Climate Climate & Energy

EU-27 emissions down 8 percent since 1990

The European Environment Agency (EEA) reports:

Total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU-27, excluding emission and removals from land-use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF), decreased by 0.7% between 2004 and 2005 and by 7.9% between 1990 and 2005.

Over the same period, 1990 to 2005, U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions are up an alarming 17 percent (PDF). The EEA report underscores a point I have made repeatedly -- the transportation sector remains the toughest nut to crack:

Notable quotable

“Anybody can talk and beat up coal: They don’t like it; it’s dirty; it does this and this. But I can assure you, they’re not going to turn their lights or their demand for energy off.” — Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia

EPA staffers warned Johnson he might have to resign if he denied Cali’s waiver

Stephen Johnson. Lordy. Not only did Stephen Johnson’s staff at the EPA oppose his decision to deny California’s waiver, but they warned him that if he denied the waiver he might have to resign in shame. Boxer’s EPW committee has gotten ahold of some internal memos and briefings from the EPA. To pick just one […]

Exxon will try to convince Supreme Court it’s paid enough for oil spill

On Wednesday, Exxon Mobil Corp. will try to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that it should not have to pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages to Alaskan folk affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Exxon, which earlier this month posted an annual profit of $40.6 billion, will argue that the $3.4 billion or […]

Climate change myth debunked: scientists did not predict new ice age

Over on his blog, John Fleck dispatches one of the most ridiculous urban legends of climate change: that scientists in the 1970s were predicting that an ice age was impending.

John and his colleagues, Thomas Peterson and William Connolly, point out that, even in the 1970s, most scientists thought that global warming was the dominant problem.

It should also be pointed out that those worried about global cooling did not necessarily dispute the fact that carbon dioxide causes warming. Rather, the global cooling theory was based on the idea the dust and other stuff people were putting into the atmosphere would reduce sunlight by more than enough to overwhelm the heating from carbon dioxide. The net result would be cooling.

There is in fact no credible dissent to the argument that carbon dioxide warms the climate. Even the Dean of Skeptics, Dick Lindzen, admits that (although he predicts less warming than the IPCC).

So, two things to remember:

1. The consensus that an ice age was coming in the 1970s didn't actually exist.
2. The theory that an ice age was coming does not contradict the theory that carbon dioxide warms the climate.

‘Doomsday’ seed vault opens in Arctic, awaits doom

A so-called “doomsday” seed vault opened in the Arctic today that’s designed to store up to 4.5 million seeds as a backup for the world’s food crops (and other seed banks) just in case something ultra-tragic happens. The $9.1 million Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built into the side of a mountain some 620 miles […]

Notable quotable

“This idea of clean, green energy is no longer a tie-dyed T-shirt kind of idea. This is mainstream economics.” — Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio

Two solutions to global warming

Will reducing or stopping carbon dioxide emissions stop global warming? Not according to the IPCC. The Fourth Assessment FAQ, section 10.3, notes that "complete elimination of CO2 emissions is estimated to lead to a slow decrease in atmospheric CO2 of about 40 ppm over the 21st century." By going cold turkey on fossil fuels, we only get down to about 1985 levels in 92 years. The oceans will continue to heat up.

In other words, we might as well try to drive a big wood screw into hard oak with a hammer. Yet the belief that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have some leverage on the problem is widespread.

To examine our beliefs, which are often hidden from us, I offer two solutions to global warming. Both will likely work, but they are very different.

1. The Earth Bag. Many elaborate and expensive geoengineering proposals have been made, but here is the most practical.

The earth's overall temperature depends in part on albedo, or reflectivity to solar radiation. Change this by a few percent, and we change the climate.

We manufacture 5 trillion plastic bags each year. All we need to do is to make them all white and bright, and get them into the dark tropical oceans, where they will reflect huge amounts of solar radiation back into space.

Virgin Airlines flies first biofuel-powered plane, enviros unimpressed

Like a virgin, the world’s first biofuel-powered plane flew for the very first time from London to Amsterdam on Sunday. (Well, it was a little bit biofueled: One of the plane’s four main tanks was filled 20 percent with coconut and babassu palm nut oil.) Virgin mogul Richard Branson celebrated his conquest, and deflected concerns […]

Is There Will Be Blood a dramatization of peak oil?

In the realm of art, no interpretation of a work can be final, but intriguing hints from no less than writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson suggest that the stunning movie There Will Be Blood is actually a story not about the rise and fall of a man so much as the rise and fall of a commodity: oil.

Of course, even the intentions of the creators -- and in the case of There Will Be Blood, that means principally writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, star Daniel Day-Lewis, cinematographer Robert Elswit, and composer Jonny Greenwood -- don't necessarily prove anything. (After all, Anderson revealed in one interview that he "had no idea what we were doing" until he heard Greenwood's revelatory score.)

But consider what Anderson said in an interview bout the movie with Terry Gross:

We all know what has happened with oil, don't we? We all know the end of the story. It's a bit like Titanic, we all know the boat sinks. The fun of the story is watching how we get there.

Or what he said in an interview with Charlie Rose, in reference to the oil industry's recent fortunes:

I haven't been living in a bubble for the last six years.

Or what the great music critic Alex Ross said of the score in The New Yorker:

Greenwood, too, writes the music of an injured Earth; if the smeared string glissandos on the soundtrack suggest liquid welling up from underground, the accompanying dissonances communicate a kind of interior, inanimate pain. The cellos cry out most wrenchingly when Plainview scratches his name on a claim, preparing to bleed the land.

Too literal an interpretation of what Anderson described to Charlie Rose as "a great boxing match" between the two of the most powerful forces in recent American history -- evangelical religion and the oil industry -- would be pointless.

But when it comes to the controversial ending, we have to consider the possibility that this story is not about an individual, or even an industry. We have no choice, really, because it's only in this context that the finale makes sense.

***SPOILER ALERT*** For those who have seen the movie, or who have no intention seeing the movie but still want to consider the idea, please read on.