Last week economist William Nordhaus slammed global warming deniers and explained that the cost of delaying action is $4 Trillion. As I wrote, Nordhaus’s blunt piece — “Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong” – is worth reading because, like most mainstream climate economists, he is no climate hawk.

A key reason for that, I believe, is a chronic low-balling of future temperature rise and hence future climate impacts and hence future climate damages by the mainstream economic profession. Nordhaus’s piece proves that point.  In his argument on why CO2 is a pollutant and negative externality—”a byproduct of economic activity that causes damages to innocent bystanders”– he writes:

The question here is whether emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases will cause net damages, now and in the future. This question has been studied extensively. The most recent thorough survey by the leading scholar in this field, Richard Tol, finds a wide range of damages, particularly if warming is greater than 2 degrees Centigrade.⁷ Major areas of concern are sea-level rise, more intense hurricanes, losses of species and ecosystems, acidification of the oceans, as well as threats to the natural and cultural heritage of the planet.

That highlighted sentence may strike some of you as a bit strange. After all, the chances that warming would be less than 2°C have been pretty small for quite some time even with aggressive action and essentially nonexistent without it. So I went to the original Spring 2009 paper in The Journal of Economic Perspectives, “The Economic Effects of Climate Change” (online here).

Note: Figure 1 shows 14 estimates of the global economic impact of climate change, expressed as the welfare-equivalent income gain or loss, as a function of the increase in global mean temperature relative to today. The circular dots represent the estimates (from Table 1).

Yes, a spring 2009 review of the economic impact of climate change reviewed 14 studies — and not single one of them looked at warming of more than 3°C! And Tol is, according to one of the leading scholars in the field, “the leading scholar in the field.” And that is “the most recent thorough survey.”

Who says economics is the dismal science? It’s the super-optimistic science. If you could ask climate economics to sum itself up in one word, it would be “cheerful.”

Note that if you check out Table 1, you’ll see that the 2 estimates of the impacts of 3C warming are Nordhaus himself from 1994 and 1995. Indeed, 4 of the 9 estimates of the impacts of 2.5C damage come from either 1995 or 1996. The head-exploding estimate that 2.5C warming could actually be a significant positive for welfare is from 1996 also. Way to stay up to date on the science.

As readers of Climate Progress know, the recent scientific literature has amped up the likely consequences of inaction considerably (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces.”

A 2010 AAAS presentation on “the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge“ concluded: New scientific findings since the 2007 IPCC report are found to be more than twenty times as likely to indicate that global climate disruption is “worse than previously expected,” rather than “not as bad as previously expected.”

Multiple independent analyses conclude that we are on track for total warming of some 5°C by century’s end and more after that.  What would be the impact of that level of warming? There is a clue inside Nordhaus’s 2008 book, A Question of Balance. Nordhaus explains that in his DICE model, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 only hit 685 ppm in 2100 and “measured mean global surface temperature …  is projected in the DICE model  to increase by 3.1°C in 2100 relative to 1900″ or a mere 2.4°C between 2005 and 2010. But he also notes that

… the DICE model’s  projected baseline increase in temperature for 2200 relative to 1900 is very large, 5.3°C. The climate changes associated with these temperature changes are estimated to increase damages by almost 3% of global output in 2100 and by close to 8% of global output in 2200.

That 8% certainly seems closer, though still low. It’d be quite interesting if somebody ran an impacts estimate using the latest science.

Now you may ask how it is that this supposedly “most recent thorough survey” was blissfully out-of-date from a scientific perspective (though not apparently an economic one) before it was even published? The answer is really that the mainstream climate economics community is generally years behind where the science is.

