Climate Change

Over the past several days as we’ve seen the death and damage from the storm in Burma/Myanmar metastasize, there has been a greater-than-usual sense of impotency on the part of the international community in its inability to rise to the challenge. There is the extraordinary scale of the disaster, and the fact that so much of the impacted area is difficult to access. There is the immediate relief effort that seems to have been thwarted by the military government there. There is the realization that the hundreds of thousands who’ve been affected were terribly vulnerable in the first place, because of their poverty, the lack of adequate infrastructure, and their proximity to the Bay of Bengal and its often-dangerous weather.

There is a further realization, I think: that storms of this strength have been more frequent in recent years and will continue to grow in frequency and intensity. Certainly, Katrina’s impact on the consciousness of Americans, and others, has been a key factor in the further recognition and acceptance of the reality of the climate change crisis that is looming. The AFP reports here that “Some experts argue the evidence is already hard enough to identify a probable trend: storms are becoming more powerful as global warming heats up the oceans.” The article gives a good summary of the scientific thinking.

To go deeper, you can refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group II Report “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” (from last year’s critical Fourth Assessment Report), and specifically the chapter on Coastal Systems And Low-Lying Areas. (See also this from Reuters when the WG II report was issued, and my post at the time.) The IPCC Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said “It’s the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit.”

In this thoughtful piece, The Science Of Cyclones, from MSNBC’s Alan Boyle, we learn about the work of Chris Mooney, the author, and blogger for Intersection. (I’ve mentioned Chris here. He’s a formidable voice.) Among the things that Mooney says in his interview with Boyle, and this very much echoes the message from the IPCC, is “There’s a huge socioeconomic disparity, in terms of levels of preparedness, and in terms of levels of damage, and especially in terms of numbers killed by cyclones in the world. And that’s something we’ve got to address.” You can hear the interview here here and read Mooney’s essay for “Science Progress” here.

In the meantime, you should find out ways to help. My first stop when disaster strikes is Unicef. Not surprisingly, they are geared up to help. Look at their website’s Cyclone Nargis information for more.

We’ve seen a couple of great documentaries in my climate change class recently:  Fighting Goliath and Burning the Future: Coal in America.  I’m particularly excited that we’re having Burning the Future’s director in next week.  We’re also reading the outstanding Big Coal.  So, we’re into coal, in a big way.  More about the documentaries and the book before long here.

In the meantime, I just want to report that I’m a little depressed by this recent article on the Presidential contenders, Obama, Clinton woo coal vote in upcoming primaries, by the AP’s hard-working environmental reporter, H. Josef Hebert.  I know that these two, and the Republican nominee-in-waiting, John McCain, are heads and shoulders above what we’ve been experiencing in the White House on the subject of climate change.  (See Plus ça change, … from April 17 below.)  Still, I would love for the candidates to say, as John Edwards did, that we have to have a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants until there’s a real CCS technology available.

On mountaintop removal coal mining, a truly evil practice, both Clinton and Obama are trying to have it both ways.  I don’t bandy the word “evil” about too much, folks, but this is an environmentally destructive practice without peer in this country at this time, and it’s got devastating human health impacts.  See the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition website and get your hands on a DVD of Burning the Future if you don’t believe me.

The AP’s article says this about Obama’s and Clinton’s take on mountaintop removal mining:

“Clinton drew the ire of some environmentalists when in a public radio interview there she said she was ‘concerned’ about mountaintop mining but also viewed it as an ‘economic and environmental trade-off’ that must be ‘looked at … from a practical perspective.’

Facing a group of environmentalists opposed to mountaintop mining at a meeting in the coal town of Beckley, W.Va., Obama also talked about the balance between economics and environmental protection. ‘There are environmental consequences to coal extraction,’ said Obama, ‘just as there are with any energy source.’ That’s just what some of the mine workers in the audience wanted to hear.” 

Presumably, the next President’s Environmental Protection Agency will do its job.  If it does, mountaintop removal will be a thing of the past. 

