That is the breaking news today from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the British Antarctic Survey:

Satellite imagery from the [NSIDC] reveals that a 13,680 square kilometer (5,282 square mile) ice shelf has begun to collapse because of rapid climate change in a fast-warming region of Antarctica.…

In the past 50 years, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on Earth, rising by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) per decade. NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March, said, “We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up.”

You can see a video of the ice-shelf post-disintegration taken from an airplane here.

Satellite images indicate that the Wilkins began its collapse on February 28; data revealed that a large iceberg, 41 by 2.5 kilometers (25.5 by 1.5 miles), fell away from the ice shelf’s southwestern front, triggering a runaway disintegration of 405 square kilometers (160 square miles) of the shelf interior (Figure 1 — click to enlarge).

That is “seven times the size of Manhattan” as Seth Borenstein of the AP helpfully points out. He notes “The rest of the Wilkins ice shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice.” The ice shelf is floating, so it won’t add to sea level rise. Such occurrences are “more indicative of a tipping point or trigger in the climate system,” said Sarah Das, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Back to the NSIDC:

The edge of the shelf crumbled into the sky-blue pattern of exposed deep glacial ice that has become characteristic of climate-induced ice shelf break-ups such as the Larsen B in 2002. A narrow beam of intact ice, just 6 kilometers wide (3.7 miles) was protecting the remaining shelf from further breakup as of March 23 (Figure 2 — click to enlarge).

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Innovest, a firm that researches investment and risks, released a report today that concludes that the proposed expansion of the Holcomb coal-fired power plant in western Kansas is not a financially sound or well thought-out decision.

From their press release (emphasis added):

Innovest examined the economics of the transaction and determined that under the most plausible regulatory scenarios the decision to build new coal generating capacity will put Sunflower Electric’s ratepayers — who in this particular case are the actual owners — at significant risk. The report concludes that Sunflower’s management has not adequately addressed the competitive and financial risks associated with climate change in deciding to pursue the expansion of its Holcomb Station power plant.

BUT, Secretary Bremby’s decision DOES adequately address the risks associated with the expansion in the context of climate change and its policy implications. As does Wall Street’s latest verdict in February, when a few of the country’s major investment banks announced that they will be making their financial backing decisions in the context of global warming legislation.

With Innovest’s conclusion that the ratepayers themselves are at ‘significant risk,’ I’m just not sure how any of the arguments for these coal plants (like energy prices) hold up any longer. Hopefully Innovest has a memo to send to KS legislators before the vote to over-ride Sebelius’ veto.

On the David Strom Show on March 22, Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist angrily attacked the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed into law in December by President Bush to slowly raise fuel economy standards to 35 MPG by 2020. Norquist alleged that these standards are killing 2,000 people each year:

The government itself has calculated that around 2000 people a year are killed because of those CAFÉ standards and our cheerful government has just voted to increase them, to make cars lighter, smaller. And more people will die. I mean 2,000 people a year die because the environmentalists think that you should be in a smaller car because it offends their sensitivities that you’re using gasoline.

Listen here:

Norquist seems to be referring to the 2002 National Academies report Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, which states, “[A]ll but two members of the committee concluded that the downweighting and downsizing that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of which was due to CAFE standards, probably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993.” The report explains the reasoning:

Although many general indicators of motor vehicle travel safety improved during [the 1970s and early 1980s] (e.g., the fatality rate per vehicle mile traveled), the preponderance of evidence indicates that this downsizing of the vehicle fleet resulted in a hidden safety cost, namely, travel safety would have improved even more had vehicles not been downsized. . . When asked about the potential use of lighter material to allow weight reduction without safety-related size reductions, … industry representatives did not expect that they could avoid reducing vehicle size if substantial reductions in vehicle weight were made. . . The committee recognizes that automakers’ responses could be biased in this regard.

However, the blistering minority dissent in that very same report points out several fallacies in the reasoning and concludes:

The relationships between vehicle weight and safety are complex and not measurable with any reasonable degree of certainty at present. The relationship of fuel economy to safety is even more tenuous.

Evidently, Norquist is more concerned by hypothetically projected deaths in an alternate universe where Detroit adopts safety instruments like air bags and rollover standards without kicking and screaming, than he is by the very real casualties to our economy, our soldiers, our nation, and our planet caused by our addiction to fossil fuels.

The American people, regardless of party, overwhelmingly recognize that higher fuel standards spur technological innovation and improve our lives.

Transcript: Read more

The Toronto Star reported an alarming factoid earlier this month:

No gasoline-powered car assembled in North America would meet China’s current fuel-efficiency standard.

That’s mainly because

1. Their standard is much higher than ours is currently.
2. Their standard is a minimum-allowable efficiency standard, not a “fleet-average” standard like ours.
3. Our lame car companies don’t make their (relatively few) most efficient vehicles in this country.

As for our much-hyped new 35-mpg (average) standard — it will take us in 2020 to where the Chinese are now (but not even to where Japan and Europe were six years ago). If we don’t rescind it, that is.

So whether you believe in human-caused global warming or peak oil, America remains unprepared to capture the huge explosion in jobs this century for clean, fuel-efficient cars.

