Climate Progress

Paul Krugman has a blog post about one of my favorite economists, Marty Weitzman. He has the central point right, which is that “on any sort of expected-welfare calculation, the small probability of catastrophe dominates the expected loss.”

But Krugman’s general lack of understanding of global warming — and his willingness to believe anything Bjørn Lomborg says — undermines his entire analysis:

Bjorn Lomborg … says that climate change will reduce world GDP by less than 0.5%, so it’s not worth spending a lot on mitigation.

Weitzman’s point is, first, that we don’t actually know that: a small loss may be the most likely outcome given what we know now, but there’s some chance that things will be much worse. (Marty surveys the existing climate models, and suggests that they give about a 1% probability to truly catastrophic change, say a 20-degree centigrade rise in average temperature.)

… Suppose that there’s a 99% chance that Lomborg is right, but a 1% chance that catastrophic climate change will reduce world GDP by 90%. You might be tempted to disregard that small chance — but if you’re even moderately risk averse (say, relative risk aversion of 2 — econowonks know what I mean), you quickly find that the expected loss of welfare isn’t 0.5% of GDP, it’s 10% or more of GDP.

Well, ‘yes’, on the final point, but ‘no’ on every other point.

Indeed, a 20°C rise in average global temperature — which translates to perhaps 50°F warming over much of the inland U.S. — is “James Lovelock” territory where “the Earth’s population will be culled from today’s 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million.” Catastrophic climate change is anything significantly over 3°C, which is not a 1% chance, but a near certainty if we don’t reverse greenhouse gas emissions sharply and soon (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 0: The alternative is humanity’s self-destruction“).

Lomborg, of course, does not have anywhere near a 99% chance of being right that “climate change will reduce world GDP by less than 0.5%.” Indeed, if we actually followed Lomborg’s do-nothing prescription, then he has precisely a zero chance of being right. He is a pure disinformer (see “Lomborg skewers the facts, again” and “Debunking Bjørn Lomborg — Part III, He’s a Real Nowhere Man“).

Weitzman’s analysis is, however, very important for traditionally economists — and everyone else — to understand, so let me reprint my September post, Harvard economist disses most climate cost-benefit analyses, below:

(more…)

I don’t really see how there is any serious prospect for solving either our energy security problem or our climate problem if the traditional media doesn’t do any policing whatsoever of statements by major politicians. Here is McCain yesterday:

“… it will be vital that we continue oil production at a high level including offshore drilling. Now, the briefings that I have had with the oil producers, there are some instances that within a matter of months, they could be getting additional oil.“

Standing in front of a large California oil drill, in what appears to be filming of a new movie, There Will Be Lies, McCain went so far as to say:

But there’s abundant resources in the view of the people who are in the business that could be exploited within a period of months. So offshore drilling is something we have to do.

Okay, I can understand why he believes whatever stuff the oil producers make up — they are lining his pockets now. And I understand the three reasons that McCain would lie to the public:

(more…)

Fivetime Climate Progress blogger (and former Time magazine reporter) Eric Roston has just published The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat.

He will be appearing on The Colbert Report tonight at 11:30. I hope he fares better than the Sierra club’s Carl Pope.

If Time magazine can call it “engaging” with a “powerful conclusion,” then I can certainly testify it is the definitive book on the most vital — and most dangerous — element in the universe. Publisher’s Weekly says:

(more…)

The Solar Electric Power Association has issued a report ranking the top utilities that have integrated solar energy into their portfolio. Crowned at the top of several of the ranking categories are Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

ClimateWire has also covered the release and reports (full article):

The California company was rated as having the most overall solar capacity and the highest solar capacity per customer. The association notes, however, that Southern California Edison may not stay in the top spot for long, as other utilities are planning to build concentrating solar thermal plants [baseload solar plants], which use technology such as mirrors to collect sunlight and use the energy to heat water for electricity generation.

(more…)

Twitter is the home of micro-blogging.

Members write text-based posts or “tweets” that are up to 140 characters long “for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Or another simple question, “What corporate spin are you pushing?”

I know readers will be eager to “Join today to start receiving ExxonMobilCorp’s updates.” Heck, you might want to send the oil giant some of your own tweets as Desmogblog suggests (see “Is ExxonMobil following you on Twitter?“)

If nothing else, this proves ExxonMobil’s profits are too large, since they can afford to pay some PR stooge staffer to push this drivel, assuming these tweets are genuine and not some clever campaign to make the oil company look (even more) inane:

(more…)

As the popular European political thinkers at Abba explained in their award-winning 1974 treatise, Waterloo: “The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.”