Earth Day is this coming Tuesday, April 22. There’s an awful lot going on all over the world. Dating myself, I can tell you that my buddy, Donald, and I went to the first Earth Day in 1970 when we were teenagers. He claims it was primarily to meet girls. My rejoinder is “That’s natural.” Back in 1990, I was working in public affairs for the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation and we had a great honkin’ Earth Day in New York City for the twentieth anniversary, with hundreds of thousands of folks out, including for a big concert in Central Park. Earth Day didn’t have much cachet during many of the off years since its founding and today, but it’s beginning to pick up steam again. Check out the Earth Day website and see what’s happening in your community. You can also go to Earth Day TV to see some great videos.

The “NY Times Magazine” has its Green Issue this week. “Act, Eat, Invent, Learn, Live, Move, Build” are the sections of the magazine. This is a terrific compendium of articles on what we can do to make a difference, including a compelling piece from the excellent and thoughtful writer, Michael Pollan, who asks: Why Bother?

I’ve been thinking more about meat and climate change, I have to tell you, these days, with the news about the pressures on grain and the soaring rise in food prices worldwide. The section on how we eat gets into this quite a bit. We learn, among other things, that in January “… Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and a vegetarian), uttered four little words: ‘Please eat less meat.’ He continued: ‘This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it.’” I’ve written about this before, in an essay on how we treat animals – and ourselves. I’ll be writing more soon about animal agriculture and its implications for climate change.

You should also check out this terrific video on the Green Issue.

Echoing the “NYT” special section on the “Business of Green” that I wrote about on April 11 below, the “FT” (aka The Financial Times) had a special on Business and the Environment yesterday. This is pretty much about business in the UK, and it’s got some fascinating stuff, including an article on companies saving energy, Energy efficiency: Use less power to cut emissions, in which we learn the arresting news that “Dow Chemical claims to have reduced its energy intensity by 38 per cent between 1990 to 2005. The group invested $1bn to meet this target but says the initiatives have resulted in $5bn of savings.” Get it?!

In another article on green building in France, Energy Plus: Paris building to set new standard, we are told that “…in France, buildings account for 45 per cent of French energy consumption and 16 per cent of water use, and generate 40 per cent of the country’s waste. Their carbon dioxide emissions amount to 25 per cent of the national total, second only to transport at 28 per cent.” I’ve written about Green Building a number of times here. It’s a fascinating and important subject. See this terrific slideshow too from the FT on green building.

… plus c’est la même chose. 

Well, much to probably nobody’s surprise, the present President of the United States has once again distinguished himself by being just about the only top political leader in the industrialized democracies who doesn’t subscribe to the belief that climate change is upon us, will overwhelm us if we don’t act more vigorously than we have, and that the only way to get at this is to have significant mandatory curbs, in the very near term, on greenhouse gas emissions.  One writer at the hippie environmentalist magazine, “Business Week,” said, in this piece, “President Bush has a habit of promising action on climate change—and then not delivering.”  Dan Froomkin, a columnist for the radical left-wing “Washington Post,” said in Bush’s Third Climate-Change Fake-Out, “Taking a brief break from all the papal pomp, President Bush today rolls out yet another wave of climate-change flim-flam.”  Reuters reports that Bush climate plan said too little, too late, quoting German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, “The president gave a disappointing speech.”  The title of the minister’s press release was “Gabriel criticises Bush’s Neanderthal speech. Losership, not Leadership.”  Ouch.

What’s the plan?  According to Himself:  “Today, I’m announcing a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.” 

According to most of the nearly fifteen hundred news articles at Yahoo, and your humble blogger, that ain’t going to feed the bulldog.

“No good times, no bad times,
There’s no times at all,
Just The New York Times” 

Here’s some good, recent stuff from the venerable “New York Times.”

The “Business of Green” is a special section from a few weeks ago. (I wrote at some length over a year ago on their special of the same name.) This latest one’s got some great articles, including one on jobs: Millions of Jobs of a Different Collar. Here’s an audio slide show too on a “net zero energy” home. I mentioned an article in this vein, For Carbon Emissions, a Goal of Less Than Zero, by Matt Wald in my review of Earth: The Sequel from last week. 

Wald, in addition to being on the energy and environmental technology beat, has been the aviation industry reporter for years. Here’s A Cleaner, Leaner Jet Age Has Arrived from Wednesday. It’s about new materials, engines, and systems for safer, more fuel-efficient planes. Who could be against that? (I’ve also written about aviation a couple of times, here and here, and I had a great time this past summer writing about sustainability at airports for “Planning,” the magazine of the American Planning Association.) 

As further evidence of the strain that biofuels, among some other causes, are putting on the land, as I’ve reported on recently at Krugman on Food Prices and Biofuels and Are Biofuels A Bummer?, there was a front-page article the other day, As Prices Rise, Farmers Spurn Conservation Program. The long and short of it is that farmers are taking millions of acres out of the hugely successful federal Conservation Reserve Program in order to cash in on profits that haven’t been available to them for years. Who can blame them? However, what’s driving so much of this is a biofuels policy that is, according to more and more food, energy and environmental experts, misguided. See more from the “NY Times” on “The Food Chain,” examining growing demands on, and changes in, the world’s production of food. This is an important series for any number of reasons and the paper is to be commended for being on it. 

Finally, I wrote about the failure of the NY State Assembly to bring New York City’s congestion pricing plan to a vote, let alone pass it. See “This is the way the world ends …” just below. Well, the paper, given the importance of the issue and the worldwide implications, has a special section, including this video from Andy Revkin on New York City and congestion pricing. Where do we go now that the Mayor’s plan has failed? Read the op-eds from Owen Gutfreund and Gene Russianoff.

I’m killing two birds with one stone here (even though I’m a vegetarian).  I’m going to highlight some of the more important recent stories I’ve not gotten to while pointing out some of the blogs I consider to be in the top tier.

Gore kick starts sweeping program to slash U.S. carbon emissions is a headline from Tuesday from the comprehensive, always informative and eminently readable DeSmogBlog.  He’s getting $300 million together to convince those that yet need convincing that climate change is upon us, and needs to be mitigated sooner rather than later.  I’d be happy to have President Obama enlist the Nobel Laureate in a major effort to effect the changes we need.  (If President Clinton or President McCain wanted that, that’d be good too.)

More reasons to love Lieberman-Warner is one of the many useful things that are usually being represented at The Gristmill.  This cites an analysis by the Center for American Progress’s Dan Weiss and his colleague, Alexandra Kougentakis, that S. 2191, the current vehicle for an American cap-and-trade program, would mean thousands of new jobs.  (I worked with Dan way back when he was a staffer on clean air for the Sierra Club and I was an activist.)  The Gristmill is an always stimulating blog.

Antarctic ice breakup caught on tape reads the story from the impeccable Climate Feedback, a blog from the folks at “Nature,” one of the world’s preeminent science publications.  Here’s the poignant video clip they’ve got posted.

Bangkok Climate Change Talks 2008 is the lead from the Climate Science blog at the National Wildlife Federation.  This reports on the talks that are a follow on to the big meeting in Bali last December.

Soot in the Greenhouse, and Kitchen is from Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth at the “NY Times.”  This highlights a story that caught my eye in which a new study identifies soot from industrial and transportation sources, and from developing world cooking practices, as having a significantly more potent impact on climate change than previously thought.  I wrote about solar box cookers, solar flashlights and innovative design for the developing world here last year.  Man, why aren’t we on that?  (That’s not a rhetorical question.  I’d like to know.  I’m going to be following up with some sustainable development folks before too long.) 

I really do love the coverage in the “Financial Times.”  It goes deeper than a lot of sources to give you stories that really mean something, rather than just the latest media frenzy over some political brouhaha or celebrity gossip.  It also lives in the critical interface between commerce, public policy and international relations.  (You may need to register.  If so, go here.  You get 30 articles a month for free.)

Oil Sands – Here’s a bit of a bombshell:  The new energy law that the US passed in December may bar the US government’s purchase of petroleum from Canadian oil sands.  Canada warns US over oil sands is the recent “FT” headline.  The story says that a “narrow interpretation” of The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, section 526 to be precise, would limit government procurement of alternative fuels that have lifecycle GHG emissions greater than conventional fuels, as oil-sand derived petroleum clearly does.  (Elizabeth Kolbert, the pathbreaking “New Yorker” writer, had a characteristically great article, Unconventional Crude, on the Alberta tar sands in November.)  The “FT” has even given us a copy of the letter from the Canadian ambassador in Washington to DOD Secretary Robert Gates, cc:  the US secretaries of Energy and State.  One energy expert said:  “The Canadians do, in fact, have something to worry about, particularly from a Democratic administration.”  A Canadian authority said:  “Classifying fuel from the oil sands as non-conventional fuel … would unnecessarily complicate the integrated Canada-US energy relationship.”  Yeah, but it might improve the world’s chances of avoiding catastrophic climate change.  Does that count?

Jatropha – I’ve been pointing out studies that pinpoint biofuels as another badly misplaced priority – except, of course, for those making a great honking profit and the elected officials that profit politically from furthering bad policy.  (See any number of posts under Biofuels and Agriculture.)  The “FT” has a good piece on a non-edible plant that thrives on generally non-arable land:  India finds cheap energy may be an easy nut to crack.  (I wrote about jatropha’s promise here in September.)  India hopes to radically accelerate the cultivation of jatropha for biodiesel over the next several years.  The pilot projects they’ve been doing have been successful and, not surprisingly, they have no wish to displace food crops from productive land for biofuels cultivation, a strategy that has been increasingly identified as a recipe for disaster on several fronts.  Shailendra Shukla, director of Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Authority, is quoted:  “If you’re growing soya for biodiesel, you’re wasting your time, money and land.”  The project is also about providing power to the countryside.  As the article says, “Alternative energy dovetails with the government’s aims to develop rural areas - including electrifying villages - to narrow a widening divide between rural and urban India.” 

Gas Flaring – This is nearly universally practiced in the oil industry, yet it wastes truly enormous amounts of energy and adds prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.  ( I wrote about this in September here.  The post also includes a very instructive video from the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction.)  Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, according to the “FT” here, are getting on board the World Bank’s program.  The total annual loading worldwide is 150bn cubic meters, producing 400m tons of CO2.  “The three Gulf states set to join the World Bank’s partnership together contribute 7bn cubic metres a year …”  Not chopped liver. 

The Heartland Institute organized a gathering of the clans this week in New York City.  Skeptics of various shades and stripes sat in on panel discussions and heard speakers make pronouncements along a spectrum of opinion.  “Registration for the event exceeded 550…” according to one of several press releases I received.  I had hoped to go for a few hours, but other priorities won out – plus I’m under the weather, as it were, with a cold.  Andrew Revkin, the “NY Times” climate change beat reporter (and the author of Dot Earth, the popular blog), wrote this article today:  Cool View of Science at Meeting on Warming.  (I’ve written about the skeptics before here.  I reference a terrific article there by Sharon Begley at “Newsweek” - The Truth About Denial.)

Revkin writes that “The main targets at the meeting were former Vice President Al Gore, who has portrayed global warming as a ‘planetary emergency,’ and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has issued four sets of reports assessing the human impact on climate over 20 years.”  You know how those uppity Nobel Peace Prize winners are.  Al Gore truly is one of the most popular “targets” of modern times.  I’ve also written that, at least as far as climate change goes, there are any number of prominent folks in the world, who will tell you what Gore tells you, and sometimes more.  See If You Don’t Like Al Gore, Then …

Revkin’s story on the conference was preceded on Sunday by Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell.  The “hook” here is a blog post from one Marc Morano, communications director for the Republican minority on the US Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, in which he claims that Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way.  Michael Schlesinger, a scientist quoted in the “NY Times” piece, is skeptical about the skeptics:  “…any focus on the last few months or years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating greenhouse gases are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a harmful distraction.”

‘Nuff said.

I wrote about one of the several climate change six-hundred pound gorillas at King Coal in November.  There was a hard-hitting piece in yesterday’s “Progress Report” called Bad News For Big Coal.  (Fair warning:   “Progress Report” is a newsletter of the avowedly partisan Center for American Progress, which I’ve noted before, along with the fact that I find their work to be thorough and well-documented.)  The article talks about the fact that the federal government recently withdrew from the flagship CCS development, FutureGen. 

It also talks about the counterattack launched by Sunflower Electric in Kansas against that state’s huge decision in October to deny permits for two 700 MW coal plants.  Go here for my post on that, including Health and Environment Secretary Roderick Bremby’s extremely lucid video announcing the decision.  He said then “I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing.” 

Sunflower Electric and the nation’s biggest coal company, Peabody, have launched “Kansans for Affordable Energy,” an exceedingly thinly disguised public relations campaign in the guise of a citizen’s initiative.  This brings to mind a bald-faced ploy in the 1980’s against federal acid rain legislation:  “Citizens for Sensible Control of Acid Rain” (CSCAR).  Peabody then was among the coal companies and utilities behind this “citizens’” group.  See this excellent item, among several, from the excellent “DeSmogBlog,” on the brawl in Kansas.

If you like, you can see this TV ad from Sunflower.  No mention of coal, but pictures of windmills; says it was recommended for approval, but, in fact, the permit was denied.  Warm and fuzzy, just like coal-fired power plants. 

Download link 

For a decidedly more vicious tack, check this out, from a series of their newspaper ads:

The Kansas legislature is being bribed and bludgeoned into attempting to reverse the state’s denial of the permits, but Sebelius has already said she’ll veto any such legislation.  For a good look at what the folks at Sunflower and Peabody would really like to say, see this video spoof from the “Wichita Eagle.”

Even more significantly, getting back to the big picture on coal, three of the world’s biggest investment banks, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Citi, have, by signing the Carbon Principles, admitted the riskiness of putting money into coal-fired plants.  For more, see Know Your Power.

Tropical Forest Loss – Following on my last post (see below) about the destruction of hugely productive carbon sinks for conversion to cropland for the production of biofuel feedstocks, it is relevant to see the testimony from three very worthy leaders in the fight against rainforest loss.  The House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing last week, Fire and Rain: How Destruction of Tropical Forests is Fueling Climate Change, in which Thomas Lovejoy (Heinz Center), Stuart Eizenstat (Sustainable Forestry Management), and Stephanie Meeks (Nature Conservancy) all gave expert testimony. 

Nuclear Waste – I wrote about Nukes last month and thought you should see this article, As Nuclear Waste Languishes, Expense to U.S. Rises, by the excellent “NY Times” reporter Matt Wald.  Wald has been on the nuclear power beat, among others, for many years, and always has an important story to tell.  Yucca Mountain, the government’s proposed repository for the long-term storage of radioactive waste, is decades behind schedule.  (See the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management [OCRWM] for more on Yucca Mountain.)  Aside from the dangers of storing waste in temporary storage at 122 sites in 39 states, there’s the cost owing to the fact that the federal government has to pay the utilities for its not receiving the waste long-term as it had promised to do years ago. 

Carbon Dioxide to Gasoline – Scientists Would Turn Greenhouse Gas Into Gasoline is the headline for this “NY Times” article about how two Los Alamos alchemists, I mean scientists, would make gold from lead, I mean gas from carbon dioxide.  “The idea is simple,” we are told.  “Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.”  The energy demand for this process, perhaps not surprisingly, would be enormous.  There is an interesting post and some useful comments at “Dot Earth,” the fine blog by “NY Times” reporter Andrew Revkin.  One of the comments seems on the mark:  “We would get a lot more bang from just using the electricity their system requires to directly power vehicles than using that electricity to make a liquid fuel.”  And we could do it without coal or nuclear power plants.  I’ve heard Jim Gordon, Cape Wind’s developer, say that, on a good day, not only would the wind farms produce enough electricity for all of Cape Cod’s and the Islands’ needs, but that there would be excess to power electric vehicles.  I have been dreaming about precisely this since the first Earth Day.

Smart Grid – “The Toronto Star” had a thoughtful column on this yesterday.  (I wrote about smart grids here in December.)  With the burgeoning of wind and solar projects in Ontario, there’s a move to get the grid there, as well as in North America and the rest of the world for that matter, more responsive to renewable energy projects.  As the article notes, “Managing the power coming from a dozen or so massive plants is relatively easy compared to a ‘distributed generation’ model that essentially involves thousands of mini power plants contributing electricity to the grid at different times of the day.”  As one consultant is quoted:  “Any kind of distributed energy needs some kind of connectivity and two-way communications.”  (For more on DG, see this from the DOE.)