Consider this jaw-dropper from Tol’s  supposedly definitive paper:

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An amendment by Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) to force immediate approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline failed to get the 60 votes it needed, on a 56-42 vote. Democrats Max Baucus (MT), Begich (AK), Casey (PA), Conrad (ND), Hagan (NC), Landrieu (LA), Manchin (WV), McCaskill (MO), Pryor (AR), Tester (MT), and Webb (VA) voted with Senate Republicans to strip authority for the pipeline’s approval from the president of the United States. Despite the intensity of climate activism in the region, New England Republicans Ayotte (NH), Brown (MA), Collins (ME), and Snowe (ME) stayed with the Republican bloc in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline. The amendment was attached to the unrelated highway funding bill.

Moments earlier, Republicans killed an amendment that would have approved the pipeline if it used American steel and kept the oil for American use.

I’ve never been much of a video gamer. But the one game I played endlessly growing up was Sim City, in which you become a city planner and simulate constructing your own community from scratch.

This was where I got my first understanding of zoning, taxes, and traffic control. I also learned about the powerful economic impact of natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes, which could rip apart sections of a city.

And with the new version of SimCity, a new generation of gamers will learn another lesson: how development choices influence the environment. According to the vice president of the studio developing the latest iteration of the game, climate change will now be a factor, reports Physorg:

“We are updating SimCity with technology of today and introducing it to a new generation of gamers,” Maxis studio senior vice president Lucy Bradshaw said at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

“It gets under your skin; exposes you to the idea of cause and effect and that choices you make have repercussions,” she said.

Along with rich 3-D graphics, the game will have a new simulation engine that enhances its realism and extends ramifications of urban design decisions past borders to affect neighboring cities.

“In ‘SimCity’ resources are finite, you struggle with decisions people are struggling with today in the real world and your decisions can have a global impact,” Bradshaw said.

“Be a polluter and you are ultimately going to affect your friends’ cities… Will you have the wealthiest, fittest, greenest city ever or the sludgiest, most yikes-worthy SimCity ever?”

Frankly, I’m surprised that it took so long to get this new element into SimCity. But I’m really happy to hear that users will now have a more realistic experience when playing the game. Actions have consequences; and I learned that very early on when designing my first cities.

More and more game designers are adding climate education themes to their games. Recently,  Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project teamed up with PSFK Consultants to encourage designers to consider climate and environmental themes. Here’s a speech and roundtable discussion featuring Gore talking about this new trend:

Gaming For Good from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo.

 

by Virginia Lacy and Victor Olgyay, reposted from Rocky Mountain Institute

Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras described them in their book Built to Last as a success strategy of visionary companies. What exactly is a big hairy audacious goal (BHAG)?

A BHAG is an “audacious 10- to 30-year goal to progress toward an envisioned future… A true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line … people like to shoot for finish lines.”

In 2008, the California Public Utility Commission established a few BHAGs of its own: By 2020, all new residential construction in California will be zero net energy (ZNE). The regulators defined zero net energy as a project that “employs a combination of energy efficiency design features, efficient appliances, clean distributed generation, and advanced energy management systems to result in no net purchases of energy from the grid.” By 2030, all new commercial construction will meet the same goal.

California calls its ZNE goals Big Bold Energy Efficiency Strategies, or BBEES, “not only for their potential impact, but also for their easy comprehension and their ability to galvanize market players.” Indeed, ZNE captures the imagination and inspires action. A goal to achieve zero net energy provides a tangible benchmark with an ostensibly clear finish line—at least on the building or community level.

But what about the system level? Does a world of zero net energy buildings make for a sustainable energy future?

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Carbon pollution from fossil fuels is poisoning the weather, helping drive the conditions that created the killer tornado outbreak last week across the heart of the United States. More than 85 tornadoes killed at least 38 people and devastated communities in ten states. The furious storms formed as a strong cold front from the north crashed into high humidity and warm temperatures from the south.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters explained to USA Today that the warm, humid air that fed the tornadoes comes from an unusually hot Gulf of Mexico:

“This year’s unusually mild winter has led to ocean temperatures across the Gulf of Mexico that are approximately 1 degrees C (1.8 degrees F) above average,” says meteorologist Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground. This places it among the top ten warmest values on record for this time of year, going back to the 1800s, he says. “Friday’s tornado outbreak was fueled, in part, by unusually warm, moist air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico due to the high water temperatures there,” Masters says. He says this exceptionally warm air set record high temperatures Friday afternoon at 28 airports in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia. Warmer winters — and an earlier arrival of spring due to a warming climate — will allow tornado season to start earlier and end earlier. “This year’s early start to tornado season is consistent with what we would expect from a warming climate.”