President Bush campaigned on a cap-and-trade system for electric utility CO2 emissions. He dumped that as fast as Brad Pitt dropped Jennifer Aniston. Now is McCain following suit?

Yesterday, McCain economic adviser Steve Forbes said:

I think cap and trade is going to go the way of some other things, as you may remember, when he came into office, Bill Clinton had a proposal of tax carbons and stuff like that. I don’t think those things are going to get very far as people start to examine the details of them.

I’m not sure people should simply dismiss this as mere talk from a conservative who doesn’t believe in global warming — remember, McCain’s administration would mostly be filled with conservatives who don’t believe in global warming (as noted in “No climate for old men: Why John McCain isn’t the candidate to stop global warming“).

This is part of a concerted effort by McCain and his campaign to reassure conservatives he’s not going to take strong action on climate, while hoping that moderates would be fooled just like some Bush voters were in 2000 ignore all this talk, which itself is a core campaign strategy of doubletalk (see “Memo to media: McCain doubletalks to woo conservatives and independents at the same time“).

Consider the increasingly sorry history of McCain campaign pronouncements on climate and clean energy:

(more…)

May 2008 saw another sharp sharp drop in vehicle miles traveled (aka VMT) according to the Federal Highway Administration’s monthly report on “Traffic Volume Trends.” This follows a 4.5 billion mile drop in April and “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history” in March (see here).

The moving 12-month trend-line is startling and suggests $4 a gallon is the first (but not the last) genuine tipping point for U.S. drivers:

(more…)

[Since our last e-mail campaign worked so well, I thought I’d try again.]

Turns out the world’s blandest environmental blog, “Greenversations,” is paid for by your taxpayer dollar:

You can waste a few minutes of time convincing yourself that it is devoid of useful information on what is certainly the greatest environmental threat the nation faces.

So why am I telling you to waste your time on the official blog of the EPA? Because they have just posted:

Question of the Week: What have you learned, been surprised by, or been inspired to do because of our blogs?

If you have nothing else to do — and that is pretty obvious since you’re still reading this post — why not let EPA hear your answer to that question (and feel free to post your comments here also)? Here are what some other people have already written in:

(more…)

In Part 1 we saw that lifting the moratorium on coastal drilling can’t possibly reduce gasoline prices. After all, two years ago, we opened most of the Gulf of Mexico — with its estimated 41 billion barrels of oil — and oil prices then doubled. The remaining prohibited coastal areas have only 18 billion barrels, of which 10 billion is off of California and likely to be blocked by the state. Another 4 of the 18 billion is in the Eastern Gulf off of Florida, which most Republican bills do not fully open for drilling since that would piss of Sen. Martinez.

Tom Cole, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, sent out an email (reprinted below) titled “Democrats Want You To Pay High Gas Prices.” The email quotes a conservative publication claiming, “Given that lower gasoline prices would defeat the purpose of their entire environmental program, Democrats are in a very awkward position on the energy issue.”

That is among the most laughable things I’ve read. It is conservatives who want high gas prices because energy companies are among their biggest donors, and high prices mean bigger profits. That’s why Republicans have consistently opposed serious efforts on energy efficiency, fuel economy standards, conservation, and alternative for over a quarter of a century (see “Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan“). That’s why former maverick and now card-carrying hard-core conservative John McCain flip-flopped on this position (see “You’ve heard of ‘polluters pay’? So has McCain“.)

Deep Throat said, “Follow the Money.” Duh!

Progressives have been working for decades not merely to lower oil prices by reducing dependence on oil but also to lower consumers’ oil bills – which is far more important.

(more…)

Solar baseload is, of course, concentrated solar thermal electric (with a few hours of storage), a core climate solution. Earth Policy Institute has a useful update with lots of data,”Solar Thermal Power Coming to a Boil” (reprinted below). Key factoid:

With concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) capacity expected to double every 16 months over the next five years, worldwide installed CSP capacity will reach 6,400 megawatts in 2012–14 times the current capacity.

You can find the existing large solar baseload plants and the 50 or so currently proposed solar baseload plants here.

EPI has an astonishing goal of “cutting carbon emissions 80% by 2020,” with a goal of 200,000 MW of solar baseload worldwide. I think the solar baseload goal is doable, but the carbon goal makes me a techno-pessimist — heck, it makes Al Gore a techno-pessimist. Here is the update by Jonathan G. Dorn:

(more…)