climate

NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan

The U.S. Climate Action Partnership -- a coalition of businesses and enviros once thought to be important -- have released their wimpy Blueprint for Legislative Action.

I can sort of understand why, say, Duke Energy, signed on to this, but NRDC, EDF, and WRI have a lot of explaining to do. As we will see, this proposal would be wholly inadequate as a final piece of legislation. As a starting point it is unilateral disarmament to the conservative politicians and big fossil fuel companies who will be working hard to gut any bill. Kudos to the National Wildlife Federation for withdrawing from USCAP rather than signing on.

I think it is absurd for any serious environmental group to support permitting new coal plants that don't capture and store the vast majority of their emissions. Yet as the WashPost reports:

The plan would also require any coal plant permitted after Jan. 1, 2015, to emit no more than half the carbon dioxide emissions now considered normal and require any newly permitted plant today to have the ability to be retrofitted to meet that standard.

These are bogus provisions. Nobody really knows what a capture-ready plant design is -- this is the climate equivalent of "the check is in the mail." Any significant number of such new coal plants will simply make it much harder to meet the 2020 target, at a time when we have more than enough low carbon technologies today to meet any such target affordably.

But it is the 2020 target and the issue of rip-offsets that make this proposal truly untenable. The Blueprint calls for requiring that U.S. greenhouse gases (GHGs) return to "80%‐86% of 2005 levels by 2020." That is essentially returning to 1990 levels, which the science clearly says is inadequate to stabilizing at 450 ppm, let alone the 350 ppm target that environmental groups should be seriously considering.

Worse, the science makes clear that you need a target below 1990 levels without allowing fossil fuel companies to offset their emissions -- i.e. continue releasing CO2 into the atmosphere where it will linger with a mean atmospheric lifetime of 30,000 years.

But the already-lame USCAP proposal shoots itself in the (other) foot with its embrace of a staggering amount of rip-offsets.

Marc Morano agrees that only experts in climate feedbacks can make judgments on climate

Tuesday, I received an email from Marc Marano, staffer for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Usually, these are vectored straight into my junk folder, but apparently my computer's spam filter has a sense of humor, because this email made it into my inbox. And what I saw astounded me.

Marc's email contained a link to a recent post by Roy Spencer. In it, Spencer claims:

Obviously, the thermostat (feedback) issue is the most critical one that determines whether manmade global warming will be catastrophic or benign. In this context, it is critical for the public and politicians to understand that the vast majority of climate researchers do not work on feedbacks.

In popular political parlance, most climate researchers do not appreciate the nuanced details of how one estimates feedbacks in nature, and therefore they are not qualified to pass judgment on this issue. Therefore, any claims about how many thousands of scientists agree with the IPCC's official position on global warming are meaningless.

Did I read that right? The only people qualified to make judgments on the science of climate change are experts in climate feedbacks?

I'll ignore the questionable and obviously self-serving nature of this claim for now. The surprising point here is that Roy has clearly disqualified virtually every member of Inhofe's list of 650 "experts" who dismiss the IPCC's view of climate science. Not only are the Inhofe 650 members not experts on climate feedbacks, but also most of them are not experts on any aspect of the climate. (Note, however, that I'm still an expert because I actually do work on climate feedbacks.)

And since Marc Moreno sent out a link to this post, he obviously agrees that Inhofe's list is a pile of rubbish.

Finally, something Marc and I can agree on.

American Meteorological Society gives James Hansen its top honor

(I'd be happy to forward to Hansen any comments people have on his quarter-century-long effort to inform the public and policymakers of the grave dangers we face on our current greenhouse gas emissions path -- in the face of withering attacks by the right-wing deniers and the attempted muzzling by the Bush administration.)

The American Meteorological Society awarded the country's top climate scientist its highest honor, the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal [PDF]:

For outstanding contributions to climate modeling, understanding climate change forcings and sensitivity, and for clear communication of climate science in the public arena.

Hansen is the longtime director of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies. NASA also announced:

In a separate announcement on Dec. 30, Hansen was also named by EarthSky Communications and a panel of 600 scientist-advisors as the Scientist Communicator of the Year. Peers cited Hansen as an "outspoken authority on climate change" who had "best communicated with the public about vital science issues or concepts during 2008."

Kudos to Hansen for these well-deserved awards. I, for one, wouldn't be writing this blog if it weren't for him.

