Another week, another group of leading scientists pleading with humanity to stop the self-destruction of modern human civilization as we know it ASAP.  The Australian Climate Commission even titled their report, “The Critical Decade.”

The figure on the right shows the catastrophic warming we risk if we stay on our current emissions path (in °C — multiple by 1.8 for °F).  The report warns, “A plausible estimate of the amount of sea-level rise by 2100 compared to 2000 is 0.5 to 1.0 meter.” The report notes that we are acidifying the oceans at “an exceptionally rapid rate of change, likely unprecedented in the 25 million years of the record,” gravely threatening marine life.  The study documents how the weather is already becoming more extreme in Australia — worse droughts, worse deluges, and worse heatwaves — and warns of “Abrupt, non-linear and irreversible changes
in the climate system.”

The report opens by slamming the media miscoverage of the story of the century.  It explains that climate science “is being attacked in the media by many with no credentials in the field….   By contrast to the noisy, confusing ‘debate’ in the media, within the climate research community our understanding of the climate system continues to advance strongly.”

Indeed, the conclusion uses language that will be familiar to Americans — language I recommend everyone use:  “we know beyond reasonable doubt that the world is warming and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary cause.”

The report warns, “Failing to take sufficient action today entails potentially huge risks to our economy, society and way of life into the future. This is the critical decade for action.”

Here are the “key messages” of the report:

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Harvard’s Stavins: A “misguided objection to a progressive policy”

On Friday San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith put implementation of a cap and trade system in the state on hold.  He said the Air Resources Board (ARB), the agency tasked with designing the program, hadn’t properly explored other alternatives to lowering emissions.

The cap and trade program is part of AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which is designed to lower California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. AB 32 also includes increased fuel efficiency standards and a renewable electricity target of 33% by 2020, both of which are unaffected by the judge’s decision.

ClimateWire (subs. req’d) reported today that “Most of California’s carbon law [is] unaffected by court ruling”:

Most observers took the view that ARB dodged a potentially fatal bullet in its implementation of cap and trade. Goldsmith could have ruled that a trading scheme was an unacceptable method of reducing emissions. He could also have stayed the entire suite of regulations that the state is pursuing, 69 in all, including a low-carbon fuel standard, local development and smart growth guidelines, and emissions reductions from ships and trucks.

The ruling is the culmination of a multi-year debate among supporters of emissions reduction policies about how to deploy an effective, fair program.

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Conservative politicians have long opposed clean energy.  But Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) apparently is willing to go so further than most in his quest to destroy our clean energy future.  Think Progress has the amazing story and video:

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Five hot, rockin’ geothermal companies

Like the natural gas sector, which has experienced an incredible boom due to new drilling techniques that allow companies to cost-effectively access unconventional gas, the geothermal sector is going through a renaissance that may open up a vast new set of resources.

Traditional utility-scale geothermal, often called hydrothermal, utilizes hot water or direct steam beneath the earth to run a turbine and generate electricity. While there’s only about 11 GW of capacity built around the world (the PV industry built 17 GW in 2010 alone), the actual electricity generation from these baseload plants typically doubles the output from an equivalent wind or solar project.

The U.S. Geological survey estimates that there are about 35 GW of hydrothermal resources left to harness in America with the potential to provide around 3% of the nation’s electricity. Last year, two researchers published a paper in the Journal of Energy Policy suggesting that the world could get about 4 percent of its electricity from traditional geothermal by 2030.

However, when looking at so-called “unconventional” resources, the potential is far greater. There are three main kinds of unconventional resources:  Enhanced or Engineered Geothermal Systems (EGS); geothermal co-production; and geo-pressured systems. By collectively harnessing these resources, we could feasibly get hundreds of GW of projects online, which some geothermal supporters suggest may supply upwards of 20% of the world’s electricity.

Here’s a video overview of EGS from Google:

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A study says that a howling beast of an Arctic storm that caused the worst flooding in 1,000 years backs up predictions that climate change will cause unprecedented and unpredictably violent weather.

“It’s exactly what one would predict with increased warming,” said John Smol, a Queen’s University scientist and co-author of a paper published Monday in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The full study is “Impacts of a recent storm surge on an Arctic delta ecosystem examined in the context of the last millennium” (subs. req’d).  It concludes:

What is of particular significance is that the magnitude of this recent ecological impact is unmatched over the > 1,000-year history of this lake ecosystem. We infer that no biological recovery has occurred in this lake, while large areas of terrestrial vegetation remain dramatically altered over a decade later, suggesting that these systems may be on a new ecological trajectory.

It’s an impressive piece of research that adds to the growing body of evidence that recent warming and extreme weather is both unprecedented and dangerous (see “Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment“)

Here’s some background from the University’s own news story:

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Climate Progress reported in March that NOAA said GOP’s proposed satellite funding cuts could halve accuracy of precipitation forecasts.   CAP’s Kiley Kroh updates the story.

