Climate Progress

I was on an energy panel today at a conference sponsored by Technology Review. The panel made it into the blog Responsible Nanotechnology. The summary of my remarks need clarification:

Romm predicts that the US space program will be essentially abandoned by 2025 because we will recognize that every available dollar must be put into combatting the effects of global climate change.

I believe that, thanks to the refusal of this administration to take any concrete action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, come 2009, the next President — and every subsequent President — will have to make action on climate a larger and larger priority in the federal budget. And if we don’t follow the advice of NASA’s James Hansen and aggressively deploy GHG-reducing technologies in the next decade, then, come the 2020s, we will be so desperate to deal with global warming that we will divert funds from many discretionary areas of the budget, such as the space program.

A NASA scientist came up to me afterwards to make sure that I was not speaking about abandoning NASA’s terrific work on Earth sciences, which has helped make everyone aware of the climate problem. Not at all. Though, sadly, again, the Bush administration has been busy cutting back that valuable research in order to fund the manned space program, including its plans to put humans back to the Moon and Mars. And yet, ironically, thanks to the Bush administration, it is increasingly doubtful we will put humans on Mars this century, at least.

This may well be a suprising point for man Americans — and I count myself as a space enthusiast — but on our current path of reckless disregard for the climate, the manned space program faces the certainty of slashed budgets.

We have passed the point at which avoiding catastrophic warming can be done easily. When the country final does confront the reality that business-as-usual energy policy risks 80-foot sea level rise as NASA itself warned this week, we will dramatically realign our priorities. At that point, which will almost certainly come by 2025, it is inconceivable we would ever spend the many tens of billions of dollars needed to put humans on Mars.

I will post a link to the video of this talk when it is available.

Some in Congress still obsess and rant over whether or not parts of Europe were as warm as today several hundred years ago — the trumped up hockey-stick controversy, which the recent National Academy of Sciences Report should have put to rest, and that RealClimate.org has debunked repeatedly.

But while Congress obsesses and delays, the entire planet keeps warming up, and NASA keeps relating the news. By 2050, not only will no one remember the hockey-stick controversy, many people won’t even be using hockey sticks anymore outdoors – it will just be too darn hot.

This is clear from the Cliff Notes version of “Global Temperature Change,” by James Hansen et al: NASA’s press release. NASA reprints and explains one of the key figures from the article that appears in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

“Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows average temperatures from 2001-2005 compared to a base period of temperatures from 1951-1980. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and purple indicates the greatest cooling.Click image to enlarge.”

Now imagine those kind of temperature changes added to current temperatures by 2050, and then doubled or tripled by 2100. Hockey sticks will probably become featured items on Antiques Road Show.

When a major science journal publishes a major climate article led by our top climate scientist–and is wise enough to make it an open access article — you MUST read it. I reviewed an early draft of “Global Temperature Change,” by James Hansen et al in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and consider it one of the most important articles published this year — or any year — worth reading a few times.

The article is already making headlines for showing that by 2050 the Earth will be warmer than it has been for a million years, thanks to human emissions of greenhouse gases. If we take strong actions to limit further emissions starting today — what the authors call the AS [alternative scenario] — we can limit total warming from preindustrial levels to about 2°C, but even that risks sea level rise of one meter per century.

Failing to act, the authors warn, ensures far higher temperature rise, “which could yield sea level rise of several meters per century with eventual rise of tens of meters, enough to transform global coastlines.” That is “the disastrous BAU [business as usual]” case.

Equally worrisome is that “species loss under BAU has the potential to be truly disastrous, conceivably with a majority of today’s plants and animals headed toward extermination.”

The paper notes that the alternative scenario limits the severe but difficult-to-quantify risks of melting tundra and other serious carbon cycle feedbacks that Climate Progress has discussed. Yet even one more decade of inaction is likely to render that scenario “infeasible.”

The time to act is now.