Worldwatch Institute’s 2009 report is one long call to climate action

President-elect Obama wants to work toward reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, but a new study from a D.C. research group says even that rate won't be enough to avoid potentially catastrophic disruptions to the world's climate. The Worldwatch Institute, which sounds a little like a group with an underground lair in a James Bond film, released its 2009 State of the World report this week, claiming the world will have to reach near-zero emissions by mid-century if it wants to avoid the worst consequences of a changing climate.

As you might guess from the title "State of the World," the annual report is ambitious in scope, synthesizing an impressive amount of climate and energy research and recruiting a variety of scientists and analysts to write chapters. It includes chapters on how to restructure energy systems, rural land use, and the "resiliency" of political and social networks as they strain under the effects of climate change. The institute says it included more contributors from developing nations than ever before, because those countries are likely to be the most affected, and least equipped to adapt, to climate change.

In an early chapter, climate scientist W.L. Hare tracks the increase in our planet's average temperature since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century -- 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit). He calculates that a further increase of even 2 degrees Celsius -- an amount climatologists predict will be very difficult to avoid given the world's continued reliance on fossil fuels -- would trigger rising sea levels, coastal flooding, major disruption to food-growing in developing countries, and reductions in biodiversity.

Much of the rest of the report focuses on solutions. In one of the strongest chapters, on farming and land use, Sara Scherr and Sajal Sthapit explain that the Earth's soil and vegetation hold some 2,000 billion tons of carbon, three times as much as the atmosphere holds. They sketch out five land-use techniques that would slow the damage of climate change: enriching soil carbon, creating high-carbon cropping systems, promoting climate-friendly livestock production systems, protecting existing carbon stores in natural forests and grasslands, and restoring vegetation in degraded areas. The chapter [PDF] forms a useful primer in eco-agriculture (not that you don't know all about those techniques already).

The report largely avoids the debates over the flashpoints of nuclear energy and carbon sequestration, devoting more ink to renewables, chiefly wind and solar: "Renewable energy combined with energy efficiency can do the job, and renewables are the only technologies available right now that can achieve the emissions reductions needed in the near term."

In using phrases like "a multicentury commitment to action," the report sounds pretty lofty, as if climate change were chiefly an academic puzzle, not a messy political one. But sections on the urgency of international climate meetings and on the problem of making climate action fair to developing nations put the report's prescriptions into a helpful context. If parts of the report feel like an intellectual exercise, it's still likely to be useful for those hashing out political plans.

The green aspects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Enviros are heartened by much of what they see in the newly released summary of the House's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus package. But they're also concerned about how the transportation funds will be spent.

The bill includes a section focused on "clean, efficient, American energy." The summary states, "To put people back to work today and reduce our dependence on foreign oil tomorrow, we will strengthen efforts directed at doubling renewable energy production and renovate public buildings to make them more energy efficient." Another section of the bill aims to "modernize roads, bridges, transit and waterways." Here's the broad breakdown of those portions:

• $32 billion to transform the nation's energy transmission, distribution, and production systems by allowing for a smarter and better grid and focusing investment in renewable technology
• $16 billion to repair public housing and make key energy-efficiency retrofits
• $6 billion to weatherize modest-income homes
• $30 billion for highway construction
• $31 billion to modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long-term energy cost savings
• $19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration investments;
• $10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption

There's also $4 billion for training and employment services through grants for worker-training programs in "high growth and emerging industry sectors." Priority for these funds would be placed on green jobs and jobs in healthcare. "Green jobs training will include preparing workers for activities supported by other economic recovery funds, such as retrofitting of buildings, green construction, and the production of renewable electric power," says the summary.

The Sierra Club praised the bill, saying it "makes an important down payment on solutions that will transform America's economy and lead to a clean energy future that will benefit generations to come."

Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder pointed out both the good and the bad. "This proposal demonstrates a serious commitment to clean energy with a number of smart and much-needed investments that can create green jobs and be instrumental in our transition to a clean energy economy," he said. "Unfortunately, the transportation spending doesn't take the same forward-thinking approach. The stimulus as it currently stands doesn't do enough to create green jobs through clean transportation investments, and it doesn't prevent spending from going to unnecessary new roads that increase pollution and oil consumption."

