The AP has the bombshell news. A judge has finally used the Supreme Court decision that carbon dioxide is a pollutant:
The ruling, from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, is here [big PDF]. What did the judge find?
Archive for June, 2008
Breaking News: Georgia judge blocks coal plant over CO2 emissions
Monday, June 30th, 2008MSM RIP
Monday, June 30th, 2008
“TV journalism” has been an oxymoron as long as I can remember, but not “print journalism.” My father was an old-school newspaper editor, which is why I still hold print journalists in moderately high regard. But media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, in a Tim Russert eulogy, explains just how far newspapers (like the Orlando Sentinel) have now fallen:
Under its new owner, Sam Zell, the Tribune Co. earlier this month decreed a 12 percent cutback in content, meaning that the Los Angeles Times, for instance, will be serving up 82 fewer news pages each week. Tribune’s Baltimore Sun announced last week it will cut 100 employees, in part through layoffs, and produce what publisher Tim Ryan called “a more concise newspaper with more local news” — a euphemism for slashing news space.
Randy Michaels, the company’s chief operating officer, said Tribune has begun measuring productivity by how much copy each journalist churns out – and that the average Times reporter generates a mere 51 pages a year, compared with more than 300 apiece at the Sun and Hartford Courant. Perhaps no one has explained to him that writing in-depth stories — say, prizewinning investigative pieces — takes a bit more time.
Note to Tribune — if “journalists” are measured by quantity over quality, then you really have nothing whatsoever over the web. Your journalists are typically less knowledgeable than many of the people who blog on their areas of expertise. And I don’t see how you can match the web for quantity. Nor price, of course. Once your quality is gone, why should anyone pay for your product?
Lee Abrams, hired from XM Satellite Radio as Tribune’s chief innovation officer, has been cranking out colorful memos: “Newspapers strike me as being a little TOO NPR. I like NPR, and their shows like Morning Edition do well. But NPR can also be a bit elitist. . . . It’s all about being INTELLIGENT . . . not intellectual.
Hence the emphasis on quality over quantity. Oops. But wait, the memo gets better….
Climate Progress on Fox Business News (with Wayne Rogers)
Monday, June 30th, 2008
I am scheduled to be on Fox Business News at 7 pm today on “to drill or not to drill.” I doubt many of you have access to FBN, but I will try to post the video if I get it. The only interesting thing about this is that Wayne Rogers is hosting for David Asman.
Rogers, for those who aren’t long time readers of this blog (or fans of Fox), is the Bizarro World’s Alan Alda (see here). So I’m doing this for amusement, practice, and general-masochism.
Anti-science conservatives must be stopped
Sunday, June 29th, 2008That’s the title of my new article in Salon. I had proposed “The political fight of the century,” but the editors wanted a stronger headline — and subhead:
Now that the relevant science is settled — namely that failing to quickly embrace strong greenhouse gas reduction policies would be the greatest act of self-destruction in human history — the fight to save a livable climate will indeed be the greatest political fight of our times. As the piece concludes:
Conservatives can’t stop the impending catastrophe with anti-government rhetoric. But they can prevent progressives and moderates from stopping it by blocking aggressive climate legislation. Progressives and moderates will need all their political skill and tenacity to overcome the obstructionism of the anti-science, anti-technology conservatives. This is unlike any previous political fight; it is a fight to save the health and well-being of the next 50 generations, a fight to preserve our way of life. Losing is not an option
The article summarizes the current state of conservative anti-science intransigence on climate, which I have discussed at great length (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us” and “Krauthammer, Part 2: The real reason conservatives don’t believe in climate science“.) I then describe how I think the next couple of decades will play out, assuming most conservatives continue to press what they are convinced is a rhetorical and political advantage in opposing strong climate legislation:
Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us
Sunday, June 29th, 2008No, 450 is not politically possible today.
OK, that was clear before. But the debate over the Climate Security Act made clear it won’t be politically possible anytime soon, for two reasons:
- The vast majority of conservatives have not budged an inch on climate science even in the face of now overwhelming direct scientific observation and a much deeper and broader scientific understanding of the dangerous impact of unrestricted human greenhouse gas emissions on the climate.
- Equally important, conservatives now have a very potent political issue to beat back advocates of an economy-wide cap & trade system — high gasoline prices. And gasoline prices are probably going to be much higher over the next few years (see “Must read CIBC report: $7 gas by 2010, 10 million cars off the road, 1970s style GDP growth“). That is one reason I would leave transportation out of an economy-wide cap & trade, but that will be the subject of another post.
I live-blogged the debate at the time. Here are the highlights — or, rather, lowlights — from the GOP side that make clear just how far conservatives are from understanding climate reality:
State News Update
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
On Wednesday (June 25th), Florida Governor Crist signed a historic piece of energy legislation that advances Florida one step closer to establishing a cap and trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Florida is the first state in the Southeast to adopt a law of this nature. While Crist has prevented new coal plant construction and while this article describes a handful of solar thermal projects in Florida, Joe has followed and described some attempts by companies in Florida to pursue nuclear, encouraged by the governor.
Other state progress is happening in New Hampshire, whose Governor John Lynch just recently signed his state on to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
In other power plant-related news in states, Virginia is mid-showdown over the future of coal in the state, an issue which has left a huge divide between northern Virginia and southern Virginia. Unfortunately, the latest coal plant in Virgina has unanimously won approval (on the condition that another coal plant start to burn natural gas). Still, this is a state to keep an eye on. In terms of coal, but also in the upcoming presidential election (see this 2007 example of the changing political orientation).
Finally, all has been quiet on the Kansas front. But it’s worth keeping in mind that every single Representative and Senator is up for re-election in November. So once the new pieces are set, it will literally be an entirely different game.
VW to join Toyota, GM with 2010 plug-in Hybrid
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
The German government announced it will be helping to fund VW’s plug-in hybrid development program with 15 million euros. VM aims for a 2010 vehicle with 31 miles of all-electric range. VW head Martin Winterkorn said that while petrol or diesel powered cars would be around for some time to come, “the future belongs to all-electric cars.” According to autoblog, the Twin Drive uses a 82-hp electric motor and a 2.0L turbodiesel producing 122 hp.
VW recently signed a deal with Sanyo, which is aggressively ramping up automotive lithium-ion battery production. It expects the hybrid and plug-in hybrid markets to be 4 to 4.5 million vehicles by 2015, and aims to capture 40% of this market. Sanyo uses a mixture of Ni, Mn, and Co for the positive electrode, thereby producing a safer battery that exhibits power retention ratio of 80% or higher after 10,000 cycles (10-15 years in a hybrid vehicle).
Last week, Daimler announced it would bring an electric car to market in 2010.
For more on plug ins, see “Plug-in hybrids and electric cars — a core climate solution, nationally and globally.”
No Anonymous Comments
Friday, June 27th, 2008’nuff said!
What drove the dramatic retreat of arctic sea ice during summer 2007?
Friday, June 27th, 2008
Funny you should ask. That is the title of an analysis published this month in Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) by four scientists from the Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle. What did they conclude?
A model study has been conducted of the unprecedented retreat of arctic sea ice in the summer of 2007. It is found that preconditioning, anomalous winds, and ice-albedo feedback are mainly responsible for the retreat. Arctic sea ice in 2007 was preconditioned to radical changes after years of shrinking and thinning in a warm climate. During summer 2007 atmospheric changes strengthened the transpolar drift of sea ice, causing more ice to move out of the Pacific sector and the central Arctic Ocean where the reduction in ice thickness due to ice advection is up to 1.5 m more than usual. Some of the ice exited Fram Strait and some piled up in part of the Canada Basin and along the coast of northern Greenland, leaving behind an unusually large area of thin ice and open water. Thin ice and open water allow more surface solar heating because of a much reduced surface albedo, leading to amplified ice melting. The Arctic Ocean lost additional 10% of its total ice mass in which 70% is due directly to the amplified melting and 30% to the unusual ice advection, causing the unprecedented ice retreat. Arctic sea ice has entered a state of being particularly vulnerable to anomalous atmospheric forcing.
