The tale of the timeline

This is an excerpted Wonk Room repost.

In mid-November, thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit webmail server “” a top climate research center in the United Kingdom “” were hacked and dumped on a Russian web server. Polluter-funded climate skeptics, along with their allies in conservative media and the Republican Party, sifted through the e-mails, and quickly cherry picked quotes to falsely accuse climate scientists of concocting climate change science out of whole cloth. The skeptics also propelled the story, dubbed “Climategate,” to the cover of the New York Times and newspapers across the globe. According to a Nexis news search, the Climategate story has been reported at least 325 times in the American press alone.

The hacked e-mails do nothing to change the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use are raising temperatures and making oceans more acidic. As the right attempts to use the Climategate story to derail the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference this week, arctic sea ice is still at historically low levels, Australia is still on fire, the northern United Kingdom is still underwater, the world’s glaciers are still disappearing and today NOAA confirmed that not only is it the hottest decade in history, but 2009 was one of the hottest years in history. But how did the right-wing noise machine hijack the debate?

The methods for the right-wing political hit machine were honed during the Clinton years. Columnist and language-guru William Safire, a former aide to actual Watergate crook President Nixon, attached “-gate” to any minor post-Nixon incident as a “rhetorical legerdemain” intended “to establish moral equivalence.” (See phony manufactured scandals “Travelgate,” “Whitewatergate,” etc.) A right-wing echo chamber “” including the Rev. Moon-funded Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, and the constellation of various conservative front groups and think tanks “” would then blare the scandal incessantly, regardless of the truth. But the more troubling aspect of this gimmick is the increasing willingness for traditional media outlets, from the Evening News to the Washington Post, to largely reprint unfounded right-wing smears without context or critical reporting.

One of the most successful coups for right-wing hit men was the “SwiftBoat” campaign, a well financed effort orchestrated by lobbyists and Bush allies to smear Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) war record. But “Climategate” is no different, with many of the same conservatives actors playing their respective roles — as this timeline shows:

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The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson is reporting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Fighting Deforestation

President Barack Obama “made his first public intervention in the Copenhagen climate summit” by supporting the Norway-Brazil plan to allow rich countries to fund the protection of rainforests. “”I am very impressed,” Obama said after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, “with the model that has been built between Norway and Brazil that allows for effective monitoring and ensures that we are making progress in avoiding deforestation of the Amazon.”

International approval for the Norway-Brazil proposal for a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism still has a ways to go, especially as targets for reductions of deforestation have not yet been determined. In a possible breakthrough for the integrity of such programs, Google presented tools for the accurate monitoring of the rates of deforestation via climate satellite data.

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Lieberman: “We’re going to get this job done in this session of Congress”

“I believe the green economy is coming.  That’s not a question of if it’s going to happen, it’s just when it’s going to happen.  The sooner the better for me, because the jobs of the future lie in energy independence and cleaning up the environment….  Why can’t America have the cleanest air?”

That’s conservative Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaking at a today’s press conference with John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT).  The group released a framework for their bipartisan climate and clean energy bill today (here).  Anyone who wants to understand what is going to happen next year in the Senate should listen to the event (here).

The bottom line:  We are likely to get a bipartisan, economy-wide bill on the Senate floor “early next year” as Kerry put it.  Lieberman said the bill would become law “in this session of Congress.” A lot of big news came out of the press conference.

First, the bipartisan group endorsed a cut in carbon pollution “in the range of 17%” by 2020 and 80% or more by 2050.  That matches the House bill, and equally important, it backs up the pledge the President has announced he is taking to Copenhagen (see Obama to attend Copenhagen, announces “a U.S. emissions reduction target in the range of 17% below 2005 levels in 2020″³).  That puts Obama on much firmer ground with world leaders.

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A Stern warning?

This guest post is by CAP’s Julian L. Wong.

The media headlines are screaming “U.S. Won’t Pay China to Cut Emissions” and “US Rules Out Climate Aid to China.” Todd Stern, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, made clear in a press conference on Wednesday in Copenhagen that the war chest for the initial fast track funds being considered now for climate change adaptation for developing countries would not be unlimited:

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A look at the facts on the Ground at the U.N. Climate Conference

Myth #1: Copenhagen is already a failure. Instead of a binding agreement we’ll end up with a political deal that gets us nowhere.

Reality: We are on schedule at Copenhagen to complete the first of a two-step negotiating process designed to finish a new international agreement well in advance of the end of the first commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

The meeting in Copenhagen was always intended to be part of a process for structuring an international agreement, not the end of it. The same was true of the Kyoto Protocol””which limits emissions in some countries and is currently in effect”” which took four years to negotiate and seven years to enter into force. In contrast the timetable for completion of a legally binding agreement out of the Copenhagen meeting is on a much faster track. The expectation that Copenhagen would produce a final agreement, however, was in part the work of a previous American administration.

