Bogus climate course “a source of embarrassment to the institution”

– Richard Littlemore, in a DeSmogBlog repost

An energy industry public relations man and lobbyist with no background in climate science has infiltrated Carleton University in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, teaching a course on climate change denial that other Carleton professors describe as “a source of embarrassment to the institution.”

Tom Harris, who originally trained as a mechanical engineer, has been a strategist for the climate change denial industry for at least a decade. A favourite presenter misrepresented as a PhD at the Heartland Institute’s regular climate change denial conferences, Harris has worked directly for companies like the international PR giant APCO Worldwide or for energy industry lobby firms such as Toronto’s High Park Group. More recently, he has launched or led at least three phony “grassroots organizations” – energy industry front groups that promote confusion or denial in climate science.

Now, Harris is teaching at Carleton, passing on a mix of climate denial mythology and flat out fiction, telling students that the planet isn’t really warming, that (if it is), humans aren’t to blame, that (if they are) if might be a good thing and that, regardless, it’s just too complicated for mere scientists to figure out. (“The climate problem is so difficult that we might never solve it.”)

Harris’s ridiculous claims have been laid bare in a new report by the Canadian Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism (CASS), which has gone through videotapes of lectures from Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective (ERTH2402), identifying 142 errors, exaggerations or outright prevarications.

The CASS report states:

“We have demonstrated that the Earth Sciences Department at Carleton University is currently running a course which obfuscates, down-plays, distorts and contradicts the overwhelming scientific consensus on dangerous, man-made climate change.  This course is run by an instructor who has been actively involved in climate change denial for many years, and involves a number of other speakers who are similarly biased in their views.  Whether the inaccurate information presented is the result of incompetence or malice we cannot comment, but we strongly advise that the course be withdrawn and corrections presented, with apologies, to the students who have previously taken the course.”

The existence of this course represents a coup for the climate change denial movement, which as documented with the release of internal documents from the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, has been trying to infiltrate the U.S. school system with a K-12 curriculum promoting the notion that climate change is not real, not caused by humans or just too confusing to understand. (Heartland, a prominent proponent on behalf of its tobacco industry sponsors, has, in fact, been promoting climate disinformation in schools for many years.)

In the Carleton course, Harris has promoted a series of irrelevant, misleading or flagrantly incorrect bromides, including:

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Nearly two years after Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, the deadliest mine accident in nearly 40 years, the West Virginia House of Delegates has just passed a mine safety reform bill that should, in theory, strengthen some of the lax laws that made the tragedy possible. Through the legislative process, the bill, already mild to begin with, has been further weakened to appease coal industry lobbyists and legislators who fear them.

Part of the bill attempts to raise the maximum fine that can be levied against mine operators who violate safety laws. While coal state legislators kowtowing to the industry is nothing new, the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. uncovered a statistic that highlights the state’s shocking disregard for the safety of miners. Under West Virginia law, the maximum fine for a safety violation that results in the death of a coal miner is one-tenth of the maximum fine for violating West Virginia University’s trademark:

Better yet — why should someone face more serious punishment if they use the WVU logo without permission (see here and here) than if they kill a coal miners? That’s right, WVU trademark violators? Up to 10 years in jail and a $100,000 fine. Mine safety criminals? Up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The new mine safety bill makes an attempt to raise both civil and criminal penalties for mine safety violations, but even the higher fines would be incredibly weak. The maximum civil fine for most safety violations would rise from $3,000 to $5,000 — weakened from $10,000 in the original draft of the bill — falling woefully short of the $70,000 maximum fine under federal law. And while it seeks to impose new criminal penalties on violations resulting in deaths, Ward couldn’t find a single example of county prosecutors bringing criminal charges under the existing statutes.

Last week, the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training released its report on the Upper Big Branch mine disaster last week, and though its tone was “tepid” compared to other reports, it became the fourth such investigation to find that lax mine safety laws and regulations were responsible for the explosion that killed 29 miners. After the disaster, West Virginia politicians and coal industry big-wigs vowed to never let such a disaster happen again.