Two other highlights are worth noting. First, the article sets the record straight on recent warming trends and how climate models have accurately predicted them. NASA’s press release points out, “the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. And the warming is accelerating:

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Australian climate scientist Barry Pittock gave a terrific and terrifying talk at the 20th Anniversary of the Climate Insitute last week. He made the case that the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the key international process for determining the “consensus” view on climate, is systematically underestimating the future impacts of climate change. Since Pittock was a major contributor to the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001) and since their Fourth Assessment is due out next year, we should pay attention to what he says.

You can see all of Pittock’s 10 reasons online in the abstract for his talk. Let me pull out four of the underestimations:

1. “The climate sensitivity, or global warming after a doubling of the pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentration, is probably in the range of 2º–6°C rather than the 2001 IPCC estimate of 1.5º–4.5ºC. This suggests a more than 50% chance of that global warming by 2100 will be 3ºC or more, a level that many consider dangerous.”

3. “Permafrost melting is widespread,” which “leads to emissions of carbon dioxide and methane,” a dangerous vicious climate cycle that CP has written about.

7. & 8. “Rapid changes in Antarctica” and “Rapid melting and faster outlet glaciers in Greenland,” which combine to threaten far faster and greater sea level rise than climate models have been predicting.

I found his talk very compelling as it matched what I’ve been hearing from a number of climate scientists I interviewed for my book, including James Hansen. Pittock concludes:

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The Aspen Skiing Company for launching their anti-global warming “Save Snow” campaign.

The Natural Resources Council of Maine, for releasing probably the most comprehensive depiction of how global warming would devastate Maine’s coastline – “President Bush’s family home on Walker’s Point could be completely submerged.” Note to self: Look up cosmic irony in Wikipedia to see if there is a link to this study.

Billionaire Richard Branson for making a pledge of $3 billion for climate solutions at the Clinton Global Initiative.

The Economist magazine for the kind of in-depth coverage of global warming that is all-too-rare in major general-interest magazines (other than Time magazine).

Katie Couric and CBS News, for running a story on global warming and arctic melting that doesn’t give precious airtime to misinformation from global warming Deniers.

James Hansen, for telling it like it is to CBS: “I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change, no longer than a decade at the most.”

The media keeps getting suckered by Bush on climate the way Charlie Brown keeps getting suckered by Lucy.

Let’s get this straight: A technology-only strategy cannot solve the global warming problem. So how can the Washington Post publish a basically favorable article about Bush’s technology-only “plan” — and do so the same week both the Congressional Budget Office and Senate Environment Committee explained that such a strategy can’t do the job?

The answer is that technology has sex appeal, and it is actually part of the answer. And that is precisely why conservative strategist Frank Luntz recommended making technology the cornerstone of the climate strategy for conservatives who want to appear as if they care about global warming but don’t actually want to do anything about it. This strategy is so good that Bush can get favorable PR for his plan even though he is cutting funding the most cost-effective technology strategy–energy efficiency.

The famous 2002 Luntz memo is available on the web–you MUST read this if you want to understand why U.S. climate politics at the national level is so divorced from reality — but many people and most of the media seem unaware of it. Heck, even smart people like Rafe Pomerance and William Fulkerson are cited in the Post praising the Bush plan.

That’s why I spend a chapter in my forthcoming book, Hell and High Water: The Solution and The Politics (William Morrow, January 2007) on this subject, which I call the Technology Trap. If we follow the Bush strategy, we doom the planet to catastrophic climate change. It is that simple.

We must have a price for greenhouse gases, as the CBO explains, and that means market-oriented regulations, like Bush’s father put in place for air pollution. But W follows the Luntz razzle-dazzle strategy: “We need to emphasize how voluntary innovation and experimentation are preferable to bureaucratic or international intervention and regulation.” Delay. Delay.

To sum up: As Climate Progress predicted earlier this week, Bush’s “astonishing U-turn on global warming” was a Double-U Turn. We are back where we started, taking no serious action to stop sea level rise of 20 to 80 feet. AAUGH!

UPDATE: Link to Luntz memo has been fixed. My apologies.

The global warming deniers aren’t just a creation of fossil fuel companies, like ExxonMobil. British author and environmental activist George Monbiot exposes their links to the tobacco industry in an extract from his new book, Heat.

