Leading Scientists Debunk Ridley Piece, Even Climatologist Cited By Ridley Says He “Is Just Plain Wrong About Future Warming”

Memo to media, deniers: “Climate sensitivity” is NOT the same as projected future warming!

Projected warming even with (an unlikely) low climate sensitivity of between 1.5°C and 2.0°C from Michael Schlesinger et al 2012. A WSJ op-ed that cites this work absurdly concludes “Evidence points to a further rise of just 1°C by 2100.” Not even close — one of the key math errors in the piece.

Every major projection of future warming makes clear that if we keep listening to the falsehoods of the anti-science crowd and keep taking no serious action to reduce carbon pollution we face catastrophic 9°F to 11°F [5°C to 6°C] warming over most of the U.S. (see literature review here).

The Wall Street Journal, however, has published a piece, “Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change,” that (falsely) asserts observations suggest global warming will be so low as to “be benificial.” This risible piece by Matt Ridley is so riddled with basic math and science errors it raises the question of how the Journal can possibly maintain its reputation as a credible source of news and financial analysis.

Ridley and the Journal apparently don’t know the difference between water vapor and clouds. They don’t understand the basic concept of climate sensitivity. And they can’t do simple math. Naturally, the climate deniers have embraced this nonsense and spread it across the internet.

UPDATE: Ridley has made an even more self-defaming response at Bishop Hill’s blog and WattsUpWithDisinformation. He doesn’t actually refute any of my points– just repeats his mistakes. His piece proves once and for all that Ridley doesn’t know the first thing about climate science or the IPCC.  As but the most astounding example, in my debunking below I explicitly quote the IPCC’s draft Fifth Assessment (AR5) — “the new IPCC draft report, upon which Ridley makes all his claims” — which summarizes the recent literature on clouds this way: “The net radiative feedback due to all cloud types is likely positive.” Ridley then absurdly asserts “He gives no backing for this dogmatic conclusion.” Seriously. It’s like he never read my piece — or the AR5! And he apparently thinks you can’t read either! I must say it is shocking that Bishop Hill would print such an easily falsifiable claim. It is not shocking Watts would.

I wasn’t going to waste time with the umpteenth debunking of the Wall Street Journal‘s nonsense — especially a piece written by someone whose “family leases land for coal mining”! But one of Ridley’s many basic mistakes is often seen in the media — the confusion of the “climate sensitivity” (to a doubling of CO2 levels to 560 parts per million) with projected warming (from actual greenhouse gas levels projected for this century plus carbon cycle feedbacks). That confusion needs clearing up (again).

First, though, let me start by quoting some of the country’s leading climate experts in an excellent debunking piece by Media Matters, “WSJ’s Climate ‘Dynamite’ Is A Dud“:

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By Daniel J. Weiss and Jackie Weidman

On December 19, 2012, Senators John Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced legislation to help communities reduce fatalities and damages from future climate related extreme weather events.  The Strengthening the Resiliency of Our Nation on the Ground (STRONG) Act, S. 3691, would direct:

the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to chair a high-level interagency working group to first conduct an assessment of Federal agencies’ current and planned activities related to short-and long-term extreme weather resilience across key sectors and then develop a plan to support State, local, and private and public sector resiliency efforts.

S. 3691 would rely on the federal, state, and local governments to work together to develop community resiliency plans.

The bill responds to the devastating floods, heavy storms, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires that recently plagued the United States.  In 2011-12 there were 21 extreme weather events that each caused at least $1 billion in damages, with a total of up to $174 billion in total damages.   And these events took at least 1,021 lives.  Two-thirds of counties in the continental U.S. were declared a disaster for at least one of these most damaging events.

Sen. Lautenberg noted that:

Yesterday’s extreme weather has become today’s normal, and the federal government must lead in the effort to help better prepare our communities for future storms and emergency events.

This new normal is occurring because of climate change.  It increases the likelihood and/or severity of these extreme weather events.   Kevin E. Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, recently noted that:

All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.

The warm moist air is readily advected onto land and caught up in weather systems as part of the hydrological cycle, where it contributes to more intense precipitation events that are widely observed to be occurring.

This new bill responds to the growing threat to communities from extreme weather.  Sen. Kerry said that “We owe it to people everywhere to strengthen our ability to respond to the next Sandy, in whatever form it may come.”

The bill would require:

• a federal government analysis of

Federal agencies’ current and planned activities on short- and long-term extreme weather resilience in key sectors: agriculture; forestry and natural resources management; water management; energy supply and transmission; infrastructure, including transportation, water and wastewater and coastal infrastructure; public health and healthcare infrastructure; communications; housing and other buildings, national security; and emergency preparedness.

• federal agencies to “help develop an extreme weather resiliency action plan to support State, local, and private and public sector resiliency efforts.”

• reports to measure the effectiveness of these efforts.

Investments in resiliency pay off.  The Federal Emergency Management Administration estimated that every $1 spent on resiliency yields $4 in future benefits.