Oh, and by 2010, China will be the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing and solar photovoltaics manufacturing. No worries, though, our TV and movie sales overseas still kick butt. For now.

Probably the biggest source of confusion and errors in climate discussions concerns “carbon” versus “carbon dioxide.” I was reminded of this last week when I saw an analysis done for a major environmental group that confused the two and hence was wrong by a large factor (3.67). The paragraph I usually include in my writing:

Some people use carbon rather than carbon dioxide as a metric. The fraction of carbon in carbon dioxide is the ratio of their weights. The atomic weight of carbon is 12 atomic mass units, while the weight of carbon dioxide is 44, because it includes two oxygen atoms that each weigh 16. So, to switch from one to the other, use the formula: One ton of carbon equals 44/12 = 11/3 = 3.67 tons of carbon dioxide. Thus 11 tons of carbon dioxide equals 3 tons of carbon, and a price of $30 per ton of carbon dioxide equals a price of $110 per ton of carbon.

I confess that in my books I have tried to consistently use CO2, for clarity’s sake, but have failed to embrace that strategy in the blog. I now realize that was a mistake after receiving an e-mail from a long time a reader who was confused as to whether the price I quoted in a recent post was dollars per ton of carbon or carbon dioxide (even though I had said in the post it was “the price of carbon”).

The reason this confusion arises so much is that scientists usually use carbon, because they are studying the carbon cycle, and governments also usually use carbon, because the scientists do. But “carbon” is not intuitive, whereas carbon dioxide is what we all emit — that is why businesses and the public typically report numbers in terms of carbon dioxide. “Point Carbon” for instance, reports prices in the European market for CO2 allowances (in euros, of course).

And, indeed, the central climate number in this whole area is the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. The media is typically caught in between, sometimes using one and sometimes using the other, and sometimes making a mistake or not being clear.

So I am going to try to be consistent and use CO2. Where relevant I will also include one conversion to carbon, too, without bombarding you with too many numbers. So hopefully, from now on, if I fail to be clear, you should make the default assumption I am talking carbon dioxide.

I would recommend all blogs and journalists clearly state their “carbon dioxide policy” – and be sure to check when reporting on studies or articles or business action that they know whether they are talking carbon or carbon dioxide.

In Hell and High Water, Joe lays out his proposals for how to slow down our greenhouse gas emissions in the first half of this century (giving us the breathing space to eliminate them in the second half). His program primarily consists of deploying existing technology, and is quite doable, should we find the political will.

His last proposal, however, is “stop all tropical deforestation, while doubling the rate of new tree planting.” I’ve always considered this to be the toughest item on his list to acheive. So it is encouraging to find a group that is working directly on pieces of the problem. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has launched a campaign to stop U.S. agribusiness expansion in the rainforests. In a recent action they have asked Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to sign a pledge to halt their palm oil madness. In particular, the pledge asks ADM to “once and for all commit to halting all direct or indirect engagement with companies that destroy tropical rainforest ecosystems for industrial biofuels.”

RAN is using a tactic that they have honed over the years: find a small number of U.S. companies connected to a problem and highlight that association to tarnish their public image until they back down from fostering the problem. It is often the case that a targeting a few high-profile firms provides significant leverage that would not be possible targeting individual plants or farmers. For example, at a RAN press event held at the ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, Ed Begley Jr. said,

“An ADM subsidiary, the Wilmar Group, is the world’s largest producer of palm-based biodiesel and is clearing tropical rainforests in Indonesia that are among the last remaining habitats of the critically endangered orangutan. U.S. agribusiness giants ADM, Bunge and Cargill account for 60 percent of the funding for Brazil’s booming soy crop. Soy has become a leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon as Brazil has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest exporter of soy, largely due to American farmers planting more corn for ethanol.”

This effort is part of RAN’s Rainforest Agribusiness (defending forests, family, farmers and our climate) campaign, which is one of four main thrusts. As part of their Global Finance (ending destructive investment) campaign, RAN has also been fighting the Wall Street investment banks to end their funding of coal power plants, and they have been quite dogged about pursuing their quarry. Their other campaigns are Freedom From Oil (jumpstarting Detroit), Old Growth (preserving endagnered forests).

Learn more about RAN’s ADM pledge petition.

– Earl Killian

Related Posts

• For Peat’s Sake, Stop the Palm Oil Madness
• Report: Palm Oil Drives Deforestation
• Can Biofuels Be Made Sustainably?
• The Debut of Deforestation Diesel

The multi-year saga of the Bush administration’s fight to avoid recognizing global warming’s threat to the polar bear heated up last week. On Thursday, March 20, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne asking him “to appear before the Committee as soon as possible for an oversight hearing” on the “considerable delays in taking final action” over the Endangered Species Act listing of the polar bear. Boxer told him that the hearing would be planned for April 2 or 8.

The following day, Lyle Laverty, Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, faxed back a response at 5:56 PM:

I understand Secretary Kempthorne called you on March 17, 2008, and expressed his commitment to testify before the Committee on the polar bear proposal once a decision is made on the issue. I also understand the Secretary committed to calling you on Tuesday, April 1, 2008, with an update on the progress towards a decision.