If recent efforts to enhance mine safety on both the state and federal levels is any indication, though, the promise from the coal industry, industry lobbyists, and coal state legislators that such a disaster will never happen again is just another example of empty rhetoric.

Did you know that the landing on the moon was staged? Or that swallowing seeds will cause fruit to grow in your stomach? Or that the cost of solar power has gone up 63% since 2001?

If you are tied to reality, you’d know that all three of these statements are utterly false. And while most people know that the moon landing was real and that seeds don’t grow in your stomach, the last falsity is an easy one to slip by people who don’t follow energy — which is almost everyone.

In fact, the installed cost of solar has come down nearly 40% since 2001.

That ridiculous statement about solar comes from Dr. Ben Zycher, an economist with the Pacific Research Institute and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who has a new book out about renewable electricity technologies. Last week, AEI held an event for Dr. Zycher to talk about his book, in which he claims to be conducting a “fresh analysis” and a “reality check” on clean energy.

It seems Dr. Zycher needs a reality check — some of his math mistakes have introduced errors that are off by a factor of 100!  Below is a response to some of his claims.

According to the authoritative “Tracking the Sun IV” report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the installed cost of solar has come down about 40% since 2001, from $10 a watt to $6.2 per watt. And with a scale-up in manufacturing, the market price of modules has come down an astonishing pace, with prices declining from $7 a watt in the mid-80′s to under $1 a watt today. Some analysts predict that we’ll see solar module prices at 70 cents a watt this year.

Zycher also claims that “wind energy costs have been steadily rising even though the capacity to generate electricity has expanded.” (Note: I inaccurately said that Zycher used turbine pricing data. In fact, he used data from the EIA on cost per MW installed and MWh of generation.)

It is true that the cost of wind power increased slightly since 2001 due to a rapid scaling of global capacity, a shortage of product, and a huge jump in the cost of raw materials. (Steel doubled in price and copper quadrupled in price in the past decade.)  But this is after a stunning drop in costs over the previous two decades:

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

The Congressional Western Caucus, consisting entirely of Republican members of Congress, held a hearing this morning entitled “Washington Barriers to Prosperity and Property Rights in the West.”  It was an opportunity for members to criticize a variety of regulations that protect our lands, water, air, and public health like the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Wilderness Act.  Congressman Steve Pearce (R-NM), co-chairman of the caucus opened the hearing by saying that such regulations are “devastating the West.”

Members also accused the administration of killing jobs, in ways such as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s recent decision to withdraw 1 million acres around the Grand Canyon from new uranium mining.  Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) railed against “the extremist policies of this administration.”

But, new on-the-ground evidence shows that westerners don’t necessarily believe with the assertion that regulations kill jobs.  A recent poll from the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project found that voters in six western states overwhelmingly believe that regulations do not harm business. Only 38 percent of respondents agreed (and 60 percent disagreed) with the statement that:

One of the best ways to create jobs is to cut back environmental regulations that are weighing down [your state’s] businesses.

Another question on the poll asked, “when you hear about the laws that govern industry’s responsibility for [your state’s] clean water, clean air, natural areas and wildlife do you think those are more likely to be…”:

-  63 percent answered “…important safeguards to protect private property owners, public health and taxpayers from toxic pollution and costly clean‐ups.”

-  29 percent answered “…burdensome regulations that tie up industry in red tape, hurt them too much financially, and cost jobs.”

On top of this, westerners are not particularly trustful of the mining, drilling, and logging companies that Republicans promote and defend.  In fact, only 21 percent of voters queried in the poll believed that “we can trust companies to act responsibly to protect [your state’s] land, water and wildlife on their own, without laws and regulations that require them to do so.”

Rather than bash environmental regulations, Republican leaders would do well to listen to what their constituents are telling them—that regulations help keep protect and preserve the land, water, air, and wildlife that makes the American West so unique.

