Must-read Hansen: “I am now inundated with broad FOIA requests for my correspondence, with substantial impact on my time and on others in my office. I believe these to be fishing expeditions, aimed at finding some statement(s), likely to be taken out of context, which they would attempt to use to discredit climate science…. The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available, on our web site and elsewhere. If those input data could be made to yield a significantly different global temperature change, contrarians would certainly have done that — but they have not.”

Fast on the heels of the hottest June to October on record, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that last month was the hottest November on record, which should be no surprise to CP readers — see my November 24th post:

Read more

Let’s thank The Guardian for wasting our time, again.

Our guest blogger is Andrew Light, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, on the ground in Copenhagen.  For a related post, see “Is it just too damn late? Part 1, the Science.”

If we were all in the Bella Center I’d start this post with something like, “The buzz in the hall today at COP 15 in Copenhagen was a leaked UN document confirming the worst fears of . . .”  But we’re not in the hall.  Most of us were locked outside today.  So I’ll settle for:

The idle chatter in the Copenhagen pubs this evening was the news that a leaked UN document demonstrates that we’re on the verge of an agreement locking in 3 degrees C.  This headline comes to us from The Guardian:

Read more

This is an excerpt of a Wonk Room repost.

Security at Copenhagen’s Bella Center has ratcheted up, excluding nearly all civil society representatives. Negotiations to craft a concrete deal continue behind closed doors as rumors swirl like the new-fallen Yuletide snow….

The Overwhelming Science
Read more

By Angel Hsu and Andrew Barnett, part of Yale University’s “Team China” blogging live from Copenhagen, re-posted from The Green Leap Forward.

As we predicted from the beginning, the negotiations in Copenhagen are coming down to two countries that could make or break a deal – China and the United States. As we mentioned in our post on Day 9, the crux of this deadlock seems to be centered around a few critical issues.  The United States’ Congress won’t pass domestic legislation without key developing countries like China, which is now a major greenhouse gas emitter signing on to reduction commitments; and China sees themselves as a developing country that has acted progressively and responsibly to address climate change when it technically has no obligation to do so under the UNFCCC.

Read more

Optimism breaks out at COP-15 following Clinton’s arrival and tough negotiations, but confusion reigns about impact of a potential deal on ultimate planetary warming

Here is CAP Senior Fellow explaining what he expects over the next 24 to 36 hours (video here, in case embed code acts up):

I found similar optimism in my evening conversations with Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and many senior environmental leaders.  More on that tomorrow.

The BBC report tonight was similarly optimistic:

Read more

Guest Blogger Rebecca Lefton is a Researcher for Progressive Media.

The international climate talks have generated major developments among major economies to combat global warming and help aid the most vulnerable countries against the impacts of climate change.  Despite the organizational problems that have hampered progress and other stumbling blocks, there has been tremendous progress towards achieving the pollution reduction goals needed to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions.  Parties have come to the table with serious proposals for the near and mid-term.  The U.S. and countries around the world recognize the opportunities to boost economic growth and create jobs that will arise from cooperation on climate.  Here are some of the major announcements that have come out of the international climate change negotiations process.

Read more

Guest Blogger Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at American Progress.

The Congressional Budget Office – the arbiter of the federal budget impact of all legislation – just released an analysis that the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, S. 1733,

“… would reduce budget deficits (or increase future surpluses) by about $21 billion over the 2010-2019 period”¦ In years after 2019, direct spending would be less than the net revenues attributable to the legislation in each of the 10-year periods following 2019. Therefore, CBO estimates that enacting S. 1733 would not increase the deficit in any of the four 10-year periods following 2019.”

This is crucial given that the annual budget deficit has exploded due to spending for two wars, prevention of the financial system collapse, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which has created thousands of jobs during this horrible recession that begun during President George W. Bush’s last year in office.

Read more

The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from Copenhagen.

Security at Copenhagen’s Bella Center has ratcheted up, excluding nearly all civil society representatives. Negotiations to craft a concrete deal continue behind closed doors as rumors swirl like the new-fallen Yuletide snow, but it’s impossible to discern political brinkmanship from irreconcilable differences until the final moments.

