Another message from the nation’s top climate scientist is out (here). I’ll let Hansen explain the baseball analogy. His bottom line is:

Basic fossil fuel facts (about reserves) must be combined with basic climate facts described in the paper “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?”. That paper has been submitted to Science and is available in arXiv, the permanent archive for physics preprints. The main paper is here and the Supporting Material is here.

Our conclusion is that, if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, CO2 must be reduced from its present 385 ppm to, at most, 350 ppm. We find that peak CO2 can be kept to ~425 ppm, even with generous (large) estimates for oil and gas reserves, if coal use is phased out by 2030 (except where CO2 is captured and sequestered) and unconventional fossil fuels are not tapped substantially. Peak CO2 can be kept close to 400 ppm, if actual reserves are closer to those estimated by “peakists” (people who believe that we are already at peak global oil production, having extracted about half of readily extractable oil resources)….

A near-term moratorium on coal-fired power plants and constraints on oil extraction in extreme environments are important, because once CO2 is emitted to the air much of it will remain there for centuries.

HANSEN ISSUES A CALL TO ARMS

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Daniel J. Weiss and Robin Pam of Center for American progress has a new article on the health impacts of global warming (here). As they explain, “Some of the most severe health effects linked to global warming include the following:”

• More illness and death resulting from heat waves.
• Worsening air pollution causes more respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
• Vector-borne disease infections will rise.
• Changing food production and security may cause hunger.
• More severe and frequent wildfires will threaten more people.
• Flooding linked to rising sea levels will displace millions.

Already, “WHO now says that 150,000 deaths annually are attributable to the effects of climate change.” And we’ve only warmed about 1.5°F in the past century. We might warm 10°F century!

The time to act is now.

In his Senate Environment and Public Works nomination hearing today, David Hill, the Bush nominee for the General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was asked by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) what the EPA Administrator should do “if the President of the United States tells him to do something illegal”:

I believe that the courts have held, Senator, that within the unitary executive the administrator and the EPA, just as with all executive agencies, work for the President and are responsible to the President of the United States.

The “unitary executive” theory is a formerly obscure, right-wing legal argument that asserts “all executive authority must be in the President’s hands, without exception.” In other words, the president has practically unlimited executive power, and no actions of the courts nor the Congress can override it. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is a champion of the doctrine.

Bush has used the theory to justify at least 145 signing statements — including those that assert his right to ignore laws restricting on torture, open mail without a warrant, and block Congressional oversight of military spending.

Boxer’s question was not purely hypothetical. The current administrator of the EPA, Stephen L. Johnson, has overruled his staff’s scientific recommendations on global warming regulations and ozone limits — both apparently at the behest of the White House. Yesterday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) issued a subpoena to compel the EPA to turn over documents involving communications with the White House.

If Hill’s nomination is confirmed, the transformation of the Environmental Protection Agency to the Bush Protection Agency will be complete.

Digg It!

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[UPDATE: DOE link below fixed!]

Almost certainly not and absolutely not. I give two answers here because there are two very different types of solar energy:

1. Solar photovoltaics, PV, which is direct conversion of sunlight to electricity. It is well-known, high-tech, uneconomically expensive in most parts of this country (but poised to resume dropping sharply in price), and intermittent (power only when the sun shines).
2. Solar thermal electric or concentrated solar power (CSP), which uses mirrors to focus sunlight to heat a fluid to run a turbine or engine to make electricity. It is, as I’ve blogged, “The solar power you don’t hear about.” It is relatively low-tech, competitive today (and poised to drop sharply in price), and can be made load-following (matching the demand curve during the day and evening) and possibly baseload (round-the-clock).

I am writing this post in response to a Wednesday post by Michael Shellenberger (here). It is not entirely civil [but perhaps he didn't get the memo yet.] The headline and opening sentence are:

No Clean Tech Breakthroughs Needed? Think Again
For solar PV to be cost-competitive, the price per ton of CO2 would have to be $220.

The Center for American Progress’s Joe Rom [sic!], like much of the environmental establishment [sic!!], believes that a price on carbon dioxide can do much of the heavy lifting for deploying clean energy technologies. But the price carbon dioxide would have to reach for technologies like solar to be cost competitive is far higher than voters, far more concerned about higher energy prices than global warming, will allow.

Okay guys, you don’t want to be called delayers — I obliged. I am most certainly not part of the environmental establishment. I am not even an environmentalist [yes -- I occasionally write about polar bears -- what can I say, those are by far my most heavily trafficked posts, and polar bears are cute, according to my legion of 'tween readers.]. I am a physicist, an energy technologist, and climate policy analyst.

As for being part of any “establishment” — “a pejorative term used to refer to the traditional ruling class elite and the structures of society which they control” — let me tell you, the elites don’t blog. They don’t have to, they actually control events, which I obviously don’t. Take U.S. energy and climate policy … please! [Sorry, couldn't resist.]

But I digress. The key question is — Does solar energy need technology breakthroughs funded by a major government program of the kind B.I. advocates? The answer is clearly “no.”

SOLAR PV IS A BIG WINNER IN THE MEDIUM-TERM (post-2020)

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After reporting last week on the climate policy progression carving its way through the Maryland Senate, the same measures were defeated in a Maryland House committee this week. Supposedly, the bill was killed by pressure from industry and labor lobbyists, ironically accompanied by steelworkers draped with “Save Our Jobs” t-shirts.

First of all, the United Steelworkers of America Union endorses the Apollo Alliance – a coalition of labor, business, and environmental groups that collaborate to advocate a clean economy revolution.

Additionally, just last Thursday a handful of labor unions – SEIU, UFCW, LIUNA – declared their support for the legislation in question.

The labor movement is no stranger to the prospect of global warming legislation, and more intimately than most, understands the need to transition our economy and the base of our workforce. In their press statement last week, the labor unions acknowledged that -

There are incredible opportunities to foster the development of all new “green collar” jobs. These jobs will include installing high-performance appliances and machinery, retrofitting buildings that are leaking energy, building wastewater reclamation, and reusing materials, to name a few.

Then today, another big green jobs announcement rang out in DC -

The United Steelworkers (USW), the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Blue Green Alliance, a partnership of the USW and Sierra Club, today launched the national Green Jobs for America campaign. The campaign will focus on the ability of a serious commitment to clean, renewable energy to make us more energy independent, help us end our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels and create over 820,000 new green jobs nationwide.

As part of their effort, they will be running a major educational campaign in a handful of states. Maryland is not one of the states. It seems, however, the campaign could find traction there, as a handful of steelworkers in Maryland could do for a meeting with their union, and they should be easily identified by a t-shirt sounding their common interest – “Save Our Jobs.”

– Kari Manlove

I do hope people will read through the comment section of the previous post (see here) — as I think we are getting down to defining the (serious) differences between me and Shellenberger and Nordhaus.

I will be doing a longer post today when I get back from speaking at ACEEE’s Energy Efficiency Finance Forum, April 10-11, 2008.

I will also be completing my debunking of the Pielke et al. Nature piece over the next few days. It has taken me quite some time to figure out the best way to explain all the reasons the piece is wrong. And it will take me three posts, not two as I had said.

Readers appear to be as happy as Ted and I are that civility has broken out on the blogosphere. But you know what they say about the lion laying down the with lamb — the lamb doesn’t get much sleep! Just kidding.