The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) thinks putting off efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions risks “catastrophic” losses for the United States’ economy and society. That’s according to a new report on the economic and environmental effects of a carbon tax CBO published Wednesday.

The CBO is the group of analysts tasked with modeling and projecting the consequences of Congress’ proposed laws, so that lawmakers can have some idea of what the likely consequences of their actions will be. You may recall the CBO from the big role its scores played in the debate over health care reform a few years ago. They’re a highly respected, methodologically cautious, and strictly nonpartisan outfit that’s widely viewed as the go-to authority for refereeing policy disputes in Washington.

With China on the verge of unilaterally putting a cap on its own carbon emissions, and with wide support for a carbon tax amongst voters, politicians, industry, economists and think tanks, the fact that CBO is using its position to highlight the risks of not addressing climate change is worth paying attention to.

Now, much of their report’s content wasn’t new. It projected that a price of $20 per metric ton on carbon dioxide emissions would bring in $1.2 trillion in revenues between 2012 and 2021, and cut emissions by roughly 8 percent over the same period, which came from work CBO did in 2011 (page 205). And the debate over what to do with the revenues from a carbon tax, which much of the report is dedicated to, is also familiar.

But one thing that is noteworthy is CBO’s blunt assessment that allowing climate change to continue unchecked could be very costly to both the United States and global society:

Climate change resulting from an increase in average temperatures is a long-term problem with global causes and consequences, including effects on humans and ecosystems. Significantly limiting the extent of future warming would require a concerted effort by countries that are major emitters of greenhouse gases. Nonetheless, U.S. efforts to decrease emissions would produce incremental benefits, in the form of incremental reductions in the expected damage from climate change.

Researchers have attempted to estimate the monetary value of the future damage from climate change associated with an increase in CO2 emissions in a given year — and thus the value of the benefits from a commensurate reduction in emissions — a measure referred to as the social cost of carbon (SCC)… Those values are highest when researchers attach significant weight to long-term outcomes and when they incorporate a small probability that damage from climate change could increase sharply in the future — causing very large, or even catastrophic, losses. Delaying efforts to reduce emissions increases the risk of such losses. Given the inherent uncertainty of predicting the effects of climate change, and the possibility that it could trigger catastrophic effects, lawmakers might view a carbon tax as a reflection of society’s willingness to pay to reduce the risk of potentially very expensive damage in the future.

Even CBO’s 2009 round-up of climate change science, which focused heavily on the uncertainty built into such projections, pointed out that the worst case scenarios for climate change “even if unlikely, would justify more stringent policies than would result from simply balancing the costs of reducing emissions against the benefits of averting damages from the expected or most likely degree of warming.”

As for the question of how to structure a carbon tax, the Center for American Progress’ Richard Caperton put forward a proposal last December for a tax of $25 per ton on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. That ought to put us on a course to reduce those emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050, though the tax would ultimately need to be expanded to the entire economy. Caperton estimated the revenue from this tax — more limited than the one envisioned by CBO — would be in the vicinity of $55 billion annually. That could be split between the roughly $20 billion annually needed to fund research and development of clean energy, deficit reduction, and support for low-income Americans.

That last aspect is especially important, because on its own a price on carbon has a regressive effect, imposing more costs on the poor and the working class than the well-off. Reductions in the payroll tax, or refundable income tax rebates, would do the most good, mainly because they target support to the very people who would most need help shouldering higher energy costs. But CBO’s new report also found that a price on carbon would reduce overall growth slightly by reducing incomes throughout the economy, and by working through income taxes those two options would counteract that drag.

It’s probably fair, if crude, to talk about national societies as having “moods,” or going through particular psychological states — especially in economic depressions, when they become more fearful and less willing to take risks. The United States has spent the last few years mired in the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, and a cap-and-trade system or a carbon price is unquestionably an attempt to structurally raise the price of some forms of energy.

However meritorious, those policies are something of a step into the economic unknown, and thus understandably worrying to the average voter. So if the economy is affecting the national mood, that’s a problem for policy efforts to fight climate change. And earlier this week, the Washington Post’s Brad Plumer dug up a new study that put some hard data to that phenomenon at the political level.

What Grant Jacobsen of the University of Oregon did was take a look at how unemployment in various states changed the votes of senators from those states. He used the League of Conservation Voters’ (LCV) scorecard as a measure of 296 senators’ friendliness to pro-environment votes. Then Jacobsen determined how their score changed as unemployment in their state went up and down between 1976 and 2008.

The result? For every one percent point unemployment went up, the average senator’s LCV score dropped 0.48 percentage points. Jacobsen statistical analysis also suggested this result was like due to a meaningful correlation between unemployment and the vote score, rather than random chance or noise.

To make sure he wasn’t just reading swings in the political leanings of the legislative body, Jacobsen also compared the American Democratic Association’s (ADA) scores — a widely accepted measure of liberalism — to his findings. With that control, the relationship between voting and unemployment actually strengthened, to 0.64 percentage point drop in the LCV score for every one percentage point increase in unemployment. Jacobsen also found the LCV decline was 0.83 percentage points when just looking at Republicans, and 0.29 when just looking Democrats, though the latter result wasn’t as statistically robust.