“Baseline ocean temperatures have indeed warmed because of global warming,” Masters told ThinkProgress Green in a follow-up, “so part of the hot Gulf of Mexico temperatures can be blamed on global warming.”

“It is irresponsible not to mention climate change,” climatologist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research told ThinkProgress Green last year. “The environment in which all of these storms and the tornadoes are occurring has changed from human influences (global warming).”

“As spring moves up a week or two, tornado season will start in February instead of waiting for April,” Trenberth told Reuters this week. The winter season from December to February was the fourth warmest on record for the lower 48 states, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“Inherently the global warming from humans is quite small from one year to the next, but 10 times larger from one decade to next, and so on,” Dr. Kevin Trenberth told ThinkProgress Green in an email interview. With over a hundred years of man-made global warming from the start of the Industrial Revolution, the cumulative effect of greenhouse pollution has become significant enough to change ocean temperatures and regional weather patterns in measurable ways. “But superposed is all the shorter term natural variability that at any time can offset that or amplify it,” Trenberth cautioned.

Because of that variability and imperfect historical records, scientists have not found a measurable trend in tornado intensity and number. However, with greater greenhouse pollution scientists expect changes. “The number of days when conditions exist to form tornadoes is expected to increase” as the world warms, atmospheric scientist Robert Trapp told Reuters.

Scientists are only beginning to have a formal understanding of how our disruption of the global climate is influencing extreme weather such as tornado-bearing thunderstorms. However, a picture is beginning to emerge, NASA climate scientist Anthony D. Del Genio wrote in 2011: “As the climate warms, we might experience fewer storms overall, but more of the strongest storms.” They have identified the risk of longer tornado seasons with stronger thunderstorms. Meanwhile, right-wing austerity policies are causing cutbacks in weather monitoring, infrastructure maintenance, and emergency preparedness.

In the face of this warning, we must ask if our current path of increased pollution and decreased investment in public safety is the wisest course.

“It would be immoral to leave these young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.”

by Dan Miller

NASA climate scientist James Hansen gave a talk at the TED conference in Long Beach, CA on February 29th where he laid out the case for taking urgent action to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Dr. Hansen’s talk began by describing his personal journey, originally studying Venus under Prof. James Van Allen and then working at NASA on an instrument to study Venus’ atmosphere.  But after being asked to do some calculations of Earth’s greenhouse effect, Dr. Hansen resigned from the Venus mission to work full time studying Earth’s atmosphere “because a planet changing before our eyes is more interesting and important – its changes will affect all humanity.”

Dr. Hansen and some colleagues published a 1981 paper in Science Magazine that concluded that “observed warming of 0.4C in the prior century was consistent with the greenhouse effect of increasing CO2, — that Earth would likely warm in the 1980s, — and warming would exceed the noise level of random weather by the end of the century.  We also said that the 21st century would see shifting climate zones, creation of drought prone regions in North America and Asia, erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels, and opening of the fabled Northwest passage.  All of these impacts have since either happened or are now well underway.”

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A Sustainable World Will Advance the Rights and Welfare of Women

by Rebecca Lefton

International Women’s Day celebrates the vital roles of women in society and the global progress made toward gender parity. Thus far development programs in health and education have directly addressed and improved the particularly vulnerable plight of women. But detrimental disparities between women and men remain everywhere. Gender norms contribute to enduring disparities between women and men. These beliefs about the roles of women and men shape the lives of women and men everywhere by defining what is expected and valued for each sex. Yet these roles are not static. There has been a shift toward greater gender balance that has often coincided with growing economies and a growing recognition that women’s empowerment is necessary for achieving prosperity, stability, and global health.

