The NY Times, through blogger Andy Revkin, is pushing Bjorn Lomborg’s alternative-universe “Post-Pollution” solution to global warming — more research and development (R&D).  Revkin is also misrepresenting a Center for American Progress report, which is why I am going to debunk this too-little, too-late strategy for the umpteenth time.

As Andrew Light, the lead author of the CAP report, explains, “I think Andy read our piece too quickly” and “I’m disappointed to see once again here the false dichotomy” that “somehow an agreement on CO2 is mutually exclusive with a mechanism to grow clean technology and sustainable development solutions.  It’s a completely uninformed view.“  I’ll repost his statement in full at the end.

False dichotomy is what the do-little crowd traffic in, sadly, and it mucks up the debate — see Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, Research and Develop, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy.  No, that abbreviated description of the optimal strategy has never been my suggestion for the sequence of investments [!] but for the ratio of spending needed!

See also this post by a leading journalist and climate expert, Robert Collier, noting “The basic message of all these reports is akin to Romm’s mantra: Deploy, deploy, R&D, deploy, deploy — but all simultaneously.”  Precisely.

We do need a vast increase in clean energy R&D spending, as I have been arguing for more than two decades.  But averting catastrophic warming requires spending several times more on deployment than on R&D.

I would have thought that the recent International Energy Agency report would have made clear to all that aggressive deployment, not R&D, must be where we put most of our money ASAP:

On planned policies, rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change.

… we are on an even more dangerous track to an increase of 6°C [11°F]….  Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”

The IEA is one of the few credible international bodies with a combined global economic and energy model that allows them to come to quantitative conclusions rather than just the hand-waving that dominates most discussions.  And by handwaving, I specifically mean this nonsense from Lomborg (Revkin’s comments are in italics at the end):

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A group of Massachusetts voters are giving Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) until this Thursday at noon to publicly announce his intention to vote against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline poison-pill provision attached to the payroll tax cut bill currently working its way through Congress. If he does not do so, they will hold a march from Senator Brown’s office to the nearby National Guard Recruiting Office, led by a former National Guardsman in uniform, to highlight the need for the National Guard to accelerate its recruitment efforts in anticipation of climate disasters in the years ahead. Craig S. Altemose, one of the climate activists and a state appointee to the Massachusetts Climate Protection and Green Economy Advisory Committee, wants Brown to choose a clean energy future:

At this very moment, we have the technology and knowledge we need to rapidly and responsibly transition our economy away from the fossil fuels which are threatening our very lives. Rather than playing around with outdated 20th century pipelines like other Republicans, we hope Senator Brown will support the tax cut without the pipeline, and further support investments in 21st century renewable energy like wind, solar, and geothermal that will make our people safer, healthier, and happier.

Brown has avoided taking a stance on the tar sands pipeline, and has explained away global warming as an “ebb and flow.” Most notably, perhaps, Brown is one of the Koch brothers’ favorite politicians, receiving massive donations in return for his allegiance to their polluter politics:

We knew that even the Koch-funded Berkeley study found recent surface warming “on the high end” and speeding up.  And scientists have long known that the overwhelming majority of human-caused warming was expected to go into the oceans, which just keeps heating up (see charts at the end).

Now a new study goes one step further and removes the “noise” of natural climate variability from the temperature record to reveal the true global warming signal.  That noise is “the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability).”

The deniers have been making as much noise as they can about the “noise” over the years — since it has obscured the rate of warming in the past dozen years, especially compared to a cherry-picked starting point of 1998 (a year whose temperature was boosted by one of those short-term variations, a big El Niño:

Figure 1: The departure from global average temperature since 1979 using the raw data of the 3 surface temperature records (GISS, NCDC, CRU) and the two satellite records (RSS, UAH).

Here’s what happens when you remove the noise and average all 5 temperature data sets:

Figure 2:  The “true global warming signal.”

The authors of the study note the “adjusted data show clearly, both visually and when subjected to statistical analysis, that the rate of global warming due to other factors (most likely these are exclusively anthropogenic) has been remarkably steady during the 32 years from 1979 through 2010.”  They conclude:

Its unabated increase is powerful evidence that we can expect further temperature increase in the next few decades, emphasizing the urgency of confronting the human influence on climate.

