Polarization on Climate Jumped in 2009 — Long After Gore’s 2006 Movie

Percent of Americans Who Believe the Effects of Global Warming Have Already Begun to Happen, by Political Ideology, from McCright and Dunlap

Conservative columnist Michael Gerson broke sharply from right-wing orthodoxy today when he ended an op-ed on climate change with this bombshell:

The extraction and burning of dead plant matter is not a moral good — or the proper cause for a culture war.

As evidenced by the presidential debates and recent Congressional hearings and speeches, it is in fact an article of faith for much of the national GOP that extracting and burning fossil fuels is a moral good, a matter of national security and economic security.  Drill, Baby, Drill!

Imagine Gerson telling the attendees of the Republican National Convention that what they are chanting for isn’t a moral good.  He’d be drummed out of the movement.

And in his op-ed, “Climate and the culture war,” Gerson gets that the planet is warming rapidly, creating many dangerous impacts, and the best explanation is human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Unfortunately, accompanying this bombshell is a dud, Gerson’s tired — and erroneous — blame-the-messenger strategy for the culture war:

No cause has been more effectively sabotaged by its political advocates. Climate scientists, in my experience, are generally careful, well-intentioned and confused to be at the center of a global controversy. Investigations of hacked e-mails have revealed evidence of frustration — and perhaps of fudging but not of fraud. It is their political defenders who often discredit their work through hyperbole and arrogance. As environmental writer Michael Shellenberger points out, “The rise in the number of Americans telling pollsters that news of global warming was being exaggerated began virtually concurrently with the release of Al Gore’s movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”

Obviously, any “fact” offered up by confusionist Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute is likely to be a nonsensical myth — and this one most certainly is.  There is no polling data to support that view, as is clear from the chart above from the 2011 journal article, “The polarization of climate change and the polarization and the American publics view of global warming.”  I confirmed this with co-author Riley Dunlap when the study came out, which I’ll discuss further in a later post.

And yes, it is laughable that Gerson has the nerve to blame Gore or anybody else for the culture war or the polarization of any issue.  Gerson “served as President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001 until June 2006, as a senior policy advisor from 2000 through June 2006, and was a member of the White House Iraq Group.”  Gore just made a movie and then use the proceeds to try to depolarize the issue whereas Bush/Cheney politicized science, and specifically climate science,  more than any administration in history.

As an aside, blaming the messenger is certainly an emerging climate strategy for many in the conservative movement since it lets them off the hook.  You see, folks, it isn’t the  disinformation campaign — which Gerson never mentions — or the power of the fossil fuel lobby — which Gerson never mentions.  It’s those darn “defenders” of scientists who are to blame.  I wonder who scientists could possibly need defending from?  But I digress.

Let me go back to the polling data because it is certainly a widely held myth that Gore is responsible for polarizing this debate.  That is a myth conservatives love to tout, of course, and it is one the Breakthrough bunch has repeated again and again.  But it just isn’t true.

As an important aside, it is pretty well-known from social science research that people take crucial cues (as to their beliefs) from elites and that Republicans tend to take their cues from Republican elites and Democrats tend to take their cue from Democratic elites.  So it would be hard for Gore by himself to polarize the debate in any case.  Indeed, Gerson himself notes that:

In 2005, then-Gov. Mitt Romney joined a regional agreement to limit carbon emissions. In 2007, Gingrich publicly endorsed a cap-and-trade system for carbon.

Many, many Republicans embraced cap-and-trade around that time and didn’t flip flop on climate until 2009, suggesting again it was something other than Gore’s advocacy to blaim (see Tim Pawlenty: “Every one of us” running for president has flip-flopped on climate change).  Let’s remember that the GOP presidential nominee ran on a platform of climate action and cap-and-trade — even his conservative VP, Sarah Palin, endorsed it.  That’s a key reason again that you see in the top chart that the liberal-conservative polarization did not accelerate until 2009, when a certain person got elected with overwhelming majorities and the prospect of an actual climate bill became quite real.

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by John Farrell, cross-posted from Energy Self Reliant States

What if electricity cost more when the sun was shining?

Many utilities are using new electronic “smart meters” to adjust the price of electricity as often as every 15 minutes, to reflect supply and demand.  And charging more when electricity is in short supply can be good news, making investments in distributed solar power pay off faster.

Time-of-use (TOU) pricing is a different billing method for electricity, where the customer pays based on the time of day of using electricity rather than a flat rate per kilowatt-hour consumed.  The premise is that electricity is more expensive when in high demand (e.g. by air conditioners in the afternoon on hot, sunny days) and that pricing accordingly will help reduce demand.

