Humanity’s Choice (via M.I.T.):  Inaction (“No Policy”) eliminates most of the uncertainty about whether or not future warming will be catastrophic.  Aggressive emissions reductions dramatically improves humanity’s chances.

In this post, I will summarize what the recent scientific literature says are the key impacts we face in the coming decades if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path.  These include:

• Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 10°F over much of the United States
• Permanent Dust Bowl conditions over the U.S. Southwest and many other heavily populated regions around the globe
• Sea level rise of around 1 foot by 2050, then 4 to 6 feet (or more) by 2100, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter
• Massive species loss on land and sea — perhaps 50% or more of all biodiversity
• Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”
• Much more extreme weather
• Food insecurity — the increasingly difficult task of feeding 7 billion, then 8 billion, and then 9 billion people in a world with an ever-worsening climate.
• Myriad direct health impacts

Remember, these will all be happening simultaneously and getting worse decade after decade.  Equally tragic, a 2009 NOAA-led study found the worst impacts would be “largely irreversible for 1000 years.”

The single biggest failure of messaging by climate scientists (until very recently) has been the failure to explain to the public, opinion makers, and the media that business-as-usual warming results in simultaneous, ever-worsening impacts that,  individually, are each beyond catastrophic, but combined are unimaginablly horrific.  For these impacts, terms like “global warming” and “climate change” are essentially euphemisms. That is why I have prefered the term “Hell and High Water.”

By virtue of their success in promoting doubt and inaction, the climate science deniers and disinformers have, tragically and ironically, turned the worst-case scenario into business as usual.

Business-as-usual typically means continuing at recent growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, which we now know would likely take us to atmospheric concentrations of CO2 greater than 850 ppm if not above 1000 ppm (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories are being realised”). We are at about 8.5 billion metric tons of carbon a year (31 billions metric tons of CO2) and, until the recent global economic recession, were rising about 3% per year.

What is less well understood is that even a very strong mitigation effort that kept carbon emissions this century to 11 billion tons a year on average would still probably take us to 1000 ppm (A1FI scenario) — a little noted conclusion of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (see “Nature publishes my climate analysis and solution“).

Until recently, the scientific community has spent little time modeling the impacts of a tripling (~830 ppm) or quadrupling (~1100 ppm) carbon dioxide concentrations from preindustrial levels. In part, I think, that’s because they never believed humanity would be so stupid as to ignore the warnings and simply continue on its self-destructive path. In part, they lowballed the difficult-to-model amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle.

So I pieced together those impacts from available studies and from discussions with leading climate scientists for my 2006 book, Hell and High Water.   But now as climate scientists have sobered up to their painful role as modern-day Cassandra’s, the scientific literature on what we face is much richer.

In a AAAS presentation last year, the late William R. Freudenburg of UC Santa Barbara discussed his research on “the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge“: New scientific findings since the 2007 IPCC report are found to be more than twenty times as likely to indicate that global climate disruption is “worse than previously expected,” rather than “not as bad as previously expected.”

This post will review the latest findings.  It will be a cornerstone of the Climate Progress archive I promised.  Please add links to more studies in the comments.

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The GOP has apparently succeeded in its goal of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The push to do something — anything — to make government investments in clean energy look bad after the Solyndra bankruptcy is hindering the development of some major job-creating solar projects.

The most recent victim is SolarCity, a solar-services provider that was set to develop the largest residential solar project in the world. The company was offered a conditional commitment on September 2nd for a $275 million loan guarantee to finance, install and maintain solar systems on 160,000 military rooftops around the country — effectively doubling the number of residential systems online in the U.S. today.

The project would bring “more than $1 billion of private investment into economically hard-hit military communities,” according to SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive.

SolarCity has said it would work to employ American veterans and family members for the 750 people needed to complete the project, showing that green jobs do indeed exist. The company has seen extraordinary growth in recent years. After starting in 2006 with just two people, SolarCity has added over 600 employees since 2006. And this latest project will again double the staff.

The conditional commitment for the so-called SolarStrong project was issued days after the Solyndra bankruptcy. It was a piece of good news after a drumbeat of bad developments in the weekend after the Solyndra story broke. Since then, however, the resulting investigation has added a slew of new documentation requirements, making it impossible for SolarCity to meet the deadlines imposed.

