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Archive for May, 2007

Climate News Roundup — Foreign Edition

Friday, May 25th, 2007

Crafting Biofuel Rules With Eye on Environment – Reuters. “In March, European Union leaders agreed to set a binding target for biofuels to make up at least 10 percent of petrol and diesel used by vehicles by 2020.” And the law contains specific provisions to ensure the biofuels were “sustainable” and to promote “second generation” biofuels, so-called “cellulosic ethanol” from non-corn sources. Our response: “From the US perspective, we think some of the sustainability criteria — you’re tying yourself in knots over [it] …. I think it’s going to be enormously difficult to figure that out.” Well, yes, being unsustainabile is easy, but self-destructive.

Costa Rice Aims to Win “Carbon Neutral” Nation Race – Reuters. “The country generates 78 percent of its energy with hydroelectric power and another 18 percent by wind or geothermally. It now plans to cut emissions from transport, farming and industry.” Yet another country the U.S. could learn a thing or two from.

China ready to take global warming step — The Times Online. “The Chinese Government is close to dropping tariffs [some up to 16%] on technologies that increase energy efficiency and decrease pollution in what would be the country’s biggest move towards tackling global warming.” Some day there will be a story reporting the U.S.’s big move toward tackling climate change, but that will probably have to wait two years.

AP & MSNBC: Climate Progress Knows its Crap

Friday, May 25th, 2007

There are but a few true experts on turkey crap and its potential as an alternative energy source. Climate Progress, however, works hard to keep current on all potential climate solutions (it is a dirty job). Indeed, we have previously blogged on the subject.

So when the Associated Press needs a quote on a new 55-megawatt poop-to-energy plant in Minnesota, they know who to call:

Joseph Romm, a former top Energy Department official under Clinton and author of the global warming book “Hell and High Water,” agreed, saying the plant would be considered greenhouse-gas neutral.

Obviously there aren’t enough turkeys to generate enough poop to power a nation,” Romm said. “On the scale of things, it’s not a game-changer. … It’s certainly more good than bad.

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So the next time some global warming Denier tells you Climate Progress doesn’t know sh*t, give them this link.

Bush’s Dumb Luck on Emissions & PGDW#7

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped 1.3% in 2006, as the Energy Information Administration reported yesterday.

bush-dumb.jpgPresident Bush immediately took credit:

“We are effectively confronting the important challenge of global climate change through regulations, public-private partnerships, incentives, and strong economic investment.”

[Please, no laughing.]

Perversely, in spite of the fact that Bush has actually gutted programs aimed at the promoting clean energy technologies, last year’s emissions dropped because of 1) higher gasoline prices, 2) a sharp drop in heating demand from an unusually warm winter, which helped bring about 3) a decline in natural gas prices (and hence more use of this clean fuel for electricity generation ).

Hmm. An unusually warm winter — wonder what caused that. And high gasoline prices — maybe the president does deserve credit after all.

Planet Gore chimes in that this means “we can indeed reduce our greenhouse gas emissions intensity (the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per dollar of economic output) at a rate that exceeds our economic growth rate.” Well, yes, but contrary to PG’s implied support of Bush’s do-nothing climate policy, this fact argues for greenhouse gas standards and major clean technology investment– so we don’t have to rely on random fortuitous factors to get our emissions reductions to coincide with economic growth.

(If PG thinks Bush’s policies are the cause of the drop, then they should be happy to take a wager on 2007 emissions. I’ll give them $100 for every 0.1% emissions drop this year if they’ll give me $100 for every 0.1% rise this year.)

For those scoring at home, I’m going to count this as PG Disinfotainment Watch #7 — two in one day, you just can’t keep up with all of the entertaining disinformation from PG’s dirty dozen.

Climate News Roundup

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Study shows that climate change could harm crops – Environmental News Network. “During the next 50 years, more than 60 percent of 51 wild peanut species analyzed and 12 percent of 108 wild potato species analyzed could become extinct because of climate change.”

Germany and Japan press U.S. to agree to leadership role on climate changeInternational Herald Tribune. And I’m willing to take a large bet they’ll be just as successful as Tony Blair was.

PGDW#6: Smearing Stern

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Climate Progress wrote last year about the UK’s important Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. That report concluded avoiding catastrophic climate change might cost countries 1% of GDP (spent largely on clean energy technologies that have many other benefits such as reductions in urban smog), but failing to act could cost up to 20% of GDP as the world must deal with impacts such as massive flooding and hundreds of millions of environmental refugees.

