In an impassioned speech, Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico and the host of the international climate summit taking place in Cancun, called for the nations of the world to stop “squabbling” and to work as one to halt global warming. After a session featuring the heads of state from Norway to Nauru, he recalled the scene in Copenhagen, Denmark, when nearly all of the heads of state of the entire world came together last year, yet left with a sense of failure and recrimination. After a state dinner with the queen of Denmark, Calderon said, they spent their moment of opportunity fighting behind closed doors for hours over who was to blame for the disastrous situation our civilization faces now — while the smallest nations, those least responsible for the pollution, are now on the “point of disappearance”:

Sometimes I think in this respect we fail to understand that we’re all passengers in the same vessel, in the same aircraft, or the same vehicle. Our aircraft has now seen the disappearance of the pilot. Something happened in the cabin. And all the passengers are responsible for the aircraft, and we’re squabbling about these matters. Whether the guilt lies with those in the tourist class or those sitting up front in first class and the plane continues to go down. It’s as if we were in a truck on a winding road and the driver has had a heart attack, and we’re all on the edge of hitting a tree, going over into a ravine, squabbling again. I think, friends, somebody has to take control of the aircraft or put on the brakes.

Watch it:

Calderon endorsed a practical and positive outcome to the Cancun talks — an official acceptance of emissions targets, while recognizing that they may be insufficient to preserve the future of the small island states; immediate deployment of the international green fund for the least developed countries; the REDD+ mechanism to turn deforestation into reforestation; and forward steps on putting a price on carbon at the national level. These are just some of the challenges facing the negotiators today — the United States delegation continues to be primarily concerned about transparency for China‘s pollution-reduction commitments, for example.

Expressing a sentiment shared by the activists outside the halls, and by the millions of people already suffering in our diminished, polluted world, Calderon called for the nations of the world to transcend their differences, disparities and faults and work together, finally, before all of civilization reaches the verge of disappearance.

“But today let us act,” Calderon concluded. Rejecting the ideological stand of the Bolivian negotiators — and the typical diplomatic tactics of practically every party in Cancun — Calderon said that “radical pretexts or all-or-nothing postures shouldn’t provide a proper excuse for those who don’t want to cooperate to spend another year fighting and squabbling among the passengers among that single truck, that single bus, that single aircraft which is on the point of crashing.”

Transcript of the English translation: Read more

Our guest blogger is Mike Casey, president of cleantech communications firm Tigercomm. The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting live from the international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

When I started working on solar energy issues several years ago, I heard it repeatedly: “Everyone loves solar.” Back then, many people in solar and other cleantech sectors saw long-term meritocracy in the energy business. Public demand, technological advances and an inevitable price on carbon were going to drive cleantech to dominance over time. “Renewable energy,” it was often said, “will soon become just plain ‘energy.’”

From the gridlocked global warming treaty negotiations here in Cancun, however, the picture seems starkly different. The congressional climate bill fight ended in disaster, the recession tightened credit markets, and the coal and oil industries bought themselves a new Congress last month. And that global carbon market many were counting on? The most optimistic note Thursday night from a top U.S. treaty negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, was “Maybe next year.”

Still, cleantech possesses a great combination of assets that many industries spend considerable time and money trying to generate. These include policy momentum, business success, and wide and deep public support. California’s anti-cleantech Proposition 23 lost by a huge margin last month, solar is creating jobs in all 50 states, and over 90% of Americans support solar energy, while 87% believe we should build more wind farms.

However, that asset combination has also moved solar, wind, battery storage, and energy efficiency technologies from being cute niceties to potentially serious market disruptors for traditional dirty energy players. The dirty energy guys know that, and they are acting accordingly:

– A series of anti-cleantech editorials on the Wall Street Journal editorial page

– Sniping from fossil-funded front groups and “experts” for hire

– Seemingly random hit pieces on individual renewable energy projects

– ExxonMobil’s New York Times front page ad falsely equating fossil fuel subsidies with those of wind and solar

– An emerging class of “green ingrates,” pro-dirty energy pundits posing as cleantech players

– Chevron’s pioneering of what I’ve begun calling “cleantech washing” — pretending to promote clean energy while actually undercutting it

Virtually all of these attacks push three interlocking memes about cleantech: 1) It’s “not ready”; 2) It’s “too expensive”; and 3) It’s “unreliable.” And the message discipline and sheer number of these attacks make it very likely they are being underwritten and coordinated by people with a vested interest in making them happen.

Cleantech is now in a full-contact game with dirty energy, which is playing accordingly. The attacks by dirty energy are serious, coordinated, and are beginning to get traction in public opinion research. By generating, stimulating, or exacerbating customer concerns about readiness, cost and reliability, the attacks are affecting the marketing and sales environment for large and small cleantech companies. It’s in each cleantech player’s financial interest to help to mount a more concerted effort to push back against detractors.

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Trenberth explains, “The work is sound and is a very useful contribution,” while Roy Spencer makes an unsound response.

Changes in clouds will amplify the warming of the planet due to human activities, according to a breakthrough study by a Texas A&M University researcher.

Andrew Dessler, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, says that warming due to increases in greenhouse gases will cause clouds to trap more heat, which will lead to additional warming. This process is known as the “cloud feedback” and is predicted to be responsible for a significant portion of the warming over the next century….

“I think we can be pretty confident that temperatures will rise by several degrees Celsius over the next century if we continue our present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions.”