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by John Farrell, via Renewable Energy World

As community solar grows in popularity, an innovative solar project by the Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association in Minnesota highlights the opportunity of merging local ownership with locally assembled solar panels.

Earlier this fall, this cooperative serving communities just north and west of the Twin Cities metropolitan area announced Minnesota’s first community solar project.  The 40 kilowatt (kW) solar array will be located at the cooperative’s headquarters, with members allowed to purchase individual panels in the project for $869 per 180-Watt panel.   In exchange, members will receive a credit on their bill equal to the electricity production of their portion of the 40-kW array.

Participation in the community solar project lowers the payback period for solar, as compared to individual ownership, by 7-12 years.

The project is organized by the Clean Energy Collective, a Colorado-based firm that has already built two community solar projects with rural electric cooperatives in that state and with plans to build several more.  Their projects are noteworthy for being the only consistently replicable community solar model, as evidenced by their success. (For more on community solar projects, see our 2010 report.)

Partnership is the key to CEC’s success, with the company providing cooperatives with “RemoteMeter” software allowing them to handle the accounting part of the community solar project (and a smartphone app to allow participants to track production).  They also handle all of the project financing and development, with utilities having merely to market the program to their members and help oversee the project interconnection to their electric grid.

The community solar project provides a good deal for members for three reasons.  Most Minnesotans lack an appropriate, sunny space for a solar array (75% of people rent or have a roof that is unsuitable for solar).  With Wright-Hennepin’s community solar array, participants can own a share of a local, centralized system that will be maintained by the cooperative, and still get their share of the electricity as though it were on their own rooftop.

The Clean Energy Collective has also negotiated a good rate for solar electricity, with participants receiving a credit of 12¢ per kWh generated by their panels, in comparison to the cooperative’s average residential retail rate of 9.3¢ per kWh.

The $4.83 per Watt cost for panels is also better than it looks, because the Wright-Hennepin project will use equipment from Minnesota’s tenKsolar.  Using an innovative, low-cost reflector, the tenKsolar array boosts output by 25% over a traditional fixed tilt solar array, with an estimated output of around 291 kWh per year from each 180 W panel compared to 233 kWh from a traditional solar module.  The local sourcing for equipment will also keep more of the cooperative members’ energy dollars in their community.

Investments in the Wright-Hennepin community solar project pay back in 20 years, according to the Clean Energy Collective (our own calculation was 25 years).  Either way, it compares favorably to an individually-owned solar project, which would have a payback of 32 years or more.  And the Clean Energy Collective warrants the project for 50 years, over which period a participant will have lifetime net savings of nearly $20,000.

John Farrell directs the Energy Self-Reliant States and Communities program at ILSR and he focuses on energy policy developments that best expand the benefits of local ownership and dispersed generation of renewable energy. This piece was originally published at Renewable Energy World and was reprinted with permission.

by Chris Potter, via the Institute for Market Transformation

Christmas has arrived early for those seeking more transparency within the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) marketplace.

Roger Chang, a principal and the director of sustainability at Westlake Reed Leskosky (WRL), one of the country’s top green design firms, just launched recool.com, a new website that serves as both a resource and a venue for professionals to share green building design and construction experiences, with an emphasis on the application of technologies.

What the heck does “recool” mean?

The name “recool” was inspired by the heating, ventilation, and cooling (HVAC) term, “reheat.” Reheat coils are used in HVAC systems to prevent overcooling of spaces for temperature and humidity control. “On a global scale, we view our impact on climate change as a form of reheat. recool is intended to counteract this global issue, through open and candid discussion of design and product applications,” it says in the recool mission statement.

What does it provide?

The website showcases projects, products, and relevant blogs—with the topics ranging from high-performance architecture to energy benchmarks, metrics, usages and efficiencies, including predicted versus actual energy usages.

Every architecture firm has a website, usually with lots of beautiful photos of the buildings they’ve designed. But very few — perhaps none — of them share the gold nuggets of information on energy usage and building performance that recool provides. The WRL projects featured give information on major costs; resource usage, in the categories of HVAC, electrical, and plumbing; and system summaries on building enclosure, controls/measurement, and more.

All of the information recool provides with each project is part of its overarching goal of accelerating the adoption of high-performance design practices in the U.S.

Amazon.com for the building sector

As consumers, we use websites like Amazon, Trip Advisor, and CNet.com every day. One of their key features is having the ability to view and share user feedback whenever we are going to or have already purchased a product. Chang and WRL think it’s time we do the same for the building sector.

“The goal of recool is to bring the innovations of Google, Amazon, and Apple to the AEC marketplace. Unlike the consumer products marketplace, the AEC product market has suffered from a lack of transparency and slower progression of improvements to products, services, and software- barriers to addressing energy efficiency and climate change,” Chang said in a press release.