Unsurprisingly, Planet Gore intensely dislikes the Stern Review. In Sterling Burnett’s recent post that misrepresented both the MIT report and CBO report on climate costs — to perversely argue that the media’s neglect of those reports is evidence of pro-warming bias — he writes:

By comparison, the now thoroughly discredited Stern report and the recent IPCC report on the costs of combating climate change were front page news.

As is typical on PG, he uses the phrase “now thoroughly discredited,” without a single link to an article or study. Such articles do exist, since the economic community in particular criticized certain assumptions in the Review. They especially don’t like his choice of a low discount rate. Boo-hoo! Stern places a higher value on future generations than many economists or conservatives. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.

In fact, the Stern Review is not thoroughly discredited nor was its choice of discount rate flawed, as argued here and here in some detail. This issue of the Stern Report and the discount rate is sufficiently important that I will return to it in future posts.

So you Want to be a Climate Expert

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

Start here.

Kudos to RealClimate for creating “a one stop link for resources that people can use to get up to speed on the issue of climate change.”

Climate News Roundup

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

NYC’s taxi fleet going green by 2012 – Associated Press/Yahoo News & Mayor Plans an All-Hybrid Taxi FleetNew York Times. Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for taking a leadership role on climate change with practical action.

Battle Heats Up Over EmissionsWashington Post & California urges EPA to change greenhouse gas rulesLA Times. The Bush administration continues to drag its feet as leading states want to take action to impose tougher standards on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

Warming blamed for frog die-offs – Reuters. Quotable Quotes: “It is believed climate change is raising temperatures allowing a skin fungus to enter the places where the amphibians resided” and “It’s going to be a fact that we see a large extinction.”

Bush 100, Blair 0. Game over.

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

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Britain Sees No Talk of Emissions Targets at G8. Lame Quote of the Week: British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett — “I don’t think anyone envisages the idea that there should be some discussion about setting numerical targets at Heiligendamm.”

In fact, The Guardian had reported on May 15: “Tony Blair believes he is close to persuading George Bush to accept an ambitious plan to bring the world’s greatest polluters into international partnership to fight climate change for the first time.” Yes, and monkees will fly out of my — but let it go.

The Bush administration has been working for a while to weaken the G-8 statement. As noted last week, our negotiators oppose “a pledge to limit the global temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as an agreement to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.”

Beckett also lamely said, “There has been a misunderstanding of the nature of the discussions that we expect.” The only misunderstanding has been Blair misunderstanding who he has been dealing with all these years.

Blog of the Day: Crichton’s Fictions

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

jurassicdork.gifWhile Planet Gore now has the market cornered on entertaining global warming disinformation, Michael Crichton perfected it. For those last two or three people who still think the technothriller writer has his facts straight, check out reasic’s terrific post on Crichton’s inane 2003 talk, “Aliens Cause Global Warming.”

Yes, Crichton, a real medical doctor, actually said:

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we’re asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

Wow! Not knowing the difference between weather and climate is like not knowing the difference between a general practitioner and an epidemiologist. I don’t know what’s worse — the possibility Crichton is just spouting standard Denyer crap he knows is crap or the possibility he actually believes what he is saying.

Kudos to “A Few Things Ill Considered,” for pointing this post out.

The growth rate of carbon emissions has TRIPLED

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

coalfiredpowerplant.jpgA stunning new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) finds the growth rate of CO2 emissions has tripled in recent years:

CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes have been accelerating at a global scale, with their growth rate increasing from 1.1%/year for 1990-1999 to >3%/year for 2000-2004. The emissions growth rate since 2000 was greater than for the most fossil-fuel intensive of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emissions scenarios developed in the late 1990s.

That’s right. CO2 emissions are rising faster than in the most pessimistic U.N. scenario. So much for all those ostriches and Global Warming Delayers who say that economic growth is the key to solving global warming or that the U.N. scenarios are too extreme.

The study finds “Global emissions growth since 2000 was driven by a cessation or reversal of earlier declining trends in the energy intensity of gross domestic product (energy/GDP) and the carbon intensity of energy (emissions/energy), coupled with continuing increases in population and per-capita GDP.” Sadly, “No region is decarbonizing its energy supply.” In short, coal remains king.

The study also makes an important point about equity in global climate negotiations:

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Climate News Roundup

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

Scientists concerned about effects of global warming on infectious diseases – American Society for Microbiology. Quotable Quote: “Environmental changes have always been associated with the appearance of new diseases or the arrival of old diseases in new places. With more changes, we can expect more surprises.”

