Climate Progress

Again, in the spirit of Oscar week:

10. Fahrenheit 451 — in the Shade

9. All the President’s Men were Wrong

8. To Kill a Mockingbird is Impossible Because they went Extinct

7. Independence Day [Sorry, that was a Top Global Warring Movie]

6. The Producers of Greenhouse Gases

5. Emission: Impossible

4. The Hypercane

3. An Underwater Streetcar named Desire

2. Some Don’t Like it Hot

1. The Rains of Kilimanjaro

More ideas for top global warming movie are welcome!

I try to keep the off topic stuff limited to the weekend, and since this website is hilarious, and it is a Saturday….

… no, it’s not Toyota (but don’t get me started). And no, it’s not Wal-Mart (I’ll be doing a piece on them later). No, it’s not GM, though they are trying hard, really hard. No, the winner, which has all the others over the proverbial barrel, is British Petroleum.

This was pretty clear when they invested in the tar sands last year, the “biggest global warming crime ever seen.” The Guardian provides more details, explaining that the new CEO Tony Hayward, is taking the company back to the past: “The shift to renewables has been ditched for a carbon intensive future.” They write:

BP appears to be dropping a central plank of [Lord John] Browne’s strategy, the green promise to go “beyond petroleum”, in favour of going back to petroleum - a move which many believe has riled the former boss. In what some saw as a thinly veiled criticism, Browne argued at a recent conference that some energy groups were “in denial” over the need to clean up their carbon output.

Browne understands the future for “carbon billionaires” and renewable power “majors,” even if Hayward doesn’t:

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USA Today reports on an important review article:

The supposed “global cooling” consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can’t make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era….

But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.

The study reports, “There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

“A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales.”

Now this isn’t really news to readers of Climate Progress or Real Climate (here and here) or William Connolley, but the global cooling nonsense is still the most common way people dismiss global warming to me. Michael Crichton repeats this attack in his novel State of Fear, when he has one of his fictional environmentalists say, “In the 1970’s all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming.“

This clever and popular attack tries to make present global-warming fears seem faddish, saying current climate science is nothing more than finger-in-the-wind guessing. This attack appeals especially to conservatives who want to link their attack on climate scientists to their favorite attack against progressive presidential candidates — that they are flip-floppers. But it just isn’t true, and it’s good to see this analysis is going to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS). [I’ll link to the study when it is up.]

Interestingly, USA Today gives famed denier Pat Michaels a chance to respond, but he makes a bizarrely lame argument, which, for anyone who understands the subject (or has read my book), should make one more worried about catastrophic global warming, not less:

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A major new study in Science by a dozen water experts, concluded humans are the primary cause of changes in Western river flow, winter air temperature and snow pack in the past 50 years — and things will only get worse if we don’t act soon. The abstract of the study, “Human-Induced Changes in the Hydrology of the Western United States” (subs. req’d), led by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, states:

Observations have shown that the hydrological cycle of the western United States changed significantly over the last half of the 20th century. We present a regional, multivariable climate change detection and attribution study, using a high-resolution hydrologic model forced by global climate models, focusing on the changes that have already affected this primarily arid region with a large and growing population. The results show that up to 60% of the climate-related trends of river flow, winter air temperature, and snow pack between 1950 and 1999 are human-induced. These results are robust to perturbation of study variates and methods. They portend, in conjunction with previous work, a coming crisis in water supply for the western United States.

The study’s conclusion is stark:

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Nothing is worse for the climate than large scale coal-to-liquids. Not even the tar sands. In September, the Chinese news agency said it would rein in liquid coal plants. A Guardian story yesterday puts the lie to that claim:

A Chinese energy company is poised to open a chemical plant to make liquid fuels for cars and aircraft from coal, a move that has alarmed environmental campaigners who say it will increase carbon emissions and worsen global warming.

The plant, in Inner Mongolia, will use technology developed by Germany during the second world war to convert coal directly into synthetic diesel, dubbed “Nazi fuel”.

Nazi fuel. Has such an inviting ring to it.

The Chinese facility, operated by Shenhua Corporation, will be the first of its type in the world….

A study last year by the Chinese Academy of Sciences said: “Production of liquid fuels from coal is practically the most feasible route to cope with the dilemma in oil supply.”

I agree — if by feasible you mean, “will just about guarantee the end of the planet’s livability by 2100.”

