Monday, November 16, 2009

Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Palin's "Going Rogue" spreads falsehoods about bipartisan clean energy legislation

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 08:55 AM PST

During the 2008 campaign, the Washington Post itself gave Sarah Palin its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of "Four Pinocchios" for continuing to "to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers."  That didn't stop the Post from running a 2009 piece by her filled with bogus information attacking climate action and clean energy action, which Senators Boxer and Kerry later debunked: "The governor's new refrain against global warming action reminds us of every naysayer who has spoken out against progress in cleaning up pollution."  Still Newt Gingrich said she was a conservative leader on energy issues.

So now Palin's book Going Rogue is out — hmm, the subtitle of the original Freakonomics is A Rogue Economist explores the Hidden Side of Everything – and Media Matters has two debunkings of it that I'll repost below.  First, MM's "ongoing list of falsehoods in Palin's memoir":

1. Palin falsely suggests poor will be "hit hardest" by cap and trade

Palin: Obama "admitted" cap and trade will cause "electricity bills to 'skyrocket' " and "those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet." Palin falsely suggests that "those hit hardest [by cap and trade] will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet" and that Obama "has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to 'skyrocket.' " She added: "So much for the campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. This is a tax on everyone." [Going Rogue, Pages 390-391]

CBO says poorest quintile will benefit from Waxman-Markey. The Congressional Budget Office found that in 2020, the version of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that passed the House in June with the support of the Obama administration would result in a $125 average annual benefit to the quintile of households with the lowest income and a $160 average annual cost to all American households.

Obama was talking about a different plan causing energy costs to "skyrocket." As the Associated Press noted in fact-checking Palin's book, Obama was not talking about the cap-and-trade legislation that has since passed in the House when he referred to energy costs "necessarily skyrocket[ting]." When Obama made that statement to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in January 2008, he was describing a cap-and-trade proposal that would auction off 100 percent of available carbon allowances, and he made no mention at the time of a plan to compensate consumers for potential cost increases. But as PolitiFact.com noted, the Waxman-Markey bill initially would distribute most of the carbon allocations for free and contains substantial provisions to offset costs to consumers, and thus "should reduce costs to consumers."

2. Palin still falsely claiming stimulus money for energy efficiency she vetoed required tougher building codes

Palin: "One-size-fits-all codes" required to get funds "simply wouldn't work." Palin claims that she vetoed a $25 million "earmark for energy conservation" available through the stimulus because Alaska would have needed to adopt "universal energy building codes" to be eligible for the funds. She comments: "Universal building codes — in Alaska! A practical, libertarian haven full of independent Americans who did not desire 'help' from government busybodies. A state full of hardy pioneers who did not like taking orders from the feds telling us to change our laws. A state so geographically diverse that one-size-fits-all codes simply wouldn't work." [Going Rogue, Pages 361-362]

PolitiFact: Palin's claim that funds were "tied to universal energy building codes" is "false." After Palin made similar comments on Fox News' Hannity, PolitiFact said she was "wrong" because "municipalities are not forced to accept the specific standards and, given that local governments set their own codes, the feds would be satisfied if Alaska merely promoted such building codes [emphasis in original]." PolitiFact also reported that in a letter to Palin's chief of staff, a Department of Energy official "wrote that the provision 'provides flexibility with regard to building codes' and 'expressly includes standards other than those cited so long as the standards achieve equivalent energy savings.' "

And here is from MM's Fact Check on Clean Energy Legislation:

In her upcoming book Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah Palin made a slew of false charges concerning clean energy legislation.  Contrary to Palin's tired claims, legislation increasing our investment in clean energy technologies would create jobs in every state and help America become more energy independent, all for less than a quarter a day.

Palin Falsely Claimed Clean Energy Legislation Would Kill Jobs

Sarah Palin:

One such cure: Washington's misguided "Cap and Trade" plan. But let's call it what it is: a "Cap and Tax" program.  The environmentalists' plan to reduce pollution is to tax businesses according to how much pollution they produce. Industries that emit more pollutants would have to pay more in taxes. Businesses that reduce emissions and thereby avoid all or part of the cap and tax hits could trade or sell their government credits to other companies.

There are big problems with this. We have the highest unemployment rate in twenty-five years, and it's still rising. American jobs in every industry will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under cap and trade. The cost of farming, for example, will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing, and transportation will also rise.  We'll all feel the effects of this misguided plan to buy and sell pollution.

The president has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to "skyrocket." Sadly, those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet. So much for the campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. This is a tax on everyone.

Is that what the president meant by "change"?

