by Tom Smerling, via ClimateBites

After watching this TEDx clip, you may never want to stand before an audience again without pausing, at least once, to utter these seven magic words:

“Let me tell you a little story.”

But most advice about the importance of narrative comes from psychologists and communication consultants, not storytellers.   So here is a master storyteller, Bill Harley, talking about his life’s work, and sharing what he’s learned about why storytelling is so central to human understanding.

A small sample:

It has a power nothing else has. . .

I’m not talking just about literature and English.   I’m talking about history and astrophysics and biochemistry and law and mathematics.

All of those things are best explained through story. Because “story” is how we are reminded, and how we remember.   If we want it to be memorable, it must be a story. . .

We are not built to memorize lists, or unrelated facts. We are built to remember narrative.So try this the next time you are giving a lecture or a talk or standing in front of a bunch of people:    Stop in the middle of your offering of facts or your closely-reasoned argument, and say “Let me tell you a little story.”

And watch what happens. You see the faces relax, you see people reseat themselves in their chairs, and get ready. . . to hear . . . a story.

Harley’s points apply not only to public speeches, but to all climate communication, from written articles to interviews, blogs, and even dinner-table conversation.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy Bill Harley’s anecdotes.

If you want to look further into the art of climate storytelling, below are some suggestions for where to start:

• There are two ways of thinking about climate storytelling

1) the overall narrative (aka storyline) you select to describe the problem and its solutions to a given audience.  There are many different approaches; ClimateBites has compiled 23 alternative ways to tell the climate story.

2) short, personal anecdotes used to draw the audience in and make your message stick.   For tips on becoming a better storyteller for any public cause, check out Andy Goodman’s work linked at “Numbers Numb, Jargon Jars.  And Nobody Ever Marched on Washington Because of a Pie Chart.“

• As role model for climate storytelling, nobody beats Dr. Richard Alley, host of PBS’s Earth: the Operators’ Manual.   That entire series is filled with great stories, and the book includes even more.   In this short clip Alley draws on his own life events to illustrate how ‘skeptics’ cherry-pick data, ala “The Escalator.”

– Tom Smerling is a climate communicator who formerly worked in the Special Projects Office of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. This piece was originally published at ClimateBites and was reprinted with permission.

Related Post:

• In Praise of Clint Eastwood’s Metaphorical “Halftime in America” Superbowl Ad
• Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on Climate

by Michael Conathan

Earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its annual “Status of Stocks” report to Congress outlining the overall health of our nation’s fisheries. To the relatively small cadre of fish geeks (myself included), the release of this document is a major event. It lacks the panache of the Oscar nominations, but for us it is perhaps comparable to the way the 1 percent gets all giddy for Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letter to shareholders.

NOAA’s report for 2011, similar to that of Warren Buffett’s financial powerhouse, continued its recent trend of positive returns. The topline numbers showed modest yet continued growth in the overall health of America’s fish populations. At the end of 2011, just 14 percent of fish stocks were subject to overfishing, and 21 percent were in an overfished state—down from 16 percent and 22 percent in 2010, respectively. (Recall this description of the difference between a stock that is “subject to overfishing” and one that is “overfished.”)

Yet the most impressive news to emerge from this year’s report was that six stocks have been declared fully rebuilt—more than in any other year—bringing the overall total of stocks rebuilt since 2000 to 27.

Despite these positive trends and all the feel-good stories the report has spawned (in more than 100 newspapers nationwide), correspondence in my personal inbox this week was dominated by references to a Washington Post Wonk Room blog post proclaiming boldly that it had found “The end of fish, in one chart.”

The chart in question comes from a wide-ranging World Wildlife Fund study on global biodiversity, and it displays the dramatic increase in global fishing pressure from 1950 to 2006. The blog piece goes on to reference an overpublicized doomsday scenario article published by lead author Dr. Boris Worm in 2006 in the journal Science. Worm’s study predicts the demise of global commercial fisheries by 2048. Ah, how the mass media truly loves a ticking clock.

The rest of that story, as I explained in an earlier column, is that Worm later collaborated with several other colleagues, including Dr. Ray Hilborn, on a follow-up article that Science ran in 2009 showing a far rosier outlook on the future of the world’s fisheries—specifically that “conservation objectives can be achieved by merging diverse management actions, including catch restrictions, gear modification, and closed areas.” Sound management practices mean fishery rebuilding is possible.

And that’s precisely what we’re now seeing in domestic fisheries with the slow but steady recovery of fish populations. Our regulations are working—at least for the fish. Yet as always, we must continue to seek the balance between regulations that work for the fish and for the fishermen.

Hilborn hit this point perfectly with an op-ed he co-authored for The New York Times earlier this week with his colleague and wife, Ulrike Hilborn. Their point, similar to one I made in this series four weeks ago, is that when we as consumers eschew overfished fisheries that are in the process of rebuilding under strictly enforced science-based catch limits, we unnecessarily penalize fishermen who are acting in the best interests of the ecosystem, coastal communities, and our national economy.

Americans should not feel guilty about eating domestically produced seafood, as long as we keep strict regulations in place that reflect the best available science and that continue working toward the rebuilding goal achieved in 2011 by six different fish stocks.

The Magnuson-Stevens Act—the law that regulates our nation’s fisheries—will be up for reauthorization again in 2013, and some commercial and recreational fishing groups have already begun their call to arms, insisting legislators roll back the stringent requirement that all catch limits be based on the best available science. While there is no question that our understanding of fish populations must improve, lawmakers should think long and hard about weakening safeguards against overfishing just as they are starting to pay positive dividends.

After all, slow, steady progress is a pretty good long-term growth strategy. Just ask Warren Buffett.

Michael Conathan is Director of Oceans Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Rebuilt fish stocks in 2011

Below are the six fish stocks that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “Status of Stocks” report declared fully rebuilt.

Bering Sea snow crab

One of the darlings of the Discovery Channel’s hit reality show, “The Deadliest Catch,” the Bering Sea snow crab (also known as opilio crab or “opies”) is perhaps the highest-profile stock to haul itself across the rebuilding finish line in 2011. In 2005 the fishery underwent a massive management overhaul—from a system that forced fishermen to fish as fast and hard as possible until the entire annual quota was met, to an individual fishing quota system that assigns each permit a total amount of crab that the permit-holder can catch at any time during a defined season.

One measure of this system’s success is that after landing 54.5 million pounds in 2010–2011, managers hiked the catch limit for 2011–2012 to 89.9 million pounds.

Summer flounder

Summer flounder is a fish with many suitors. It’s a staple of both the commercial and recreational fishery from North Carolina to Maine in state and federal waters. Perhaps because it’s so well known and sought after, it’s also one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s highest-profile success stories.

After rampant overfishing decimated the species in the mid- to late-1980s, it took more than two decades of legal and regulatory wrangling to implement catch limits in line with scientific recommendations. Now, thanks to strict harvest caps and a few robust-year classes of young fish, the stock—which has brought commercial fishermen between $20 million and $30 million annually since 2001 and has become one of the most popular sport fish in the mid-Atlantic region—is now fully rebuilt.

Gulf of Maine haddock

For all the negative news that has come out of the New England groundfishery in the past few years, including terrible new stock assessments for cod and yellowtail flounder, the groundfish species that has quietly dominated the northwest Atlantic ecosystem has been Gulf of Maine haddock.

Unfortunately for fishermen, they have been largely unable to take advantage of the increasingly large catch limits that come with a healthy haddock population. Because cod haddock and many flounders all school together, trawls, gillnets, and other fishing gear cannot selectively target haddock while avoiding the less healthy species. In 2010 fishermen caught just 20 percent of their total allowable catch of haddock, and that figure stood at just 11 percent of the total through the first 11 months of 2011.

