The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.

“We looked at the PETM because it is thought to be the best ancient analog for future climate change caused by fossil fuel burning,” said Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences, Penn State….

“Rather than the 20,000 years of the PETM which is long enough for ecological systems to adapt, carbon is now being released into the atmosphere at a rate 10 times faster,” said Kump. “It is possible that this is faster than ecosystems can adapt.”

That’s the Penn State news release for a major new study in Nature Geoscience, “Slow release of fossil carbon during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum” (subs. req’d).

Again, this bad news isn’t big news to Climate Progress readers.  A year ago I wrote about a different Nature Geoscience study, which found our oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred.  And the UK’s Royal Society  published a 2010 paper that noted, “Palaeotemperature proxy data from across the PETM indicate a coincident increase in global surface temperatures of approximately 5-6°C,”  which is to say 9° – 11°F.

In short, whatever we do, we don’t want to duplicate the conditions of the PETM.   Unfortunately,  the new study finds human are actually pushing the climate system 10 times harder than it was pushed during the PETM by natural forcings.

The new study does come with a number of caveats, as would be expected for any analysis of such a long time ago.  Here’s more from the news release:

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The presumptive front-runner is a professional flip-flopper, from his opposition to the Obama healthcare reform bill that his Massachusetts plan inspired to his embrace of the car company bailout he once rejected.

I’m coining a new term for the politician who points in all directions simultaneously, who is omni-directional.

What’s interesting is that in contrast to the large group of  national GOP climate zombies who reject the science and don’t want to take action, there is an emerging Romney-directional group who claim they believe in climate science but don’t want to take action:

• GOP contender Jon Huntsman stuns right by embracing climate science, but still tries to appease them by flip-flopping to oppose any action
• Confused Chris Christie embraces climate science, rejects climate action

Unsurprisingly, Romney is now in the latter group.  He told voters in New Hampshire that the world is getting warmer, humans are contributing, and “it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases.”  Here’s the video via TP Green:

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While officials throughout the U.S. Department of Homeland Security scramble to deal with a torrent of extreme climate disasters, the Tea Party-controlled House of Representatives has voted to cripple their response. In a nearly party-line vote of 242 to 180 on Thursday, the House adopted an amendment by Rep. John Carter (R-TX) to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from participating in the Obama administration’s Interagency Task Force on Climate Change Adaptation. Carter justified his amendment by saying DHS — which includes the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — should focus on the Mexican border instead of “duplicating the work” of agencies that monitor climate change and greenhouse pollution:

“Why, at a time when our nation is running a public debt of over $14 trillion, should the Department of Homeland Security be spending money on a Climate Change Adaptation Task Force?” he said, adding that the money would be better spent securing the southern border with Mexico. “These are the priorities that the Secretary should be focusing on — not wasting time duplicating the work of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

“Disaster planning is a form of climate change adaptation,” the Task Force on Climate Change Adaptation’s October 2010 progress report recognizes.The task force, mandated by President Barack Obama in executive order 13514 to develop a “U.S. strategy for adaptation to climate change,” has already produced a national action plan for managing freshwater resources in a changing climate. FEMA has the critical mission of revising the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and the Coastal Construction Manual to reflect the impacts of global warming on sea level rise, storms, and floods.

The work of the climate adaptation task force, including the Department of Homeland Security, to mobilize our nation against climate disasters is desperately needed:

– The U.S. Coast Guard has closed a more than 180-mile stretch of the Missouri River due to flood levels that are expected to last the entire summer.

– FEMA is handling 37 presidential major disaster declarations, 7 emergency declarations, and 57 fire management assistance declarations for 2011 — before the hurricane season has begun. These disasters include May’s tornado outbreaks, the raging wildfires of Texas and Arizona, the killer snowstorms of February and March, and flooding from North Dakota to Mississippi.

The Republican Party is doing its utmost to cripple our nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to climate disasters. At Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s behest, House GOP slashed clean energy investments to pay for emergency disaster relief following the Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes. They cut the DHS disaster preparedness budget, including firefighter funding, in half (after Democrats raised an outcry, some firefighter grants were restored). They have blocked funding for the NOAA Climate Service, and slashed money for critical weather satellites. In states throughout the nation, conservatives are gutting clean-energy programs and attacking climate science, while local emergency services budgets are stripped to the bone.

With the security of our homeland under the clear and present threat of global warming, conservatives are choosing to cripple our defenses, simply to serve the obscene profits of climate polluters.

