Climate Progress

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Yes, the country is dangerously addicted to oil, which threatens our security and our environmental well-being. But coal-to-liquids (CTL), the Fischer-Tropsch process, is not the answer, as Climate Progress has argued previously. It is just too dirty.

Unfortunately, as a recent New York Times article trumpeted: Lawmakers Push for Big Subsidies for Coal Process. The piece has an excellent figure showing why cellulosic ethanol and electricity are much better transportation fuels:

CTL diesel has twice the greenhouse gas emissions as regular diesel, unless you capture and store the carbon dioxide — and even then, CTL still isn’t cleaner.

But no CTL plant currently captures and stores the carbon dioxide and few are likely to do so any time soon — because the process is already wildly expensive. You need to spend a stunning $4.5 billion dollars just for a 50,000-barrel-a-day facility without CO2 storage, as detailed in a new Energy Department Report. And the U.S. uses more than 20 million barrels of oil a day.

So what is Congress contemplating?

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Companies Gear Up for Greenhouse Gas Limits - Washington Post. Quotoable Quote: “It’s a matter of when, not if,” said Paul Hanrahan, chief executive of AES, an energy company.

Time to Tax Carbon - LA Times. Is a carbon tax better policy than cap-and-trade? They think it is, so does Al Gore, and I’m leaning in that direction myself. Simplicity is a virtue.

Does Planting Trees Make it Okay to Drive an SUV? - AP. Answer–Not really: “It makes you feel good…. But the reality is it’s not going to have a significant effect.”

“We conclude that a CO2 level exceeding about 450 ppm is dangerous….“

Both Climate Progress and the Center for American Progress strongly endorse the need for a target near 450 ppm — or a total warming from preindustrial levels not to exceed 2°C.

Considering that we have already warmed 0.8°C, we can’t risk another 1°C more — a challenging goal since the Earth will warm another 0.6°C even if we stop all carbon dioxide emissions tomorrow. Nonetheless, James Hansen et al. very much believe the goal is achievable if we act quickly and focus on all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide. (I share this view, and indeed they cite a Science article I coauthored on emissions reductions.)

The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (signed by President Bush’s father and ratified unanimously by the Senate) identified an objective–”to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” But it never answered the obvious question– really the central question of the century — what is that “safe” level?

The nation’s top climatologist is nothing if not prolific. He and nearly four dozen co-authors answer the question in a masterful article for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, “Dangerous human-made interference with climate.”

They look at the “potential criteria for dangerous climate change assuming that humanity wants to preserve planetary conditions similar to those in the period of civilization.” They are especially concerned about the risks posed by an ice-free Arctic, tropical storm intensification, “the potential for accelerating sea level rise [from the disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets], and future positive feedback from methane release.” They warn:

If the [additional] warming is less than 1°C , it appears that strong positive feedbacks are not unleashed, judging from recent Earth history. On the other hand, if global warming gets well out of this range, there is a possibility that positive feedbacks could set in motion climate changes far outside the range of recent experience.

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Tim Wirth, Vinod Khosla and John Podesta have written a piece for Grist on how “new energy rules could unleash an economic boom and help quash climate change.” What do they mean?

Consider the recent case of Xcel Energy, a Minnesota utility that wanted to build a new coal plant. When the state utility commission asked Xcel to recalculate the cost of running the plant with an $8-per-ton cost for carbon emissions, the company did so — and then abandoned its plan for the coal plant. Instead, it will rely on wind generation and hydropower. A spokesperson said that the prospect of a carbon fee helped prompt the decision, and the company now advocates mandatory standards for reducing greenhouse gases.

In this case, just the anticipation of a rule change created a market incentive for Xcel to make its next investment in a way that favored new technology.

They propose five rule changes:

• Put a price on carbon.
• Set “carbon efficiency” standards for vehicles.
• Make energy efficiency the business of utilities.
• Modernize the electric power grid to be more efficient and better deliver clean energy.
• Increase government support for clean energy.

What could this accomplish?

Climate change and oil dependence are pushing us toward a clean, renewable, efficient energy future. The profits to be made in making and selling these technologies are pulling us in the same direction. With one strategic leap, we can wipe out two of the biggest threats to our children’s well-being while creating the high-tech industries that will employ them in the future.

If we just change the rules.

Despite the statements of coalitions made of highly recognized businesses, industries, and military officials from all over the country, President Bush continues to ignore the pleas to cap carbon dioxide emissions or even use the authority he has to tighten CAFE standards.

In December 2006, the Energy Security Leadership Council (ESLC) released a report calling for heavy strides to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The ESLC includes top names from FedEx, Southwest Airlines, Dow Chemical, and the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marines.

