The NY Times isn’t the only major publication going apocalyptic on climate change. New Scientist has a new dedicated issue that makes the Times’ stories seem down-right Pollyannish.

Nearly 3 years ago, the late William R. Freudenburg discussed in a AAAS presentation how 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.” As he said at the time:

Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss ‘both sides’ of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate ‘other side’ is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date.

So it’s good to see New Scientist make just that point in its special issue on climate change:

Five years ago, the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a gloomy picture of our planet’s future. As climate scientists gather evidence for the next report, due in 2014, Michael Le Page gives seven reasons why things are looking even grimmer

The 7 reasons are below, with links to their respective articles. Since they are all behind a paywall, I’ll provide links to Climate Progress articles on the same subject:

1. The thick sea ice in the Arctic Ocean was not expected to melt until the end of the century. If current trends continue, summer ice could be gone in a decade or two. Read more (or see “Death Spiral Watch: Experts Warn ‘Near Ice-Free Arctic In Summer’ In A Decade If Volume Trends Continue“).
2. We knew global warming was going to make the weather more extreme. But it’s becoming even more extreme than anyone predicted. Read more (or see “NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather“).
3. Global warming was expected to boost food production. Instead, food prices are soaring as the effects of extreme weather kick in. Read more (or see “Oxfam Warns Climate Change And Extreme Weather Will Cause Food Prices To Soar” and links therein).
4. Greenland’s rapid loss of ice mean we’re in for a rise of at least 1 metre by 2100, and possibly much more. Read more (or see “Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Nearing Critical ‘Tipping Point’” and links therein).
5. The planet currently absorbs half our CO₂emissions. All the signs are it won’t for much longer. Read more (or see “Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4°F – 1.5°F To Total Global Warming By 2100” and “Drying Peatlands and Intensifying Wildfires Boost Carbon Release Ninefold“).
6. If we stopped emitting CO₂ tomorrow, we might be able to avoid climate disaster. In fact we are still increasing emissions. Read more (or see “The IEA And Others Warn Of Some 11°F Warming by 2100 on current emissions path”)
7. If the worst climate predictions are realised, vast swathes of the globe could become too hot for humans to survive. Read more (or see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts“)

Actual New Scientist image accompanying bullet #7!

And people say Climate Progress has too much gloom and doom! Still, if we didn’t add that all of the above impacts will be happening simultaneously and “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” then we wouldn’t be true to our name, would we? [Note to self: Look up "progress" in dictionary.]

It’s too bad the articles are behind a paywall, but at least the accompanying editorial plea, “Obama should fulfil his 2008 climate promises,” isn’t. The editors’ bottom line is inarguable:

What’s needed is very clear: emissions cuts, and soon. The best way to do that is to change our economic systems to reflect the true long-term cost of fossil fuels. That means ending the $1 trillion of annual subsidies for fossil fuels and imposing carbon taxes instead.

by Mike Casey, via Scaling Green

In our first post on the Clean Energy Forum we held recently at Tigercomm, we noted that there’s an aggressive, ongoing effort by the fossil fuel lobby to push clean energy policy into the culture wars (hat tip to J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun).  How to combat this assault is a pressing question not just for those of us in the clean economy, but also for politicians who get the urgent – even existential – need for our country to develop abundant energy that’s clean and cost-effective.

All too often, though, we have had to choose between one candidate who might support us and one who is cheering our demise (go figure!).  Former Virginia Governor  Tim Kaine recently ran for, and won, a U.S. Senate seat from Virginia. A few weeks earlier, Kaine was willing to sit with some of the sharpest minds and most dynamic companies in the mid-Atlantic region’s clean economy community (note: also see our first and second posts on the forum). He actually wanted to hear from us and had an understanding of what we’re doing.

During the roundtable, Kaine made a number of astute observations, but one particularly jumped out at us regarding the phony Solyndra “scandal.” According to Kaine, demonizing the entire solar industry over one particular company’s demise would be analogous to people arguing that the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill should make us stop using oil completely.