The Koch Industries front group Americans for Prosperity is preparing a tour across America “aimed at trying to put the blame for high gas prices on the Obama administration.” The tour will feature multiple campaign-style rallies, a website, and radio and television advertisements. The tour will demand that Obama increase domestic drilling — even though domestic oil production is at an all time high and further drilling will do nothing to affect prices.

Koch’s relaunch of Drill Baby Drill appears to be a crass attempt to distract Americans from a true driver of high prices: oil speculation, coming from companies like Koch. In fact, a new ThinkProgress investigation of Koch’s oil speculation business reveals that Koch is perhaps the most important player in distorting oil markets for private profit.

Our report highlights:

– Koch’s role in inventing modern oil derivatives.

– Koch’s alliance with Enron and the Gramm family in deregulating oil speculation, first in the early ’90s then again ten years later.

– Koch’s participation in unregulated exchanges, and the ways in which it uses its political power to allow excessive oil speculation to continue.

Experts contacted by ThinkProgress pin the blame for sky-high prices and record volatility on excessive oil speculation, the oil market corrupted by unregulated Wall Street traders who buy and hold onto oil futures contracts with no interest in the actual delivery of oil. Koch Industries — generally known as an oil pipelines and refining company — is also on the forefront of speculating on oil for profit.

Even Goldman Sachs concedes that at least $27 of the price of crude this year has been a result of rampant speculation, not supply and demand. Other experts contacted by ThinkProgress have said the number is closer to fifty dollars. To read our report about Koch Industry’s long and sordid history in the oil speculation business, click here.

The countries that have made the smallest contribution to climate change may be doing the most to address it.  That would be Robin Hood in reverse — compounding the fact that we are all reverse Robin Hoods, maintaining our wealthy lifestyles by robbing our children of a livable climate and truly sustainable wealth (see “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?“)

A new report from Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) finds that developing nations are on track to reduce emissions more than their industrialized counterparts.  The report, commissioned by Oxfam for the GROW Campaign, made some striking claims, including:

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Last year, Climate Progress made Time’s list of the 25 “Best Blogs of 2010.″

This year, DeSmogBlog deservedly made the list.   Here is what times Brian Walsh says about this  must-read climate blog:

A corporate smoke screen surrounds much of the coverage of climate-change and energy issues. Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation. Started in 2006 by James Hoogan, a Canadian p.r. guru, DeSmogBlog dissects the half truths and outright lies around climate change, acting as an aggregator for smart research and opinion on green issues. If it sometimes goes too far — as with its jihad against gas fracking — DeSmogBlog is nevertheless a necessary corrective.

 

In the lead up to the 2012 election, Republicans have stepped up their attacks on environmental regulations – saying that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, monitor coal ash, and limit ozone are “job killers.” But as Ciera Crawley writes, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds just the opposite.

In light of recent attacks that new EPA standards would damage the economy and lower employment, the Economic Policy Institute released a report last week finding that new and proposed rules – which include limits on sulfur dioxide, mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants – will not harm the economy.

The study’s top findings include:

• The combined annual benefits from all final rules exceed their costs by $32 billion to $142 billion a year. The benefit/cost ratio ranges from 4-to-1 to 22-to-1.
• The combined annual benefits from four proposed rules exceed their costs by $160 billion to $440 billion a year. The benefit/cost ratio ranges from 12-to-1 to 32-to-1.

Many opponents are claiming that new EPA regulations (air toxics, greenhouse gas emissions, vehicle efficiency and water cooling) will lead to job losses. On this matter, the EPI found:

Economy-wide studies do not find that regulations cause a significant decline in employment, nor, generally, do studies at the industry level.

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At the first town hall event of his 2012 presidential campaign, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said he envied European-style energy efficiency. After he told the audience in Manchester, NH that it was “important” to reduce global warming pollution, he said that American energy policy needs to include increased energy efficiency:

I also want to see us become more energy efficient. I’m told that we use almost twice as much energy per person as does a European, and more like three times as much as does a Japanese citizen. We could do a lot better. I’d like to see our vehicles, and our homes, and our systems of insulation and so forth become far more efficient. I believe that we have a role in trying to encourage that to happen.

Watch it:

Romney spoke a truth that most on the oil-funded right tries desperately to avoid.

There’s no secret why American energy consumption is so much higher than other first-world nations. The American tax system has the lowest rate of pollution taxes, less than half the rate that Europe and Japan does. American fuel economy standards lag far behind those of Europe and Japan. European energy codes for buildings and efficiency programs are far ahead of the United States.