The Overwhelming Science

Even as the Copenhagen conference nears its conclusion, the largest climate science conference — the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union — is taking place in San Francisco, where the National Snow and Ice Data Center is discussing the Arctic’s uncertain future.

A new paper published in Nature warns that “an additional 2 degrees of global warming could commit the planet to 6 to 9 meters (20 to 30 feet) of long-term sea level rise,” which would “permanently submerge New Orleans and other parts of southern Louisiana, much of southern Florida and other parts of the U.S. East Coast, much of Bangladesh, and most of the Netherlands.”

A leaked United Nations document confirms analyses by leading climate scientists, Climate Interactive and the Center for American Progress that the mitigation efforts proposed by major polluting states — while dramatically better than continued inaction — are not yet sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change.

World Leaders Take The Podium

Here are a few of the top quotes from the today’s speeches by some of the 130 world leaders now streaming to Denmark’s capital:

Gordon Brown, United Kingdom Prime Minister: “In these few days in Copenhagen, which will be blessed or blamed for generations to come, we cannot permit the politics of narrow interest to prevent a policy for human survival.”

Evo Morales, President of Bolivia: “Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity. We are here to save Mother Earth.”

Shimon Peres, Israel Prime Minister: “By 2020, the government of Israel intends to make best efforts to reduce its CO2 emissions by 20% compared to a business as usual scenario.”

Apisai Ielemia, Tuvalu Prime Minister: “We will leave this meeting with a bitter taste in our mouth. The true victims of climate change have not been heard here.”

Following the Sarah Palin playbook, the right-wing prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has announced he will boycott the talks. The world is waiting for President Barack Obama and Premier Wenjiabao to speak tomorrow.

Congress In Copenhagen

The U.S. Congressional delegation held a press conference at the Bella Center today, saying that President Obama is “committed to making a difference.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “It’s about jobs. It’s about jobs that are sustainable for the future. New jobs, new technology, new green jobs for a green revolution to follow the industrial revolution of 100 years or longer ago, over 100 years ago the technological revolution of the last century and now this green revolution.”

Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) urged the international community to seize the political opportunity to fight the “common problem” of global warming, noting that “it is rare in history that different countries agree to work together rather than work against each other.”

Global Warming Chair Ed Markey (D-MA): “The planet is running a fever. There are no emergency rooms for planets. . . . We want to work with you, we want to partner with you because the alternative is unacceptable…Our goal is to work with the world to make it possible that children will have to look to history book to find if there ever was such a thing as global warming.”

Palin snaps back that Arnold is just trying to be “greener than thou”

The leaders of the science and anti-science wings of the Republican party are bickering like an old (unhappily) married couple.

This summer, Newt Gingrich said Sarah “Four Pinocchios” Palin is a conservative leader on energy issues. First, Sarah “Four Pinocchios” Palin — a conservative leader on energy issues according to Newt Gingrich — embraced the anti-science view of human-caused global warming (again) in a falsehood-filled Washington Post op-ed by Sarah Palin. Governor Schwarzenegger then dissed Palin, as Think Progress reported on Tuesday:

One of the biggest critics of efforts to curb climate change is former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who recently called global warming “bogus.” In a wide-ranging interview with The Financial Times, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger objected to Palin’s characterization of global warming, and suggested that she is playing politics:

Read more

“Workers in Shanghai walk on the roof of the Theme Pavilion, built for the World Expo 2010. The roof is covered with solar panels.”

The Green Rush Is On In China

A new gold rush in China is actually a green rush “” an urgent drive to develop green technologies. One group of Western companies, the Cleantech Initiative, suggests China’s market for renewable energy could eventually be worth as much as $500 billion to $1 trillion a year.

Now, Obama administration officials are warning that the U.S. could risk losing the race in green technologies.

“The future of sustainable energy is here.” The words are emblazoned on a wall at the world’s largest nongovernmental solar research center. It was built by an American company, Applied Materials, in the central Chinese city of Xian.