In a letter sent last week to three men responsible for the investigation — Republican Congressmen Cliff Stearns, Ed Whitfield and Fred Upton —SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive lamented the last-minute changes in document requirements:

Unfortunately, Project SolarStrong, together with the thousands of job years it would create and the benefits it would bring to our country’s military communities, is at risk of becoming an unintended casualty of the controversy over Solyndra.

Rive makes clear in the letter that he supports additional Congressional oversight of the loan guarantee program. Indeed, everyone — even those who passionately support the loan guarantee program — agrees that additional oversight is needed after the Solyndra bankruptcy. But onerous requirements thrown on projects in late stages of development are hurting private investment and job creation:

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by Matt Kasper

The U.S. Department of Energy released a report yesterday on government R&D priorities, shifting the agency’s main focus from long-term technologies to more readily-deployable technologies in vehicle efficiency, building/industrial efficiency and transportation electrification.

The Quadrennial Technology Review report (DOE-QTR) is a 168-page assessment of the DOE’s portfolio. The report is inspired by the Quadrennial Defense Review and was recommended by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). In a letter to President Obama in November of 2010, PCAST wrote:

“We recommend that the Secretary of Energy prepare and implement a DOE Quadrennial Energy Review, focused on energy technology innovation, as a component of the full interagency QER on a shorter timescale. The DOEQER should include roadmaps for key energy technologies, an integrated plan for the involvement of the national laboratories in energy programs, portfolio assessments that lay out the optimal deployment of resources, identification, and projections of demonstration projects, and identification of funding needs for each technology.”

In order to address our nation’s challenges, energy security, and U.S. competitiveness, the DOE-QTR outlined six main strategies in two sectors:

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In a stunning conflict of interest, public hearings on federal approval for a proposed tar sands pipeline are being run by a contractor for the pipeline company itself. The U.S. Department of State’s public hearings along the proposed route of the TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline this week are under the purview of Cardno Entrix, a “professional environmental consulting company” that specializes in “permitting and compliance.”

Cardno is not only running the State Department hearings, but also manages the department’s Keystone XL website and drafted the department’s environmental impact statement. Comments from the public about the pipeline go not to the government, but to a cardno.com email:

Cardno Entrix was contracted by TransCanada Keystone XL LP (“Keystone”) to do the work for the Department of State (DOS):

Keystone contracted with Cardno ENTRIX as the third-party contractor to assist DOS in preparing the EIS and to conduct the Section 106 consultation process.

“Section 106″ refers to the section of the National Historic Preservation Act that considers impacts on historic places.

Throughout the history of the DOS review of the Keystone pipeline, the work has been conducted not by civil servants but by representatives of the pipeline company. During the Bush administration, the Department of State appointed TransCanada “and its subcontractors to act as its designated non-federal representatives” to assess the potential impact of the Keystone pipeline on endangered species.

Cardno Entrix contractors are running the public hearings from Port Arthur, Texas, to Glendive, Montana. It is not clear from media reports whether the State Department “representatives” at the hearing were in fact Entrix employees. ThinkProgress Green is awaiting information from the State Department.

“All of this adds up to the old saying, the fox is guarding the hen house,” says Jane Kleeb, the Nebraska activist leading the fight to protect her state from the risks of the Keystone XL project.

EPA Inspector General:  EPA met statutory requirements for rulemaking and generally followed requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting technical information.

Here’s some background on the denier molehill-to-mountain du jour.

In December 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency reviewed a mountain of scientific evidence and found that “Six greenhouse gases taken in combination endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”

In April 2010, the country’s most famous climate science denier, Sen James Inhofe (R-OIL) asked for a federal investigation into this rather obvious finding.

In February of this year, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a January 2008 letter from then EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson explaining to President Bush that:

… a finding is still required by the Supreme Court case, and the state of the latest climate change science does not permit a negative finding, nor does it permit a credible finding that we need to wait for more research.

Duh.

Today, after spending an estimated $297,385 in putting together its report, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gases Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes.  The first sentence of that report is above.

Since it spent all that money, I suppose the IG felt obliged to come up with some complaint to satisfy Inhofe.  Here is IG’s torturous explanation of that complaint:

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By Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress.

