[We are barreling headlong into "catastrophic" 5-7°C warming by 2100. Bill Becker says it's time for the federal government to stop subsidizing humanity's self-destruction. That means the green eyeshades -- fiscal managers, accountants, and economists -- must start fully accounting for the harm that carbon emissions do to our health and well-being and for the cost of destroying ecosystem services.]

As Congress gets ready to debate an economic recovery package – and President Obama gets ready to sign one — they should use a simple test to determine who and what gets the money: Is the project friend or foe in regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing America’s energy security?

At some point, our energy producers, road-builders, auto manufacturers, building contractors and other sectors of the economy need an unequivocal message from Washington that public funds must pass a strict litmus test from now on. Unless there are legitimate overriding factors of national security or economic trauma, public funds will no longer support global climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels.

In other words, when it comes to taxpayer money, the carbon economy need not apply.

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Here are all the year’s posts viewed by 15,000 or more people.

It is a more arbitrary list than the most-discussed posts of 2008, since it is wholly determined by whether I get picked up by some uber-popular website like Digg or if the post pops up in search engines. But I will include this list in the year-end recap if for no other reason than it contains one post guaranteed to make you laugh:

15,933 Views: Physicists forced to reaffirm that human-caused global warming is “incontrovertible”

[The only post to make both lists.]

18,962: The truth-telling ad ABC won’t let you see — and what you can do about it

[This received 1700 Diggs and temporarily crashed my system -- otherwise it probably would have gotten considerably more views.]

20,611: Bush launches Unendangered Species List, phones “Rename the Polar Bear” winner

[A lot of people come to Climate Progress after doing a search on polar bears.]

21,848: More conclusive proof of global warming

[If that post doesn't make you smile, then you are simply impervious to schadenfreude.]

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CNN updates the coal story of the year:

Estimates for the amount of thick sludge that gushed from a Tennessee coal plant last week have tripled to more than a billion gallons, as cleanup crews try to remove the goop from homes and railroads and halt its oozing into an adjacent river.

That would be “enough to fill 1,660 Olympic-size swimming pools” assuming you wanted to fill your pool with “concentrated levels of mercury and arsenic.” And that is, as Richard Graves puts it, “more than 100 times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster and, in fact, more than every drop of petroleum used in the United States that day.”

The next time someone says “clean coal,” be sure to do that bit where you cough and say “B.S.” Or maybe skip the couging part.

Related Posts:

• The day ‘clean coal’ died
• Clean coal, meet harsh reality
• Clean coal: Claptrap or crap trap?
• Is coal with carbon capture and storage a core climate solution?

Time is running out:

Climate change is happening more rapidly than anyone thought possible, the German government’s expert, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, warned in an interview.

The threats posed by climate change are worse than those imagined by most governments, warned Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the scientist who heads the Potsdam Institute for Research on Global Warming Effects and acts as an adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate-change issues.

Schellnhuber warns that previous predictions about climate change and its catastrophic effects were too cautious and optimistic.

“In nearly all areas, the developments are occurring more quickly than it has been assumed up until now,” Schellnhuber told the Saarbruecker Zeitung newspaper in an interview published Monday, Dec. 29. “We are on our way to a destabilization of the world climate that has advanced much further than most people or their governments realize.”

This isn’t news to top climate scientists around the world (see Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path) or even to top climate scientists in this country (see US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed” IPCC projections, SW faces “permanent drying”) and certainly not to people who follow the scientific literature, like Climate Progress readers (see Study: Water-vapor feedback is “strong and positive,” so we face “warming of several degrees Celsius”).

But it’s always worth reporting when another leading scientist goes public with the truth that has been too long the bastion of “off the record” remarks:

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Right now, it’s mostly the worst of times for the environment — and hence the health and well-being of current and future generations. David Sassoon of the must-read climate blog SolveClimate has a Dickensian tale I’m reprinting it its entirety below — and what could be more Dickensian than coal and tar!

