Climate Progress

UPDATE: Greenspan is no polymath, to go by the discussions of energy and climate in his instant bestseller, The Age of Turbulence. During his nuclear power love-fest, he writes:

Nuclear power is not safe without a significant protective infrastructure. But then, neither is drinking water. (p. 453)

Wow! That’s an analogy I bet you never heard before. Greenspan is actually comparing drinking water infrastructure — which is needed mainly to protect the water from us (i.e. from human pollution) — with nuclear power’s infrastructure–which is needed to protect us from nuclear material, which (unlike water) is inherently dangerous. I guess this economic guru is the only person in the country who would rather live next to a nuclear power plant than a reservoir.

Even more annoying:

For example, after the initial surge in the fuel efficiencies of our light motor vehicles during the 1980s, reflecting the earlier run-up in oil prices, improvements slowed to a trickle. (p. 446)

Seriously. This statement sums up everything that is wrong with conservative economists. Greenspan hates government mandates like fuel economy standards, so they can’t be the reason why fuel efficiency surged (as the law required) and then stopped (since we haven’t toughened the law in two decades).

Greenspan’s thoughts on global warming are equally annoying and confused, but that will have to wait until Part II. The reason I interrupted my multi-part thrashing of Lomborg is that Greenspan’s book is perhaps more damaging, since he is far, far more respected and this book will be read by many more people–it has already leaped to #1 on Amazon.

Greenspan does have more to say on the issue of oil and fuel economy a few paragraphs later. He notes parenthetically

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Call to ban petrol cars by 2040 - BBC News. Some aggressive proposals across the pond, where British Liberal Democrats are calling for carbon neutrality by 2050 in the UK.

Ethanol sparks food fight between corn growers and buyers - Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “The burgeoning ethanol industry is creating a wave of prosperity for rural towns throughout the Midwest, but the energy bonanza is also pitting farming groups against each other.” Many farming groups don’t like high prices for corn. The American Meat Institute plus dairy, egg and turkey lobbyists have launched a Web site called Balanced Food and Fuel that spells out “the seemingly dire consequences of the growing demand for biofuel.” Corn growers have responded in kind.

Grim outlook for poor countries in climate report — Guardian Unlimited. “Professor Martin Parry, a climate scientist with the Met Office, said destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture were now forecast to occur several decades earlier than thought.” The effect on Africa and Asia will be especially hard. “By 2020, the report warns, up to 250 million Africans may be left short of water.”

Since the federal government has so far refused to adopt a nationwide renewable electricity standard (RES) the states have stepped in. Some 25 states, plus DC, have adopted an RES, also known as a renewable portfolio standard, which requires utilities to purchase a rising percentage of their power from renewable sources like wind and solar.

A new report by U.S. PIRG details the myriad benefits of state action to promote renewables –Reaping the Rewards: How State Renewable Electricity Standards Are Cutting Pollution, Saving Money, Creating Jobs and Fueling a Clean Energy Boom. Here are some of the conclusions

• In 2006, more than two-thirds of all new renewable electric generating capacity in the United States was built in RES states. In 2007, more than 70 percent of planned renewable generation is expected to be built in RES states.

• Texas stands out as the state with the most aggressive renewable energy development in recent years, adding 2,000 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity. Texas is followed by Washington, New York, and Colorado.

• Renewable energy is addressing a greater share of new energy needs in RES states. In 2007, renewables account for about 38 percent of planned capacity additions in RES states, compared to just 12 percent in non-RES states.

The report also found significant environmental benefits as a result of new renewable energy development. Renewable energy sources built after the adoption of state RES policies will:

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The Montreal Protocol (on Substances that Deplete the Ozone) celebrated its 20th anniversary Sunday, September 16th. Realistically, it probably wasn’t celebrated much but commemoration and reflection are due.

A month ago the Financial Times jumped the gun on the anniversary and ran an op-ed by Mario Molina, a chemist who won a Nobel Prize for driving concern over the ozone.

Molina says that the treaty’s impact on greenhouse gas reductions is central to its success and that it has slowed global warming up to 12 years. He discusses the Montreal Protocol in relation to the climate’s tipping point and in doing so, builds pressure on signatories of the Montreal Protocol (entering a phase to accelerate the phase-out of ozone-depleting chemicals) and participants in the upcoming climate negotiations.

In one week a series of international meetings over global warming begins, eventually leading to formal post-Kyoto negotiations in December. Those talks will ultimately set the global policy framework for the decade during which greenhouse gas emissions should (must) peak. The negotiations are critical and, unfortunately, success hinges on U.S. involvement.

Yet the Montreal Protocol has been a landmark of successful, international, environmental negotiations. Therefore Molina’s full op-ed is below, lest we forget Montreal:

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Karl Rove thinks history will be kinder to President Bush than the public and the pundits are today:

I believe history will provide a more clear-eyed verdict on this president’s leadership than the anger of current critics would suggest. President Bush will be viewed as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century.