For those who want more analysis, I’m reposting Tamino’s excellent post below:

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GENEVA—A new report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned Monday that global warming is likely to become completely irreversible if no successful effort is made to slow down the trend before 2006.

Unless greenhouse-gas emissions are drastically reduced by then, the report concludes, it will be too late to avoid inflicting a grave environmental catastrophe upon future generations.

If global warming isn’t under control by 2006, scientists say it will achieve unstoppable momentum, destroying the only planet we have.

Okay, it’s just another killer piece from The Onion.  It ranks with their classic, Major new report finds “Global warming issue from 2 or 3 years ago may still be problem.” Still, it’s good to know someone in the major media is paying attention to the latest science.

Let’s get back to America’s Finest News Service coverage of this shocking new report.

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Republican leadership in Congress have decided to use must-pass payroll tax cut legislation as a vehicle to push key polluter priorities, despite a veto threat from the White House. House GOP have attached a rider to extend a Clean Air Act loophole for the coal industry, daring a White House veto. The coal-powered poison pill, inserted into Title I, Section B of H.R. 3630 as the “EPA Regulatory Relief Act,” would establish a five-year delay in Boiler Maximum Available Control Technology (MACT) rules, striking down four Environmental Protection Agency rules. Section A is Rep Lee Terry’s (R-NE) Keystone XL poison pill rider for the oil industry.

The Boiler MACT language, taken from Rep. Morgan Griffith’s (R-VA) bill H.R. 2250, would keep in place a long-standing loophole in the Clean Air Act, that exempted coal-fired “utility boilers” from regulations of their hazardous air pollutants like heavy metals, including mercury, arsenic, chromium, and nickel; and acid gases, including hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride; and particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides.

In October, as the House voted to pass Griffith’s bill and H.R. 2681, a related bill to exempt cement plants from clean air laws, as stand-alone legislation, the White House issued a veto threat of the attempt to “undermine public health protections under the Clean Air Act (CAA).”

Today, the White House issued a new veto threat for H.R. 3630, the payroll tax cut bill including this poison pill:

H.R. 3630 seeks to put the burden of paying for the bill on working families, while giving a free pass to the wealthiest and to big corporations by protecting their loopholes and subsidies.

This rider, like the Keystone XL provision, is genuinely a poison pill. “For each year of delay,” the U.S. Climate Action Network noted, “thousands of people will die.”

However, both Griffith’s bill and its Senate counterpart, S. 1392, enjoy broad support in Congress. The legislation passed the House by a vote of 275-142, with no Republican opposition and 41 Democrats in support. The Senate bill, introduced by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), has 40 co-sponsors in total, including twelve Democrats: Wyden, Mark Begich (AK), Kay Hagan (NC), Herb Kohl (WI), Mary Landrieu (LA), Joe Manchin (WV), Claire McCaskill (MO), Barbara Mikulski (MD), Bill Nelson (FL), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), and Jim Webb (VA).

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A U.C. Berkeley News Release

The American Petroleum Institute likes to share what average Americans think about Big Oil, except when they express real opinions. Unsurprisingly, despite API’s claims to feature Americans in favor of oil, their “authentic” commercials are entirely scripted, with casters feeding participants’ every word.

An e-mail from API advertised an open casting call for “all ages and races to express their views” in a commercial spot. The basic qualifications read: “You are willing to go on camera and state your beliefs” and “You are comfortable portraying YOURSELF! They want REAL PEOPLE not Actors!”

But when Gabe Elsner of the watchdog Checks and Balances Project attended the commercial’s open casting, he wasn’t even allowed to finish his sentence about clean energy jobs:

Elsner is escorted to the sound stage and asked to repeat the following lines:
“I vote,” he is prompted.
“I vote,” he repeats.
“I vote!” more emphatically this time.
“I vote!” Elsner repeats.
“For American Jobs,” he is told.
“For American Clean Energy Jobs,” he responds.
“Just, ‘For American Jobs,’” the staffer says.
“For American Clean Energy Jobs,” Elsner repeats. “I’d like to add that…”
“Just deliver the line. That we have. Just, because, just cut for a second,” the staffer says. “Are you…I want to make sure that you are okay with what we are doing as far as the script goes.”
Elsner says, “Well I didn’t see the script. I was told that I was going to be able to deliver my views on camera.”

