The fate of FL and LA if we’re myopic and greedy enough to let the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) collapse [click to see entire SE coast].

A new study in Science finds that sea level rise from a collapse of the WAIS would likely be 25% higher for North America than previously estimated:

The catastrophic increase in sea level, already projected to average between 16 and 17 feet around the world, would be almost 21 feet in such places as Washington, D.C., scientists say, putting it largely underwater. Many coastal areas would be devastated. Much of Southern Florida would disappear.

This article has already started to make news around the globe (Reuters story here). But, frankly, divining the difference between a rise of 16.5 feet (an incalculably devastating catastrophe) and 21 feet (an incalculably devastating catastrophe) is like trying to count the number of devils on a pin.

Nonetheless, WAIS collapse is all but inevitable given business-as-usual warming of 5-7°C. As I explained in my book:

Perhaps the most important, and worrisome, fact about the WAIS is that it is fundamentally far less stable than the Greenland ice sheet because most of it is grounded far below sea level.

For a longer discussion of WAIS and its unique instability, see “Antarctica has warmed significantly over past 50 years.”

So what is new in the Science article, “The Sea-Level Fingerprint of West Antarctic Collapse” (subs. req’d)? Study coauthor and geophysicist Jerry X. Mitrovica, director of the Earth System Evolution Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, explains:

Read more

On Tuesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) stood with fellow Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to introduce principles for climate legislation, saying “We know that we have to act, and we intend to act.” David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s senior advisers, told E&E News that the effort by Congress to construct legislation to fight global warming is more than welcome:

We think that it’s healthy that there’s so much momentum in Congress to address this problem. It’s long overdue.

Boxer admitted that December is her working deadline for getting a bill “out of committee.” Other Senate chairs, including Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingman (D-NM) and Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) intend to weigh in on any legislation. “All of those committees,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told E&E News, “especially my old committee, EPW, have an important role to play for the Senate to produce a sound cap-and-trade bill that meets the president’s emission reductions objectives.”

At Climate Progress, Joe Romm therefore doubts climate legislation will be passed before 2010: “So this has to get through multiple Senate committees, pass the full Senate, be reconciled with whatever comes out of the House, and then pass both House and Senate again, and finally end up on Barack Obama’s desk.”

Meanwhile, President Obama continues to build a green-powered administration, with the selection of Robert Sussman and Lisa Heinzerling as senior EPA policy advisers, Todd Stern as the State Department climate envoy, climate justice leader Ron Sims as deputy secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and even new assistant White House chef Sam Kass, a strong supporter of local, sustainable, and healthy food.

Showing that Obama won’t just wait for Congress to act, yesterday the EPA and Department of Justice restarted a “national initiative, targeting electric utilities whose coal-fired power plants violate the law,” with a lawsuit against a Kansas utility whose coal-fired power plant has been in violation of the Clean Air Act for more than ten years. The case against Westar Energy had been held up by the Bush administration since 2003. A memo from Stephen Johnson’s deputy Marcus Peacock practically shut down all enforcement activity in 2005 .

It looks like approval for eight more conventional coal plants now in the pipeline will be delayed and/or cancelled.

This time, the action is taking place in Lansing, Michigan, where Governor Jennifer Granholm has just called for a near-moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired power plants while state agencies consider “all feasible and prudent” alternatives.

In her State of the State address, Governor Granholm also pledged to reduce Michigan’s reliance on fossil fuel-generated electricity by 45 percent by 2020–an aggressive goal. She framed the pledge not in terms of greenhouse gases but in terms of dollars:

Read more

In a speech at the Department of Energy today, President Obama announced he was signing a memorandum to direct the department to issue new energy efficiency standards for common household appliances — something Secretary Steven Chu has highlighted in the past as a top priority. He also responded to critics who “ridiculed our notion that we should use part of the money to modernize the entire fleet of federal vehicles,” asking, “Are these folks serious?”

This is what they call “pork.” You know the truth. . . . So when you hear these attacks deriding something of such obvious importance as this, you have to ask yourself, “Are these folks serious?” Is there any wonder we haven’t had a real energy policy in this country?