As more and more Americans understand that cap and trade is an environmentalist Ponzi scheme in which only the government benefits, they will refuse to tolerate it. They will make their voices heard at the ballot box, and any lawmaker who supports destructive legislation like this will soon be turned out of office. That's what we mean by "change"! [Sarah Palin, Going Rogue: An American Life pgs. 390-391]

Millions Of American Green Jobs

As Media Matters Action Network has noted, a recent study from UC Berkeley found that pollution reduction and energy efficiency measures would create up to 1.9 million jobs, boost GDP by up to $111 billion and increase families' incomes by nearly $1,200 per year!

Investment In Clean Energy Technology Will Create Over 1.7 Million American Jobs. According to the Center for American Progress: "Investments in a clean-energy economy will generate major employment benefits for the entire U.S. economy. Our research finds that spending $150 billion on clean-energy investments would create roughly 1.7 million jobs. This is even after assuming a reduction in fossil fuel spending equivalent to the increase in clean-energy investments." [Center for American Progress, The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy, 6/17/09]

  • Every Single State Will Gain Jobs From An Investment In Clean Energy Technologies. According to the Center for American Progress, investments in clean energy projects would create 1.7 million American jobs in every state in the country. [Center for American Progress, The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy, 6/17/09]

Investment In Clean Energy Technology Creates FOUR TIMES As Many Jobs As An Investment In Oil & Gas. According to the Center for American Progress, "spending $1 million on energy efficiency and renewable energy produces a much larger expansion of employment than spending the same amount on fossil fuels or nuclear energy. Among fossil fuels, job creation in coal is about 32 percent greater than that for oil and natural gas. The employment creation for energy efficiency-retrofitting and mass transit-is 2.5 times to four times larger than that for oil and natural gas. With renewable energy, the job creation ranges between 2.5 times to three times more than that for oil and gas." [Center for American Progress, The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy, 6/17/09]

Investment In Renewable Energy Has Already Salvaged Many Manufacturing Facilities Closed During Economic Downturn. Across America, factories and plants abandoned by the old economy have been re-tooled and re-opened to satisfy the growing demand for new energy technologies. For instance, once hopeless manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Michigan have re-energized their communities by creating jobs and leading the charge toward a new energy future. [Bloomberg, 4/2/09; Star Tribune, 4/22/09; Grand Rapids Press, 3/6/08]

Clean Energy Jobs Legislation Would Rebuild America For A Postage Stamp A Day

Reuters: "Climate Legislation Moving Through Congress Would Have Only A Modest Impact On Consumers." According to Reuters: "A new U.S. government study on Tuesday adds to a growing list of experts concluding that climate legislation moving through Congress would have only a modest impact on consumers, adding around $100 to household costs in 2020. Under the climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives in June, electricity, heating oil and other bills for average families will rise $134 in 2020 and $339 in 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the country's top energy forecaster." [Reuters, 8/5/09]

EIA: Clean Energy Legislation Would Cost Only $0.23 Per Day. According to a House Energy and Commerce Committee factsheet of the Energy Information Administration's analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act: "The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has completed an analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), as passed by the U.S. House of Representatives… The overall impact on the average household, including the benefit of many of the energy efficiency provisions in the legislation, would be 23 cents per day ($83 per year). This is consistent with analyses by the Congressional Budget Office which projects a cost of 48 cents per day ($175 per year) and the Environmental Protection Agency which projects a cost of 22 to 30 cents per day ($80 to $111 per year)." [House Energy and Commerce Committee, EIA's Economic Analysis Of "The American Clean Energy And Security Act Of 2009," 8/4/09; emphasis original]

CBO: In 2020, Cap-And-Trade Will Only Cost An Average Of $175 Annually, "About A Postage Stamp A Day." In its analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the Congressional Budget Office wrote: "On that basis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the net annual economy wide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion-or about $175 per household." Rep. Edward Markey noted it was "the cost of about a postage stamp a day." [CBO, 6/19/09; House Committee on Energy & Commerce Release, 6/20/09]

  • Cap-And-Trade Would DECREASE Energy Prices For Low-Income Americans. In its analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the Congressional Budget Office wrote, "households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020." [CBO, 6/19/09; emphasis original]

Study: Clean Energy Legislation's Benefits Far Outweigh Costs. According to the Wall Street Journal:

As flawed as it may be, the Waxman-Markey climate bill makes economic sense, offering benefits worth at least twice as much as it costs, if not more.

"From almost any perspective and under almost any assumption, H.R. 2454 is a good investment for the United States to make in our own economic future and in the future of the planet," the paper concludes.

[...]

So, given that the Waxman-Markey bill would curb emissions over the next 40 years, it's a pretty simple job to tally up the potential benefits: about $1.5 trillion on the middle-of-the-road estimate. The benefits could be as low as $382 billion or as high as $5.2 trillion, depending on how you fiddle with the numbers.

Since Waxman-Markey is meant to cost about $660 billion, that means the bill provides $2.27 in benefits for every dollar spent, the brief concludes. That doesn't include extra benefits-cleaner air from a cleaned-up power sector, for instance. And it suggests that even tougher greenhouse-gas targets in the Senate version of the bill would make an even more compelling economic argument. [Wall Street Journal, 9/8/09; emphasis added]

By 2025, A Clean Energy Standard Would Save $95 Billion On Energy & Gas Bills. According to the Center for American Progress: "A national renewable electricity standard, a key piece of the clean energy legislation currently before Congress, would save households and businesses in every state billions of dollars in electricity and natural gas bills… The numbers come from the Union of Concerned Scientists, who earlier this year analyzed a renewable electricity standard that would aim to have 25 percent of our electricity come from renewable sources by 2025. They found that this standard would save families and businesses $95 billion in electricity and natural gas bills through 2030 and spur new investments and hundreds of thousands of new clean-energy jobs." [Center for American Progress, 5/19/09]

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NASA reports hottest June to October on record*

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 07:27 AM PST

Fast on the heels of the hottest June to September on record*, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that last month was tied for the second hottest September on record (after 2005).

Unlike NOAA, which announced its October global analysis with a major "State of the Climate" monthly update, NASA just quietly updates its data set (here).  So you have to do a little math to see that for the June through October period, 2009 now tops both 1998 (easily) and 2005 (just barely, hence the asterisk).

For NOAA, it was the sixth warmest October on record, and the fifth-warmest January-through-October period:

NCDC 10-09

Yes, the one place in the world where it warmed the least is, of course, the good old (continental) U.S. of A. — though it was the wettest October on record for the lower-48 (see WWF's U.S. Sees Wettest October on Record; Arkansas Records are Washed Away).

That's the continental United States, of course.  Once again, the geographical distribution of the warming continues to be bad news for those worried about the permafrost permamelt, since temps even in the summer ran upwards of 5°C (9°F) warmer than the 1961-1990 norm over much of Siberia and parts of Alaska and Canada.  Siberia contains probably the world's largest amount of carbon locked away in the permafrost (see here).

As for the NASA data showing its been the hottest June to October on record, I'm not cherry-picking these last four months, but rather ENSO-picking them.  The reason 1998 was so anomalously warm even beyond the human-caused trend was the uber-El Niño.  Back in January, NASA had predicted:  "Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance."

Then, back in early June NOAA put out "El Niño Watch," which I noted meant that "record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record."  So here we are.

What makes these record temps especially impressive is that we're at "the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century," according to NASA.  It's just hard to stop the march of anthropogenic global warming, well, other than by reducing GHG emissions, that is.

Finally, NOAA again reports on the temperature trend from the lower troposphere ("the lowest 8 km (5 miles) of the atmosphere") — the satellite data that began in 1979 analyzed by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS).  NOAA reports that the lower troposphere warming trend for October is

  • +0.14°C/decade (UAH)
  • +0.16°C/decade (RSS)

So yes, the satellite data also shows that the lower atmosphere is warming, contrary to what you may have heard.  As the AP reported last month:

"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."

… "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.

h/t Nick Sundt

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Best. Review. Ever.

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 06:16 AM PST

Freakonomics got super freaky. And super wrong.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are to blame for the global financial crisis.

See, back in 2005, they wrote "Freakonomics," a wildly successful book brimming with interesting stories about why incentives matter and how actions have unintended consequences. Indeed, incentives do matter, and actions (or publications) do have unintended consequences: Their book made economists around the world more inclined to come up with cute little analyses of the business of being a drug dealer or the impact of a first name on a child's success. And that distracted them, so they didn't notice the giant housing and credit bubbles that in hindsight were plain to see. A global collapse ensued.

That's all nonsense, of course. The forces that led to the current economic troubles were far too big for any one book, or even one current of economic thought, to have caused them. The argument that the Freakonomics guys are to blame for the crisis is provocative and clever and sounds vaguely plausible. It may even contain a kernel of truth. But it fundamentally defies any clear-headed look at reality.

In other words, it's just like many of the anecdotes that fill "Superfreakonomics," the sequel to the original bestseller.

This is the Washington Post book review by Neil Irwin.  I think this review just edges out Elizabeth Kolbert's, but it's close.  In particular, Irwin covers the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve for the paper, not climate, so he hits some other parts of the book, like "Patriotic Prostitutes" and drunk walking:

Take the chapter that covers prostitution, for example. It spins a nice yarn about Allie, a clever, vivacious woman who went into the world's oldest profession in Chicago for fully rational — and lucrative — reasons. Good for her, but this doesn't have much of anything to do with the fundamental reality of most prostitution, in which coercion, violence and desperate addiction to drugs frequently play larger roles than does cost-benefit analysis.