Elsner never finished his thoughts on camera; he was simply escorted away from the set. API tells an altered version, where it claimed in a followup blog post that “some activists” decided “not to spend their Saturday hanging around a bunch of other people who do support oil and natural gas.” But it is more likely API spoon-fed those supporters with favorable “views” just as they treated Elsner.

There is an inevitability that a Big Oil commercial must resort to insincerity and imaginary people’s opinions. The industry is sitting on enormous profits, even as 74 percent of Americans want to end the industry’s subsidies.

This isn’t the first time API has misled on its commercials. In 2009, API doctored the race of two iStock models in a promotional pamphlet. And while the newest API ad won’t be released until January, here is an older commercial with equally under-enthused, overly scripted Americans talking about oil:

– Robert Stavins, in a Harvard repost

The 17^th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adjourned on Sunday, a day and a half after its scheduled close, and in the process once again pulled a rabbit out of the hat by saving the talks from complete collapse (which appeared possible just a few days earlier).  But was this a success?

The Durban Outcome in a Nutshell

The outcome of COP-17 includes three major elements:  some potentially important elaborations on various components of the Cancun Agreements; a second five-year commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol; and (read this carefully) a non-binding agreement to reach an agreement by 2015 that will bring all countries under the same legal regime by 2020.

Is This a Success?

If by “success” in Durban, one means solving the climate problem, the answer is obviously “not close.”

Indeed, if by “success” one meant just putting the world on a path to solve the climate problem, the answer would still have to be “no.”

But, I’ve argued previously – including in my pre-Durban essay last month – that such definitions of success are fundamentally inappropriate for judging the international negotiations on the exceptionally challenging, long-term problem of global climate change.

The key question, at this point, is whether the Durban outcome has put the world in a place and on a trajectory whereby it is more likely than it was previously to establish a sound foundation for meaningful long-term action.

I don’t think the answer to that question is at all obvious, but having read carefully the agreements that were reached in Durban, and having reflected on their collective implications for meaningful long-term action, I am inclined to focus on “the half-full glass of water.”  My conclusion is that the talks – as a result of last-minute negotiations – advanced international discussions in a positive direction and have increased the likelihood of meaningful long-term action.  Why do I say this?

The Significance of Durban

Let’s look at the three major elements of the Durban outcome.

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by Christine Shearer, in a Conducive Chronicle cross-post

In a recent article in National Journal, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) President Tim Phillips said there is no question that AFP and others like it have been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science: “We’ve made great headway. What it means for candidates on the Republican side is, if you … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril.”

AFP is a section 501(c)(4) organization, meaning it does not have to disclose its donors, but has been tied to significant funding from the Koch Family Foundations – founded by the billionaire Koch brothers of Koch Industries – as well as smaller donations from companies like ExxonMobil. Koch Industries and ExxonMobil are among the largest funders of studies questioning climate change science, often drawn upon by conservative politicians to legitimize their view that regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is not needed because the science is still under debate.

These organizations and their supporters say they are just funding their own independent studies of climate change science. Yet these studies almost all go against observable scientific data to question global warming – so much so that one study funded in part by the Kochs that confirmed a rise in average world land temperature was regarded as an anomaly. Which raises the question: if these studies are largely designed not to shed light on climate change, but to create doubt and confusion to delay greenhouse gas regulations, why is it legal, and do those deliberately spreading misinformation face liability?

The first question, as far as I can tell, apparently boils down to: it’s legal because we have yet to make the deliberate manipulation of science illegal.

Yet while people and companies enjoy the First Amendment right to free speech, legal scholars have argued that right does not extend to influencing people under false pretenses. According to former tobacco industry lawyer Stephen Susman, when it comes to fossil fuel companies and supporters funding their own research on climate change, if “they knew the information they were spreading was false and being used to deliberately influence public opinion—that would override their First Amendment rights.”

This question may soon be playing out in the courts.

History of the science

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