Now, changes of 0.64 and 0.48 may not sound like big swings on a score that goes from 0 to 100, but lawmaking is a game of inches.

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Washington, D.C. — As AAA estimates that nearly 35 million Americans are preparing to travel 50 miles or more this weekend, with nearly 90 percent of travelers filling up their tanks with expensive gasoline or diesel fuel to drive to their destination, the Center for American Progress released an analysis of Memorial Day driving by the numbers.

Gasoline prices averaged $3.66 per gallon nationwide on May 21, 2013, which is 2 cents per gallon lower than they were a year ago when the price per gallon was $3.69. But experts predict that prices will plateau or increase throughout the summer, providing little relief at the pump for American families during this vacation season. These high prices enable the five biggest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — to reap huge profits even though they are producing less oil worldwide than this time last year.

Beginning with the Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer, Americans will spend their hard-earned dollars traveling to visit family, friends, and the great outdoors. Meanwhile, Big Oil will be making huge profits off of these travel expenditures on fuel, while at the same time fighting for decreased public health and climate-change protections.

Here is a by-the-numbers look at what Big Oil will cost us this holiday weekend:

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At a May 16 televised forum on the recovery from Superstorm Sandy, a former top military infrastructure official called on Americans to “stop ignoring” climate change and “realize it’s the new reality.”

At the Sandy town hall organized by public television stations NJTV and WNET, John Boulé, the former commander of the New York District, Army Corps of Engineers, warned New Yorkers to stop ignoring climate change and start preparing for higher sea level rise and more frequent and more powerful storms:

First of all, we’ve got to realize it’s the new reality. Climate change is real. It’s more than sea level rise that’s going to happen over the course of the next 100 years. It’s greater storm intensities, it’s greater storm frequencies. We’ve got to stop ignoring it and start planning and building to reduce the risk to the public. That’s where we are.

Watch it:

Like Boulé, other panelists, including PSE&G president Ralph LaRossa, recognized the “new reality” of rising seas and extreme weather. Although these words are welcome, the most important element of facing the reality of climate change is understanding that it’s caused by human activities — something no-one at the forum did. In fact, Richard Ravitch, the real-estate scion and former Democratic lieutenant governor of New York, blamed “forces of nature” on sea level rise.

At no point during the two-hour forum did any panelist or reporter discuss the manmade causes of climate change or recommend opposing the threat to civilization posed by the fossil-fuel industry. The words “fossil fuels,” “carbon”, “greenhouse,” “pollution,” and “oil” were never mentioned. Also not mentioned was David Koch, the carbon pollution billionaire and richest man in New York, who was on the board of WNET from 2006 until the day of the forum. At the WNET board meeting on the morning of May 16, Koch’s resignation was accepted.

A coalition of people who live and work near the drilling rigs that have allowed the U.S. to see incredible booms in oil and gas production is in Washington, D.C. this week demanding that both government and industry be held accountable when drilling causes health and environmental problems.

Members of the “Stop the Frack Attack” coalition held a forum yesterday because, as their website states:

Impacted communities [are] “experts” schooled in the curriculum of hard knocks doled out by the oil and gas industry.

In total, 16 people spoke at the forum representing eight different states. They included ranchers, mothers, librarians, nurses, and former industry employees. They came from various political backgrounds — in fact, one speaker held up the Constitution, the Bible, and his badge from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this year to relate how he has pled with Republicans to help communities pushed to the wayside by oil and gas companies.

All of the speakers described the impacts of oil and natural gas drilling on their health and property. For example, Kristi Mogen, whose community in Wyoming was evacuated after a well blowout in April 2012, spoke of her two daughters and husband who suffered nosebleeds and other health effects afterwards. And Rod Brueske of Longmont, Colorado explained how his “American dream was shattered by multinational companies” after a natural gas well across the street from his farm released chemicals into the air.

This is an important moment for oil and natural gas policy in Washington, D.C.  The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week is holding the final two of its three recent forums on natural gas policy issues. Of the 36 witnesses invited to share their opinions about natural gas in the U.S., none are citizens from affected communities.

And, last week, the Department of Energy announced the approval of a second facility to export natural gas to other counties, while the Department of the Interior released rules governing hydraulic fracturing on public lands that lack basic public right-to-know measures.

A new report released from the Center for American Progress shows that the five largest oil companies earned more than $30 billion in profits in just the first quarter of 2013. Put a different way, in only one minute these companies make more than “what 95 percent of American households earn in an entire year.”

And yet, citizens living near drilling rigs have to deal directly with the costs of drilling. As Jon Fenton, a rancher in Wyoming who admitted he hadn’t been on an airplane until six years ago when he began working on behalf of his community stated at the forum yesterday, “It’s us who have to bear that burden…but now I know that there are things worth fighting for.”