Chinook salmon—Northern California coast: Klamath (fall), and coho salmon—Washington coast: Queets

Many consumers think of salmon as a single species. But this is like thinking all wine is a single varietal. Not only are salmon divided into Atlantic and Pacific (virtually all wild salmon is Pacific and most farmed is Atlantic), but there are also five different species of Pacific salmon alone. Each species is further divided into subpopulations since salmon, which spend their adolescence and adult lives in the open ocean, have the uncanny ability to return to the same tributary of the same river in which they were spawned.

Confused yet? Now try managing each river’s population of each distinct species and rebuilding them all to optimum biomass levels.

This year, two rivers in the Pacific Northwest can claim rebuilt populations for a species of salmon: Washington’s Queets River’s coho salmon and California and Oregon’s Klamath River’s chinook salmon.

The Klamath River story is particularly remarkable. As recently as 2008, this fishery was completely shut down—that year, just 68,000 fish returned to the Klamath, a paltry fraction of the historic highs. In 2011 that figure had limped its way up to 233,000—still far short of what fishery managers considered sustainable. This year? More than 1.6 million fish came back to the Klamath.

It’s too early to tell why the numbers have rebounded so dramatically or whether they will stay high in the years to come, but for now northern California and Oregon’s salmon fishermen are truly in the pink.

Widow rockfish

The sixth species declared rebuilt is the widow rockfish. This is neither a terribly abundant nor commercially critical species even in the best of times, but in the late-1980s and mid-1990s West Coast fishermen were landing between 16 million and 22 million pounds per year and bringing in $4 million to $6 million. That total dropped off a cliff around the turn of the century and from 2000–2011 landings totals have been in the neighborhood of 300,000 pounds per year. The species is currently managed under the Pacific groundfish multispecies complex, and it represents just a tiny fraction of what fishermen bring in overall.

Michael Conathan is Director of Oceans Policy at the Center for American Progress. This piece was originally published at the CAP website.

NOTE: How about crowd-sourcing some real pennies for cartoonist, Stephanie McMillan, who has given me permission to reprint her cartoons. Here’s the link to Paypal: CLICK HERE (then click where it says DONATE).

API President Jack Gerard

by Lee Fang, via the Republic Report

When oil companies need help in Washington, they call Jack Gerard. But in January of next year, assuming he wins the presidency, Mitt Romney may be dialing Gerard for political support. According to media reports in his native Idaho, Gerard is on the shortlist to become Romney’s White House chief of staff.

Gerard is the president of the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil lobbying associations in the country. Using a budget that is rumored to be in the hundreds of millions (funded by all of the major oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, etc.), Gerard finances pro-oil propaganda on network television, academic studies to promote his policy positions, front groups to hold rallies in pivotal swing states, and of course a large teams of lobbyists from D.C. to over a dozen state capitals across the country. For his work, he’s one of the highest paid lobbyists in the Beltway, making $6.4 million in 2010 alone.

Rumors are against circulating that Gerard, a prominent Mormon and close ally to the Romney campaign, may be selected to take the top slot in a Romney administration. And there’s other evidence that Gerard has already ingratiated himself with the Romney campaign:

– Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) told the Idaho Statesman that he thinks Gerard may be selected as Romney’s chief of staff. “Gerard is a heckuva player in Washington, D.C.,” Risch told the newspaper. “He’s well thought of, well connected, has incredible street cred. He’s certainly got the qualifications to do any of that.”

– Former Senator Jim McClure (R-ID), Gerard’s former boss when he worked on Capitol Hill, predicted that Gerard would be Romney’s chief of staff had he won in 2008.

– Breaking a tradition of trade association nonpartisanship, Gerard endorsed Romney during the Republican primaries this year, and indicated the he is close to the Romney family.

– Jack Gerard’s son, who shares the same name, is now a spokesman for the Romney campaign.

The Romney campaign, like most political campaigns, has remained largely silent about its future staffing plans.

Lee Fang is a reporter with the Republic Report. This piece was originally published at the Republic Report and was reprinted with permission.

The worse news is that, “The new data provide further evidence that the door to a 2°C trajectory is about to close,” according to IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol. Why does that matter? As Reuters reported:

Scientists say ensuring global average temperatures this century do not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is needed to limit devastating climate effects like crop failure and melting glaciers.

Darn you truth-telling scientists, always ruining the party (see “James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don’t Act Now“).

And the worst news, as Birol told Reuters, is that:

“When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius [11°F], which would have devastating consequences for the planet.”

As Birol said of 11°F warming late last year, “Even School Children Know This Will Have Catastrophic Implications for All of Us.” If only school children ran the country.

In fact, the scientific literature now makes clear that even 4°C (7°F) warming would destroy the livable climate 7 billion people have come to depend upon (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

So what is the ‘good’ news? We have has been reducing our emissions:

CO₂ emissions in the United States in 2011 fell by 92 Mt, or 1.7%, primarily due to ongoing switching from coal to natural gas in power generation and an exceptionally mild winter, which reduced the demand for space heating. US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. This development has arisen from lower oil use in the transport sector (linked to efficiency improvements, higher oil prices and the economic downturn which has cut vehicle miles travelled) and a substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector.

Actually, the change in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) predated the downturn. VMT “began to plateau as far back as 2004 and dropped in 2007 for the first time since 1980,” as Brookings has reported. Indeed, per capita driving saw “flat-lining growth after 2000 and falling rates since 2005.”

The point is that given Obama’s strong new fuel economy standards and the reality of peak oil (that high oil prices are here to stay absent a global depression), the U.S. could meet its Copenhagen target of a 17% reduction in CO2 from 2005 levels with a pretty modest carbon tax (see “Bipartisan Support Grows for Carbon Price as Part of Debt Deal“). And that is the prerequisite for a global deal that would take us off the 6C path and give us a fighting chance at 2C.

"Activists" offered $50 to wear pro-coal shirts.

Apparently unable to find real activists, the coal industry paid astroturfers $50 to wear pro-coal t-shirts at an Environmental Protection Agency hearing yesterday.

The EPA hearings, held yesterday in Chicago and Washington, D.C., were focused on the agency’s first-ever carbon standards for new power plants. The industry has adamantly opposed these standards, as well as standards on mercury — a pollutant that even Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) admits is harmful.

This year, coal is throwing around its weight by spending tens of millions of dollars on media advertising and political contributions.

Coal is also engaging in fake advocacy campaigns, known as astroturfing. In a Craigslist ad found by the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago, a coal group promised participants $50 to “wear a t-shirt in support of an energy project.” Upon further digging, the Sierra Club blog pieced together much of the deleted Craigslist ad:

People needed to attend a public meeting (Tinley Park /Chicago)

Reply to: px6mq-3031150602@gigs.craigslist.org (email address no longer valid)

Looking for people THIS THURSDAY, MAY 24 who want to make a couple of dollars for a few hours of your time.

All you need to do is wear a t-shirt in support of an energy project for two hours during the public meeting. We will be departing the Tinely Park convention center at 8:15 am for the meeting and we will be back by 1:30 pm. For your time we will pay you $50 cash and provide you lunch once we return to the convention center.

If you can’t beat ‘em, cheat ‘em.

Alaska is a very important area for U.S. fossil fuel development. But, somewhat paradoxically, rural Alaska and its 250 Native villages are facing an energy crisis: Residents are forced to burn diesel for electricity; a gallon of gas sells for around $10 in some communities; and gasoline and diesel have been barged in from as far as Russia.

An event called “Challenges and Opportunities for Renewable Energy in Alaska” sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the Alaska Federation of Natives yesterday helped shed light on an extraordinarily important local solution to this energy crisis — renewable energy.

As Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), who spoke at the event, described:

…we bring a lot of people up there to see what the opportunities are.  Once they come there and they see for example a windmill working in a small remote village, and what it’s doing and lowering costs, they got it there, they’re maintaining it in very unique conditions, suddenly you get people saying “well maybe there’s something here.”  Or some of these other smaller projects.  So I think from a private investor standpoint, we are a unique opportunity from that perspective.

Watch it:

Alaska has tremendous renewable energy potential.  The state’s location on the Ring of Fire provides geothermal resources, its rivers provide untapped hydropower, its oceans have over 90% of the nation’s tidal resources, its vast forests provide biomass resources, and many areas have high class wind. Dozens of projects — ranging from wind to geothermal — have already been built and have started generating power for communities.

Villages in Alaska are generally remote, and approximately 150 have stand-alone electrical grids that prevent traditional, centralized energy development. However, panelists at the event discussed how this challenge can provide opportunities — particularly when it comes to designing innovative, decentralized renewable energy technologies that could be exported to the developing world.

While there are tremendous opportunities to scaling up renewables in Alaska, there are also challenges. These include human capacity, overlapping government agencies, and a lack of incentives. As one panelist, Scott Borgerson, put it: Alaska remains one of the world’s last “emerging markets.”

So while companies start eying offshore oil resources off the coast of Alaska, perhaps they should be looking to renewables instead.

Jessica Goad is the Manager of Outreach and Public Communication for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress.

by Daniel J. Weiss

Big polluters and their Congressional allies have created a new straw man to knock down with the invention of the so-called “War on Coal.” It is a multi-million dollar disinformation campaign funded by Big Coal polluters to protect their profits and distract Americans from the deadly effects of air pollution on public health.

However, with the number of coal jobs in key coal states actually on the rise since 2009, it’s more like peacetime prosperity than war in coal country. The War on Coal is nothing more than a new shiny object, designed by big polluters to distract Americans from the real war – the polluters’ attacks on their health – and the truth.

Coal companies and dirty utilities claim that long overdue requirements to reduce mercury, arsenic, smog, acid rain, and carbon pollution from power plants will kill jobs. In West Virginia, however, coal mining employment was higher in 2011 than at any time over the last 17 years. Federal jobs statistics also show modest coal mining job growth in coal states like Virginia and Pennsylvania.

In West Virginia, a recent report from the non-partisan West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy showed coal mining jobs are actually rising, with 1,500 new coal jobs added since 2009. In Pennsylvania, Energy Information Administration (EIA) data shows a 2.3% increase in coal related jobs. And in Virginia, EIA data shows a 6.7% increase in coal mining employment from 2009 to 2010.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has promulgated or proposed new clean air standards for smog, acid rain, mercury, air toxics, and carbon pollution that will save lives, create jobs and protect public health. For example, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard alone could prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 130,000 asthma incidents, and 540,000 lost work days every year. This would provide at least $59 billion in economic benefits.

The Economic Policy Institute projects that the mercury standard will actually have a “positive net impact on overall employment – likely leading to the net creation of 84,500 jobs between now and 2015.” The jobs created by the standard, however, would not just be limited to certain industrial sectors. EPI’s study projects that “8,000 Jobs would be gained in the utility industry itself,” along with the over 80,500 jobs that would be created to build pollution control equipment.  While dirty coal companies claim that the mercury standard will cause massive unemployment, EPI notes that “only 10,600 jobs would be displaced due to higher energy costs.” Richard Morgenstern, a former Reagan and Clinton EPA official, predicts that the new standard will have “no net impact” on employment.

EPA predicts that its proposed carbon pollution standard for new power plants will have no impact on employment or existing coal plants. In fact, the standard simply complements existing market factors, as the EPA points out:

Because this standard is in line with current industry investment patterns, this proposed standard is not expected to have notable costs and is not projected to impact electricity prices or reliability.

So what is happening to King Coal?  The real culprit is the low price for natural gas. A February, 2012 analysis of coal plant retirements by the Analysis Group found that coal plant declines resulted from basic changes in market forces:

The sharp decline in natural gas prices, the rising cost of coal, and reduced demand for electricity are all contributing factors in the decisions to retire some … coal-fired generating units. These trends started well before EPA issued its new air pollution standards.

Coal industry executives themselves say that low natural gas prices, a warm winter, and a sluggish economy are the primary reasons for coal mining worker layoffs. The Bipartisan Policy Center noted that industry-commissioned doomsday projections of economic losses from EPA standards are vastly exaggerated by including unrelated regulations and worst-case scenarios.  BPC found that “Several investment analysts were conducted prior to EPA’s [rule] proposal and made worst case estimates about what EPA was likely to require.”

Coal generated electricity is relatively inexpensive because the public pays for the external costs from burning coal. These expensive harms include premature deaths, asthma attacks, respiratory ailments, lost productivity and the impacts of climate change. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that burning coal costs $62 Billion annually due to premature deaths, more respiratory ailments, and lost work days.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity – a front group for coal companies and dirty utilities — plans to spend at least $40 million in ads and lobbying to convince Congress to block these vital public health standards. Fortunately, voters won’t be fooled by this attempt to distract them from the real public health impacts of dangerous air pollution. We understand that this isn’t a war on coal. It’s a war on us.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer, but a large swath of the U.S. will skip right to mid-summer heat this weekend, likely breaking records and leading to one of the hottest Indy 500 races on record. [Climate Central]

We still have one more week left in May, but after a record-warm March and above-average temperatures on all but four days this month, Washington, D.C. is on track to record its warmest meteorological spring on record. [WaPo Weather Gang]

From a wind-power factory in this battleground state, President Obama urged Congress to extend tax credits he said would save jobs in the field of clean-energy production. [Los Angeles Times]

Villagers in windswept Barrow, Alaska fear that Shell’s seismic work and drilling will disturb the bowhead whale migration, forcing whales away from their food and whalers dangerously far offshore to catch them. Worse yet, they say, a spill could poison the whales. [New York Times]

Alaska has massive hydro, wind, geothermal and other renewable resources, but the state’s rural villages are chained to diesel and suffer oppressive energy costs they say threaten their existence. Lawmakers, energy experts and Native leaders said Thursday it’s a dire problem with elusive solutions. [Miami Herald]

California is poised to more than double its targeted electricity output from rooftop solar panels. [Los Angeles Times]

The United Nations chief, Ban Ki-moon, held out little hope on Thursday of an historic outcome at the Rio global development summit, now less than a month away, admitting negotiations had been “painfully slow.” [Guardian]

China hit back Thursday at claims it was holding up global climate talks in Germany, saying the United States, Europe and other rich states were the ones applying the brakes. [AFP]

The amount of radioactive materials released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost two and a half times the initial estimate by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday. [New York Times]

A protester outside Heartland's climate denier conference. Photo: Kelly Mitchell

“I don’t appreciate being called a terrorist,” the woman said firmly.

I was standing outside the Hilton Chicago hotel talking to Jim Lakely, the director of communications for the Heartland Institute, when an elderly woman approached us on the street. Dressed in a business suit, she was loading her luggage into a taxi when she noticed Lakely’s Heartland name badge and interrupted our conversation.

“We can have a civil discussion. But I really don’t like being labeled a terrorist,” she said, referencing a billboard posted by Heartland equating people who believe in global warming to the Unibomber. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Well, I appreciate you telling me that,” said Lakely, who was taking a break from managing Heartland’s conference to watch the 60 or so people protesting the event outside the hotel.

The woman, who was wearing a badge for a different conference, got into her taxi and drove away. There was a brief moment of awkward silence between me and Lakely.

