKeever, executive director, Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG); and Barbara Windsor, president & CEO, Hahn Transportation Inc.

Panel III, Actions in Other Countries: John Podesta, president and CEO, Center for American Progress; Ned Helme, president, Center for Clean Air Policy; Jonathan Lash, president, World Resources Institute; Iain Murray, vice-president for strategy, Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Panel IV, Moving to a Clean Energy Economy: Linda Adams, secretary, California Environmental Protection Agency; Dave Johnson, organizing director, Laborers' Union Eastern Region, Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA); J. Stephan Dolezalek, managing director, VantagePoint Venture Partners; David Hawkins, director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council; Eugene Trisko, attorney for the United Mine Workers of America; Charlie Smith, president & CEO, CountryMark; and Paul Cicio, president, Industrial Energy Consumers of America.

Caldeira tells Yale e360: "Thinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, 'Now that I've got the seatbelts on, I can just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat.' It's crazy…. If I had to wager, I would wager that we would never deploy any geoengineering system."

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 06:47 AM PDT

Yale Environment 360: I want to start with this little dust-up over SuperFreakonomics. In the book, you are quoted as saying, when it comes to global warming, "Carbon dioxide is not the right villain." Is that accurate?

Ken Caldeira: That is not accurate. I don't believe I said anything remotely like that because I believe that we should be outlawing the production of devices that emit carbon dioxide, and I don't think we can solve this carbon climate problem unless we drastically reduce our carbon dioxide emissions very soon.

e360: They also write that you are convinced that human activity is responsible for "some" global warming. What does that mean?

Caldeira: I don't think we can say with certainty whether we're responsible for 90 percent of it or we might be responsible for 110 percent of it. But the vast majority of global warming, I believe, is due to human release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

e360: Another thing that plays in to the same kind of sensibility is the idea [which the book quotes Caldeira saying] that the "doubling of CO2 traps less than 2 percent of the outgoing radiation emitted by the Earth." When that's phrased like that, it makes it sound like it's not really much of a problem.

Caldeira: You should think of the whole global warming problem as a 1 percent problem, at least for doubling of CO2. In absolute temperature Kelvin — scientists like to use the Kelvin scale — the current Earth temperature is around 288 degrees Kelvin, and a 3-degree warming on top of that is basically a one-percent additional warming. And so this whole issue of climate change, when viewed from an Earth-system perspective, is a story about 1 percents and 2 percents. Two percent might sound like a small number, but that's the difference between a much hotter world, and the kind of world we're accustomed to….

e360: Overall, do you feel like your work has been accurately and fairly represented in this book?

Caldeira: The main misrepresentation is the quote that says that CO2 is not "the right villain." Now, again, I don't use "villain" talk myself, but if you say what's the primary gas responsible for the planetary warming, I would say it's carbon dioxide.

Now, there's a tougher question when it comes to the other statements that are attributed to me. All of those other statements are based in fact and based on studies that either I have published or other scientists have published. And if we pull back to the case of the biosphere taking up 70 percent of CO2 — well, yes, we have a published study that said that. It also presented results saying that we might warm up the planet enough to risk melting Antarctica ultimately. And so there is a selective use of quotes.

If you spend several hours talking to somebody and they take a half-dozen things and put it in a book, then it's going to be in the context and framing of arguments that the authors are trying to make. And so the actual statements attributed to me are based on fact, but the contexts and the framing of those issues are very different from the context and framing that I would put those same facts in…

So I think that the casual reader can … come up with a misimpression of what I believe and what I feel about things.

None of Caldeira's statements in this recent Yale e360 interview are a surprise if you read my original, accurate debunking — Error-riddled 'Superfreakonomics': New book pushes global cooling myths, sheer illogic, and "patent nonsense" — and the primary climatologist it relies on, Ken Caldeira, says "it is an inaccurate portrayal of me" and "misleading" in "many" places.

And this all matches the Bloomberg interview of Dubner and Caldeira, which also backed up my reporting on error-riddled Superfreakonomics:

Caldeira, like the vast majority of climate scientists, believes cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions is our only real chance to avoid runaway climate change.

"Carbon dioxide is the right villain," Caldeira wrote on his Web site in reply. He told Joe Romm, the respected climate blogger who broke the story, that he had objected to the "wrong villain" line but Dubner and Levitt didn't correct it; instead, they added the "incredibly foolish" quote, a half step in the right direction. Caldeira gave the same account to me.

Levitt and Dubner do say that the book "overstates" Caldeira's position. That's a weasel word: The book claims the opposite of what Caldeira believes. Caldeira told me the book contains "many errors" in addition to the "major error" of misstating his scientific opinion on carbon dioxide's role….

Although this made a lot of news, it really isn't news.  Anyone who spends a great deal of time reading Caldeira's work, communicating with and listening to him, as I have, would know instantly how directly at odds his views are with the entire Superfreakonomics chapter.

