Climate Climate & Energy

Climate chaos shuts down trains

The National Association of Rail Passengers reports that Amtrak is taking a pounding from the flooding in the midwest, making trips difficult or impossible and generally showing how we've managed to go from the finest rail system in the world to one that would shame Bulgaria (to steal Kunstler's line).

Thanks, climate change!

Notes from a plug-in hybrid conference

Silicon Valley came to Washington this week to talk about plug-in hybrids at a great conference organized by Google.org with Brookings. The combination of tech visionaries, electric cars on display, Washington heavy hitters such as John Dingell, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and even a couple of film stars, Peter Horton and Anne Sexton of Who Killed the Electric Car?, made for a great meeting.

Here are my notes from the standing room only event ...

The goal of climate policy is not high GHG prices

There's an implicit assumption in much of the climate policy debate that to meaningfully lower greenhouse-gas emissions, we need a high price on carbon. The assumption is wrong.

Economics 101

In a market setting, price is a function of supply and demand. For a given commodity, prices will be high when demand outpaces supply and low when supply outpaces demand. Thus oil, for instance, is expensive. And autographed copies of my pen and ink cartoons are cheap (in spite of their rarity, I might add).

A cap-and-trade system is an attempt to create a market around a particular commodity, namely GHG emissions. The same dynamic will apply: if demand for GHG reduction outpaces supply, the price of GHG reduction will be high; if supply of GHG reduction outpaces demand, the price will be low.

If we pass a cap-and-trade policy that yields sustained high prices for GHG emissions, it will not be a sign of a successful policy. Quite the opposite: it will mean that the supply of GHG reduction is insufficient to meet the demand.

EIA: Making the same mistake again and again

If you believe the Energy Information Administration, U.S. gas prices will peak at $4.15 per gallon in August.

Whew. That's a suprise for most Americans, 86 percent of whom believe that prices will top $5 by the end of the year. We can be confident that the EIA -- the agency that does the country's official projection of oil prices -- knows what they're talking about. Yessiree.

If you detect a note of sarcasm in my post maybe that's because the EIA has a hilarious record of forecasting world oil prices. And even when it comes to domestic gasoline prices, it's as if their forecasts are completely impervious to reality. To wit:

Toyota and Honda could sure learn something from Chevy!

“I don’t have to tell you how sexy the [Chevy] Volt is. The Japanese and Chinese couldn’t possibly put out something that appealing to middle America.” — Andy Karsner, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy

Arctic sea ice update: 2008 poised to repeat — or beat — 2007

For months, the deniers have been extolling the fact that the Arctic sea saw record refreezing last fall. And they have been claiming that this somehow fits into the absurd claim that the planet is now in a major cooling trend.

But back in the real world, the planet keeps warming, and the Arctic is taking the worst of it, which could lead to potentially catastrophic methane emissions from the tundra, as noted here. The National Snow and Ice Data Center just reported:

Breaking news: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss

A major new study published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters by leading tundra experts has found "Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss." The lead author is David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who I interviewed for my book and recently interviewed again via email about his recent work. The study's ominous conclusion:

Mainstream media misses connection between global warming and Midwest floods

The British and the Chinese understand global warming has driven their record flooding. The United States? Not so much.

Although you wouldn't know it from most U.S. media coverage, the record "once-in-a-hundred-year flooding" the Midwest now seems to be getting every decade or so is precisely what scientists have been expecting from the warming.

A 2004 analysis [PDF] by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center found an increase during the 20th century of "precipitation, temperature, streamflow, heavy and very heavy precipitation and high streamflow in the East." They found a 14 percent increase in "heavy rain events" of greater than 2 inches in one day, and a 20 percent increase in "very heavy rain events" -- best described as deluges -- greater than 4 inches in one day. These extreme downpours are precisely what is predicted by global warming scientists and models [PDF].

Cool idea of the day

Floating wind turbines that can be placed farther out at sea (and in heavier wind) than typical anchored offshore turbines. Next: high-altitude wind!

Colbert on the Arctic