Shame on the schizophrenic Chinese Academy, which in 2005 signed the Academies statement (along with the U.S., Russia, India, Brazil, and major European countries) that called for “substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions” — something that would be quite impossible with widespread use of Nazi fuel liquid coal.

At least two more commercial scale coal-to-liquids plants are under construction in China, although the Chinese government has expressed concern about the possible environmental impact of uncontrolled expansion, and has taken steps to limit the number of smaller facilities.

Oh, why didn’t you say that to begin with: The Chinese government “expressed concern” about environmental impacts and is limiting the number of “smaller” facilities. That almost restores my faith in the wisdom of their leaders. Almost. Significant production of liquid coal would officially make their climate policy as immoral as ours. I fear that the figurative “U.S.-China Suicide Pact on Climate” I describe in my book is starting to become a literal one.

Capturing the carbon dioxide from liquid coal would reduce the negative consequences, though “would still produce at least 20% more carbon dioxide than petrol and diesel made from oil.” But, in any case, the Chinese plants are not designed for capture, even if they had some large, certified repository to put the carbon dioxide in, which they don’t. So the life cycle emissions will be “almost twice the carbon pollution as using conventional diesel.”

And putting this in dry Inner Mongolia doesn’t strike me as a terrific idea given that “the energy-intensive conversion plants also require massive amounts of cooling water to stop them overheating.”

I thought the Chinese were supposed to be wise and holistic, what with Confucius and Tai Chi and the I Ching and yin & yang and acupuncture, and inventing paper, movable type, the compass, silk, and porcelain, and all that. Turns out they are as dumb as us. Or maybe dumber. I mean, we would never go for something dubbed Nazi fuel … would we?

Related Posts:

• Coal-to-Liquid Is a Dead End
• New Years Resolution #47: Get the real facts out on liquid coal
• Liquid coal means liquid problems
• Memo to Air Force: Stop misleading the public on liquid coal
• Congress should say NO to coal-to-diesel
• The WSJ (and Climate Progress) on Liquid Coal
• Liquid Coal Hearing Report
• China reins in liquid coal
• Liquid Coal Goes Down In Flames In Senate
• The Post Gets Coal-Liquids Story Mostly Right
• Plug-in Hybrids Beat Coal-to-Liquids (Duh!)
• Coal State Newspapers Attack Liquid-Coal Plans
• Some Thoughts on Coal to Diesel

That would be the title of An Inconvenient Truth, if it had been produced by the Coen brothers — since young men (and women) are poised to suffer through the worst consequences of our immoral short-sightedness. (This is not such an odd pairing of movies, considering that No Country star Tommy Lee Jones was the Harvard roommate of Al Gore).

I do think No Country for Old Men deserves the Oscar this Sunday for best movie of the year because it is brilliantly constructed and acted — and delivers a powerful, coherent message to all of us from the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy.

Yet this is easily one of the most depressing and nihilistic major movies ever made. On the nihilistic/life-affirming story scale, where Hamlet is a 1 and It’s a Wonderful Life is a 10, No Country is easily a zero, and perhaps deserves negative numbers.

Normally I do not like movies with an unhappy ending, and this movie arguably has about the unhappiest ending a movie of its kind could possibly have — but the movie did seem to me a perfect metaphor for modern American politics and global warming.

[You can read the basic plotline here. Since Wikipedia is untroubled by spoilers, with nary a warning, why should I be? Note to people who haven’t seen the movie 1) I’m assuming you have figured out that when a film is titled No Country for Old Men, you can be sure it does not end well, and 2) this post will not make much sense to you.]

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin, in a career-relaunching role) stumbles upon a drug-deal gone bad and walks away with a case containing $2 million (and a transmitter). Let’s say he represents humanity, taking and burning the fossil fuel resources of the world. He is more ingenious than he at first seems, like humanity, but over the course of the movie he slowly realizes just what a terrible mistake he has made, how he has set himself on a path toward destroying himself and everyone he loves.

Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem in a chilling Oscar-nominated performance) is the relentless, consciousless killer who pursues him. Let’s say he represents both modern American politics and the consequences of global warming, both of which respect neither person nor place.

The local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, another terrific performance), though jaded by the mystery of modern evil, seems to be as smart as Chigurh, and the only one who can save Moss. Now I bet you’re thinking I’m going to say he represents Al Gore [don’t worry, I know you’re really thinking Joe has gone off his meds — again]. But no!

