Part 1 discussed why global warming means killer storms worse than Katrina and Gustav.  This post looks in more detail at Katrina and Gustav, and why they weren’t as strong and hence as devastating at landfall as they could have been.

My key point here is one that is rarely discussed in the literature dealing with global warming and hurricanes: All things being equal, if a storm taking the same track of Gustav (or Katrina) occurred in 2050, then, rather than weakening before making landfall, it would probably have strengthened considerably, creating far more havoc.

Let’s look at the region in 2050, assuming BAU (business-as-usual) warming, or no effort to reverse current emissions trends.

Now that is bad news for New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and the South Atlantic. The average warming in the Gulf, Caribbean, and coastal Atlantic is 1°C to 2°C, but this model has an enormous body of very warm water 2°C to 3°C over much of the typical storm path for a hurricane like Katrina or Gustav. There are two relevant points to recall:

1. The National Climatic Data Center 2006 report on Katrina notes that the surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Gulf of Mexico during the last week in August 2005 “were one to two degrees Celsius above normal.“
2. In the case of both Katrina and Gustav, they hit colder water before hitting the coast — a key reason they were far weaker at landfall than they might have been, as these pictures make clear:

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When Waxman-Markey passed out of committee on Friday 33-25, only three Democrats voted no, along with every Republican but Bono Mack [see "House committee approves landmark (bipartisan!) clean energy and climate bill"].

One of those Democrats was Jim Matheson of Utah.  The state’s largest newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, wrote a strong editorial Sunday criticizing that decision, “Vital energy bill deserves support“:

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Our guest blogger is Reece Rushing, director of regulatory and information policy at American Progress.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s selection to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, is likely to be solid on the environment, based on her record on the Second Circuit of Appeals. In 2007, she authored the decision to strike down an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Water Act rule that had been corrupted by the Bush White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) on behalf of energy companies. Georgetown law professor and American Progress affiliated scholar Lisa Heinzerling, now senior counsel for the EPA, explained at the time that Sotomayor’s Riverkeeper v. EPA decision was a “huge victory“:

In a huge victory for fish and other fans of the Clean Water Act, the Second Circuit last week ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency may not use cost-benefit analysis in setting standards for cooling water structures used at existing power plants around the country. . . .

The court ruled that the Clean Water Act does not permit the use of cost-benefit analysis in setting these standards or in allowing deviations from the standards. Quite reasonably, the court held that the agency could engage in a form of cost-effectiveness analysis in setting standards, by identifying the level of protection afforded by state-of-the-art technology and then allowing use of cheaper but equally effective technologies in meeting the standards. But the court clearly ruled out OIRA’s favorite technique for undoing regulatory advances, cost-benefit analysis.

As OMB Watch explained in 2002, EPA originally “sought to require the 59 largest plants in the most ecologically sensitive areas to meet the performance achievable by a closed-cycle cooling system, which reduces fish kills by up to 98 percent by recirculating or reusing water.” But by “ignoring the requirements of the law” and applying corporate-friendly cost-benefit analysis to the question of the “best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact”, OIRA “embraced alternative, less protective measures urged by energy companies — including Cinergy, Edison Electric, and Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G), among others.” Riverkeeper noted that this weaker rule “would allow existing plants to kill 20 to 1000 times more fish” than the stronger proposed mandate.

This April, Sotomayor’s decision was wrongly struck down by the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the 6-3 opinion to uphold Bush’s activist interpretation of the Clean Water Act, with Souter, Ruth Ginsberg, and John Stevens in dissent. Scalia’s decision reversed not only the Second Circuit decision but earlier Supreme Court precedent. Scalia effectively ruled that Congressional silence equals consent, writing that the Clean Water Act’s “silence is meant to convey nothing more than a refusal to tie the agency’s hands as to whether cost-benefit analysis should be used.” As Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent:

Section 316(b) neither expressly nor implicitly authorizes the EPA to use cost-benefit analysis when setting regulatory standards; fairly read, it prohibits such use.

