Climate Progress

Late last year, after his campaign tanked, no one was paying much attention to McCain. As a result, some of the amazing things that he believes didn’t get a lot of attention, such as this Cheney-esque stunner:

JOHN MCCAIN: “When you say wind solar and tide, most every expert that I know says that, if you maximize that in every possible way, the contribution that that would make given the present state of technology is very small, is very small. It’s not a large contribution. It’s wonderful, it’s great to have it, I encourage it everywhere. I hope everyone will, for Christmas, buy their family a solar panel. But, that would be exciting. But they, but, I’d be glad to send you the figures that there’s the amount of–even if we gave it the absolute maximum, uh, wind, solar and tide, uh, etc. The clean tech - the truly clean technologies don’t work.”
(Town Hall Meeting; Portsmouth, NH 12/04/07)

Yes, John McCain is the candidate from the 19th century. He has a Luddite mentality that not even the Bush energy Department believes (see “Wind Power — A core climate solution“).

This quote reveals what a narrow circle of experts McCain relies on. Just what we need, a President in a bubble. And one that he is completely unable to hear the truth, even when it is presented to him by a hard core conservative, like T. Boone Pickens, as we learned from these amazing remarks last month:

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As deforestation accelerates and grows ever more concentrated the consequences on climate change are even greater than previously thought. As reported in New Scientist:

Pristine temperate forest stores three times more carbon than currently estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and 60% more than plantation forests, according to research in Australia.

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Part 2 began an analysis of the bipartisan compromise proposed by the Gang-of-10 Senators, suggesting that deal isn’t so bad. The other evidence the deal isn’t so bad is that the House GOP is threatening to refuse to vote for it (see “Part 2.5“).

The good of the 5-year extension of the renewable tax credits certainly beats the “bad” of doubly de minimis drilling. But what about the rest of the deal?

MORE GOOD

Offsets
The $84 billion in investments in conservation and efficiency in the New Era bill will be fully offset with loophole closers and other revenues. Approximately $30 billion will come from new revenues from the oil and gas industry through such measures as modifying the Section 199 manufacturing deduction for oil and natural gas production and other appropriate measures to ensure that the federal government receives its fair share of revenue from Gulf of Mexico leases. Remaining offsets will be finalized in consultation with the Finance Committee after accounting for interaction effects with other pending legislation.

Pretty amazing, really. This bill is going to be paid for in part by “Repealing a tax break for oil companies that Democrats have long called for,” as CNN put it. This is probably a deal killer for those taking millions of dollars in contributions from Big Oil, like McCain.

And there is even more pretty good stuff, depending on exactly how the final bill is written:

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The National Clean Energy Summit at the University of Nevada Las Vegas began on Monday afternoon with an inspiring speech by former President Bill Clinton [pictured above with Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) President John Podesta]. The Summit is sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), CAPAF, and UNLV. Clinton spoke before 900 Summit attendees.

President Clinton’s speech included a new and important idea: create energy independent areas. These places would rely on renewables, efficiency, and home grown energy. These places would then prove to the rest of the world that energy independence built on clean energy can occur, and would lead to economic growth. He touted the strong economic potential of renewable energy, citing an example from nearby California “Recently the state of California commissioned a study…which showed that building a 100 megawatt solar thermal plant would provide ten times the economic benefit of a comparable coal-fired power plant. It would create 4000 person-years of employment, and a net, NET, $628 million of economic benefit.” In pursuing clean energy projects worldwide, he suggested the following places:

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I am participating in an online debate sponsored by the Economist on the “Global energy crisis.” The proposition being debated Oxford-style is:

“This house believes that we can solve our energy problems with existing technologies today, without the need for breakthrough innovations.”

Needless to say, I am taking the “Pro” side.

There is voting by the public for both Pro and Con. Although online voting is about as scientific as a typical argument from a global warming denier, I’d always rather win than lose (or, worse, statistically tie and then have the judges redo the calculation and give the gold to some underage host-country gymnast who screwed up their dismount, but I digress).

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You know your product is in trouble when the housing analogies come out:

The market for sport utility vehicles is starting to look a lot like the housing market, spreading pain to consumers, automakers and dealers….

I am not sure this post qualifies as schadenfreude — since that has been defined as “largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate.” There is nothing unanticipated about high oil prices (see “My 1996 warnings and predictions: “MidEast Oil Forever?” — Part I: Drifting Toward Disaster“).

