Climate Progress

With Bush going to Saudi Arabia to beg — again — for lower prices, the media is gaga over a confrontation that has about as much significance as a Rocky Balboa fight.

Even the venerable NYT just published an article, “Bush Rebuffed on Oil Plea in Saudi Arabia,” that opens, “With the price of oil hitting record highs, President Bush used a private visit with King Abdullah to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudis to increase oil production and was rejected yet again.”

Unlike the 1970s and 1980s and even much of the 1990s, neither OPEC nor the Saudis no longer control the price of oil.

If any country had a million barrels a day of (sellable) sparce oil capacity, they could make more than $100 million a day selling it, even if that much new oil dropped prices 20%, which it probably wouldn’t.

Who would sit on that kind of money? Yes, the Saudis are selling over 8 million barrels a day, so they don’t really need the money. But if they have any significant excess capacity, it is sour or high-sulfur crude (see the other experts on the full CNBC interview here). Such crude is not currently in demand: “Many refineries are not set up to process such crude because it is more difficult and expensive to refine into products.”

Even the WSJ, which published the figure on the right, headlined the October article, “OPEC’s Lever Loses Its Pull on Oil” (subs. req’d). As I wrote back then, “We cannot be far from $100+ oil.” Duh!

By the way, the Saudis are much slier than Bush, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, and, most of the press [okay, that’s not saying much]. As the NYT and AP reported, Hadley told reporters:

“What they’re saying to us is” that “Saudi Arabia does not have customers that are making requests for oil that they are not able to satisfy.”

What a clever way of sounding to those not in the know [This means you — Bush, Hadley, and the media] like they are sitting on extra capacity that they could sell, when in fact what they are really saying is that they have no customers for any extra capacity they have.

The situation is not going to get any better soon until the nation and the world develop and deploy at scale a high-volume, low-cost, carbon free alternative fuel:

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The Toyota Prius is “the world’s first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid car to hit 1 million in sales.” More than half of those were sold in North America. Toyotaps goal is to sell more than one million per year.

I own one and must say it is a terrific car. I get about 45 miles per gallon combined city and highway — double the mpg of my old Saturn, which was not as big.

I think the comments from the Wired blog bear repeating, considering how GM (and others) mocked Toyota for pushing what they claimed was a money-losing vehicle:

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I didn’t get much time to say anything, so I thought that most useful thing I could do for listeners was to let them know what is coming in terms of gasoline prices.

[Warning to Parents — This titillating post is rated PG-13, though it does come via the WSJ blog.]

Because I try to keep Climate Progress readers abreast of technology and fashion news, here is the latest from the gadget-crazed Japanese:

Triumph International Ltd., famous underwear maker, unveiled its environmentally friendly “Solar Power Bra” Wednesday in Tokyo.

The bra, designed to raise awareness of global warming and the need to conserve energy, features a solar panel worn around the stomach.

The solar panel is able to produce electricity from sunlight and room lighting that can generate enough power to charge a cell phone or an iPod.

Okay, now here is the dumb part [no seriously, this is the dumb part]. Reuters reports

The panel requires light to generate electricity and the concept bra will not be in stores anytime soon, said Triumph spokeswoman Yoshiko Masuda, as “people usually can not go outside without wearing clothes over it.”

I hear you cry ‘udder nonsense’! But surely Madonna at least will find some use for it. The bra does have another obvious flaw:

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In theory, anyway. Supposedly between about 11:05 and 11:15, delivering the great news that the public need to get used to four dollars a gallon gasoline, and then five dollars…. I should have a clip to put up at some point today. Unless, of course, I get bumped, or this turns out to be one of those dream sequences from Lost.

Nature has published the first article to “formally link observed global changes in physical and biological systems to human-induced climate change, predominantly from increasing greenhouse gases.” See news story here and the article, “Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change” (subs. req’d, abstract below).

NASA’s discussion of the piece here explains, “human-caused climate change has made an impact on a wide range of Earth’s natural systems, including permafrost thawing, plants blooming earlier across Europe, and lakes declining in productivity in Africa.” The image at right: “Impacts from warming are evident in satellite images showing that lakes in Siberia disappearing as the permafrost thaws and lake water drains deeper into the ground.” The lead author explained:

“This is the first study to link global temperature data sets, climate model results, and observed changes in a broad range of physical and biological systems to show the link between humans, climate, and impacts.”

