What is the best, most accurate soundbite for climate science advocates asked about projected climate impacts on this country by 2100 assuming we stay on business-as-usual emissions — according to the latest science?

I suggest some version of

On our current emissions path we are projected to warm most of the United States 10 – 15°F by 2100, with sea level rise of 5 feet or higher, the U.S. Southwest a permanent Dust Bowl, half or more species extinct, and much of the ocean a hot, acidic dead zone.

I say that, of course, because that is what the latest science says, as I document at length with links to the literature here:  An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water.

You can quibble with the word choice, and sometimes I don’t remember to say every word or phrase I’d like to, such as “from preindustrial levels” [or "from Kansas and Oklahoham to California"].   But this is now the median projection for business-as-usual emissions and warming.  It might not be that bad, but it could be much worse.

If you like to err on the conservative side, you can throw in “up to” — i.e. “we are projected to warm most of the U.S. up to 15°F or more by 2100, with sea level rise of up to 5 feet or more….”

Now conservatives, who err all the time, don’t like blunt progressives who know their science.  So they are trying to shout down this soundbite by misstating the science.

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“In Areas Fueled By Coal, Climate Bill Sends Chill” — so goes the title of a recent New York Times article by Felicity Barringer, in which she persuasively describes the “wounded economy” of Missouri. She explained the state’s reliance on “21 coal-fired power plants that emit more than 75 million tons of carbon dioxide annually and generate 80 percent of Missouri’s electricity,” based on “economic incentives built into the state’s laws, history and habits” that “encourage burning as much coal as possible.” But coal-state Democrats are fighting “legislation that would put a price on carbon-dioxide emissions”:

Missouri is hardly alone. Nebraska, Indiana and Iowa are also states where coal turns on most of the lights. That is why, even before Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, proposed legislation that would put a price on carbon-dioxide emissions, Senate and House Democrats from coal-using states began to push back. They are concerned that the new costs would get passed on to consumers, to Ms. Daniels-Hanner, to farmers from rural Missouri and to employers like the energy-hungry Noranda aluminum plant in New Madrid in the southeast of the state, which has 1,000 workers. And they worry that in an already wounded economy, increased costs could turn one of the relatively few economic blessings into a blight.

Is that really what “coal-state Democrats like Senator Claire McCaskill” are concerned about? After all, the “low-cost electricity” in coal states hasn’t helped their citizens much. In fact, states with higher electricity rates also have higher wages. Limiting coal pollution will increase the health of their constituents and spur a clean-energy economic recovery.

The actual beneficiary of coal’s dominance in states like Missouri have not been the working people Felicity Barringer profiles, but rather the polluting corporations and their conservative allies. In particular, Missouri is home to “the world’s leading coal merchant,” Peabody Energy, and the 20th largest utility in the country, Ameren. Peabody and Ameren respectively pulled in $6.6 billion and $7.5 billion in annual revenues in 2008. Peabody CEO Gregory Boyce’s salary was $11.95 million in 2008 — Ameren CEO Gary Rainwater made $5 million. Strangely for a piece about the politics of regulating coal’s pollution, Barringer fails to note Peabody and Ameren’s outsized political influence: Read more

A number of commenters suggested I write about population and global warming (see here).  Leading environmental journalist Fred Pearce beat me to the punch with an excellent piece at Yale’s e360 that I almost entirely agree with.

Pierce’s key point is that the rapacious consumption of hydrocarbons and other non-renewable resources practiced by the planet’s wealthiest 10% far outweighs the effects of population growth in developing nations:

It’s over-consumption, not population growth, that is the fundamental problem: By almost any measure, a small portion of the world’s people — those in the affluent, developed world — use up most of the Earth’s resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions.

Precisely.

The world’s richest half-billion people “” that’s about 7 percent of the global population “” are responsible for 50 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile the poorest 50 percent are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions.

This is not to say that population isn’t important, but mainly that the the population ship has sailed, as it were:

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Top Stories

A Revived EPA Takes on Climate Change and More

Over the past 10 weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency has been pumping out proposals and directives on everything from climate change to pollution from ships. In one high-profile move last month, the EPA said it will launch detailed reviews of permits for mountaintop coal mining operations, which can have profound effects on nearby waterways.

By moving so quickly, President Obama’s EPA has in effect reproached the Bush administration for dawdling on climate change. In calling for tougher regulations, it has also criticized Bush officials for catering to businesses and industry.