The cost of solar panels has dropped dramatically “” 30 percent in the past year alone. One major reason is the “China price,” or the competitive advantages offered by Chinese manufacturing, with its cheap labor and economies of scale. China is now the world’s biggest producer of photovoltaic solar panels, making about 40 percent of all panels, according to the China Daily, mostly for export.

For more on China eating our lunch on clean energy, see “Invented here, sold there.” The NPR story continues:

Read more

Danish Pork: Nice and juicy, for some

This guest post is by Tom Hilde, Research Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, on the ground today in Copenhagen.

The Natural Resources Defense Council this morning posted a perhaps obvious two-point recommendation for agreement between the US and China, and reassurance for the world. Part of the deadlock between the two countries, despite reportedly constant head-to-head negotiations at COP15, remains transparency in measuring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) emissions reductions in China and the US financial commitment to developing countries. China admitted publicly a couple of days ago that it is unlikely to receive adaptation funds from the US. That question has been a confused sticking point leading up to COP15, one regarding which United States Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said last week, “I don’t envision public funds “” certainly not from the United States “” going to China”¦” to which Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei responded, “I think [Stern] lacks common sense where he made such a comment vis-a-vis funds for China. Either lack of common sense or extremely irresponsible.” The issue is off the table.

Read more

The highlights so far

I  can’t be in two places at the same time, but you can, courtesy of the blogosphere.  So while I’m in Copenhagen, CP has Steve Easterbrook blogging on the important fall AGU meeting in San Francisco, where many of the top climate scientists in the world are presenting new findings, explaining old research, and talking about the purloined emails.  Steve Easterbrook — not to be confused with one of the two worst science writers in the country (see “John Tierney IS the country’s worst science writer, not Gregg Easterbrook“) is a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto who blogs here.  He is live blogging the AGU meeting, and I’ll repost/excerpt what I think will be of most interest to Climate Progress readers.  Think of this as “fresh frozen” live blogging.

Given the terrible internet connection and complete lack of power outlets in most meeting rooms, I’ve been reduced to taking paper and pencil notes, so I’m way behind in the blogging. So I’ll console myself with a quick tour of everyone else’s blogs about this AGU meeting:

Read more

Good COP: Hillary breathes new life into a global deal that the Chinese had been saying can’t be done

And today I’d like to announce that, in the context of a strong accord in which all major economies stand behind meaningful mitigation actions and provide full transparency as to their implementation, the United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries. We expect this funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance. This will include a significant focus on forestry and adaptation, particularly, again I repeat, for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

That’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived in Copenhagen with real money (FULL video here, transcript here).  NRDC’s Dan Lashof calls this a “breakthrough,” and I certainly agree.

The deal that could come out of Copenhagen was never going to please everyone, particularly because America’s hands are tied, unable  to commit to deeper 2020 reductions than Congress is likely to approve, an uber-modest 17% cut from 2005 levels.  At the same time, you can’t get to the 2°C ( 3.6°F) target for total warming unless China in particular agrees to peak in total emissions in the 2020-2025 time frame and then start reducing emissions after that — a commitment that goes far beyond their uber-modest carbon goal of cutting  carbon intensity 40% to 45% by 2020.

So the bottom line question is — Will the major players accept 3/4 of a loaf now, with an understanding that climate commitments will need to be strengthened in the future accords, just as the world did in its ultimately successful effort to save the ozone layer.

China has emerged in the last 24 hours as the spoiler, the bad COP.  As the WashPost reports:

Read more

Blame Canada!

This is an excerpt from a post by Campus Progress’s Tommaso Boggia.

TVMOB caught on video in multiple extreme falsehoods: “There hasn’t been any global warming for 15 years” — according to all 5 global temperature databases! Falsely asserts Trenberth agrees.

The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) is one of the most grotesque liars in the climate arena, as the above video shows.

TVMOB repeatedly claims there has been no warming since 1994! And he compounds that falsehood with several more, by asserting that all 5 global temperature databases agree with him, when in fact none of them support that assertion (see Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira “” “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous”).

