Climate Progress

Hurricane season has ended this year. Thankfully there were no Katrinas, which caused over $50 billion in insured losses.

We were fortunate to have a relatively typical Atlantic hurricane season with the number and duration of storms “very close to the averages one expects for an Atlantic hurricane season.” This was thanks to a confluence of unusual factors – including a “rapidly growing El Nino” that typically makes it hard for Atlantic hurricanes to form.

But while individual hurricane seasons are difficult to predict because of such factors, the trend is clear: Hurricane Katrina is exactly the kind of extreme weather event we expect to see more and more of thanks to our inaction on climate change. And sea level rise will only complicate efforts to protect coastal cities from major hurricanes.

A recent article in Plenty magazine weighs in on the “risky business” that will continue to confront the insurance industry as climate change feeds extreme weather conditions. Two reports (here and here) conclude that insurance companies are not appropriately preparing for the environmental and health consequences of climate change.

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The McKinsey Global Institute has released a report on energy productivity and energy demand. The report concludes that by aggressively pursuing energy efficiency and efforts to curb the demand for energy, “the worldwide energy consumption rate could be cut by more than half over the next 15 years.”

To read the report, you have to be a registered user with McKinsey.com, but today’s New York Times has run an article that sums it up well.

A few highlights of the article are that:

• The findings are based on what is possible with technologies that already exist.
• Energy efficiency is a “start smart” approach to addressing climate change, as climatologist Stephen H. Schneider puts it.

And don’t forget about the Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. EPA, whose opening statements are heard today. The coincidence of the court case and the report’s release underscores both the growing awareness of the urgent need to act on global warming and the fact that smart solutions exist today.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case in which Massachusetts, ten other states, and a handful of environmental groups challenge the Bush administration’s refusal to implement policies that curb carbon dioxide emissions.

The Clean Cars Campaign has posted a summary (including links to the briefs of petitioners and respondents) that provides a straightforward explanation of the legal case. It also lays out specific questions the court will answer, the actions that may be required by the administration, and what is at risk for the climate, the government, and the automobile industry.

The briefing and the Clean Cars Campaign’s primer are extremely useful tools in understanding the court case and its implications. How sad that saving the climate has come to this: Suing the Administration to adopt genuine climate solutions, rather than the administration pursuing genuine climate solutions on its own.

Climate change no longer resides solely in scientific journals. An article in Sunday’s Washington Post illustrates the growing evidence of local impacts felt by nature, cities, and businesses.

The article, “On the Move to Outrun Climate Change” is based on an upcoming report by University of Texas at Austin professor Camille Parmesan. She compares the results of more than 800 peer-reviewed studies on the effect of climate change on nature.

Parmesan is able to relate the following trends caused by human-propelled global warming, among others:

• Butterflies are voting with their wings, abandoning southern Europe and flying north to the more amenable climes of Finland. Species impacted include the Speckled Wood and Orange-tip.

• Ski-lift operators in the West are lobbying for leases on federal land higher up in the Rockies, trying to outclimb snowlines that creep steadily upward.

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More new studies show that our major glaciers — both inland and Greenland/Antarctica are melting faster thanks to human-cause global warming — with dire consequences for us all. Global warming deniers like Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

One recent survey shows accelerated glacial melting. Especially worrisome is the loss of the inland glaciers in South America and Asia, which will threaten the water supplies of millions of people within a few decades. “The glaciers are going to melt and melt until they are all gone. There are not any glaciers getting bigger any more,” said glaciologist Georg Kaser who led the research.

This research is further detailed in a Geophysical Research Letters paper led by Kaser (subs. req’d), which notes that the sea level rise from melting glaciers (as opposed to the ocean expanding as it gets warmer), more than doubled in the 2001-2004 period versus 1961-1990 period.

As for Greenland, an article in Nature (subs. req’d — news article here) reports an ice loss comparable to about 0.5 mm/year, which is pretty astonishing when you consider that the scientific consensus, the U.N.’s 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, had projected little or no contribution from Greenland to sea level rise by 2100! The authors conclude ice sheet disintegration is accelerating: “The rate of ice loss increased by 250 per cent between the periods April 2002 to April 2004 and May 2004 to April 2006.”