For example, customers in Los Angeles on a TOU pricing plan have a flat rate for electricity in the fall, winter and spring.  But in the summer, they pay significantly more for electricity used during “peak hours,” when the power system is at its maximum use.  In June to September, electricity used from midnight to 10 AM (and from 8 PM to midnight) costs 4.7 cents per kilowatt-hour.  But each kWh used from 1 to 5 PM costs 16 cents. (there are other charges on the typical bill that amount to ~6.1 cents per kWh)

This pricing scheme can act as an incentive to go solar, because solar panels tend to operate at their highest capacity during summer months.  The following chart shows the solar radiation falling on Los Angeles during the various seasons.  The average insolation during June to September is 6.37 kWh per sq. meter per day, compared to 5.33 in the non-peak season.

Solar panels also tend to have higher output during the peak hours of the day.  In fact, the California Public Utilities Commission found that solar tends to have a 60% capacity factor (produce 60% of its maximum) during peak electricity periods.  The following chart from SolarStik illustrates:

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The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are hosting the first in a series of national public hearings in Detroit today regarding proposed standards for model-year 2017-25 vehicles that would require automakers to work toward producing a fleet that averages 54.5 miles per gallon of gasoline. Over 100 people are speaking in the marathon hearing. United Auto Workers President Bob King stood united with National Wildlife Federation president Larry Schweiger and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) in support of the “sensible, achievable and needed” standards.

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

At the invitation of veterans, businesses, and the local community, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last Friday paid a visit to Fort Ord, a former military base located on the Monterey Peninsula near Salinas, California. At a listening session to discuss the future of the site, local activists called on the secretary and President Obama to designate the Bureau of Land Management-managed lands at Fort Ord as a new national monument using the president’s executive authority under the Antiquities Act.

Local support for a new Fort Ord national monument is undisputed. As the Monterey Herald reported:

Before he left to catch a plane, Salazar asked how many in the room wanted ‘this land protected and preserved in perpetuity.’

He was met with resounding applause.

Speakers at Friday’s public hearing discussed in detail how the former Fort Ord Military Installation played a key role in our country’s history. From its founding in 1917 until its formal closure in 1994, the fort served as a training center and staging area for troops, and thus was home to 1.5 million soldiers fighting in every war from World War I to Desert Storm. The Vet Voice Foundation and a group of California veterans noted in a letter to Secretary Salazar that:

A National Monument designation will serve as a reminder of the triumphs and sacrifices that have shaped the United States and honor the legacy of the millions of soldiers who trained on these lands.

In addition to its place in military history, the public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management around Fort Ord are some of the finest for outdoor recreation in the area. The fort’s 86 miles of hiking, biking, and horseback trails on more than 7,000 acres are enjoyed by 100,000 visitors every year, who spend money in and around the area creating economic impacts. National monument status would likely increase visitation and associated economic impacts; a case study on protecting Fort Ord’s public lands authored by economic consulting group Headwaters Economics found that:

The counties in the West with protected public lands, like national monuments, have been more successful at attracting fast-growing economic sectors and as a result grow more quickly, on average, than counties without protected public lands.

The president has the authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate places of “historic or scientific interest” as national monuments. Unfortunately, the 112th Congress has thus far failed to pass any legislation that would protect public lands and provide more recreation and economic opportunities. Local supporters of a national monument at Fort Ord made it clear last week that the president can’t wait for Congress—now is the time to make sure that Fort Ord and its surrounding public lands are protected for all Americans to enjoy.

As Salazar said Friday: “Our best places in the United States…are those where you have the kind of united community support that I see here today.”

A Republican online advertisement for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline mocks a Rachel Maddow spot praising New Deal public infrastructure spending. The Republican National Congressional Committee’s amateurish parody of Maddow’s “Lean Forward” Hoover Dam spot criticizes President Barack Obama for the administration’s decision to reconsider approval of TransCanada’s pipeline after Nebraskans and climate activists raised objections. Approval of the dangerous pipeline is opposed by Republicans and Democrats, ranchers and labor unions.

A young woman in a curly brown wig, playing “Rachel Maddow,” makes the false claims that the economy-threatening pipeline would “provide energy security and up to 130,000 jobs”:

We’ve got a project like this waiting for the President’s go ahead – supported by Republicans and Democrats, labor unions. It’d provide energy security and up to 130,000 jobs. We’ve got to figure out why the President thinks we’re not a country that can think this big.

