Climate Progress

I couldn’t stomach watching Mayor Giuliani’s convention speech, so I missed this defining moment when it was live.

But should John McCain win (and maybe even if he doesn’t), and assuming the country fails to achieve a bipartisan agreement to take action strong enough and fast enough to avoid the catastrophic impacts of global warming (and of peak oil, too) — then the Future Historians of America (FHA) will be able to trace the precise time and place the great American experiment failed. It was September 3, 2008 at 10:14 pm EST at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota:

Yes, the delegates to one of the two major political parties were chanting for crack cocaine to feed an addiction that is destroying the economic health of this country, strengthening our enemies, jeopardizing our security, and ultimately posing “an existential threat to civilization” itself. With apoligies to T. S. Eliot:

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You can see it live here. After that, it will be downloadable.

I was a tad milder than in my blog posts.

Two major new studies, in Nature and Science, sharply increase the projected sea level rise (SLR) by 2100. This post discusses the Science study, “Kinematic Constraints on Glacier Contributions to 21st-Century Sea-Level Rise” (subs req’d), which concludes:

On the basis of calculations presented here, we suggest that an improved estimate of the range of SLR to 2100 including increased ice dynamics lies between 0.8 and 2.0 m.

… these values give a context and starting point for refinements in SLR forecasts on the basis of clearly defined assumptions and offer a more plausible range of estimates than those neglecting the dominant ice dynamics term.

Scientific analysis is finally catching up to scientific observation. In 2001, the IPCC projected that neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. The IPCC made the same basic projection again in 2007. Yet both ice sheets already are. As Penn State climatologist Richard Alley said in March 2006, the ice sheets appear to be shrinking “100 years ahead of schedule.”

So for over a year now, delayers like Bjørn Lomborg have been able to cling to (a misrepresentation of) the IPCC’s lowball SLR estimate (see “Debunking Bjørn Lomborg — Part II, Misrepresenting Sea Level Rise.” Science’s Richard Kerr explained what the IPCC did wrong and what the new study does right:

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Seems like somebody out there is listening (see “Since offshore oil is de minimis, why shouldn’t Obama and the Dems make a deal? Part 1“). The AP reported:

Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate will push a bipartisan energy proposal that would allow for some expansion of offshore drilling when Congress returns next week from a five-week recess.

A spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, leader of the Senate’s Democratic majority, said Wednesday the plan would allow Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to opt into leasing programs starting 50 miles (80 kilometers) off their shores. The spokesman said the idea now has the support of 16 senators, eight Democrats and eight Republicans.

The proposal, which has not yet been introduced as legislation, also would lift a ban on drilling off the Gulf coast of Florida, invest $20 billion on developing petroleum-free motor vehicles and extend expiring tax credits for renewable energy.

Apparently Reid is going to offer the Gang-of-1o proposal (see “The good, the bad and the ugly of the Gang-of-10 drilling deal, Part 2: Something for nothing?“). Success remains an unlikely. Many Dems still don’t want any drillings. Many in the GOP don’t want this to come to a vote, since it takes away their “drill, drill, drill” message:

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From McCain’s prepared text we see the Arizona Senator easily top Palin’s lies (see “In her big speech, Palin repeats the GOP’s big energy lie — plus three other energy lies, too“):

My fellow Americans, when I’m President, we’re going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much.

LIE #1: McCain has no plan to reduce oil imports — indeed, throughout his career he has explicitly rejected every plan that might reduce oil imports substantially, including fuel economy standards, biofuels, and renewables. Heck, he even rejected the plan offered by billionaire conservative oilman T. Boone Pickens to aggressively deploy clean energy and alternative fuels over the next ten years (see The real, Luddite McCain: “The truly clean technologies don’t work”).

We will attack the problem on every front.

LIE #2: This is, of course, the GOP’s Big Energy Lie, widely debunked (see “The Big Energy Lie — Blog round-up“).

We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we’ll drill them now.

LIE #3: No, we won’t drill them now. We might drill these new wells in 10 years, as the U.S. Energy Information Administration expert on offshore drilling explained to me (see “The cruel offshore-drilling hoax, Part 1“).

We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas.

LIE #4: McCain has fought against wind and solar and alternative energy for his entire career because he genuinely but mistakenly believes “The truly clean technologies don’t work” (see “Anti-wind McCain delivers climate remarks at foreign wind company” and “Why McCain hates renewables but pretends he loves them.”)

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Consider this:

1. McCain has a significant chance of dying in office.
2. Palin is a global warming denier.
3. If the the next president doesn’t provide very strong climate leadership at home and abroad then we have doomed our children and countless generations after them to ever worsening misery and suffering.