One area largely overlooked is the disproportionate impact of climate change on women. Also overlooked, however, are the opportunities for empowering women that stem from tackling global warming. Not only will unabated climate change threaten the livelihood of women more than men, but programs to develop sustainable energy will have immediate positive opportunities in enhancing and promoting the welfare of women around the world.

Investing in solutions that help women and tackle climate change is a win-win that will change the lives of people on the planet today and make the world a safer and more equitable place for future inhabitants. Climate change presents an opportunity for economic transition to a low-carbon sustainable economy that works for all people. Yet the transition to a sustainable economy must be inclusive of half the population if it is to succeed. We can meet the global challenges of gender inequality and climate change simultaneously.

This piece looks at the climate issues facing women and the solutions that will empower them and help mitigate these effects. The upshot is that women can play a major role in responding to climate change and building a sustainable economy.

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Even the least expensive white roof coating reduced peak rooftop temperatures in summer by an average of 43°F

by Patrick Lynch, re-posted from NASA

On the hottest day of the New York City summer in 2011, a white roof covering was measured at 42 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the traditional black roof it was being compared to, according to a study including NASA scientists that details the first scientific results from the city’s unprecedented effort to brighten rooftops and reduce its “urban heat island” effect.

A new study of how different white roofing materials performed “in the field” in New York City over multiple years found that even the least expensive white roof coating reduced peak rooftop temperatures in summer by an average of 43 degrees Fahrenheit. If white roofs were implemented on a wide scale, as the city plans to do, this reduction could cut into the “urban heat island” effect that pumps up nighttime temperatures in the city by as much as 5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, said the study’s lead scientist, Stuart Gaffin of Columbia University. Image credit: Patrick Theiner, Creative Commons

The dark, sunlight-absorbing surfaces of some New York City roofs reached 170 degrees Fahrenheit on July 22, 2011, a day that set a city record for electricity usage during the peak of a heat wave. But in the largest discrepancy of that day, a white roofing material was measured at about 42 degrees cooler. The white roof being tested was a low-cost covering promoted as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030.

On average through the summer of 2011, the pilot white roof surface reduced peak rooftop temperature compared to a typical black roof by 43 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the study, which was the first long-term effort in New York to test how specific white roof materials held up and performed over several years.

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“We’re Seeing Much More Severe Fire Behavior Than Ever Experienced,” Says U.S. Forest Service Chief

Other stories below: Obama Lobbying Dems over Keystone XL pipeline; Winter checks in at Fourth Warmest Ever

Climate change ravaging Forest Service budget for wildfire mitigation, officials say

The warming climate is breeding more beetle-ravaged forest and prolonged fire seasons, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell testified before a Senate committee on Tuesday, as he fielded questions about the White House’s proposed agency budget for fiscal year 2013.

“We’ve been doing research on the effects of a changing climate to the vegetation on our nation’s forests for over two decades,” he told the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources in Washington, D.C. “When it comes to fire, we’re definitely seeing much longer fire seasons in many parts of the country, another 60 or 70 days longer than what we used to experience.”

The Forest Service is not only dealing with an uptick in the number of wildfires, wind storms, droughts and other extreme weather as a result of climate change. “We’re also seeing much more severe fire behavior than we’ve ever experienced in the past,” Tidwell noted….

U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, expressed frustration that politics are polluting scientific discussions. He said it only makes sense for Congress to begin incorporating the effects of climate change into budgetary decisions.

“To me it is so obvious the costs of climate change that we are already paying, and these are never factored in when we talk about the costs of things like burning more coal or burning dirtier oil,” Franken said. “This debate that has been going on in this country – it saddens me sometimes when what your scientists are telling us is called a hoax. I don’t know if it’s for political gain or to curry favor with big donors who can fund super PACs or what it is, but there is a climate-change-denial culture among some of my colleagues that I find very disturbing.”

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