Earlier this year, Congressional Republicans decided accurate weather forecasting and hurricane tracking were services the American people could live without. The GOP-sponsored 2011 spending bill slashed the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing $700 million targeted for an overhaul of the nation’s aging environmental satellite system. NOAA scientists have stated unequivocally the existing satellites will fail and if they aren’t replaced, the agency’s ability to provide life-saving information to the American people will be compromised. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator, told reporters yesterday that the agency’s hurricane outlook last year was “spot-on” and cautioned that “not having satellites and applying their latest capabilities could spell disaster“:

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Tiny federal program will save enough water to supply a city

Japan ‘plans solar panels for all new buildings’

Japan is considering a plan that would make it compulsory for all new buildings and houses to come fitted with solar panels by 2030, a business daily said Sunday.

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Bloom: “2% of all US energy goes to food we’re throwing away.”

Figure 2 shows that the per capita food loss in Europe and North-America is 280-300 kg/year. In Sub- Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia it is 120-170 kg/year. The total per capita production of edible parts of food for human consumption is, in Europe and North-America, about 900 kg/year and, in sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia, 460 kg/year.

By Tyce Herrman, the first ever Climate Progress intern, in his first post

The agriculture sector is one the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, approximately 10-12% of the global total according to the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change.

Climate Progress’s ongoing series on food insecurity explores both how climate change is affecting agriculture and how agriculture is contributing to climate change.  This post examines something close to our hearts (and stomachs): food waste.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a study on food production last week that concluded 1.3 billion tons of food is lost each year.  That’s one third of total global production.  This inefficiency in food production and consumption reflects wasted energy and consequently unnecessary GHG emissions.

According to FAO, food loss in developing countries has multiple causes:

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Our guest blogger is Alice Thomas, Climate Displacement Program Manager at Refugees International.

Unprecedented rain that has hammered Colombia over the past year has affected three million people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. In March, I spent three weeks traveling across the Caribbean region visiting families displaced by the floods. The alarming conditions I encountered more than three months since President Santos declared a state of emergency are described in a new report by Refugees International entitled, “Surviving Alone: Improving Assistance to Colombia’s Flood Victims.”

In the town of Manatí in Atlántico Department I was greeted by the Iraida, an Afro-Colombian mother of four who leads a local women’s organization. “Today we don’t have a glass of water to drink,” Iraida tells me. “The water truck has not come to distribute water. It comes every eight days.” She explains that water rations are not sufficient to allow her to bathe her baby and provide enough water for the other four members of her family.

Watch a personal account from Iraida and her husband:

Iraida points to her house, which is submerged except for the tops of the windows and roof. “We had a store, a business. We took out a loan and now we are unable to pay the bank. We need food, water, clothes – yes, even clothes because we have lost everything.”

Tragically, her story was similar to dozens of others I heard in Atlántico, Córdoba, Bolívar, Sucre and Magdelana Departments. Flood victims received some basic aid during the height of the floods in December; many had been encouraged by news that the government had launched a multi-media campaign to raise flood aid. But more than three months later, what little assistance they had received was tapering off, leaving them to survive on their own. As described in the report, an uncoordinated, bureaucratic process set up by the Colombian government to distribute millions of dollars in flood relief was severely hindering the provision of emergency humanitarian assistance. According to a recent report by the Colombian General Accountability Office, only half of the flood aid has been distributed to date.

In 2010 alone, 300 million people across the globe were affected by natural disasters, the majority of which were climate-related, including 182 floods that affected 180 million people — almost double the annual average for the last decade. Read more

Where is the Senate?

Our country is facing the greatest threat to our freedom and future since 1941. Any honest view of our … challenges shows we must make major changes if we are going to pass on the American way of life to our children. Each week seems to bring new warning signs….

If these facts are true “” and very few policymakers deny them “” why has the U.S. Senate become the least deliberative “greatest deliberative body” in the world?

So opens a WashPost op-ed by a well-known Senator. Okay, it’s Tom Coburn talking about the deficit, not the global Ponzi scheme, not human civilization on the precipice.  But the op-ed almost reads as if he were.

This blog post is a follow up to “Why does Washington DC have so many more deficit hawks than climate hawks?“  If only politicians cared as much about not dumping an unmanageable and unlivable climate on their children as they claim to care about not dumping a less threatening and less unmanageable economic problem on them.

The language of the deficit hawks could almost be used word for word by climate hawks — and more accurately:

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Filets on display.  SOURCE: AP/Brian Branch-Price

Last week in this space we broke down the sustainability of fast food fish. As it turns out, sustainability is perhaps more prevalent at the drive-thru than it is on a white tablecloth at a high-end restaurant.

But what about the supermarket with its endless glass doors keeping Mrs. Paul’s and Gorton’s in their blissful deep freeze and its fish counters of artful displays of tuna steaks, shrimp of every conceivable size, and pink filets of salmon glistening ‘neath the fluorescents? Is it safe to dip into these waters? Michael Conathan has the story.

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