In short, Santa Claus and Superman need to find a new home. Next stop for them — East Antarctica, which is probably good for another century or two.
Related Posts:
UPDATED WITH POST-MORTEM — Climate Progress on Fox News at 3:55 pm EST …
Friday, June 27th, 2008… on the prospects for and impact of an ice-free North Pole. Or at least that is the plan!
Too bad Shepard Smith wasn’t hosting — he wouldn’t have wasted time on the global cooling nonsense!
Remember, Shepard thinks global warming deniers are a “little crazy” like some guy who got stuck in the toilet (see QUIZ: Who said, “People who deny the whole global warming thing. They’re just a little crazy.”)
I have previously debunked this absurd claim we have somehow cooled in the last year back to levels of a century ago (or even two decades ago), see Media enable denier spin 1: A (sort of) cold January doesn’t mean climate stopped warming and Breaking News: The Great Ice Age of 2008 is finally over — next stop Venus!
For another perspective, News Hounds wrote up this encounter here, “To This Day, Fox is Feeding its Audience “Proof” That Global Warming Doesn’t Exist.” I may blog on this again.
Bush BLM: We don’t need no stinkin’ solar on federal lands
Friday, June 27th, 2008
In a parting shot at the competition for its fossil fuels supporters, the uber-lame (duck) Bush administration “has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.”
- Drilling for oil and gas, even in pristine areas — hey, we’re former oil company executives.
- Leveling mountains in beautiful West Virginia — we’re all for it.
- Toxic metals from mining — bring ‘em on!
- Logging old-growth forests — what so you think forests are for?
But solar power on publicly owned desert land? We need to study that for two years. Wouldn’t want to risk a rush to clean energy. As Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, this is “the wrong signal to send to solar power developers, and to Nevadans and Westerners who need and want clean, affordable sun-powered electricity soon.”
The only upside of this lame last-minute attack on renewables is that it can be overturned on January 21.
Must read McKinsey report shatters myths on cost of curbing climate change
Friday, June 27th, 2008The McKinsey Global Institute has published another terrific piece of analysis, “The carbon productivity challenge: curbing climate change and sustaining economic growth.”
MGI is best known for its comprehensive cost curve for global greenhouse gas reduction measures (reprinted below), which came to the stunning conclusion that the measures needed to stabilize emissions at 450 ppm have a net cost near zero. The new report has its own stunning conclusion:
In fact, depending on how new low-carbon infrastructure is financed, the transition to a low-carbon economy may increase annual GDP growth in many countries.
The new analysis explains that “at a global, macroeconomic level, the costs of transitioning to a low-carbon economy are not, in an economic ‘welfare’ sense, all that daunting — even with currently known technologies.” Indeed, 70% of the total 2030 emissions reduction potential (below $60 a ton of CO2 equivalent) is “not dependent on new technology.”
The final reality is perhaps the most important:
Chance of ice-free North Pole wows Drudge
Thursday, June 26th, 2008[I'm not sure this Independent story is quite that big a deal, but it got Drudge all globally hot and bothered with the banner headline and pic below, so at least the deniers and delayers will all see it.]
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Related Posts:
The CAFE we could have had
Thursday, June 26th, 2008White House intervention at the EPA is back in the news.
The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming finally received some long-awaited documents from the EPA. In a letter to President Bush, Committee Chairman Markey indicated what the EPA was recommending before the White House stepped in to weaken the regulations. First Representative Markey sets the stage:
On May 14, 2007, you directed EPA, along with other agencies, to prepare a regulatory response to Massachusetts v. EPA by the end of 2007 and to complete it by the end of 2008. According to reports, EPA staff spent about six months developing this proposal, and transmitted both a positive finding of endangerment to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and a draft regulatory proposal to require the equivalent of 35 miles per gallon (mpg) fuel economy standard from the fleet of cars and light trucks by 2018 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in early December, 2007.