The exchange perfectly encapsulated the public relations disaster the Heartland Institute has created for itself over the last few weeks. The downfall started with an offensive billboard campaign on May 3rd and ended with 11 companies pulling support for the organization — stripping 35% of corporate funds overnight and leaving its financial future uncertain.

The dramatic drop in support was facilitated by the advocacy organization Forecast the Facts, which collected more than 150,000 signatures from people calling on corporate donors to end their relationship with Heartland.

This series of events built on an earlier incident in which Peter Gleick, a scientist with the Pacific Institute, faked his identity to acquire internal documents from the Heartland Institute. Those documents showed that the organization planned to secretly develop school curriculum to spread doubt about the causes of climate change. It also opened up a window to the organization’s donors, which were forced to make a decision about whether or not they wanted to be associated with Heartland’s tactics.

And then yesterday, the other shoe dropped. In his closing speech, Heartland President Joseph Bast announced that the organization does not have the money to continue putting on its hallmark climate conference — an event that had become a rallying point for an insulated group of climate disinformers.

“I hope to see you at a future conference, but at this point we have no plans to do another ICCC,” said Bast, explaining that Heartland was struggling to meet expenses.

The cancellation marks the end of an era — albeit a short era — for the oddball world of organized climate change denial.

The event, called the International Conference on Climate Change, was started in 2008 as a way to organize libertarians  — many of whom believe that taking action on climate change would create a one-world government dominated by the United Nations.

Heartland tried hard to label the event a “science” conference. But the presentations were almost always political, peppered with anti-government rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

“We’re in a war. We’re in a war against our standard of living,” said Walt Cunningham, a former NASA astronaut, speaking in a morning session on Tuesday.

“There’s not a lot of science here,” said Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist from Colorado State University who attended the event last year to present the so-called “warmist” case. Neither Denning nor any of the other 97% of climate scientists who say human activity is warming the planet presented at this year’s conference.

In fact, none of this year’s top speakers had any background in climate science. Instead, they spoke about the issues in highly conspiratorial terms.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a former economist who gave the keynote address on Monday, called environmentalism “identical to communism—identical, not similar.”

Wisconsin Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, the featured keynote speaker for Tuesday, asked if we “need to put catalytic converters on our noses” by addressing heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

And following Sensenbrenner’s nonsensical remarks, Heartland brought up “special mystery guest” Lord Christopher Monckton, who admitted at the beginning of his speech that he has “no scientific qualification” to challenge climate science. He then performed a comedy routine in which he questioned the legitimacy of President Obama’s citizenship — a joke that brought the room to full applause.

These fringe views made even Heartland senior staffers very nervous. After the billboard debacle, the leader of Heartland’s Washington office, Eli Lehrer, left the organization and brought six staff members with him, saying the campaign “didn’t reflect the seriousness which I want to bring to public policy.”

But Heartland’s leadership twisted the knife into their self-inflicted wound with a decision to keep repeating their extreme rhetoric in the lead-up to the conference — later calling Bill McKibben and Michael Mann “Madmen.”

The rapid unraveling of Heartland forced it to scale down the conference, and seemingly kept attendees away. This year, only around 300 people showed up — a decrease from the 500 people at its first conference in 2008.

Despite the subdued mood, Congressman Sensenbrenner tried to rally the remaining troops during his Tuesday speech.

“Things are a lot better now than they were three years ago,” he said, referencing the failure to pass a carbon cap and trade bill and potential expiration of the Kyoto Protocol.

Things certainly weren’t better for Heartland. The following afternoon, the organization announced its decision to abandon the entire conference due to lack of funds and a backlash from corporate donors.

But Sensenbrenner was right about one thing: The public dialogue has moved dramatically backward in the last three years, driven largely by the aggressive disinformation tactics of the climate denial community — and enabled by the Obama Administration’s decision to stop talking about the issue and the media’s decision to sharply curtail coverage.

While the dissolution of Heartland’s conference may be considered a “win” for those concerned about the spread of junk science and disinformation, there are still plenty of allies in industry and the halls of Congress willing to take up the denial cause.

The Center for American Progress traveled to Iowa to talk to experts about the PTC. In this video, Dr. Harold Prior of the Iowa Wind Energy Association and Brian Crowe of the Iowa Economic Development Authority explain how lacking national renewable energy policies hurt development and investments in wind in the long-run. Watch it:

Wind energy provides thousands of jobs in Iowa, like this one of a turbine maintenance worker in Franklin County.

As a national leader in wind generation and jobs, Iowa workers benefit immensely from the PTC. There are more than3,000 manufacturing and operations jobs in Iowa, and 6,000 to 7,000 workers overall, with more than 215 wind-related businesses. Wind energy powers nearly 1 million Iowa homes with electricity, and 20 percent of the state’s total electricity.

Though some Republicans choose to ridicule wind energy, the PTC has broad bipartisan support. For instance, an op-ed from a Republican business owner argued, “The president kept our doors open and our employees working because of the wind-production tax credit and 1603 Treasury grant program.” Meanwhile, 64 percent of Americans support congressional efforts to encourage investments in clean energy. So with Americans firmly behind the President’s proposal, the question remains whether Congress will act.

There are at present six proposals to export coal from Northwest ports. If all of these proposals are built, and if all of them operate at full capacity, the Northwest would be shipping 145 million tons of per coal year.

When burned, that coal will produce roughly 262 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. It’s such a staggering figure, that it’s a little hard to grasp. So here’s some context:

The coal export proposals are, in other words, a disaster for the climate. In aggregate, they are actually far worse than the Keystone XL pipeline.

If you want to dig into the numbers on a project by project basis, here they area:

• Cherry Point, Washington. SSA Marine is planning to build and operate the Gateway Pacific Terminal, a new shipping facility north of Bellingham that would be capable of handling 48 million tons of coal per year. Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company, has already agreed to supply 24 million tons of coal.
• Longview, Washington. Millennium Bulk Terminals, a subsidiary of the Australian coal mining company Ambre Energy, purchased a port site on the Columbia River. Arch Coal, a major American coal mining company, has a 38 percent stake in the site. Ambre hopes to export 44 million tons of coal, with 25 million tons in the first phase.
• Grays Harbor, Washington. According to newspaper accounts, RailAmerica is planning to develop a coal export terminal at the Port of Grays Harbor’s Marine Terminal 3 that could handle 5 million tons of coal each year.
• Port of St. Helens, Oregon. Kinder Morgan is planning to build and operate a coal export terminal at the Port Westward Industrial Park near Clatskanie that will be capable of handling30 million tons of coal per year, with 15 million tons in an initial phase of development.
• Port of Morrow, Oregon. Ambre Energy is planning to construct a facility on the Columbia River in eastern Oregon that will transfer coal from rail to barges that will be towed downriver to Port Westward where the coal will be loaded on ongoing vessels. The company says that the system will be capable of handling 8 million tons per year.
• Coos Bay, Oregon. The Port of Coos Bay is considering a mysterious proposal, known to the public only as “Project Mainstay,” that officials say could export 6 to 10 million tons of coal per year.

Notes: My calculations assume that Powder River Basin coal generates 8,500 BTUs per pound, and that 1 million BTUs produces 212.7 pounds of CO2. Gasoline consumption refers to “motor gasoline” and comes the US Federal Highway Administration’s statistics and assumes 19.6 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon of gasoline.

– by Eric de Place. This post is part of the research project, Northwest Coal Exports, and is reprinted with permission. An earlier version can be seen here, Coal Exports and Carbon Consequences.

Related Posts:

• Coal Exports Are Bigger Threat Than Tar Sands Pipeline
• Why Coal Leasing Should Be The Center Of The Climate Fight

“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.”