What is the morality of electing a President or Vice President who doesn’t understand the urgent need for very strong domestic action and international leadership to mitigate man-made climate change?

What does McCain’s choice of Palin say about whether he really considers global warming a priority issue, given that he put a global warming denier a heartbeat away from the presidency (see “No climate for old men“)? What does it say about his judgment? At least they found common, albeit Luddite, ground on renewable energy (see “Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert” and “The truly clean technologies don’t work”).

Let’s go through the three points:

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Nature recently ran an article on “Energy alternatives: Electricity without carbon.” Like most discussions written by people who don’t follow clean energy closely, the article lumped baseload solar (also known as concentrated solar thermal power) in with solar PV and generally treated it as an afterthought.

Here is everything that they wrote about baseload solar:

Solar cells are not the only technology by which sunlight can be turned into electricity. Concentrated solar thermal systems use mirrors to focus the Sun’s heat, typically heating up a working fluid that in turn drives a turbine. The mirrors can be set in troughs, in parabolas that track the Sun, or in arrays that focus the heat on a central tower. As yet, the installed capacity is quite small, and the technology will always remain limited to places where there are a lot of cloud-free days — it needs direct sun, whereas photovoltaics can make do with more diffuse light.

Costs: The cost per kilowatt-hour of concentrated solar thermal power is estimated by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, at about $0.17….

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Palin’s full speech contained yet another energy lie, one that is very revealing :

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world’s energy supplies….

Not even close. Yes, if you live in a world where the only energy source is oil, then the Persian Gulf countries do produce 20% of the total world supply — although it would be next to impossible for Iran to cut it all off. And kind of stupid, since they’d lose tens of billions of dollars in revenues themselves.

But we don’t live in a world where the only energy supply for the world is oil — well, maybe Palin and the McCain campaign does, but the rest of us don’t. In the world the rest of us live in, oil is maybe 20% of total world energy usage. And I’m going to ignore efficiency, even though it is certainly the largest energy resource (see “Energy efficiency, Part 2: The limitless resource“).

Bottom line: A really self-destructive Iran might in fact be able to cut off a few percent of the world’s energy supply.

And one more thing. If you were really worried about the possibility Iran might cut off a fifth of the world’s oil supply, cut off some 20 million barrels of oil a day, then it is inane to say you confront that threat by saying “we need to produce more of our own oil and gas.” If you opened every conceivable area now off-limits to drilling, you might get 1 million barrel of oil a day starting in 10 years.

The only way to prepare for losing a fifth of the world oil supply — or, more realistically, to prepare for the reality peak oil –is to transform our transportation system into one that can also run on electricity (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“)

Here is the total global energy use:

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Excerpts from Palin’s big speech are already online:

“Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems - as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to lay more pipelines…build more nuclear plants…create jobs with clean coal…and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers.”

LIE #1 shows chutzpah, I’ll give her that much. Just two months ago, Palin said “I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem.” Perhaps someone told the would-be energy expert that even billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens knows her July claim was absurd (see “Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert“).

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Nature has published a major analysis that supports my recent 2-parter (Why global warming means killer storms worse than Katrina and Gustav, Part 1 and Part 2). As Nature explains:

… scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so far that global warming will significantly increase the intensity of the most extreme storms worldwide.

The maximum wind speeds of the strongest tropical cyclones have increased significantly since 1981, according to research published in Nature this week. And the upward trend, thought to be driven by rising ocean temperatures, is unlikely to stop at any time soon.

The team statistically analysed satellite-derived data of cyclone wind speeds. Although there was hardly any increase in the average number or intensity of all storms, the team found a significant shift in distribution towards stronger storms that wreak the greatest havoc. This meant that, overall, there were more storms with a maximum wind speed exceeding 210 kilometres per hour (category 4 and 5 storms on the Saffir–Simpson scale)….

“It’ll be pretty hard now for anyone to claim that cyclone activity has not increased,” says Judith Curry, an atmospheric researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who was not involved in the study….

“People should now stop saying ‘who cares, storm activity is just a few per cent up’,” says Curry. “It’s the strongest storms that matter most.”

Again, “More than half the total hurricane damage in the U.S. (normalized for inflation and populations trends) was caused by just five events,” explained MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel in an email. Storms that are Category 4 and 5 at landfall (or just before) are what destroy major cities like New Orleans and Galveston with devastating winds, rains, and storm surges.

The impacts projected for coming decades are quite ominous in a world that currently refuses to take serious action on climate:

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