Dingell: Climate Change Bill Will Pass – Forbes.com. Legislation to fight global warming is on its way by year’s end!

Smithsonian Accused of Altering Exhibit – ABSNews.com. Why is this not surprising?

Cap-and-grandfather?

Monday, May 21st, 2007

Read all about it on Grist’s blog.

PGDW#5: Claiming Climate Mitigation must be Regressive

Monday, May 21st, 2007

As discussed last week, Planet Gore’s Sterling Burnett was upset with the media for supposedly ignoring “the recent reports by MIT and the CBO detailing the substantial costs and regressive nature of the costs that are estimated to arise if any of the current domestic proposals restricting carbon emissions to combat global warming are enacted.”

Given that the MIT report in fact concluded the exact opposite of what Sterling claimed — and given the fact that the National Review typically doesn’t complain about the regressive nature of, say, tax cuts for the wealthy — I’m guessing you won’t be surprised to learn that the CBO report also comes to a different conclusion than Sterling claims.

I should also point out that, as a minor instance of disinfotainment, the CBO report does not in fact look at the “costs that are estimated to arise if any of the current domestic proposals restricting carbon emissions to combat global warming are enacted.” No, it merely looks at the impact of various ways of implementing a 15% cut in carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 — which is part of no current proposal.

This may seem like a tiny mistake by PG but it isn’t really, because the entire point of the CBO analysis is not to judge existing proposals but rather to show that choices about how a cap & trade system is set up have a big effect on a proposal’s impact on the economy and regressivity. An unintelligent system would be somewhat regressive, since “lower-income households tend to spend a larger fraction of their income than wealthier households do and because energy products account for a bigger share of their spending.”

You could actually make the entire system progressive by auctioning off the carbon dioxide permits and using the proceeds to make a lump-sum payment of equal size for all households. Somehow I can’t really imagine Planet Gore would endorse such a strategy.

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Story of the Day: Nukes and Global Warming

Monday, May 21st, 2007

simpsons.jpgThis story deserves singling out because it is on an important but too-neglected subject — the connection between energy and water.

Climate change puts nuclear energy into hot waterInternational Herald Tribune. Key point: Nuclear power “requires great amounts of cool water to keep reactors operating at safe temperatures. That is worrying if the rivers and reservoirs which many power plants rely on for water are hot or depleted because of steadily rising air temperatures.”

Factoid of the day: “During the extreme heat of 2003 in France, 17 nuclear reactors operated at reduced capacity or were turned off.”

An Australian report noted that there are “few seaside sites available” for siting nuclear plants but warned “that building nuclear plants inland would be a major threat to water supplies in a country already stricken by drought.”

Climate News Roundup

Monday, May 21st, 2007

Schwarzenegger accuses Bush on global warming — Washington Post Op-Ed and Reuters story. Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Jodi Rell (R-CT): “It’s bad enough that the federal government has yet to take the threat of global warming seriously, but it borders on malfeasance for it to block the efforts of states such as California and Connecticut that are trying to protect the public’s health and welfare.” They write scathingly of the President:

Another discouraging sign came just last week, when President Bush issued an executive order to give federal agencies until the end of 2008 to continue studying the threat of greenhouse gas emissions and determine what can be done about them.

To us, that again sounds like more of the same inaction and denial, and it is unconscionable.

Dems Better on Energy, but Not by Enough – CBSNews.com reprinting a column from the Nation. Quotable quote: “In sum, Democrats call for a dramatic change of course from Bush’s policies, and their rhetoric touts a compelling national mission…. No one has yet portrayed the scope and urgency of this national imperative. A bold leader would summon the nation to action.”

And the ever important green celebrity of the week: Leonardo DiCaprio. The headline hits on the hot button issue for would-be jet-setting environmentalists: “No more private jets for me, DiCaprio tells Cannes.”

Climate Progress, “Environmental Pragmatist,” in the New York Times

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

hype1.jpgProbably half of all the media queries I get these days concern hydrogen — thanks to my last book, The Hype about Hydrogen. Today’s New York Times Magazine has an exceedingly long article, “The Zero-Energy Solution,” on a solar-hydrogen home. The author refers to me as “an environmental pragmatist,” no doubt because I don’t automatically embrace every environmental solution that comes along, but judge each on its technical and practical merit.