Whether Obama and the Democrats can fill vacancies in the Federal Appeals Court in Washington D.C. could decide the fate of the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of power plant emissions. [NY Mag]

The biggest piece of President Obama’s second-term agenda is his widely expected plan for the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new carbon regulations for power plants, a move that could bring the United States in line with the greenhouse-gas-reduction goals it agreed to in Copenhagen and open the way for an international treaty to control climate change. If the administration unveils such a plan, conservatives will undoubtedly challenge its legality. The legal challenge won’t take place for two years, but the two sides are preparing for war already. The field of battle will be the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, D.C.

The D.C. Circuit, as the appeals court covering legal issues arising within the nation’s capital, has assumed a large and growing influence in the ideological wars over the scope of government, and over the last decade its appointments have provoked bitter conflict. … Since President Obama took office, four vacancies have opened on the D.C. Circuit Court, and Obama has not managed to seat a single justice to fill any of the slots. Republicans have displayed a willingness to filibuster even mainstream nominees, like Caitlin Halligan, who recently withdrew, while Obama expended little effort to resist.

Harry Reid is warning that, unless Republicans stop routinely filibustering Obama’s nominees for cabinet and judicial positions — that is, unless they adopt the high threshold that Senate Democrats accepted for blocking Bush’s nominees — he will change the Senate rules to ban such filibusters, just as Republicans had threatened under Bush. … The Republican response is more audacious. They propose not merely to continue blocking Obama’s nominees but to simply eliminate all three vacancies on the D.C. Circuit, which will hear the inevitable legal challenge to power plant regulations.

More on the divestment campaign: students are pressuring their schools to stop investing in fossil fuel companies. [AP]

The Solar Impulse completed the second leg of its cross-country journey, setting a distance record for a solar powered airplane. [AP]

Vice President Biden told graduating Coast Guard officers that they faced the “opportunity” and “challenges” of an ice-free Arctic. [The Hill]

The Congressional Budget Office released a report on the effects of a carbon tax, noting it could raise “significant” revenue while heading off “catastrophic” climate change. [The Hill]

In a new survey, 70 percent of Americans say global warming should be a priority for lawmakers, and 87 percent say we should be developing clean energy. [TreeHugger]

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In what will likely prove as meaningless a vote as the 37th repeal vote of Obamacare, on Wednesday night 241 members of the House of Representatives voted to approve the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. H.R. 3 would give Congress the power to approve the pipeline and allow TransCanada to build the northern leg without a cross-border permit.

These legislators support the oil industry’s push for the pipeline, even though it would create far fewer jobs than its supporters claim, would do nothing to make the country more energy independent, and would facilitate a dramatic increase in the production of high carbon polluting tar sands oil.

The 241 members who voted for the bill have taken a collective $39,150,812 in career contributions from the oil and gas industry, compared to $5,094,217 for those who voted no. Even more starkly, in the last election cycle, that split widens to $11,529,335 versus $742,125.

Only 19 Democrats voted for the bill, less than a third of the number (69) who supported a similar bill in April 2012. Even some supporters of the pipeline couldn’t vote for tonight’s bill, such as Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV):

“Last Congress, I voted for every piece of pro-Keystone pipeline legislation that was brought before this body…. Something’s happened along the way between then and now. And that something is called a hijacking of this bill by the right wing.”

This is the eighth time Republicans pushed a bill promoting Keystone, and the fifth time it voted to speed up the approval process. A White House statement made clear that President Obama would veto the bill because it “conflicts with long-standing Executive branch procedures.”

While some conservatives may claim the pipeline would create tens of thousands of jobs, the most recent State Department draft environmental impact statement found that the pipeline would directly create only “3,900″ temporary construction jobs. After construction is complete, the operation of the pipeline would only support 35 permanent and 15 temporary jobs, with “negligible socioeconomic impacts.” Moreover, only 10 percent of the total workforce would be hired locally. For perspective, the U.S. had 3.4 million green energy jobs in 2011 and it was the fastest-growing industry in the country.

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On Sunday, I wrote about the real scandal of the century that the media is ignoring or misreporting — unchecked global warming (see “Worse Than Watergate“).

Now I have a name for this growing scandal — No-Water-Gate. It is increasingly clear that the gravest climate threat to the most people in the coming decades will be Dust-Bowlification and the impact that has on food security (see Oxfam: Extreme Weather Has Helped Push Tens of Millions into “Hunger and Poverty” in “Grim Foretaste” of Warmed World).

As I wrote in my 2011 Nature article, “The next dust bowl,” which reviewed some of the vast literature on the growing threat of prolonged warming-driven drought, “Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced.”

You’d think that a New York Times front page story on our current return to Dust Bowl conditions — and how farmers need to adapt — would discuss some of this vast literature. Or at least mention climate change. Once.

