[The authors of this study framed their results incorrectly, I think, causing many in the media to miscover or ignore the story.]

Scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [warn] that the UN negotiations aimed at tackling climate change are based on substantial underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to its impacts.

The real costs of adaptation are likely to be 2-3 times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), say Professor Martin Parry and colleagues in a new report published by the International Institute for Environment and Development [IIED].

And as the IIED reported, the study Assessing the costs of adaptation to climate change: a review of the UNFCCC and other recent estimates concludes costs will be even more when the full range of climate impacts on human activities is considered.

The study finds that the mean “Net present value of climate change impacts” in the A2 scenario is $1240 TRILLION with no adaptation, but “only” $890 trillion with adaptation.

The mean [annual] impacts in 2060 are about $1.5 trillion….  As usual, there is a long right tail, with a small probability of impacts as large as $20 trillion.

Don’t worry folks, it’s only a “small probability” — but that “fat tail” by itself is enough to render all traditional economic analyses useless (see Harvard economist: Climate cost-benefit analyses are “unusually misleading,” warns colleagues “we may be deluding ourselves and others”).  Let’s put aside the fact we are on pace to exceed the A2 scenario (which is “only” about 850 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in 2100):  See U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm “¦ the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” “” 1000 ppm.  For this country, the A2 scenario means 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year.

But here’s the key point the media and the authors failed to convey.  In the “aggressive abatement” case (450 ppm), the mean “Net present value [NPV] of climate change impacts” is only $410 trillion — or $275 trillion with adaptation.  So stabilizing at 450 ppm reduces NPV impacts by $615 to $830 trillion.  But the abatement NPV cost is only $110 trillion — a 6-to-1 savings or better.

Bizarrely, the authors never point this out directly.  They are adaptation experts, so rather than focusing on the immense economic benefits of preventing catastrophic global warming in the first place, they offer up this secondary conclusion as their primary finding:

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“Green jobs” may be a trendy phrase, but its underlying principles are as old as the Constitution itself.

No doubt Glenn Beck will call now call Jim Rogers a socialist — and some readers may call him schizophrenic or worse.   But the coal-plant-building, climate-bill-endorsing, coal-front-group-quitting CEO of Duke Energy agrees with me that in the future the only jobs left will be green:

There is no such thing as a “green” job. Or at least there shouldn’t be.

It has become fashionable to say “green jobs” will lead us out of the recession. Green jobs put people to work, achieve long-term cost savings and ease demand on limited resources. They provide a “paycheck with a purpose.”

Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of the book “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” has often said we’ll know the green revolution has succeeded when we no longer need the word “green” as a descriptor. Terms like “green buildings” and “green energy” will be redundant as high performance and sustainability become our new “business as usual.”

Friedman is right. Reducing waste, improving productivity and boosting efficiency are all traits of the green movement, but they are also hallmarks of good business. Companies of all sizes that embrace these sustainable behaviors are finding that they can enhance their profitability in any economic climate.

Performing every job in a more sustainable manner, however, must begin with a mandate from leaders and involve buy-in from employees.

Very coy, his ambiguous use of the phrase “must begin with a mandate from leaders.”  Does he mean corporate CEOs — or Washington DC political leaders?  Either way, it’s one thing for Climate Progress to say all future jobs will be green, and quite another for Rogers to do so as a long letter to the editor of the Indianapolis Star, a major swing state.  He continues:

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The House climate and clean energy bill has made energy efficiency a centerpiece (see “The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030“).  It would generate some $500 billion through 2025 in efficiency investments alone (see “The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill“).  This new CAP analysis, which includes a state-by-state data on energy savings, cost savings, job creation, and pollution reductions from efficiency investments under the American Clean Energy and Security Act (.xls), by Daniel J. Weiss, Erica Goad, and Jonathan Aronchick was first published here.

Energy efficiency is the “low-hanging fruit” of energy policy, and is the quickest, easiest, and most cost-effective way of driving new investment, creating jobs, saving consumers money, and cutting pollution.  Energy efficiency alone could cheaply””and often profitably””provide two-thirds the necessary greenhouse gas reductions to reduce carbon emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050“”a level based on the science-driven conclusion that the risks of dangerous climate impacts rise sharply as planetary warming exceeds 2°C from preindustrial levels. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454“”which passed the House and is now pending in the Senate””recognizes and invests in the economic benefits of energy efficiency.

The bill would provide up to $65 billion in allowances from 2012 to 2020 for state and local government energy efficiency programs (see chart). These funds are in addition to other investments in energy efficiency from utilities and the federal government. The state and local programs in ACES would create up to 137,000 jobs in 2015 from energy efficiency investments that year [1]. It would save consumers up to $63 billion on their electricity bills from 2012-2020, while reducing enough greenhouse gas pollution during this period to equal taking 26.5 million cars off the road.