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The Wonk Room is reporting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Fighting Deforestation

President Barack Obama “made his first public intervention in the Copenhagen climate summit” by supporting the Norway-Brazil plan to allow rich countries to fund the protection of rainforests. “”I am very impressed,” Obama said after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, “with the model that has been built between Norway and Brazil that allows for effective monitoring and ensures that we are making progress in avoiding deforestation of the Amazon.”

International approval for the Norway-Brazil proposal for a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism still has a ways to go, especially as targets for reductions of deforestation have not yet been determined. In a possible breakthrough for the integrity of such programs, Google presented tools for the accurate monitoring of the rates of deforestation via climate satellite data.

Tuvalu Contretemps

Tuvalu’s proposal to amend the Kyoto Protocol to mandate strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from all nations continued to embroil official negotiations, causing the shutdown of today’s plenary. China led objections to Tuvalu’s request for formal discussions, concerned that the negotiations could end up breaking the Kyoto Protocol’s delicate balance. Formal negotiations have been suspended until Saturday, when it is possible the delegates may take a formal vote on the amendments — an unprecedented event.

European Disunion

Three European countries received awards from the International Climate Action Network — two for setting the talks back and one for helping progress. Poland was deemed a Fossil Fool for preventing the European Union from strengthening its 2020 emissions targets in Copenhagen, while Germany earned opprobrium for its proposal that funding for climate assistance should be taken away from other international aid programs. In contrast, France was praised for challenging other EU members to close the “loophole in the accounting of emissions for forest management” — namely, getting unfair credit for existing forests — in Europe.

United States

The United States continued to have a strong presence behind the scenes and in side events, with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack joining a panel on the future of international agriculture, rich and poor. While discussing his agency’s plans to expand renewable energy in the United States, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar noted that President Bush “simply slept” through global warming. Salazar brushed off questions from activists about his agency’s continued support for the expansion of offshore drilling and coal mining.

Hottest decade on record may well be followed by hottest year

NOAA’s National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center released its monthly El Ni±o/Southern oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion:

Synopsis: El Ni±o is expected to continue and last at least into the Northern Hemisphere spring 2010.

El Ni±o strengthened from October to November 2009, as sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies increased across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean (Figs. 1 and 2). The Ni±o-3.4 index value remained steady during November with the most recent weekly value at +1.7°C (Fig. 2)…. Collectively, these oceanic and atmospheric anomalies reflect a moderate strength El Ni±o.

This is a revision from NOAA’s November Diagnosis:

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GE Wins $1.4 Billion Turbine Order for Biggest Wind Farm So Far

General Electric Co. won a $1.4 billion contract to supply turbines and services for an Oregon wind farm that would be bigger than any completed so far and supply a tenth of Southern California Edison’s renewable energy.

GE, whose equipment generates one-third of the world’s electricity, will supply 338 of its 2.5-megawatt turbines to Caithness Energy LLC to be installed in 2011 and 2012 and will hold a 10-year service contract, the companies said in a statement. About 400 people will be needed during construction of the wind farm and 35 to run the plant, GE said.

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The Wonk Room is reporting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published a bizarre and vile screed by editor Bret Stephens, who compared climate scientists to anti-Semites and Stalinists, furthering the descent of the Climategate swiftboating campaign into parody. The Wonk Room has the exclusive responses to the charges Stephens made from several of the thousands of scientists working to understand the dynamics of our climate system. These scientists are participating in the American Geophysical Union’s Climate Science Q&A for Copenhagen program. The Wonk Room would like to thank the scientists — from the United States, Norway, Australia, Scotland, and Germany — for their thoughtful replies to a pile of otherwise unredeemable twaddle.

These scientists refute the charges that they are guilty of “utopianism,” “anti-humanism,” “intolerance,” and “indifference to evidence.” Their responses may be summed up by that of David S. Stevenson, a University of Edinburgh climate scientist: “Mr. Stephens is missing something here, and it is called a scientific understanding of the climate system.”

Utopianism?

Stephens writes:

In the world as it is, climate alarmists see humanity hurtling toward certain doom. In the world as it might be, humanity has seen the light and changed its patterns of behavior, becoming the green equivalent of the Soviet “new man.” At his disposal are technologies that defy the laws of thermodynamics. The problems now attributed to global warming abate or disappear.

Alastair Jenkins, Senior Scientist, Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen:

All the proposed “carbon neutral” energy sources (wind, hydropower, solar, biomass, CO2 storage, nuclear) and storage/transmission technologies (electrical network, hydrogen) provide more energy in the lifetime of the installation than they require in construction, maintenance, etc.