You’d be wrong. And so this NY Times story is one of the inspirations for naming the greatest scandal of our time No-Water-Gate:

The failure to discuss climate change renders the piece less than useless — it is scandalously misleading. The article focuses on how the drought has accelerated the depletion of the High Plains Aquifer by Kansas and Texas farmers:

Kansas agriculture will survive the slow draining of the aquifer — even now, less than a fifth of the state’s farmland is irrigated in any given year — but the economic impact nevertheless will be outsized. In the last federal agriculture census of Kansas, in 2007, an average acre of irrigated land produced nearly twice as many bushels of corn, two-thirds more soybeans and three-fifths more wheat than did dry land.

Farmers will take a hit as well. Raising crops without irrigation is far cheaper, but yields are far lower. Drought is a constant threat: the last two dry-land harvests were all but wiped out by poor rains.

In the end, most farmers will adapt to farming without water, said Bill Golden, an agriculture economist at Kansas State University.

No, no, a thousand times no: Farmers aren’t going to “adapt to farming without water”!

Farmers might adapt to farming without water from the aquifer for irrigation — but only if the climate is not changing for the worse!

An important, if under-reported, 2012 study from the The National Center for Atmospheric Research “strengthened the case” that, unless we reverse emissions trends soon, we risk having a situation by the end of the century where ”most of southern Europe and about half of the United States is gripped by extreme drought” a great deal of the time:

[Author Aiguo] Dai’s new work stresses that the drying effect of human-produced greenhouse gases should overwhelm natural variability by later this century.

“The U.S. may never again return to the relatively wet conditions experienced from 1977 to 1999,” he says.

How will farmers adapt to no aquifer water and dwindling precipitation and rising temperatures (see We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming).

Worse, how will they adapt to no aquifer water and dwindling precipitation and rising temperatures – and the media and other opinion-makers ignoring the latter two irreversible (but not unstoppable) trends?

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Electric automaker Tesla Motors just announced that it has paid back the nearly half a billion dollars the Department of Energy lent it in 2010. According to a company press release, today’s wire transfer of $451.8 million dollars follows two other payments in the last year and a half. U.S. taxpayers could see a $12 million profit, in addition to a thriving company employing thousands.

The loan was offered in 2009 through the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program, which began during the Bush Administration in 2007 and was funded in 2008. The program has resulted in $34.4 billion in loans and the creation of roughly 60,000 jobs.

This announcement, hinted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday via Twitter, follows the company’s first profitable quarter and Consumer Reports rating the Model S a 99 out of a possible 100. Tesla also outsold similarly-priced gas-powered cars created by Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi.

Tesla’s history has not always been as bright as its future looks now. In 2010, Musk said his investments in Tesla had essentially dried out his personal fortune, stating in a court filing that he “ran out of cash.”

Musk also said that “Tesla will do well as long as we make good products…. To say a car company is the best way to get a return on your investment is absurd, though Tesla will do well for its shareholders.”

Apart from achieving profitability, the full repayment of Tesla’s loan was made possible by “a portion of the approximately $1 billion in funds raised in last week’s concurrent offerings of common stock and convertible senior notes.”

Musk, Tesla’s initial primary investor and CEO, thanked the Energy Department, Congress, and the American taxpayer, saying “I hope we did you proud.”

Credit: Associated Press

China is taking steps to tackle its huge carbon output. Today, the country announced the details of its first carbon trading program, which will begin in the city of Shenzhen next month. The southern city is one of seven cities and provinces, including Beijing, which will take part in the pilot program, set to be completely implemented by 2014.

And according to one local news source, China could implement an absolute, nation-wide cap on its carbon emissions by 2016. China’s 21st Century Business Herald reported this week that the country’s State Council still needs to approve the carbon cap proposal submitted by the National Development and Reform Commission, a government entity that controls much of the Chinese economy. The proposal, which the State Council is reportedly likely to support, would ensure China’s emissions would not increase past the country’s target cap, regardless of economic growth — though it’s still unclear what that cap would be. The paper reported that the NDRC also predicts China’s greenhouse gas emissions will peak in 2025, rather than 2030, as earlier predictions stated.

If the cap is adopted, it would be a major step for the world’s top CO2 emitter, which desperately needs to slow its carbon production. China is experiencing the world’s fastest growth in energy production and CO2 emissions, while production and emissions in the U.S. and Europe are flat-lining or decreasing. China uses 47 percent of the world’s coal, a number that’s only going up: in 2011, China’s coal consumption grew by 9 percent, accounting for 87 percent of the world’s 374 million ton increase in coal consumption that year.

The country’s emissions aren’t just a major contributor to climate change worldwide — they’re causing serious local problems as well. In Beijing, pollution has reached record levels, topping 775 in January — a number that breaks the Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality scale of 0 to 500. The air pollution levels are so high that Beijing schools are building air-purified domes over playgrounds so that children can play outside, and many expatriates are withdrawing their applications from Beijing jobs or choosing to leave the country altogether.