More Kaine:

Read more

A bizarre headline, I know. But even stranger is that someone actually made that comparison.

Speaking about China’s demand for Canadian tar sands at a conference in Beijing earlier this month, a Chinese energy researcher compared unused tar sands to “unmarried single women.”

“It’s the same situation as the leftover single women. … It will be the same for the oil sands, they will be outdated just like unmarried single women,” said Chen Weidong, a chief energy researcher at the CNOOC Energy Economics Institute.

That sparked a new piece of satire from the folks at Deep Rogue Ram, the creative group behind the rogue weathergirl series. One of the people who produced the video, Heather Libby, also wrote another great skit comparing the Keystone XL pipeline to an annoying ex-boyfriend who won’t take “no” for an answer.

Watch the Tar Sands Love Line:

by Craig A. Severance, via Energy Economy Online

Right now the climate and energy community is stuck.  There is a growing consensus, including among conservatives, that it is finally time for a carbon tax.  Yet, no politician — especially President Obama — seems ready to advance the proposal.

The previous proposal to do something about climate — cap&trade — failed to gain wildly popular public enthusiasm (and we need this level of support).  While economists thought cap&trade was the best way to address the carbon pollution that is causing extreme climate disruption, it wasn’t seen as “giving back” enough to the public.

We Need Work not Wonk.  A recent American Enterprise Institute conference on a carbon tax showed broad support for the idea among both Republicans and Democrats.  Conservatives have long wanted to lower taxes on earnings, and many have called for taxing consumption or pollution to achieve this.  A properly structured carbon tax can also bring investment and jobs, and effective action on climate.

However, the conference showed how quickly the discussion can fall into a “wonky” technical morass of various ways to carry out a carbon tax.  There are a host of different and complex ways to assess a carbon tax — but that is not where the discussion needs to begin.

To gain wildly enthusiastic public support, we must first discuss the economic prosperity that can flow from a carbon tax.

No “Bitter Pill.” As much as Americans now want action on extreme climate disruption, the public just won’t take any “bitter pill” to solve the problem.

Climate economists know preventing loss of life and economic damages from superstorms, droughts, floods, and wildfires more than justifies taking action now.  This is all very true and rational, but President Obama knows the public wants action on the economy.

The nation’s main focus is still “jobs, jobs, jobs”.  The President has his ear keenly attuned to the public voice, and he is right to insist economic prosperity must flow from any climate proposals.

The price of climate action will be acceptable if it is used to deliver what the public wants.  Salespeople never begin by focusing on price, but rather strive to meet what the customer wants.  Once the customer decides they want something, they are willing to pay the price to get it.

To gain wild enthusiasm from the public, we must learn to talk about climate action smartly, and show that action on climate is also a way to achieve very popular and tangible economic proposals the public wants.

Fortunately, this won’t be hard.

Top 10 Ways Economic Prosperity Can Flow From Carbon Tax:

Depending on the level of tax placed on carbon and the amount of revenues thus raised, the following “Top 10″ benefits can flow to the public:

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The campaign to kill renewable energy, brought to you by the organization that gave you this billboard.

Six months after rolling out a disastrous billboard campaign that linked people who care about global warming to the Unabomber, the Heartland Institute is looking for another project to boost its profile.

And what better way for the organization to mend its tarnished image than to go after a policy that Americans overwhelmingly support?

The Heartland Institute, known for its campaigns to cast doubt about the science of climate change, is now teaming up with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to craft laws repealing state-level renewable energy targets. ALEC is best known as a “stealth business lobbyist” that helps corporate interests write and pass legislation friendly to their interests. This spring, the organization came under fire for its role in pushing Stand-Your-Ground laws that opponents blamed for the shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. Both the Heartland Institute and ALEC lost major funders throughout the spring as a result of the separate controversies.

The campaign to dismantle these types of laws isn’t new. Last summer, Bloomberg News reported on tax documents showing that Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil and other energy companies paid membership fees to ALEC in order to help write legislation repealing carbon pollution reduction programs in states around country. But after getting beat on the issues in national elections earlier this month, these groups are doubling down on their efforts to kill clean energy on the state level.

