Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

The scientific debate is closing (against us) but not yet closed.
–Frank Luntz, conservative strategist, 2002

Global warming is real (conservatives secretly know this).
–David Brooks, New York Times columnist, 2005

The global- warming problem is no longer primarily a scientific matter. Science has told us what we need to know about how life on this planet will be ruined if we stay on our current greenhouse gas emissions path. Global warming is also not a technological problem. We have the technologies to avoid the disasters that await us if we keep doing nothing.

Today, global warming is a problem of politics and political will. We lack the will to take the necessary actions–and many of the actions we are poised to take are either inadequate or ill conceived. The great political tragedy of our time is that conservative leaders in America have chosen to use their superior messaging and political skills to thwart serious action on global warming, thereby increasing the chances that catastrophic climate change will become a reality.

Global warming should not be a partisan issue–not when the health, well- being, and security of the next fifty generations of Americans are at stake. But it has become partisan, at least in this country. In order to determine how to create the politics of action in the next decade, we must understand what the politics of inaction has caused in the past decade. That’s what this chapter is about.

The buzz is growing that President Bush will call for change in fuel economy regulations in his State of the Union address.

Bush must understand that calling for the authority to act is no longer acceptable–He has the power to toughen the standards himself right now. Bush needs to take a bold step to show he is serious. After all, he has been President for 6 years and we have heard the rhetoric in six SOTU’s.
The CAFE standard sits at 27.5 miles per gallon and has not been raised since 1990. Last year when Bush called for the authority to improve CAFE, Democrats in Congress shot back that the power to do so was already at his fingertips.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) framed the status of CAFE well:

Our problem in dealing with the Bush administration is that when they want to send troops to fight for oil, they do that whether they have the authority or not. When you ask them to reduce the need for oil, suddenly they’re concerned about authority.

Check out this podcast interview on E&ETV and this interview on Pacifica Radio.

Also, check out this story on “Getting hydrogen cars to live up to their hype” — an article whose title seems a response to my last book, The Hype about Hydrogen:

During the Clinton and Bush administrations, the federal government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year on advanced automotive technology. Joseph Romm, an Energy Department official in the late 1990s, estimates the total expense at $3 billion since the early 1990s.

President Clinton launched an initiative called the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. The goal of the program was to deliver an advanced hybrid family sedan that could get 80 miles per gallon….

“As soon as George Bush got elected, the U.S. car companies walked away from the partnership and didn’t continue developing hybrids,” Romm said. “And the Japanese did. As a result, they ended up the leaders.”

And catch Climate Progress on CNBC Wednesday Morning at 10:20….

[Note: This excerpt is being posted out of sequence because Chapter Six of Hell and High Water lays bare the rhetorical strategy that the President will no doubt use in his State of the Union address.]

There is no doubt that the time to act is now. It is now that timely action can avert disaster. It is now that with foresight and will such action can be taken without disturbing the essence of our way of life, by adjusting behaviour, but not altering it entirely.
–Tony Blair, 2005

It’s important not to get distracted by chasing short-term reductions in greenhouse emissions. The real payoff is in long- term technological breakthroughs.
– John H. Marburger III, president’s science adviser, 2006

The mantra of the Delayers is “technology” and “technology breakthroughs.” Their technological fix to the greenhouse gas problem is, unsurprisingly, not imminent. It is “long-term.” But as we have seen earlier, failing to act in the near term–now–will bring about such drastic conditions that soon our only choice will be to react with extremely onerous government policies.

In 2005, British prime minister Tony Blair described the crucial two- prong strategy we must adopt: “We need to invest on a large scale in existing technologies and to stimulate innovation into new low- carbon technologies for deployment in the longer term.” Future technology will be able to help preserve our way of life in the long term if and only if we have already moved “on a large scale” to technologies that already exist. Over the next few decades, we must rapidly deploy available technologies that stop global carbon dioxide emissions from rising. Then, in the second half of this century, we must sharply reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by deploying all the new technologies we have developed.

The time to act is now…..

Conservative message makers, like Frank Luntz, realized that it could be politically dangerous to oppose any action on global warming, even if their efforts to obfuscate the climate science were successful. Luntz lays out a clever solution to this conundrum in his 2002 “Straight Talk” memo on climate change messaging [a must-read for all progressives]:

Technology and innovation are the key in arguments on both sides. Global warming alarmists use American superiority in technology and innovation quite effectively in responding to accusations that international agreements such as the Kyoto accord could cost the United States billions. Rather than condemning corporate America the way most environmentalists have done in the past, they attack us for lacking faith in our collective ability to meet any economic challenges presented by environmental changes we make. This should be our argument. We need to emphasize how voluntary innovation and experimentation are preferable to bureaucratic or international intervention and regulation.

This is the technology trap, where clean energy technology is used to delay action, rather than to foster action, on climate change.

Catch the audio interview with Betsy Rosenberg of EcoTalk.

With less than a week before Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address, concerned parties are speculating over what the President will announce in regards to climate change. The problem is that no matter what he says, he will do nothing.