More newsworthy is Caldeira's longer elaboration on his views of geoengineering and what the world's overall approach to global warming should be:

e360: Let's talk a little bit more broadly about geoengineering. I was struck by something one of the authors said on NPR the other day — that he got interested in geoengineering when he realized that the problem with global warming is not that there is too much carbon in the air; it's that it is too hot. Do you agree with that?

Caldeira: The reason it is too hot is that there is too much carbon dioxide in the air. Now the carbon dioxide itself, of course, has big negative implications for ocean acidification and ecosystems, including coral reefs. So there are direct CO2 effects.

But I think if we had some magic thing that would reverse all effects of CO2 perfectly, then you could say, "Well the problem is not CO2." But nobody really expects that we are going to have some magic, perfect CO2 nullifier. And it's clear to me that if we continue allowing greenhouse gas concentration to grow in the atmosphere, and try to engineer our climate to counteract those effects, that as the greenhouse gases accumulate, and our counteracting system grows ever larger and larger, that the risk of some kind of catastrophic failure of this offsetting — or the imperfections in this offsetting — would grow in time and the net result would be pretty negative, I would imagine.

So, I do see CO2 as the problem. I think to present it as if, "Well, it not's really CO2, but the effects of CO2," it's like if you got shot by a bullet and you said, "Well, it wasn't really the bullet that was the problem, it was just that I happened to have this hole through my body…"

e360: Right. Well, a lot of people think of geoengineering as a quick and cheap fix for global warming. Is it?

Caldeira: Let's pretend for a moment that putting dust in the stratosphere is easy to do and works reasonably well. And let's say the United States and England and the "Coalition of the Willing" decided to go ahead and deploy this system, and that China or India then went into a decade or two of deep drought. Whether the system caused that drought or not, I think the Chinese or the Indians would rightly suspect that the reason they have this drought and ensuing famines might be due to this system that was put up by these other countries. And you could easily imagine that there would be a great amount of political tension, and possibly even leading to warfare. So I think just the political dimensions and the governance dimensions of these geoengineering options suggest that we would be very reluctant to deploy these things, even if we thought they worked more or less perfectly.

Another example is that, in many climate model simulations, the area around Egypt tends to get wetter with global warming. And so what if you do this geoengineering scheme and it takes away water from countries that didn't have water a few centuries ago? Are they are going to be happy you're doing this? So I think just the political problems associated with perceived winners and losers are so great that a politician is not going to want to deal with these problems.

Then, of course, the system is not going to work perfectly. First of all, it's not going to address the issues of ocean acidification. It's not going to perfectly offset global warming, so you'll have some residual effects. So, I look at these geoengineering options as something we would only want to consider if our backs were really up against the wall, and where all these environmental and political risks seem worth taking because the alternatives look so frightening.

e360: I know that some scientists have suggested that there should be some kind of taboo on geoengineering research. But I know that you've been outspoken in the need for a federally-funded geoengineering research program. Can you explain that?

Caldeira: Yes, I think we don't know right now whether these kinds of approaches have the potential to reduce risk or not. In our climate models, the amount of climate change can be reduced by these kinds of approaches, but the climate models are an imperfect reflection of reality, and they don't consider the kinds of political risks that I was mentioning before. And so I think we just have to say we don't know whether these options can really reduce overall risk…

Let's say geoengineering doesn't work, and that it would add to risk. It seems to me it would be worth having a research program to demonstrate that beyond a reasonable doubt so we can all forget about this and move on.

On the other hand, if these options do have the potential to reduce risk, then it seems to me that we would like to have the option to reduce that risk should a time come where that would seem necessary. I kind of think of these geoengineering options as seeing, "Well, can we invent some kind of seatbelts for our climate system?" We need to drive the climate system carefully, we need to greatly reduce emissions. But even if we're driving carefully we still run the risk of getting into an accident. And seatbelts can potentially reduce the damage when we're in an accident.

But the reason I'm concerned about geoengineering is because I am so concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, and so, again, I'm in favor of essentially making greenhouse gas-emitting devices illegal. But I don't think we're going to reduce emissions fast enough to make me feel that we're not running some really grave risks. And so I think we need to develop options to diminish those risks.

And it's not just geoengineering. I'm much in favor of a very broad-spectrum approach. I think one of the things we saw with the subprime mortgage crisis is that a few million people in the United States defaulted on their mortgages and we have a worldwide economic crisis. I think we have to assume that climate change damage will be a much bigger amplitude than a few million mortgage defaults.

If there's some kind of climate crisis in Southeast Asia, is that going to amplify and shake the whole global economic system? This is the kind of thing that Jim Lovelock is afraid of, that you'll have "economic migrants" resulting from climate change that will ultimately destabilize modern civilization.

