Climate Progress

Why the traditional media should not have blogs. Thursday morning, “Senior National Correspondent” Jake Tapper headlined his “Political Punch” blog

Bill: “We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy” to Fight Global Warming

Stop the presses! An ABC News exclusive — the former President and husband of the Democratic candidate says the only way to fight global warming is to slow down our economy! Needless to say, Drudge ate it up as did the Republican National Committee. As did more than 100 blogs by Thursday night (including Think Progress). And the Clinton campaign even felt obliged to point out that, in fact, “President Clinton was making the opposite point”.

The AP story with the full video is here. Curiously, the AP reporter never mentions the supposedly stunning statement by the ex-prez. Hmm. Maybe this was an ABC News exclusive for a reason. Tapper “reports”:

In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?

I don’t really think there’s much debate that, at least initially, a full commitment to reduce greenhouse gases would slow down the economy…. So was this a moment of candor?

He went on to say that his the U.S. — and those countries that have committed to reducing greenhouse gases — could ultimately increase jobs and raise wages with a good energy plan..

So there was something of a contradiction there.

Or perhaps he mis-spoke.

Or perhaps this characterization was a description of what would happen if there isn’t a worldwide effort… I’m not quite certain.

Hmm. Jake Tapper is not quite certain what Clinton meant. What to do? I know — let’s quickly take the most sensational possible interpretation and splash it all over the web without actually listening closely to what Clinton said or — shudder — asking him what he meant — or even searching the blogosphere to see if Clinton has ever talked about this before (anyone who saw the videos of the Clinton Global Initiative or read my blog on it knows Clinton believes the exact opposite). Nooooo. That would be too easy. Tapper has managed to combine the worst of traditional journalism and the blogosphere. But I digress.

Let’s look at what Clinton actually said, in context, which, strangely enough, Tapper reports:

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For those remaining 7 or 8 3 or 4 people who still buy the Bush rhetoric that he cares about global warming and is committed to addressing the problem with new technology, Exhibit 435C for the prosecution is the just-canceled “clean coal” project called FutureGen.

[Amusing anecdote for FHA — Future Historians of American — I once had a boss at the US Department of Energy who practiced repeating “clean coal” in front of a mirror so as not to break out smiling when uttering that oxymoron.]

Yes, I know Bush said as recently as Monday (in the most vetted of all Presidential speeches), “Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions.” But he wasn’t lying or flip-flopping or anything. He didn’t say, “We are funding new technologies….” or “Anyone who actually meant what they said would keep funding new technologies….” Give the guy a break. He said, “Let us fund new technologies….” He was imploring Congress for help in a “Let my people go” vein.

Yes, two months ago, “administration officials were calling it a ‘centerpiece‘ of their strategy for clean coal technologies,” but centerpieces are largely decorative, no?

This is sort of a setback for those who believe coal gasification combined with carbon capture and storage could be a major global warming solution. I say “sort of” for two reasons. First, the program was being horribly mismanaged:

“The idea of FutureGen makes complete sense,” Dr. Moniz [under secretary of energy during the Clinton administration] said. However, a study he helped direct concluded earlier this year that the FutureGen project was badly structured, with confusion about whether it was a research project or a demonstration. Among its problems, he said in a telephone interview on Friday, was that it has “a cast of thousands” ….

Apparently the too-many-cooks overseeing FutureGen couldn’t make up their minds whether they were developoing new technology or demonstrating existing technology. Hey. No big deal. We have a decade. Why not do both?

The second problem: The goal of FutureGen was to “validate the engineering, economic, and environmental viability of advanced coal-based, near-zero emission technologies that by 2020″ will produce electricity that is only 10 percent more expensive than current coal-generated electricity.

So the project was either doubly pointless or doubly cynical, depending on your perspective. After all, by the time this technology was ready to commercialize on a significant scale in the early 2020s, the world will have built or begun construction on more than a 1000 GW of coal plants, using traditional technology that is not designed for carbon capture and storage. The climate will have been destroyed irrevocably before Futuregen could have accomplished anything useful in the marketplace. Also, we will still need a mandatory cap on carbon emissions to make future FutureGen plants viable because they will be more expensive than traditional plants even in the 2020s. Since the Bush administration opposes a mandatory cap, the whole R&D effort looks like another delaying action … if you were inclined to take anything the Administration says seriously, of course.

No wonder people in the energy business called the project NeverGen.

(You can read more on the cancellation here.)