That is, the death of SUVs isn’t like, say, Martha Stewart going to jail. What has happened to SUVs — “Sales of S.U.V.’s are down 32 percent so far this year, and were off 43 percent for July” — was inevitable.

Well, in July, General Motors dealers had a 174-day supply of the Yukon XL/Suburban on hand, on average, up from a 92-day supply a year earlier. Inventory of the Chevrolet C/K Suburban nearly doubled over the same period, to 116 days from 63 days.

Just like hapless homeowners, countless car owners are now “underwater,” driving vehicles that are worth less than the balance on their car loans. And just like desperate homeowners, the sellers of S.U.V.’s are having to painfully cut asking prices.

How bad is it?

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Part 1 argued argued that the Democrats would be smart to compromise on offshore drilling. Part 2 began an analysis of the bipartisan compromise proposed by the Gang-of-10 Senators, suggesting that deal isn’t so bad.

I am interrupting this series to point out that the House GOP is so nervous that the Dems might kill their pathetic political ploy by forcing a vote on a reasonable compromise that they are willing to delay indefinitely any deal that includes drilling, as CQ Politics just reported:

Republicans Say Any Drilling Bill Must Move Through Committee

House Republicans said Monday they would refuse to consider any energy bill that came straight to the floor from the Democratic leadership’s offices, rather than working its way through committee markups — a process that can take weeks or months.

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We have come to a point in the election season where the courage of the candidates and the intelligence of the voters are being severely tested. So far, the candidates are flunking.
The public’s grade is pending.

The test is about oil and national security. Over the past several months, consumers showed their smarts by recognizing that a gas-tax holiday was pandering and by responding to high gasoline prices with conservation. Conservation is one of the factors that have resulted in the drop in gasoline prices.

Now, it appears that public opinion has shifted in favor of drilling for more oil, even though the experts say it will have no short-term impact on prices or long-term impact energy security. (I say “appears to have shifted” because at least one expert — David Moore, the former head of Gallup — thinks public opinion is not so clear-cut. When asked a question that gives them a choice, Moore says, half or more of the respondents favor conservation over drilling.)

It’s disappointing, but no surprise, that the candidates’ positions have swung with the pro-drilling polls. Read the rest of this entry »

I know we’re supposed to be going into a period of cooling, at least according to people who don’t believe in the scientific method, but for those who do, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports in its “Climate of 2008 July in Historical Perspective“:

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the fifth warmest on record for July and the ninth warmest for the January-July year-to-date period.

It is worth noting that El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions remained in a neutral phase during July. And we’re still at a solar minimum.

And no, I don’t think the monthly data tell us much about the climate — but I know reporting it annoys the deniers, and I am trying to enjoy my vacation. As for what the peer-reviewed scientific literature forecasts for the next decade, temperaturewise:

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Major legislative compromises are unsatisfying by design. They invariably have good, bad, and ugly parts.

I have previously argued that the Democrats would be smart to compromise on offshore drilling (see “Since offshore oil is de minimis, why shouldn’t Obama and the Dems make a deal? Part 1“) The rest of this series will examine whether the so-called Gang-of-10 deal is in fact a smart compromise.

That question can be rephrased as, does the good beat out the bad and the ugly [as, of course, Clint did in the epic spaghetti western]?

I will focus here on the main good-and-bad pieces of the “New Energy Reform Act of 2008.” Part 3 will cover the smaller pieces, including the one I think is really, really ugly.

THE GOOD

The best part by far is:

Enhancing Conservation [sic]
To ease gas prices and protect our environment during the transition, the proposal includes a significant federal commitment to promoting conservation and efficiency [sic]. These include:
• Extending renewable energy, carbon mitigation and energy conservation and efficiency tax incentives, including the production tax credit, through 2012 to create greater certainty and spur greater investment.

[Note to Gang-of-10 Dems: Please stop buying into the GOP frame that renewables are the same as “conservation and efficiency.” That’s how they try to pigeonhole all progressive solutions — Doing with less. New renewables, including solar baseload, are a serious supply option that are all but certain to deliver more new kilowatt hours through 2050 and beyond than new nuclear power plants and coal with carbon capture and storage combined.]

Assuming this includes the solar investment tax credit along with the PTC, then this is far and away the most important piece of the legislation. Renewables have had to contend with uncertain year-by-year renewal for a long time. Consider the effect on the wind power, as this chart from a Union of Concerned Scientists study shows:

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