For the record, in NASA’s and NOAA’s record, 2005 was the warmest year on record .  The Met Office/Hadley/CRU data shows steady warming over the past decade (see here).  And according to NOAA, both satellite datasets show warming this decade (see “NOAA: Second hottest September on record and virtual tie for hottest in lower troposphere from satellite data“.

Read more

Previous program was oversubscribed 10-to-1

This guest post is by Sean Pool, Special Assistant for Energy Policy at American Progress.

A $5 billion expansion of clean energy manufacturing tax credits for wind, solar and electric vehicles is exactly what the doctor ordered. Vice President Biden announced today that the $2.3 billion of tax credits currently available under in the ARRA stimulus package’s section 48C Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit program will be expanded with an additional $5 billion.

The additional funds will leverage $15 billion in private sector investment, work immediately to create new clean energy manufacturing jobs, and go a long way toward boosting the America’s competitiveness in the global clean tech innovation race. This is great news for American workers, manufacturers, and technology developers.

Read more

The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from Copenhagen.

Today’s session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, was marred by a vicious and blatantly extra-legal crackdown by authorities on non-violent protesters, activists, and civil society leaders. Demonstrators were pre-emptively detained and held in cages without being charged. Police beat non-violent marchers with batons and pepper-sprayed them in the eyes. The United Nations preemptively revoked the credentials of the entire delegations of Friends of the Earth International and Avaaz.org.

It only took a few thousand police and soldiers, some vans, guard dogs, and fencing, some sticks and sprays to put down the attempts by thousands of people to call for a real deal and respect the rights of those among us most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change. Of course, the authorities did have the challenge of protecting the world’s leaders from unpredictable rabble, and these talks need to continue. The governments of the world genuinely understand the dynamics of crowd control.

But I’ve never seen a hurricane, a drought, a flood, or an ocean that can be stopped by riot police and identification cards.

Our guest blogger is Michael Breen, a former US Army Captain. He served two tours, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He is from New Hampshire and currently studying law at Yale.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is in its final week, and the streets of Copenhagen are packed with government officials, scientists, engineers and non-profit leaders. Operation Free joined their ranks yesterday, when a dozen combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan touched down to spread a crucial message: the stability of our climate and the security of our globalized world are inextricably linked. As veterans, we’ve learned the hard way that the drought, famine and scarcity climate change will bring produces a breeding ground for insurgency and terrorism. More than glaciers and polar bears are at risk – preventing climate change is a struggle for the security and prosperity of every human being on the planet.

Even with the vast array of organizations and agendas present at the conference, our message is catching on. Waiting to enter the convention hall Tuesday morning, I talked with botanists and engineers with a plan to restore trees to the Sahara desert, delegates representing a series of small islands existentially threatened by rising sea levels, and a vegan activist in a chicken suit. When I mentioned that I was an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran here to discuss the link between climate change and global security, even the chicken stood up and took notice.

Each of them understood that while Operation Free is a coalition of American veterans, the security threat posed by climate change is equally real for nations around the globe. The scientific consensus is overwhelming. If we continue to burn dirty fuels at our current rate, increasing carbon levels in the atmosphere will cause significant shifts in the earth’s climate. According to a new analysis by the Pentagon and the CIA, the resulting drought, famine and flooding will lead to a dramatic increase in global conflict.

As veterans of a global fight against insurgency and terrorism, we’ve seen the link between scarce resources and violence at eye level. In Afghanistan, my small Forward Operating Base took rocket fire on a weekly basis. As we struggled to defend ourselves, we gradually realized that our attackers weren’t hardened insurgents – they were local tribesmen who had lost their livelihoods to deforestation and drought. Knowing that the local people were struggling to feed their families, the Taliban was quick to move in. They offered these former farmers and loggers a simple deal: ten dollars for every rocket they fired at the American camp.

Unless we take immediate action to prevent climate change, the same deadly dynamic will become a global fact of life. This week in Copenhagen, Operation Free is committed to helping secure the future.