Boxer immediately responded, calling the offer of a telephone briefing and a hearing after a decision has been made “wholly inadequate,” and again requested the April 2 or 8 date for a hearing discussing “this serious breach of the Department’s duty to follow the law.”

This fight began in 2005, when the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the polar bear endangered by global warming’s assault on Arctic sea ice. Since then, the administration has violated repeated Endangered Species Act deadlines — the latest this January — when it instead announced it would speed through a multibillion dollar sale of drilling rights in the very same Arctic seas.

It has been nearly a month since Fish and Wildlife Service director Dale Hall — who is under investigation for his part in the delays — stated in a February 28 House Appropriations Committee hearing that his agency had submitted its decision on the polar bear listing to Secretary Kempthorne.

This post ends with a Climate Progress exclusive: James Hansen’s response to the NYT‘s Andy Revkin piece commenting on Hansen’s (draft) article on why we need a CO2 target of 350 ppm. But first the backstory.

Revkin used me as the “balance” for his piece:

Some longtime champions of Dr. Hansen, including the Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm, see some significant gaps in the paper (it is a draft still) and part ways with Dr. Hansen over whether such a goal is remotely feasible.

I complained directly to Revkin about the first part of that characterization. I was going to let it go at that, but then I got e-mails from people directing me to a media interview of Hansen (and Mark Bowen, whose new book is Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming). The reporter cited Revkin’s quote directly to Hansen to argue the paper is “controversial.”

Well, obviously, the reporter should have called me directly, rather than taking some hearsay characterization from another member of the media. But that just isn’t the state of journalism today. [Note to media: You don't need to cite me in order to say that a paper saying we need to go back to 350 ppm is "controversial" -- it's kind of obvious, given that we're at 385 ppm, rising 2 ppm a year, and not currently doing anything to stop emissions from rising, let alone concentrations, but I digress.] Anyway, at that point I felt obliged to write Hansen an email titled, “I don’t see ‘significant gaps in the paper’ “:

I complained to Revkin about that characterization.

I think it is a solid and important paper and told everyone to read it:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/03/17/hansen-et-al-must-read-back-to-350-ppm-or-risk-an-ice-free-planet/

I just say you don’t know how much we can overshoot and for how long, which your paper acknowledges. You quite naturally take a conservative approach — best not to overshoot too much for too long. Since I don’t believe we can possibly get to 350 ppm this century, I interpret your paper to say that we should shoot to stay below 450 ppm this century [almost certainly politically impossible but worth a shot] and 1) plan on going to 350 by 2150 and/or 2) waiting to see if the science becomes clearer on the overshoot issue and we need to act faster.

I don’t think we disagree about much on the technical side. On the action side, you need a WWII-scale effort ASAP for decades. Whether we can get 450 or 400 or 350 with such an approach is something neither of us knows for sure.

Hansen forwarded my email to Revkin with this cover note (which he has given me permission to reprint):

Read more

We’ve heard climate double talk from McCain on “mandates” and “dependence on foreign energy sources.” Now, in a stunning interview with E&E News (subs. req’d), the McCain campaign seriously undermines its claim that the Arizona Senator could successfully take on the global warming threat.

As the reporter put it, “the Arizona senator’s presidential campaign is trying to differentiate itself from its Democratic rivals by rejecting calls for additional climate-themed restrictions.” This, however, is a potentially fatal difference.

I don’t know which of three statements by “Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a McCain campaign policy adviser” is more wrong-headed.

1. “The basic idea is if you go with a cap and trade and do it right with appropriate implementation, you don’t need technology-specific and sectoral policies that are on the books and that others are proposing simultaneously.”

This statement could not be more inaccurate and naive. A cap & trade system without on aggressive technology development/deployment effort, especially in the transportation sector, will inevitably fail because it causes too much economic pain, as I explained at length in “No climate for old men.” And now we get the explicit statement that McCain opposes “technology-specific and sectoral policies that are on the books” if we have a cap & trade.

Does anybody who cares about climate change really think we are pushing clean technologies and clean transportation too hard? Other than Sen. McCain’s campaign, that is — we’ve already seen that McCain does not support renewable technology tax credits that have been “on the book” for years even before we have a cap & trade. This is an especially jaw-dropping statement given that even the delayers themselves have been saying we need a bigger clean tech push for years.

2. Holtz-Eakin … questioned the candidates’ [Obama's and Clinton's] calls for a new federal low carbon fuel limit, stronger fuel economy standards and policies to reduce U.S. oil consumption. Cap and trade, Holtz-Eakin said, is the ideal solution by itself…. Asked if this position meant McCain would block implementation of new corporate average fuel economy requirements that President Bush signed into law last December, Holtz-Eakin replied, “He’s not proposing to eliminate those. He simply wants to check as time goes on if they become completely irrelevant. You might want to take them off the books [!!!], but we’re not there yet.”

He cannot be serious. We might “want to take [fuel economy standards] off the books” because a cap & trade system might render them irrelevant? Uhh, no. Let’s go through this again.