These projections are based on our analysis that provides estimates of efficiency investments, job creation, electricity savings, and greenhouse gas pollution reductions under state and local government energy efficiency programs funded by ACES. This includes the cumulative benefits from these efficiency investments. Once a building is made more efficient, the electricity savings and pollution reductions accrue every year compared to business as usual. So the lower energy costs that occur due to investments in 2012 are also a benefit in 2013, 2014, and so on. Any energy savings from efficiency measures undertaken in 2013 are in addition to the savings in 2012.

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Joe Klein, the prominent Time Magazine liberal columnist, has embraced the right-wing assault on Van Jones, the White House green jobs advisor who resigned this weekend. Stung by a successful boycott for calling the president a “racist,” Glenn Beck led a campaign against Van Jones as a “self avowed communist” who is a “danger to the republic.” Yesterday, Klein said “good riddance” to the “too-angry blowhard” Van Jones, comparing him to a “white supremacist” and a “Nazi”:

Anyway, Jones: He has, in recent years, done some valuable work trying to steer green jobs into poor communities…but there is a bright line in American political life: Self-proclaimed “communists” need not apply. Communism is too odious and foolish a philosophy for anyone reasonable to believe in, or even to use as red-flag hyperbole, as Jones did after the Rodney King riots of the early 1990s, when he said that he’d been a [black] nationalist, but was now a communist. It’s sort of like a Republican President appointing someone who had said, “I used to be a white supremacist, but now I’m a Nazi.” So, good riddance. The work of this presidency is too important to be side-tracked by a too-angry blowhard spouting foolish radicalism.

In the past decade, Van Jones has been at the vanguard of a green capitalism that combines progressive and conservative ideals, “focusing on job, wealth and health creation” in poor and minority communities while healing the planet. His work has helped establish the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, the Green Jobs Act, and community partnerships for job training and retrofit programs in cities across the nation.

Before becoming a leading green capitalist, Jones was a progressive leader in the Bay Area. The “communist” smear hinges on a 2005 interview with the East Bay Express, in which Jones described how he had “renounced” his radicalist politics of the 1990s, when he participated in STORM, a utopian, anti-racist peace collective in Berkeley, CA that drew from Marxist teachings. Jones was radicalized by the 1992 Rodney King trial, in which four LAPD officers were acquitted of police brutality although their beating of Rodney King was caught on videotape. While acting as a legal observer for a non-violent rally in San Francisco protesting the trial and its aftermath, Jones was caught in a mass arrest for which the city later apologized.

Klein’s comparison of Jones to a “Nazi” “white supremacist” is both repugnant and ironic, considering Jones’s record of fighting racism and embracing compassion for all people. Following the Rodney King verdict, Jones worked effectively against police brutality, establishing first the Bay Area PoliceWatch and then the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The Ella Baker Center successfully campaigned against San Francisco police officer Marc Andaya, who led a team of cops in beating Aaron Williams, “emptying three cans of pepper spray into his face, and hogtying him in an unventilated police van where he died.” With its “Books Not Bars” campaign, the Center also stopped the construction of the Alameda County “Super Jail for Kids” in 2001.

Klein — a compelling writer who has argued for legalizing marijuana, a war crimes tribunal for the Bush administration, and the same green-jobs vision as Van Jones — should be the last person to promote a McCarthyite purge of “left-extremists” from the Obama administration.

“Ninety-nine percent of households in Rizhao, China, use solar water heaters like these.”

China, green? In the case of solar water heating, yes

In a nation known more for its belching smokestacks, solar water heaters are on nearly every roof in some cities. Manufacturers are eyeing foreign markets, including Southern California.

Before her family bought a solar water heater, Liu Yan would bathe the way many working-class Chinese have for generations: boil water, dampen a rag and wipe away the dirt.

Today, the 40-year-old mother and her family shower every day and wash their dishes with hot water. The stainless steel heater affixed to her red-tiled roof cost about $220.

The device has become a symbol of China’s rising standard of living and its leap into the era of clean energy.

In the seaside city of 2.8 million where Liu lives in Shandong province, 99% of households use solar water heaters. The mattress-sized contraptions dominate Rizhao’s skyline, resting haphazardly on almost every residential rooftop.

In the global race to develop green technology and stem climate change, China has quickly become a leading producer of solar panels and wind turbines. It also dominates the lesser-known technology of solar water heaters.

Using principles of solar heating more than a century old, the humble, low-cost devices consist of an angled row of cola-colored glass tubes that absorb heat from the sun. The most common models fill the tubes with cold water. As it heats, the water rises into an insulated tank where it can remain hot for days….

The heating of water accounts for a quarter of a typical building’s energy usage. The Chinese solar heaters are estimated to have prevented more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide that would have been emitted annually using electrical units.