The Washington Post reported this weekend on how the embattled Heartland Institute is joining the campaign:

The involvement of the Heartland Institute, which posted a billboard in May comparing those who believe in global warming to domestic terrorist Theodore J. Kaczynski, shows the breadth of conservatives’ efforts to undermine environmental initiatives on the state and federal level. In many cases, the groups involved accept money from oil, gas and coal companies that compete against renewable energy suppliers.

The Heartland Institute received $736,500 from Exxon Mobil between 1998 and 2006, according to the group’s spokesman Jim Lakely, and $25,000 in 2011 from foundations affiliated with Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, whose firm Koch Industries has substantial oil and energy holdings. Lakely wrote in an e-mail that the Koch donation was “earmarked for our work on health care policy, not energy or environment policy.” He added the institute had received financial support from the Koch brothers before 2001, but did not specify how much.

James Taylor, the Heartland Institute’s senior fellow for environmental policy, said he was able to persuade most of ALEC’s state legislators and corporate members to push for a repeal of laws requiring more solar and wind power use on the basis of economics.

So far, 29 states have renewable energy targets in place. And with years of experience in these states, multiple analyses have shown that these laws have had virtually no impact on rate increases.

Heartland and ALEC are building their campaign around economic research from the Beacon Hill Institute, a free-market think tank that has received money from Koch-backed groups:

Read more

by RL Miller, via Daily Kos

Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times has published yet another anti-solar piece in the Los Angeles Times. This time, in Solar power plants burden the counties that host them, she discovers that sprawling rural counties that vote Republican would like more money from the federal government, please, and it’s all the fault of Big Solar. And when a sprawling rural county that votes Republican tries to tax just the solar industry alone, solar advocates organize opposition to a Sun Tax.

The horrors!

Among other journalistic nuggets, she reports that construction workers laboring near the California-Nevada state line are more likely to spend their money in Nevada (i.e., Las Vegas) than in the middle of California’s Empty Quarter. Because Joshua trees don’t take ATMs.

And she indulges Republicans opposed to the Obama administration’s treatment of renewable energy:

“The solar companies are the beneficiaries of huge government loans, tax credits and, most critically for me, property tax exemptions, at the expense of taxpayers,” said county Supervisor John Benoit, referring to a variety of taxpayer-supported loans and grants available to large solar projects as part of the Obama administration’s renewable energy initiative. “I came to the conclusion that my taxpayers need to get something back.”

Republican John Benoit, shorter: If they’re going to get special treats, I want a cut.

Among Benoit’s recent campaign contributors: Occidental Petroleum, California Independent Petroleum Association, Chevron, Valero Energy… but no solar folk. (That information is not in Julie Cart’s story. I did the research.)

Also missing from Cart’s story is any sort of perspective or critical analysis. If a plant will end up with only five permanent workers, then how accurate is the county’s claims of wear and tear on its roads and increased emergency room services?

Julie Cart has been assigned to the California desert solar beat for several years. Anyone whining about Big Solar finds her writing a sympathetic story.

Her reporting that Taxpayers, ratepayers will fund solar plants was widely criticized as getting the facts wrong, very wrong.

Read more

by Anne Polansky

Conservative Republican Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, known internationally for his denialist viewpoint on climate change, and nationally for being a defense hawk, may soon be faced with the problem that his stubborn stance on the former conflicts with his ability to credibly pull off the latter.

When he returns for the 113th Session of Congress in January, Sen. Inhofe will give up his role as Ranking Minority Member on the Environment and Public Works Committee (forced by Senate rule) and take up the same role on the Senate Armed Services Committee, replacing Sen. John McCain. Though he’s served on this Committee since 2009, his new position will give him more power and responsibility; he’ll be leading the Republican members and working alongside Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) to oversee, direct, and authorize key military programs in the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. He’s looking forward to it: “My focus on the committee will be on military readiness, acquisition reform, and preventing the potential hollowing out of our forces,” he’s said in the press.