In the Energy Information Administration’s own analysis of using a cap & trade system to reduce U.S. emissions — a very flawed study, but one that is a good economic model of McCain’s strategy, since it doesn’t capture technology deployment strategies or fuel economy standards — the price of carbon hits politically impossible levels, $348 per metric ton, which, in the EIA analysis, doubles the price for electricity. But that price for carbon would raise gasoline prices by under a dollar a gallon and thus would not have much impact on average US fuel economy or the success of alternative fuels (much as the recent price jump from $2 a gallon to $3 didn’t). Long before the carbon price hit that level, businesses and consumers would demand the price be capped, or the program shut down entirely ending the U.S. effort to stop catastrophic global warming.

3. “You don’t need redundant policies that interfere with the flexibility that is the key to meeting these desirable goals at low costs….” Pressed to explain what beyond a cap-and-trade program would be needed, Holtz-Eakin replied, “He wants to see the use of nukes. The ultimate policy proposal will be designed to make sure that’s true.”

The hypocrisy is staggering. “Redundant policies” that push renewables or efficiency would interfere with flexibility that supposedly keeps costs low. Indeed, we can even take existing clean tech policies off the books once we have a cap & trade. But ramming expensive nuclear power plants down the public’s throat — that’s fine.

Note, the nonpartisan Keystone report “Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding,” from June 2007, found nuclear “power isn’t cheap: 8.3 to 11.1 cents per kilo-watt hour.” And as a study by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) found, nuclear power plant costs have soared in the last couple of years. And, of course, nuclear power has a major supply bottleneck, that will inevitably drive up costs for any country that wants to rapidly accelerate the construction of nuclear power plants.

The fact that this guy is a former director of the Congressional Budget Office means, of course, he is an economist, which is perhaps all you need to know about him. The fact he is acting as a senior advisor and surrogate for McCain is a very bad sign. Holtz-Eakin could easily end up as the head of McCain’s Council Economic Advisers, National Economic Council, or, scariest of all, the Office of Management and Budget — where he could (further) cripple clean tech programs for years to come (beyond the damage the Bush administration has already done).
This was one of the central points from my long analysis, No climate for old men: McCain would appoint all the wrong people to key positions, and they would undermine or block the key policies needed to tackle warming cost effectively. This stunning interview confirms my worst fears.

Here is the whole article:
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Paul Scofield, who won an Academy award playing Sir Thomas More in one of my favorite movies, died this week. Scofield was brilliant as More, “the ultimate man of conscience.” The movie title comes from a 1520 description:

“More is a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.”

President Bush is, obviously, no More. He is much, much less. He is a man for no seasons — literally. If we end up with atmospheric CO2 concentrations above 800 ppm, then Bush will deserve a great deal of blame credit. In such a harsh world, all the seasons will merge into one, or rather none. American Heritage provides the origin of the word “season”:

Middle English, from Old French seison, from Latin sati, satin-, act of sowing, from satus, past participle of serere, to plant.

Well, the planet won’t be doing bloody much planting if Bush and the delayers have their way. As a 2006 Hadley Center study concluded, if we continue unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions: “One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100” and half the planet will experience moderate drought.

Not many seasons in the desert. Thomas More, of course, wrote Utopia — indeed, he coined that term. Bush and the delayers are trying to write a very different story, titled Dystopia. We must not let them succeed.

Okay, famed scientist James Lovelock didn’t say that second part. But the Daily Mail headline of a recent interview with the creator of the Gaia theory makes clear that this blog is can hardly be accused of real climate alarmism:

We’re all doomed! 40 years from global catastrophe – and there’s NOTHING we can do about it, says climate change expert.

Why he thinks we’re doomed:

“It was last as hot as this 55 million years ago. There was a geological accident in the North Sea, near where Norway is. A volcanic layer of lava came up underneath one of the large petroleum deposits. It vaporised the whole lot, putting into the atmosphere about two million, million tons of crude oil.

“We will have put that much into the atmosphere within the next 20 years or so. We know what happened last time, we know how long it lasted. It hung around for about 200,000 years….”

“Everything moved to the North,” Lovelock explains. “The Arctic Ocean was tropical, the sea temperature was 23C (73F). You could find the remains of crocodiles in the sediments.”

[Jim -- you forgot to mention sea levels were 250 feet higher!]

As for what will happen to humankind:

We will face a ruthless period of natural selection.

“I reckon there are about 80 per cent more people than the world can carry,” he says sanguinely….

“By 2040, China will be uninhabitable.” Lovelock believes that the Chinese, because of their high levels of industrial activity, will be the first to suffer, with the death of all plant life.

“So I think the Chinese will go to Africa. They are already there, preparing a new continent – the Chinese industrialists who claim to be out there mining minerals are just there on a pretext of preparing for the big move.

Okay, so now you’re thinking he’s a crackpot. But then he appeals to your vanity:

Lovelock sees Americans moving to Canada. Americans have the natural advantage of being born migrants….

“White Americans are descended from those who had the guts to cross on rough old ships and find a new life. They have the right spirit of can-do.”