In another section, the authors theorize that it is more dangerous for a tipsy person to walk any given distance than it is for that person to drive. That would be interesting, if true, and certainly useful information for anyone who has ever stumbled out of a downtown Washington bar a few blocks from home.

The problem is that Levitt and Dubner don't actually have the foggiest idea whether it's safer to drive drunk than walk drunk, as they claim. As my colleague Ezra Klein has pointed out, they don't have data on how many miles are walked under the influence, and so they just assume that people walk drunk in the same proportion that people drive drunk. In calculating the rate of deaths from walking drunk, then, they have the numerator (the number of drunk pedestrians killed each year) but not the denominator (the number of miles walked drunk).

And then he does take on the "Global Cooling" chapter:

Both of those problems are mild compared with the ones in the penultimate chapter, in which the authors bring their oh-so-clever approach to the climate debate. The standard strategy for preventing potentially catastrophic global warming, one advanced by an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists and environmental economists, is to put in place policies to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide humankind emits. That's apparently too conventional for Levitt and Dubner, who spend the vast majority of their chapter (with time taken out for potshots at Al Gore) examining the work of scientist/entrepreneur Nathan Myhrvhold's crew, a group that is exploring the idea of pumping sulfur into the upper atmosphere and other neat tricks that just may be cheaper, easier ways to combat global warming.

It would be great if one of those schemes turned out to work. Fantastic, even. But Levitt and Dubner seem to simply presume that because one of them might work, Gore et al. are foolish to push to reduce emissions. It is like a family declining to save for college because their 10-year-old Little Leaguer with a decent arm may end up getting a full baseball scholarship.

Snap!

"Superfreakonomics" doesn't really have a broader argument. The authors acknowledge in the opening pages that their book has no unifying theme, beyond the banality that "people respond to incentives."So instead of offering up a bunch of quirky stories of questionable reliability to make an argument that feels coherent, they offer up contrarianism for its own sake.

Just what you'd expect from two guys who caused the financial crisis.

Status-quo-media stunner: David Broder urges Obama to make a decision on Afghanistan right now, "whether or not it is right."

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 05:16 AM PST

When we last left David Broder back in April, the dean of the DC press corp and the sultan of the status quo centrists, he was criticizing Obama for "launching highly controversial efforts in health care, energy and education."  What was his argument?  "Each of those issues has a history in Washington — a history marked by congressional gridlock and legislative frustration."

Never mind the fact that inaction on energy would destroy a livable climate for billions.  No, Obama was rocking the establishment boat by trying to do too much too fast, taking on problems that were mired in decades of inside-the-beltway inaction because they were too difficult.

But now, in a stunning piece titled, "Enough Afghan debate," Broder flips his criticism entirely.  Obama simply can't act fast enough on perhaps the most complex issue of his presidency — even if it means getting this vital and dangerous issue completely wrong:

The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees. But, as the old saying goes, to govern is to choose — and he has stretched the internal debate to the breaking point.

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right.

As the Washington Monthly opines on this piece by "the so-called Dean of the D.C. Media Establishment":

"Whether or not it is right." The Commander in Chief, in other words, should put expediency over merit. Speed is preferable to accuracy. It's only the longest military conflict in American history, with the future of U.S. foreign policy on the line — the president should worry less about due diligence and thoughtful analysis, and worry more about picking a course, even if it's wrong. Other than the loss of American servicemen and women, untold billions of dollars, and undermining U.S. interests in a critical region, what's the worst that can happen?

What a crock.

I realize there's been a painful decline in the quality of Broder's analysis in recent years, but this column is a mess. He's effectively calling for President Obama to act and think more like President Bush — make decisions first, and think through the consequences and implications second.

Worse, Broder goes so far as to castigate the administration for "all this dithering" — using Dick Cheney's preferred choice of words.

The premise of the piece is that a decision is needed immediately. Where did this arbitrary deadline come from? Broder doesn't say; he just warns of the Taliban "coming back in Afghanistan," as if the Taliban hasn't already reclaimed much of the country.

For Broder, Obama is moving too fast and too slow.

I understand why many readers wish Obama were pushing harder and moving faster on the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill.  But in fact, on most major issues, particularly ones like global warming and Afghanistan, a President basically gets one shot.  Again, look at health care, where the president is pushing his hardest with speeches, town hall meetings, and intense hands-on lobbying with members of Congress.  There's still no Senate bill.

I've always said Obama could get a better climate bill in 2010, and so he will.

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