Following President Obama’s “all-the-above” energy speech last Thursday, conservatives have ignored the speech and instead latched onto a single point about investing $14 million in algae-based biofuel research. “Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this [algae] fuel that we can grow right here in the United States,” Obama said.

Newt Gingrich said the president’s comments are “worthy of Leno or Letterman.” The same candidate who wants moon colonies during his presidency attacked the president for a “weird” technology both Republicans and their industry allies have endorsed.

Gingrich isn’t alone in the right-wing attempt to simplify the administration’s multifaceted energy proposals:

Newt Gingrich: “And maybe what we ought to do at Newt.org is we ought to get t-shirts that say ‘You choose.’ Gingrich went on to suggest the slogans, ‘You have Newt: Drill here, Drill Now, Pay Less. You have Obama: Have Algae, Pay More, Be Weird.”

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): I think the American people realize that a president who’s out there talking about algae when they’re having to choose between whether to buy groceries or to fill up the tank is the one who’s out of touch.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer: Why build a keystone pipeline with real oil from Canada to put in real refineries and put in real existing cars when you can do algae? I think he is on to something. And I think this shows the vision, the hope and change he promised in 2008.

Rush Limbaugh: This guy is so out of his league, to throw out there, “I’m looking at algae.” It’s patently absurd. In a sane world this guy would be laughed out of office, not voted out.

By mocking the president, conservatives ignore a history of party leaders and their industry allies endorsing algae research.

Republicans from Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) have requested Department of Energy grants for algae research. All three lawmakers wrote that algae investments would reduce America’s oil use. For instance, Johanns wrote that an algae biotechnology center “would develop technology to decrease our dependence on imported oil.”

Republican allies in the oil industry have also invested in algae, including No. 1 oil lobbyist ConocoPhillips and ExonMobil, which sunk $600 million in algae biofuel research.

On energy, the administration is doing far more than budgeting for biofuel research. The White House’s FY 2013 budget provides billions for R&D and manufacturing in clean energy technologies, while higher fuel economy standards will reduce U.S. oil consumption by more than 2 million barrels per day. Meanwhile, under Obama, domestic production of oil has reached record levels of quadruple the drilling rigs over the past three years.

The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund continues to receive donations and offers of help from various stakeholders.  [Click here to donate.]

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JR: Let me add that Climate Progress readers have been among the biggest supports of the CSLDF.  Climate scientists are greatly for this support, as am I. People are always asking me for specific things that they can do to help. Well, this is one of them. Spread the word on blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

A new study led by the Georgia Institute of Technology provides further evidence of a relationship between melting ice in the Arctic regions and widespread cold outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere….

Since the level of Arctic sea ice set a new record low in 2007, significantly above-normal winter snow cover has been seen in large parts of the northern United States, northwestern and central Europe, and northern and central China. During the winters of 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, the Northern Hemisphere measured its second and third largest snow cover levels on record.

“Our study demonstrates that the decrease in Arctic sea ice area is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation,” said Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. “The circulation changes result in more frequent episodes of atmospheric blocking patterns, which lead to increased cold surges and snow over large parts of the northern continents.”

That’s from the news release of an NASA- and NSF-funded study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall.”

I think Curry’s use of the phrase “cold surges” is important. Although there have definitely been some major cold blasts, our winters aren’t actually getting colder — see the 10/11 Climate Progress post, “Last Two Winters’ Warm Extremes More Severe Than Their Cold Snaps, Study Finds.” And that’s without counting this winter.  Of course, winters are just going to keep getting warmer globally — so I think some of the reporting on this study has been a tad misleading.

The point is that it now appears over the next couple of decades, the gradual rate of warming will not be able to overcome the occasional incredible winter cold surges fueled by the loss of Arctic ic. This is particularly true if, as I and others have argued, we’re going to see continued rapid ice loss in the next decade (see “The New Arctic Abnormal: Record Low Sea Ice Volume, Area and Extent*” and “The death spiral continues“).