The possibility of a carbon cap in China has been hailed as “potentially transformative” in the fight against climate change, as other major emitters such as the U.S. have historically cited China’s inaction on climate change as reason to avoid implementing meaningful greenhouse gas regulations. Previously, China has shied away from cuts in emissions, saying its main priority was the growth of its economy. In November 2012, the state-owned Xinhua quoted Xie Zhenhua, China’s chief negotiator to the UN climate change talks, as saying it was “unfair and unreasonable to hold China to absolute cuts in emissions at the present stage, when its per capita GDP stands at just 5,000 U.S. dollars.”
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Dr. Ernest Moniz was sworn in as the new Energy Secretary this week. Last week, the previous Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, gave an interview to Stanford where he is returning as a physics professor.

The Nobel laureate was asked “What’s the No. 1 problem on your list?” His answer:

Climate change. We’re heading into an era where if we don’t change what we’re doing, we’re going to be fundamentally in really deep trouble. We’re already in trouble. So we have to transition to better solutions.

We’re not too far away from producing a lot of renewable energy, and doing it cheaply. Solar power is going to become cheaper and cheaper – costs have plummeted three-fold in six years, partly because of the dropping price of modules and electronics. Wind energy is within 15 percent of the cost of new natural gas energy, and the DOE predicts that that cost will cross over within one or two decades, so we need to start to plan the transition system that can conduct more wind energy.

But right now, we’re not prepared. As technology continues to race forward – battery technology has advanced faster in the past five years than what I’ve seen in the [previous] 15 years – we need policy to guide and anticipate development. It takes decades to change things like infrastructure, and so people have to think about that today. Otherwise, progress slows down, and we emit more carbon and get into more trouble environmentally.

Back in 2009, Chu said “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

Chu did keep talking about climate change in the past 4 years, but neither the media nor the White House were paying much attention. And so we are “already in trouble” with much, much worse to come if we don’t act now.

Related Post:

• Chu Resigns, Writes Of Our ‘Moral Responsibility’ For Action Amid Growing Evidence We’re Making Weather More Extreme

By Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

As Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I see a lot of fanfare applauding increased oil production in the U.S. and the increase is truly remarkable. We are producing nearly 2 million more barrels of oil a day than government (EIA) experts had predicted ten years ago. But here’s what is truly astounding: We are consuming over 5 million barrels less in oil a day than had been predicted in 2003. So, there is no question we are making dramatic strides in the oil sector, but we are doing twice as well on the conservation side of the ledger than we are in production.

Oil conservation lacks the sizzle that energy production enjoys. After all, you don’t see people striking it rich by taking a train to work, by driving an electric car, or converting their business’ fleet to run on natural gas. What’s worse, not only does it lack sizzle, some public figures say oil conservation isn’t even a serious approach to energy policy. Vice President Cheney famously said conservation is a “sign of personal virtue, but … not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”

But as a nation, in order to continue to improve our energy security, insulate our economy from high oil prices, and address climate change, we will continue to accomplish a lot more by using less oil than by producing more oil. It’s less exciting than an oil geyser, but the opportunity is simply much bigger. Increasing oil production in the U.S. helps our energy security and our economy, but increasing domestic production is often described as the healer of all wounds. Unfortunately it is not.

If it were, oil prices would not be so stubbornly high. Oil is traded in a worldwide market, so our increased production has been drowned out by increased demand elsewhere. But thanks to increased fuel economy standards, investment in public transportation, and a burgeoning market in alternative fuel vehicles, Americans do not need nearly as much oil to achieve mobility as once predicted. And we have a lot more improvement to do. After all, we use twice as much oil per capita as the United Kingdom and Germany and a third more than Australia.

Despite our exceptional prowess in drilling for oil, we simply cannot drill our way out of our problems. To address climate change, drive down prices, and truly end the world’s dependence on energy from unstable parts of the world, we need to use a lot less oil. The good news is that we have gotten off to a great start.

By Michael D. Lemonick via Climate Central

When 97 percent of Greenland’s ice experienced at least some melting in July 2012, scientists wondered if it was a one-time phenomenon. Now a new study in Geophysical Research Letters indicates it is a sign of things to come and by 2025, there is a 50-50 chance of it happening annually.

Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8, 2012 (left) and July 12, 2012. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed. Credit: NASA.

It’s not clear what the effects of such melting will be: the majority of Greenland’s ice loss, which has accelerated significantly over the past decade, comes from glaciers shedding more ice into the sea, and moving faster toward the sea, not from melting snow and ice at higher elevations of the ice sheet.

Nevertheless, such widespread melting indicates an overall warming in the region that could threaten the ice more generally, adding significantly to the threat of sea level rise.

The 2025 projection is based on two factors, according to lead author Dan McGrath, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The first is a series of temperature measurements going back to 1950 at the Summit research station, at the highest — and on average, the coldest — point on the Greenland ice sheet. The mercury has been rising more or less steadily there for that entire time, with the fastest increase, of about .22° F per year, coming since 1992. “That’s six times faster than the global average,” McGrath said in an interview.

The highest parts of the ice sheet still remain below the freezing mark virtually all the time, but when unusual weather conditions set in — an especially warm air mass, or as in the case of the 2012 melting, an influx of clouds just thin enough to let sunlight through but thick enough to block heat from escaping — the thermometer can sneak above 32°F. “Only an hour above freezing is enough to start the surface melting,” McGrath said.