The heaters will be much needed if Beijing is to meet its goal of reducing its reliance on coal, which supplies 80% of the country’s energy. The central government aims to meet 15% of its energy needs through renewable sources by 2020. Beijing hopes to triple its solar heater capacity by the same year, according to Greenpeace China.

The technology’s gains here lie in its affordability, the dearth of residential natural gas service and the modest expectations of consumers, many of whom had never enjoyed hot water at home before. The starting price for one of the clunky devices is around $220, about the same as an electric heater in China. In the United States, where labor costs are higher and systems tend to be larger and more elaborate, solar water heaters can easily cost $1,500 or more.

Oh and now it turns out that Japan’s pledge — to slash CO2 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 — is conditional.

Not So Fast: Japan Climate Pledge Conditional on China, India

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Having taken Van Jones down, the job destroyers and climate destroyers of the right wing most certainly smell blood (see Beck: “Almost everyone who does believe in global warming is a socialist”).

Now Phil Kerpen, policy director for Americans for Prosperity, has laid out the right-wing strategy for how “the Van Jones affair could be an important turning point in the Obama administration,” in a piece on FOXNews.com.  AFP is “pro-tobacco industry” group that “worked around the U.S. in recent years to defeat” smokefree workplace laws (as SourceWatch notes) — and is now fighting for the big corporate polluters to block climate and clean energy action.  Brad Johnson at WonkRoom has documented how Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a front group for billionaire polluters, pushing the most inane pro-pollution ads you’ll ever see (here).

But what Fox News and AFP would like to achieve is no joke:

The Van Jones affair is, as President Obama likes to say, a “teachable moment,” and we need to put not just him but the whole corrupt “green jobs” concept outside the bounds of the political mainstream.

Conservatives hate the notion of green clean energy jobs because their entire anti-science, anti-climate, anti-environment message is built around the (false) notion of a trade-off between reducing pollution and jobs (see “Mything in action: Why conservatives hate green clean energy jobs“).  If you don’t care about the health and well-being of future generations, you certainly don’t care if they have good jobs (or any jobs, for that matter).

Progressives are going to have to redouble our efforts if we’re to have any chance whatsoever of creating 1.7 million clean energy jobs while averting catastrophic global warming.  Here is an excerpt of the FoxNews/AFP opinion piece strategy document, “How Van Jones Happened and What We Need to Do Next,” which seems like a parody, but, sadly, isn’t:

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President Obama delivered a rip roaring speech yesterday in Cincinnati (text and videos here).  It’s how he should have been messaging all along.  Even though it focused on health care and the economy, Obama talked about clean energy, as always does:

And we’re making an historic commitment to innovation–much of it still to come in the months and year ahead: doubling our capacity to generate renewable energy; building a new smart grid to carry electricity from coast to coast; laying down broadband lines and high-speed rail lines; and providing the largest boost in basic research in history.

So our Recovery plan is working. The financial system has been saved from collapse. Home sales are up. We’re seeing signs of life in the auto industry. Business investment is starting to stabilize. For the first time in 18 months, we’re seeing growth in manufacturing….

We have to build a new foundation for prosperity in America….An America where energy reform creates green jobs that can never be outsourced and that finally frees America from the grip of foreign oil.

In the clip above, he launches into a scathing attack on the status quo special interests who are trying to block action on health care reform, and lays out the catastrophe that awaits this country if we do nothing.  This is precisely what he needs to do on climate change, even though (some of) his advisers are foolishly suggesting otherwise.  Obama said bluntly:

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To all readers in North Carolina — Duke University students, I’m talking to you — please spread the word from the North Carolina Conservation Network on the Duke Energy Rate Hike Hearing at the Durham City Hall this Thursday evening:

Duke Energy is seeking an 18% rate hike this year for residential electricity customers. Over 13.5% would cover costs such as the Cliffside coal-fired power plant, now under construction west of Charlotte. Another 4.5% increase has recently been approved for rising costs of coal. The NC Utilities Commission has scheduled six hearings across the state to hear public comment on whether or not to approve the proposed rate hike.

Please attend the public hearing in Durham, NC to show your opposition to this unnecessary rate hike!

Yeah, Duke Energy has argued “We Can ‘Decarbonize’ Without Painful Electricity Price Hikes,” it supports the climate bill, and it just quit the scandal-ridden coal front group over the issue.  But they are still a big coal utility, and building new expensive, dirty plants when energy efficiency would be much cheaper and infinitely cleaner.  Why should NC ratepayers suffer for Duke’s bad decisions?

The NCCN is “a statewide network of over 100 environmental, community and environmental justice organizations focused on protecting North Carolina’s environment and public health.”  Click here for details on attending the rate hearing.

You’re perhaps wondering about how Duke can get a rate increase for rising coal costs when the price has collapse, as the figure from the Energy Information Administration below shows:

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