Journalist Bill Blakemore has a great piece on ABC’s website:

‘Hug the Monster’ for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate).

He offers advice to journalists in covering climate change — and advice to the rest of us in a world captured by denial.

The piece helps dispel the myth that climate scientists have long been overhyping climate impacts — when everyone who actually follows climate science and talks to any significant number of climate scientists knows that the reverse is true. As Blakemore writes:

Established scientists, community and government leaders and journalists, as they describe the disruptions, suffering and destruction that manmade global warming is already producing, with far worse in the offing if humanity doesn’t somehow control it, are starting to allow themselves publicly to use terms like “calamity,” “catastrophe”, and “risk to the collective civilization”….

A few years ago, this reporter heard a prominent climate and environment scientist speaking at a large but off-the-record conference of experts and policy makers from around the world who had gathered at Harvard University’s Kennedy School….

He told us that he and most other climate scientists often simply didn’t want to speak openly about what they were learning about how disruptive and frightening the changes of manmade global warming were clearly going to be for “fear of paralyzing the public.”

That speaker now has an influential job in the Obama administration.

Climate scientists have been consistently downplaying and underestimating the risks for three main reasons. First, their models tended to ignore the  myriad amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks that we now know are kicking in (such as the defrosting tundra).

Second, they never imagined that the nations of the world would completely ignore their warnings, that we would knowingly choose catastrophe. So until recently they hardly ever seriously considered or modeled the do-nothing scenario, which is a tripling (820 ppm) or quadrupling (1100 ppm) of preindustrial levels of carbon dioxide over the next hundred years or so. In the last 2 or 3 years, however, the literature in this area has exploded and the picture it paints is not pretty (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

Third, as Blakemore (and others) have noted, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are generally reticent and cautious in stating results — all the more so in this case out of the mistaken fear that an accurate diagnosis would somehow make action less likely. Yes, it’d be like a doctor telling a two-pack-a-day patient with early-stage emphysema that their cough is really not that big a deal, but would they please quit smoking anyway. We live in a world, however, where anyone who tries to explain what the science suggests is likely to happen if we keep doing nothing is attacked as an alarmist by conservatives, disinformers, and their enablers in the media.

Back in 2005, the physicist Mark Bowen wrote about glaciologist Lonnie Thompson: “Scientists have an annoying habit of backing off when they’re asked to make a plain statement, and climatologists tend to be worse than most.”

The good news, if you can call it that, is that the climate situation has become so dire that even the most reticent climatologists are starting to speak more bluntly. By the end of 2010, Thompson was writing:

Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group. We are not given to theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees. Why then are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer is that virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.

Blakemore points out some other climate scientists who are starting to speak out:

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There’s no way around it: we need a price on carbon in order to rapidly reduce emissions. But absent that necessary policy, putting the investment structure in place to promote renewables can also have a substantial impact on lowering emissions.

A new analysis from the Energy Information Administration of a Clean Energy Standard (CES) proposed by New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman finds that strong clean energy targets would reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the electricity sector by 44 percent over the next two decades.

The Bingaman CES would require utilities to procure 85 percent of their electricity from a mix of renewables, nuclear and natural gas by 2035. According to the EIA analysis, the targets would help decrease coal generation by 54 percent by the 2035 target date — all without a price on carbon.

There’s no substitute for putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions. But establishing a national target for clean energy can also be an effective tool in our arsenal for reducing global warming pollution.

by Celine Ramstein

With just over six weeks until­­­­ the Rio+20 summit, the potential for concrete action at the event is still uncertain.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called the Rio Earth Summit “one of the most important global meetings on sustainable development in our time.” However, the negotiations text is far from being an actual agreement and does not yet reflect the ambitious results expected at the event.

In order to step up pressure and make the event a success, youth groups are getting increasingly involved in the process.

A few months ago, a group of students in Paris launched a youth initiative aimed at organizing a simulation of Rio+20, called Paris+20. They organized conferences every week with experts from different fields to educate the “delegations” about sustainable development issues. The idea spread rapidly and students from all over the world started organizing their own events.

Since then, the so-called MyCity+20 movement has gathered momentum. In Late April, the New-York+20 was held, bringing together more than 300 committed young people (in person and online) at the Ford Foundation in New York City.

In one day of hard work, the young people came out with a statement that was presented to the official delegation. They managed to agree on a 2-page document on the most critical issues to agree on at Rio+20 and call world leaders to tackle them. These include:

• The creation of the United Nations Environment Organization that will that will serve as the primary coordinating body for environmental issues at the UN and improve efficiency, transparency and equitable participation of all stakeholders.
• A more holistic integration of sustainability into all professions and education systems to enable a transformation to the green economy.
• The establishment of Ombudspersons for Future Generations, at all levels of governance, that have a comprehensive mandate to engage and enlighten the present citizenry about the needs and rights of future generations.
• The adoption of a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that promote and protect the economic, environmental, and social well-being of present and future generations.