He is expected to call for a serious boost in our ethanol supply and consumption, but in terms of a climate change policy? The White House has gone so far as to outright DENY its intention to cap emissions.

Well, what about the state of our atmosphere? Of the Arctic sea ice or the Greenland ice sheet? What about the state of the union in 2050?

Last year, the “addicted to oil” comment was supposedly added last minute, so let’s just hope (feverishly) that he puts a final cap on the State of the Union by capping carbon dioxide emissions. Failing to do so would render the speech–and his presidency–irrelevant.

Obviously, if you get drought indices like these, there’s no adaptation that’s possible.

–David Rind, NASA climate scientist, 2005

We’re showing warming and earlier springs tying in with large forest fi re frequencies. Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away. But it’s not 50 to 100 years away–it’s happening now in forest ecosystems through fire.

– Thomas Swetnam, University of Arizona climate scientist, 2006

Imagine if the climate changed and extreme weather became so constant that it was no longer considered extreme. Mammoth heat waves like the one that killed 35,000 Europeans in 2003 would occur every other year. Mega- droughts and widespread wildfires, like those of the record- breaking 2005 wildfire season, which ravaged 8.5 million acres, would be the norm. This new climate would wipe out whole forests, including virtually every pine tree in British Columbia. The Arctic would have little or no summer ice, and the Greenland ice cap would melt, eventually raising sea levels by 20 feet.

If we permit this Planetary Purgatory to occur, the nation and the world would be forced to begin a desperate race against time–a race against the vicious cycles in which an initial warming causes changes to the climate system that lead to more warming, which makes adapting to climate change a never- ending, ever- changing, expensive, exhausting struggle for our children, and their children, and on and on for generations.

This chapter will focus on (1) the impacts of accelerated warming, especially drought and wildfires, and (2) the fatal feedbacks that will probably start to kick into overdrive during this era and complicate any effort to stop the Greenland Ice Sheet from melting….

Satellite images and seismic monitors have confirmed that some 16 months ago an ancient ice shelf broke off from Ellesmere Island in the northern most part of Canada.

The separation took place on August 13, 2005 when the Arctic summer was 3ËšC higher than normal and crucial ice pack was blown away from protecting the ice shelf.

According to the Canadian scientists involved, this is a huge change. It offers a glimpse into what the future holds–a full-scale disappearing act by Arctic ice before 2040.

Warwick Vincentn of Laval University has traveled to see the ice shelf and concludes:

We can say it is consistent with the larger body of evidence indicating the climate is warming and predictions that the greatest effects are likely to take place at high latitudes.

He also makes an astute observation: “People talk of endangered animals — well, these are endangered landscape features, and we’re losing them.”

Right he is, and we just witnessed a rare ice shelf begin to float off and melt away.

A nice UPI story on the book was picked up by ClimateArk, among others:

A former energy official under President Bill Clinton has released a new book on global warming, calling on the country to address the issue by changing how — and which — energy sources are consumed.

“Hell and High Water: Global Warming, the Solution and the Politics,” by Joseph Romm, Clinton’s assistant secretary of energy for renewables and energy efficiency, comes as global warming has received attention unseen before.

Congress, too, is starting to press the issue, while the debate over costs and benefits is likely to play a major role.

In the book, Romm outlines strategies which he says can help avoid possible global catastrophe. Included in his proposals are: creating more fuel efficient cars through hybrid technology, constructing 1 million wind turbines and capturing and storing the carbon dioxide from coal plants.

Speaking recently at the Center for American Progress, in Washington, Romm recommended a California model of energy consumption for the rest of the country.

Californians emit two-thirds less in carbon dioxide than what the average American emits, and yet their energy bills are the same, Romm said.

“The cost of action is much lower than people thought,” said Romm, “but the main cause (of inactivity is that) people don’t understand the cost of inaction.”

Climate Progress was on Al Franken this week (audio available here). The interview shows that even catastrophic climate change can be a source of humor.

Franken posed a challenge to science-fiction author and global warming denyer Michael Crichton: Debate ClimateProgress on climate change. Franken promised to be neutral — and really who is a more neutral commentator than Al Franken?

ClimateProgress immediately agreed. But so far, not a peep from Crichton. Chicken!!

The following article of mine ran last month in the Houston Business Journal and is here reprinted in its entirety:

TXU Corp. plans to pour billions of dollars into power plants putting out emissions that may ultimately ruin the city of Houston and Texas. Is that really wise?

Texas utility companies including TXU have announced plans to build more than a dozen new coal-fired power plants. Coal plants put out far more heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions than any other type of power plant. Worse still, TXU will not be using the latest technology, which gasifies the coal and could allow carbon dioxide to be captured and stored.

The planet has already warmed nearly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and human emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide are the primary cause according to scientists from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and around the world. If we continue unrestrained emissions, the United States will suffer brutal consequences.

Few states are likely to suffer more from global warming than Texas, and Houston has a much as much at risk as any major U.S. city. What do Houston and Texas face?

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