Another factor that went into the analysis involved what’s known as the equilibrium line — the altitude where the snow is neither piling up year to year nor shrinking. Over the past 20 years or so, that transition zone has been gradually moving up the ice sheet by about 115 feet every year, on average— another indication that temperatures on the frozen island are warming.

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An infographic from the International Displacement Monitoring Centre and Norwegian Refugee Council of populations displaced by climate change and extreme weather disasters. [The Guardian]

More than 32 million people fled their homes last year because of disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes – 98% of displacement related to climate change. Asia and west and central Africa bore the brunt. Some 1.3 million people were displaced in rich countries, with the US particularly affected. Floods in India and Nigeria accounted for 41% of displacement, according to the International Displacement Monitoring Centre and Norwegian Refugee Council.

The House plans to vote today on a bill forcing the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, while the Obama Administration issued a firm statement “strongly opposing” the bill. [Washington Post]

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is refusing to approve new disaster aid for the tornadoes that just hit his state without offsetting cuts elsewhere. [HuffPo]

China has reportedly committed to a hard cap on its carbon emissions by 2016, which could spur the U.S. and other nations to a serious accord in 2015. [Independent, Renew Economy]

New Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz committed to energy efficiency legislation and improved standards, saying, “I have never seen a credible solution to the climate risk mitigation challenge, to reach the kinds of goals we need to reach, without the demand side playing a very, very important part in that.” [The Hill]

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Sarah Palin took to Facebook again this weekend, posting about her youngest daughter’s graduation in the Alaskan snow:

One last blast of Alaska winter today, hopefully? This is what “Grad Blast” means in Alaska! We’ll move our graduation b-b-q indoors and watch the mini-blizzard from ’round the fireplace. (Global warming my gluteus maximus.)

When Palin was running for national office, she advocated capping carbon emissions and said man’s activities contribute to global warming. Over the last half decade, she has swung back to rejecting climate science and embracing carbon emissions:

Aug. 2008: Asked about global warming, said “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

Sep. 2008: Told Charlie Gibson: “I believe that man’s activities can certainly be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change.”

Oct. 2008: Said during the vice presidential debate that she supported capping carbon emissions.

May 2009: Forced to cancel an appearance at White House Correspondents’ dinner because of a flooding disaster caused by an “unusually warm spring thaw in Alaska.”

Nov. 2009: Asked Rush Limbaugh, “Are we warming or are we cooling?”

Dec. 2009: Attacked climate scientists in a Washington Post op-ed, then said she would not debate Al Gore on climate change because “they don’t want to listen to the facts. They don’t want to listen to some reasonable voices in this.”

Feb. 2010: Asserted that climate science is “snake oil” and said “man-made global warming hysteria isn’t based on sound science.”

Apr. 2010: Dismissed “this snake oil science stuff that is based on this global warming, Gore-gate stuff

Jun. 2010: In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill, said “I chant, ‘drill, baby, drill,’ because it will help make the country energy independent.”

May 2011: At a motorcycle rally, exclaimed: “I love that smell of the emissions!”

Jan. 2012: In the middle of last winter, took to Facebook to ask, “What global warming?”.

Apr. 2012: Celebrated Earth Day by calling, yet again, to “drill, baby, drill.”

Palin is an entertainer now rather than a public servant and so her opinions alone do not merit much consideration. Yet her joking asides that cold weather means that climate change is not happening are representative of a larger skepticism and confusion about the link between climate and weather.

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Yesterday, Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) rejected the notion that Hurricane Sandy’s damage was worsened by climate change.

At a ceremonial event to mark the rebuilding of the Jersey Shore boardwalk post-Hurricane Sandy, Christie responded to a question from WNYC/New Jersey Public Radio about how the state could have better prepared for the consequences of climate change:

Well, first of all, I don’t agree with the premise of your question because I don’t think there’s been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change. But I would absolutely expect that that’s exactly what WNYC would say, because you know liberal public radio always has an agenda. And so since I disagree with the premise of your question I don’t feel like I have to answer the rest of it.

Of course, this isn’t about whether Sandy was “caused” by climate change. It’s about whether climate change and sea level rise are making such storms more frequent and much more destructive (see links below) — and that is something we can plan for.

Christie is already one of the few Republican leaders that acknowledge human activity causes climate change. Even so, he still casts it as a second-tier issue. “Maybe in the subsequent months and years, after I get done with rebuilding the state and getting people back in their homes,” he told reporters in February, “I’ll have the opportunity to ponder the esoteric question of the causes of the storm.” He even acknowledged climate change is real in the same speech where he announced that he was pulling New Jersey out of a regional compact aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Contrast Chrstie’s words with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D), who said, “We have a one-hundred year flood every two years now.” Still, both governors make the case for greater greater resiliency, even though Christie does not directly reference climate change. The different responses also characterize the gulf in NY and NJ preparations for climate change. According to a report from WNYC, New Jersey overlooked climate change warnings before Sandy, which resulted in it losing over one-quarter of its public transit fleet. Meanwhile, New York had consulted scientists on climate change-related incidents, and lost 19 of its 8,000 rail cars.

