Bill Gates is one very confused billionaire philanthropist.

He understands global warming is a big problem — indeed, his 2012 Foundation Letter even frets about the  grave threat it poses to food security.  But he just doesn’t want to do very much now to stop it from happening (see Pro-geoengineering Bill Gates disses efficiency, “cute” solar, deployment — still doesn’t know how he got rich).

He love technofixes like geoengineering and, as we’ll see, genetically modified food.   Rather than investing in cost-effective emissions reduction strategies today or in renewable energy technologies that are rapidly moving down the cost curve, he explains that the reason invests so much in nuclear R&D is “The good news about nuclear is that there has hardly been any innovation.”  Seriously!

His Letter includes the ominous chart at the top, and he warns of the dire consequences of climate change:

Meanwhile, the threat of climate change is becoming clearer. Preliminary studies show that the rise in global temperature alone could reduce the productivity of the main crops by over 25 percent. Climate change will also increase the number of droughts and floods that can wipe out an entire season of crops. More and more people are raising familiar alarms about whether the world will be able to support itself in the future, as the population heads toward a projected 9.3 billion by 2050.

Strong stuff.

And yet, as the AP reported this week, the wealthiest of all Americans gets very prickly if you don’t wholeheartedly endorse his techno-fix adaptation-centric approach  to dealing with this oncoming disaster:

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ThinkProgress Green has learned that TransCanada, the foreign tar sands company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is facing a potential inquiry into whether it deliberately deceived investors by inflating the job-creation potential of the project. Greenpeace has filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over TransCanada’s “false or misleading statements about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project.”

In the complaint, Greenpeace shows evidence from TransCanada’s Canadian filings and the State Department that the project would involve fewer than 1000 in-state jobs, and around 6000 total jobs. This evidence is contrasted with TransCanada’s (TRP) repeated public pronouncements that pipeline construction would involve 20,000 American jobs:

Specifically, TRP has asserted that each mile of KXL pipeline constructed in the U.S. would create American jobs at a rate that is 67 times higher than job creation totals given by the company to Canadian officials for the Canadian portion of the pipeline.

These false and misleading job creation numbers are part of TRP’s lobbying and public relations campaign designed to create congressional pressure on the U.S. government to issue a Presidential Permit approving construction of KXL. Without government approval, TRP will not be able to build KXL, which will significantly impact the company’s future earnings and share price. That government approval was thrown into serious doubt last week when President Obama rejected the current KXL pipeline proposal at the State Department’s recommendation.

It may be legal to lie to the American public, but it is an actionable offense to deceive shareholders under U.S. securities disclosure laws.

Download the Greenpeace SEC TransCanada letter here.

Scientists are still studying the links between climate change, migration patterns and conflict. Because of the extraordinarily complicated range of factors that impact why people migrate and how conflicts are started, it’s nearly impossible to point to a single occurrence today and blame it on climate alone.

Clearly, factors that may impact conflict can be exacerbated by a warming planet. Demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt that sparked the Arab Spring last year began partly because of protests over rising food prices — a persistent problem that will increase with more severe heat waves, droughts and floods — see Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security.

And in Darfur, a prolonged drought was one of the catalysts for the social unrest that caused a brutal decade-long civil war. Some have gone far enough to call it the “first climate war.”

However, in both of these cases, the political and social unrest contributing to these conflicts are deep and complex. Climate change certainly isn’t the sole driver — but it is one that we know will get considerably worse if we don’t act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply.

Without a more integrated approach to the three D’s of foreign policy — diplomacy, development and defense — governments may find it difficult to get out ahead of problems.

“It is not only about hard security, about hard military power anymore. But you can prevent conflicts if you have smart development and sustainability policies in place if you preemptively invest and make sure that conflicts don’t even rise,” says Michael Werz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, in an interview on the Climate Progress podcast.

Werz recently co-authored a report on the issue, which is the first in a series of reports exploring the link between climate, migration and conflict in different areas of the world.