Coal ash deposits in the USA are now under renewed scrutiny after a giant spill just before Christmas released 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic sludge into Tennessee waterways. Water tests near the spill from the Kingston Fossil Plant showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders. The spill muddied the waters in the Emory river and is flowing into tributaries of the Tennessee River – the water supply for Chattanooga and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

So now a big question mark hangs over the hundreds of coal plants all across the country which store their fly ash in unlined embankments and ponds — like the one that failed last week. Most are situated near rivers that supply water needed by the coal plants to operate.

The NY Times reported that in the US, coal plants produce 129 million tons of postcombustion byproducts a year. It’s the second-largest waste stream in the country, after municipal solid waste, and it’s storage and handling is unregulated. Who knew?

It is yet another measure of the high price of addiction to fossil fuels, which is not only polluting the air and warming the earth, but fouling the nation’s terrestrial and aquatic environment as well. The Tennessee coal spill is a wake up call not only for the coal industry, but the oil industry as well, and not only for America but for Canada, too.

Both nations, still in pursuit of endless supplies of fossil energy, are collaborating on the exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands whose byproduct will be spills like the one in Tennessee, only on steroids.

In Alberta, visible from outer space, are 23 squares miles of unstable, unregulated and leaking man-made “tailings ponds” holding the toxic leavings of the mining process. A dam breach is only a matter of time.

Required reading on this subject is Andrew Nikiforuk’s new book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, recently published to wide acclaim in Canada and set for US release in March. In this context, one chapter in particular called “The Ponds” is of direct and chilling relevance:

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Technology Review has an excellent new article, “Lifeline for Renewable Power: Without a radically expanded and smarter electrical grid, wind and solar will remain niche power sources.”

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The above pics are the Matterhorn, 1960 and 2006. The website DoubleExposure explains:

Global warming is affecting our planet in countless ways, not in some remote future, but today. DOUBLEXPOSURE documents one aspect of the warming climate through fine-art photography that brings the viewer into panoramas of glaciers once grand but now receding. The compelling comparisons put into stark view the fact of melting glaciers.

The actual photos are going on display in a few cities:

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The McKinsey Global Institute has done some of the most comprehensive and credible recent analyses on energy efficiency potential and carbon mitigation cost curves (see “Must read McKinsey report shatters myths on cost of curbing climate change“). They have summarzed their work in “2008 Research in Review,” so this is a good opportunity to create one universal link for their work.

One core MGI factoid you can use: Nearly 40% of the U.S. emissions reduction potential by 2030 is from energy efficiency (see here).

MGI is best known for its comprehensive cost curve for global greenhouse gas reduction measures (click to enlarge), which concluded measures needed to stabilize emissions at 450 ppm have a net cost near zero — the same conclusion as the International Energy Agency and IPCC.

Another 2008 MGI report has its own stunning conclusion:

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If I weren’t on vacation, I wouldn’t have read Oprah magazine. No really. But then I would have missed a piece of misinformation gratuitously foisted on her readers.

For her legion upon legion upon legion of fans, the big news is the O has recently been losing her battle with weight [-- one legion does not do her empire justice. Turns out a Roman legion isn't that big, just a few thousand fighters. Who knew? In any case, Oprah is now bigger than ancient Rome. No, I don't mean physically -- give her a break, it's only 40 pounds, and she's under a lot of stress and has a thryoid problem to boot. But I digress]. Even legions have their limits in certain fights.

But for clean energy advocates, it is a single sentence buried deep in the magazine that should be a source of distress:

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The best eco-movie of the year is Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E — easily one of the best movie dystopias ever. It ranks with Blade Runner, Brazil, A Clockwork Orange, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the Matrix, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and the first two Terminator movies.

Yes, Hollywood loves dystopias. Perhaps because it is one (okay, technically Hollywood is an anti-utopia).

The worst eco-movie of the year for me was Quantum of Solace. I had been somewhat hopeful upon learning the villain was a green-washing “eco-entrepreneur.” But as a huge James Bond fan, I was quite disappointed. The writing and directing were dreadful, among the worst of the entire series. The story line was incoherent. The characters’ motivations were opaque. And the direction of the action scenes suffered from the Jason Bourne syndrome — way too much fast-cutting.