I have written a number of articles arguing hydrogen has been wildly overhyped as an energy and climate solution, when in fact it holds little promise of being a cost-effective greenhouse gas reduction strategy for at least the first half of the century, if not forever. Since ten years ago I ran the Federal office that does all the hydrogen research, I am one of the go-to guys for a skeptical quote or two.

This article is no exception, and the author accurately writes, Romm “says he believes that the problems of global warming are urgent and that hydrogen technologies are too remote in time to be of any real help.”

Somewhat annoyingly, the author focuses on my concerns about hydrogen safety, which I think are quite genuine for home hydrogen production — but which pale in comparison to the basic technical, cost, and practical considerations for a solar hydrogen home. Still, I stand by every statement, including, “The last thing you want is somebody making hydrogen in his garage.” I did add, though it didn’t make publication, that “I wouldn’t want someone making gasoline in their garage either.”

The article has some hype but is still worth a read as it presents both sides.

Climate Changes the Picture

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

Adirondack Mountains, NY

If this were the daily sunset you had gotten used to growing up, you would understand the hesitancy of even Bill McKibben, a renowned environmentalist, to okay wind turbines on the horizon, interfering with bird migration in order to generate electricity.

However, in an opinion article in which McKibben confesses his sentiment, entitled “One world, one problem“, he ultimately resolves,

In this world, the threat to that landscape, and to those birds, comes far more from rapid shifts in temperature than from a few dozen towers.

McKibben goes on to write a testament to the gravity of climate change and its meaning for the environmental movement, which the existential call for action is uniting. No matter your top concern – clean water, dolphin populations, crop survival, energy consumption – there is a link to climate change and a bigger picture to keep in mind.

Policies in Need of Californication

Saturday, May 19th, 2007

Popularized by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the term “Californication” actually refers to the surge of Californians migrating up the West Coast following the opening of a major highway. In this context, we’re hoping we can Californicate the state’s climate change and energy policies to the rest of the Union.

Since the 1970s, California has kept its per capita energy use at a level rate, using primarily energy efficiency programs. Over time and with minimal spending, the cost of electricity under the programs is 1.4 cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s an outstanding rate compared to traditional or even carbon-free energy sources.

I discuss California’s unique route in Chapter 7 of Hell and High Water. You can access the information from the California Energy Commission or this PowerPoint with graphics.

When our country gets serious about addressing climate change and energy dependence, we need active national attention and proliferation of California’s policies.

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California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Saturday, May 19th, 2007

A good op-ed on an important policy measure with bipartisan support. Quotable Quote:

The low carbon fuel standard differs significantly from President Bush’s proposal to indiscriminately expand “alternative fuels” without paying attention to their environmental consequences. His plan would likely bring us coal-based liquid fuels and more of today’s corn-based ethanol, but it does not provide the incentives and rules needed to transform these technologies so that they can compete in energy markets that take climate change seriously.

PGDW#4: Utterly Misrepresenting Research

Friday, May 18th, 2007

New research finds low cost for tackling climate change. But not when that research is reported by Planet Gore. Sterling Burnett recently authored a classic example of PG’s disinfotainment. He writes:

Has the media completely lost objectivity and the search for the “truth” with regard to the issue of global warming. The latest reason that made me ponder this question arose with the “non-story” of the recent reports by MIT and the CBO detailing the substantial costs and regressive nature of the costs that are estimated to arise if any of the current domestic proposals restricting carbon emissions to combat global warming are enacted. Despite the best efforts of Senator James Inhofe , among others, to get these studies publicized, I have barely seen a mention of the findings of either of these reports in the mainstream media.

He goes on to say, “it has surprised me how economic and science reporters have also ignored the MIT and CBO reports.” The same week I read this, however, I saw a science news article on the MIT report (”Damn you, Science magazine,” as Jon Stewart might say). The article requires a subscription, but I have copied the key figure below.

mit-study.gif

I believe Science has mislabeled the figure as to which line refers to which Congressional plan — indeed the main reason the media probably didn’t cover this study more is that 1) it is quite confusing and 2) the results are not terribly exciting, since, like most studies, MIT finds a low cost for cutting emissions.

The middle line represents a 50% cut in U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions below 1990 levels by 2050 (which is relatively close to the McCain-Lieberman targets the way M.I.T. does the math). Now that is a very deep cut — a 60% cut from current levels in just four decades.

Yet even with that deep GHG cut, as the figure clearly shows, welfare — the average citizen’s wealth — drops only 1% or less through 2040. Only PG would claim that is a “substantial” cost. That is the disinformation in PG’s post. But where is the entertainment?

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