That is the breaking news today from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the British Antarctic Survey:

Satellite imagery from the [NSIDC] reveals that a 13,680 square kilometer (5,282 square mile) ice shelf has begun to collapse because of rapid climate change in a fast-warming region of Antarctica.…

In the past 50 years, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on Earth, rising by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) per decade. NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March, said, “We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up.”

You can see a video of the ice-shelf post-disintegration taken from an airplane here.

Satellite images indicate that the Wilkins began its collapse on February 28; data revealed that a large iceberg, 41 by 2.5 kilometers (25.5 by 1.5 miles), fell away from the ice shelf’s southwestern front, triggering a runaway disintegration of 405 square kilometers (160 square miles) of the shelf interior (Figure 1 — click to enlarge).

That is “seven times the size of Manhattan” as Seth Borenstein of the AP helpfully points out. He notes “The rest of the Wilkins ice shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice.” The ice shelf is floating, so it won’t add to sea level rise. Such occurrences are “more indicative of a tipping point or trigger in the climate system,” said Sarah Das, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Back to the NSIDC:

The edge of the shelf crumbled into the sky-blue pattern of exposed deep glacial ice that has become characteristic of climate-induced ice shelf break-ups such as the Larsen B in 2002. A narrow beam of intact ice, just 6 kilometers wide (3.7 miles) was protecting the remaining shelf from further breakup as of March 23 (Figure 2 — click to enlarge).

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Innovest, a firm that researches investment and risks, released a report today that concludes that the proposed expansion of the Holcomb coal-fired power plant in western Kansas is not a financially sound or well thought-out decision.

From their press release (emphasis added):

Innovest examined the economics of the transaction and determined that under the most plausible regulatory scenarios the decision to build new coal generating capacity will put Sunflower Electric’s ratepayers — who in this particular case are the actual owners — at significant risk. The report concludes that Sunflower’s management has not adequately addressed the competitive and financial risks associated with climate change in deciding to pursue the expansion of its Holcomb Station power plant.

BUT, Secretary Bremby’s decision DOES adequately address the risks associated with the expansion in the context of climate change and its policy implications. As does Wall Street’s latest verdict in February, when a few of the country’s major investment banks announced that they will be making their financial backing decisions in the context of global warming legislation.

With Innovest’s conclusion that the ratepayers themselves are at ‘significant risk,’ I’m just not sure how any of the arguments for these coal plants (like energy prices) hold up any longer. Hopefully Innovest has a memo to send to KS legislators before the vote to over-ride Sebelius’ veto.

On the David Strom Show on March 22, Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist angrily attacked the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed into law in December by President Bush to slowly raise fuel economy standards to 35 MPG by 2020. Norquist alleged that these standards are killing 2,000 people each year:

The government itself has calculated that around 2000 people a year are killed because of those CAFÉ standards and our cheerful government has just voted to increase them, to make cars lighter, smaller. And more people will die. I mean 2,000 people a year die because the environmentalists think that you should be in a smaller car because it offends their sensitivities that you’re using gasoline.

Listen here:

Norquist seems to be referring to the 2002 National Academies report Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, which states, “[A]ll but two members of the committee concluded that the downweighting and downsizing that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of which was due to CAFE standards, probably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993.” The report explains the reasoning:

Although many general indicators of motor vehicle travel safety improved during [the 1970s and early 1980s] (e.g., the fatality rate per vehicle mile traveled), the preponderance of evidence indicates that this downsizing of the vehicle fleet resulted in a hidden safety cost, namely, travel safety would have improved even more had vehicles not been downsized. . . When asked about the potential use of lighter material to allow weight reduction without safety-related size reductions, … industry representatives did not expect that they could avoid reducing vehicle size if substantial reductions in vehicle weight were made. . . The committee recognizes that automakers’ responses could be biased in this regard.

However, the blistering minority dissent in that very same report points out several fallacies in the reasoning and concludes:

The relationships between vehicle weight and safety are complex and not measurable with any reasonable degree of certainty at present. The relationship of fuel economy to safety is even more tenuous.

Evidently, Norquist is more concerned by hypothetically projected deaths in an alternate universe where Detroit adopts safety instruments like air bags and rollover standards without kicking and screaming, than he is by the very real casualties to our economy, our soldiers, our nation, and our planet caused by our addiction to fossil fuels.

The American people, regardless of party, overwhelmingly recognize that higher fuel standards spur technological innovation and improve our lives.

Transcript: Read more

The Toronto Star reported an alarming factoid earlier this month:

No gasoline-powered car assembled in North America would meet China’s current fuel-efficiency standard.

That’s mainly because

1. Their standard is much higher than ours is currently.
2. Their standard is a minimum-allowable efficiency standard, not a “fleet-average” standard like ours.
3. Our lame car companies don’t make their (relatively few) most efficient vehicles in this country.

As for our much-hyped new 35-mpg (average) standard — it will take us in 2020 to where the Chinese are now (but not even to where Japan and Europe were six years ago). If we don’t rescind it, that is.

So whether you believe in human-caused global warming or peak oil, America remains unprepared to capture the huge explosion in jobs this century for clean, fuel-efficient cars.

Oh, and by 2010, China will be the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing and solar photovoltaics manufacturing. No worries, though, our TV and movie sales overseas still kick butt. For now.

Probably the biggest source of confusion and errors in climate discussions concerns “carbon” versus “carbon dioxide.” I was reminded of this last week when I saw an analysis done for a major environmental group that confused the two and hence was wrong by a large factor (3.67). The paragraph I usually include in my writing:

Some people use carbon rather than carbon dioxide as a metric. The fraction of carbon in carbon dioxide is the ratio of their weights. The atomic weight of carbon is 12 atomic mass units, while the weight of carbon dioxide is 44, because it includes two oxygen atoms that each weigh 16. So, to switch from one to the other, use the formula: One ton of carbon equals 44/12 = 11/3 = 3.67 tons of carbon dioxide. Thus 11 tons of carbon dioxide equals 3 tons of carbon, and a price of $30 per ton of carbon dioxide equals a price of $110 per ton of carbon.

I confess that in my books I have tried to consistently use CO2, for clarity’s sake, but have failed to embrace that strategy in the blog. I now realize that was a mistake after receiving an e-mail from a long time a reader who was confused as to whether the price I quoted in a recent post was dollars per ton of carbon or carbon dioxide (even though I had said in the post it was “the price of carbon”).

The reason this confusion arises so much is that scientists usually use carbon, because they are studying the carbon cycle, and governments also usually use carbon, because the scientists do. But “carbon” is not intuitive, whereas carbon dioxide is what we all emit — that is why businesses and the public typically report numbers in terms of carbon dioxide. “Point Carbon” for instance, reports prices in the European market for CO2 allowances (in euros, of course).

And, indeed, the central climate number in this whole area is the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. The media is typically caught in between, sometimes using one and sometimes using the other, and sometimes making a mistake or not being clear.

So I am going to try to be consistent and use CO2. Where relevant I will also include one conversion to carbon, too, without bombarding you with too many numbers. So hopefully, from now on, if I fail to be clear, you should make the default assumption I am talking carbon dioxide.

I would recommend all blogs and journalists clearly state their “carbon dioxide policy” – and be sure to check when reporting on studies or articles or business action that they know whether they are talking carbon or carbon dioxide.