Last year, the journal Nature asked me to write a Comment piece after they read one of my posts on prolonged drought and “Dust-Bowlification.” The article was published October 27, 2011 (here, subs. req’d).

Since six months have passed, I can reprint the entire piece on ClimateProgress (see below).

This was my first piece ever in the journal itself.  I did have an online piece, “Nature publishes my climate analysis and solution.”  This is not a peer-reviewed article but rather a “Comment” piece.

I sent it to five of the world’s leading authorities on climate change and drought and the hydrological cycle:  Kevin Trenberth, Aiguo Dai, Michael Mann, Peter Gleick and Jonathan Overpeck.  I endeavored to incorporate their comments, but unfortunately Nature has a 10-reference limit for their Comment pieces so I wasn’t able to include as many references as they suggested or as I would have liked.  If you want links to most of the articles I refer to, go here.

I was particularly delighted that Overpeck liked the term “Dust-Bowlification.”  He really was an inspiration for me to begin studying this topic many years ago when I saw a 2005 presentation of his, “Warm climate abrupt change–paleo-perspectives,” that concluded “climate change seldom occurs gradually” (see The “global-change-type drought” and the future of extreme weather).

I was equally delighted Nature has basically endorsed this term through its multiple appearances in this article and felt that the overall issue warranted more attention.

I do not believe that most Americans — and that includes most policymakers and the media — understand the convergence of the recent scientific literature on the extreme threat posed directly to this country of Dust-Bowlification (see “Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security“).

I am glad that leading climatologists like James Hansen are starting to talk more about the threat posed by drought — since it is painfully clear that even some people considered climate experts are unaware of the literature (see “James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don’t Act Now“).

As I wrote in the article:

Human adaptation to prolonged, extreme drought is difficult or impossible. Historically, the primary adaptation to dust-bowlification has been abandonment; the very word ‘desert’ comes from the Latin desertum for ‘an abandoned place’. During the relatively short-lived US Dust-Bowl era, hundreds of thousands of families fled the region. We need to plan how the world will deal with drought-spurred migrations and steadily growing areas of non-arable land in the heart of densely populated countries and global bread-baskets. 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.

Now, Dust-Bowl conditions could stretch all the way from Kansas to California by mid-century. America’s financial future and the health and safety of our people are at serious risk if greenhouse gas pollution is not brought under control quickly.  The food security of all of humanity is at risk. Denial is simply not an option, the time for action is now.

Here is the whole article:

Which impact of anthropogenic global warming will harm the most people in the coming decades? I believe that the answer is extended or permanent drought over large parts of currently habitable or arable land — a drastic change in climate that will threaten food security and may be irreversible over centuries.

A basic prediction of climate science is that many parts of the world will experience longer and deeper droughts, thanks to the synergistic effects of drying, warming and the melting of snow and ice.

Precipitation patterns are expected to shift, expanding the dry subtropics. What precipitation there is will probably come in extreme deluges, resulting in runoff rather than drought alleviation. Warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the Sun’s energy goes into baking the soil, leading to a further increase in air temp- erature. That is why, for instance, so many temperature records were set for the United States in the 1930s Dust Bowl; and why, in 2011, drought-stricken Texas saw the hottest summer ever recorded for a US state. Finally, many regions are expected to see earlier snowmelt, so less water will be stored on mountain tops for the summer dry season. Added to natural climatic variation, such as the El Niño–La Niña cycle, these factors will intensify seasonal or decade-long droughts. Although the models don’t all agree on the specifics, the overall drying trends are clear.

I used to call the confluence of these processes ‘desertification’ on my blog, ClimateProgress.org, until some readers pointed out that many deserts are high in biodiversity, which isn’t where we’re heading. ‘Dust-bowlification’ is perhaps a more accurate and vivid term, particularly for Americans — many of whom still believe that climate change will only affect far-away places in far-distant times.

Prolonged drought will strike around the globe, but it is surprising to many that it would hit the US heartland so strongly and so soon.

The coming droughts ought to be a major driver — if not the major driver — of climate policies. Yet few policy-makers and journalists seem to be aware of dust-bowlification and its potentially devastating impact on food security. That’s partly understandable, because much of the key research cited in this article post-dates the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Raising public awareness of, and scientific focus on, the likelihood of severe effects of drought is the first step in prompting action.

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

I first heard of the risks in a 2005 talk by climatologist Jonathan Overpeck of the Uni- versity of Arizona in Tucson. He pointed to emerging evidence that temperature and annual precipitation were heading in oppo- site directions over many regions and raised the question of whether we are at the “dawn of the super-interglacial drought”.

The idea wasn’t new. As far back as 1990, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York projected that severe to extreme drought in the United States, then occurring every 20 years or so, could become an every-other-year phenom- enon by mid-century.

Events are starting to bear out these worrying predictions. Snowpack reduction, early snowmelt and a decrease in dry-season river flow in the American West, forecast more than two decades ago, have now been measured. In much of the northern Rockies, the peak of the annual stream runoff is up to three or four weeks earlier than it was half a century ago.  Heat and drought — coupled with the greater impact of destruc- tive species, such as bark beetles, aided by warming — have increased forest die-off and the risk of wildfire.

The palaeoclimate record dating back to the medieval period reveals droughts lasting many decades. But the extreme droughts that the United States faces this century will be far hotter than the worst of those: recent decades have been warmer than the driest decade of the worst drought in the past 1,200 years.

And much warmer conditions are projected. According to a 2009 report of the US Global Change Research Program, warming over mid-latitude land masses, such as the continental United States, is predicted to be higher than the forecast average global warming: much of the inland United States faces a rise of between 5 °C and 6 °C on the current emissions path (that is, ‘business as usual’) by the century’s end, with a substantial fraction of that warming occurring by mid-century.

A 2007 analysis of 19 climate projections estimated that levels of aridity comparable to those in the Dust Bowl could stretch from Kansas to California by mid-century. To make matters worse, the regions at risk of reduced water supply, such as Nevada, have seen a massive population boom in the past decade. Overuse of water in these areas has long been rife, depleting groundwater stores.

Of course, the United States is not alone in facing such problems. Since 1950, the global percentage of dry areas has increased by about 1.74% of global land area per decade. Recent studies have projected ‘extreme drought’ conditions by mid-century over some of the most populated areas on Earth—southern Europe, south-east Asia, Brazil, the US Southwest, and large parts of Australia and Africa. These dust-bowl conditions are projected to worsen for many decades and be “largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stopped.”

The concept of drought has not been ignored by the IPCC and other scientific groups; there is even a United Nations Con- vention to Combat Desertification. But the cumulative risks don’t seem to have been fully recognized by the public and by policy- makers. And key questions remain to be answered, ideally in a dedicated report by an organization such as the US National Academy of Sciences or the IPCC.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Most pressingly, what will happen to global food security if dust-bowl conditions become the norm for both food-importing and food-exporting countries? Extreme, widespread droughts will be happening at the same time as sea level rise and salt-water intrusion threaten some of the richest agricultural deltas in the world, such as those of the Nile and the Ganges. Meanwhile, ocean acidification, warming and overfishing may severely deplete the food available from the sea.

What are the implications of dust-bowlification for energy generation? After agriculture, energy generation is responsible for the majority of freshwater withdrawals, and two key strategies for generating additional potable water — wastewater purification and desalinization — are both energy intensive. Future energy systems will need to be low on greenhouse-gas emissions and on water use. In particular, thermal power plants — including nuclear — may need to switch from evaporative or ‘wet cooling’  systems to dry cooling techniques, which, unfortunately, tend to be less efficient.