“The trajectories that we can observe are pointing in the same direction, which means there is a need to do something. And the fact that we’re not entirely certain about the scientific relation between climate change, human mobility and conflict does not mean that we do not have to act. It means the opposite: uncertainty should be a driver for action, and not vice versa.”

So what might that new national security framework look like exactly? We’ll talk with Werz about how the international community can prepare for the climate-conflict nexus — even with so many unanswered questions.

To listen, play the podcast above.

If you want to get automatic updates of our podcast, subscribe to us in itunes. You can simply go to itunes, search for Climate Progress, and click “subscribe free.” If you don’t use itunes, you can follow our RSS feed.

Related Post:

• Sandia Labs study: “It is the uncertainty associated with climate change that validates the need to act protectively and proactively.”
• USGS Expert Explains How Global Warming Likely Contributes to East Africa’s Brutal Drought
• An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces

This week NASA released what it calls “the most amazing high definition of earth” ever taken — a shot snapped on January 4th from the agency’s newest satellite.

The satellite, which is a joint project between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,  was launched last October to collect more detailed data about earth’s atmosphere and oceans, while also enhancing climate forecasting capabilities.

The next generation of climate and weather satellites are scheduled for launch in 2017. However, some onlookers are concerned that government underfunding of satellite programs make the future of projects like this uncertain.

Former Vice President Al Gore is heading to Antarctica to highlight the extraordinary changes greenhouse pollution is causing even in our most remote continent. When Gore visited Antarctica in 1988, scientists were predicting it could warm more rapidly than the global average. “This prediction has proven true,” Gore writes. “Today, the West Antarctic Peninsula is warming about four times faster than the global average.”

Although the vast ice sheets of the frozen continent are remote from almost all of human civilization, their warming has drastic implications for billions of people. With the melting of those almost inconceivable reserves of ice, the planet’s sea levels are rising. Scientists now expect 21st-century sea level rise — on the scale of three to six feet or more — will be dominated by the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps.

Gore is leading an expedition of “civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens, as well as “many of the world’s leading climate scientists” to see how man’s negligence is transforming the forbidding continent:

To better understand the changes taking place near the South Pole and the impacts those changes will have around the world, I will be returning to Antarctica this month with The Climate Reality Project. A large number of civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries on this voyage will be joined by many of the world’s leading climate scientists and Antarctica experts to see firsthand and in real time how the climate crisis is unfolding in Antarctica.

The Climate Reality Project is asking everyone to host their own expeditions wherever they live. As the new plant hardiness zone maps from the USDA remind us, we don’t even need to leave our backyards to see the effects of the hundreds of billions of tons of carbon pollution we have pumped into the atmosphere with the profligate burning of fossil fuels.

Nor do we have to leave our neighborhoods to see the signs of positive change — community gardens, electric cars, solar panels, wind turbine manufacturers, and more in the growing mass movement to build a sustainable, resilient civilization on our changing planet.

by Kiley Kroh and Jorge Madrid

Tonight, the four remaining Republican presidential contenders head to Jacksonville, Florida for the final debate before the battleground state’s January 31^st primary.

Although the candidates’ energy platforms are firmly anchored to the  “drill, baby, drill” platform, the call to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, and the denial of climate change, those messages won’t necessarily resonate with Floridians. The state has long been wary of offshore drilling, and south Florida ranks among the nation’s most vulnerable areas to climate change-induced flooding and erosion.

Given the importance of these environmental issues for Floridians, here are five key themes to keep in mind for tomorrow night’s debate:

1. Tourism
2. Wetlands
3. Clean energy
4. Sea-level rise
5. Fishing

Here’s why each of these five are important:

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by John Farrell, reposted from Energy Self Reliant States

Last week I wrote about the time-of-use pricing scheme that PG&E offers in San Francisco, and how solar power is worth 14% more compared to a standard flat-rate electricity plan.  In reality, it’s 36% or more.

In the interest of simplicity, I only looked at the rates PG&E charges for using up to ~250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month (their “baseline” rate).  But baseline rates only apply to the first 3,000 kWh consumed per year, one-third the U.S. average.  Very few customers use so little electricity.