Hmm. Interesting sentiment. Guess he’s not an Obama-maniac. Europeans, however, have got it all wrong:

“European governments are doing daft things, investing huge sums in renewable energy which makes a hell of a lot of profit but does no good at all for our survival.”

No greenie, he. In fact, in an earlier interview he said:

“Green,” he tells me, only half-joking, “is the color of mold and corruption.”

But don’t feel bad, humanity. We were probably doomed all along:

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As Democratic candidates head into a primary schedule heavy with coal-mining states, they have been talking about coal in a way that draws dangerously close to industry talking points on the single biggest air polluter in the U.S. and the fossil fuel with the worst greenhouse gas output rate.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) told an NPR affiliate in West Virginia Wednesday that we need to “make sure that coal plays a major role” in the future and when asked about mountaintop removal, said “maybe there is a way to recover once they have been stripped of the coal.” Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) told a crowd in West Virginia Thursday that “clean coal jobs” are “green jobs.”

Here’s a rundown of some of the issues at play:

Mountaintop Removal:

Sen. Clinton, when asked her position on mountaintop removal, said “it’s a difficult question because of the conflict between the economic and environmental trade-off” and continued, “You know, I think we’ve got to look at this from a practical perspective.”

In the words of Appalachian Voices spokesman J.W. Randolph, “Mountaintop removal does the same thing to our economy as it does to our mountains.” Since 1950, coal-mining jobs in West Virginia have plummeted from over 120,000 to less than 20,000, even as the wasteful and mechanized process of flattening entire mountains for seams of coal has allowed production to increase. Appalachian activist Denise Giardina explained that “it is deep mining that provides jobs,” not mountaintop removal: “To destroy the mountains is to spit in the face of God Almighty.”

Coal-to-Liquids:

Sen. Clinton praised “subsidies for coal-to-liquids projects” and said “I don’t understand” why the Bush administration canceled the FutureGen coal-to-liquids coal-gasification demonstration plant when the $900 million project ballooned to $1.8 billion, with further overruns in sight.

Coal-to-liquids technology, which uses the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert coal into vehicular fuel, “creates almost a ton of carbon dioxide for every barrel of liquid fuel.” The Natural Resources Defense Council explains that many “economic, social, and environmental drawbacks of coal-derived liquid fuel preclude it from being a sound option to move America beyond oil.”

“Clean Coal”:

Sen. Obama told his audience:

We could be investing in renewable sources of energy, and in clean coal technology, and creating up to 5 million new green jobs in the bargain, including new clean coal jobs.

“Clean coal” is a shorthand term for “technologies designed to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation and use.” This includes established technologies used to capture methane emitted during coal mining and to “wash” coal before it is burned to separate toxic impurities, as well as technologies to capture and geologically store its greenhouse emissions (CCS) that are “expensive, experimental and not in commercial use.”

The coal industry, with the assistance of the current administration, has been fighting regulations to establish or enforce the use of existing technologies to reduce traditional air pollutants produced by coal-burning like mercury and sulfur dioxide. In climate scientist James Hansen’s analysis, the only way to avoid climate catastrophe is to establish “an immediate moratorium on additional coal-fired power plants without CCS.”

Van Jones, head of Green For All, defines “a green-collar job” as “a vocational job in an ecologically responsible trade.”

No matter how advanced coal technology becomes, a coal-industry job is simply not in the same class of ecological responsibility as one that involves renewable energy or actually restores carbon and health to the soil.

These issues are complicated and need to be talked about responsibly, especially when the coal front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) is running a $35 million campaign across the nation with the slogan “Clean Coal. America’s Power.”

UPDATE: CORRECTION: The FutureGen project in Mattoon, Illinois was to be a demonstration coal-gasification and carbon-sequestration power plant, not a “coal-to-liquids plant.” Although the synthesis gas (syngas) generated by coal gasification is a step in the coal-to-liquids process and can be “used in a fuel cell to produce clean [sic] electricity, or it could be fed to a refinery to help upgrade petroleum products,” it is not a liquid fuel.

If want to reduce your carbon footprint, what should you do about your air travel until we have carbon-free jetfuel?

The Stockholm Environment Institute and the Tufts Climate Initiative has a good handout on the subject, “Flying Green.” They note

… the average American is responsible for the emissions of about 20 tons of CO2 annually…. If you fly to Europe and back from the US, you’ll add about 3-4 tons to your (already large) carbon footprint. With one flight you will have caused more emissions than 20 Bangladeshi will cause in a whole year. Unfortunately they are the ones who will lose their homes and livelihood once sea level rise inundates their low lying country.

Personally, I have cut back air travel a great deal to reduce emissions, to spend time with my daughter, to spend more time blogging, and, of course, to spend less time flying, which just isn’t very pleasant anymore.

The handout has a number of good suggestions and factoids — why should flying economy be considered better for the environment than flying business class?

Also, while I’m not a big fan of carbon offsets, the handout offers some good principles for such purchases and then recommends a few offsets companies.

If you want to learn more about the controversial issue of just how much damage to the climate air travel does, you might read this. If you want to know more about offsetting air travel emissions, read this.