I still like the grittiness of Daniel Craig — his Bond is much more like Ian Fleming imagined in his books than anyone since the Sean Connery of the early movies. Still, the gritty realism is undercut again and again as one guy with a pistol keeps beating a dozen guys with machine guns — not something you find much in the books.

Environmentally, one incidental character did mention global warming in passing. The only “good” eco-point the movie “exposed” was the danger of hydrogen fuel cells. But even that was an absurd contrivance — with a hotel in the middle of nowhere apparently keeping hydrogen in every room. I’m afraid that’s less plausible than the repeated pistol victories.

As for the brilliantly crafted Wall-E, the movie deserves special attention for two reasons:

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[A guest post by a federal employee with over 30 years experience in energy and the environment (see "Utility decoupling on steroids").]

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are the darling of energy and climate policy. Simple in concept, an RPS requires that a certain percentage of electricity supply come from renewable resources. Twenty-six states plus the district of Columbia have RPS requirements of one kind or another, and when it comes to federal energy and climate legislation, the one thing nearly everyone agrees on is the need for an RPS.

As usual, California is leading the pack with a goal getting 33% of their supply from renewables by 2020. Congress is considering a federal RPS between 10% and 15% by as early as 2015.

All fine and good, except for one thing – from a policy perspective, an RPS is the cart before the horse. The sizzle without the steak. The bark without the bite. The sound of one hand clapping. It’s the … oh you get the idea. It’s zen policy. Sexy, even necessary, but not sufficient, and certainly not the kind of coherent and systematic approach we need if we’re to avoid atmospheric levels of GHG in excess of 450 ppm and the hell on earth such a catastrophe would create.

What’s not to like about requiring that a certain percentage of our power come from clean, renewable energy?

Well, for starters, it’s only half a solution, and it’s the expensive half at that.
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[JR: This is a reprint of a post by A Siegel.]

The incoming US Congress will be running full out in January to develop a stimulus package to have ready, potentially, for signature by President Barack Hussein Obama minutes into his Presidency. Organization after organization, business after business, motivated citizen after motivated citizen are knocking on every door conceivable with ideas for funding that range from great through good to indifferent to bad all the way to simply venally corrupt.

Just sent to the Transition team and en route Hill offices is, well, a truly “great” approach, a path that could massively stimulate economic activity throughout the United States while setting us on a path for a stronger tomorrow economically and in terms of global warming. As the 2030 Challenge Stimulus Plan summary concludes:

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Tip O’Neil, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, once declared that “all politics is local.” The same might be said for climate change. While its consequences are global, its root cause is the greenhouse gas emissions each of us emits directly or indirectly from our vehicles, buildings and appliances.

Since anthropogenic climate change is the result of the millions of energy decisions each of us makes in the course of our lives, then it stands to reason that the solution to climate change lies in making those decisions differently. Each us must sign a treaty with ourselves, a personal Kyoto Protocol. Without that individual commitment, no international agreement to mitigate global warming will be worth the recycled paper it’s written on.

This point came home recently when I met a woman named Clare Dakin in London. Clare is the UK’s representative for a program called Project Green Hands. Its objective is to reverse the desertification of Tamil Nadu, the seventh most populous state in India, by planting 114 million trees within the next 10 years.

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Science blogger extraordinaire Tim Lambert (aka Deltoid) has called me out. I wrote:

Tierney is easily the worst science writer at any major media outlet in the country. Pretty much every energy or climate piece he writes is riddled with errors and far-right ideology, including this one.

Lambert writes that he “must, however, disagree with one of Romm’s points”:

The second sentence is correct, but what about Gregg Easterbrook?

I do realize that Tierney cites Easterbrook as a scientific authority, so his Easterbrook number is 1, but Easterbrooks’s Easterbrook number is zero.