Arctic sea ice in September 2007 reached its lowest extent on record, approximately 40% lower than when satellite records began in 1979. Sea ice loss in 2011 was virtually tied with the ice loss in 2007, despite weather conditions that were not as unusual in the Arctic.

The new PNAS report is about the third study to come to the same conclusion:

• Is Climate Change Bringing the Arctic to Europe? “The probability of cold winters with much snow in Central Europe rises when the Arctic is covered by less sea ice in summer.”
• Our Extreme Weather: Is Arctic Sea Ice Loss Partly to Blame? ”Such a large area of open water is bound to cause significant impacts on weather patterns, due to the huge amount of heat and moisture that escapes from the exposed ocean into the atmosphere over a multi-month period following the summer melt.”

The disinformers have repeatedly suggested that big snowstorms disprove (!) climate science. They can’t stand the fact that actual science says that the Snowpocalypses we’ve been seeing can be directly linked to global warming, which, of course, wasn’t news to anyone who actually reads the scientific literature or talks to real climatologists (see “An amazing, though clearly little-known, scientific fact: We get more snow storms in warm years!“).

This study is probably particularly annoying to the disinformers since it was co-authored by Curry, who has transformed herself from climate science advocate into a promoter of many long-debunked disinformers (see “The curious incident of Curry with the fringe“).

The lead author, Jiping Liu, a senior research scientist at Georgia Tech, explained that the study looked at more than just changes in atmospheric circulation. It also looked at changes in atmospheric water vapor content, which into scientists have long said would increase because of global warming and drive more extreme precipitation events, which  in fact is what has happened (see “Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment“).

As ABC News reports, “more water is evaporating into the air as Arctic ice at the ocean’s surface melts away”:

“This greatly enhances the transfer of moisture from the ocean to the atmosphere,” Liu said. That humidity, he says, essentially acts as fuel to help supercharge “Snowmageddon”-type storms like the ones that paralyzed parts of the northeastern U.S. in 2010. A more recent, deadly deep freeze in Eastern Europe left 650 people dead.

“The record decline in Arctic sea ice is at least a critical contributor to recent snowy winters in northern continents,” Liu said.

Liu says the new research may also help connect the dots between human-caused global warming, vanishing ice and our changing weather.

As Climate Central notes, “The Arctic has been warming at about twice the rate of the rest of the globe, a trend studies show is largely due to manmade climate change. Fall sea ice cover declined by 27 percent between 1979-2010, and the five lowest sea ice extent years have all occurred during the past five years.”

They spoke to another leading expert on the subject:

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by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, reposted from NRDC’s Switchboard

Bullying American landowners and stockpiling pipe for a rejected project show the arrogance of the Canadian pipeline company TransCanada as it tries to reanimate the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The latest news is that TransCanada is proposing to split the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in two in order to get around the U.S. process to review international pipelines for their national interest. TransCanada says that it will seek the presidential permit for the border crossing, but move ahead separately with the southern portion of the rejected Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Oklahoma to the Gulf. This is a ploy to avoid a review that will show how the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will raise U.S. oil prices, send tar sands overseas, endanger U.S. homes and waters, and contribute to worsening climate change.

What part of “no” does TransCanada not understand? Texans, Nebraskans, and folks all across the country are saying that whether in a hundred pieces or one piece, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in the national interest. At a time of public worry about rising gas prices, lawmakers should be concerned about a project that will in diverting oil from the Midwest gasoline refining operations to Gulf Coast diesel refining operations thereby raising U.S. oil and gas prices.

So what exactly has TransCanada proposed? TransCanada announced that it has let the State Department know that the company will submit a new application for a presidential permit for the northern portion of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from the border crossing in Montana to Steel City, Nebraska on the Kansas border where an already existing part of the pipeline starts. TransCanada would supplement this application with the proposed route through Nebraska after that has been determined in cooperation with Nebraska. But there is some question as to how long this would take since Nebraska does not currently have laws in place to do this assessment. TransCanada will then apply separately to the various federal and state permits for the southern portion of the pipeline from Cushing Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast.