Watch it:

ThinkProgress Green has prepared a helpful checklist explaining how the American Hoover Dam is different from the foreign Keystone XL pipeline:

Activists led by 350.org are set for another round of protests against the Keystone XL pipeline next Tuesday in Washington, DC.

by Stephen Lacey and Zach Rybarczyk

Before the series of protests in front of the White House last summer and fall, most insiders in Washington assumed the Keystone XL pipeline would be approved. But after a strong show of force by the 99% — led by the environmental community — opposed to piping more Canadian tar sands through the country, the White House delayed the decision.

The date has been set — Tuesday, January 24th – for a third round of demonstrations organized to put pressure on the Obama Administration. The White House is also getting pressure from Congressional Republicans, who slipped a provision into a last-minute tax cut package that forces the President to make a decision on Keystone XL by February 21st. An executive decision could come this week.

The 350.org demonstration plays up a recently released report showing that the 234 members of Congress who voted to force a decision on Keystone XL cumulatively took $42 million in fossil fuel money:

We need to be outraged—if this is what business as usual looks like, then business as usual isn’t acceptable and has to stop before the planet cooks. No one would countenance this kind of corruption at a high school gymnastics meet—it’s simply not right to take money from a company and then vote on its interests.

Here’s the plan: Instead of circling the White House, this time we’re going to show up at Congress. And we’re going to do it in…referee’s uniforms.

On January 23, the day they return to business, we’ll be there at 3 in the afternoon, ready to blow the whistle on their corruption. The demonstration will start on Capitol hill, and then we will head to the headquarters of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s #1 lobby. We’re going to call penalties—forget facemasking, this is vote-buying. Forget unsportsmanlike conduct—this is undemocratic conduct.

Environmental groups have called Keystone XL a “line in the sand” for climate — and for their support of Obama. Last November, Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, explained that “it will be increasingly difficult for our members to stand behind the president” if Keystone XL is approved.

The protesters are up against powerful forces. The Oil and Gas lobby recently rolled out an aggressive campaign to promote fossil fuels and Keystone XL during during the 2012 election. And at an event announcing the new campaign, American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard promised that a failure to approve the pipeline “will have huge political consequences” for the Obama Administration.

Then again, most people thought Keystone XL was a done deal last summer. But when the 99% actually stood up with a strong voice, the dynamic changed very quickly.

The Koch-funded political advocacy organization Americans for Prosperity is unleashing another multi-million campaign to play up the Solyndra bankruptcy in key election states.

After the release of 180,000 pages of documents and months of a heavily-politicized Congressional investigation that included testimony from Energy Secretary Steven Chu, there is still no evidence that the loan guarantee issued to the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra was a political favor, or that any official in the Administration did anything illegal.

In fact, an in-depth investigation of the Solyndra documents conducted by the Washington Post recently found: “The [email] records do not establish that anyone pressured the Energy Department to approve the Solyndra loan to benefit political contributors.”

But rather than stick to the known facts established by an ongoing investigation, AFP seems to believe it has greater insight into the issue than Congress, investigative journalists or the FBI — spending $6 million to spread lies and half truths about the Solyndra affair.

The ad is part of a desperate full-court press by conservatives to keep Solyndra at the top of the headlines:

This $6 million campaign follows a $2.4 million media blitz on Solyndra by Americans for Prosperity last fall. That ad was labeled “mostly false” by the fact-checking organization PolitiFact. But facts be damned, the Solyndra issue will continue to be a central piece of the GOP’s political agenda this year.

Typical of smear ads, this latest Solyndra spot is very “creative” with the truth.

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Long a leader in the fight to defend the teaching of evolution in public schools, the National Center for Science Education now sees creationist-like tactics being used in the attack on climate education. A recent survey of science teachers found over half had encountered skepticism from parents, and a quarter dealt with climate-denying administrators. Climate deniers are increasingly sending hate mail to scientists and teachers. As the Los Angeles Times reports, state legislators are increasingly promoting climate denial in classrooms:

Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.

After decades in which climate denial was driven primarily by industrial polluters, much in the way the tobacco industry lied about the dangers of smoking, the climate fight is becoming more intensely personal and political. As extreme weather disasters rise and the effects of global warming become unmistakable in daily life, right-wing climate deniers are trying to subvert the obvious moral and ethical necessity of action, trying to tie their fossil-fueled denial to religious faith.