Watch it:

Neo-Hooverite conservatives have attacked numerous efficiency initiatives in the recovery plan:

– $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees

– $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations

– $5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration

– $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings

As President Obama explained, federal fleet modernization “will not only save the federal government significant money over time, it will not only create manufacturing jobs for folks who are making these cars, it will set a standard for private industry to match.” This is as true for the green building efforts and other efficiency initiatives. Speaking to an audience of Department of Energy scientists, he concluded:

For the last few years, I talked about these issues with Americans from one end of this country to another. Washington may not be ready to get serious about energy independence, but I am and so are you and so are the American people.

Inaction is not an option that’s acceptable to me and it’s certainly not acceptable to the American people, not on energy, not on the economy, not at this critical moment.

In Obama’s words, it’s time for Congress “to rise to this moment.”

I have been blogging that we won’t see the U.S.’s big cap-and-trade bill until next year (see “Boxer makes clear U.S. won’t pass climate bill this year“). And I’ve argued that Obama can get a better climate bill in 2010. At least one climate wonk, however, disagrees (see “I just learned two shocking things“).

So now I want to hear from you — wonk or not. On what day will Obama sign his big climate bill?

I’m going to pick Earth Day next year – April 22, 2010, although I doubt the GOP would accommodate such symbolism and frankly a climate bill isn’t about saving the Earth, it’s about saving the next 50 generations from irreversible Hell and High Water. Hmm, I’m already starting to talk myself out of that date….

Here’s something to factor in to your guess expert projection. E&E Daily (subs. req’d) reported Wednesday:

Read more

We are facing catastrophic sea level rise this century on our current greenhouse gas emissions path (see “Startling new sea level rise research: “Most likely” 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100“).

The direct impact of such sea level rise is so enormous — and so easy to show visually — that other serious ramifications hardly get mentioned at all. So kudos to Reuters for reporting:

KOLKATA, India: Rising sea levels are causing salt water to flow into India’s biggest river, threatening its ecosystem and turning vast farmlands barren in the country’s east, a climate change expert warned Monday.

Much of the world’s cropland — especially in the developing world — is close to sea level and near the shore. I haven’t seen a global quantification of the impact of salt water infiltration. I did find a 2008 discussion of “Global Warming and Salt Water Intrusion: Bangladesh Perspective,” which concludes:

Global Warming has already started to hit the Bangladesh coastal areas. The salty sea water intrusion and its disastrous effects in landscape, ecology and human health already created widescale agony amongst the inhabitants of Bangladesh coastal belts….

A 3-foot rise by century’s end … would wreak havoc in Bangladesh on an apocalyptic, Atlantis-like scale, according to scientific projections and models.

A quarter of the country would be submerged…. As many as 30 million people would become refugees in their own land, many of them subsistence farmers with nothing to subsist on any longer.

And again, we’re facing 5 feet of sea level rise by 2100.

The impact on India of just the salt water infiltration will be devastating, as the Reuters piece details:

Read more

The Wonk Room would like to congratulate Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman, who the Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports “is returning to the Environmental Protection Agency” as “senior policy counsel to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, advising her on climate and environmental issues across the agency.” An official announcement is expected shortly. Before joining the Center for American Progress, Sussman was the Deputy Administrator during the Clinton administration, serving under Carol Browner, now President Obama’s White House energy and environment adviser.

Sussman was a Wonk Room regular, writing on the Mary Gade scandal, the Bush administration, and climate legislation. In particular, he explained in clear language why Bush’s disdain for environmental regulation was flawed. Sussman demolished the argument that laws like the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act are not applicable to the threat of global warming:

The truth is that our environmental laws were not written to be static. They are flexible tools to address unanticipated or emerging problems that science identifies over time.

Sussman’s work for the Center for American Progress highlighted that practical approach. He crafted recommendations for regulatory and funding mechanisms to spur the development of carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal plants, “to reconcile reliance on coal for electricity with the need to reduce the threat of global warming.”

His knowledge, experience, and passion will be invaluable in restoring the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency.

If Watts Up With That can be named a leading science blog, Climate Progress can be one of the “Top 50 Foreign Policy Blogs.”

Seriously, though, global warming is the most important foreign-policy issue facing the country (see “Brookings joins the realists: 7 Years to Climate Midnight” and “Does a serious bill need action from China?“).

President Obama appears to understands that given his choice of climate-wise Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. And Clinton certainly understands that, since, as the NYT‘s Andy Revkin reported yesterday:

Read more

Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson put together his own “clean coal” ad as part a terrific post first published here.

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:

Read more