Just after yesterday’s post on photovoltaic (PV) installs in CA and NJ, I found a 43-page update from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in my inbox. The second paragraph of the executive summary tells the good news:

Despite the transition to a new program, demand is robust. In the first twelve months, demand for CPUC-administered California Solar Initiative incentives exceeds California’s total installed solar from the previous 26 years. Since 1981, California installed 198 megawatts (MW) of grid integrated solar statewide. From January 1 through December 31, 2007, the California Solar Initiative program has applications for 208.6 MW of new solar. Disregarding applications that have been withdrawn or rejected, the program has received 7,541 applications, worth $558 million in incentives. Residential applications dwarf all others (6,712 applications) and are 89% of the total applications, but only comprise 15% of the total MW in the active applications. The 829 non-residential applications from commercial, government, and non-profit applicants make up 11% of the total applications. The non-residential applications are 176.8 MW in active applications.

In 2006 the U.S. installed 108 MW of PV. If most of the 209 MW of applications reported above are built in 2008 (18 MW where already operating in 2007), we will see at least a doubling of U.S. PV.

The California Solar Initiative (CSI) is budgeted for $3.3 billion of incentives over 10 years for 3,000 MW. Incentives will decrease in ten steps over the 10 years so even if applications in the first year are $533 million, this does not indicate CSI will run out of funds. Non-residential applications appear to be ahead of goals, while residential is lagging somewhat.

Also, Cooler Planet has added more features to their interactive map, so you may want to check it out again.

– Earl K.

Okay, you’re annoyed you can’t watch 24 or a full season of House or The Office — and yes, A Daily Show is kind of lame these days. But on the bright side, as a UK Times headline notes:

Viewers turned off by Hollywood writers strike ‘may never switch TV on again’

Yet, as is so typical of the MSM traditional media, they completely missed the real story — the connection to global warming: Turning TVs off equals using less electricity equals emitting less carbon dioxide.

How much less?

American TV networks have lost almost a quarter of their audiences because of the Hollywood writers’ strike, according to new figures, and executives fear that “orphaned” viewers may never return.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Joe is off his meds again Joe, what about the substitution effect? Won’t people just do something else that uses energy? And indeed the article says,

Writers as well as studios are worried that lost viewers may never return to TV, instead finding new ways to entertainment themselves, such as YouTube, Facebook or video games. The most recent figures show that YouTube has had an 18 per cent surge in traffic, while visitor numbers to other websites, such as Crackle, have seen doubled, albeit from small bases.

But first of all most people leave their PCs on all the time anyway, or they have one of those flying toaster climate-destroyers screen savers. Second of all, many people are multi-tasking when they watch TV — blogging, checking emails, playing their Game Boy [I mean seriously, who could possibly watch Las Vegas and do nothing else at the same time — give the public some credit, people!]

Now if we could only get the reality TV show writers and staff to strike….

Cooler Planet looked at the solar photovoltaic (PV) installation data from the California Energy Commission and made it visual to show just how it is growing. A static view of their data is at the right, but go to the site and move the slider to see the growth from only 1,675 grid connected photovoltaic installations in 2002 to 29,628 installations in 2008. According to SolarBuzz,

In 2006, 112 megawatts of solar photovoltaics were installed in the US Grid Connect market, up from 80 megawatts in 2005. Demand was led once again by California, which accounted for 63% of the national market. Notwithstanding funding program bottlenecks, New Jersey saw very strong growth in 2006, representing 17% of the national market.

Why would California and New Jersey, with only 12% and 2.9% of U.S. population respectively, account for such a large fraction of PV installations? Perhaps incentive programs (most recently the California Solar Initiative and the New Jersey Clean Energy Rebate Program) and other policies are working.

Internationally, Germany (8.8× U.S. in 2006 MW installed) and Japan (2.6× U.S.) are the leaders in PV installations, with California a “distant third” according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Most places where PV is economic have some combination of the following (but usually not all):

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Those rabble-rousers at Greenpeace have done it again:

I had nothing to do with this! Here is the press release:

GREENPEACE TURNS NATION’S MOST ICONIC LANDMARK INTO MEMORIAL TO FAILED BUSH LEGACY ON CLIMATE

Bush Plan Portrayed as a Disaster on Eve of U.S-Led Climate Change Meeting

WASHINGTON– Responding to the Bush administration’s continued obstruction of international efforts to address global warming, Greenpeace activists turned one of the nation’s most iconic symbols into a memorial to Bush’s failed legacy on climate change. Greenpeace projected on the Washington Monument the message: U.S. Global Warming Plan: Hell and High Water accompanied by an image depicting rising sea levels at the base, a predicted consequence of global warming.