And so I think we also need to be doing research in how do we make our society more robust, so that these local climate damages won't turn into global problems. We need to be doing basic adaptation planning; we need to look at geoengineering options. But the main thing we need to do is work to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions.

But thinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, "Now that I've got the seatbelts on, I can't just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat." It's crazy.

The authors of SuperFreakonomics simply never understood what the chief climatologist they interviewed believed about the central thesis of their chapter, As Bloomberg reported last week:

Caldeira, who is researching the idea [of aerosol geoengineering], argues that it can succeed only if we first reduce emissions. Otherwise, he says, geoengineering can't begin to cope with the collateral damage, such as acidic oceans killing off shellfish.

Levitt and Dubner ignore his view and champion his work as a permanent substitute for emissions cuts. When I told Dubner that Caldeira doesn't believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions, he was baffled. "I don't understand how that could be," he said. In other words, the Freakonomics guys just flunked climate science.

And ironically, the "polymath's polymath" contrarian's contrarian apparently agrees with Caldeira in opposing the geoengineering-only approach — although Nathan Myhrvold apparently never understood what the Superfreaks actually wrote in their chapter and the Superfreaks apparently never understood what the former Microsoft CTO actually believed!  See Nathan Myhrvold jumps the shark — and jumps 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?

One final quote that I think might surprise a great many people who don't know Caldeira, who got their entire misimpression of him from Superfreakonomics:

If I had to wager, I would wager that we would never deploy any geoengineering system….

If you want to know what Caldeira thinks will happen, you can listen to Caldeira's entire interview with journalist Jeff Goodell on the Yale e360 website.

Related Post:

Bill McKibben's wrap up of the more than 4300 (!) demonstrations for 350 ppm around the planet

Posted: 25 Oct 2009 12:12 PM PDT

350 Front Pages

The great environmental writer and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, is the guest blogger.

We're sitting here in our temporary offices in lower Manhattan hunched over laptops drowning in images—15,000 photos and thousands of minutes of video have arrived from what turned out to be 5,200 rallies, protests, and demonstrations in 181 countries around the world.

It was, according to any number of journalistic accounts, "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history." But here's the thing that impresses us. There wasn't a rock star or a movie star or a charismatic politician in sight.  It was ordinary citizens and scientists coming together around a scientific data point.

The coverage, except for a somewhat sour piece by Andy Revkin in the NYT, was incredible. And it was also massive. We owned the top of Google News for 18 hours, and were all over the front pages of newspapers across the globe. Here's a link that will give you the tiniest taste.

But I hope folks will go to the website and just spend some time going down the blog or looking at the slideshows. It will serve as a good reminder of just how many people are engaged and thinking about climate.

Clearly 350 doesn't solve the problem. Clearly we're not going to get the agreement our group wants out of Copenhagen. Hopefully we've managed to push the process at least a little ways in the direction of the science. And hopefully we're finally beginning to build something that looks like a global movement to face the biggest global problem there's ever been.

Enormous thanks to all who helped over the weekend, and will in the future.

– Bill McKibben

JR:  The Revkin piece is here.  At least it has a great final quote by NASA's Gavin A. Schmidt:  "If you ask a scientist how much more CO2 do you think we should add to the atmosphere, the answer is going to be none."  The Washington Post ran a good AP story Saturday with the website link (reprinted below) and a photo today:

Activists held events around the world Saturday to mark the number they say the world needs to reach to prevent disastrous climate change: 350.The number represents 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere that some scientists say is the safe upper limit. The atmosphere currently reaches about 390 parts per million, according to research by NASA climate scientist James Hanse cited by 350.org.

Hundreds of events highlighted the number in different ways.

In what 350.org founder Bill McKibben called a global game of Scrabble, groups in Australia, Ecuador, India, the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Denmark each spelled out one of the numbers in 350. Hundreds gathered in New York City's Times Square and watched slideshows of the other events on giant screens.

McKibben, an environmentalist and author of "The End of Nature," said the day was unique because it emphasized the science behind a politically complicated topic.

"It was ordinary people rallying around a scientific data point," McKibben said. "Nothing like that has ever happened before."

In Venezuela, volunteers formed a human chain marking the number zero on the beach at Catia La Mar north of Caracas to mark the spot where they said the ocean would reach if global warming is not stopped.

McKibben said volunteers also sent in photos of separate groups forming the numbers 350 around the Dead Sea, in Jordan, Israel and Palestinian territory.

Many of the events referred to the Copenhagen conference scheduled in December that will seek to reach a new global climate change treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on carbon dioxide emissions. It has been billed as a last chance to avoid the impact of catastrophic global that could be felt for generations.

McKibben said there are lessons to be learned from the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. did not join.

"We saw what happened," he said. "Everybody walked away once it was done, and there was no real progress. We need to pick up the pace."

—

350.org:http://www.350.org

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