Not!

On the path set by Bush’s do-nothing climate policies, future generations — including historians — will be living in a ruined climate for centuries, with brutal summer-long heat waves, endless droughts, unstoppable sea level rise, mass extinction, and on and on. If we do stop catastrophic global warming, it will only be because succeeding presidents completely reject Bush’s approach. Either way, President Bush will be viewed as a short-sighted leader who ignored the key test of the 21st century.

Rove actually has the chutzpah to claim:

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Taping today with Mike Tidwell at 10:40 am. Stations that broadcast or rebroadcast it can be found here. DC 89.3 FM broadcasts live. The whole show should be good if you tune it at 10 am, starting with an Arctic ice expert.

In Cool It, Lomborg writes about global warming — but the globe he is writing about certainly isn’t Earth. We’ve already seen in Parts I and II that on Planet Lomborg, polar bears can evolve backwards and the ice sheets can’t suffer rapid ice loss (as they are already doing on Earth).

On Planet Lomborg, the carbon cycle has no amplifying feedbacks — even though these are central to why warming on Earth will be worse than the IPCC projects. I couldn’t even find the word “feedback” or “permafrost” in the book [if anyone finds them, please let me know].

On Planet Lomborg, free from the restrictions of science, global warming is kind of delightful:

The reality of climate change isn’t necessarily an unusually fierce summer heat wave. More likely, we may just notice people wearing fewer layers of clothes on a winter’s evening. (p.12)

On planet Earth, a major study in Nature found that if we fail to take strong action to reduce emissions soon, the brutal European heat wave that killed 35,000 people will become the typical summer within the next four decades. By the end of the century, “2003 would be classed as an anomalously cold summer relative to the new climate.”

Lomborg’s entire book takes place in a kind of fantasy-land or Bizarro world. Aptly, on the last page is “A Note on the Type” that begins

This book was set in Utopia….

Irony can be so ironic. Utopia is from the Greek for “no place” or “place that does not exist.” Lomborg is the nowhere man!

On Earth, if we listen to Lomborg and take no action anytime soon, then the amlifying feedbacks kick in, and the planet, including America, is going to hell — as a major 2005 study found:

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Let’s look at some of the records for the month, according to the National Climatic Data Center, a division of NOAA:

• For the contiguous U.S., the average temperature for August was 75.4°F (24.1°C), which was 2.7°F (1.5°C) above the 20th century mean and the 2nd warmest August on record.
• More than 30 all-time high temperature records were tied or broken and more than 2000 new daily high temperature records were established.
• Raleigh-Durham, NC equaled its all-time high of 105°F on the August 21, and Columbia, SC had 14 days in August with temperatures over 100°F, which broke the record of 12 set in 1900. Cincinnati, OH reached 100°F five days during August, a new record for the city.
• The warmest August in the 113-year record occurred in eight eastern states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida) along with Utah.
• Texas had its wettest summer on record.
• This was the driest summer since records began in 1895 for North Carolina and the second driest for Tennessee.
• At the end of August, drought affected approximately 83% of the Southeast and 46% of the contiguous U.S.

Coincidence? I think not!

N. Gregory Mankiw may have been Chairman of the President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers but he is seriously confused about the relative economics of fuel economy and carbon taxes. In today’s New York Times, he repeats a variety of standard myths and makes one classic blunder.

Why does he prefer taxes to raising fuel economy standards?

A carbon tax would provide incentives for people to use less fuel in a multitude of ways. By contrast, merely having more efficient cars encourages more driving [the “rebound effect”]. Increased driving not only produces more carbon, but also exacerbates other problems, like accidents and road congestion.

Uhh, nice try. But if having more efficient cars encourages more driving, then why has driving — vehicle miles traveled (VMT) — soared in the past two decades while the average fuel economy of US vehicles has actually declined? The answer is that people drive more mainly because they have gotten wealthier. It is a myth that the rebound effect is significant, as this recent study makes clear.

But won’t a carbon tax cut gasoline consumption? Not likely. The only carbon tax that Mankiw cites is $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide ($55 per metric ton of carbon). That would add a whopping 14 cents to the price of gasoline.

How high would gasoline prices have to be increased through a carbon charge to significantly change the average fuel economy of U.S. cars, which currently averages some 20 miles per gallon for all vehicles and 27 mpg for new cars?

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As with The Best of Climate Progress — 2006, I’m hoping to save new readers time by going through the archives for the gems myself. It’s my version of a clip show:

• The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush
• Hidden Bombshell in the IPCC Fourth Assessment
• The Great Political Divide on Global Warming
• We Must STOP Building Traditional Coal Plants
• GOP Attack on Gore Makes No Sense At All
• Franken Calls for Crichton-Climate Progress Debate. We Accept.

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