From an ecological perspective, what will be the effects of dust- bowlification on the global carbon cycle? In the past six years, the Amazon has seen two droughts of the sort expected once in 100 years, each of which may have released as much carbon dioxide from vegetation die-off as the United States emits from fossil-fuel combustion in a year. More frequent wildfires also threaten to increase carbon emissions. And as habitats are made untenable, what will be the effect on biodiversity?

At the same time, drought models need to be improved. They successfully chart the hydrological changes seen in the US South- west and the drying seen at the global level7, but regional predictions can be disturbingly variable. Some models forecast an increase in precipitation for East Africa, whereas oth- ers correctly predicted in 2010 that warming of the Indian Ocean would lead to drought in the region, such as this year’s devastating drought in Somalia. The models need higher resolution and a better understanding of precipitation, sea surface temperature and the effects of vegetation.

Human adaptation to prolonged, extreme drought is difficult or impossible. Historically, the primary adaptation to dust-bowlification has been abandonment; the very word ‘desert’ comes from the Latin desertum for ‘an abandoned place’. During the relatively short-lived US Dust-Bowl era, hundreds of thousands of families fled the region. We need to plan how the world will deal with drought-spurred migrations (see page 447) and steadily growing areas of non- arable land in the heart of densely populated countries and global bread-baskets. 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.

These predictions are not worst-case scenarios: they assume business-as-usual greenhouse-gas emissions. We can hope that the models are too pessimistic, but some changes, such as the expansion of the subtrop- ics, already seem to be occurring faster than models have projected10. We clearly need to pursue the most aggressive greenhouse-gas mitigation policies promptly, and put dust-bowlification atop the world agenda.

What does the future look like?  Dai laid it out in a 2010 study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, “Drought under global warming: a review,” the best review and analysis on the subject I’ve seen.

He is in the process of revising his analysis, but the figure below (which had been his 2030s projection in his original version) is a rough representation of where his analysis projects things will be around mid-century for the U.S.

The PDSI [Palmer Drought Severity Index] in the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl apparently spiked very briefly to -6, but otherwise rarely exceeded -3 for the decade (see here).

And this isn’t just Dai’s finding. Michael Wehner et al. find the drying has the same signature in “Projections of Future Drought in the Continental United States and Mexico” (2011).

Wehner and Dai are quoted in an excellent new IPS News piece by Stephen Leahy, “Action Needed Now to Prepare for Severe Drought.” That article notes future conditions “for almost all of Mexico, the midwestern United States and most of Central America … are projected to be worse than Mexico’s current drought or the U.S. Dust Bowl era of the 1930s that forced hundreds of thousands of people to migrate”:

“Drought conditions will prevail no matter what precipitation rates are in the future,” said co-author Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a U.S. government research centre in California.

“Even in regions where rainfall increases, the soils will get drier. This is a very robust finding,” Wehner told Tierramérica.

Wehner’s conclusions are based on findings from 19 different state-of-the-art climate models. His results match Dai’s. The story notes:

“If the projections in this study come even close to being realised, the consequences for society worldwide will be enormous,” Dai said in 2010.

According to Wehner, the very latest projections from the newest computer models that have not yet been published also show very similar results. “At the very least we are looking at severe drought conditions in future.”

Wehner said he was surprised the study received very little media attention, given the serious implications for the future.

What this means for future generations is “a very difficult issue for me to talk about” at a personal level, Wehner admitted.

Climate Progress readers aren’t surprised the media mostly ignores what is probably the most dangerous of all the climate impacts humans face in the coming decades (see “Network News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011“).

The time to act is now.

Want updates from Climate Progress? You can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe to our RSS Feed.

A new paper from Dr. Susan Tierney at the Analysis Group confirms that Americans do not have to choose between clean air, a liveable climate, and reliable electricity.

The coal industry has been lobbying intensely against new clean air standards and regulations for carbon dioxide emissions. There are two important takeaways from the report that debunk the coal lobby’s arguments against EPA regulations:

1. Despite coal plant closures, PJM (the largest grid operator in the country) actually exceeded its targeted reserve margin — capacity above peak levels — following its annual auction.
2. Wholesale electricity rates have decreased in since 2009 and are projected to drop 10 percent from 2011 levels by 2015.

The people who operate our grid are doing it reliably and with less coal. Last week, the Energy Information Administration found that coal’s share of electricity generation had dropped from 44.6 percent in Q1 of 2011 to 36 percent in Q1 of 2012. Yet the lights stayed on.

Why It Matters

There are two things consumers want from a utility: to turn on the lights cheaply and to do it without harming public health or the environment.

The idea that we can’t have both is a fallacy. Proponents of coal have conducted a very aggressive (albeit, incorrect) messaging campaign that goes something like this:

1. Coal is cheap
2. Cheap coal makes cheap electricity
3. Therefore, reducing reliance on cheap coal means more expensive and/or less reliable electricity

This argument has come up repeatedly as a reason to reject EPA air quality regulations to limit coal pollution, including the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) and the Carbon Pollution Rule. Now, most folks believe that these regulations are important — even if they do lead to slightly higher costs, since public health is a serious concern.

But we don’t have to choose between higher costs and less pollution, as Dr. Tierney explains.

Tierney looks at recent results from PJM’s capacity auction to see the impact of coal plant closures. PJM holds an annual auction where it “procure[s] resources needed to guarantee reliability three years into the future.” These auctions allow companies to competitively bid into the market to secure contracts for future generation.

For coal plants affected by regulation, this will theoretically make their operating costs higher and impact their ability to bid. Other resources like nuclear, renewables, and natural gas would then have the opportunity to step up their market share if they can provide a better deal and reliable delivery. In the auction process, PJM shoots to have 15 percent reserve margin, which is the ability to deliver power over peak demand.

If the coal lobby’s argument against regulation were correct, one of two things should have happened: Either electricity should be more expensive, or it should be less reliable to deliver.

But neither of those scenarios came to be. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: electricity prices based on contracts secured at the auction will actually be 10 percent below 2011 prices, and PJM overshot its capacity margin by 5 percent.

Once again, the scare tactics from the coal industry and its allies have been proven false.

Adam James is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress.

by Daniel J. Weiss

Fossil fuel companies and their political allies have spent millions of dollars on advertising to persuade Americans that drilling and mining are the best solutions to our energy problems. Despite their spending, these polluters haven’t convinced most Americans – including many Republicans — to support their proposals.

A brand new United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll found overwhelming public support for renewable energy tax credits, a clean energy standard, and increased regulation of hydraulic fracking for oil and gas production.

The nationwide poll of 1,004 adults was conducted from May 17-20. It asked respondents about whether tax credits for renewable energy — such as the Production Tax Credit for wind set to expire the end of this year — should be extended:

Supporters of these tax credits say they should be extended because they create jobs and encourage the development of cleaner sources of energy. Opponents say they should end because they cost too much and have not been effective at encouraging the use of renewable energy. Do you think Congress should extend these energy credits, OR allow them to expire?

By better than a two to one margin, respondents wanted to extend the incentives. Independents favored such an extension by 64 to 29 percent, as did 48 percent of Republicans.  Only 43 percent of Republicans opposed the PTC extension.

Today, President Obama plans to visit TPI Composites, a manufacturer of wind turbine blades in Newton, Iowa that employs 700 people.  He is expected to again urge Congress to extend the PTC because it is vital for job creation and maintaining competitiveness in the wind energy industry. The National Journal poll suggests that most Americans agree with him.

Poll respondents demonstrated additional strong support for clean energy when they were asked about whether they favored a Clean Energy Standard that would require utilities to generate 80 percent of their electricity with low- or no carbon resources by 2035.