Dieter Issler, PhD, Natural Hazards Division, Norwegian Geotechnical Institute:

The Laws of Thermodynamics have been found to apply wherever they are supposed to apply. Saying that the “technologies needed to abate the problems attributed to global warming defy the laws of thermodynamics” is therefore just about equivalent to saying that no technology, whether existent or not yet invented, can possibly solve the problem of climate change. Both in Law and in Science, anybody making such a far-ranging claim is generally held liable to prove their claim, but the author certainly does not do this in his article. . . .

Suppose we were able and willing to replace all combustion engines (including power plants) by electric engines and produced the needed electric energy solely through nuclear reactions. Through this, we would still be adding about the same amount of heat from non-solar sources to our system, but we would not add new CO2 to the atmosphere and thus eventually reduce the greenhouse effect. This solution—even though quite radical and not so very desirable either in my personal opinion—is perfectly in agreement with the Laws of Thermodynamics.

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A dispatch from the Denmark conference

If you listened to my friends over at Fox news and the Heritage Foundation, you might be forgiven for thinking that the polyglot conference going on this week in Denmark was a conspiracy of commie sympathizers and faceless bureaucrats hell bent on taking down the global economy – or at least that part of it located in the continental USA.  Well, I’m sorry to report that the view from street level is a little bit different.

Here in no particular order are just a few of the conversations that I had the privilege of witnessing today in some of the quieter corners of the cavernous Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark where COP 15 is unfolding in real time.  These economic prognostications are not my own, but they came from some of the most reliable people on the planet for navigating a path to a low carbon economy.

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The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley jumps the python

TVMOB has now gone far beyond his normal Monty Python-esque self-parody toward pure hate speech, as this Think Progress repost makes clear.  My thoughts at the end.

One of the most notorious climate change denial groups is Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which is largely funded by fossil-fuel industry interests. In the past, it has been part of the “Hot Air Tour” where it sent staffers to 40 cities in hot air balloons to try to convince the public that climate change is not happening.

AFP’s latest venture to try to deny the science of global warming and obstruct any real action on climate change has been to extend its “Hot Air” tour to Copenhagen, Denmark, where the United Nations Climate Change Conference is being held. Yet as the astroturf deniers conducted their alternative conference today (to five attendees), they were surprised by the presence of nearly 50 youth activists from the United States who entered the event to call out AFP’s junk science and dirty agenda:

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A “just peace” requires climate action

… a just peace includes not only civil and political rights “” it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.

It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

And that is why helping farmers feed their own people “” or nations educate their children and care for the sick “” is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action “” it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance.

That’s the part of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today.  No doubt he’s keeping his major remarks on global warming for Copenhagen next week (see “Obama’s double Copenhagen stunner: He agrees to global climate assistance fund for developing countries and will go to Denmark on the 18th“).

Grist notes, “Obama was much more direct about climate change earlier in the day, during a brief press availability after his meeting with Norway’s prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg”:

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By Matt Wuerker, Politico
From the Cartoonist Group.

Plus full list of statement by scientific groups

Statement from the UK science community

10 December 2009

We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method.

The science of climate change draws on fundamental research from an increasing number of disciplines, many of which are represented here. As professional scientists, from students to senior professors, we uphold the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes that ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal’ and that ‘Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations’.

You can find the statement, with the full list of names, here, on the Met Office website.

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This may be the big story of the day:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will hold a press conference today to discuss the Senate’s progress on comprehensive climate change and energy independence legislation.

It’s going to be in the Senate Radio and TV Gallery at 2 pm.  I’ll get a story up as soon as I can this afternoon.

For background, see Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman “will be working closely with the White House” to develop separate tripartisan climate bill to get 60 votes “” with Reid’s and Boxer’s consent; Graham rebukes fellow Republicans saying, “The green economy is coming!”

The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson is in Copenhagen to cover the global warming treaty negotiations. He will be filing daily dispatches. In this post, he underscores the urgent need for action that confronts the international negotiators as they begin their discussions.

As the nations of the world gather in Copenhagen, the Wonk Room has prepared this alphabetical journey of the impacts of climate change around the globe:

A

East Antarctica, long stable, is now losing ice.

B

Bolivia needs $1 billion over the next seven years to build reservoirs, as the glaciers that hold the nation’s water supply are shrinking rapidly.

C

Leatherback sea turtles that spawn on the beaches of Costa Rica are threatened with extinction by warmer temperatures and rising seas.

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This Think Progress repost is by guest blogger Lee Fang.

Right-wing billionaire David Koch, who along with his brother Charles owns the oil and gas empire Koch Industries, constantly presents himself as a champion of science. Next year, a wing of the Smithsonian will be named after him because of his generous donations. Indeed, in accepting Koch’s donations, the Smithsonian Human Origins Program director Rick Potts attempted to whitewash Koch’s philanthropist history:

POTTS: What we find in David Koch is a person who’s committed to doing things for the American public that has no relationship to politics

Koch apparently relishes this perception that his money buys. In an interview earlier this year, Koch pretended that he opposes organizations which politicize and distort science:

Q: What role do you think politics should play in educating the public about evolution?