In recent years, conservatives have demonized policies that encourage energy efficiency and even attacked the principle of energy conservation. A law passed to increase lighting efficiency is a “light bulb ban” that takes away “personal freedom.” Smart grids are part of a government plot to take over thermostats and kill old people. People who buy hybrid cars have a “superiority complex.” Higher fuel economy standards, Romney claims, are “depressing the auto industry.”

The American conservative culture of energy irresponsibility is to blame for the state of affairs Romney bemoaned Friday in New Hampshire. Because of the Republican Party’s embrace of polluter power, the United States has a political system that rewards pollution instead of work, energy waste instead of efficiency.

Earlier in the town hall, Romney accused President Barack Obama of being “awfully European” on energy policy. Romney appears to have contracted Europe envy himself.

Palin at Rolling Thunder: “I love that smell of the emissions”

Kilgore in Apocalypse Now:  “I love the smell of napalm in the morning…. The smell, you know that gasoline smell.”

Fox news analyst and social media maven Sarah Palin (aka the Quitterer) has filled the vacuum left by Donald Trump’s faux presidential campaign.

The three key pieces of evidence: She launched a nationwide bus tour, “a documentary extolling Palin’s accomplishments as governor is set to premiere in Iowa next month,” and, of course she started saying inane things again on TV (see Palin defends oil subsidies: “Were only talking about $4 billion” a year).  Here she is on Fox News.

VAN SUSTEREN: I know you haven’t made a decision, but do you have that fire in your belly? Do you really want it?

PALIN: Oh, that’s a great question. I think my problem is that I do have the fire in my belly…. I want to make sure that America is put back on the right track, and we only do that by defeating Obama in 2012. I have that fire in my belly…. But yes, the fire in the belly? It’s there!

So I’m thinking, give that woman some Tums! If that fails, try Prilosec.
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The Climate Progress news round-up is a daily look at the top climate and energy news from around the web. Do you have interesting stories to share? Post them in the comments below.

This wind turbine is being repaired. There are more than 197,000 to go. Photo: Rope Partner.

GREEN JOBS: Companies recruit rock climbing enthusiasts to repair wind turbines

When repairing wind turbines became his full-time job five years ago, Josh Crayton was awed by what he calls “the fantasticness of it all.”

“It didn’t seem real,” Crayton, an avid rafter and rock climber, recalled of his first days at Rope Partner, a Santa Cruz, Calif., company. “To get to use my climbing skills and my rope knowledge was great.”

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Kolbert:  When Obama took office, he appointed some of the country’s most knowledgeable climate scientists to his Administration, and it seemed for a time as if he might take his responsibility to lead on this issue seriously. That hope has faded. The President sat on the sidelines in 2009 and 2010 while congressional leaders tried to put together majorities in favor of climate legislation. Since the midterm elections, Obama has barely mentioned climate change, and just about every decision that his Administration has made on energy and the environment has been wrong.

In March, the Administration announced that it would be opening up new public lands in Wyoming for coal mining. In April, the White House delayed plans to impose stricter controls on the mining technique known as mountaintop removal. In May, the Administration put on hold rules aimed at cutting pollution from power plants at places like paper mills and refineries. Also in May, the President announced plans to increase domestic oil production by speeding up permits to drill off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico. “Is Obama’s call for more drilling bad messaging masquerading as cynical policy—or vice versa?” the liberal blog Climate Progress asked.

No, I’m not just posting this because Kolbert gave a shout out to my post (which, for the record, is here).

Elizabeth Kolbert is one of the most thoughtful climate journalists, whose terrific 2006 book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, famously ends, “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”

And we’re still doing it — but now even faster than before and with a progressive President!  Here’s more from Kolbert:

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Our guest blogger is Tom Thompson, Policy Director of the New York Solar Energy Society and CEO of Gridwerks Consulting Inc.

The New York Solar Industry Development and Jobs Act is being hotly debated in the State Senate, with the summer recess deadline just a few weeks away. The act would create a specific carve-out for solar power, to the tune of 5,000 megawatts of solar capacity by 2025. Analysis done as recently as 2010 suggests that the economic benefits of the bill would include 22,000 new jobs and an estimated $20 billion boost in economic output. With this landmark legislation, New York can finally catch up with nearby states that have already passed similar solar laws.