A major new study in Science, “A Determination of the Cloud Feedback from Climate Variations over the Past Decade,” (subs. req’d) uses observations to answer what is probably the most important uncertainty in the climate models:  What is the feedback from clouds?

Now we can be confident the feedback is likely positive, and exceedingly unlikely to be negative enough to counter the many other positive, amplifying feedbacks.  In short, as Dessler says, “This work suggests that climate models are doing a pretty decent job simulating how clouds respond to changing climates.”  Recent studies have come to a similar conclusion — see Journal of Climate: New cloud feedback results “provide support for the high end of current estimates of global climate sensitivity.”

Because this is such an important issue — and because this study should be the final nail in the coffin of the central denier myth that the climate has a low sensitivity to CO2 — this post includes two videos explaining the study, an exclusive comment on the study by one of the leading experts on the cloud feedback (NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth), and Dessler’s debunking of the laughable conspiracy-laden response by a discredited disinformer (Roy Spencer).

Perhaps the most important point about the study is that it is the first of its kind based on actual observation, as the Texas A&M news release quoted above explains:

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From cartoonist Matt Davies, “Scepticemia”:

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Our guest blogger is Mike Casey, president of cleantech communications firm Tigercomm.

When I started working on solar energy issues several years ago, I heard it repeatedly: “Everyone loves solar.” Back then, many people in solar and other cleantech sectors saw long-term meritocracy in the energy business. Public demand, technological advances and an inevitable price on carbon were going to drive cleantech to dominance over time. “Renewable energy,” it was often said, “will soon become just plain ‘energy.’”

From the gridlocked global warming treaty negotiations here in Cancun, however, the picture seems starkly different.

Read more

The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting live from the international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

In a plenary session moderated by Mexico President Felipe Calderon at the Cancun climate talks this morning, world leaders debated what counts as a reasonable approach to the threat of global warming. The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, stressed the importance of moving forward with frameworks to strengthen the role of “small players” in market approaches to reducing climate pollution and building resilience to the impacts. Challenging negotiators to “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he said that it would “unfortunate” if “one or two small players held the negotiations hostage.”

One of the speakers to follow Zoellick was the president of Nauru, Marcus Stephen. The head of the world’s smallest island nation, covering just 8 square miles, explained his negotiating stance:

Some have suggested that we cannot let the “perfect” be the enemy of the “good.” For us, ‘the good’ is pretty simple. ‘The good’ is our survival. It’s not ‘perfect.’ but it’s very good for us.

“We’re not here to derail the process,” he said. “But our starting point is our survival.”

Scientific researchers at the Potsdam Institute have found that sea level rise can only be halted under emissions trajectories that result in 1.5 C warming or less. “For small island states, even 2C implies long-term sea level rises that will affect them existentially—which is why these states call for a 1.5C target,” Dr. Malte Meinshausen explained in 2009.

President Stephen reminded the audience why his nation is one of over 110 others that have embraced the 1.5 C goal: “We simply cannot ignore the science.”

Daniel Kim looks at the salt-laden soil that forced Westlands Water District to retire land where he now wants to build a 30,000 acre solar farm near Lemoore, Calif.

Reusing worn-out farmland for renewable energy generation is one aspect of a growing movement to build wind, solar and other renewable projects on lands that are already disturbed or have been polluted.  CAP’s Tom Kenworthy has the story.

Even at a time when plans for utility-scale solar electricity projects covering thousands of acres and producing nearly as much power as nuclear plants are becoming almost commonplace, the proposed Westlands Solar Park in California’s Central Valley is eye-popping big.

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The “good news” is Dana “dinosaur flatulence” Rohrabacher (R-CA) lost his bid for House Science Chair.  The sobering news is that the winner is only marginally better.  As Politico reports this morning:

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Report: US would gain $342 billion from a national renewable energy policy

The US would have the most to gain percentage-wise from its share of an estimated $2.3 trillion clean energy economy by 2020, a new Pew report finds, if it adopted aggressive clean energy policies such as a national Renewable Energy Standard. Investment dollars follow policy. By 2020 investment would have ramped up a 237 percent increase for the US, one of the highest percentage gains among G-20 members, to a cumulative $342 billion in the US.

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By CAP’s Richard W. Caperton

Wednesday afternoon, the co-chairs of the UN High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing – Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway – described why meeting the financing commitments of the Copenhagen Accord will be “challenging but feasible.”  UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon shared their assessment.

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Catastrophic rains this fall put two-thirds of Benin underwater, as “the worst floods in living memory” killed at least 60 people, left 150,000 people homeless, and caused an outbreak of cholera.  “Areas previously thought not to be vulnerable to flooding have been devastated and villages wiped out.”

No, that story didn’t get much attention in this country — which isn’t a big shock given that the media largely ignored deluges in countries that are considered far more important to American security (see Juan Cole: The media’s failure to cover “the great Pakistani deluge” is “itself a security threat” to America).  Many deniers in this country simple dismiss the threat.  At the start of the Cancun climate talks, four Republican senators, led Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OIL), wrote a letter arguing the scientific findings about “eventual impacts of climate change in developing countries were found to be exaggerated or simply not true.”

Unsurprisingly, many in Benin feel quite differently, as Brad Johnson reports in an exclusive interview with Mawus© Hountondji, the executive director of Jeunes Volontaires pour l’Environnement in Benin:

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