Legislation recently introduced in the U.S. Senate would create a national clean-energy standard that requires the country to generate an increasingly large percentage of its electricity from cleaner sources of energy, including renewable energy, natural gas, and nuclear power. Supporters of this policy say it would promote cleaner energy and not add an undue cost onto consumers. Opponents say imposing a national clean-energy standard would cost jobs and create higher electricity costs. What is your opinion – do you think the country should or should NOT create a national clean-energy standard?

The National Journal poll found that supporters outnumbered opponents by nearly 40 percent. This included independents who favored it by 64 to 23 percent. Even Republicans favored a Clean Energy Standard by one percent.

Fossil fuel interests are spending millions of dollars advertising and lobbying to convince Congress to leave hydraulic fracturing unregulated — despite its production of large amounts of air, water, and climate pollution.   So far, it appears Big Oil has made little progress convincing the public to support their position. Respondents were asked:

Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” is a process used to develop deposits of natural gas recently discovered in many regions of America. Environmentalists and some residents living near drilling operations worry that fracking can contaminate drinking water sources and worsen climate change. The oil and natural gas industry maintains the process is safe and can create jobs and promote energy independence. Which of the following comes closest to your view of what the federal government should do on this issue?

One of six respondents wanted to “ban fracking altogether because it’s not safe for the environment.”  A majority supported an “increase in regulation of fracking to protect the environment, but NOT ban it.”  A total of sixty eight percent wanted either a ban or more safeguards from fracking. Only one quarter of poll subjects wanted to “reduce regulation of fracking to encourage more natural gas production.”

Some 68 percent of independents wanted to ban or regulate fracking. A clear majority of Republicans wanted either a ban or more regulation. Only 41 percent of GOPers wanted to reduce regulation.

The National Journal poll is independent of both political parties, and provided respondents with arguments for and against each position.  By overwhelming margins – including a majority or plurality of Republicans – respondents supported clean energy investments, clean energy targets, and cleaning up hydraulic fracking.

The poll suggests that people are disregarding the tens of millions of dollars in attack ads against clean energy spent by Big Oil, the dirty coal lobby, the Koch Brothers, and Mitt Romney’s oil-funded super PAC. Perhaps it’s because these ads had little credibility. The Washington Post concluded that “there is no excuse for these kinds of ads, which take facts out of context or simply invent them.”

This latest poll is another signal that 2012 candidates running for president, city council, or any other office should support clean energy and cleaner oil and gas production knowing that the public strongly favors these measures too.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The investment bank is already a major financier of renewable energy and energy efficiency around the world, putting $4.8 billion into projects last year alone.

Taken across the next decade, the new $40 billion plan would mean that Goldman is investing $800 million less per year than in 2011. However, it would still roughly equal the rate of investment during its first major foray into the sector between 2005 and 2011, according to Reuters:

In 2005, Goldman pledged to invest and finance $1 billion of environmentally friendly projects. By the end of 2011, the company had exceeded its goal, arranging $24 billion worth of financing and investing $4 billion into such projects, said Kyung-Ah Park, head of environmental markets at Goldman.

So is this a real vote for the sector or a public relations ploy?

Goldman was thrust back in the spotlight in March after a former executive wrote an op-ed lambasting the bank for “toxic and destructive” behavior.

“The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for,” wrote former Executive Director Greg Smith.

And in April, Goldman was given an “F” on a report card grading investment banks for their coal financing activities. While the bank actively monitors and reports emissions from coal-fired power plants it owns in the U.S., Goldman still doesn’t have a stated policy on destructive mountaintop removal coal mining.

There’s no doubt that Goldman — and every other investment bank — sees the opportunity to invest in renewable energy as a way to improve its brand. But committing $40 billion to the sector is more than a public relations campaign. It’s a clear sign that banks see the benefits of investing in these technologies.

“When investors deploy capital into renewable energy projects, they’re investing in proven technologies: solar PV, wind, biomass, geothermal. These technologies can be put to work today. Deals can be structured such so that investors can enjoy virtually bond-like, long-term returns with immediate yield,” said Bill Green, senior managing director of Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets, in a recent interview.

Goldman executives agree with that assessment. From the Reuters story:

Stuart Bernstein, head of Goldman’s clean technology and renewables investment banking group, compared the opportunity to technology investments in the 1990s or investing 10 years ago in fast-growing countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China, for which Goldman economist Jim O’Neill coined the term “BRIC” in 2001.

“This is another emerging opportunity we think will be quite large,” Bernstein said.

“Obviously we recognize this is not the easiest of times in the clean energy market but nevertheless the underlying thesis as to why cleaner and more sustainable forms of energy need to scale up still holds true,” Park said.

In 2011, global investments in clean energy totaled $260 billion — bringing cumulative investments since 2004 to over one trillion dollars. Last year was also the first time that investment in renewable energy surpassed fossil fuels.

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

The gap between the emissions cuts needed to contain global warming and actual reductions by 2020 is at risk of widening as countries including the U.S., Brazil and Mexico fail to meet pledges, Climate Action Tracker said. [Businessweek]

At best, commitments would lead to emissions 9 gigatons (9 billion tons) higher than the 44 gigatons needed in 2020 to stop the planet warming more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) since industrialization, the project said in Bonn, where two weeks of United Nations talks end tomorrow.

A temperature increase of at least 3.5 degrees Celsius on the current greenhouse-gas trajectory may accelerate because nations are indicating they will miss 2020 pledges, Climate Action Tracker said after analyzing presentations made by countries at the meeting.

Obama will hold a grass-roots campaign event in Iowa Thursday evening. Earlier in the day, Obama will be seeking support for an election-year agenda to encourage renewable energy along with a more immediate prize: the state’s up-for-grabs voters. [Washington Post]

Killer heat fueled by climate change could cause an additional 150,000 deaths this century in the biggest U.S. cities if no steps are taken to curb carbon emissions and improve emergency services, according to a new report. [Chicago Tribune]

Already this spring, several large fires have charred the southwestern landscape, and an expanding drought suggests that this summer is going to be a busy one for the nation’s 2,000 elite hotshot crew members who are specially trained to fight Mother Nature’s most fearsome blazes. [Climate Central]

The Obama administration announced that BP North America Inc. has agreed to pay an $8-million fine and install more than $400 million in equipment to cut air pollution from an oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., as part of a settlement over alleged violations of the Clean Air Act. [Los Angeles Times]

Business secretary Vince Cable, responsible for the UK’s Green investment bank (GIB), visits the German development bank KfW today, a day after the law establishing the GIB was published. It will be an interesting visit. [Guardian]

The German government will more closely oversee the country’s move from nuclear power to renewable energy, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday — a mammoth 10-year project for Europe’s biggest economy that has been going slowly so far. [Washington Post]

‘The Great Big Book of Horrible Things’: WWII and Climate Change

What our great failure in the 1930s may teach about facing the rapid assault of manmade global warming  (Or “Hell is the truth seen too late.”)

Dresden (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

It is the continuation of an essay he wrote about last week, which I blogged about here: “ ‘Hug The Monster’: Why So Many Climate Scientists Have Stopped Downplaying the Climate Threat.”

Blakemore cites the great quote from 18th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “Hell is truth seen too late.” Since I wrote a book on climate a few years back, Hell and High Water, that quote seems particularly apt to me for climate.

Blakemore’s piece starts by looking at The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities by Matthew White, noting:

The world’s climate scientists are in effect telling us that one part of the truth we must now try to see is humanity’s ability — or lack of it — for collective prevention of enormous manmade disaster, atrocity.

The record is worrisome.

He then examines humanity’s problematic track record of not preventing catastrophes even when many powerful people were aware of what was happening or about to happen, including the great atrocities of World War II. And no, there is no direct analogy being made (see “Climate Science Disinformers Are Nothing Like Holocaust Deniers“).