This group of youth also committed to action by “engaging their communities and youth globally to advocate for policies that ensure the future they want.” A report on this event can be found here.

The agreement was praised by Rio+20 Executive Coordinator Elizabeth Thompson and France’s Ambassador for the Environment Jean-Pierre Thébault. Thébault promised to share the statement with the EU delegations and reminded the participants that “the youth’s job only starts at Rio, and will continue for the next two to three decades.”

This impressive organization is an extension of the youth outreach efforts at recent UN climate conferences. These negotiations are critical for our future. Young people know they can’t afford to wait another 20 years for action — we need strong political commitments and concrete actions today to build a sustainable tomorrow.

Celine Ramstein is an intern on the energy team at the Center for American Progress.

To add your voice to the petition calling on corporations to end support for the Heartland Institute, click here.

by Brad Johnson, campaign manager of Forecast the Facts

The Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers (ABIR) and member company XL Group have announced that they will discontinue their support for the Heartland Institute, adding more companies to the list of those rejecting Heartland’s climate change denial. The decision comes in response to Heartland’s short-lived ad campaign that compared people who believe in global warming with serial killers and mass murderers. Association President Bradley Kading communicated the decision to Heartland President Joseph Bast in a letter:

On behalf of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers, we write to disavow any future relationship with your organization. Recent revelations of the Heartland Institute’s radical position on climate change as portrayed on the new billboard featuring Ted Kaczynski made our association with other parts of your organization untenable.

“The letter represents the position of our members,” Kading told Forecast the Facts. ABIR’s membership includes 22 of the world’s largest insurance and reinsurance companies, including erstwhile Heartland funder XL Group. Edward Heffernan, XL Group’s Senior Vice President for International Govermental Relations, confirmed to Forecast the Facts that his company has ceased all support.

According to leaked documents, ABIR and XL Group had provided $160,000 in the past two years to Heartland’s work on insurance issues. Climatewire reports that other insurers are working to end their ties to the Heartland Institute, encouraging Heartland’s insurance expert Eli Lehrer to leave the extremist organization. Lehrer has worked with the insurance industry and environmental organizations including Friends of the Earth, National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club in the Smarter Safer Coalition to reform national flood insurance and the Green Scissors initiative to cut anti-environmental government subsidies.

Forecast the Facts has mobilized more than 20,000 people to call on corporations to pull their support from Heartland. General Motors was the first to respond, ending their twenty-year relationship with Heartland on March 28. They have been followed by AT&T, ABIR, and beverage maker Diageo, whose products include Jose Cuervo, Guinness, and Captain Morgan. In the coming weeks, Forecast the Facts will continue to mobilize its members to push all of Heartland’s corporate donors to immediately pull their support.

“We applaud ABIR and the XL Group for recognizing that supporting Heartland is totally unacceptable for any company that takes climate change seriously,” said Daniel Souweine, Campaign Director for Forecast The Facts, which has launched a petition to ask all corporations to end their support. “Now it’s time for Heartland’s other corporate donors, like State Farm and Microsoft, to come to the same realization.”

DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

by Arpita Bhattacharyya

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta joined the chorus of academics, policymakers, and security analysts concerned about the “dramatic” impacts of climate change on national security.

“Rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” said Panetta at a recent event at the Environmental Defense Fund.

While Congress continues to waver on mitigation measures and debate the science, the U.S. defense, development, and diplomacy establishments are already grappling with the impacts of climate change in their work at home and abroad.

The latest Quadrennial Defense Review recognized climate change as an “accelerant of instability or conflict” and emphasized the challenges U.S. and partner militaries will face in light of rising sea levels, more frequent extreme weather events, desertification and water scarcity.  USAID is working to integrate climate change into its development efforts, particularly in their agriculture and technology programs. And at the State Department, U.S. negotiators are exploring options to make the Green Climate Fund a reality to support climate change adaptation in vulnerable countries.

Understanding climate change and integrating its anticipated effects into our defense, development and diplomacy strategies will be crucial in addressing the security challenges that Panetta highlights. Crisis scenarios are made increasingly complex by the intersection of climate change with other geopolitical trends like human migration.

The Center for American Progress’s new report on Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict in North Africa, part of CAP’s Climate, Migration, and Security Project, outlines exactly the sort of complex crisis Panetta forecasts. The report links Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, and Morocco as a contiguous region or “arc of tension” in which climate change impacts could exasperate existing conflicts and worsen migratory conditions.

Author and columnist Thomas Friedman also highlighted the implications of climate change in conflict scenarios in his recent piece on “The Other Arab Spring.”  While the exact casual relationships between climate and conflict have not been fully studied, both Friedman and Secretary Panetta realize that climate change must be factored into our assessments of national and regional security.

