Climate Progress

I won’t be reprinting Hansen’s e-mails in their entirety anymore, since he has now begun posting them online. For completeness’s sake, here is the rest of the July 23rd email (the whole thing is here):

My statement “It seems to me that young people, especially, should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty (no CCS) coal-fired power plants” raised a concern (of someone in Ireland) that “such a call amounts to incitement to civil disobedience”.

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Offsets are spreading like kudzu:

G.E. will introduce the GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard, which allows cardholders to forgo a 1 percent cash rebate on purchases and earmark that amount for projects that reduce greenhouse gases.

General Electric does acknowledge some of the oxymoronic irony of pushing an Earth-friendly credit card:

It’s important to keep in mind that we can’t “shop away” global climate change.

Duh! U.S. (and Chinese) greenhouse emissions are so high thanks in part to credit cards, which have allowed us to consume far beyond our means (and to consume huge amounts of products made in carbon-intensive China).

But there is more irony. As Michael J. Brune, executive director for the Rainforest Action Network, notes:

It’s ironic. G.E. supplies parts for coal-fired plants, so its credit card offsets emissions it helps create.

G.E. is not the only one offsetting consumer purchases. Check out ClimateCooler. At least they specificy what offests they will be buying:

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So Europeans are buying Indonesian palm oil as a “sustainable” biofuel, but it isn’t sustainable, as we’ve noted before. The tragedy continues:

Palm oil companies are burning peat forests to clear land for plantations in Indonesia’s Riau province, despite government pledges to end forest fires…. Blazes have started flaring again since the end of June with the start of the dry season.

How a big deal is this? As the New York Times put it earlier this year, “Considering these emissions, Indonesia had quickly become the world’s third-leading producer of carbon emissions that scientists believe are responsible for global warming.” [Note to NYT, you can drop the "scientists believe" crap: Carbon emissions cause global warming -- deal with it, MSM!]

The emissions from the 1997 fires alone are staggering, as Nature reported in 2002 (subs. req’d):

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Even more from NASA’s climate guru:

Given the damage that fossil fuels cause to the climate, human health, wildlife, forests, lakes, ocean fish, etc., you may think that we place a very high tax on fossil fuels, right? Umm, well, not exactly. On the contrary, our government, egged on by special interests, chooses to subsidize them, or, more accurately, they volunteer YOU to subsidize fossil fuels.

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Here’s yet another report cautioning that conventional oil can’t meet projected demand. This one, Facing the Hard Truths About Energy, is from the National Petroleum Council, an advisory group to the Secretary of Energy chaired by Lee Raymond (!), retired CEO of Exxon Mobil.

The report wisely recommends: “Moderate the growing demand for energy by increasing efficiency of transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial uses.” But it unwisely calls for promoting liquefied coal and oil from tar sands, especially counterproductive from a report that actually acknowledges the future of growing carbon constraints.

Ah well, after five years working at the Energy Department in the 1990s, I can safely say that these reports typically are not very discriminating because they have members from all forms of energy. This one looks to be no exception.

Still, the warning that our current energy path is not sustainable is one policymakers need to hear:

It’s a hard truth that the global supply of oil and natural gas from the conventional sources relied upon historically is unlikely to meet projected 50 to 60 percent growth in demand over the next 25 years.

Let’s just hope policymakers are wise enough to forego dirty, unconventional sources of liquid fuel (especially liquid coal) and instead aggressively pursue efficiency, cellulosic ethanol, and plug-in hybrids.

On its Sunday op-ed page, the New York Times ran four dispatches about the “rash of extreme weather around the world.” The articles show how “human activity” is having “drastic and lasting” impact globally:

The Great Swiss Meltdown: Swiss glaciers “have lost almost 50 percent of their surface area in the past 150 years; half of this loss has occurred in the last 30. Some 100 out of our nearly 2,000 glaciers have already disappeared, and researchers predict that most will have melted away by 2050.” What this may mean to the Swiss?

Sunny California: Sunny and dry this year. This is the weakest of the four articles — heck it doesn’t even mention wildfires.

Dining in a Drought in Australia: Australia, by contrast,”is suffering what some are calling its worst drought in 1000 years, and the impact on our farmers, livestock and produces catastrophic. Scientists have linked the six-year drought to the changing climate….”

Israel’s Incredible Shrinking Sea: The Dead Sea is dying.

There is a hard rain coming, according to a new study, Before the Deluge: Coping with Floods in a Changing Climate. This is the International Rivers Network second annual “Dams, Rivers & People” report:

Floods are the most destructive, most frequent and most costly natural disasters on earth. Flood damages have soared in recent decades, despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on flood control structures. This is partly because global warming is causing more severe storms, and partly because of growing populations and economic activity on floodplains. It is also because flood control technologies and approaches often prove counterproductive.

Improving our ability to cope with floods under current and future climates requires adopting a more sophisticated set of techniques — the “soft path” of flood risk management, which aims to understand, adapt to and work with the forces of nature. Before the Deluge gives an in-depth look at the flaws with hard, structural flood-control techniques and describes what we need to do to make our communities safer from floods.

If we don’t take strong action to avert catastrophic global warming — and to improve flood risk management — we will be leaving our children and the next 50 generations a drenched and flooded world.

… and if you haven’t got enough of offsets — a big if, I know — come to The National Academies Building, 500 5th Street, NW, for a talk/debate, “Voluntary Carbon Offsets: Hype or Hope?”

I’ll be speaking along with Eric Carlson, Founder and Executive Director of Carbonfund.org, August 1, 12:30-2:00 PM. Here are more details:

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Hansen offers his climate solution — two important actions and two “tweaks”:

When you are given a list of 101 things that you should do to save the planet, it is easy to get discouraged. Well, that way of looking at the problem, without some overall understanding, is discouraging! Moreover, you would need to convince everyone else to do all those things! Fat chance of that. Even if you convinced a very large number of people, the net effect would be to reduce the cost of oil (and other fossil fuels). With dirt cheap fossil fuels (they are already cheap) do you think that there is not someone in the world who will burn them?

I am not discouraging you from individual good deeds. Those will be a part of the solution, and they will be helpful in the upcoming critical battle with special interests, if we succeed in finding a leader with the guts to “go to the mat”. However, the deeds should be recognized as part of a workable strategy, a strategy that gets everyone to participate, not simply a drop in the bucket.

The solution is two plus two: two important actions and two “tweaks”. By far the most important action is “coal” solution, specifically an immediate moratorium in the West (developed countries) on new coal-fired power plants without CO₂-capture, and phase-out of such existing power plants (or installation of carbon capture) over the next several decades. Within a decade or less a similar moratorium will be needed in developing countries.

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Okay, this is somewhat off topic, although I do all of my blogging using Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) voice dictation software.

Anyway, a lot of people I know tried voice dictation a few years ago and gave up on it, since it wasn’t that good, especially IBM’s Via Voice. But the DNS software is really kickass now.

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