Last October, the Kansas Department of Health denied air quality permits to a proposed coal plant expansion near Holcomb, KS, because of the danger greenhouse gas emissions pose to the climate. Ever since, coal’s proponents have waged an aggressive, fear-centered campaign against Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ (D) administration.

Today, Sebelius issued a long-expected veto of the legislature’s plan to not only approve the plant but also strip the Department of Health of its regulatory capacity. From her veto statement:

This decision not only preserves Kansans’ health and upholds our moral obligation to be good stewards of this beautiful land, but will also enhance our prospects for strong and sustainable economic growth throughout our state. Instead of building two new coal plants, which would produce 11 million new tons of carbon dioxide each year, I support pursuing other, more promising energy and economic development alternatives.

Big Coal’s allies had pulled out all the stops to pressure Sebelius into approving the drastic bill. Following the air permit denial, Peabody Energy, one of the largest coal companies in the world, funded newspaper ads comparing the governor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Vladmir Putin, and Hugo Chavez. When that failed, Sunflower Electric — the company making the bid for the new plants — offered a quid pro quo to Kansas State University, promising millions of dollars to fund energy research if the coal plants were approved.

Just this week, coal’s allies in the state legislature insisted that the state “lost a chance to win a $10 billion [oil] refinery because of the recent rejection” of the coal project. As a spokeswoman for Sebelius pointed out that the company’s first choice has been South Dakota “since June 2007 — which was well before the Sunflower decision.”

UPDATE: ClimateProgress points out that Sebelius has offered compromise legislation that would allow for a coal plant to be built with carbon sequestration technology.

UPDATE: WarmingLaw contrasts the record of Kansas Secretary of Health and the Environment, Roderick Bremby, who made the landmark decision, to that of United States Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.

Today Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius took her turn in vetoing the two coal-fired power plants proposed in western Kansas, whose permits Sec. Bremby controversially rejected in October 2007.

Read her full statement here. She has offered to compromise on legislation that would:

* Build one new plant similar in size to the Sand Sage permit previously approved (660 MW);
* Kansas base load power needs must receive top priority;
* Plant must be able to implement carbon sequestration technology;
* Commitment for 20% wind power (132 MW)
* Commitment for 100 MW of energy efficiency
* Net metering allowed in the Sunflower service area

Otherwise, legislators have 30 days to override her veto, and luckily, the House appears a few votes short.

Also worth noting is that the Gov. signed an Executive Order to establish a Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group:

Sebelius has named Jack Pelton, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Cessna Aircraft Company, to lead this group.

“I am so pleased that one of our most prominent business leaders has agreed to serve as chair,” said Sebelius. “Jack understands the balance between continuing to grow our economy and making sure that we protect our environment and maximize our natural assets for future generations.

“The Advisory Group will explore opportunities in all sectors of our economy to accomplish the goal of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions; and, at the same time, continue to take advantage of the economic prosperity provided by job growth throughout Kansas.”

Better yet – the EO says:

The Advisory Group will first produce a comprehensive inventory and forecast of greenhouse gas emissions in Kansas from 1990 to 2020. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment shall produce an annual report to the Governor at the end of each fiscal year tracking statewide greenhouse gas emissions in Kansas and forecasted trends, and tracking progress toward the reduction goals that are established.

– Kari Manlove

Reprinted below is an article from Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. I found it to be an honest, objective piece worth reading for details on the coal fight in Kansas I had never run across before – like the letter from six other states’ attorneys general to Secretary Bremby leading up to his decision (encouraging him to reject the permit).

There are a handful of ‘takeaways’ from the article that lay down some of the big picture context for this debate:

First, this is about more than two coal plants in Kansas. This isn’t about how one state or region gets its electricity – it’s about how an entire industrialized, wealthy country continues to prosper in the face of a globally and locally changing market.

Second, like the California EPA waiver case, these are the first traces of a state versus federal-level battle. (It may not have to be a battle, time will tell, but with the current federal Administration, it’s sure turning into one.) Were I more versed in American history, I could pull some states’ rights case out of my head for a perfect comparison.

It also raises larger political and ethical questions. Should an appointed position be able to make such a large decision (in truth, this one has been made much larger by the political context and attention)? (There’s no way we could elect every powerful position, and there’s no way elected bodies could achieve the same efficiency in decision-making as appointees.)

Is there value in making decisions for future generations? How effective is a small decision like this when compared to a problem the size of China and its population+development? Does that make the effort futile, or can its actual impact plus the message it sends overcome its size?

On this last point, I have to confess, I think the answers are Yes, and Effective because Yes, there are a lot of forces that can overcome size (not to discount how crucial federal global warming legislation is). That’s why I am a progressive – I think policy decisions should be about more than yourself and that you have to tastefully adjust to change and new knowledge (like the fact of man-made global warming).

No one said progress would be easy, but that’s the essence of human civilization. The wind won’t always blow at your back, but so long as you step up and show the sort of leadership Secretary Bremby has, there’s hope yet. It was Ayn Rand who wrote that “man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.” Anti-environmentalism, anti-altruism – I find that philosophical pillar of hers quite ironic in this case.