Rather, most customers will consume electricity in Tier 2, which applies to consumption from 3,000 to 6,900 kWh per year, or even Tier 3, which applies to consumption up to 14,500 kWh.  And the electricity rates in these tiers are substantially higher.

For each peak hour kWh used in Tier 1 (the baseline), a customer pays 28 cents per kWh.  But once they’ve used up their baseline amount, each peak kWh will cost 29.6 cents in Tier 2.  If the customer hits Tier 3 rates in a given month, their peak electricity will cost 44.6 cents per kWh!

A solar array provides two benefits under this scenario.  First, it produces electricity during peak periods, and second, it also reduces overall consumption.  Thus, the electricity offset by a rooftop solar array is the most expensive, and it also can push the customer into a lower usage tier, reducing the rate paid on grid electricity.

A few examples:

1. A customer uses 3,000 kWh per year (the Baseline) and has a 2 kW solar array.  The solar array provides 97% of the annual household consumption, and the value of the electricity produced by the solar array (based on the cost of grid power at the time it produces) is 22% higher than under a flat rate plan.
2. A customer uses 6,900 kWh per year (Baseline and Tier 2 power) and has a 2.5 kW solar array.  The solar array provides 53% of the annual household consumption (but nearly all of the Tier 2 electricity), and the value of the electricity produced by the solar array (based on the cost of grid power at the time it produces) is 36% higher than under a flat rate plan.
3. A customer uses 10,000 kWh per year (Baseline, Tier 2 and Tier 3) – the U.S. average – and has a 2 kW solar array.  The solar array provides just 20% of the annual household consumption (but nearly all of the Tier 3 electricity), and the value of the electricity produced by the solar array (based on the cost of grid power at the time it produces) is 253% higher than under a flat rate plan.

The chart at the top illustrates the good matchup between solar and time-of-use rates (the rates shown are for summer weekdays).  The bars show the pricing by hour, as well as the higher prices in higher tiers of consumption (for Residential Schedule E-6).  The green line shows the percent of daily solar output that falls during a particular time-of-use pricing period.

Overall, solar power is a pretty good fit with time-of-use pricing, a policy that should be used in more locales to improve the economics for local solar power.

Thanks to Mark, whose timely comment last week notified me of a change in PG&E’s residential time-of-use pricing plan.

– John Farrell is a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self Reliance. This piece was originally published at Energy Self Reliant States.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ExxonMobil, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN), and other insiders made a furious lobbying push in the fourth quarter of 2011 for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, as Congress and the White House debated the dangerous project’s future. Forty-five companies and organizations reported significant lobbying between October 1 and December 31 on the Keystone XL Pipeline in general or on legislation aiming to speed up the Obama administration’s consideration of the application — with the lion’s share coming from proponents of the foreign crude project.

Last week, ThinkProgress reported that, through the third quarter of 2011, at least 31 companies or organizations reported lobbying in favor for federal approval of the application by the TransCanada Corporation to build a tar sands pipeline between Alberta, Canada, and Nederland, Texas — while seven lobbied against it. That group included a wide array of energy and construction companies, trade associations, and labor unions lobbying for and a handful of environmental groups lobbying against.

During the fourth quarter of 2011, oil money poured into Washington to push for the tar sands pipeline:

– Backers include some of the most influential players in Washington. At least 31 pipeline supporters spent over $36.7 million lobbying on this and other issues in the fourth quarter of 2011. These included huge players including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips — each of whom spend $1 million on lobbying each quarter. New supporters included the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers ($251,383) and the office of Gov. Mitch Daniels ((R-IN) ($66,000).

– The few organizations lobbying against the pipeline were much smaller players. Seven organizations publicly opposed to the pipeline reported only about $1.1 million on all lobbying for that time. These included newcomers Environment America Inc., the National Farmers Union, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation. The Friends Committee is the advocacy arm of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and its $427,181 lobbying total made it the largest spender on the no side, for the quarter.

