Finally, we have a top administration official telling it like it is. Energy Secretary and Nobelist Steven Chu told a Los Angeles Times reporter:

In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.

“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he said.

Precisely. [You can listen to an interview with the LAT reporter and me on "To the Point" here.]

We face desertification of perhaps a third of the earth that is “largely irreversible for 1000 years” — if homo sapiens are not sapiens enough to sharply and quickly reverse emissions trends. Part 1 looked at the canary-in-the-coal mine for desertification: “Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in.”

But the Southwest from Kansas and Oklahoma to California are right behind Australia, according to a 2007 Science (subs. req’d) paper:

Here we show that there is a broad consensus among climate models that this region will dry in the 21st century and that the transition to a more arid climate should already be under way. If these models are correct, the levels of aridity of the recent multiyear drought or the Dust Bowl and the 1950s droughts will become the new climatology of the American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades.

[Note: That study "only" modeled the A1B emissions scenario, which leads to 720 ppm by 2100. We are currently on track to 1000 ppm (see here).]

A December US Geological Survey report also warned that the SW faces “permanent drying” by 2050.

Before the permanent drying — aka a desert — sets in, you’d expect to see more and longer record-breaking droughts. In fact, Lester Snow, Director of California’s Department of Water Resources said Friday

We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern history.

Fundamentally, California and the SW face one of the gravest dangers predicted by climate science, the expansion of the subtropics, the dry regions of the planet getting drier and getting bigger. As New Scientist explains:

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In his first interview as Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu “offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama’s cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration’s plans to combat it.” Secretary Chu told the Los Angeles Times that the nation is like “a family buying an old house and being told by an inspector that it must pay a hefty sum to rewire it or risk an electrical fire that could burn everything down”:

I’m hoping that the American people will wake up.

Chu also worried the nation doesn’t yet recognize how great a threat global warming represents:

I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen.

One danger Chu highlighted in the interview was rising drought throughout the West, with major declines in the snowpack that waters California. In the worst case, Chu said:

We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going.

Chu described “public education as a key part of the administration’s strategy to fight global warming” — in addition to clean energy research, infrastructure, a national renewable electricity standard, and a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system.

Perhaps proving his point that Americans have yet to “wake up,” right-wing climate-denial bloggers retort that the Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist and energy expert can’t be believed because he “isn’t a climate scientist.”

A: Nonprofits need money, too, and I trust my readers.

We are doing a trial run of advertising on Climate Progress. It is a potentially significant source of revenue since according to Google Analytics, last month I had 1.1 million page views!

These are tough economic times all around, including for foundations and other donors who have most of their money in the stock market. My father was editor-in-chief of a medium-sized newspaper for 30 years, so I grew up understanding that ads are part of doing business for the media.

The editorial content of this blog is not going to be influenced by the ads, needless to say. Indeed, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) signed on for a trial ad run. I was initially concerned about whether NEI might have ads whose content I questioned, but the same NEI ad you will see running in rotation here is in today’s Washington Post, Greenwire, and ThinkProgress. My readers (i.e. you) are certainly as discriminating as theirs and more knowledgeable on energy issues.

I have written and placed this post — An introduction to nuclear power — on the sidebar for any new or occasional readers who might not have already read my more detailed analyses of nuclear power.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, especially on the NEI ad when it runs.

Here are links to all my discussions of nuclear power and its various limitations:

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The coal industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get out the message of “clean coal,” through front groups like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, campaign contributions, and an army of lobbyists. But the devastating December 22, 2008 coal ash slurry spill of the Kingston Fossil Plant in rural Tennessee broke through the cacophony of clean coal carolers. This ThinkProgress Wonk Room video is a stark reminder that in reality, coal isn’t clean.

Watch it:

This week alone, the news of progress away from dirty coal has reached a fever pitch:

Monday: A new report shows high levels of arsenic and other toxins in rivers downstream of the Kingston coal ash spill. “TVA says no drinking water standards were violated, but tests done by the nonpartisan, nonprofit group Environmental Integrity Project say otherwise.”

A Montana electric utility decided to “scrap its plans for a $900 million coal-fired power plant east of Great Falls and turn instead to renewable energy to meet the needs of its 65,000 Montana customers.”

Tuesday: In Pettus, West Virginia, five Coal River Mountain activists were arrested and charged with trespassing after locking themselves to a bulldozer and a backhoe at a Massey Energy mountaintop-removal mine site — that could instead be a wind farm.

250 people in the towns of Prenter and Seth, West Virginia “with orange and black water in their taps, tubs and toilets are suing eight coal companies they believe poisoned their wells by pumping mine wastes into former underground mines.”

Saying, “Coal makes no sense in this day and age,” Georgia Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D) introduced legislation to “limit then ban” coal from mountain-top removal and “place a moratorium on new coal-plant construction in the state.”

In her State of the State address, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) called for “a near-moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and a major reduction in reliance on coal for electricity generation over the next decade.”

Green Inc.‘s Tom Zeller Jr. notes, “The coal industry — which suffers from an image problem to begin with — has had a particularly rough few days.”

First, one of my favorite tunes, “Waltzing Matilda,” has nothing to do with dancing.

Second, somebody out there thinks Congress might actually put a climate bill on Obama’s desk this year.

First things first. So I’m singing to my daughter, reworking the lyrics to the “the unofficial national anthem of Australia,” to distract her from her quest to watch videos on my PC, and she cleverly asks to see a “Waltzing Matilda video.” And this is what I find on YouTube:

Turns out the song is about an Australian hobo, who gives the name Matilda to his swag, his “bed roll that bundled his belongings.” Turns out “waltzing Matilda” is slang for traveling with all one’s belongings on one’s back.

Given where Austalia is headed — “Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in” — and for how long (if we don’t act soon and strongly to stop it) — Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls around the globe — I’m now thinking that Waltzing Matilda will eventually be the official national anthem of Australia. But I digress.

So who is this mystery person who thinks we are on the fast track for climate action?

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[I am pleased to introduce a new CP blogger: Sean Pool. He is Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress. Sean graduated Yale in December 2008 with a double major in environmental engineering and international studies.]

Developers at Southern Montana Electric announced Monday that they are scrapping plans to build a 250-megawatt coal plant. Instead, SME has announced that they will seek financing for 120-megawatts of natural gas-fired generation and six megawatts of wind power.

Earthjustice, a top non-profit environmental law firm, succeeded in convincing the Montana courts that the Department of Environmental Quality should have to take into account the 2.1 million tons of annual carbon dioxide that the plant would emit before giving it the green light.

In addition to the lawsuits, the capital costs of the project had ballooned (in fact, since 2004, the project’s projected cost has doubled from initial estimates of $456 million to nearly $900 million), to a point where the project manager for the facility declared on KBLG radio in Billings, MT that the project “just simply cannot be accomplished.” He went on to cite the “aura of uncertainty” surrounding coal fired power as a leading factor in the decision to switch to gas and wind.

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