Yet major New York utility Consolidated Edison Inc., more popularly known as Con Ed, is arguing that the legislation is a bad deal for New Yorkers because it will drive up electricity rates. Con Ed has chosen to criticize the bill through its transmission and distribution subsidiary, whose revenues would not be affected by the bill. But the parent corporation would be affected. The bill would force Con Ed Development, the company’s electricity supplier arm, to purchase solar energy under 15-year contracts, which could cut into corporate profits.

Here’s the truth for New Yorkers: the solar bill will have a very small impact on electricity rates. A 2010 CrossBorder Energy analysis estimates that the cost will be about 39 cents on the average household monthly bill. Further, the bill includes a provision to cap any resulting utility rate increases to a modest 1.5 percent. If costs approach the cap, then the pace of solar development would slow. But close observers of the solar sector are quick to point out that this is unlikely. Why? Because over the past few years solar costs have been plummeting due to technology improvements. Maintenance costs are already close to zero.

Con Ed’s ostensible concern for New Yorkers is questionable since it is already raising electricity rates even without a solar mandate. Last year Con Edison increased its electricity rates to the tune of $420.2 million annually, even though average state electricity rates actually declined. Meanwhile, company profits last year increased 14 percent to $893 million. Con Ed’s opposition to the bill is also hard to square with its solar investments of nearly $200 million in New Jersey and Massachusetts.

In contrast to solar, the cost of fossil fuels is notoriously volatile and the long-term trend is upward. Furthermore, reliance on fossil fuels like coal and natural gas involve the risks associated with global warming, toxic pollution, and fracking contamination. When the cost of fossil fuels rises, states with lots of solar power will be better positioned to resist pressure to increase rates even higher. New York legislators and Governor Andrew Cuomo must not be fooled by the negative messaging of Con Ed. They should pass the New York Solar Jobs Act into law and allow the Empire State to finally stake its claim to the fastest growing energy source in the world.

The future of nuclear power in addressing climate change is hotly debated. As a reliable form of low-carbon, baseload power, some see it as the only way to bridge to a clean energy future — depending on what your definition of “clean” is. But along with renewed concerns about safety issues after Fukashima, there are two major factors holding back new nukes in market economies that Climate Progress has analyzed repeatedly — Cost and insurability.

In this guest post outlining the rising cost of nuclear, author and renewable energy advocate Paul Gipe shows that solar electricity has become competitive with new nuclear.

The world’s beleaguered nuclear industry continues to take a battering. The “nuclear renaissance” juggernaut that once seemed unstoppable now appears dead in its tracks.

The cabinet of Germany’s conservative government on Monday voted to take the country out of nuclear permanently by 2022. Not to be outdone on the right, the country’s opposition parties say that’s not fast enough.

Bavaria’s conservative party has gone even further and says that while it was first in German nuclear power it will now be first in exiting nuclear. Bavaria, known as the “Texas of Germany” for its conservatism, gets more than 50% of its electricity from nuclear energy.

But it’s the sheer cost of nuclear that may overwhelm any industry “renaissance”. Read more

If you drew up the specs for a commerce secretary, John Bryson would seem to fit the bill. Mr. Bryson, president Obama’s nominee, brings a distinguished career as a businessman, public servant and environmentalist. This is just the résumé for someone whose department is tasked with expanding exports, managing the census, monitoring the atmosphere and protecting America’s ocean waters.

Mr. Bryson — a former chairman of Edison International, a Southern California utility, and a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council — has already received a wide range of endorsements. Supporters include the Center for American Progress, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other advocacy groups, and the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the main utility industry group, the Edison Electric Institute.

Yes, folks at the Center for American Progress, where I work, are fans of Bryson.  How many times do you find a major utility executive  who really understands how to bring clean energy into the marketplace and who has  serious environmental credentials?

Here’s more from the NY Times editorial, “We Call That a Big Tent,” on GOP opposition to Bryson and why that’s a mistake:

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Peter Sinclair pens this guest post, his “Climate Denial Crock of the Week.”

UPDATE:   I have added a featured comment from Prof. Timothy Hughbanks of Texas A&M University in the text below.

The Tea Party congress hates new energy, hates the idea that the nation could be weaned off its oil dependence, or fossil fuels. They hate renewable energy because their primary sponsors in the fossil fuel industry want above all to slow progress on that front, and drag the nation back into the 19th century [see the CP post, "Video proof David Koch, the polluting billionaire, pulls the strings of the Tea Party extremists"].

We’ve seen a number of examples of this over recent months, now the anti-science crusade continues. Lead by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), 9 members of congress have now asked for the closure of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO.

The Denver Post reported this amazing story Saturday:

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