Climate Progress

Climate Change Refugees by Jeffrey D. Sachs - Scientific American. Too much water (sea level rise) and too little water (drought) will create hundreds of millions of refugees if we don’t reverse global warming soon.

Lithium Batteries Power Hybrid Cars of Future - Reuters. An article on the battery of the (near) future.

Texas oil tycoon plans largest wind farm - Associated Press. Billionaire T. Boone Pickens is planning 2,000 turbines over 200,000 acres at cost that could reach $6 billion. The project would produce up to 4,000 megawatts of electricity — 50% more than all of Texas produces today (2700 megawatts).

A new study on “Sipping Fuel and Saving Lives: Increasing Fuel Economy without Sacrificing Safety” notes:

The public, automakers, and policymakers have long worried about trade-offs between increased fuel economy in motor vehicles and reduced safety. The conclusion of a broad group of experts on safety and fuel economy in the auto sector is that no trade-off is required. There are a wide variety of technologies and approaches available to advance vehicle fuel economy that have no effect on vehicle safety [and vice versa].

The study by the International Council on Clean Transportation concludes that “Technologies exist today that can improve light-duty vehicle fuel economy by up to 50 percent … with no impact on safety.”

The study has two noteworthy figures. The first shows that higher fuel economy vehicles [green] are some of the safest while low fuel economy vehicles [red] are some of the least safe vehicles driven today — heavy, large trucks and SUVs. Click to enlarge.

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The Senate approved by voice vote a plan to increase fuel economy standards for all cars, trucks and SUVs by 10 miles per gallon over 10 years — or from 25 to 35 miles per gallon by Model Year 2020.

Everything you could want to know about the compromise is in this Statement by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

The House better get with the program!

New Scientist is usually sharp, but not with the poll that led them to conclude, “the US public has a clear preference for action in the electricity sector rather than vehicle fuel.” The methodology was flawed:

We split the sample into three groups. One was told that the vehicle fuel policies would result in the price of a gallon rising to $4. The second group was told that a gallon would rise to $7 and the third $15. We did the same for electricity, telling the groups that a typical monthly bill would rise from $85 to either $87, $95 or $155. Then we presented all the respondents with the six policies and for each asked: “If an election were being held today, would you vote in favour of this policy or would you vote against it?”

Gosh, people would rather their electricity bill rise a little than their gasoline bill rise a lot. Duh.

And this polling completely misses the point that you can cut emissions in both sectors without raising energy bills — if you focus on energy efficiency.

Jeers to New Scientist for trying to pass off this silliness as serious analysis.

Freak autumn & winter is Europe’s warmest for 700 years - New Scientist. “The last time Europeans saw similar temperatures to the autumn and winter of 2006-07, they were eating strawberries at Christmas in 1289.”

Why ‘Green’ Investing Has Gained Focus - Wall Street Journal. “For Holly Isdale, managing director and head of wealth advisory at Lehman Brothers, global warming isn’t a scientific theory — it’s an investment opportunity.”

Climate change and the fight for resources ‘will set world aflame’ - The Independent. “A report to be published by UNEP tomorrow will make a direct link between climate change and the Darfur conflict” (a point ClimateProgress has made before).

Breaking News:

Senate lawmakers neared a compromise on Thursday to sharply increase automobile fuel efficiency….

The emerging compromise would preserve much of the lead Senate proposal that would require all vehicles to average 35 miles per gallon by 2020….

However, negotiators agreed to strip other mandates out of the bill, including one that would require specific efficiency gains after 2020.

Much better than nothing — and does not preclude revisiting post-2020 fuel efficiency as concern about peak oil and climate change grows in the coming years. Now the House must step up to the plate.

Humor from The Onion:

President Bush responded to the global warming crisis Monday by calling for the construction of a giant national air conditioner by the year 2015.

E&E News (subs. req’d) has reported on an “apparent deal” between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Energy and Commerce Chair John Dingell (D-MI):

Dingell has effectively decided to punt until later in the year the entire fuels title, which contained an alternative fuels mandate, a low-carbon fuel standard, a boost in corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards and coal-to-liquids provisions.

My sources — how many years I have waited to write that — say differently. They say no firm deal to punt on CAFE exists.

Punting on CAFE makes no sense now that political momentum has swung in favor of genuine action on fuel economy, and the Senate is poised to put CAFE into its energy bill.

Let’s hope my sources are right and the news reports are wrong. In any case, even if CAFE isn’t in the Bill, surely amendments will be offered. The time to act is now!

For the first day of summer:

OK, Planet Gore posts this cartoon under the headline: “Dilbert Tells an Inconvenient Truth?”

Well, shouldn’t the headline be “Dogbert Tells an Inconvenient Truth”? And Dogbert is not so much a truth-teller as “a megalomaniac; one of his dreams is to conquer the world and enslave all humans.” So the fact that he spouts misanthropic conservative claptrap is not something that really advances PG’s (false) argument that environmentalists are elitists who only want other people to change their behavior.

This isn’t the first time PG has misued a cartoon to try to make a point. This one was far more inane:

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