Articles by Joseph Romm

Revkin has leading system dynamics expert Sterman on NOAA's 1,000-years-of-hell paper

I am a big fan of MIT's John Sterman, one of the world's leading experts on systems thinking.

In a post on "The Greenhouse Effect and the Bathtub Effect," Andrew Revkin notes that Sterman's work trying to reduce the biggest source of climate confusion is related to the new NOAA-led paper that I discussed here: Climate change "largely irreversible for 1000 years," with permanent Dust Bowls in the Southwest and around the globe.

The bathtub analogy is that while atmospheric concentrations (the total stock of CO2 already in the air) might be thought of as the water level in the bathtub, emissions (the yearly new flow into the air) are the rate of water flowing into a bathtub. We need to lower the level, not just the flow. A great video clarifying the issue is here. It is narrated by my friend Andrew Jones. If you want to play the simulation itself, go here.

Revkin got Sterman's comments on the paper, which I am reposting below:

Summers doesn't advocate for climate solutions, but Obama's climate team makes up for it

Yes and no.

Larry Summers is widely regarded as a very brilliant economist. I can't dispute that. He was also the lead horse among the economists in the Clinton administration who were using every trick they knew to undermine any serious effort toward negotiating an international agreement on restricting greenhouse gases in Kyoto, Japan (see here and below).

He appears to remain firmly in the camp of most MEOWs (Mainstream Economists who Opine on Weather) in that he

• Doesn't understand climate science enough to realize how dire the situation is
• Doesn't propose remedies that would avert the irreversible catastrophe we face.

That seems clear from his two-part series on climate in the Financial Times in 2007 (Part 1 and Part 2). By his own admission, he proposes polices that are "less dramatic in their immediate claims for emissions reductions" than what the world has been considering. These include more R&D, of course, and an end to energy subsidies, plus:

The US must engage in an energy efficiency programme that takes effect without delay and has meaningful bite. As long as developing countries can point to the US as a free rider there will not be serious dialogue about what they are willing to do. I prefer carbon and/or gasoline tax measures to permit systems or heavy regulatory approaches because the latter are more likely to be economically inefficient and to be regressive

First off, the "and/or" is odd, since the "or" undermines the whole message. A gasoline tax is obviously not going to touch coal, and it is obviously not "economically efficient" if your goal is carbon reductions.

Second, it is odd economics to described an "energy efficiency" program as being driven by price, when high carbon prices primarily drive fuel switching. You would need incredibly high CO2 prices to drive efficiency in transportation (see "Why a carbon cap won't solve our oil addiction"), something Summers has never endorsed as far as I've seen. Also, even his new boss knows a gas tax is a politically dubious strategy for pushing efficiency (see Obama is right: Higher gasoline taxes to boost efficiency would be "a mistake"). Fortunately, his boss also understands that smart regulations make more sense in the transportation sector (see "Obama to push for California waiver that mandates cut in auto CO2 emissions").

In any case, if Summers won't specify a domestic emissions target, let alone a global one -- and won't specify how high a carbon or gasoline tax he has in mind, then it is impossible to view his policies as a serious addition to the debate or know if he is really serious at all. He is just another mainstream economist opining on a subject that he has not bothered to become knowledgeable enough on to make a useful contribution.

But does it matter that a MEOW, in this case a very clever kitty, is the head of the president's powerful National Economic Council? The New York Times says it does matter a lot in "In Obama's Team, Two Camps on Climate," which pits Summers against Carol Browner, who will oversee Obama's energy and climate policy, and which ignores the rest of his amazing Cabinet.

NOAA stunner: Climate change 'largely irreversible for 1,000 years'

Important new research led by NOAA scientists, "Irreversible climate change because of carbon dioxide emissions," finds:

... the climate change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop ... Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450-600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the "dust bowl" era and inexorable sea level rise.

I guess this is what President Obama meant when he warned today of "irreversible catastrophe" from climate change. The NOAA press release is here. An excellent video interview of the lead author is here.

The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science paper gives the lie to the notion that it is a moral choice not to do everything humanly possible to prevent this tragedy, a lie to the notion that we can "adapt" to climate change, unless by "adapt" you mean "force the next 50 generations to endure endless misery because we were too damn greedy to give up 0.1 percent of our GDP each year" (see, for instance, McKinsey: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero or the 2007 IPCC report).

The most important finding concerns the irreversible precipitation changes we will be forcing on the next 50 generations in the U.S. Southwest, Southeast Asia, Eastern South America, Western Australia, Southern Europe, Southern Africa, and northern Africa.

Here is the key figure (click to enlarge):

How Obama can get a better climate bill in 2010

Update: The Center for American Progress has the post "Timeline: A Fight for State Fuel Efficiency Standards, President Obama Moves on Issue After Years of Roadblocks."

My new Salon piece is out: "Real science comes to Washington: Myopic conservatives and the media still don't get global warming. But if anybody can preserve a livable climate, Obama's amazing energy team can."

Besides exploring how the media clearly doesn't get the dire nature of the climate problem (duh) and how Obama's amazing team of radical pragmatists clearly do, I discuss what Obama needs to do in 2009 to justify not passing a major climate bill this year.

I am trying to make lemon out of lemonade here. I can't find a single reporter, staffer, or wonk who thinks we're going to have a climate bill this year. As the NYT reported earlier this month, "advisers and allies have signaled that they may put off ... restricting carbon emissions." Noting that many in Congress "question the pace at which lawmakers will be able to move on a climate legislation," Climate Wire ($ub. req'd) even quoted the uber-progressive Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, Barbara Boxer, as "acknowledging this" and saying, "If that doesn't all come together within a year, I would expect EPA would act."

Boxer's comment gets at one of the two key issues, namely, what does team Obama need to do in 2009 to make up for the fact that there won't be a climate bill? The other issue is, what does team Obama need to do in 2009 to get a better bill next year than they could get this year? I have already blogged on one part of the answer to the second question -- they need to get China onboard with a hard emissions cap (see "Part I, Does a serious bill need action from China?").

Here is my answer to both questions from the Salon piece: