JR: “Leading climate scientists have given their support to a Freedom of Information request seeking to disclose who is funding the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London-based climate sceptic thinktank chaired by the former Conservative chancellor Lord Lawson.”  As the UK Guardian reported earlier this week, “James Hansen, the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies who first warned the world about the dangers of climate change in the 1980s, has joined other scientists in submitting statements to be considered by a judge at the Information Rights Tribunal on Friday.”  Hansen has posted “Cowards in Our Democracies: Part 1” — his submitted statement and an explanatory intro — which I repost below.

by James Hansen

Global warming due to human-made gases, mainly CO2, is already 0.8°C and deleterious climate impacts are growing worldwide. More warming is “in the pipeline” because Earth is out of energy balance, with absorbed solar energy exceeding planetary heat radiation. Maintaining a climate that resembles the Holocene, the world of stable shorelines in which civilization developed, requires rapidly reducing fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Such a scenario is economically sensible and has multiple benefits for humanity and other species. Yet fossil fuel extraction is expanding, including highly carbon-intensive sources that can push the climate system beyond tipping points such that amplifying feedbacks drive further climate change that is practically out of humanity’s control. This situation raises profound moral issues as young people, future generations, and nature, with no possibility of protecting their future well-being, will bear the principal consequences of actions and inactions of today’s adults….

The public has the right to know who is supporting the foot soldiers for business-as-usual and to learn about the web of support for the propaganda machine that serves to keep the public addicted to fossil fuels and destroys the future of their children.

Figure 1. CO2 emissions by fossil fuels (1 ppm CO2 ~ 2.12 GtC, where ppm is parts per million of CO2 in air and GtC is gigatons of carbon). Alternative estimates of reserves and potentially recoverable resources are from EIA (2011) and GAC (2011). [JR:  Significantly exceeding 450 ppm risks severe, irreversible warming impacts.  We are headed toward 800 to 1,000+ ppm, which represents the near-certain destruction of modern civilization as we know it -- as the recent scientific literature makes chillingly clear.]

Cowards in Our Democracies: Part 1

The threat of human-made climate change and the urgency of reducing fossil fuel emissions have become increasingly clear to the scientific community during the past few years. Yet, at the same time, the public seems to have become less certain about the situation. Indeed, many people have begun to wonder whether the climate threat has been concocted or exaggerated.

Public doubt about the science is not an accident. People profiting from business-as-usual fossil fuel use are waging a campaign to discredit the science. Their campaign is effective because the profiteers have learned how to manipulate democracies for their advantage.

The scientific method requires objective analysis of all data, stating evidence pro and con, before reaching conclusions. This works well, indeed is necessary, for achieving success in science. But science is now pitted in public debate against the talk-show method, which consists of selective citation of anecdotal bits that support a predetermined position.

Why is the public presented results of the scientific method and the talk-show method as if they deserved equal respect? A few decades ago that did not happen. In 1981, when I wrote a then-controversial paper (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html) about the impact of CO2 on climate, the science writer Walter Sullivan contacted several of the top relevant scientific experts in the world for comments. He did not mislead the public by dredging up and highlighting contrarian opinion for the sake of a forced and unnatural “balance”.

Today most media, even publicly-supported media, are pressured to balance every climate story with opinions of contrarians, climate change deniers, as if they had equal scientific credibility. Media are dependent on advertising revenue of the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases are owned by people with an interest in continuing business as usual. Fossil fuel profiteers can readily find a few percent of the scientific community to serve as mouthpieces — all scientists practice skepticism, and it is not hard to find some who are out of their area of expertise, who may enjoy being in the public eye, and who are limited in scientific insight and analytic ability.

Distinguished scientific bodies such as national science academies, using the scientific method, can readily separate charlatans and false interpretations from well-reasoned science. Yet it seems that our governments and the public are not making much use of their authoritative scientific bodies. Why is that?

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GOP darling Mitch Daniels at the EnerDel plant

by David Roberts, reposted from Grist

In a shocking turn of events, Republicans have turned on the very man they chose to speak for them this week in response to Obama’s State of the Union address — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. He is taking a drubbing in the conservosphere, but what’s most peculiar about the scandal that threatens to engulf him is that Republicans don’t seem aware that they’re attacking him.