Monbiot lays out the case that “corporate funding of lobby groups denying that manmade climate change is taking place was … started by the tobacco company Philip Morris.” For instance, in 1993, Philip Morris created a phony citizens group to discredit EPA research showing the dangers of second-hand smoke, the Orwellian-named, “the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.” That coalition launched the career of well-known denier, Steve Milloy, publisher of Junkscience.com, dedicated to misleading the public on a host of critical science issues, especially global warming.

Tobacco smoke harms both those who generate it and those nearby. Greenhouse gas emissions are far less discriminating, and will leave no part of the planet unscathed if they continue to grow unchecked. Anyone who continues to deny the dangerous reality of global warming, who continues to blow smoke in the face of the American public, should be ashamed.

1. Al Gore’s terrific speech at New York University on what this country must do now to avert catastrophic global warming. Gore offers the key starting point that has so far eluded our President and the conservative Congress: “We should start by immediately freezing CO2 emissions and then beginning sharp reductions.”

2. A new report, “American Energy: The Renewable Path to Energy Security,” by the Center for American Progress and the Worldwatch Institute. The authors notes, “If the U.S. is to join the world leaders in renewable energy — among them Germany, Spain, and Japan — it will need world-class energy policies based on a sustained and consistent policy framework at the local, state, and national levels.”

3. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, “Evaluating the Role of Prices and R&D in Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions,” that concludes “Relying exclusively on R&D funding in the near term… does not appear likely to be consistent with the goal of balancing costs and maximizing benefits or the goal of minimizing the costs of meeting an emissions reduction target.”

What an amazing world we live in that you actually need a CBO report to make the case that the only plausible climate strategy for the country must include both R&D and a carbon price.

Big media claims, “President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming.” Since Bush already has had one not so astonishing U-turn, when he abandoned his 2000 campaign pledge to put a cap on carbon dioxide emissions, don’t hold your breath.

Let’s be clear. As NASA’s James Hansen just said, “I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change … no longer than a decade, at the most.”

So only two “U-turns” matter–those on a Green Arrow Only. We need a serious cap on carbon dioxide emissions to reduce absolute levels of emissions in the utility and industrial sectors, and we need a big boost in fuel economy standards to cover the transportation sector.

If Bush embraces these two policies, that would indeed be “an astonishing U-turn,” especially since the administration announced just one year ago, “What will never fly is a mandatory cap on carbon.”

Blogs like Grist have been doing a good job of covering this. But big media has not. Time quoted a Bush adviser saying about the GOP, Democrats, the oil and electricity industries, and environmentalists:

“Only Nixon could go to China, and only Bush and Cheney–two oilmen–can bring all these parties kicking and screaming to the table.”

NOT! Progressives have been waiting at the table for more than a decade — conservatives have chained themselves to their beds.

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For every few hundred climate scientists who believe global warming is an urgent threat, there is one global warming denier, often funded by the fossil fuel industry, who downplays the danger. So why do we have so many more profiles of the deniers in the media?

The Washington Post has run its second profile of the the Deniers this year, featuring Virginia’s Patrick Michaels and Oregon’s George Taylor. Earlier in the year, the Post ran a major cover story by Joel Achenbach in their Sunday magazine profiling a number of Deniers. The journalists writing these articles seem to think that they are hanging the Deniers with their own words or, as Achenbach said, “the skeptics as they present their case tend to undermine it.”

But that is typically true only for someone who reads the piece closely and already knows climate science well enough to see how ridiculous their arguments are. Yes, sometimes a Denier is so out in left field he or she will say something that anyone can see is absurd, as when meteorologist William Gray told Achenbach, “Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews.”

But most Deniers are highly skilled in sounding reasonable, even when they smear the entire scientific community. So these articles mainly serve to give a lot of free air time–often with little serious rebuttal–to people whose main activity in life is to stop the nation in the world from acting in time to afford catastrophic warming. Many readers I talk to come away thinking either the subject is just too complicated for them or that the Deniers must have legitimate arguments if prestigious publications are giving them so much ink.

The recent Post article quotes a wholly unjustified smear on climate scientists (and the media) by Michaels:

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