A little more than a week ago, a grand experiment long in the making began unfolding on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State: the removal of two large dams on the Elwha River and one of the most important river restoration efforts ever undertaken. Dave Reynolds of the National Park Service explained the beginning of the process at Glines Canyon dam, while jackhammers and construction crews work behind him:

I think this is a historic day for the National Park Service and for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the start of this three-year process here at Glines Canyon dam and, in a few days, at Elwha Dam. Of course preparations have been ongoing all summer, but this is a great day to really get removal started and the beginning of this process. It’s a new beginning for the Elwha River.

Watch it (video courtesy of Peninsula Daily News):

Appropriately enough, much of the media coverage – including an ambitious multi-media report by the Seattle Times – focused on how the removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams will restore epic salmon runs that were destroyed nearly a century ago and heal a 70-mile river ecosystem stretching from the ocean to the mountains of Olympic National Park.

But almost lost in the coverage was another important story: that restoration of rivers and landscapes scarred by old commercial enterprises can be an economic boon as well. At the Elwha River, a National Park Service study of the dam removal project found that 1,150–1,240 jobs will be generated by dam removal and river restoration, while even more jobs will be generated from increased tourism to Clallam County, Washington.

Restoration, especially in the western U.S., is a serious job creator. As the Center for American Progress’ recent report entitled “The Jobs Case for Conservation,” concluded in regard to restoration:

Thousands of long- and short-term jobs can be created through restoration and reforestation of public lands. Various government and independent analyses have found that every $1 million invested in restoration activities such as river and road restoration, hazardous fuels reduction, and tree planting creates between 13 and 30 direct, indirect, and induced jobs, many in the private sector.

And so it will be on the Elwha River project. In its 2005 environmental and economic analysis of the proposal to remove both dams, the National Park Service projected that total benefits over the 100 years following removal would be about $355 million, almost twice the cost of actually removing the structures. Most of the benefit would come from increased fishing, recreation and tourism opportunities.

At the same time as excavators began breaking down the concrete of the two Elwha River dams, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the completion of technical studies on another possible Pacific Northwest dam removal project: a plan to tear out four dams on the Klamath River near the border of California and Oregon. That project would create some 450 jobs annually from both dam removals and improvements to fisheries and water quality.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber said the studies were proof of the great economic potential in restoring degraded natural resources:

This is just one example of the tremendous opportunity we have to get Oregonians back to work across the state restoring the health of our watersheds, fisheries and forests and better position Oregon for long-term prosperity.

Colbert:  The United States emits more CO2 per capita than the European Union and China combined.  Just think what those emissions numbers would be if America still made anything.  Right now it’s all coming from hobo fires and Vin Diesel movies.

Sadly (and comically), Stephen Colbert’s sarcastic conservative pundit persona is often grounded firmly in reality.

His rants on climate change are particularly spot on. While going on another diatribe this week about our changing climate (this time by admitting it’s happening), Colbert pinpointed the reason why many Americans are still skeptical of the science in spite of the mounting evidence:  “America has not hit bottom yet.”

Here’s the video:

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A federal investigation, requested by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) in an April 7, 2010 letter, finds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding for greenhouse gases “met statutory requirements for rulemaking and generally followed requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting technical information.”

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Environmental Protection Agency did state the “opinion” that the finding’s technical support document, which summarized the key findings of the National Research Council, U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was more than just a summary, but a “highly influential scientific assessment” that required more rigorous review. The Office of Management and Budget, which sets the rules for such procedures, disagreed with the OIG. Despite these bureaucratic concerns, the OIG began its report with a sentence that demonstrated that the endangerment finding is legally and scientifically solid:

EPA met statutory requirements for rulemaking and generally followed requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting technical information.

The OIG’s recommendations: revise a flowchart on peer review, include more clarifying statements, and establish explicit criteria for using scientific information from outside organizations.

Attempting to create a new scandal, Inhofe highlighted the opinion of the OIG that more rigorous procedures should have been followed, saying that “the endangerment finding, the very foundation of President Obama’s job-destroying regulatory agenda, was rushed, biased, and flawed.”

Right-wing blogs are trying desperately to twist this confirmation of the endangerment finding’s integrity into a story of corruption, using Inhofe’s press release to falsely claim “EPA’s own inspector general calls greenhouse gas science flawed.”