Let me explain.

You’ll recall that ever since the Solyndra faux scandal, the right has been on the hunt for a “new Solyndra,” another company that received help from the Dept. of Energy and subsequently went under. For a while the New Solyndra was going to be Fisker Automotive, for a while SunPower, but those attempts sank like a stone.

The latest candidate is lithium battery company Ener1, Inc., which just declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a long-term debt restructuring deal. Ener1′s subsidiary EnerDel received a $118.5 million grant as part of the stimulus bill. Rep. Cliff Stearns, the GOP’s Solyndra point man, has a characteristically melodramatic statement out on it.

Substantively, Ener1′s restructuring means very little. As DOE spokesman Damien LaVera pointed out, “This is one of 30 new advanced battery and electric vehicle component plants that the administration has invested in across the country.” What matters is the success of the broad portfolio, and more importantly, the success of the industries and innovations the support is meant to stimulate. Of course there will be failures and setbacks along the way. In fact, Congress itself expected the DOE loan guarantee program to have a much higher failure rate than it has actually had; it set aside $2.4 billion in anticipation. That’s the nature of supporting cutting-edge companies.

Nonetheless, it’s bound to be embarrassing for those who supported EnerDel. For instance, just last year Joe Biden traveled to Ener1′s factory and praised the company for expanding its operation and creating jobs. Ha ha, Joe Biden!

Who else is going to be embarrassed by this?

Well, the United States Advanced Battery Consortium — including Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors — signed a $6.5 million contract with EnerDel in 2007 (in partnership with George W. Bush’s Dept. of Energy). Dummies!

The U.S. Dept. of Defense awarded EnerDel a $4 million research grant in 2008 “(i) to create lightweight, high-performance battery solutions for real-time tracking of vital military assets in harsh climates, and (ii) create high-energy batteries to power miniature unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), increasingly critical to battlefield troops.” Bozos!

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) was a key advocate for EnerDel. He visited their factory in 2008 and said, “fostering research for advanced batteries should receive high priority as part of our nation’s effort to develop a diversity of energy sources.” Here he is acknowledging the risks but saying that companies like EnerDel represent the future:

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by Alisa Valderrama, cross-posted from NRDC’s Switchboard

An innovative energy-smart finance program for homeowners – called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE – has a chance for revival. Over the next 60 days (until March 26th, 2012), a broad bipartisan coalition of business leaders, environmentalists, property owners and federal, state, and local policymakers will finally have a chance to make their voices heard and explain to federal regulators why PACE makes economic and environmental sense.

The PACE Saga

PACE programs, run by towns or counties, enable property owners to finance the initial cost of energy efficiency improvements or small scale renewable energy projects and pay them off in small increments that are added to property taxes over an extended period of up to 20 years.  Participation in PACE programs is entirely voluntary and from the start, homeowners can save more on their energy bills than the cost of the payments thanks to the clean energy projects. Improvements financeable under PACE can include better insulation, more efficient windows, more efficient heating and cooling systems, and solar panels. (See: Babylon Steps Up the PACE of Green Jobs: “For Energy Savings, Carbon Reduction and Job Creation”).

Because of the economic and environmental benefits PACE could provide, PACE programs were supported by wide range of stakeholders: from labor unions to Fortune 500 companies and environmental groups.  Starting in 2008, over 27 states and the District of Columbia passed PACE enabling legislation and a large number of municipalities in those states started or were preparing to launch PACE programs locally.

However, nearly all existing PACE programs were halted in July 2010, when the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued instructions to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the national banks that effectively froze PACE financing programs nationwide. The result was millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds in limbo, thousands of jobs implementing the projects left on the drawing board, and economic development plans and climate change goals across the country on hold. Lawsuits and proposed legislation followed, in addition to widespread frustration that the regulators had failed to consider the full range of implications of their actions.  You can read about the status of the lawsuits at my colleague Kit Kennedy’s blog.

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