Frontline, CBS, and CNN this week
Thursday, June 26th, 2008Climate Progress was (or is supposed to be) featured in:
- Great frontline story Tuesday on the human impact today of climate change in Asia and Africa (video online here) — a prequel to a 2-hour special this fall.
- CBS Evening News piece tonight on CIBC oil report (which is how I came to blog on it).
- CNN report tomorrow morning on a new hydrogen fueling station in California.
Energy and climate are hot — stay right here for the cutting edge news and analysis.
California leads the way toward climate sanity
Thursday, June 26th, 2008How do you return greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 while promoting jobs, competitiveness, and public health? Conservatives in the U.S. Senate think it can’t be done. California knows it can.
The Air Resources Board has just published their Scoping Plan here. How do they cut 169 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020? Efficiency, efficiency, renewables, renewables, and even some conservation:
Given that the single biggest source of California’s GHG emissions is transportation, surging oil prices will make it that much easier for them to achieve this target and increase the savings for California consumers and businesses.
Unlike U.S. Senate conservatives, Californians understand that the multiple benefits of action — and the cost of inaction — greatly exceed the costs of action:
Must read CIBC report: $7 gas by 2010, 10 million cars off the road, 1970s style GDP growth
Thursday, June 26th, 2008CIBC World Markets has just released a stunning yet detailed economic analysis of near-term oil prices and impacts. The PDF has some excellent figures I will convert to JPEGs.
The two key pieces are “Getting off the Road–Adjusting to $7 per Gallon Gas in America” and “Oil and Growth–That 70s show Re-Run“. Main points:
- “That additional 200,000 barrels per day pledged from Saudi Arabia is a pittance compared to the four million barrels per day this year that depletion will hive off world production. What little increase in production Saudi is capable of will probably all be gobbled up by that country’s own voracious appetite for energy.”
- China’s recent oil subsidy drop? Another yawner: “Most North Americans would gladly line up at the pumps for China’s now $3.25 a gallon gas.”
- “The only supply response to date has been yet another round of cost overruns and lengthy project delays running the gamut from Canadian oil sands to deepwater Gulf of Mexico wells.”
- “With the basic laws of supply and demand no longer operative in crude oil markets,” CIBC is”compelled to once again raise our target prices for oil” to “an average price of $200 per barrel by 2010.” That “should translate into a near-$7 per gallon pump price within two years, a 70% increase from today’s already record levels.”
- “Higher oil prices spell stagflation for the US economy next year” and beyond. The report has a good analysis of why “The US economy has managed to avoid feeling the full brunt of oil prices over the last few years, but 2009 will be the year that its luck runs out.”
The analysis seems very solid and suggests the only thing that can “save” us from near-$7 gas by 2010 is a major global recession, but even that would only be a temporary respite. The implications for Detroit is staggering:
Gas prices kill the “Green Acres” dream
Thursday, June 26th, 2008“Rethinking the Country Life as Energy Costs Rise,” was the NYT story yesterday:
Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the distant edges of metropolitan areas.
Green acres is the place to be
Farm living is the life for me
Land spreading out, so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.
Just off Singing Hills Road, in one of hundreds of two-story homes dotting a former cattle ranch beyond the southern fringes of Denver, Phil Boyle and his family openly wonder if they will have to move close to town to get some relief.
New York is where I’d rather stay
I get allergic smelling hay
I just adore a penthouse view
Darling, I love you,
but give me Park Avenue.
But life on the edges of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable.
Delaware to get offshore wind
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
On Tuesday, the utility Delmarva announced a 25-year contract with Bluewater Wind Delaware, a subsidiary of the Babcock & Brown, to purchase 200 megawatts of power from a wind farm that would be constructed 11.5 miles in the Atlantic off Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach. First power is expected in 2012. The contract locks in the price Delmarva will pay per kilowatt-hour. Bluewater has previously built offshore energy near Denmark.
Hansen’s famous 1988 testimony
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008Someone sent me the link (here)
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