Salazar promises to ‘clean up mess’ at Interior, looks like a shoo-in for confirmation

Ken Salazar. At his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, Interior Secretary nominee Ken Salazar said he would promote sound environmental and energy policies through his role in the new administration. His former colleagues on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee seemed to think he'd do a fine job.</p> <p>Salazar pledged to "clean up the mess" […]

NASA: 'Likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years'

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has released its final report on "2008 Global Temperatures." Last year "was the coolest year since 2000." Given 0.05°C "uncertainty in comparing recent years," NASA "can only conclude with confidence that 2008 was somewhere within the range from 7th to 10th warmest year in the record."

The bigger climate news, of course, is that "in the period of instrumental measurements, which extends back to 1880 ... The ten warmest years all occur within the 12-year period 1997-2008." That's why the climate story of the decade is that the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s. And that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s.

The headline coming out of NASA's report, however, is clearly that they are sticking by their near-term forecast of an imminent record:

Finally, in response to popular demand, we comment on the likelihood of a near-term global temperature record. Specifically, the question has been asked whether the relatively cool 2008 alters the expectation we expressed in last year's summary that a new global record was likely within the next 2-3 years (now the next 1-2 years).

Since global temperature in any year can be affected by many factors that have nothing to do with the long-term climate trend, and since short-term predictions gone awry are inevitably seized on by the DICKs (denier-industrial-complex kooks) as evidence the long-term predictions are wrong (even though they are no such thing), I'm not sure it is wise for GISS to make such predictions. But they have made the prediction:

Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.

Their analysis is certainly worth reviewing since, for better or worse, what happens to temperatures in the next few years may well affect just how much climate action that we are going to take (I will discuss the medium-term temperature forecast in the literature at the end):

Waxman calls for climate bill by May, despite grumbling from Energy Committee members

In his first hearing as chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Thursday pledged to act "quickly and decisively" on climate change, and said he wants a bill ready to go by Memorial Day recess in May.

"Our environment and our economy depend on congressional action to confront the threat of climate change and secure our energy independence," Waxman said. "U.S. industries want to invest in a clean energy future, but uncertainties about whether, when, and how greenhouse-gas emissions will be reduced is deterring these vital investments."

But not everyone is on board. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said there are "many different views on this committee" as to whether climate change is caused by humans.

The committee heard from representatives of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership about its new blueprint for a cap-and-trade climate bill. President-elect Barack Obama and Waxman have both called for cap-and-trade programs, though considerably stronger ones than USCAP proposed.

But some committee member suggested that cap-and-trade is not the way to go. Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas) said he prefers a carbon tax, though it may not be as politically palatable. "It's probably the cleanest and most transparent thing Congress can do is to put a tax on something we shouldn't be putting in our atmosphere," said Green. His fellow Texan, Republican ranking member Joe Barton, also indicated that a carbon tax might be preferable to cap-and-trade.

Today's hearing illustrated that despite the leadership change in the committee -- climate advocate Waxman replacing automaker-friendly John Dingell -- it's going to be a tussle to move climate legislation this year. "Be prepared for a battle," warned Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.).

Business/enviro alliance unveils climate plan, attracts critics

The United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a coalition of businesses and environmental groups, today released its Blueprint for Legislative Action [PDF] at a press conference on Capitol Hill, and then presented it to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

With climate legislation appearing imminent, USCAP members want a voice in shaping it -- and they seem to want to make sure it isn't too stringent.

"Today, cap-and-trade legislation is a crucial component in fueling the bold clean energy investments necessary to catapult the U.S. again to preeminence in global energy and environmental policy, strengthen the country's international competitiveness, and create millions of rewarding new American jobs," said Jeff Immelt, chair and CEO of General Electric, a USCAP member.

Other corporate members of USCAP include General Motors, Ford, Duke Energy, Dow Chemical, and ConocoPhillips. The coalition also includes a handful of big green groups: Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and the World Resources Institute.

WRI President Jonathan Lash issued a statement praising the document and the partnership that produced it. "The health of our economy and the safety of our climate are inextricably linked, except nature doesn't do bailouts," said Lash. "USCAP has redefined what is possible. If the diverse membership of USCAP can find common ground, Congress can agree on effective legislation."

But one environmental group, the National Wildlife Federation, pulled out of the partnership rather than sign on to the blueprint. In a statement to The Washington Post, NWF called USCAP "a welcome, strong force for action," but said it would work separately to "enact a cap-and-invest bill that measures up to what scientists say is needed and makes bold investments in a clean energy economy."