In January 2007, a handful of utilities and manufacturers joined to advocate a limit on carbon dioxide emissions. The list of supporters includes General Electric, PG&E in California, BP, Alcoa, Caterpillar, and DuPont.

And equally important, a good deal of American citizens have expressed concern over global warming.

So why does our President tell us we are “addicted to oil” and ignore the findings of every peer-reviewed study from 1993-2003 that confirm the scientific consensus of anthropogenic global warming?

We can begin to fight both threats at once - through energy efficiency and renewable fuels and more. We just have to start.

Thanks to global warming, the permafrost is no longer very perma, nor very frosty. We’ve noted before about how the ultimate release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases formerly trapped in the tundra could create a “self-perpetuating climate time bomb.” But we shouldn’t ignore the severe local impacts.

The New York Times has a front-page story on what global warming has done to the Alaskan village of Newtok:

Sea ice that would normally protect coastal villages is forming later in the year, allowing fall storms to pound away at the shoreline.

Erosion has made Newtok an island…. The village is below sea level, and sinking…. The ragged wooden houses have to be adjusted regularly to level them on the shifting soil.

Studies say Newtok could be washed away within a decade….

The corps has estimated that to move Newtok could cost $130 million because of its remoteness, climate and topography. That comes to almost $413,000 for each of the 315 residents.

Not that anyone is offering to pay.

The Global Warming Deniers always say we must adapt, but that is mostly empty rhetoric. The Bush administration is too busy dumbing down G-8 statements and muzzling U.S. climate scientsts to take real action.

The Alaskan quoted in the headline, Frank Tommy, 47, says, “It’s too muddy. Everything is crooked around here.” That last sentence would seem to be a fitting epitaph for the Bush Administration.

Being an an environmental pragmatist means making tough choices, choosing between alternative energy sources like hydrogen and turkey poop.

The Toronto Globe and Mail quotes us on the former:

When is the fuel-cell car going to be widely available? Car companies like Ford and General Motors say they could be ready to market fuel-cell vehicles by 2015, depending on the availability of fuelling stations. Expert panels have told the California and federal governments that target is optimistic. Hydrogen critics, like former U.S. Department of Energy official Joseph Romm, says: “Not in our lifetime.”

As for the Associated Press story quoting Climate Progress on turkey poop, that continues to be picked up by newspapers who recognize an important story when they see one — in New Mexico (”Turkey poop will power electric plant“) and in Canada (”Turkey coop waste will power first U.S. poultry litter electric plant“). Note the amusing lengths the ever-polite Canadians will go to avoid using the word “poop” in the headline.

And yes, Climate Progress believes that turkey crap is a better alternative energy source then hydrogen.

“Lose-lose: the penalties of acting alone stall collective effort on climate change” is an article the Financial Times ran a while back. While the piece gives a panoramic analysis of the international prisoner’s dilemma, there are two other angles that are missing. The first is the penalties of no one acting.According to the UK’s environmental minister, the economic rationale for inaction is that the first country to act risks undergoing some degree of economic hardship. This, he explains, is “the last refuge of the deniers — the idea that it’s not worth anyone doing anything unless everyone does it.”

It seems that actors are falsely interpreting an outcome that avoids economic costs as a win–but not so fast! The whole point of this debate is to avoid the costs of continually unregulated global warming.

Maybe someone needs to brief policymakers again on what the future is bound to look like when sea levels rise 20 feet, populations are famished from crop-damaging drought, and loved landmarks have been destroyed by hurricanes or wildfires.

The second flaw in the argument has to do with the traditional first-mover advantage for new technologies and new industries. Countries that go first in reducing emissions will develop the expertise and the technologies needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ensuring global leadership in the job-creating clean industries of the future.

The time to act is now!

Sea level rise of 5 meters in one century? Even if most scientists will not say so publicly, that catastrophe is a real possibility according to the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute Of Space Studies.

It may seem like I single Hansen out for recommended reading. But that’s only because he

• is the nation’s top climatologist
• writes prolifically
• speaks with unusual bluntness for a scientist
• has been more right than just about any climate scientist

He has written a terrific piece for the open-access Environmental Research Letters on “Scientific Reticence and Sea Level Rise“:

I suggest that a “scientific reticence” is inhibiting the communication of a threat of a potentially large sea level rise. Delay is dangerous because of system inertias that could create a situation with future sea level changes out of our control. I argue for calling together a panel of scientific leaders to hear evidence and issue a prompt plain-written report on current understanding of the sea level change issue.

I could not agree more. In researching my book, Hell and High Water, many leading climate scientists spoke to me candidly off the record that they share Hansen’s fear. Fortunately, more and more are speaking out.

Hansen is especially concerned that sea level rise is nonlinear:

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