Articles by Joseph Romm
Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
All Articles
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Death, disease, and infection, thanks to our friend climate change
Daniel J. Weiss and Robin Pam of the Center for American Progress have a new article on the health impacts of global warming. As they explain, "Some of the most severe health effects linked to global warming include the following":
- More illness and death resulting from heat waves.
- Worsening air pollution causes more respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
- Vector-borne disease infections will rise.
- Changing food production and security may cause hunger.
- More severe and frequent wildfires will threaten more people.
- Flooding linked to rising sea levels will displace millions.
Already, "WHO now says that 150,000 deaths annually are attributable to the effects of climate change." And we've only warmed about 1.5 degrees F in the past century. We might warm 10 degrees F each century!
The time to act is now.
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Concentrated solar power is already doing great; no breakthroughs needed
Almost certainly not and absolutely not. I give two answers here because there are two very different types of solar energy:
- Solar photovoltaics, PV, which is direct conversion of sunlight to electricity. It is well known, high-tech, uneconomically expensive in most parts of this country (but poised to resume dropping sharply in price), and intermittent (power only when the sun shines).
- Solar thermal electric or concentrated solar power (CSP), which uses mirrors to focus sunlight to heat a fluid to run a turbine or engine to make electricity. It is, as I've blogged, "The solar power you don't hear about." It is relatively low-tech, competitive today (and poised to drop sharply in price), and can be made load-following (matching the demand curve during the day and evening) and possibly baseload (round-the-clock).
Absent major subsidies, solar PV is simply not a big-time winner (in terms of kWh delivered cost-effectively) in rich countries with built-out electric grids in the near term. It is, however, a big winner in the medium-term (post-2020). I don't agree with the Scientific American article that calls for a massive $400 billion 40-year plan for solar. I have been meaning to blog that it has many weaknesses, in my mind. No energy efficiency. No wind. Heck, nothing but PV and CSP, and it looks to be mostly PV, which needs expensive storage.
- Solar photovoltaics, PV, which is direct conversion of sunlight to electricity. It is well known, high-tech, uneconomically expensive in most parts of this country (but poised to resume dropping sharply in price), and intermittent (power only when the sun shines).
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Maryland House committee kills climate bill
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.
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After reporting last week on the climate policy progression carving its way through the Maryland Senate, the same measures were defeated in a Maryland House committee this week. Supposedly, the bill was killed by pressure from industry and labor lobbyists, ironically accompanied by steelworkers draped with "Save Our Jobs" t-shirts.
First of all, the United Steelworkers of America Union endorses the Apollo Alliance -- a coalition of labor, business, and environmental groups that collaborate to advocate a clean economy revolution.
Additionally, just last Thursday, a handful of labor unions -- SEIU, UFCW, LIUNA -- declared their support for the legislation in question.
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Examining the IPCC’s ‘portfolio of technologies’
In 2007, the IPCC wrote [PDF] in its Working Group III summary (page 16):
The range of stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are currently available and those that are expected to be commercialised in coming decades. This assumes that appropriate and effective incentives are in place for development, acquisition, deployment and diffusion of technologies, and for addressing related barriers (high agreement, much evidence).
This range of levels includes reaching atmospheric concentrations of 445 to 490 ppm CO2-equivalent, or 400 to 450 ppm of CO2. The first sentence does beg the question, what exactly does "expected to be commercialized" mean? I'll return to that in Part 2.
So, what exactly are these climate-saving technologies? You can read about every conceivable one in the full WG III report, "Mitigation of Climate Change." But the summary lists the "Key mitigation technologies and practices" (page 10) in several sectors divided into two groups: those that are "currently commercially available" and those "projected to be commercialized before 2030." I will simply list them all here. In a later post, I'll discuss which ones I believe could deliver the biggest reductions at lowest cost -- my 14-plus "wedges," as it were -- and the political process for achieving them.
It is worth seeing them all, I think, to understand exactly how we might stabilize below 450 ppm CO2. Also, one of the technologies is the closest thing we have to the "silver bullet" needed to save the climate, as I will blog on in a few days.