Water security, for example, is central to these challenges, as outlined in a new Intelligence Community Assessment on Global Water Security from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.:

During the next 10 years, many countries important to the United States will experience water problems—shortages, poor water quality, or floods—that will risk instability and state failure, increase regional tensions, and distract them from working with the United States on important US policy objectives. Between now and 2040, fresh water availability will not keep up with demand absent more effective management of water resources. Water problems will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate energy, posing a risk to global food markets and hobbling economic growth. As a result of demographic and economic development pressures, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia will face major challenges coping with water problems.

The impacts of climate change, including salt intrusion, drought, and more frequent floods will continue to shape the already complex global water security scenari0.

It is clear that Secretary Panetta — indeed, virtually the entire military establishment — understands the security implications of climate change and is working to prepare the U.S. military for the challenges ahead. Congressional lawmakers need to wake up and address the problem with the same sense of urgency.

Arpita Bhattacharyya is Research Assistant to Distinguished Senior Fellow Carol Browner at the Center for American Progress. She works on both domestic and international climate and energy issues.

This document was found on the computer of Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012) after his death. It was originally published at TomDispatch.

To all brothers and sisters who hold the dream in their hearts of a future world in which humans and all other beings live in harmony and mutual support — a world of sustainability, stability, and confidence. A world something like the one I described, so long ago, in Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging.

As I survey my life, which is coming near its end, I want to set down a few thoughts that might be useful to those coming after. It will soon be time for me to give back to Gaia the nutrients that I have used during a long, busy, and happy life. I am not bitter or resentful at the approaching end; I have been one of the extraordinarily lucky ones. So it behooves me here to gather together some thoughts and attitudes that may prove useful in the dark times we are facing: a century or more of exceedingly difficult times.

How will those who survive manage it? What can we teach our friends, our children, our communities? Although we may not be capable of changing history, how can we equip ourselves to survive it?

I contemplate these questions in the full consciousness of my own mortality. Being offered an actual number of likely months to live, even though the estimate is uncertain, mightily focuses the mind. On personal things, of course, on loved ones and even loved things, but also on the Big Picture.

But let us begin with last things first, for a change. The analysis will come later, for those who wish it.

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“I’M MELTING.” 80 by 80 foot banner unfurled on Dana Glacier in Yosemite on Climate Action Day, May 5, 2012.

by Dr. Jeff Masters, via Wunderblog

On Saturday, May 5, the activist group 350.org, founded by Bill McKibben, launched a new effort to “connect the dots between climate change and extreme weather.” They declared May 5 Climate Impacts Day, and coordinated an impressive global effort of nearly 1,000 events in 100 countries to draw attention to the links between climate change and extreme weather. Their new climatedots.org website aims to get people involved to “protest, educate, document and volunteer along with thousands of people around the world to support the communities on the front lines of the climate crisis.”

Below are photos from some of the many events on Climate Impacts Day as archived on the climatedots.org website. It is remarkable to view the slide show on their web site and see the degree of global participation this event had; 350.org has created a dedicated and creative global climate movement that will be a major force to reckon with in the coming years.

Figure 1. Volunteers in the city of Salvador, Brazil, have connected the dots have and drawn people’s attention to sea level rise and what it impacts in our life.

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The American Legislative Exchange Council’s anti-environment agenda is fueled by none other than Big Oil companies, which sit on ALEC’s “task forces.”

The watchdog group Common Cause published ALEC’s full member list, revealing four of the five major oil companies behind the group’s anti-environment legislation. These four oil companies — Shell, BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil — are also the four most profitable, taking a combined $30.6 billion profits in just three months this year.

Koch Industries, ubiquitous in funding right-wing causes, is also one of ALEC’s corporate members, while ConocoPhillips has its own history of funding the group.

ALEC’s agenda includes crafting legislation that kills carbon pricing and renewable energy targets, turns over public lands, and prevents fracking disclosure laws, among other harmful laws.

The latest chapter of Big Oil shaping local and state laws occurs later this week, where state legislators from 15 oil and gas states will meet with oil and gas companies presenting a fossil-fueled vision for the future.

A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post additional links below.

The European Union hosts this week what could be one of the most significant meetings of the year on climate change. [BBC]

The government does a poor job of estimating what it will cost to tear down a nuclear reactor, Congressional auditors say, and it may not be overseeing plant owners well enough to assure that they set aside enough money to do the job. [New York Times]

Major U.S. and German automakers have agreed on a common electric-car charging standard that will speed the recharging of batteries in as little as 20 minutes. [USA Today]

Onshore wind farms, recently under attack from leading conservationists for damaging the countryside, can bring significant economic benefits locally and nationally, as well as contributing to the fight against climate change, a new study claims. [The Independent]

Aspen Ski Area hosted a ski race without snow Saturday to highlight the effect climate change has on the outdoor recreation industry. [Washington Post]

Free access to emerging renewable energy markets such as Brazil, China and India will be a major factor in helping the European Union maintain its lead in green energy, according to draft documents seen by Reuters. [Reuters]

Japan is shutting down its last working nuclear reactor as part of the safety drive imposed after the March 2011 tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima plant. [Guardian]