The color of solar cells — and their short energy payback — are trivial factors when considering the huge climate benefit they provide in avoiding the release of CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels.

That was a central point in my first post debunking the error-riddled book Superfreakonomics.  By failing to retract the many glaring errors I pointed out in my original post weeks ago — and instead blowing an aerosol smokescreen with false claims that Caldeira did not say the book misrepresented his views (see here) — Levitt brought upon himself the detailed and devastating takedown by Geophysicist Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, which focused on the same exact paragraph in the book that I debunked:

“A lot of the things that people say would be good things probably aren’t,” Myrhvold says.  As an example he points to solar power.  “The problem with solar cells is that they’re black, because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12% gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat “” which contributed to global warming.”

In my post, I noted that there were three and a half major howlers in this one tiny paragraph and that California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld called this “patent nonsense” when I read it to him.  Within minutes of my posting, a former lead engineer at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab “emailed me to be sure I don’t miss the forest for the trees here in debunking this,” as I wrote at the time.  He pointed out that climatologist Ken Caldeira, of all people, had an analysis showing it was trivial:

As Ken Caldeira so grippingly points out (and I tried to make graphically clear in my Stanford talk last year), each molecule of CO2 released thermal energy when it was formed “” that’s why we formed it.  In the case of electricity generation, about 1/3 of its thermal energy went out a wire as electric power, the rest was released promptly as waste heat.  But each molecule of CO2, during its subsequent lifetime in the atmosphere, traps 100,000 times more heat than was released during its formation.

A hundred thousand is a big number.  It means that running a handheld electric hairdryer on US grid electricity delivers a planet-warming punch comparable to [the heat given off by] two Boeing 747s operating at full takeoff power for the same time period.  The warming is delivered over time, not promptly, but that don’t matter; the planetary heating is accrued, the accountants would say, the moment you hit the switch.

And so I immediately added that in the original debunking (see here), which Levitt and Dubner obviously read and chose to ignore.

The graphic above is a PowerPoint from the engineer meant to illustrate the factor of 100,000.

Several people asked me for the analysis that derived the factor of 100,000.  Climatologist Ken Caldeira was kind enough to share it with me and give me authority to post it.  It is a previously-unpublished joint analysis by Caldeira and NYU’s Martin Hoffert titled, “Warming from fossil fuels,” which is now posted here.  The abstract reads:

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Sometimes change can happen much faster than people expect.  If we pass a domestic climate bill, as Sen. Baucus (D-MT) and other key swing Senators now believe is likely, and that enables an international climate deal, then I do think that will usher in a much more rapid decarbonization than most people expect.  Continuing the Veterans Day theme, I’m going to repost this Huffpost piece from my friend Joe Cirincione, President of Ploughshares Fund, about a signature event in the end of the Cold War.

I was in Berlin 20 years ago this week. I saw the impossible first-hand: the people of Germany taking down the Wall.

I was then working on the professional staff of the House Armed Services Committee. We were on a staff tour of NATO military bases and arrived in Berlin during this critical week by pure coincidence. When our delegation took off from Andrews Air Force base outside of Washington the Warsaw Pact was alive and apparently formidable. By the time we landed in Europe, it was falling apart.

It is amazing how quickly structures, paradigms, and ideologies that experts believe unchangeable can change. Forces can build undetected for decades, then explode in rapid, transformational movement.

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This post is an update of Memorial Day, 2029.

The two worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and sea level rise, Hell and High Water.  But another impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly than either of those: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don’t leave a world of wars to our children. That means avoiding centuries of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change. That also means finally ending our addiction to oil, a source “” if not the source “” of two of our biggest recent wars.  As the NYT reported in August:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

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Montgomery County redefined the way it will grow in the next two decades when lawmakers endorsed a plan Tuesday that encourages development where residents can easily live a car-free lifestyle.

The County Council, after weeks of intense debate over the county’s growth policy, unanimously agreed to give developers discounts to build dense developments near transit stations as long as they also construct bike paths and walkways, put shops and other amenities nearby, and use environmentally friendly construction methods.

I don’t do a lot of local area reporting, but this front page (!) Washington Post story, “Montgomery draws a car-free blueprint for growth,” seemed newsworthy.  The picture above is of the Rockville Pike corridor, and anyone who has driven around Rockville knows it is as car-centric as anywhere in America.

The county is working to change that:

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If you want to help keep the Vote Vets ad on the air, click here.

And this is the new LCV ad to “stop Big Oil’s bid to kill clean energy legislation”: Read more

You may recall from September that the dirty coal group’s 14th forgery impersonated American veterans, whereas real vets support strong action on climate and clean energy “” as does GOP Senator John Warner, former Armed Services Committee chair. The coal industry is still up to its dirty tricks, as made clear in this Think Progress repost.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) “” a front group of big utilities and coal companies “” is no stranger to fraud. During the summer’s House debate on cap-and-trade legislation, lobbyists working on behalf of the coal group sent forged letters to members of Congress, and lied under oath about it. Now, ACCCE is trying to exploit Veterans Day by misrepresenting veterans groups in an email to supporters:

With Veterans Day around the corner, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on all the military personnel who are involved in ensuring our country is protected.

Energy security is one issue that has become increasingly important to our veterans. In fact, national veterans groups Votevets and Operation Free are urging the government to become more energy independent and less reliant on foreign oil.

We can do this by using the abundant domestic fuels we already have. With more than 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, the United States has more coal than the Middle East has oil.

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