[*B.S. means “Bad Science.” What did you think it meant?]

by Peter Gleick

The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011 – a year in which unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events killed people and damaged property around the world. The scientific evidence for the accelerating human influence on climate further strengthened, as it has for decades now. Yet on the policy front, once again, national leaders did little to stem the growing emissions of greenhouse gases or to help societies prepare for increasingly severe consequences of climate changes, including rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, rising sea-levels, loss of snowpack and glaciers, disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and much more.

Why the failure to act? In part because climate change is a truly difficult challenge. But in part because of a concerted, well-funded, and aggressive anti-science campaign by climate change deniers and contrarians. These are mostly groups focused on protecting narrow financial interests, ideologues fearful of any government regulation, or scientific contrarians who cling to outdated, long-refuted interpretations of science. While much of the opposition to addressing the issue of climate change is political, it often hides behind pseudo-scientific claims, with persistent efforts to intentionally mislead the public and policymakers with bad science about climate change. Much of this effort is based on intentional falsehoods, misrepresentations, inflated uncertainties, or pure and utter B.S. – the same tactics that delayed efforts to tackle tobacco’s health risks long after the science was understood (as documented in Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s book, Merchants of Doubt).

Last year, we issued the first ever “Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards.” I am now pleased to present the 2nd Annual (2011) Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards. In preparing the 2011 list of nominees, suggestions were received from around the world and a panel of reviewers — all climate scientists or climate communicators — waded through them. We present here the top nominees and the winner of the 2011 Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards.

The 2011 Winner:

Climate B.S.* from all of the Republican candidates for President of the United States

Is it really necessary to be anti-science in general, and anti-climate science in particular, in order to be nominated to lead the Republican Party in the United States? Apparently, yes, at least in the minds of the Republican presidential candidates or their advisors. These candidates can be split into three groups: those ignorant or uninterested in science and its role in informing policy; those who intentionally distort science because it conflicts with deeply held political or religious ideology; and those who blow with the wind, giving their allegiance to whatever ideology seems most expedient at any given moment. There is some overlap, of course: some candidates, such as Rick Perry, have been in all three groups at various times. The third group includes candidates who have at one time or another held positions more or less consistent with scientific understanding but who in 2011 adopted anti-scientific positions during their primary campaigns. For example, Gingrich, Romney, and Huntsman, at some point in the past, all expressed at least a partial understanding about the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change. Yet all three have now retreated from the scientific evidence to faulty but ideological safe positions demanded by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In October, Romney caved in to conservative pressure and changed his stance on the issue. Just days ago, after pressure from anti-climate-science activists, Gingrich cut a chapter on climate science from a book of environmental essays he had agreed to produce. Ironically, that chapter was to have been written by an atmospheric scientist (Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University) who happens to be an evangelical and speaks regularly to conservative groups. She was also targeted by these activists for personal abuse – a tactic often pursued by climate deniers and contrarians.  (For a few of the craziest things the top GOP candidates have said on climate change, see Joe Romm’s recent essay at Think Progress.)

In short, the choice among the Republican candidates on the issue of climate change is scientific ignorance, disdain for science, blatant misrepresentation of facts, or naked political expediency, any one of which would make the Republican candidates strong contenders for the 2011 Climate B.S. Award. Combined? They win hands down.

[For comparison, while the Obama Administration has made little progress (and some would argue insufficient effort) on climate change, the President’s stated position on climate change is clear and in line with scientific evidence. And here is his unequivocal comment on scientific integrity:

“Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world’s leader in science and technology…the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources. It’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient. Especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth, and a greater understanding of the world around us…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFsB1Jk1OQ0]

Second Place: Disinformation from Fox News and Murdoch’s News Corporation

In this year’s competition, we award Fox News second place – up from their fifth place finish last year. This year, the award is extended to the entire News Corporation empire of Rupert Murdoch because of its apparent efforts to synchronize anti-climate science reporting among the different Murdoch outlets in the UK, the U.S., and Australia. Among the bad climate science promoted by Fox News is that snowy weather disproves global warming (while ignoring or inaccurately reporting record high temperatures recorded around the world); biased and misleading reporting about the content of emails stolen from climate scientists; incorrect claims that El Niños are responsible for global warming; and inaccurate reporting about fundamental scientific principles.

Other Murdoch empire assaults on climate science?

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The top six newspapers most negative about the Australian government’s carbon policy are all owned by Rupert Murdoch.

