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Archive for January, 2008

Bill Clinton hypothetical + lame ABC News blog = mother of all out-of-context quotes

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

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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Post by Joe in Media | 3 Responses

In seeming flipflop, Bush drops mismanaged ‘NeverGen’ clean coal project

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

no-coal-is-clean-small.jpgFor 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.)

Post by Joe in Solutions | 6 Responses

California Solar Applications Brighten

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Just after yesterday’s post on photovoltaic (PV) installs in CA and NJ, I found aPV panel 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.

Post by Earl Killian in Solutions | Leave a response

Hollywood writers strike a blow for the climate

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

tv.gifOkay, 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….

Post by Joe in Humor | 3 Responses

Here comes the sun, at least to CA and NJ

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Cooler Planet looked at the solar photovoltaic (PV) installation data from the California Energy CommissionCalifornia PV installations 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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Post by Earl Killian in Solutions | 9 Responses

Bush’s legacy on global warming

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Those rabble-rousers at Greenpeace have done it again:

greenpeace.jpg

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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Post by Joe in Politics | 10 Responses

MIT’s systems thinking on climate, Part I: SOTU

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

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.

Post by Joe in Science | 3 Responses

Looks like McCain will take the GOP nomination

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

mccain-clinton190.jpgCertainly 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.

Post by Joe in Climate Progress | 1 Response

Climate News Roundup

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

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.

Post by Kari in Climate Progress | Leave a response

Yet more scientists call for deep GHG cuts

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

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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Post by Joe in Science | 7 Responses

Trouble at EV-maker Tesla

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

tesla.jpgEvworld has a very good article on the recent purge bloodbath personnel turmoil at start up electric vehicle company, Tesla motors:

On January 10, 2008, the Tesla Founders Blog published a list of employees who had recently been terminated from Tesla. This list included multiple vice presidents, lead engineers, and a variety of other folks from all areas of the Tesla organization. The blogosphere erupted in speculation about the future of the company.

Always worth remembering that good technology does not make a successful company — good people do.

Post by Joe in Solutions | 3 Responses

For carbon-target junkies only

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Have you been scratching your head about the basis for the widespread claim — “to have a 50% chance to stabilize at 2ºC (global average temperature above pre-industrial) industrialized countries need to reduce their emissions 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020″?

You can find a good explanation here.

Of course this country isn’t going to cut emissions that far that fast, making clear just what a tragic mistake it was for us not to embrace the Kyoto Protocol, which history will certainly view as the best chance humanity had to start down a plausible path to sustainability. At this point, just returning to 1990 levels by 2020 would be an astonishing achievement for America, especially given our current politics.

As I discuss in my book, this doesn’t mean 2ºC is unattainable — we could still embrace a World War II type strategy starting around 2020, though conservatives would almost certainly block such an effort. Let us hope that 2.5ºC is not fatal to the planet, and that we get started soon enough to achieve it.

Post by Joe in Politics | 5 Responses

Bush SOTU: Decreasing Energy Security and Fronting for Climate Change

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

“… clean energy technology … advanced batttery technology … new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions … new international clean technology fund…. The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change, and the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more energy-efficient technology.”

For Bush/Luntz energy/climate policy, “Technology, technology, blah, blah,” the State of the Union never, ever changes.

That was Bush’s only use of the word “climate” in the speech — though he did also say, “let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases.” Potential! This is the last friggin’ year of your second term and your big plan for dealing with climate is the potential of new technology and an agreement that has the potential to reverse emissions trends — which itself is just doubletalk since you’ve spent 7 years working to block any international (or domestic) agreement.

I propose a new drinking game: one shot when Bush says something that isn’t true, and a double shot when he says something that is actually the exact opposite of the truth. Unfortunately for me, before the actual SOTU, the White House released its State of the Union energy talking points, titled “Increasing Our Energy Security And Confronting Climate Change: The Administration Is Taking Steps To Reduce U.S. Dependence On Oil, And To Advance U.S. Leadership In Developing A Global Response To Climate Change.”

And I passed out shortly after finishing the headline.

It is a laugh-til-it-hurts (and I mean root-canal-without-novocaine hurts) document, as the speech was.

Lets see. After 7 years:

  • Record oil imports. Check.
  • Record oil prices. Check.
  • Record trade deficit in oil. Check.
  • Endless war in the Persian Gulf. Check.
  • Iraqi oil exports below pre-war levels. Check.

Now that’s what the White House calls “Increasing Energy Security.” I’d hate to imagine what it would take for the White House to say we were Decreasing Energy Security.

And don’t get me started on “Confronting Climate Change.” The thing to always bear in mind:

President George W. Bush doesn’t just fiddle while the planet burns, he actively fans the flames and thwarts the fire-fighters.

Thank goodness this is the last Bush SOTU we’ll have to endure.