The White House is expected to sign off this week on the most important finding the EPA will make in his administration (see “EPA makes landmark finding: Global warming threatens public health and welfare“).

Rich-Poor Divide Still Stalls Climate Accord

Elisabeth Rosenthal writes at DotEarth:

Little concrete progress was achieved at the climate talks that ended here this week, but the fault lines that will divide the world as its attempts to negotiate a new climate treaty by the end of this year became vividly clear in the corridors of the Maritim Hotel Conference Center.

A host of developing countries, from China to Bolivia to the Philippines, took to the podium to insist that developed countries cut their emissions very rapidly by far more than they had planned. Most said the appropriate figure would be at least a 40 to 50 percent reductions compared to 1990 levels by 2020.

Note to Rosenthal, NYT:  It is time to start writing about China differently. It is I think absurd to continue to lump China in the same sentence or the same “developing country” category as the likes of Bolivia or Philippines, given that China can pretty much single-handedly finish off the climate and that China is a hyper developing, exporting giant that is a leader in many clean technologies (see one example below).

For a different, albeit more fanciful take, see Andrew Jones’ “Developed World Strikes a Climate Deal with Developing World (in a sim at least).”

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Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), chair of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, announced that top Obama officials will testify next week on the immediate need for clean energy legislation. Speaking at an event on building a clean energy economy hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rep. Markey said that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson will testify in hearings on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, beginning on Tuesday, April 21.

John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told attendees that “significant harm to human well-being is already occurring” from global warming — including agricultural impacts from monsoon changes in China, greater floods “on practically every continent,” increased drought and soil drying, increased wildfires, worse air pollution and heat stress, and timber losses from Alaska to Colorado due to pest explosion — and “worse is yet to come.”

The MIT event is being webcast live.

I am reprinting and updating one of my first posts (from August 2006) because I realize the subject remains confusing to people.  Indeed, I myself recently wrote a post on projected warming by 2100 that failed to explain whether I was talking about warming from recent levels or from preindustrial levels.  And, as I’ll blog on shortly, a recent statement I made on projected U.S. warming by 2100 was erroneously attacked by people unaware of basic climate science — the vast majority of this country is projected to warm up much faster than the planet as a whole, as the figure depicts for a scenario of 2.8°C warming from 1990 to 2095.]

Many of the articles that discuss the projected temperature change from global warming do not explain crucial points in a clear fashion.  A clarifying note is in order since Climate Progress discusses temperature a great deal — how much we are likely to warm on our current emissions path, why the planet must stay as close to 2°C (3.6°F) warming, and how we can do so.

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FirstEnergy retooling coal plant to burn biomass from fast-growing trees and grasses

The best and cheapest near-term strategy for reducing coal plant CO2 emissions without forcing utilities to simply walk away from their entire capital investment is to replace that coal with biomass.  Utilities can replace the coal partly, aka cofiring (see “If Obama stops dirty coal, as he must, what will replace it? Part 2: An intro to biomass cofiring“) or wholly, aka repowering (see “Southern Company embraces the only practical and affordable way to ‘capture’ emissions at a coal plant today “” run it on biomass“).

Cofiring could generate some 26 GW of high-availability low-carbon baseload power by 2020.  Energy Daily (subs. req’d) notes of the growing trend:

Over the past three years, Southern Co., Northeast Utilities, Dynegy, Xcel Energy, and DTE Energy have either converted plants or are in the process of doing so.

This month, another major utility joined the biomass bandwagon:

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Investing in a Clean-Energy Smart Grid is a critical step towards addressing both our economic and energy crises [see "A smart, green grid is needed to enable a near-term renewable revolution"]. Clearly, we need energy policies for the 21st century that will increase jobs and help us become more competitive, while reducing our use of foreign oil and curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases.

A National Conversation about the Clean-Energy Smart Grid
If we build a modern interstate energy transmission system, we will strengthen our national security, create quality jobs, and provide the backbone for broad economic growth, just like building the Interstate Highway System did in the 1950s and 1960s. And since this is a national problem that requires a national solution, it is important to make this a national conversation.

If we can get people across the entire country talking about the need for a clean-energy smart grid, the odds we can get it built will go up dramatically. That is why the Center for American Progress Action Fund is promoting a week-long national conversation about the clean-energy smart grid Monday, April 13 through Sunday, April 19 [See www.WiredforProgress.org to participate].

Will you join the conversation?

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