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Scientists have tied the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice, caused by global warming pollution, to the recent extreme winters that hit the United States last year and Europe this year. In “Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall,” a new report published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers find that the loss of polar ice has changed atmospheric circulation and increased atmospheric water vapor, driving the popularly-dubbed “snowpocalypse” conditions:

We conclude that the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters.

Sea ice decline is contributing to catastrophic, deadly winters in two ways, the researchers find. The loss of ice changes wind patterns over the northern oceans, which in turn disrupts the jet stream, allowing cold polar air to plunge across the northern hemisphere. “If there is a dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice, the westerly winds that blow across the North Pacific and North Atlantic oceans are weakened,” lead author Jiping Liu, a senior research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Climatewire. “This means we will have a wavier jet stream.”

The loss of ice and warmer temperatures mean that there is much more evaporation from the Arctic Ocean, leading to a higher moisture content in the polar air that is pulled south. That means that intense snowfall is more likely, especially as the polar air collides with warm, moist air from the south.

In 1999, Kevin Trenberth explained how global warming would lead to more intense precipitation events, including snow storms.

The decline in Arctic sea ice is one of the primary indicators of man-made global warming. Arctic sea ice cover began shrinking decades ago, with a rapid acceleration in the last decade. Sea ice decline has been much more rapid than projected by climate models. Some scientists now expect the Arctic to be effectively ice-free during the summer in less than 30 years. The United States and other nations have responded to this troubling collapse of the planetary thermostat by making plans to drill for fossil fuels in the Arctic oceans. That decision hastens our march into a “no-analogue world,” in the words of NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco.

by Zachary Rybarczyk

Joint investment between the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors has enabled a breakthrough in lithium-ion cell technologies that could cut the price of electric vehicle batteries in half.

Armed with $7 million from from General Motors’ venture investment arm, G.M. Ventures, and $4 million from the Energy Department’s advanced energy research program, ARPA-E, California-based Envia Systems announced that it had created a battery pack with cells with energy density far greater than other technologies on the market.

Envia says its new manganese-based cathode design allows lithium cells to store almost three times the amount of energy per charge than today’s commercial lithium-ion battery packs. Envia’s chairman and CEO Atul Kapadia spoke to the New York Times:

“We will be able to make smaller automotive packs that are also less heavy and much cheaper,” Atul Kapadia, chairman and chief executive of Envia, said in a telephone interview. “The cost of cells will be less than half — perhaps 45 percent — of cells today, and the energy density will be almost three times greater than conventional automotive cells.”

Mr. Kapadia continued: “What we have are not demonstrations, not experiments, but actual products. We could be in automotive production in a year and a half.”

If these claims are true, they could provide a much-needed boost to the electric vehicle sector. Because batteries are one of the most costly parts of electric vehicles, dramatic improvements like this could substantially reduce the overall cost of vehicles. Dozens of companies are working on bringing battery costs down, but none have been able to get into a cost range that would break the market open.

Looks like a strategic government investment in good ol’ fashioned energy R&D could just get us there.

Other stories below: Santorum’s impious denial theology; debunking myths about wind turbines and carbon emissions

Keystone breakthrough may muffle Republican attack on Obama

A Canadian company’s decision on Monday to proceed with part of a U.S. pipeline might end up muffling one of the Republicans’ loudest arguments in this election year: that President Barack Obama has pursued failed energy policies.

TransCanada Corp announced it intended to begin work on the southern leg of the $7 billion Keystone XL project, from Oklahoma to Texas, leaving for later another run at the more controversial, and complicated, northern segment.

For months, Republicans have hammered Obama for blocking the pipeline project out of concern for the environmentally sensitive areas south of the U.S.-Canada border. Republicans seeking re-election to Congress uniformly branded his decision as a job-killer that undermines energy independence.

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