Post by Joe in Politics | 4 Responses

Climate news roundup

Monday, January 28th, 2008

Maldives Builds Barriers to Global Warming – NPR Report. The Republic of Maldives, a nation of small islands, is among the most threatened by sea level rise in the coming century. Having tried for decades to address the coming doom, their president has found a solution aimed at adapting to sea level rise, spreading out the nation’s population, and building sturdier cities in general.

Antarctica on alert for alien invaders – Reuters. Scientists in Antarctica fear that global warming and travel to the island could cause a mass introduction of species new to Antarctica – like rats.

Let’s hope talk on climate change is not just hot air – The Times (UK). From the author of The Rough Guide to Climate Change, in anticipation of Bush’s second meaningless climate PR stunt major emitter’s meeting – to be held in Hawaii (!) later this week:

Talk of global warming will fill the balmy air of Hawaii this week. President Bush will host representatives of 15 of the world’s biggest economies that lead the global pack on greenhouse emissions to discuss setting goals that can take over where the Kyoto Protocol leaves off in 2012.

However, Earth’s atmosphere isn’t exactly waiting in the wings. Change is already occuring, due to gases emitted over the past hundred years. A century is a long time — but what about what happens in the next five minutes:

– Burning oil, petrol and coal will throw about 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air.

– Human-produced greenhouse gases will trap enough sunlight to power a 40-watt lightbulb for every 40 square metres on Earth.

– Two people will die from illnesses related to global warming.

The flip side of these ominous numbers is that personal and societal actions make a concrete difference here and now, not just in a hazy climatic future. Let’s say you replace an incandescent lightbulb with a compact fluorescent or, for your holiday, opt for a train to Nice instead of a flight to Cyprus.

Imagine a half-tonne of refuse strewn across a tropical ocean for a hundred years. Then imagine having it within your power to keep it from getting there. In the ocean of air in which we live and breathe, we have that power.

Post by Kari in Climate Progress | Leave a response

House carbon offsets “a waste of taxpayer money”

Monday, January 28th, 2008

If you must buy carbon offsets, caveat emptor — in particular, don’t buy them from the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). That is the point of a terrific front-page article in today’s Washington Post “Value of U.S. House’s Carbon Offsets Is Murky, Some Question Effectiveness of $89,000 Purchase to Balance Out Greenhouse Gas Emissions.”

Yes, it is nice to be quoted above the fold in any major newspaper — the quote in the headline is from me — but the reason I think the article is important is that the reporter took the time to track down the offset projects the taxpayer money went to. The results are not encouraging. I am not a fan of offsets (see my many posts dissing “Offsets” under that category on this blog’s side bar) — and certainly wasn’t a fan of the House buying offsets from the CCX in the first place.

But I was surprised by the overall lameness of the specific projects and utterly shocked to read the words of CCX CEO Richard Sandor (a man I have a fair amount of respect for):

It basically rewards people for having done things that had environmental good in the past and incentivizes people to do things that have environmental good in the future.

Shame on him for having this policy, and double shame if he actually believes it is the right thing. Offset money is supposed to cause carbon emissions reductions that would not otherwise have happened without that money (the so-called additionality criteria), in order to offset our own emissions (which we have first worked hard to reduce). We are most certainly not expecting our money go to rewarding people for having done things that had environmental benefit in the past. Geez — I’ve done a whole bunch of things that had environmental benefit in the past — see list here — does that mean I’m entitled to some of Sandor’s CCX money? Absurd!

An old friend of mind, consultant Mark Trexler, put it well in the article when he said,

If you don’t have additionality, you know what you’re getting. You’re getting nothing.

Kudos to uber-capitalist Sandor. He has proven you can get nothing for something.

Post by Joe in Offsets | 5 Responses

Tidwell: Dominion Power’s Dirty Plans for Virginia

Monday, January 28th, 2008

Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, regularly has me on his Earthbeat radio show, so I’m returning the favor with this great letter to the editor he had in the Washington Post yeterday:

Fact: Virginia gets less than 1 percent of its electricity from “green” sources such as the wind or the sun. Fact: Virginia ranks 38th among U.S. states in energy efficiency. Fact: Climate change is real, and fossil fuel substitutes are needed, according to President Bush’s State of the Union address last year. So how would Dominion Virginia Power respond to these facts?

  • Savagely blow up entire mountains in southwest Virginia.
  • Feed the resulting exposed coal to a proposed power plant that is unnecessary and would cost ratepayers at least $1.8 billion.
  • Create lots more greenhouse gases in the process.
  • Doom the good people of southwest Virginia to living with a brutal extraction industry that has no future.

Whew! Talk about getting everything wrong.

And yet Gov. Tim Kaine supports the plan:

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Post by Joe in Solutions | 3 Responses

The meat of the carbon issue

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

For those interested in sources of growing carbon emissions, the N.Y. Times ran an important article today, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler.” Here’s a startling factoid:

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

And the indirect effect of growing meat consumption on the climate is equally large:

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Post by Joe in International | 12 Responses

Chapter Ten Excerpt: Missing the Story of the Century

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

The chapter on the media in Hell and High Water (paperback now at Amazon):

In the end, adherence to the norm of balanced reporting leads to informationally biased coverage of global warming. This bias, hidden behind a veil of journalistic balance, creates . . . real political space for the U.S. government to shirk responsibility and delay action regarding global warming.