If Sotomayor’s record on the Second Circuit is any guide, she will hold with Justice Souter’s example of putting science and the law above the interests of corporate polluters.

Download the Second Circuit opinion.

Download the Supreme Court decision.

The U.S. economy is incredibly energy inefficient, a key reason even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar.

This inefficiency is summed up best in one remarkable statistic that I first learned at the U.S. Department of Energy and then reprinted in my 1999 book, Cool Companies:  How the best businesses boost profits and productivity by reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

The average fossil-fuel electric power plant converts only one-third of the primary energy it burns–coal, oil, or gas–into electricity.  More energy is lost distributing it from the power plant to the end user.  The energy lost by U.S. electric power generators equals all of the energy that the entire country of Japan uses for all purposes:  buildings, industry, and transportation.  Most of this lost energy is in the form of waste heat that is literally thrown away by electric utilities:  Thus, more fossil fuels must be burned in your company’s furnaces and boilers to generate the heat and steam needed to run your business.

The key to reducing most of that waste is the simultaneous generation of electricity and heat, called cogeneration, combined heat and power (CHP) or recyled energy. You can read the basics here.

I have included CHP as one of the 12-14 “stabilization wedges” we need to stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm (here). Some people, like my friend Tom Casten, Chairman, Recycled Energy Development, think it could be multiple wedges.  In an interview I recommend all readers watch (here) or read (here), Casten asserts that in this country alone:

We could take the 42 percent of carbon dioxide that comes from electricity and cut it in half and save $70 billion.

For more details on the U.S. commercial and industrial CHP potential — estimated to be some 160,000 MW (!) — and the policies needed to achieve it, see “Recycled Energy “” A core climate solution.“  For a September profile on Casten with a fascinating case study of recycling energy, see this Forbes article.

The rest of this post excerpts the second half of the introduction to Cool Companies, which presents numerous case studies of manufacturing companies that have cost-effectively employed CHP and other low-carbon strategies to boost profits and productivity — strategies that are still available to the overwhelming majority of US companies, strategies that will become the norm once the nation is committed to strong climate action.

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President Obama has chosen federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.  The African American Environmentalist Association has an extended discussion of her energy and environmental views, reprinted below:

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Government to embrace ‘Green New Deal’

The [Japanese] government will promote “Green New Deal” policies to expand the nation’s markets related to environmental conservation and build a society where environmental policies will not hamper economic growth, according to a draft of the 2009 white paper on the environment.

The annual report on the environment, recycling society and biodiversity, penned by the Environment Ministry, will call for such policies as the promotion of environmentally friendly consumer appliances for replacement demand. The Cabinet is set to approve the paper June 2.

The Green New Deal strategy, officially unveiled by Environment Minister Tetsuo Saito on April 20, is designed to expand Japan’s environment-linked market 1.7-fold from the 2006 level to 120 trillion by 2020 and double employment in the market to 2.8 million.

In one of the main features of the new policy, the government will provide interest of up to 3 percent on loans to be taken out by businesses for introducing natural energy and equipment with low carbon dioxide emissions…..

The paper also refers to Prime Minister Taro Aso’s pledge in early April to boost Japan’s solar power output capacity 20-fold by 2020.

[Note:  If anyone can find this white paper, especially an English-language version, please post the link.]

Russian Uranium Sale to U.S. Is Planned

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Major coal utilities are now publicly endorsing electricity decarbonization, an all but unimaginable position even 12 months ago.  And although Duke is a member of USCAP, which was the basis of Waxman-Markey, it remains remarkable that the company has joined the call for strong climate action (see How does Duke CEO Jim Rogers sleep at night, generating so much coal-fired CO2: “Lunesta”).

Jim Turner, chief operating officer of Duke Energy Corp, explains the utility’s view in an Energy Daily (subs. req’d) column:

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And a shout out to Toles for his shout out to Dust-Bowlification (see “NOAA stunner:  SW faces permanent Dust Bowls” and “Climate change drives SW Dust Bowl sooner than expected“).