Removing barriers

As an advocate for removing market barriers to address energy efficiency and increasing building energy transparency, IMT applauds WRL’s efforts to create transformative and possibly disruptive change in the design industry (something IMT’s Jessica Lawrence has previously blogged about). The name of the website / project may be technical and slightly nerdy, but we think the goals of recool are, well, real cool.

Chris Potter is a Communications Associate with the Institute for Market Transformation. This piece was originally published at IMT’s Current and was reprinted with permission.

by Kate Zerrenner, via Environmental Defense Fund

When a state is facing electric resource shortages, like Texas is, it’s just common sense to explore all the ways to make our electric use more efficient.

We know efficiency makes sense – in terms of grid reliability, lower emissions, and reduced costs to ratepayers. But there is a barrier to some ratepayers in implementing more energy efficiency: upfront costs. Several options currently exist to finance efficiency, such as home equity loans and incentive programs through utilities. But what about creating a market to allow private investors to invest in the market by offering lower rates for utility customers by ensuring some security through repayment on the utility bill? That’s what on-bill repayment aims to do.

On-bill repayment (OBR) offers an opportunity for home and building owners to finance energy efficiency and renewable electricity generation projects through cost-saving loans from third-party investors. The loans are repaid through customer’s utility bills.  The money comes from private sector lenders at no cost to ratepayers or taxpayers.  OBR also allows for longer term loans with lower interest rates.

The general concept of OBR is not new. Several utilities around the country have instituted on-bill finance programs. However, there is a key difference. On-bill finance programs use utility money to finance the program, thus creating an additional cost for the ratepayers. On-bill repayment would use new money from third parties, such as banks, to create a new market that is secure, cost effective, and enables more bang for the buck in terms of what the ratepayer receives.

OBR is a flexible program that works for a wide variety of properties and vendor business models.  In some programs, contractors are told what solutions can be offered to each customer.  OBR, on the other hand, allows each contractor or vendor significant latitude to design solutions that meet the needs for their customers.  This could include everything from insulation upgrades for residential customers or lighting upgrades for restaurants all the way to deep retrofits of commercial or industrial properties.  All of these would be delivered by the private sector and would be completely voluntary to each property owner.

Benefits of OBR include:

• Job growth: We estimate that it could generate 100,000 new jobs to install energy efficiency and renewable electricity.
• New market creation: We estimate that OBR could generate $13.5 billion over a decade in private sector investments in energy efficiency, renewable generation, and demand response projects.
• Ratepayer and state savings: OBR would promote energy efficiency and distributed energy resources that avoid the cost of expensive new power plants and other high-cost generation—saving ratepayers $4.8 billion in energy bills.
• Flexibility for contractors and vendors: Program participants would have considerable discretion to design product offerings and go-to-market strategies to meet their customers’ needs.

In a state like Texas that prides itself on making its economy attractive to investors and creating markets, especially in the energy sector, OBR could be an effective tool to opening up the state to a private sector solution that can ameliorate our Texas energy crunch. Efficiency is an investment that makes sense for Texas. As utilities face increasing demands on their energy resources, and fewer dollars to spend on efficiency for their customers, giving them another tool, energized by funds from the private market, will benefit the entire state.

Kate Zerrenner helps develop and implement strategies to promote energy efficiency in Texas and leads EDF’s multi-year campaign to influence and enact state and national energy efficiency policy. This piece was originally published at EDF’s Energy Exchange and was reprinted with permission.

by Tom Kenworthy

Changing water temperatures and stream flows combined with drought and increasing wildfires from global warming are creating a bleak outlook for trout in the western U.S., according to a new study.

“Despite the best intentions, we will not be able to preserve all populations of native trout in the Rocky Mountains this century,” concludes a paper that has been published in the December issue of the journal Fisheries. The study looked at five river basins in the West and was conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Geological Survey and Colorado State University.

Though the study does not look at the economic implications of these changes, they could be large. Trout fishing is a significant part of the West’s recreational economy. According to a 2006 report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly 1.6 million anglers pursue trout in the Mountain West. Nationally, trout fishermen spent $4.8 billion in 2006 — generating about $13.5 billion in economic activity, sustaining more than 109,000 jobs, and yielding more than $1.8 billion in federal, state and local tax revenues.

Numerous earlier studies have predicted big declines in trout populations under climate change; this most recent one looks at how coldwater fish habitats have already been changing in recent decades in some of the region’s most important river basins, including the Flathead in northern Montana, the Boise in Idaho, the Green in Wyoming, the Rio Grande in Colorado, and the Greater Yellowstone region of northwest Wyoming and southwest Montana.

The warming trend of recent decades — a mean increase in temperatures of .8 degrees Celsius during the 20^th century — has raised stream temperatures and altered normal water flows. For fish like trout that depend on cold water, this has brought on a range of effects: less summer habitat, migrations to higher altitudes and cooler waters, greater competition with non-native species and more hybridization, and less reproduction success.

“Many [trout] populations and species will retain enough flexibility to adapt … but others are likely to be overwhelmed by future changes,” the report concludes.

Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.