“We consider climate change a critical issue in our own mission to protect the integrity of science education,” said Dr. Eugenie C. Scott, NCSE’s executive director, announcing the new initiative. She discussed the parallels and differences between creationism and climate denial in a podcast with Steve Mirsky.

Mark McCaffrey, a climate and environmental education expert, has joined the NCSE as its new climate change programs and policy director. Mark is a co-author of the Essential Principles of Climate Literacy and co-founder of the Climate Literacy Network. Pacific Institute hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick, one of the leading climate communicatiors in the nation, has joined their board of directors.

NCSE’s stellar Josh Rosenau has more details as his blog, Thoughts From Kansas.

Debuys:  “If one were to write a survey of all the instances in the history of civilization when societies accepted difficult medicine in order to spare their descendants worse pain in the future, it would make a very short book.”

by Gerald R. Rising

Williams DeBuys has written what I consider the most frightening book of this century. In A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest (Oxford, 2011), he describes a situation already out of control with an ever-worsening future projected. Writing beautifully (which only makes what he says still more scary), DeBuys places the current status of the Southwest in historical context, brings to bear not only the research of academics but also the experiences of affected individuals, and reorganizes masses of data to present them in terms we can (too) easily understand.

This is a book about ever increasing levels of CO₂ and higher temperatures; of forest fires, insect scourges and dust storms; of population pressure and power brown-outs in seven western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah. But the deeper focus is on water, or more appropriately the absence thereof.

There is much to say about this book, but I will deal here with just one aspect: water in the Colorado River basin, water that is stored and managed for downstream human use in Lakes Mead and Powell.

DeBuys is not talking about some distant future. For example, he quotes one Scripts Institute research paper: “Lake Mead has a 50-50 chance of going dry by 2021.” That’s just ten years from now and it threatens the water supplies of Las Vegas, Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles.

Consider the evidence that suggests this future. When full, Lake Mead is 360 feet deep. In 2010 it was 224 feet deep, down 37%. At 215 feet a 4% downstream legal reduction will kick in and at 190 feet a further 7% reduction will be necessary. The water level is already so low it threatens Hoover Dam’s electricity generation. Those projected reductions will worsen shortages already being felt at a time when the regional population continues to increase.

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by Peter Fox Penner

When your local utility buys more renewable energy to power your lights and computers, what more do you get besides the power?  You get cleaner air, fewer respiratory health problems, and lower health-care costs.

You get local jobs building and maintaining green power plants and a better foothold in the fast-growing, multi-billion dollar global renewable energy industry.

If you use the power to charge the new plug-in electric vehicles now available, you reduce our imports of foreign oil and increase our energy security.

And finally, you reduce the greenhouse gases that are leading to the severe, threatening weather events spurred by global climate change.[i]

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have laws that require utilities to purchase a percentage of their power from renewable sources, known as renewable portfolio standards. An additional nine states have voluntary renewable energy goals. Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, is now urging state legislators to repeal these laws, saying that they cause electricity prices to go up and “distort the market.” (See: Grover Norquist Spreads Lies About Renewable Energy Standards).

In his criticisms of renewable standards, Norquist never mentions – much less tries to measure – the health and environmental benefits of renewable energy standards.  The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School estimates coal powered generation costs us $500 billion annually in health, economic, and environmental impacts.  (See also Economics Stunner: “Oil and Coal-Fired Power Plants Have Air Pollution Damages Larger Than Their Value Added”).

States are also beginning to take these health benefits into consideration when planning their electricity resource mix.  For example, Delmarva Power’s 2010 Integrated Resource Plan estimated that the health benefits of renewable energy were worth $1.8 to $4.3 billion to Delaware over the next ten years. Renewable energy offers a several other environmental benefits as well such as reducing hazardous waste and water use.

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Other stories below: Electric power plants shift from coal to natural gas; Russia warming at alarming pace

Group says Keystone pipeline benefits are embellished, Wants focus shifted to renewable sources

A coalition of businesses is the first such group to denounce the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline and is urging President Obama to reject the project and turn the nation’s focus to alternative and renewable energy.

The American Sustainable Business Council disputes Keystone’s job numbers and energy security claims that most other business organizations tout when discussing the project.

“Keystone makes no economic sense for America,” said ASBC communications manager David Brodwin. “Once we take into account the true cost of oil including subsidies, environmental damage and military costs, oil is far more expensive than the alternatives. The best thing we can do for the American economy, and for American businesses as a whole, is to wean ourselves from oil as quickly as possible.”

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