Blakemore cites a presentation by Harvard historian and social anthropologist Timothy Weiskel — a colleague of mine 20 years ago at the Rockefeller Foundation. Weiskel in turn cites John F. Kennedy’s 1940s book, Why England Slept (a title JFK ‘borrowed’ from Churchill’s 1938 book, though JFK’s book was originally his senior thesis at Harvard titled, Appeasement in Munich):

“To say that all the blame must rest on the shoulders of Neville Chamberlain or of Stanly Baldwin, is to overlook the obvious.  As the leaders, they are, of course, gravely and seriously responsible.  But, given the conditions of democratic government, a free press, public elections, and a cabinet responsible to Parliament and thus to the people, given rule by the majority, it is unreasonable to blame the entire situation on one man or group…”

Blakemore notes, “But this time, say today’s climate scientists, the rapidly approaching climate catastrophe threatens to kill far more people than all of White’s 100 Deadliest atrocities combined.”

There is little question that if we continue to listen to the disinformers and the do-little crowd, we are very likely headed toward global warming in excess of 10°F, as the International Energy Agency and many others have made clear. That will destroy a livable climate (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

Indeed, that is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e.  4°C [7F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level),” according to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain (see here).

Blakemore points out that a great many scientists are worried that this would lead to a staggering amount of misery and starvation:

The Rapidly Approaching Climate Catastrophe

… Estimates heard in private conversations with scientists and economists reach even into the billions of people who could perish well within this century if the warming is not somehow controlled.

This reporter has heard figures in measured conversation, for example, such as this: If humanity does not now manage somehow to drastically cut carbon emissions so that the global temperature levels off at around 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial times, but reaches instead 4 degrees centigrade, it could mean some 4 billion people dying within this century because the world couldn’t grow enough food in such heat and the drought it will bring — rice harvests, for one, would be decimated.

And remember, we’re on track to blow past 4C (7F), possibly even this century:

Humanity’s Choice (via M.I.T.):  Inaction (“No Policy”) eliminates most of the uncertainty about whether or not future warming will be catastrophic.  Aggressive emissions reductions dramatically improves humanity’s chances.

Steve Easterbrook’s post “A first glimpse at model results for the next IPCC assessment” shows that for the scenario where there is 9°F warming by 2100, you get another 7°F warming by 2300.  Of course, folks that aren’t motivated to avoid the civilization-destroying 9°F by 2100 won’t be moved by whatever happens after that.

I do know some experts who think that a great many people will die if we are so self-destructive as to keep near the worst-case emissions scenario — even if the carbon cycle feedbacks and soil moisture projections are merely in the middle of their projected range (see “James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don’t Act Now“).

But it’s not what I think is going to happen. I actually believe that even if we do let the disinformers sucker us into another decade of delay, we are still going to get WWII-scale serious about climate sometime in the 2020s and avert the worst-case scenarios — even if the feedbacks really start to kick in.

I also believe that if the bad-case scenarios kick in post-2040, the world is going to reorganize much of its activity to prevent billions of people from dying. Oh, yes, billions of people are going to needlessly suffer a great deal if the deniers triumph, but stopping billions from starving to death this century will be well within our capability even if we ruin a livable climate.

We waste over 1/3 of our food globally, and the U.S. burns 1/6 of the world’s corn crop in its vehicles. Oh, and then there is the use of staggering amounts of grain for meat. We could feed the world on under half the acreage we use today.

Now that doesn’t mean we will definitely do what is needed, of course, but I remain an optimist in this regard. Still, if we blow past 3C, and then 4C, then unimaginable catastrophe is unavoidable.

Blakemore ends:

What if we don’t try to report or explain the full scale and challenge of the climate problem?… just as a number of professionals in the 1930s apparently didn’t with the challenge they faced.

Knowing the general size of the problem, painful or frightening as it may be, would seem clearly necessary for any professional journalist or government leader trying to report on or assess the chances of any realistic hope we think we may glimpse amid all the bad news.

It would obviously help us get our minds around it, at least.

And that’s a beginning.

To be continued…

Hear! Hear!

It’s not too late for the truth, not too late to avoid Hell and High Water.

Related Posts:

• The Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on Climate
• A Critique Of The Broken-Record Counterfactual Message of The New York Times On Environmentalists and Scientists
• Network News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011

“I hope to see you at a future conference, but at this point we have no plans to do another ICCC,” said Bast, addressing the remaining attendees this afternoon.

The International Conference on Climate Change is a yearly gathering of climate change deniers and disinformers — mostly hardcore libertarians — who attempt to spread doubts about climate science.

Earlier this month, Heartland posted a billboard that compared believers in global warming with the unibomber. The campaign set off a firestorm of criticism that caused a split within the organization and ended with 11 of Heartland’s donors pulling support for the organization — taking an estimated 35% its corporate revenue for 2012.

by Melanie Hart

Chinese capital is finally flowing into the U.S. clean energy market. Chinese direct investment in the U.S. clean energy economy has grown from just $4 million annually in 2006 to over $260 million in 2011. That increase is attracting attention, and not all of it is positive.

Yesterday Third Way released a report concluding that U.S. private-sector investors are losing interest in investing at home due to the fickle American policy environment, leaving Chinese companies to fill the gap. The report’s authors worry that increasing Chinese participation in the U.S. clean energy market will “dramatically hamper U.S. companies’ ability to compete” and “slow economic growth and American leadership.”

Rather than welcome Chinese direct investments as job-creating, there is a tendency here in the United States to take a zero-sum view and assume that Chinese enterprise successes in this country are not good for American competitiveness. Last month, when China’s ENN Group announced plans to build a massive solar power R&D, manufacturing, and generation complex in Clark County Nevada, some U.S. commentators suggested that the ENN facility would force solar panel prices down even further and drive U.S. firms into bankruptcy.

When it comes to the U.S. clean energy market, Chinese companies must feel like they cannot catch a break.

Over the past few months, many voices in the United States—myself included—have called for stronger U.S. trade enforcement vis-à-vis China, particularly in clean energy manufacturing. It appears that in at least some cases, Chinese manufacturing companies may be breaking global trade rules. If that is true, then U.S. policymakers have to do a better job protecting American companies and making sure WTO-illegal trade behavior does not erode U.S. competitiveness in this sector.

Playing by the rules goes both ways, however. If Chinese companies are willing to come over to the U.S. market and compete on an equal playing field, we should welcome that with open arms, not with knee-jerk protectionism.

Chinese competition is not the problem. As long as the field is level, U.S. companies can handle the competition. And if we open up new clean energy opportunities here in the U.S., ideally that will give the Chinese companies that are willing to play by the rules a pathway for opting in to our rules-based system. If those companies are successful, that success will be a positive contributor to the U.S. market, and it may also help convince Chinese leaders that heavy government subsidization is not the best pathway forward toward Chinese clean energy success.

In reality, the real problem isn’t that Chinese companies are investing too much in U.S. clean energy technologies. The real problem is that they are not investing enough.

The United States does not have a clear policy framework on foreign direct investment. That makes our market difficult to traverse, and that means that in many cases, the only Chinese firms that can succeed here are the well-connected state-owned enterprises who are much more interested in fossil fuels than clean energy.

Growth rates for Chinese clean energy investments in the United States only look impressive when viewed in isolation. When you compare those numbers to the numbers for fossil fuels, clean energy is still just a drop in the bucket. In 2011, for example, China invested just under $2 billion USD in American fossil fuel sectors. Most of those investments went toward U.S. shale gas assets. The $260 million that went toward clean energy projects pales in comparison.

If we want to accelerate the clean energy market, we need to do more to level that playing field for U.S. and Chinese investors alike.

– Melanie Hart is an Analyst with Chinese Energy and Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress.