At the week-long Bangkok international climate negotiations that have just concluded, chief U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson told the Associated Press:

If you push the globe into recession, it certainly isn’t going to help the developing world. Exports go down, and many of the developing countries of course are heavily dependent on exports. So there’s a lot of issues which need to be fleshed out … so people understand the real world.

It is, of course, the Bush administration that does not understand the real world.

REAL WORLD: The Planet Is In Crisis Today

Every day, every week, the local, regional and global impacts of climate change that are already here are reported by officials and scientists.

– “Spain’s northeast Catalonia region will need to import water by ship and train from May to ensure domestic supplies” because “rainfall in all but one of Catalonia’s 15 river basins was below emergency levels for the year so far.”

– “Canada’s massive Mackenzie Delta is feeling the impact of climate change faster than expected and could foretell of problems elsewhere in the Arctic.” The researchers warn that “greater than expected storm surges and coastal flooding should be a concern for companies looking at drilling in the energy-rich Mackenzie Delta and areas of the Beaufort Sea.”

– In India, “the early ripening of the popular ‘Kaafal’ wild fruit in Kumaun division of Uttarakhand is being seen by experts as a fallout of global warming in the Himalayan region. The edible wild fruit has hit the markets this year a month before than the usual time and it is being sold at four times higher than its normal rate.”

REAL WORLD: The United States Is Not Immune

– “From deadly heat waves in the Midwest and Northeast to more intense Gulf Coast hurricanes and Southwest droughts, the effects of climate change will have an unprecedented impact on the health of Americans, a report said Monday.”

– “Utah still remains at the epicenter of global warming in the United States, becoming ever more arid,” warned a NOAA researcher. “It would take 15 years of average runoff conditions” to fill Utah’s Lakes Powell and Mead, but studies of the region suggest that won’t happen.

– Increasing drought means “Canada could one day be forced to allow bulk shipments of water” to the United States. Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute said that “many U.S. cities could face critical water shortages by 2015 and noted the Southwest was already clearly in trouble.”

REAL WORLD: Developing Countries Want Climate Action

– At the Bali climate negotiations last fall, developing countries shamed the U.S. delegation into accepting a roadmap. “Then South Africa, responding to the US, said developing countries had voluntarily moved to accept new obligations for their national actions on climate change that were ‘measurable, reportable and verifiable,’ a concession that only a year ago, he said, ‘would have been unthinkable.’”

– At the Bangkok negotiations, “We believe that Africa is getting a raw deal in these negotiations once more,” said Grace Akumu, head of the Nairobi-based environmental group Climate Network Africa. “The African continent will suffer the most from the impact of climate change and that’s why we’re getting very worried.”

– Developing countries like the island nation of Tuvalu are already running out of time. “The nature of the U.S.’ commitment … is unclear, and I suspect we’re not going to get a clear signal from the U.S. until after the next election,” said a representative for Tuvalu in Bangkok. “The uncertainty is troubling, particularly for highly vulnerable countries, like small island states.”

REAL WORLD: Just Climate Action is a Pathway Out of Poverty

– Representatives from developing nations and advocates for the disenfranchised in our country “understand the real world” and share a common vision for a climate-positive future built on sustainability, justice, and economic opportunity.

The rest of the world knows this — it is the Bush administration, the polluters, and their conservative allies who are trying to delay and deny the rest of us a positive future.

Contest: Dismantle Pielke’s post before I do. Prize announced below.

Here is the response to my challenge from Roger Pielke, a blogger.

I’m on my way to Houston to give a talk, so I won’t have the time to point out all of the errors and misstatements that Pielke, a blogger, makes myself before Monday.

I do think it’s funny that Pielke, a blogger, identifies me as “Joe Romm, a former political appointee,” as if that were, like, my entire resume or even the most important thing to know about me. It would be like me, I don’t know, just referring to Pielke (a blogger) as, say, a blogger. I suppose he means to imply (cleverly) that all of my comments are politically motivated. They are not.

That said, I am delighted he answered me as directly (and incorrectly) as he did, as we can finally — finally! — get to the heart of why he’s wrong and dangerously so.

I leave the next two days to my readers to beat me to the punch in spelling it out. Whoever does the best job I will elevate from the comments to a post of his or her own — and then take further trial posts as a potential permanent weekly guest blogger on Climate Progress.

[Hint to readers: Start with his answer to #2, then go to #1, and finally to #3. I count 4 major flaws in his response to me. I would also note that it's ironic that he said "it does not appear that" I read his paper. It's pretty clear he does not even understand what his own analysis shows or what the IPCC was saying. Second hint: "frozen technology"]

Atop the Drudge Report right now:

Do the stories behind these headlines tell the tale that global warming alarmists have “hijacked” the political debate despite a “lack of natural disasters” and no global warming “since 1998″?

No.

Let’s review:

DRUDGE HEADLINE #1: REPORT: GLOBAL TEMPS ‘HAVE NOT RISEN SINCE 1998′

This claim has been thoroughly debunked every time it’s popped up. The oil-backed global warming denier Dennis Avery first made the claim — which hinges on the fact that 1998 was an exceptionally warm year (but not the warmest ever) — in 2006.

A chart prepared by NASA’s Goddard Institute clearly shows that the climate continues to warm, with the eight warmest years on record occurring since 1998.

DRUDGE HEADLINE #2: LLOYD’S: Lack of natural disasters putting pressure on insurance firms

The reporter in this story about Lloyd’s record profits in 2007 describes how compared to the devastating year of 2005 — which saw an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season including the double punch of Katrina and Rita — 2006 and 2007 were easier on insurance firms. His emphasis is misleading, as the actual quotes from the CEO of Lloyd’s warn primarily about the exposure of the insurance industry to the growing global financial crisis, as “insurers derive much of their income from investments”:

“On the back of a good performance in 2007 we need to sound a note of caution for 2008 because of softening market conditions and because of the financial turmoil we have seen,” said Richard Ward, chief executive of Lloyd’s.

As a better report on the same Lloyd’s news indicated, Lloyd’s had limited exposure to England’s terrible floods last year and that its “21 per cent return on its investments in bonds, money market instruments and other assets, as well as releases from reserves set aside for earlier claims. Mr Ward said it would be hard to reproduce last year’s investment performance in the current market.” In addition to the worsening economy, 2008 is predicted to have a very strong hurricane season on top of the freak floods, storms, and droughts already experienced here in the United States and around the world.

DRUDGE HEADLINE #3: World Bank accused of climate change ‘hijack’…

The “hijack” referenced in this story describes the distrust poor nations feel about the World Bank, which is largely “under the control of the Group of 8 (G8) richest countries,” in being able to properly address the climate crisis:

Developing countries and environmental groups accused the World Bank on Friday of trying to seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades.

Drudge has strung together a climate-denier myth, a poorly reported story about the financial crisis, and a report about how developing nations are under the threat of climate change to give support to his right-wing fantasy world. The rest of us, however, live in the real world.

Yesterday, the Kansas Senate was swept by agreement to override Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ veto of legislation allowing two coal-fired power plants to be built in Kansas (whose permits were previously denied by Health and Environment Sec. Bremby).

Today, the vote moves over to the House, where the prospects for an override are much weaker but not entirely out of the question. The fate of coal in our nation may be determined. We will either usher in a precedent of immature, negligent energy policy or see Kansas make the history books in a revolutionary first move given ‘the fierce urgency of now.‘

I quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. here for several reasons.

Read more

One more denier talking point has been debunked by scientists using actual observations. You can read the Science News article here, which explains, “New research has dealt a blow to the skeptics who argue that climate change is all due to cosmic rays rather than to man-made greenhouse gases.”

You can read the original article, just published by the Institute of Physics’ Environmental Research Letters, “Testing the proposed causal link between cosmic rays and cloud cover” online here. The major finding:

[N]o evidence could be found of changes in the cloud cover from known changes in the cosmic ray ionization rate.

Here is the full abstract:

Read more

Assassinated 40 years ago, King’s words about civil rights echo today in the climate battle:

“We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’ “

I first saw this in Mike Tidwell’s book, The Ravaging Tide. Sen. Obama also loves to quote the second sentence.

The time to act is now.

Please stop misstating the findings of the Pielke et al. Nature paper.

The subhead on the Breakthrough Institute’s blog post on the paper says:

“Dangerous Assumptions” shattered the notion that we already have all the technology we need to deal with climate change.

And the first line in the blog post says:

A new piece in Nature today shatters the notion that we already have all the technology we need to deal with climate change.

In fact, it doesn’t, but this is obviously a major theme the Institute is pushing. Why?

I realize my long reponse to the Nature piece combined important points and less important points — and did not get to the heart of the key issues. Many readers wondered what was the real disagreement I and others have with Pielke and Breakthrough Institute (B.I.). Two commenters had posts that help clarify the issues. Let me boil the matter down to three issues:

1. I challenge Pielke or Hoffert or Shellenberger or Nordhaus or anyone else at B.I. [or anyone on the face of the planet] to show me where in the Nature piece it “shatters the notion we have all the technology we need to deal with climate change”? I assert that the only “notion” the Nature piece “shattered” is the idea that we can possibly “deal with climate change” without very aggressively deploying both energy-efficient and low-carbon technology starting immediately.
2. I also challenge Pielke and B.I. to indicate where the IPCC ever said “we already have all the technology we need to deal with climate change.” After all, if the IPCC never put forth this notion, then how could Pielke et al. shatter it? I would add that Princeton’s Robert Socolow never put forth this notion in his “stabilization wedges” work (although Marty Hoffert mistakenly seems to think he did). Nor have I made this assertion. Nor has anyone else I know in the energy or climate arena. I assert this is a straw man attack by Breakthrough.
3. I also challenge the statement in the Nature piece: “Enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at acceptable levels.” I specifically challenge Pielke and B.I. to state what “atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations” are “acceptable.” I assert that this statement has no meaning whatsoever if “acceptable levels” are not defined. I also assert that you never define what you mean by “enormous advances in energy technology” so the entire sentence is doubly meaningless. Are we talking major breakthroughs like fusion and hydrogen storage? Or are we just talking steady cost reductions to things like PV and solar thermal electric — a trend that would be driven as much by a serious price for carbon plus aggressive deployment strategies (which bring in manufacturing economies of scale) as anything else.

Let’s see if Pielke and B.I. take up the challenge — or if they just want to be delayers kibitzers in the climate debate. The answers to the questions should clarify just whose myths they think they are debunking.

Certainly B.I. expends an unusual amount of effort attacking Al Gore (see here). So in Part 2, I’ll examine why they do that — when Gore has long been one of the biggest champions of clean technology solutions, both deployment and R&D?