I cannot argue with the assertion that Gregg Edmund Easterbrook (GEE) is one of the leading anti-scientific writers (see “People Who Just Don’t Get Global Warming: Gregg Easterbrook and the Editors of the Atlantic” and “Gregg Easterbrook still knows nothing about global warming — and less about clean energy“). And I must agree with Wonk Room, which recently documented “Brookings Science ‘Expert’ Doesn’t Understand Basic Science.”

But first off, I am going to claim victory on a technicality. GEE is not a science writer at a major media outlet (see his Wikipedia bio here). He writes on a broad variety of subjects, including football, for a broad variety of outlets. GEE is easily the worst freelance science writer published by multiple major media outlets — but that’s as far as I can go.

Tierney not only has a real science column with the NYT where he says staggeringly anti-scientific things and quotes anti-scientific organizations like CEI. Tierney states his anti-scientific philosophy right on the front page of his online column, Tierney Lab:

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Who the heck knows what the best posts are? But I do have two quantitative measures of the hottest posts — most comments and most views (Part II).

The most-discussed post received more than 500 comments, a figure I doubt I’ll ever match again! This most comments” list is, I think, a good introduction to what Climate Progress is all about:

44 (comments). Krauthammer, Part 2: The real reason conservatives don’t believe in climate science.

47. The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power, Part 1

48. Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us

48. Obama’s strongest message on climate yet: John Holdren to be named Science Adviser

50. American Physical Society stomps on Monckton disinformation — thank you Climate Progress readers

50. Media enable denier spin 1: A (sort of) cold January doesn’t mean climate stopped warming

51. Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 2.5: The fuzzy math of the stabilization wedges

57. Peak Oil? Bring it on!

61. How desperate are climate scientists? Desperate enough to contemplate geo-engineering.

61. What are the near-term climate Pearl Harbors?

64. Plug-in Hybrid FAQ

64. “Nature article on ‘cooling’ confuses media, deniers: Next decade may see rapid warming

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The AP reports:

Manufacturers and retailers across the country report sales that are surprisingly brisk even during an economic downturn. For example, light-bulb maker OSRAM Sylvania said it doubled its LED sales since last year to between 15 million and 20 million LED units.

LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, can be three times more expensive than traditional incandescent lights but they use 90 percent less energy, produce less heat and last longer.

Interestingly, the AP feels a need to “balance” this good news cleantech story about the actions of millions of sensible people by quoting one myopic doofus:

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Three days later, the traditional media has finally picked up the shocking toxic coal sludge story (see “Clean coal, meet harsh reality“). It was on NBC last night (among other networks). Elliott Negin of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained:

This disaster shows that the term ‘clean coal’ is an oxymoron. It’s akin to saying ‘safe cigarette.’ Clean coal doesn’t exist.

TP has the video:

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This looks like a job for a green stimulus!

Seriously. I’m asking you — how annoying is that?

I honestly don’t know how I should feel about someone copying my title for a book on exactly the same subject. But I learned today (of all days) from Paul in the comments (here) about this:

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The media are drama queens. The Washington Post has an Ali-Frazier front page story, ” ‘Green’ Jobs Compete for Stimulus Aid: Obama Weighs Them Vs. Traditional Projects,” which opens:

In one of the first internal struggles of the incoming Obama administration, environmentalists and smart-growth advocates are trying to shift the priorities of the economic stimulus plan that will be introduced in Congress next month away from allocating tens of billions of dollars to highways, bridges and other traditional infrastructure spending to more projects that create “green-collar” jobs.

But I’m afraid this isn’t even a Thrilla in Vanilla. The stimulus was always going to be mostly traditional spending, with maybe one-third (or more) going toward green projects.

I’d add there are lots of traditional stimulus projects that are green — such as repairing our decades old water infrastructure or funding mass transit. So I suspect under a quarter of the stimulus package is likely to be atypically green.

As is common in drama-queen articles by respectable media outlets like the Post, buried inside the article is a paragraph that completely guts the entire thesis of the rest of the story:

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