Climate Climate & Energy

Thousands of protesters in over 50 cities call for climate action, now

This weekend, thousands of people around the world protested for climate action in at least 50 cities, urging the governments meeting at the United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, to get serious about curbing climate change. An estimated 10,000 people protested in London, marching through the streets to rally outside the U.S. embassy, emphasizing […]

A letter from James Hansen pleads for action on coal-fired power plants

The following is a draft letter to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on the subject of proposed new coal-fired power plants. (A similar letter is in the works to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.) The author would appreciate feedback.

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Dear Prime Minister Brown,

Your leadership is needed on a matter concerning coal-fired power plants in your country, a matter with global ramifications, as I will clarify.

For the sake of identification, I am a United States citizen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University Earth Institute. I write, however, as a private citizen, a resident of Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, on behalf of the planet and life on Earth, including all species.

I recognize that you strongly support policies aimed at reducing the danger of global warming. Also Great Britain has been a leader in pressing for appropriate international actions.

Yet there are plans for construction of new coal-fired power plants in Great Britain. Consummation of those plans would contribute to foreseeable adverse consequences of global warming. Conversely, a choice not to build could be a tipping point that seeds a transition that is needed to solve the global warming problem.

Basic Fossil Fuel Facts

The role of coal in global warming is clarified by a small number of well-documented facts. Figure 1 shows the fraction of fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that remains in the air over time. One-third of the CO2 is still in the air after 100 years, and one-fifth is still in the air after 1000 years.

How much power do Americans guzzle for lighting?

Can anyone out there help me out?

Doing some fact-checking for a book, I ran across a question I didn't know the answer to: How much power is consumed by lighting in the U.S.? I spent a bit of time Googling for an answer, but at risk of looking like a dim bulb, I have to confess -- I just couldn't figure it out!

Sweden best at addressing climate change, U.S. and Saudi Arabia worst, says report

You might want to sit down for this: A new report from a German environmental group says that Sweden does the most to address climate change, while the U.S. and Saudi Arabia do the least. Shocking, we know. The U.S. dropped two places from its fourth-worst position last year, while Sweden stayed up top for […]

More backlash against new coal power plants

The headline says it all: "PacifiCorp labels coal a no-go for new plants."

PacifiCorp has backed away from plans to build any new coal plants within the next 10 years, conceding that coal no longer can overcome tightening regulations and environmental opposition.

This seems like a big deal, since -- in my opinion at least -- the gravest long-term climate threat from our part of the world is coal-fired power. Nationwide, coal power plants represent America's largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions; and there's still an awful lot of coal in the ground in the American West. Until recently, coal's abundance, coupled with rising demand for electricity, has made a rapid proliferation of coal power seem more or less inevitable.

But this announcement throws that into a cocked hat. Perhaps the lesson here is that the politics of climate change are changing so quickly that what seemed inevitable as recently a few years ago is starting to look unthinkable.

Climate disruption comes home to the Northwest

In the late 1990s, after pineapple express storms caused severe flooding and deadly mudslides across the Northwest, National Climatic Data Center Chief Scientist Thomas Karl said the storms were "an example of the type of weather patterns that would be expected to become more frequent and yield an increase in precipitation extremes as the climate continues to warm."

Welcome to the future.

The Northwest was fire-hosed again in recent days, flooding communities and leaving them in the dark throughout western Washington state, while cutting I-5 from Portland to Seattle, and rail service to boot. As of today, a lengthy detour to the east or an air flight remain the options for travel between the two major U.S. Northwest cities. Costs are placed at $4 million per day, and that is before expensive repairs to the I-5 roadbed are taken into account.

The connection of global warming to increased storms and rainfall is as easy to make as the connection of steam rising from a pot of water to the stove flame beneath -- Heat causes evaporation. Global warming is heating the oceans, and the steamy, moist air rising from ocean surfaces is rocket fuel for storms. A warmer atmosphere also holds moisture better. The line of clouds pointing from the tropical Pacific to the Northwest that show up on the weather report satellite photos are the physical illustration of these phenomena.

Of course, the scientific caveat is that no one weather event conclusively demonstrates global warming. The point here is that global warming loads the dice for more frequent and intense storms such as the Northwest has seen in recent days. When rainfall in the rain city of Seattle hits the second greatest one-day level in recorded history, and the record was set only in 2003, it provides a very suggestive indicator.

Ireland will phase out incandescent light bulbs

So Australia wants to phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2010? Ireland plans to do it by as early as January 2009. Anybody wanna try to top that?

A carbon tax isn’t the only solution

At least someone gets it:

All three of the leading Democratic candidates have proposed cap-and-trade plans that auction 100% of their CO2 permits. This is, economically speaking, the same thing as a carbon tax.

The context: New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is complaining that no major presidential candidate has proposed a carbon tax -- which he takes as evidence that nobody has had the guts to take a stand in favor of policies that would "trigger a truly transformational shift in America away from fossil fuels."

But as uber-blogger Kevin Drum points out, this is simply rubbish.

Northwest flooding gives some clues

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, it looks like the last few days, according to this report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

In pictures, it looks like this and this.

Interesting Kiwi story about anti-windfarm sentiment

Apparently being in the antipodes doesn't change how people see wind farms: