Climate Progress

“The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley” is full of crap himself. Before casting a wary eye on his new ribaldry, however, let me direct you to yet another dismantling of his “thesis” — this one by Deltoid at ScienceBlogs: “Monckton’s triple counting.”

But I digress. The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, as he prefers to call himself, or TVMOB, as I will call him because, damn, the acronym is just too sweet, has penned an epistle to the president of the American Physical Society, which you can peruse here. [Please note that the picture on the right is not TVMOB nor do I think he would ever participate in this.]

TVMOB is displeased with the new APS disclaimer on his article: “The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.”

TVMOB writes, “This seems discourteous.” You see, TVMOB holds the view that peer review occurs if his article gets suggested edits by a co-editor who happens to be a scientist.

Let me not make the obvious point that being edited by an editor ain’t scientific peer review. You can read the editor’s requested edits on page 2 of TVMOB’s letter. Anybody who has actually been peer-reviewed will note that the proposed edits aren’t anything close to what a peer-reviewed set of comments looks like, especially for an analysis as flawed as this one.

Since TVMOB’s letter is straight out of Monty Python, let me rather make the point in kind that a peer is “a person who holds any of the five grades of the British nobility: duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron.”

By that definition, I am sure that TVMOB’s paper was not given proper peer review. Indeed, I’m not certain TVMOB has a proper peer on this Earth. Perhaps Senator Inhofe or President Bush.

But pity the poor modern British viscount who whines in his letter, “I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.” Join the club, buddy. Since when do you think scientific newsletters pay you a nickel? Oh, I forgot. You aren’t a scientist.

I especially love the conclusion to his epistle:

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The country’s largest organization of physicists is working fast to restore its good name, which was damaged by one ignorant editor of a non-peer-reviewed newsletter. That editor, Jeff Marque, published a previously-debunked analysis by failed conservative politician and non-scientist Lord Monckton.

The Council of the American Physical Society quickly responded to the uproar over this disinformation by adding a new disclaimer to the Monckton article:

This article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.

There is no need to waste any further time here debunking Monckton’s “sleight-of-hand to fool the unwary,” as RealClimate put it. As the APS makes clear, just because somebody uses a lot of numbers and formulas, that doesn’t make their analysis either scientific or credible.

Thanks to all those who wrote in and helped push the APS to clean up this mess.

Kentucky has selected a site to build a $4 billion coal-to-liquids plant in Pike County that would produce 50,000 barrels of liquid coal a day. According to Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader:

…The county would use federal and state grant money to put the basic infrastructure in place, including water and sewer, and the company chosen to operate the facility would pay for the rest.

County officials have not yet secured funding, but Ruther­ford said he has received support from Gov. Steve Beshear, as well as several others, including state Rep. Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook.

Joe has written often about the climate dangers of coal-to-liquids, and recently about the health dangers of living near coal plants. There are also other consequences.

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[I am asking all Climate Progress readers to start an email campaign. Please feel free to post your emails as comments.]

The Drudge headline blared “Group Repping 50,000 Physicists Opens Global Warming Debate…” The link was to a story “Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate.” Since it was a denier website, I ignored it. Then I got forwarded an e-mail from one of the top journalists in the country titled “This may be important” with the same opening paragraph as the denier article:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”

Now you can be just as sure that any denier talk point is wrong without studying it in detail as you can be sure that a perpetual motion machine is not, in fact, perpetual without studying it in detail. But as a former American Physical Society Congressional science fellow, I feel obliged to point out that the obvious way to figure out what the American Physical Society believes is to go to their website, www.aps.org, and see what they say:

APS Climate Change Statement

APS Position Remains Unchanged

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that “Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.” This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

Read: APS Climate Change Statement [which states, “The evidence is incontrovertible” and “We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.”

I really don’t like the word “consensus” (see Deniers say there’s no consensus about global warming. Well, there’s not. There’s well-tested science and real-world observations [that are much more worrisome].” But in any case, one ignorant editor at one unpeer-reviewed newsletter does not explode it.

So this editor who single-handedly smeared the good name of the American Physical Society and the 50,000 physicists it represents is one “Jeff Marque, Senior Staff Physicist at Beckman Coulter Corporation, 1050 Page Mill Rd., MSY-14, Palo Alto, CA 94304, jjmarque@sbcglobal.net.” Please do email him and his bosses (whose names and e-mails I will provide below) to let them know your thoughts.

What Marque has does is so beyond the realm of real scientific debate that he should be fired from his editorial position. In the July issue of the newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, Marque wrote:

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As part of my ongoing series on core climate solutions (see links below), let’s examine biofuels.

If we are going to avoid catastrophic climate outcomes, we need some 11 “stabilization wedges” from 2015 to 2040 (see here). So if you want to be a core climate solution, you need to be able to generate a large fraction of a wedge in a climate-constrained world. And that is a staggering amount of low-carbon energy (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 1“).

Princeton’s Socolow and Pacala describe one wedge of biofuel in their original August 2004 Science article on the wedges:

Option 13: Biofuels. Fossil-carbon fuels can also be replaced by biofuels such as ethanol. A wedge of biofuel would be achieved by the production of about 34 million barrels per day of ethanol in 2054 that could displace gasoline, provided the ethanol itself were fossil-carbon free. This ethanol production rate would be about 50 times larger than today’s global production rate [actually, now more like 60 times current U.S. biofuels production], almost all of which can be attributed to Brazilian sugarcane and United States corn. An ethanol wedge would require 250 million hectares committed to high-yield (15 dry tons/hectare) plantations by 2054, an area equal to about one-sixth of the world’s cropland. An even larger area would be required to the extent that the biofuels require fossil-carbon inputs. Because land suitable for annually harvested biofuels crops is also often suitable for conventional agriculture, biofuels production could compromise agricultural productivity.

Biofuels thus have several problems as a large-scale medium-term climate solution:

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… then you may have noticed I wasn’t on it. I was there, though. They got befuddled, and I had previous commitment on NPR at 1 pm. But I did get to sit in traffic for a couple of minutes while Tony Snow’s funeral procession went by.

July 17, 2008
A Generational Challenge to Repower America (as prepared)
D.A.R. Constitution Hall
Washington, D.C.
Ladies and gentlemen:

There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more — if more should be required — the future of human civilization is at stake.

I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse — much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland’s largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City.

Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world.
Just two days ago, 27 senior statesmen and retired military leaders warned of the national security threat from an “energy tsunami” that would be triggered by a loss of our access to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse.

And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn’t it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today.

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I will post his speech at noon.

The former vice president and Nobel laureate is giving a major speech at noon today in which he will be “challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years“:

“I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that’s emerging now,” Gore told The Associated Press in an interview previewing a speech on global warming he was to deliver Thursday in Washington.

Gore said he fully understands the magnitude of the challenge … $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand….

To meet his 10-year goal, Gore said nuclear energy output would continue at current levels while the nation dramatically increases its use of solar, wind, geothermal and so-called clean coal energy. Huge investments must also be made in technologies that reduce energy waste and link existing grids, he said.

Personally, I would have set the challenge at closer to 50% by 2020 and 90% by 2030. In particular, I’d like a few years for solar photovoltaics and concentrated solar thermal to mature a little more, to see what are the very best strategies and technologies. And I’m not certain all the money in the world can get us a substantial amount of “clean coal” (presumably coal with carbon capture and storage) in a decade. So all that speaks to adding another decade. Also, I don’t know why we would want to shut down the combined cycle natural gas turbines, which is why I’d be more than happy to see this country with a 90% fossil-free grid in 2030.

Nonetheless, kudos to Gore for laying out such an ambitious “moonshot” goal.

That bastion of enlightened thinking known as the US Chamber of Commerce has assembled every éminence grise they could disinter find to tell us “Don’t just stand there, do nothing. ” Their open letter begins:

America is facing a long-term energy crisis, one which could become one of the most significant economic and national security challenges of the 21st century.

[Note to the grises: Next time, spring for an editor who would cut the first “one” and punch up the first sentence for more impact — “America is facing a long-term energy crisis that could become one of the most significant….]

We strongly recommend that you attach the highest priority to developing and implementing a strategic energy policy that has a long-term, commonsense vision and the full attention of our national leadership.

In short: “The sky is falling. Do something now.” So naturally they urgently recommend very specific policies, a 20% renewable portfolio standard by 2020, fuel economy standards to 55 mpg by 2030, 20% of new cars must be plug ins by 2020, an 80% cut in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, monkeys fly out of Joe Romm’s butt. Well, maybe not the first four. In fact, here is the kind of “pillar” they propose:

Reduce the Environmental Impact of Energy Consumption and Production

We must address the impact of our growing energy consumption on the environment and climate, while recognizing that any approach must be both economically viable and environmentally effective. We must not set targets for which technology does not yet exist or which threatens major economic displacement. We must give industry a predictable investment climate and incentives for innovation in clean energy. Costs and benefits must be transparent to consumers. We must commit to a course that promotes global participation while considering the priorities of the developing world.

How helpful. Let’s start with the unbelievable confusion in the notion of giving industry “incentives for innovation in clean energy” when earlier in this short letter they had written “We need to resist the temptation to rely on taxes or subsidies as the solutions of choice to meet our energy challenges.” I hope you are listening next President — we need incentives for innovation that aren’t subsidies and aren’t targets for technology.

[Note to the grises: Next time, actually read what you are signing.]

So who signed their name to this mush? Mostly conservative democrats and members of the BOP — Bland Old Party. It is simply inconceivable that these guys could endorse anything both useful and specific:

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