What Christie fails to grasp is the impact climate change is having on his constituents today, including coastal flooding, powerful storms, sea level rise, and drought. Extreme weather has also cost taxpayers $136 billion in the last three years, with Sandy’s toll alone at $60 billion.

Related Posts:

• How Arctic Ice Loss Amplified Superstorm Sandy — Oceanography Journal
• How Does Climate Change Make Superstorms Like Sandy More Destructive?
• Yes, Climate Change Contributed To Superstorm Sandy

The big tornado outbreak, including a monster Oklahoma twister, have people asking again about a possible link to climate change. I’ll review the science in this post.

“The news helicopter from kfor.com caught this image of the shocking near-total destruction of a huge area of Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013.” Via Masters.

Tom Karl, the director of the National Climatic Data Center, explained in a 2011 email:

What we can say with confidence is that heavy and extreme precipitation events often associated with thunderstorms and convection are increasing and have been linked to human-induced changes in atmospheric composition.

Insured losses due to thunderstorms and tornadoes in the U.S. in 2012 dollars. Data and image from Property Claims Service, Munich Re.

Tornadoes “come from certain thunderstorms, usually super-cell thunderstorms,” explained climatologist Dr. Kevin Trenberth in an email today, but you need “a wind shear environment that promotes rotation.” Global warming may decrease the wind shear and that may counterbalance the impact on tornado generation from the increase in thunderstorm intensity.

Trenberth, the former head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, notes:

The main climate change connection is via the basic instability of the low level air that creates the convection and thunderstorms in the first place. Warmer and moister conditions are the key for unstable air.

The climate change effect is probably only a 5 to 10% effect in terms of the instability and subsequent rainfall, but it translates into up to a 32% effect in terms of damage. (It is highly nonlinear). So there is a chain of events and climate change mainly affects the first link: the basic buoyancy of the air is increased.  Whether that translates into a super-cell storm and one with a tornado is largely chance weather.

After April 2011 saw records set for most tornadoes in a month and in 24 hours — “The Katrina of tornado outbreaks“ — I examined the climate/tornado link in great detail here, looking at the data, the literature, and expert analysis. That piece concluded:

1. When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.
2. Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.

Early March 2012 saw what was likely “the most prolific five-day period of tornado activity on record for so early in the year,” as meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters put it.

Then we had an unusually long “tornado drought” from May 2012 to April 2013, which has now come to a stunning end, punctuated by the devastating Moore, Oklahoma tornado yesterday:

A massive, mile-wide supercell tornado ripped through the suburbs of Oklahoma City, destroying homes, schools and other buildings. The tornado was on the ground for some 40 minutes, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), and police reported that an occupied elementary school was in the path of the cyclone. Early estimates had winds on the ground near 200 mph, which would have made the cyclone an F4 or higher. Witnesses said the damage was like something out of an atomic bomb strike, and there are at least 24 people dead, including many young children, with a toll that could eventually be far higher.

Masters says “the Moore tornado likely to be one of the five most damaging tornadoes in history,” which is particularly tragic because Moore had “previously experienced the 4th costliest tornado in world history, the notorious May 3, 1999 Bridgecreek-Moore EF-5 tornado.”

You can donate to the American Red Cross disaster relief here.

Below is an extended review of the scientific literature along with some analyses from this year and last year by leading experts.

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DeSmogBlog notes that the Bureau of Land Management’s recently-released rules governing fracking on federal lands ”will adopt the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill written by ExxonMobil for fracking chemical fluid disclosure on U.S. public.” It uses a voluntary online chemical disclosure database that has “truck-sized” loopholes, most notably that it’s voluntary — editors.

By Frances Beinecke via NRDC

When I talk to people who live near fracking operations, they often ask me the same question: “What is this doing to my drinking water?” Homeowners have shown me jugs of water from their kitchen sinks that look like rusty mud. One man said he could light his tap water on fire after energy companies put a drill pad in his neighborhood. Others tell me they worry their water is causing health problems for their families.

People across the country share these concerns. From Pennsylvania to Texas to Colorado, residents see wastewater pits leak, smell chemicals in the air, or read the scientific research showing that fracking can contaminate water supplies and pose a host of other threats. No one should have to live with these dangers: we all want to keep our drinking water safe from dangerous chemicals and reckless industrial activity.

And yet the federal government just released draft rules for fracking that fail to protect people from harm. Instead the rules protect the oil and gas industry from having to follow strong public health and environmental standards.

There is a lot at stake here. The Bureau of Land Management’s draft rules would cover fracking on public lands, including millions of acres of wild landscapes and private property where the federal government owns mineral rights. An enormous amount of land is involved, but also water.  The weak rules in the draft need to do more to protect the water supplies for millions of Americans. Residents of Denver, Washington, DC, and Santa Barbara, for instance, live downstream of public lands where fracking could or already does occur.

