Climate Progress

I interviewed the billionaire conservative oilman for Salon. My article and the interview are now online here. My goal was not to trip him up with the flaws in his plan, but just explore some of the key issues, especially the role of government in making it happen.

Talking to him it is clear he is very genuinely concerned about the impoverishment we face on our current laissez-faire energy path — a $10 trillion transfer of weath from Americans to rest of the world over the next decade, ending with $300 a barrel oil.

But I simply couldn’t get him to acknowledge that or all his claims that his proposal is nonpartisan, it is his fellow conservatives who stand in the way of achieving his dream. The subtitle of the piece tells the story: “The oil tycoon’s support of John McCain for president demonstrates that his heavily advertised plan for wind power is only hot air.”

Pickens says “The government’s going to have to provide corridors to transmit the wind energy to the east and west coast… Second you need to put a 10-year production tax credit.”

I couldn’t agree more. But then again, I’m not in Congress. So I asked him the obvious political question: If you looked at the votes in the last year that have held up just a one-year extension of the production tax credit, the vast majority of Republicans have consistently voted against that, while the vast majority of Democrats voted for it. “So let me ask you, how do we, how do we get Republicans to support that kind of investment in renewables.”

Salon sharply edited down Pickens’ rambling answer to my key question, but I think it is worthwhile to see the whole thing:
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I am starting a new feature and a new category here on Climate Progress for Must-have PowerPoint Slides. I’ll begin with my favorite new slide, which shows just how stable the climate has been over the 10,000-year period that allowed modern human civilization to develop and flourish (click figure for larger version):

The slide is a must-have because it captures the risk we are taking while also providing a quick visual rebuttal to a very common denier talking point, one that NASA administrator Michael Griffin of all people repeated last year (see “And the Moon is Made of Green Cheese“):

To assume that [global warming] is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change…. I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

Seriously! Needless to say, his employee, James Hansen rightly called those remarks “ignorant and arrogant.” He might have added “suicidal.”

So I had to have this slide after I saw it in a recent presentation from my friend Bob Corell, chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and now Director of Global Change Programs at the Heinz Center.

And it’s not just Griffin pushing this nonsense. One of the Cato Institute climate experts currently debating the online, Indur Goklany, just advanced the following argument against my call to stabilize at 450 ppm or less:

… there is no guarantee that stabilizing CO₂ at 450 ppm would optimize human or environmental well-being. For all we know, stabilizing at 750 may be more optimal.

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“After all, just 20 years ago scientists were worried about the new Ice Age.” This myth is so potent for deniers from Michael Crichton to George Will to Senator James Inhofe that even word guru and strategist Frank “death tax” Luntz made it a recommended line of attack in his super-slimy 2002 memo to conservatives on how best to cast doubt on climate science.

Why do deniers love it so? It makes 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.

The myth has been utterly debunked in the scientific literature (see “Another denier talking point — ‘global cooling’ — bites the dust,” RealClimate here and here, “Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the ’70’s by scientists, in scientific journals? No.” and Skeptical Science).

In fact, 27 years ago Thursday, James Hansen and six other NASA atmospheric physicists, published a seminal article in Science, “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.” The paper has a number of caveats, as befits a major projection before modern climate models and modern supercomputers were available, before we had decades of verifying observations, and before we knew just how fast greenhouse gas emissions would rise. But the analysis bears up unbelievably well — any one of us would be delighted if we published something a quarter century ago that was this prescient:

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That headline is lifted from Drudge. Needless to say, he left out “… and on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, where both Bush and McCain were AWOL” (see TP’s “As Katrina hit, McCain celebrated 69th birthday with Bush“).

Track the storm with the National Hurricane Center here. Best hurricane blog here.

Readers of this blog know that my brother lost his home in Katrina three years ago, which is probably the main reason I began this blog in the first place (see “100 Katrinas and the Launch of Climate Progress“).

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… ’cause it is impossible to tell them apart!

A GREAT metaphor! The line of the convention so far. Worthy of repetition all next week.

Andrew Jones — former Rocky Mountain Institute colleague and systems-dynamic modeler extraordinaire at the Sustainability Institute — asks if I could write something “from a DC insider perspective about why we shouldn’t be freaking out that climate change is getting so little air time at the Democratic National Convention?”

Actually, Drew, getting people to freak out is the whole point of this blog, no? But seriously, the media wouldn’t cover climate change even if the speakers did talk about (see “No Questions On Global Warming Asked At CNN’s Coal Industry-Sponsored Presidential Debates“). Or they would just screw up the story, just as they did with drilling (see “Note to media: Are you going to allow McCain to just make up stuff on oil drilling?“).

Heck, when even National Public Radio (!) blows the climate story, you know the country is in trouble:

All Things Considered, August 13, 2008: If you are trying to figure out whom to vote for in the upcoming presidential race, the issue of climate change may not be much help. This is one area where both leading candidates for president do not have a lot to disagree about. In fact, when the two rivals paint a picture of a warmer world, it seems like they might have the same speechwriter.

[Cue Obi-Wan Kenobi intoning, “I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”]

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

I’m sure I said something to annoy everyone.

Related Posts:

• Gang-of-10, Part 3: More good stuff, some ugly
• Gang-of-10 Part 2.5: House GOP says drill here, drill now, compromise … later
• The good, the bad and the ugly of the Gang-of-10 drilling deal, Part 2: Something for nothing?
• Since offshore oil is de minimis, why shouldn’t Obama and the Dems make a deal? Part 1

Fresh from its Olympic-record in denier debunking, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has released a new update:

Sea ice extent is declining at a fairly brisk and steady pace. Surface melt has mostly ended, but the decline will continue for two to three more weeks because of melt from the bottom and sides of the ice. Amundsen’s Northwest Passage is now navigable; the wider, deeper Northwest Passage through Parry Channel may also open in a matter of days. The Northern Sea Route along the Eurasian coast is clear.

NSIDC has put together a nice animation (click on figure):

More details below:

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Okay, the kitten is doing fine, but I really need you to vote for me.

Why? I am only winning with 56% of the vote in the online debate sponsored by the Economist on whether we need technology breakthroughs to solve the “Global energy crisis.” I say ‘only ‘ because the other guy’s new post makes clear he agrees with my position entirely. More importantly, I want to crush the breakthrough technology illusion, which keeps attacking the hope for genuine climate action like a relentless, indestructible, killing machine from an apocalyptic future.

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The following op-ed ran in the Denver Post yesterday by John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, and Timothy Wirth, president of the UN Foundation, who represented Colorado in the U.S. House and Senate from 1975 to 1992.

The key paragraphs recognize that energy is the essential issue facing this country:

The Democratic Party platform recognizes the energy opportunity in its section on “Investing in American Competitiveness” — but it does not go far enough. The size and urgency of this task require a president willing to make it the top domestic priority in the White House — not pigeonholed as an energy initiative or environmental initiative or even as a security initiative, but made the centerpiece of his economic agenda. Indeed, it will demand that the president refocus the mission and responsibility of all relevant government agencies and convene them in a new National Energy Council in the White House.

The success of this year’s candidates and next year’s elected leaders will rise and fall on how they address the energy issue. Those who convey the scale and scope — and opportunity — of transforming our energy economy will succeed.

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