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I happen to be on an email list with one of the country’s leading systems thinkers: John Sterman, Director, MIT System Dynamics Group, Sloan School of Management. Part II will discuss the Group’s important contribution to demystifying the greatest single source of confusion about avoiding catastrophic climate change. But this post will give Sterman’s comment on the SOTU:

Bush’s SOTU reference to climate is small beer indeed. I think [Climate Progress] has it mostly right — it’s more delay and doubletalk. Yes, he dropped the sound science part (because the scientific case is now so clear he’d be a laughingstock), but the underlying policy hasn’t changed. It’s still about creating the potential, not doing anything, and, worse, still framed as “slow, stop, and eventually reverse” the growth of emissions. By phrasing in terms of emissions growth he can use words like slow and stop, which in fact mean emissions continue to grow (although not as fast). Emissions peak when the growth stops, and fall only when that growth is reversed. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise even if emissions peak and will peak only when emissions fall to CO2 removal, something like 50-80% below current levels by 2050; warming continues long after concentrations peak, and sea level rise and other impacts continue long after that. So the SOTU still reflects deliberate and careful use of language to make delay sound like action.

Precisely.

Part II is here.

Certainly that’s how Intrade bettors see it. They also think Hillary is the 2-to-1 favorite for the Democratic nod.

Not sure why McCain is only a 1-in-3 shot for winning the White House. That looks like a good bet to me — not that I’m a betting person….

If Dems are smart, they’ll make climate a big issue in the general. Not sure they are that smart, though. I’ll blog on this later.

McCain would almost certainly push some serious action on climate change. Yes, he’s been going a bit wobbly of late and he thinks nuclear power can do more than in fact it can — and he certainly wouldn’t be as good on the issue as Clinton or Obama — but this still represents a huge leap forward for the climate.

FYI - Dr. Pachauri, Nobel-winning Climate Scientist, to Testify before Select Committee. 9:00 AM, Wednesday, January 30, 2008. Watch the live webcast on the Select Committee’s webpage, at www.globalwarming.house.gov

The Preservation Predicament - New York Times. How global warming could affect the conservation efforts to which environmentalists have dedicated so much time, energy, and resources - and which may now become obsolete.

850 companies participating in EPA ‘green power’ program - Greenwire (subs. req’d):

More than 850 companies are purchasing more than 13 billion kilowatt-hours of green power per year under U.S. EPA’s voluntary Green Power Partnership.

Fifty-three of the program participants are Fortune 500 companies. Collectively, they are buying more than 6 billion kWh of green power annually, exceeding the program’s goals by 130 percent, EPA said. Their purchases equal the avoided carbon dioxide emissions of more than 570 million gallons of gasoline per year.

Intel Corp. was the top renewable energy buyer with 1.3 billion kWh per year, followed by PepsiCo, Wells Fargo & Co., Whole Foods Market and the Pepsi Bottling Group. Johnson & Johnson, Cisco Systems, Kohl’s Department Stores, Starbucks and DuPont Co. rounded out the top 10.

Good. Great. But…

But an environmentalist, Clean Air Watch President Frank O’Donnell, warned the success of the voluntary program is designed to hide the need for enforceable regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

“Everyone realizes voluntary efforts, though positive in some cases, are never going to be the real answer to the problem,” O’Donnell said.

Similarly… this is exactly why Bush’s major emitter’s meeting later this week is in fact a catastrophic global warming policy farce.

The American Geophysical Union, an organization of geophysicists that consists of more than 45,000 members, has issued a strong statement on human-caused global warming:

In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change–an additional global mean warming of 1°C above the last decade–is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past thousand years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it. Warming greater than 2°C above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and–if sustained over centuries–melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters. If this 2°C warming is to be avoided, then our net annual emissions of CO₂ must be reduced by more than 50 percent within this century. With such projections, there are many sources of scientific uncertainty, but none are known that could make the impact of climate change inconsequential. Given the uncertainty in climate projections, there can be surprises that may cause more dramatic disruptions than anticipated from the most probable model projections.

Precisely. In short, the time to act is now.

Who can believe the discredited “Inhofe 400” over the world’s top climate scientists? As climate scientist Andrew Dessler has written:

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