Would you want your tap to run brown? Would you want to serve toxic water to your family?

Ordinary citizens have a hard time forcing energy companies to keep our water and air clean. We count on the government to do that job. Yet when it comes to fracking, states have proven ill equipped for the job. Only about half of the 30 states with fracking, for instance, require companies to report which chemicals they use in fracking fluids. And in most of the states with disclosure rules, companies can withhold information they deem confidential without any justification or oversight.

The federal government hasn’t been much better. The oil and gas industry has won exemptions from critical sections of our nation’s most basic environmental laws – the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Now the Bureau of Land Management has issued woefully inadequate rules for fracking on public lands. The current draft rules are even weaker than a previous draft leaked several months ago, and they read like an industry wish list.

They could exempt huge tracts of state and tribal lands from the safeguards. They offer only weak chemical disclosure requirements that would make it hard for homeowners or medical professionals to find out all the chemicals being used in fracking operations. And they ignore key areas of health and environmental concern like the huge wastewater pits have been known to leak toxic and radioactive materials.

Surely America can do a better job of holding industry accountable for its actions. Fracking is already moving full steam ahead on our public lands. Now is the time to enact strong standards, not issue giveaways to oil and gas companies.

The Obama Administration should be a leader in establishing safeguards that protect public health and the environment. And the industry—which is drilling in our backyards, near our schools, and in our natural treasures—should accept these stronger safeguards. Americans deserve to know their water is safe from fracking chemicals.

– Frances Beinecke, President of NRDC, reposted from NRDC Switchboard with permission

The Production Tax Credit — the key federal incentive for wind power — is a success story. Since the PTC was first enacted in 1992, the cost of wind power has fallen 90 percent, 75,000 people now work in the wind industry, and wind power is booming.

Yet, some people still think the PTC should be eliminated. Most interestingly, Exelon — the large Midwestern utility and power plant operator — has made ending the PTC its number one lobbying priority, claiming that the credit distorts markets. This would be scary. Fortunately, it’s not true.

The truth is that Exelon hopes to slow or halt expansion of wind power projects that can affect the bottom line of their nuclear power plants in the Midwest, and to achieve that objective they’re blaming wind and the PTC for market phenomena like negative pricing that are almost always caused by inflexible generation technology and transmission constraints.

This post will summarize Exelon’s position on the PTC, show where it falls short, and then point out that Exelon is more concerned about competition from wind power, in general, than the Production Tax Credit.

Why does Exelon say the PTC is distortionary?

Exelon’s argument hinges on two fundamental ideas. First, that the PTC causes negative prices; and second, that negative prices are bad for wholesale electricity markets.

Digging into this argument requires a little knowledge of how power markets work. In much of the country — including where Exelon’s nuclear plants are located — power is sold in competitive markets, at a “clearing price” set by an auction process. In general, the clearing price is set by the most expensive marginal resource needed to meet demand at a given time. This price is then given to all the generators providing electricity at that time. (For more on this, see Wind Power Helps to Lower Electricity Prices.)

Importantly, all power plants bid prices that reflect not just their fuel expenses and other operating costs, but also forgone revenues. For example, coal plant owners can sell the coal ash for industrial uses, and they take these lost sales into account when deciding how much they should charge for power from the plant. Wind power is exactly the same, only one of its lost benefits is a tax credit.

The Production Tax Credit offers eligible wind generators a tax credit worth $23 per megawatt hour for the electricity they produce. Since the fuel costs for wind power are zero and operational costs are low, wind turbines can theoretically offer to sell their power at a negative price (that is, they can make money even though they’re paying someone to take their power).

Where Exelon goes wrong is when they draw policy conclusions from these facts. Exelon believes that these negative prices are bad for wholesale electricity markets because they discourage investment in new generation. And, because all power plants operating get the same price, a negative price can force nuclear power plant owners to pay someone to take their power.

Where Exelon loses the plot

Exelon’s explanation of negative prices is generally correct, but it’s also incomplete. First, we need to look at how often wind is setting the power price.

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Our thoughts this morning are with those affected by the tornadoes in Oklahoma.

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives should pass a bill aiming to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, but some House Democrats are trying to offer amendments to clarify the true nature of the project. [The Hill]

The House is expected to easily pass a Keystone XL pipeline approval bill this week with bipartisan support, but liberal Democrats that oppose the project will try to land some punches too.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) wants a floor vote on an amendment requiring that oil transported through the Canada-to-Texas oil sands pipeline — and any refined products made from it — remain in the U.S. …

Holt’s export ban amendment is one of several submitted thus far to the House Rules Committee, which will meet late Tuesday afternoon to decide which amendments will receive votes on the floor the next day. …

And a separate amendment from Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) requires that prior to the pipeline approval taking effect, TransCanada must “disclose its campaign contributions and other electioneering expenditures over the previous five years to the public,” a summary states.

A good brief summary of what can be said about tornadoes and climate change (hint: it’s complicated). [Grist]

Chris Christie says there is no “proof” that climate change helped cause Superstorm Sandy. [WNYC]

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