Articles by Joseph Romm

Poll: How likely is it that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century?

I'd be interested in hearing your answer to this question in the comments.

How desperate is the conservative pollster Rasmussen to glom onto the climate issue and both trivialize and confuse the debate with hyperbole, unscientific polls, and inane, vaguely worded questions? Pretty damn desperate, to judge by their headline poll last Thursday:

23% Fear Global Warming Will End World -- Soon

Nearly one-out-of-four voters (23%) say it is at least somewhat likely that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century. Five percent (5%) say it's very likely.

Uhh, what does this polling question mean anyway:

Is Gen. Jones trying to grab part of the energy and climate portfolio?

Yes -- and no (unless you worry about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda, in which case, yes, you should worry that Jones might be talking his eye off the proverbial bomb ball).

The WashPost reported Sunday:

President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council [NSC], expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues ...

New NSC directorates will deal with such department-spanning 21st-century issues as cybersecurity, energy, climate change, nation-building and infrastructure.

A highly placed source confirms for me that national security adviser and retired Marine Gen. James Jones wants to play in areas like the outercontinental shelf (i.e. offshoring drilling) and smart grid.

CNN, ABC, WashPost, and AP blow Australian wildfire, drought, heat-wave story

If the U.S. media refuse to make the connection between record breaking wildfire, drought, and heat waves and human-caused global warming, why would anyone be surprised if the U.S. public doesn't put it as a higher priority or make the connection itself (see here)?

Australia knows it's facing climate-driven impacts that threaten it with complete collapse (see here). AFP (French international media) get this: "Australian wildfire ferocity linked to climate change: experts." So does Reuter's climate change correspondent in Asia: "Australia fires a climate wake-up call: experts."

I saw the CNN and ABC stories, and you can read the AP's stories, which have been published in the Washington Post and NY Times (though the NYT redeemed itself, see below). The media love a good calamity of Biblical proportion:

ITC to build $12B in wind farm power lines, JCSP study finds $50B savings from wind

Wind power is coming of age as the U.S. becomes the global wind leader and probably the biggest source of new jobs in the energy industry.

ITC Holdings announced Monday plans to build a $10 to $12 billion power transmission network to move 12,000 megawatts of electricity from the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Iowa to the Chicago area.

ITC called the plan, depicted above, the Green Power Express, saying it could:

result in a reduction of up to 34 million metric tons of carbon emissions, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of about seven to nine 600 MW coal plants.

ITC made its announcement the same day a major study, the Joint Coordinated System Plan, was released by the Midwest grid operator and other U.S. regional grid managers was released. It concluded that to increase wind power to 20 percent of electricity production by 2024 (requiring some 230 GW of wind) would require some 15,000 miles of new transmission costing $80 billion. The total cost of the wind would be some $1 trillion.

The WSJ reports this as "New Grid for Renewable Energy Could Be Costly." But in fact the study found that "increasing wind's share to 20 percent of U.S. power production would yield annual net savings of $12 billion annually by 2024 based on wind's low production cost compared to the fossil plants the turbines would replace," as Energy Daily (sub. req'd) explained.

Moreover, JCSP projects that the 20 percent scenario would save 3 billion tons of carbon over the next 16 years, which would generate in 2024 an annual value of some $40 billion a year at carbon prices comparable to that which the European Union has seen over the past year -- and several times that if the price of carbon to reaches levels needed to stabilize at 450 ppm.

One reason I say wind power has come of age is because the announcement and the study don't come from your traditional pro-wind trade groups or think tanks. Far from it.