Megan McArdle, the Atlantic Monthly blogger fond of making up nonsensical arguments about the economy, health care, and education policy, has waded into climate policy with similarly catastrophic results. In a critique of a Kevin Drum piece about new research on a warming-induced decline of global stocks of phytoplankton, McArdle claims he misses the point:

I actually think that Kevin misses the point a little: if this is true, 2% of GDP isn’t going to cut it. We’d better get back to an emissions level around 1940, or earlier, and stay there. Being that we now have about 2.5 times as many people in the country, and the world, as we did then, that’s going to be tricky.

Notwithstanding McArdle’s staggeringly ignorant post, climate policymakers have already considered this “tricky” challenge. The 2006 Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change estimated that stabilization at safe greenhouse levels would require investments of approximately one percent of GDP. In 2008, review author Sir Nicholas Stern argued the estimate should be raised to two percent of GDP because signs of increasing climate change necessitated faster action. Other economic estimates are in line with Stern, some even finding the investments could increase GDP growth.

So what emissions targets was Stern using? The Stern Review assumes eventual reductions of “more than 80% below current levels.” In 1940, global carbon dioxide emissions were about 4.8 gigatons. They’re now approximately 30 gigatons. So to get to “an emissions level around 1940″ would require an 85% reduction — in line with the Stern analysis (and every other serious economic analysis of global climate policy). McArdle’s supposed insight that deep cuts are needed is nothing new.

A blogger who had spent any effort understanding climate policy would recognize that the emerging challenge is not reaching an eventual low emissions level, but increasing the speed that emissions are cut while ensuring that natural carbon sinks and stores (like phytoplankton, the rain forests, and the permafrost) are not radically disrupted by the unavoidable warming of the coming decades.

In McArdle’s defense, her pseudo-expert folderol isn’t much worse than that being produced by the Congressional Budget Office.

By the way, McArdle’s insight that the population has increased since 1940 is also not news to climate policy makers. Just in case she’s wondering, the Stern analysis recognizes that “global population growth is likely to remain positive at least to 2050.”

McArdle also displays ignorance about China’s decision to institute a carbon cap-and-trade system and offers arguments against mass hysteria that are so dumb that they might encourage rational people to panic. But let’s leave those monumental works of mindless contrarianism as exercises for the reader.

Back in early May, I interviewed experts on dispersants and oil spill clean up and wrote “Out of Sight: BP’s dispersants are toxic “” but not as toxic as dispersed oil.”

Chemically dispersing oil spills “solves the political problem of visible oil but not the environmental problem,” Robert Brulle, a 20-year Coast Guard veteran and an affiliate professor of public health at Drexel University, told me. These dispersants “do not actually reduce the total amount of oil entering the environment,” as a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report on the subject put it.  Nobody has any idea what will be the impact of massive exposure to these toxic chemicals on organisms that live on the bottom or feed off the bottom of the ocean.

In short: out of sight, out of mind. But not out of the body of marine life.

The dispersants seem to have done their job — and keeping oil off sensitive coastal habitats is a very good thing.  But some in the media seem to have confused not seeing oil with not being harmed by it.

In fact, as Science reports, “Oil Contamination of Crab Larvae Could Be Widespread“:

Researchers have found droplets of oil inside crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico. Although preliminary, the findings represent the first sign of hydrocarbons from the Deepwater Horizon well entering the food web.

Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has more on the premature declaration of “Mission Accomplished”:

Read more

James Powell, Executive Director, National Physical Science Consortium, has produced an excellent YouTube video summarizing the evidence for anthropogenic global warming

Powell is a former college and museum president.  “President Reagan and later, President George H. W. Bush, both appointed Powell to the National Science Board, where he served for 12 years.”

Great for sending to any septics you may know:

Read more

Solar-Power Industry Hits Magic Number

While some investors feel they’re still waiting for the sun to rise on the solar energy industry, it’s already high noon for some parts of the sector.

In some places in the U.S. today, solar photovoltaic, PV, technology””the iconic glass panels being deployed on home and business rooftops””already allows users to beat what their local utility charges for electricity generated from coal-fired power plants.

Read more

This is part of a series on the fossil fuel-funded Proposition 23 effort to repeal California’s clean energy and climate laws. Read previous posts on Prop 23′s economic impact, national repercussions, and funding from Texas oil companies.

In the California legislature, the loudest voice to kill the landmark clean energy climate change law AB32 has become Assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Chico). Described by Sacramento insiders as a “backbencher,” Logue has built a powerful coalition of former tobacco lobbyists and Texan oil companies to orchestrate Prop 23, an initiative to essentially rescind AB 32. But who is Logue?

During an interview earlier this month in Yuba City, California, Logue told the Wonk Room that he thinks that “the issue of global warming is not solved,” referring to climate change as a “scam.” Calling his repeal effort an “epic battle,” Logue claimed that the pro-Prop 23 forces would raise up to $45-50 million:

Read more

Our guest blogger is CAPAF’s Joshua Dorner. This is a Think Progress cross-post.

Following scandal after scandal, many donors have abandoned the Michael Steele-led Republican National Committee in favor of other right-wing groups preparing to attack Democratic candidates in this fall’s elections. The two biggest beneficiaries of the RNC’s woes appear to be American Crossroads, the “shadow RNC” setup by Bush operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, and the Republican Governors Association, currently chaired by Mississippi Governor and former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour. Despite their apparent strategic differences, these three groups still have one thing in common: massive infusions of cash from Big Oil. Over $4 million of oil-related cash has spewed into the three groups in the second quarter alone:

Read more