Daniel J. Weiss and Valeri Vasquez

On September 19 President Barack Obama announced his plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years, including raising $1.5 trillion by closing special interest loopholes and other revenue raisers. This includes eliminating $41 billion in tax loopholes for the oil and gas industry (p. 63) over the next decade.

Big Oil is predictably opposed to losing its unnecessary tax breaks. The American Petroleum Institute, or API, the oil industry’s lobbying muscle, quickly claimed that “the Administration plan would hurt jobs and investment.”

But this claim ignores the fact that the big five oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhilips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—have ample financial resources that dwarf the value of these tax breaks. These companies enjoy billions in cash reserves, made nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past decade, and at least one company (ExxonMobil) pays a lower effective tax rate than the average American family.

In other words, Big Oil can readily afford to contribute its “fair share” to reduce America’s debt.

A Federal Reserve report released this month documented the massive cash reserves held by American corporations. The Wall Street Journal reported:

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An Associated Press journalist draws on decades of climate reporting to offer a retrospective and analysis on global warming and the undying urge to deny.

The headline on the 1975 report was bold: “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of “global warming” didn’t set off an instant outcry of angry denial.In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the “greenhouse effect” is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.

What’s going on?

“The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows,” concludes economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton.

He and others who track what they call “denialism” find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democrat gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign.

The A.P. has published journalist Charles Hanley’s nearly 2000-word essay on U.S. climate denial, “The American ‘allergy’ to global warming: Why?”

The piece is an excellent edition to a growing group that includes, WashPost stunner: “The GOP’s climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion” and National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.”

Here is more:

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ThinkProgress reported earlier this month about NFL teams that have embraced using renewable energy to power their stadiums, and now an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based environmental group is pushing for the University of Michigan to do the same at the Big House — the university’s stadium with a capacity of 109,901, making it the world’s third largest stadium.

The Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, along with Ann Arbor 350, wants the university to commit to using solar energy at the Big House. Information about the petition on Change.org points out that University of Michigan students did a feasibility study in 2009 about installing solar panels on the stadium and found that the plan could divert 776 tons of carbon dioxide from the air, so the Ecology Center wants the university to take action beyond that study:

Activists hope the petition on Change.org will lead the University of Michigan…to become the first big-name college football school to join in.

“The UM stadium has the potential to be the largest athletic venue in North America with solar panels, which is fitting with the University’s claim to be ‘the leaders and the best’,” said Monica Patel, policy specialist at the Ecology Center. “Even though the electricity generated won’t solve the climate crisis, it will go a long way in terms of solar energy education — just think of the awareness raised among the 100,000+ fans there on Game Day, and millions of others who tune in. The move would also give real support to Michigan’s growing solar energy industry.”

But so far, university officials insist it would not be cost effective. Terry Alexander, executive director of the Office of Campus Sustainability, told the Michigan Daily that the university would not be able to recoup its investment for about 70 years because there is not space for enough panels to collect a sufficient amount of energy. “Solar (energy) isn’t efficient in this part of the country,” he said. (The students’ feasibility report cited a 26-year window before the university began recouping its investment.)

So far, more than 3,000 people have signed the Change.org petition to push for the university to make the Big House a leader in clean energy among college football programs. To sign the petition, click here.

A round-up of the top climate and energy stories. Please post additional stories below.

Google wants to help homeowners add solar power panels

Google wants to buy solar panels for your house.

The search giant announced yesterday that it will provide $75 million to build 3,000 residential solar electricity systems across the country. Google will own the panels, and get paid over time by customers who purchase the electricity the panels produce.

by Mark Muro and Jonathan Rothwell, in a Brookings repost

With the bankruptcy of the California solar-gear manufacturer Solyndra, the Department of Energy (DOE)’s loan program has been excoriated for wasting tax payer money under suspicious circumstances. The program’s website refers to 63,000 jobs created with $38.6 billion of loans. Some, like those at the Washington Post, see this number and incorrectly conclude that the government has spent $600,000 per job. Others cite the size of the loan guarantee to Solyndra—$535 million—and mistakenly equate it with the taxpayer bill for one company’s failed enterprise.