Al Gore is, in fact, symbolically represented by Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) a bounty hunter who shows up briefly in the middle of the movie. Like Gore, he explains to Moss/humanity that Chigurh/warming is relentless and will prove fatal if Moss/humanity stays on its current path. Like Gore, Wells offers M/h a way out. And like Gore (so far), M/h chooses to ignore Wells until it is too late. [Okay, Gore hasn’t been killed heartlessly by warming, but he is (or was) metaphorically killed by modern American politics — if you’re still with me and not, say, filing papers to have me committed.]

So who — or what — does Sheriff Bell represent? Here is where things get interesting….

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Seven votes short of over-riding a veto, the Kansas House has passed legislation allowing two new coal-fired power plants in western Kansas. This is quite possibly the latest answer to that whiny question I usually hate - “What’s the matter with Kansas?”

What’s the matter is that bloody Kansas has again become a battleground between those looking forward and those stuck in the past - those who see an inevitable cap on greenhouse gas emissions and the possibility of a clean energy future versus those tangled up in dirty habits with deep pockets.

So deep in fact that the plants developers have cut a deal with Kansas State University for a 10-year, $2.5 million energy research program if the coal plants are built. (I can already imagine the Peabody Coal Co. blimps floating over the Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium the day of the big game. Oh wait, no, I can’t… there’s something dirty in the air obstructing my view and my breath, and oddly, I had to cut the sleeves off my favorite KSU sweatshirt - it just got unusually warm for this time of year…)

Shameless yet shameful, to even bribe education. Now if you ask me, that’s a hefty insult to the Midwestern values I grew up to pride.

The bottom line is, these plants are no good for Kansas. At this point, it almost seems symbolic that coal and anti-coal advocates continue this fight. For Kansans, it’s not difficult to see that there are better options for energy, job creation, economic development, etc.

First of all, the energy demand is simply not there - not in Kansas, and while Kansas would house these plants, Colorado would receive 85 percent of their generated electricity. (It’s also worth noting that Colorado has adopted a renewable electricity standard, meaning even the consumer of these coal plants is ahead of the curve in terms of cleaning their energy sources and dampening demand for dirty coal.)

Plus, the job creation potential of coal is dwarfed by the wind and solar industries‘ economic stimulation potential.

On top of that:

The only people behind the proposed coal-plants are the utilities and industry reps who would make money off of them. Nothing about this legislation and nothing about these plants is in the best interest of Kansans, and most know that intuitively, despite the propaganda being thrown at them and other voters.

Next, the Kansas House and Senate will try to conference legislation to win those additional seven votes. Not to say they would have worthwhile legislation afterwards. So I am stuck here desperately convincing myself that something about a ‘Lucky 7‘ will keep Kansas clean…

The conservative operative and wife of James Carville explained on CNN today why conservatives don’t like McCain’s views on global warming: It’s “a largely unscientific hoax.” Oh, well, then never mind.

Her husband takes a different view (duh): “What we need to do, as a party, is try our best to focus on those two issues, energy independence and global warming, above the other environmental and energy issues out there.”

So to him, global warming is the top environmental issue. To her it is a hoax. If they can be married, why can’t the Sunnis and Shiites live in harmony???

Okay, not only was the “Share This” button NOT causing any of the terrific people who read this blog (don’t be shy, you know who you are!) to send any of my posts to the social networking sites for popular consumption — but apparently some spammer was using it and the Mail feature for nefarious purposes. That was also artificially inflating my page view statistics, which I did not like.

So I decided to go with the Digg button plus counter. Please patronize this button!

If you like ClimateProgress and appreciate the daily content and would like more people to see it — now I sound like NPR during a pledge break, but hey at least I’m not asking for money — Digg the posts you like. The most popular stories rise to the top of the Digg page where millions of viewers will see them, becoming informed on global warming and ultimately saving the planet from general destruction. One does need a lot of Diggs to get noticed on, say, their environment page — but if Desmogblog can do it, why not ClimateProgress?

Once you sign up to Digg, it is incredibly easy — plus you will be able to enjoy all the benefits of Digg, including being able to meet people with similar interests and read blog posts others like.

Also this will give me instant feedback on how many people like a given article, so I can deliver better content.

In addition, I (or rather the brilliant web folks here) have also improved the Feed — and added an explanation of what that is — and even added a way to subscribe to the feed by e-mail, as some had requested.

More improvements will be coming.