Let’s talk about military readiness, through the lens of a new analysis conducted by the National Academy Sciences at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis is a thoughtful 218-page brief that makes the case that the military should boost its overall readiness for, and understanding of, the threats that a disrupted global climate could pose to US national security. It builds on and verifies previous studies with similar conclusions, and elaborates on the destabilizing effects of restricted access to, or prolonged shortages of, essential resources, such as arable land and potable water. Competent staffers should place this report on Senator Inhofe’s must-read list for the winter recess.

On Climate Progress and elsewhere, much ink is dedicated to the nonsensical mutterings and obstructionist shenanigans of Sen. Inhofe on the topic of global warming and climate change. As Chair of Environment and Public Works from 2003-2007 and Ranking Minority Member under the chairmanship of Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) since 2007 when Democrats regained control of the Senate, Jim Inhofe has made every attempt to quash meaningful legislative proposals to cut carbon and deal with climate impacts.

He’s taken every opportunity to spout off about how climate change is one of the “biggest hoaxes ever played” on the American people (and even published a book about it); how NASA scientist James Hansen is not a real scientist and is not to be believed (but that his own cherry-picked but poorly credentialed scientists are); and how anthropogenic global warming is impossible anyway since, well, “God is still up there” and it’s “outrageous” and arrogant to believe human beings are “able to change what He is doing in the climate.” Check, check, and, uh, check.

In early 2008, soon after the Democrats had retaken the Senate and Sen. Barbara Boxer had taken back the gavel, she invited former V.P. Al Gore to testify on climate change, and brought a full hearing room to rare applause when she skillfully intercepted another typical Inhofe filibuster by reminding her colleague that, indeed, “elections have consequences” and she was now enforcing the rules. (Translation, he should shut up now.) Many had high hopes that the Congress would finally take on and pass serious carbon-cutting provisions, but it was not to be. While the demise of the 2009 House-passed comprehensive climate change “Waxman-Markey” bill (named the American Clean Energy and Security Act) in the Senate can’t be blamed just on Inhofe, he incessantly urged his colleagues to defeat the bill and repeated his mantra that a cap-and-trade bill will never pass into law in the US.

In a rare appearance earlier this year on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show, he admitted: “I was actually on your side of this issue when I was chairing that committee and I first heard about this. I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.” Oops. The truth, outed.

But from what I read in the CIA-requested National Academy of Sciences report, drawn from a panel of top experts, higher-ups in our military forces are worried about the costs of failing to deal squarely with a climate-change-disrupted world:

Read more

All eyes are on Doha, Qatar, this week as world leaders, politicians, academics and environmentalists gather to work on a global solution to climate change at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. [International Herald Tribune]

Doha will host the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change. But can a major oil and gas hub with the highest carbon footprint per person in the world lead the way on a switch to a green economy? [The Telegraph]

This year marks the end of the first commitment period of the 1997 Kyoto protocol. But it was never ratified by the US, contains no obligations for developing countries and has been abandoned by others. [Guardian]

Industrialised countries have failed to provide the promised $30 billion to tackle climate change in developing nations particularly the poor and least developed countries, hindering a global agreement on climate, according to an independent non-profit research institute. [Economic Times]

Newly published research suggests mountain pine beetles have become so widespread that they’re not just benefiting from global warming, they’re starting to contribute to it. [CTV]

China expects US President Barack Obama will give climate change more attention in his upcoming second term, top climate change negotiator Su Wei said ahead of the climate change talks in Doha, Qatar. [China Daily]

Two major organizations released climate change reports this month warning of doom and gloom if we stick to our current course and fail to take more aggressive measures. [The Atlantic]

Some advocates fear that rebuilding efforts could take shape on New Jersey’s storm-devastated shore before thoughtful decisions can be made about just how the area should be rebuilt. [Associated Press]

Maine snowmobilers love to have destinations for their wintertime rides, and they are working with the wind power industry on a plan to link perhaps 10 of the state’s wind farms with trails in a unique addition to Maine’s outdoor tourism menu. [Associated Press]