Lots of experts are weighing in as the Atlantic hurricane season comes to an end (today). One of my favs, Jeff Masters, summarizes it this way:

The Atlantic hurricane season of 2007 is over, and it was a strange one. For the second straight year, we had a near average season, despite pre-season predictions of a very active season.

Before going further, I should point out that hurricane forecasting experts tend to be on the wild side. The dean of forecasters, Bill Gray, has become a cranky global warming denier — you can read his detailed explanation of the 2007 season here. Masters, on the other hand, flew into hurricanes, of his own free will, for four years (!), sans parachutes (!!), until he was nearly killed flying into Hurricane Hugo, in “the most harrowing flight ever conducted by the NOAA hurricane hunters”.

On the more normal side, Chris Mooney, science writer and author of a good recent book on hurricanes and global warming, has his post mortem here.

Now the 2007 season did set a lot of records, as Masters notes:

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NASA’s James Hansen has apologized for his coal train/death train analogy (discussed here), in a post titled “Averting Our Eyes.” While I didn’t think the National Mining Association deserved an apology, Hansen came to see that others were legitimately offended:

I regret that my words caused pain to some readers. I hope that they will accept my apology for having caused discomfort, an apology that is heartfelt.

At the same time, Hansen is — like all of us — searching for the words, the metaphors, the pictures, really, anything that can help the public grasp the genuine scale of the dangers we face:

Burning all fossil fuels, if the CO2 is released into the air, would destroy creation, the planet with its animal and plant life as it has existed for the past several thousand years, the time of civilization, the Holocene, the period of relative climate stability…. We cannot pretend that we do not know the consequences of burning all fossil fuels.

I think that we still have a long way to go in making the danger clear, in part because of the inertia of the climate system and the danger of passing tipping points — points at which little or no additional forcing is needed to cause large, relatively rapid, undesirable effects….

We cannot avert our eyes and pretend that we do not understand the consequences of continued “business as usual.”

… the special interests have been cleverer than us, preventing the public from seeing the crisis that should be in view. It is hard for me to think of a different equally poignant example of the foreseeable consequence faced by fellow creatures on the planet. Suggestions are welcome.

Hansen does have more to say in his apology:

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International consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has released a must-read study concluding:

The United States could reduce GHG emissions in 2030 by 3.0 to 4.5 gigatons of CO₂e using tested approaches and high-potential emerging technologies. These reductions would involve pursuing a wide array of abatement options with marginal costs less than $50 per ton, with the average net cost to the economy being far lower if the nation can capture sizable gains from energy efficiency. Achieving these reductions at the lowest cost to the economy, however, will require strong, coordinated, economy-wide action that begins in the near future.

Yes — existing or in-the-pipeline technology can get us very far for the next quarter century (duh!).

Previously McKinsey had released a comprehensive cost curve for global greenhouse gas reduction measures (reprinted below, original article here), which came to the stunning conclusion that the measures needed to stabilize emissions at 450 pppm have a net cost near zero (the negative-cost efficiency measures just about compensating for the higher cost fuel switching).

[This makes a great powerpoint slide for talks.]

A few key points on the new study:

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A few weeks ago, one of the presidential candidates’ advisors challenged a group of climate leaders to describe America’s future. His challenge triggered a flurry of e-mails as we attempted to articulate a vision.

We talked about carbon caps and price signals and new investments in R&D. That’s fine, the advisor responded, but what it the vision? What is America’s perfect future?

I’m not sure we ever satisfactorily answered this very good question, but I found myself trying to describe what America might look like 10, 20 and 40 years from now.

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