And why is this all happening? Kaser’s GRL paper concludes:

The decrease of mass balance from near zero around 1970 gives confidence that late 20th century glacier wastage is essentially a response to post-1970 global warming, reinforced by feedbacks among which the most important are probably the balance-altitude feedback (net melting lowers the glacier surface to warmer altitudes, increasing net loss) and the albedo feedback (more darker ice exposed at the surface promotes further melting).

Only we can stop it.

There’s something very wrong with the movies–and the air–in Los Angeles, according to the Sundance Institution.

Robert Redford’s Utah resort is famous as the site of the Sundance Film Festival, but last week it was host to a fresh, independent voice: the second Sundance Summit of mayors. The consensus among summiteers: If the federal government won’t step up and address climate change, local officials will.

Among those in attendance were co-founder and former Senator Gary Hart, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, nearly 30 mayors and representatives of other concerned groups, all gathered to discuss climate change, energy, and sustainability.

“It may not be the total answer to relieving the United States’ addiction to foreign oil…”, as Reuters put it, but an energy company has started building a plant in Minnesota to use poultry droppings to generate carbon-free electricity.

On Thanksgiving, you may not want to think about what exactly the word biomass means as a renewable energy. You wouldn’t want to ruin your feast by bringing up “700,000 tons per year of turkey litter” as a source of clean power for 55,000 homes in Minnesota. On the other hand, maybe it’s just the political debate you want to spark with your in-laws.

Those cheese-eating surrender monkeys are at it again. Greenwire (subs. req’d) reports:

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin … said the nation would push the European Union to create a carbon tax on non-Kyoto nations. In total, two industrialized countries chose not to ratify Kyoto: Australia and the United States.

Reaction from Australia was swift and strong:

Australian Prime Minister John Howard today … called the plan ridiculous. “That is a thoroughly silly proposal and utterly out of touch with reality,” Howard said.

Reaction from us was swift but bland:

At the U.N. climate change conference in Kenya, U.S. officials slammed the proposal. “We would not see in this case this kind of approach as being the most constructive one or the most effective one,” said Paula Dobriansky, the U.S. undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs.

Hmm. Does this mean Dobriansky might consider the proposal the second most effective one–second, say, to the U.S. proposal to refuse to do anything whatsoever?

Seriously, though, while the tax proposal seems unlikely to go anywhere, sooner or later–probably sooner given the accelerated rate of climate change we are witnessing–nations that refuse to take action on climate will be seen as rogues and punished accordingly by the world community. We must join the fight soon, lest some French satricial TV show label us “Freedom-Fry-eating polar-bear killers.”

Ah, to be a bear. Normally they sleep the winter away and prior to their hibernation eat and eat to put on weight, as much as 400 pounds. Makes you feel better about Thanksgiving, no?

But, thanks to global warming, their natural cycle is getting disturbed. Reuters reports:

Insomniac bears are roaming the forests of southwestern Siberia scaring local people, as the weather stays too warm for the animals to fall into their usual winter slumber.

Insomniac bears?! Imagine how grumpy you would get if your annual nap were seriously postponed. Fortunately, there has been sufficient food supply and so no attacks, but local environmentalists are keeping a close eye on the situation.

Who knows what other strange impacts of global warming will have on the planet? But for now, if you see a forest ranger filling a prescription for mega-doses of Ambien, you’ll know why.

Columnist Samuelson’s attack on the Stern Report does more than merely ignore energy efficiency and avoid any serious discussion of climate impacts. Here is how it ends:

We need more candor. Unless we develop cost-effective technologies that break the link between carbon dioxide emissions and energy use, we can’t do much. Anyone serious about global warming must focus on technological progress – and not just assume it. Otherwise, our practical choices are all bad: costly mandates and controls that harm the economy, or costly mandates and controls that barely affect greenhouse gases. Or, possibly, both.

Does that that position sound familiar?

“It’s important not to get distracted by chasing short-term reductions in greenhouse emissions. The real payoff is in long-term technological breakthroughs.”

That is John H. Marburger III, the president’s science adviser. When you start sounding like the Administration on global warming, it is a pretty good indication that you’re just plain wrong. Pardon my candor.