… Observed impacts included changes to physical systems, such as glaciers shrinking, permafrost melting, and lakes and rivers warming. Biological systems also were impacted in a variety of ways, such as leaves unfolding and flowers blooming earlier in the spring, birds arriving earlier during migration periods, and plant and animal species moving toward Earth’s poles and higher in elevation. In aquatic environments such as oceans, lakes, and rivers, plankton and fish are shifting from cold-adapted to warm-adapted communities.

Significantly, the changes are driven by “temperature increases at continental scales [that] cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone.” The full abstract of the article is below:

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The Department of Interior suffers from a rare form of bipolar disorder called bye-polar disorder. There is one major symptom of this disorder: You list the polar bear as “threatened” because of its melting polar sea ice habitat, but then do nothing to actually protect that polar habitat from its primary threat, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

The disorder is accompanied by an occasional burst of logic, as when the DOI noted:

• The polar bears need sea ice for feeding.
• The sea ice is being destroyed by human-caused emissions, faster than the models had predicted.
• Thus, the polar bear is endangered.

On the other hand, the disorder makes it physically, or at least psychologically, impossible for the patient to take any action based on that burst of logic. The quote in this post’s headline is from the DOI press release’s own subhead (see here and below). Someone will need to explain how producing fossil fuels — whose combustion is destroying the polar bear’s habitat — is consistent with preserving an endangered species.

The disorder is also marked by unintentional bursts of irony, as in the use of the phrase “Rule will allow continuation of vital energy production.” The word ‘vital’ means “Necessary to the continuation of life; life-sustaining.”

Kempthorne said:

“Listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable losses of polar bears. But it should not open the door to use of the ESA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources. That would be a wholly inappropriate use of the ESA law. The ESA is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy.”

Sadly, doctors say bye-polar disorder is incurable. Worse, since global warming is opening up the Arctic to more fossil fuel drilling, victims of bye-polar disorder tend to suffer a progressively deteriorating condition.

If you want to become an expert on polar bears and their habitat, read the actual 368-page DOI rule here (big PDF). You can see the Wonk Room’s comments here. Sierra Club view here. The full press release is below:

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UPDATE — This MOU’s lame language is completely inconsistent with the Secretary Kempthorne’s announcement today (see here). I guess that is another symptom of bye-polar disorder.

Pity the poor polar bear. Two of the governments who should be most concerned about the survival of the species just signed a pointless “Memorandum of Understanding between Environment Canada and the United States Department of the Interior for the conservation and management of shared polar bear populations.”

As you can see, this high-level May 8 MOU says its purpose is

to provide a framework for the development and implementation of mutually agreeable immediate, interim and long-term actions that focus on specific components of polar bear conservation.

And the MOU says that a key goal is

working to identify key polar bear habitats and developing recommendations for habitat conservation measures.

As we used to say in third grade,

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A President McCain would have no magic wand to get conservatives to join a cause they simply don’t believe in, much as he wasn’t able to get them to join the cause for his McCain Lieberman climate bill. As E&E News (subs. req’d) reports today:

Several key Capitol Hill Republicans stood defiant yesterday against the types of changes to U.S. global warming policy spelled out earlier this week by presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain….

“I’m going to vote for McCain this year for president, but if he offers that bill I’ll vote against it and work against it,” pledged Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee….

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), who would likely become the lead Republican on the Senate Environment Committee next year if McCain wins the presidency, said he wanted to work on a different type of climate plan that focused first on incentives for new energy technologies.

“We both agree there’s a problem,” Voinovich said. “We have a difference of opinion about how to solve the problem.”

Retiring Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee … “I’m not for that,” Domenici said. “I respect [McCain] greatly. But I think before we’re finished, there’ll be an awful lot of reality added to this.”

That’s a pretty pathetic response, especially when you consider that McCain’s plan is already too watered down to solve the climate problem (see here). Still, it can’t be considered a big surprise given that only 27% of conservatives say human emissions are warming the earth (see “The deniers are winning, especially with the GOP“).

Interestingly, there is at least one conservative who understands the central flaw in McCain’s plan:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), for example, said he wasn’t so sure McCain got it right in calling for the unlimited use of domestic and international offset projects for industry compliance in a cap-and-trade system. “That’s something that’s very poor public policy and hopefully he’ll evolve on that,” he said

[Note to Corker: Conservatives don’t believe in evolution!]

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