– Most of the lobbying groups who lobbied for the issue in previous quarters continued to do so in this period. Just a few proponents, such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the National Taxpayers Union lobbied in previous quarters on the issue, but did not appear to in the fourth quarter. Only the Defenders of Wildlife lobbied in opposition to the bill in earlier quarters, but did not report lobbying on Keystone XL in this period.

– Self-interest continued to be a big factor. TransCanada Pipelines Inc. spent $410,000 on lobbying in quarter four of 2011.

As these groups were lobbying, the fourth quarter of 2011 saw public hearings on the bill, mass protests, industry-backed TV spots, and legislation pushed by Congressional Republicans to force an expedited permit application response by the administration.

TransCanada has vowed to reapply with a modified proposal and Republicans are threatening to hold up tax relief for working families to force federal approval. Expect 2012 to be more of the same: Washington lobbyists are gunning for Keystone XL, while the opposition is mostly grassroots and a few environmentalist organizations, largely outside of the Washington money game.

Other stories below: Climate change set to hit UK poorest hardest; Vermont considers banning fracking

U.S. Agencies Cast Doubt on Republican Bill to Push Keystone XL

A Republican-backed bill to advance TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which was delayed by the Obama administration, poses jurisdictional and legal issues, representatives of two U.S. agencies said.

The bill requiring the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency, to issue a permit raises “serious questions,” Kerri-Ann Jones, assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, said today at a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel hearing in Washington.

FERC, which oversees interstate transport of electricity, oil and natural gas, lacks authority to locate oil pipelines, Jeffrey Wright, the agency’s director of the Office of Energy Projects, said today at the hearing. The bill doesn’t give FERC enough time to adequately assess the project, Wright said.

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Recently released lobbying disclosures show that Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN), who delivered the GOP rebuttal to the State of the Union last night, joined the oil industry in lobbying Congress on behalf of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The pipeline does not go through Indiana, and few, if any, Indiana workers are expected to be employed in its construction. However, the Indiana Petroleum Council has been touting the project.

An analysis of fourth quarter 2011 lobbying forms by ThinkProgress Green finds:

The state of Indiana’s DC representatives received $66,000 from Indiana taxpayers to lobby Congress in the fourth quarter of 2011. Deborah Hohlt reported receiving $50,500 for lobbying on behalf of the state, including advocacy of the tar sands pipeline. Hohlt is a long-time Washington lobbyist who began her career at the Republican National Committee and George H.W. Bush administration. Griffin Foster reported receiving $15,500 for lobbying on behalf of the state of Indiana, including the Keystone pipeline. Foster is a former legislative assistant to Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL).

During the rebuttal, Daniels attacked President Obama for “extremism” that “cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands.” Daniels did not mention how many of those jobs seem to be going to DC lobbyists.

by Daniel J. Weiss

Today President Obama will give two speeches about his clean energy blueprint announced Tuesday during the State of the Union address. The first talk will occur at a United Parcel Service facility in Las Vegas where he plans to discuss American workers developing American energy. Buckley Air Force base in Aurora, Colorado will host the second address, which will focus on energy security.

In conjunction with these speeches, the White House released more details about its clean energy proposals beyond the State of the Union address or the Blueprint for America document.[1] Here is brief rundown on the details of these proposals that rely on existing executive authority, and do not require legislation.

• The lease sale of 7,250 unleased blocks covering 38 million acres in the central Gulf of Mexico could yield 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  The minimum bid for these leases will be nearly triple the previous amount.  This could raise nearly $4 billion if companies lease every available acre.  The leases will stipulate that companies must develop these areas promptly or risk losing them, which should increase oil and gas production.

• The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) — will announce a new research competition to develop innovative methods to use natural gas as transportation fuel.  Hopefully, this contest will lead to the development and deployment of breakthrough technologies that can dramatically reduce oil use and pollution, create new jobs, and save drivers money.

• The Navy will add 1 gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) of renewable electricity generation capacity for its “shore-side” installations.  This is enough power for a quarter-million homes.   The Navy will use “existing authorities such as power purchase agreements… [to] ensure these energy projects are cost neutral and require no up-front investments by the government.”

There are also proposals that would require legislation to become law, so Americans depend on Congress to act:

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