The article follows [unindented]:

Kansan Stokes Energy Squabble With Coal Ruling Official Cites Warming In Blocking Two Plants; ‘Ground Zero’ in Fight

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This week John McCain has an article in the Financial Times, “America must be a good role model.” It has two paragraphs on the need for leadership on greenhouse gas reductions, but endorses only one low-carbon energy source:

Right now safe, climate-friendly nuclear energy is a critical way both to improve the quality of our air and to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.

That dependence, I am afraid, has become a vulnerability for both the US and Europe and a source of leverage for the oil and gas exporting autocracies.

You can tell a politician is being wishy-washy when he or she uses the phrase “dependence on foreign energy sources.” There is really only one foreign energy source Americans care much about — oil. It comes from unstable and undemocratic regions, and our trade deficit in it now exceeds $1 billion a day.

But nuclear power can’t significantly reduce US oil consumption or imports — because very, very little electricity in this country is generated by burning petroleum (only 1.6% of electricty in 2006 came from oil). [In the future that could change when a significant number of vehicles on the road substitute electricity for gasoline, but that is not imminent.]

And since McCain presumably knows that, he uses the catch-all phrase “foreign energy sources” to try to make it look like nuclear power is homegrown and patriotic. But is it? In fact, we import the vast majority of the uranium we use, so it is an even bigger “foreign energy source.”

McCain also cleverly throws in a second sentence that links America to the European vulnerability to leverage from Russia’s large natural gas exports. Yet as the U.S. EIA notes, “net natural gas imports equaled 16 percent of U.S. natural gas consumption, a ratio that has remained relatively stable in the past 8 years.” Moreover, most of that comes from Canada, by pipeline. Hardly a worrisome dependence.

What about uranium? Well just last month the Bush administration signed a remarkable deal:

The United States and Russia signed a deal that will boost Russian uranium imports to supply the US nuclear industry, the Commerce Department said Friday….

The new agreement permits Russia to supply 20 percent of US reactor fuel until 2020 and to supply the fuel for new reactors quota-free.

So if, under a President McCain, we build a bunch of new nuclear reactors — they could be fueled 100% by Russia.

I can almost hear Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin saying, “Excellent.”

Coal demand is through the roof even as prices soar. And that’s why “Carbon emissions race past all predictions.” And, of course, U.S. coal exports are soaring. As the NY Times reported in a major piece:

United States exports of coal grew from 49 million tons in 2006 to about nearly 59 million tons in 2007, according to coal industry statistics, while domestic production increased by 1 percent. Coal executives say they expect exports to reach 80 million tons this year, and with railroad and port improvements, to rise to as much as 120 million tons in the next few years.

China is the big driver, adding a stunning 200,000 Megawatts of fossil fuel power (most coal) in the past two years alone. As the Washingon Post reports today in a long must-read article:

China, the world’s largest consumer of coal, is burning through more than the United States, European Union and Japan combined. And its consumption is increasing by about 10 percent a year. In 2006, it installed power plants with more capacity than all of Britain.

If any sentence bears repeating, that one does: “China, the world’s largest consumer of coal, is burning through more than the United States, European Union and Japan combined.” Also, China has “limited electricity rate increases for years, encouraging greater use” and in January, it froze electricity prices. This completes a total reversal from their pro-efficiency policies of the 1980s and 1990s. The immorality of their energy policy (i.e. climate non-policy) almost matches ours.

India is working hard to catch up: “By 2012 India expects to add 76,000 megawatts of power, according to Upendra Kumar, a member of the mining committee at the Confederation of Indian Industries.” And many in India seem stuck in the same old misguided mindset that dominates China and parts of this country:

“Coal will continue to be king in India. There is no way out,” said Kumar… “The other choice is asking the country to stay poor. . . . The question is, are we going to allow poverty or allow a little bit of pollution?”

If that were their only choice, the answer would be obvious. But they have huge renewable and efficiency opportunities. Sadly for India, they are one of the countries that will suffer the most from climate change, especially the loss of the inland glaciers that provide water to hundreds of millions.

It is worth noting, though, that it isn’t just China and India fanning the flames. As the Post article explains, Germany and even the United Kingdom are turning back to coal, even as our country is having second thoughts.

MEDIA CONFUSION

So is there enough coal to fill demand? Well, the NYT headline from Wednesday reads: “An Export in Solid Supply.” The Post article from today reads, “Coal Can’t Fill World’s Burning Appetite.” Ah, don’t you just love the traditional media….

I think the bottom line is that, unlike conventional oil, there is more than enough coal at current prices to push us on the irreversible path to 1000 ppm of atmospheric CO2 concentrations and satisfy the world’s apparently insatiable demand for self-destruction.

If it wasn’t clear before, the next president is perhaps the only person in the world (other than the leader of China), who has any hope of providing the global leadership needed to save the climate.

Yesterday Fox News ran a segment on a yet-to-be-released poll by the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research. The poll states that 48 percent of “Americans wouldn’t be willing to pay even a penny more for gasoline” to combat global warming.