I was struck by a recent analysis from Daily Climate showing a substantial drop in the number of stories covering climate change in 2011. In spite of the dramatic increase in extreme weather events and the white-knuckled political tension around government investments in energy, there was still a 20% drop in coverage of climate-related issues last year.

One of the exceptions to that drop, however, was Australia. News outlets like the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and the Sydney Morning Herald saw a 60% increase and a 21% increase respectively. Australia was a particularly important country to watch in 2011 because of the dramatic political battle that unfolded over a comprehensive climate bill.

But experience in that country illustrates a hole in analysis that simply tracks the quantity of articles — it ignores the quality of those stories.

A recent report from the Australian Center for Independent Journalism attempts to fill in that hole. The researchers looked at climate policy stories in 10 major newspapers from February of 2011 through July of 2011 and tracked how positive or negative those stories were, who was quoted, and what kid of language was used. The results were overwhelmingly negative. Here are some highlights:

• Overall, negative coverage of the Gillard government’s carbon policy across ten newspapers outweighed positive coverage across ten Australian newspapers by 73% to 27%. (Note: After neutral items were discounted).
• After neutral items were discounted, negative coverage (82%) across News Ltd newspapers far outweighed positive (18%) articles. This indicates a very strong stance against the carbon policy adopted by the company that controls most Australian metropolitan newspapers, and the only general national daily. [Note: This is an organization owned by Rupert Murdoch.]
  
• Headlines were less balanced than the actual content of articles. Neutral articles were more likely to be headlined negative (41%) than positive (19%).

In an interview with Climate Progress at the Durban climate talks, Christine Milne, the Deputy Leader of Australia’s Green Party, lamented the domination of negative stories in Murdoch publications:

“The Murdoch press is a very big problem in Australia. It owns 70% of the print media and has run a massive campaign against the climate science and against the climate pricing policy that we’ve delivered in Australia. And it will continue to do so in the hope that the opposition is elected and the whole thing is repealed. This is a critical time in Australian politics and for the climate.”

Remarkably, even though the Green Party provided the political catalyst for getting a climate bill considered in the first place, members of the party only received 5% of quotes in stories on the issue.

When journalists reached out to the business community, which sector got the most quotes? By far, sources directly or indirectly representing the fossil fuel industry, “often without any critique or second source”:

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World leaders struck a deal last month during the Durban United Nations conference that sets a path to a global climate deal by 2015 — a precarious agreement including major developing countries like China and India. However, a report by the research branch of the HSBC bank predicts a deal would be trashed if President Obama is not reelected. With climate denial and opposition to emissions limits rampant in the GOP field, HSBC finds a global deal would be “almost impossible” if a Republican wins the White House:

[The] prospects for a new global climate deal in 2015 depend considerably on the election of a pro-climate action president. The election of a President opposed to climate action will not only damage growth prospects for low-carbon solutions in the USA itself, but will make the hard task of negotiating a new global agreement by 2015 almost impossible. If Obama is re-elected with support in both houses, we expect modest measures to introduce a federal clean energy standard for electricity; a stripped down cap and trade programme could re-emerge building on the regional scheme on the West and East coasts.

Though some GOP contenders haven’t always positioned themselves as climate zombies, everyone from Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, to Jon Huntsman have doubted climate change science leading up to the primaries. Frontrunner Romney opposes carbon emissions limits and a cap and trade program, despite having supported pollution limits as Massachussets governor.

Of course, the future of energy policy also hinges on political developments worldwide. The report also notes that elections worldwide, particularly France, will be an “important test of the resilience of pro-nuclear policies” in a post-Fukushima world.

While a number of U.S. utilities are actively embracing an energy transition, rural electric cooperatives have yet to begin leading the fight action on climate change.

In fact, because co-ops own a large portfolio of coal plants across the country, they have often been at the forefront of opposing federal climate policy.

The Virginia Association of Electric Cooperatives, recently put together a petition demanding Congress stop Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that Congress should do it. But when Congress tried to do it in 2009, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) dragged its heels and declined to support the efforts.

This mindset at NRECA, the Washington, DC-based association, originates with its members. For example, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, has been reportedly working to oust a member of the board who is considered “green” and who stopped the group from sending tends of thousands of dollars to fund climate deniers. And the anti-action messaging from a Virginia rural electric cooperative caused one member to criticize the organization for “wasting members’ money challenging the world’s scientific community.”

Given this history of behavior, it was quite a shock to read the latest piece of news from NRECA lamenting the expensive impact that extreme weather had on co-ops around the country:

Big natural disasters added up to big money in 2011, and many of the nation’s electric cooperatives could be including projects to repair the damage permanently in their construction plans for 2012.

“The year 2011 is already in the record books as a year of historic extreme events,” Undersecretary of Commerce Jane Lubchenco said recently. “There have now been 12 extreme weather events [each] totaling at least $1 billion in damages.”

We’ve seen some failure to connect the dots on climate and extreme weather in the press, but this is a completely different level of absurdity.

At a time when climate and meteorological experts are calling climate change the “steroids” for extreme weather, electric cooperatives are busy trying to downplay the problem in order to avoid the consequences of transitioning away from coal — even while recognizing the immense economic costs already incurred by electricity infrastructure.

In fact, a recent study published in the American Economic Review showed that the true cost of coal is actually about $0.17 cents per kilowatt-hour when factoring in the health and environmental consequences.

How high do those costs need to be before cooperatives, which have so much at stake, start recognizing the need to take action?

Renewable energy use has expanded rapidly across the U.S., with solar energy booming as government subsidies help homeowners offset the costs of installing solar panels.

At the same time, the price of natural gas is dropping, thanks to increased supply due to fracking. The process of fracking can harm the surrounding area, poisons water supplies, and even causes earthquakes. But NPR reports that the cheaper cost due to the damaging process is making it harder for more costly renewable energy sources to compete:

Due in large part to a combination of fracking and horizontal drilling, there’s been a nearly 30 percent increase in the amount of natural gas produced in the U.S. since 2005. [...]

Natural gas demand has not gone up as quickly as supply, and Klaber says the price has dropped.

“A handful of years ago, natural gas could have been in the order of 12, 13, 14 dollars per million BTU,” she says. “We’re now down to three to four [dollars].”

This has allowed utilities that burn natural gas to produce electricity to hold the line on rates. For most of us, that’s a good thing, but for those who’ve installed solar panels, it makes that investment less of a bargain.

Barbara Scott, who installed 21 solar panels at her home in Pennsylvania, told NPR that she’s glad she installed the panels, but now it’s not as likely that she will quickly recoup the $21,000 she spent to install the panels. “[K]nowing it’s — at best — a break-even proposition, we’re not so comfortable telling other people to do it,” she said.

Internationally, customers are still opting for solar panels, and the cost to build the panels are dropping while coal prices rise. The U.S. needs to continue embracing renewable energy on a larger scale to keep up with the international community and get away from harmful natural gas extraction.

Ohio ended 2011 with a magnitude 4.0 earthquake on New Year’s Eve, the second quake to strike the area within a week and the 11th of the year. That earthquake, the most recent and the strongest, was traced back to the fluid injection wells at a fracking site in Youngstown, Ohio. Indeed, all 11 earthquakes occurred “within two miles of the injection wells.”

Now, state officials are shutting down the injection wells and letting the waste fluids that were injected to “bubble back to the surface in an effort to relieve underground pressure.” The original injection pressure will force the brine waste water back out of the well into storage tanks, which should “help stop the ground from shaking.”

It is increasingly clear to experts and state officials that the earthquakes were triggered by the fracking process. The epicenter of the last earthquake was only 330 feet from the earthquake that occurred only a week before. For seismologists, the “evidence is convincing“:

John Armbruster, a Columbia University seismologist who installed the seismometers at the state’s request, said yesterday he thinks that the disposal well triggered the quakes.

“I find the evidence convincing,” Armbruster said.

Brine is salty waste water that comes out of the ground from working oil and gas wells, including shale wells that have been “fracked.” The fracking process injects millions of gallons of water and chemicals underground to shatter shale and release the trapped oil and gas.

More than half the brine injected in Ohio disposal wells comes from Marcellus shale wells in Pennsylvania. Ohio officials expect shale drilling and fracking to pick up in this state as energy companies tap the Utica shale here.

The serious danger of water pollution and earthquakes should serve as a warning to Ohio politicians who remain committed to opening up the state’s parks to fracking. Seventy percent of Ohioans oppose the idea. But perhaps politicians like Gov. John Kasich (R) are blind to the danger because of the level of donations they receive from the Oil and Gas Association.

But even the Ohio Oil and Gas Association supported the decision to stop the injections as “a rational thing to do.” The Network for Oil and Gas Accountability and Protection, however, wondered why such actions took so long. “What about earthquakes one through nine?,” said the group’s president Vanessa Pesec. “It seems remarkable to me that they would not have done something until earthquake 10.”

With the word “jobs” on the lips of every policymaker in the country, here are some of the best ideas for creating well-paying employment opportunities for a wide range of people throughout the U.S.

Forget a top-10 list, we’re jumping straight to a top-20 list for job creation in 2012 – and clean energy, environmental standards and efficiency dominate the list. This list was not compiled by Climate Progress. It was compiled by the editorial team at the Center for American Progress. Many of the ideas are extensions of CAP’s “Meeting the Jobs Challenge” initiative launched in 2009. — Stephen Lacey

20 Ways to Create Jobs

1. Upgrade our nation’s roads, bridges, and other basic infrastructure: 18,000 new jobs for every $1 billion invested.

2. Launch a rehab-to-rent program to turn tens of thousands of government-owned foreclosed homes into affordable rental housing, stabilize neighborhoods, and put construction workers back on the job: 20,000 new jobs a year.

3. Implement new EPA rules governing toxic emissions from power plants: 40,000 new direct jobs.

4. Protect health care reform, which will reduce health insurance premiums, expand coverage, and create jobs: 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year for the next decade.

5. Retrofit for energy efficiency just 40 percent of the nation’s residential and commercial building stock and unleash massive demand for domestic labor: more than 625,000 new jobs over a decade.

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by Jocelyn Fong, cross-posted from Media Matters

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has canceled the climate change chapter in his upcoming book of environmental essays after Rush Limbaugh and other commentators targeted its author, atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe.

At a recent campaign event, Gingrich told a woman he had cut the climate change section after she expressed concerns about it, citing what she heard from “Rush.” “That’s not going to be in the book. We didn’t know that they were doing that and we told them to kill it,” Gingrich says in the video provided by National Journal. The woman replies, “That sounds like a good idea because I thought, why would you want to have somebody like that in there.”

By “somebody like that,” she was referring to a scientist who, like the vast majority of climatologists, will tell you that human activities are driving climate change. Gingrich’s comments came as a surprise to Hayhoe, who said on Twitter that she spent “100+ unpaid hrs” on the project. According to emails reported by the Los Angeles Times, Hayhoe was asked in 2007 to write “a good opening chapter that lays out the facts on global climate change,” including “a sense of what needs to happen.” She said via email that her chapter did not include specific policy prescriptions. Gingrich’s collaborator Terry Maple told the Times that the book will probably be released in 2013.

Hayhoe, an Evangelical Christian who often speaks about climate change to faith-based communities, has noted in the past that “there is a very intelligent, well-planned effort to deliberately try to muddy the waters on this issue.” This month, she became the target of that very cohort of activists and commentators.

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by Daniel J. Weiss and Jackie Weidman

The American Petroleum Institute – the lobbying arm of big oil and gas companies – yesterday announced its “Vote 4 Energy” campaign that will promote its policy agenda in key electoral states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.  This campaign will more loudly promote the Big Oil agenda of more drilling, fewer safe guards, and retention of Big Oil tax breaks.

API’s members, including the five largest public oil companies which could earn record profits in 2011, will likely provide major funds this program. These funds come from profits that are due to record high oil prices, which led American families to pay the highest average annual gasoline price ever.

These high prices pose real economic harm to Americans. According to the Associated Press:

“The typical American household will have spent $4,155 filling up this year, a record. That is 8.4 percent of what the median family takes in, the highest share since 1981.”

Adding insult to injury, American taxpayers provide $4 billion in annual tax breaks to Big Oil companies, half of which go the big five.

The bottom line: Americans are subsidizing big oil’s campaign that is designed to convince them to support policies that will ultimately increase oil company profits — at the public’s expense.

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Other stories below: Debate flares on U.S. natural gas exports; Insurance payouts point to climate change

Lack of ice could be causing more seal deaths: study

A new scientific study suggests harp seals in the North Atlantic are dying at high rates because of warming waters and a steady decline of sea ice in their traditional breeding grounds.

The research by scientists at Duke University in North Carolina tracked the decrease of sea ice due to global warming and the mortality of harp seals from 1992 to 2010.

David Johnston, a marine scientist who co-wrote the report, said it’s the first study to show that seasonal ice cover in the four seal breeding areas of North America has receded by as much as six per cent per decade.

“There has been a string of light ice years recently and we’re starting to be concerned that if ice continues to decline, this might have longer-term effects on the harp seal population,” Johnston said from his office in Beaufort, N.C.

“I’m concerned that these animals are in for a tough road with what we’re seeing with climate change.”

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