–Maxwell Boykoff and Jules Boykoff, 2004

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.

–Edward R. Murrow, March 9, 1954

If we do not avert Hell and High Water, global warming will be the news Story of the Millennium. In a world where sea levels are rising a foot or more every decade for centuries, our coasts are ravaged by superstorms, and we face endless mega-droughts, global warming won’t be the most important story–it will be the only story.

If we do avert catastrophe, global warming will still be the Story of the Century. Starting very soon, and for many decades to come, the top news will focus on the country coming together to embrace an aggressive government- led effort to preserve the American way of life by changing everything about how we use energy–on a scale that dwarfs what the nation achieved during World War II.

While the media has begun providing more coverage of global warming, that coverage is still a long way from adequately informing the public about the urgency of the problem and the huge effort needed to avert catastrophe. The media’s miscoverage of global warming makes it much less likely that the country will act in time, and it is a key reason why only a third of Americans understand that global warming will “pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime,” according to a March 2006 Gallup Poll.

We don’t have any Edward R. Murrows today, at least not on the climate issue. What we do have is a declining number of science reporters, and only a handful of those are dedicated to covering climate. Worse, the media has the misguided belief that the pursuit of “balance” is superior to the pursuit of truth–even in science journalism. The result is that global warming and its impacts are systematically underreported and misreported.

Post by Joe in Media | Leave a response

Hansen: The Shadow on American Democracy

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Next month, our nation’s top climate scientist is receiving the Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility from the AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society. The award is very well deserved.

Hansen has just released a long discussion of the sad state of scientific freedom in the Bush era. It begins:

I just did an interview with CNN (Miles O’Brien) re “censoring science”. The point I emphasized is that overreaching by the Executive Branch, trying to make government science submit to political command and control, is a threat to our democracy, and, as a result, a threat to the planet. The scary part about this story is that seeds have been sown, and a playbook has been codified (although not written!), that will make the situation much worse unless the American public recognizes the problem and makes an issue of it. This is a bi-partisan problem — and neither party is trying to fix it. It is remarkable how wimpish Congress has become in accepting subjugation to the Executive Branch, contrary to designs and intents of our Founding Fathers.

You can say that again, Jim! Congrats on the award and please keep speaking out, showing all of us what true straight talk is.

Post by Joe in Media, Science | Leave a response

McCain’s Double-Talk Express on Global Warming

Friday, January 25th, 2008

If you think Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is a straight-talking courageous politician on the issue of global warming, watch this jaw-dropping clip from last night’s Republican presidential debate:

[flv http://images1.americanprogress.org/ il80web20037/ ClimateProgress/ flv/ 2008/ 01/ MSNBC_McCain.320.240.flv]

The transcript is online, so we can go through McCain’s entire Orwellian answer to moderator Tim Russert [Note: This was following a question to Giuliani about the global warming threat to Florida and his opposition to mandatory caps, which I'll briefly discuss at the end.]. Russert said, correctly:

Senator McCain, you are in favor of mandatory caps.

And, as you’ve seen, McCain immediately answers –

No, I’m in favor of cap-and-trade. And Joe Lieberman and I, one of my favorite Democrats and I, have proposed that — and we did the same thing with acid rain.

And all we are saying is, “Look, if you can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, you earn a credit. If somebody else is going to increase theirs, you can sell it to them.” And, meanwhile, we have a gradual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

As a great American once said — you cannot be serious! My jaw dropped (yes, I was watching, and yes, I’m a hardcore political junkie). I know McCain was beaten up in Michigan by Romney for supporting CAFE standards to deal with global warming, and I know “mandates” are as popular with conservatives as taxes are, but this is Romney-esque doubletalk. Europe has a mandate. We dealt with acid rain with a mandate. And McCain’s own climate bill with Lieberman is a mandate.

A straight talker would not use those two wishy-washy “can’s.” Nothing mandatory or threatening to conservatives about “can.” What a wonderful world McCain is imagining: If “somebody else” increases their emissions — not you, of course, you’ll be the one reducing emissions cheaply and getting rich with all the credits — “you can sell it to them.” Well, that is double double-talk.

First, a straight talker would note that the person who increases their emissions must buy a credit (though obviously not necessarily from you). Second, a straight talker would not imply that the point of a cap-and-trade is to allow someone who decreases their emissions to sell credits to someone who increases them — the point is to set the cap well below current levels (as McCain’s own bill does) so that everyone decreases their emissions, but allowing those who can achieve very deep reductions cost-effectively to sell to those who can’t.

If John “Straight Talk” McCain can’t tell conservatives the truth about what this country will need to do to stop catastrophic global warming, who can? Buck up, John — A real man says “mandate.”

The rest of his answer is equally unsettling:

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Post by Joe in Politics | 8 Responses

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