KOCH: That’s an interesting question. I think politicians should really stay out of it and allow scientists to present the facts and discoveries. I hate to see it politicized.

In an op-ed in the Boston Globe yesterday, I observed that Koch has manufactured a positive image for himself by giving to laudable causes, while at the same time, quietly “funneling tens of millions of dollars to more subterranean efforts that reflect his conservative politics.” Despite his funding of the Smithsonian, Koch has done more to politicize and and undermine the public’s understanding of science than any other single person. Koch has funded the leading groups dedicated to spreading skepticism of climate change:

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Our guest blogger is Benjamin Hale, a philosophy and environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado and an environmental ethics blogger. Dr. Hale is blogging live from Copenhagen.

Of the many interesting venues offering side events at the Copenhagen climate negotiations, the events put on by the Bellona Foundation have been the most impressive. You can actually stream and watch some of these events, but’s a noisy little spot, so be warned. I’ll just give you a taste here of what a side event is like. Here’s video from the event on black carbon.

The upshot of the event is that polar and alpine regions are warming rapidly, so watching what’s going on in Russia is important. Moreover, since the arctic makes up one of the largest regions in Russia, watching black carbon is not just extremely important, it’s extremely important to Russia.

Pam Pear of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and Elena Kobets from the Bellona Foundation noted that rapid reduction in CO2 emissions is vital to slowing arctic warming, but that simply reducing CO2 is not enough. It is prudent also to pay attention to the role of land use. In this case, black carbon (or soot, basically) plays an warming role as well, since when the black carbon lays over white snow, the carbon absorbs more light and thereby exacerbates the melting.

What then causes carbon on the snow? It results from a variety of activities, but mostly from agricultural burning and from forest fires, even though transportation, power, and industry also create this soot effect. Notably, of the forest fires creating black soot, approximately 97% begin from reckless agricultural burning. To make matters worse, underground peat fires caused by above-ground agricultural fires add to the black soot effect by emitting more greenhouse gases. Read more

Our guest bloggers are Julian Wong and Kari Manlove, members of the Center for American Progress Energy Opportunity team.

At the COP15 meetings in Copenhagen on Wednesday, the governments of the United Kingdom, Mexico, Norway, and Australia proposed the establishment of a new Green Fund and a set of governance principles. The document is not final or even formal, but it is encouraging progress and entails a clear indication that the United States is not expected to fully bear the financial burden. In fact, the proposal states:

Whilst recognizing the responsibility of developed countries, future climate finance arrangements should be responsive to future changes in the global economy.

The COP15 negotiations — as agreed to in the Bali Action Plan two years ago — are structured around four simultaneous issue tracks or pillars: mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer, and finance. Finance is key If any progress is to be made on the other pillars. Countries must make headway on various financial aspects, including scale, architecture of financial mechanisms, how to calculate contributions, public versus private funding, and governance. Read more

This guest post is by Angel Hsu and Christopher Kieran, both part of  Yale University’s “Team China” tracking the Chinese delegation live from Copenhagen as part of The Green Leap Forward‘s “China in Copenhagen” series.

A small island nation has now become famous here in Copenhagen:  Tuvalu, a tiny Polynesian island occupying just 10 square miles of the Pacific Ocean.

During the morning plenary session today, however, the Tuvaluans were not as diminutive as the size of their small island state would suggest. After Tuvalou proposed the creation of a contact group for a ‘Copenhagen Protocol’ (full text of draft here), China’s apparent negative reactions sent the Tuvaluans to motion for a suspension of the talks. The proposed ‘Copenhagen Protocol’ would parallel the current negotiations regarding the Kyoto Protocol (KP). It would be stricter than Kyoto, and legally bind parties to keep global atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 350 parts per million and global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

While Tuvalu fears it will drown from sea-level rise, Tuvalu negotiator Ian Fry sought high moral ground today stating, “Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.” Fry repeated the expectation of many nations to sign a legally binding deal by the end of next week.

Both developed and large developing countries like China and India responded strongly to Tuvalu’s proposal, stating that a 350 ppm cap on atmospheric concentrations would unreasonably constrain their economies. Their concern is to be expected, considering that CO2 concentrations already exceed 350 ppm and are currently closer to 400 ppm.

Tuvalu’s position is backed by the small island states (AOSIS) and some African nations and up to this point, all members of the Group of 77, the now 130-country block of developing nations. China’s reaction to the Tuvalian proposal marks for the first time a significant rift between China and the G77, both of which had thus far been consistent in their positions regarding major negotiating issues (e.g. supporting the UNFCCC and Bali Road Map).

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