Fox jumped on the poll to fearmonger on the costs of combating climate change, saying any mitigation effort “is going to be painful” and framing it as a standoff between Congress and the American people:

The United States is a signatory to this UN climate change initiative, and Congressman John Dingell of Michigan says we have to come into compliance and do something, and the way to do that is to cause pain to people. If we want to stop global warming, and it’s an urgent situation like many claim it is, it’s going to be painful. [...]

But what we’re finding of course — and here’s the conflict: the American public is not going to take this lying down, and that’s where the conflict is going to come later on.

Watch it:

Fox’s report is — unsurprisingly — flawed for many reasons. The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, the global warming bill expected to reach the Senate floor this summer, does not call for a gasoline tax. The bill features a cap-and-trade system that would gradually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Though the bill does cover the transportation sector, it does not propose that the government impose a tax on gasoline.

Fox’s insistence that combatting climate change would “be painful” is simply another example of the channel’s incessant fearmongering on the topic.

In fact, even the Stephen-Johnson-led Environmental Protection Agency admitted in a report last week that cap-and-trade would barely affect economic growth, confirming many other estimates that show combating global warming is affordable. What’s more, the EPA report did not even take into account the economic benefits from emissions reductions, the enormous cost of inaction, or the significant greenhouse gas reductions already in place due to the 2007 energy bill.

Fox’s insistence that “the public won’t take this lying down” is particularly disingenuous. A BBC poll from November showed that 83 percent of the 22,000 people surveyed in 21 nations said they were willing to make changes in their lifestyles to address global warming. Closer to home, a 2007 poll found that 78 percent of Americans believe we must take action “right away” to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Science journalist Chris Mooney, author of the must-read Republican War on Science, has a post at Science Progress titled, “Enablers: Sometimes Refuting Unscientific Nonsense Reinforces It.” This is a provocative and timely post, given the recent tussles I’ve been having with deniers and delayers.

I’ve talked to Chris, and his occasional co-blogger, Matthew Nisbet (who has a related post here), many times. And while we are probably 95% in agreement on most things climate, I don’t quite buy their argument here:

So we’ve reached a point where we may well be wasting our energies if we continue to battle climate skeptics. Indeed, we run the risk of propping them up far more than they deserve.

For that’s the other problem with constantly rebutting anti-science forces–not only does it waste our time, but it may play right into their hands. Consider: Over at his blog Framing Science, Matthew Nisbet makes a very strong case that the rhetorical strategy of the Heartland Institute is exceedingly similar to that of the anti-evolutionist think tank the Discovery Institute. If so, it follows that the defenders of climate science ought to be at least as leery of outright engagement with Heartland as the defenders of evolutionary science are when it comes to engaging with Discovery.

The reason is that if you actually bother to rebut the Heartlands and Discoverys of the world, you instantly enter into a discourse on their own terms. The strategic framing these groups employ to attack mainstream science heavily features the rhetoric of scientific uncertainty….

The key issue is what Chris means by “battle climate skeptics.” I tend to agree it is pointless to debate them one on one, as the listening audience can hardly be expected to adjudicate scientific arguments, so it is a losing proposition, and I rarely waste my time doing it any more. And as I’ve recently blogged, I think it is also a waste of time (for me) to keep rebutting long-debunked denier talking points that someone posts in the comments of this blog.

But I do a lot of radio shows, and conservatives and libertarians (most, but not all, well-meaning people) inevitably call in, repeating old and new denier talking points. The same for lectures I give. I must rebut those points clearly and succinctly, or I will convince nobody. All progressives need to have that ability, even if they don’t give talks on the subject, but merely argue with a non-progressive friend or relative. So I feel some obligation on this blog to rebut new denier talking points — like the “Earth is cooling” crap. Indeed, that was one of the reasons this blog was created.

The other advantage of doing it on a blog is that one can build up an entire database of links about the problem and the solution, so I (and others) don’t have to keep rebutting the same points — you can just refer people to the relevant posts, either here or at the few other sites that do this.

That said, I am a big believer in strategic framing, which is why I use the word “delayer” more than “denier” [I still use the term denier occasionally, in headlines for instance, since it is better known]. Delayer or delayer-1000 focuses the debate on the need for action and makes clear that the goal of the deniers is to delay action. And that’s why I insist people who want to engage in a debate answer the question: “If you were running national and global climate policy, what level of global CO2 concentrations would be your goal and how would you achieve it?”

Because if we go to 1000 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, then all debate and uncertainty in the science disappears — the planet’s livability will be destroyed for hundreds if not thousands of years.

I do not believe the climate issue has much analogy to the evolution issue. The creationists/intelligent-designers are mainly arguing over science in the public arena primarily because they don’t want evolution taught. The stakes are very low — at best you end up with some poorly educated kids and the country falls behind in bio-tech research that someone else will do.

The deniers/delayers are mainly arguing over science in the public arena because they don’t want action on climate. The stakes are enormous. If they succeed in delaying action much longer, we will be condemning the next 10 billion people who walk the earth to untold misery and strife. The public (and hence the media) needs to get the facts on climate science and climate solutions, much more than they need to get the facts about evolution (don’t get me wrong, though — scientists need to vigorously defend evolution).

And that means everybody needs to be educated about the science. Matt writes:

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