The Wonk Room

350 Islands Being Hung Out To Drown

Today is the International Day of Climate Action, organized by 350.org, “an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis–the solutions that science and justice demand.” The events today are centered around the call for global action to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere from the present 390 parts per million down to 350 ppm. Among the over 5200 events taking place in 181 countries, islanders waded out into the sea in Auckland, New Zealand and hung up 350 T-shirts on a giant washing line, signifying that the Pacific Islands are being hung out to dry.

Watch it:

Join an action today.

Answers For DeLong About The SuperFreaks, Part One

Blogging economist J. Bradford DeLong has read the “global cooling” chapter of SuperFreakonomics and has made some suggested corrections. He also asked six wonkish questions about climate policy, spurred by the misleading portrayal of the field by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner. The Wonk Room will be answering DeLong’s questions. Here are answers for the first two questions about passages from SuperFreakonomics:

1: “Wood notes that the most authoritative literature on the subject suggests a rise of about one and a half feet by 2100…” I had thought that the most authoritative estimates suggest a 1 to 7 feet rise in sea levels by 2100–not 1.5 feet. Am I wrong?

“Most authoritative” is a value judgment, of course. If we consider literature that was reviewed and summarized by the 2007 International Panel on Climate Change report (AR4) as the “most authoritative,” then the climate models considered there provide estimates of sea level rise of 0.18 – 0.59 m (0.59 – 1.93 ft), depending on future emissions and “excluding future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow.” [IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group 1, Summary for Policymakers, 2007]

However, that exclusion is a major caveat, and all the literature on “dynamical changes in ice flow” points to a much higher estimate for likely sea level rise by 2100. The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has found that the likelihood of warming of 4°C is almost 100 percent without efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions. At the 4 Degrees and Beyond climate conference this September, lead climate researchers presented their latest estimates of sea level rise for 2100 given 4°C warming. Pier Vallinga summarized recent estimates of sea level rise under warm scenarios:

40 – 85 cm [KNMI, 2006]
50 – 140 cm [Rahmstorf, 2007]
40 – 140 cm [Delta Vision, Blue Ribbon Task Force California, 2007]
80 – 200 cm [Pfeffer et al., 2008]
60 – 110 cm [Vellinga et al., 2008]

These estimates give a range of 0.4 to 2 m (1.31 to 6.56 ft), on average estimating 0.95 m (3.1 ft). It should be noted that sea level rise by 2200 will be about twice that of 2100, as the oceans continue to rise due to thermal expansion and the disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets. In short, Wood is only off by a factor of 100 percent.

2: “Ken Caldeira… mentions a most surprising environmental scourge: trees…” I grant that covering the reflective Greenland ice sheet with green leaves might not be a good idea. But surely Ken Caldeira of Stanford did not say that your average tree is doing less to cool the earth by sucking up carbon dioxide than if the tree were cut down and decomposed and some other more-reflective typical use were made of its spot, is he?

In a word, no. In a 2007 New York Times op-ed discussing his research and opinions on forestation and climate change mitigation, Caldeira wrote:

This effect is most pronounced in snowy areas — snow on bare ground reflects far more sunlight back to space than does a snowed-in forest — so forests in areas with seasonal snow cover can be strongly warming. In contrast, tropical forests appear to be doubly valuable to the earth’s climate system. [New York Times, 1/16/07]

He also noted: “Clear-cutting mountains to slow climate change is, of course, nuts.”

Blog Action Day: Is The CBO Trying To Kill Humanity? »

Today is Blog Action Day, with thousands of blogs discussing global warming.

Doug Elmendorf, CBO

Yesterday, Doug Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Senate energy committee about the “comparatively modest” cost of a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon pollution. The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal blared “Congressional Budget Chief Says Climate Bill Would Cost Jobs” and “Cap-and-Trade Would Slow Economy, CBO Chief Says.” Conservatives leapt on the reports to cheer the “end” of “cap-and-tax.”

Of course, Elmendorf’s testimony is nothing new. Elmendorf warned that jobs in the fossil fuel industry would be lost, and that overall GDP growth would be slowed by less than one percent by 2020. No one is arguing that there won’t be a shift from pollution-based industries to clean-energy industries. But doing so will create millions more jobs than are lost, as energy companies invest in American workers instead of foreign oil and mountaintop removal. The effect on GDP is within the margin of error of future estimates of growth. Even pessimistic studies by the National Association of Manufacturers find that U.S. GDP will increase by $9 trillion with limits on carbon pollution.

What upset me, however, was the portion of Elmendorf’s testimony that was not reported. Although he recognized that his estimates do not take into account the economic impacts of climate change, he testified that the changes that scientists call “catastrophic” would be barely noticeable in the U.S. economy:

Most of the economy involves activities that are not likely to be directly affected by changes in climate. Moreover, researchers generally expect the growth in the U.S. economy over the coming century to be concentrated in sectors — such as information technology and medical care — that are relatively insulated from climate effects. Damages are therefore likely to be a smaller share of the future economy than they would be if they occurred today. As a consequence, a relatively pessimistic estimate for the loss in projected real gross domestic product is about 3 percent for warming of about 7° Fahrenheit (F) by 2100. [Dale W. Jorgenson et al., 2004]

Elmendorf goes on to cite Nordhaus & Boyer (2000) to claim “the risk of catastrophic outcomes associated with about 11°F of warming by 2100″ gives a projected “loss equivalent to about 5 percent of U.S. output and, because of substantially larger losses in a number of other countries, a loss of about 10 percent of global output.” (By way of comparison, US GDP collapsed by nearly 50 percent during the Great Depression.)

This is frighteningly nonsensical. The CBO is arguing that the collapse of the national electricity grid, water supply, food system, and physical infrastructure from heat waves, desertification, disease outbreaks, wildfires, floods, and catastrophic storms would barely affect the national economy. In fact, seven to 11° F (4 to 6°C) warming would lead to unimaginable changes in our planet by 2100: More »« Less

O’Reilly’s Weatherman Joe Bastardi: ‘The Globe Is Actually Cooling’ »

Last week, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly promoted the conspiracy theories of a weatherman who believes “the globe is actually cooling.” O’Reilly’s guest, Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi, scoffed at the connection between global warming and wildfires in California. Bastardi — who has an undergraduate degree in meteorology from 1978 and no other academic credentials — went so far as to claim that “global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California”:

I’m gonna show you the facts over the last two years. California has been very, very dry. Why is that the case? Well, whenever the Pacific Ocean starts cooling, and the global temperatures start to cool, California gets dry. You see this ocean temperature presentation, all this cold water off California means the air sinks over top of California. When it sinks, it dries out, so global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California, which by the way is a dry climate naturally.

Watch it:

The upswelling of cold waters in the eastern Pacific, known as La Nina events (the opposite of El Nino events), is certainly a factor in California’s epic drought and unprecedented wildfires. However, what Bastardi fails to mention is that temperatures have also been unusually warm during the present drought, despite the cold La Nina airmass:

California Temperatures During La Nina Droughts

Previous events during 1949, 1954, 1964, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1988, 1995, 1998

Bastardi’s claim of “global cooling” is completely unsubstantiated. Even with the upwelling of cold water during the La Nina cycle, average ocean temperatures during the “cool” years of 2006-2008 were higher than any year before 1997. It has been the warmest decade for both ocean and land temperatures in recorded history. This summer, the La Nina event was replaced by its counterpart, El Nino, and average sea surface temperatures are now at their highest in recorded history.

Bastardi also showed a graph he purported was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s forecast for global temperatures to “go up, up, up” against actual temperatures “over the last 10 years” supposedly “coming down”:

Fake IPCC Chart Claims ‘Global Cooling’

In July, O’Reilly mocked “hard core right-wingers who don’t believe in global warming even though the temperature shows that the earth has warmed in the last 30 years, three times faster than the previous hundred,” saying, “you don’t debate that.” Evidently, he’s changed his mind.

Transcript: More »« Less

Global Boiling: Dangerous Feedback Loop Of Fire And Climate Change Nears The Tipping Point

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

For residents of the western United States — including California, which is fighting at least eight fires right now — a 1-degree rise in average spring and summer temperatures could mean a staggering increase in the extent and cost of fires, according to a recent study. In their report, researchers at Headwaters Economics, an independent nonprofit research group in Bozeman, MT, predict that climate change and the accelerating movement of western residents to areas near or in undeveloped forests will likely prove to be a devastating combination. The area burned by seasonal fires in Montana will increase by more than 300 percent and more than double the cost of protecting homes threatened by fire:

While fire prone lands are being developed, the climate is warming, leading to more large fires. . . . More development in these sensitive areas would lead to more wildfire suppression costs, even in the absence of climate change. Climate change will only exacerbate this effect.

Though the Headwaters paper focuses on Montana, using data from 18 large fires in the state during 2006 and 2007, it has implications for fire-prone areas throughout the Rocky Mountain West. And it builds on a growing body of evidence that inaction on climate change will cost the western United States dearly.

Earlier this summer, for example, Harvard University scientists published a study in the Journal of Geophysical Research predicting that areas burned by wildfires in the West could increase by 50 percent by 2050, with even larger increases of 75 percent to 175 percent in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain West. Those increases could have “large impacts on human health” because of the added smoke and particulates released into the air, the study said.

Since 2000, wildland fires in the United States have burned an average of more than 7 million acres a year, about double the average acreage for the previous four decades. Federal firefighting costs have also risen dramatically, according to the Government Accountability Office, averaging $2.9 billion per year from fiscal 2001-2005 compared to $1.1 billion in the previous five-year period, and “the majority of [Forest Service] large fire suppression costs are directly linked to protecting private property” in the wildland-urban interface, where new development is increasingly popular.

And in recent years, a widespread and so far unchecked epidemic of mountain pine beetles that has killed millions of acres of trees from Colorado north into Canada has laid the foundation for a potentially large increase in catastrophic fires. Climate change has played a role in that outbreak, too, as warmer winters spare the beetles from low temperatures that would normally kill them off, and drought stresses trees.

In the western United States, mountain pine beetles have killed some 6.5 million acres of forest. As large as that path of destruction is, it’s dwarfed by the 35 million acres killed in British Columbia, which has experienced a rash of forest fires this summer that as of early this month had burned more than 155,000 acres. In the United States to date about 5.2 million acres — an area larger than Massachusetts — have burned this year.

Destruction of trees by the mountain pine beetle, combined with climate change and fire, makes for a dangerous feedback loop. Dead forests sequester less carbon dioxide. Burning forests release lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide adds to climate change, which raises temperatures, stresses forests, and makes more and bigger fires more likely. It’s a frightening prospect, as British Columbia’s Forests Minister Pat Bell told an International Energy Agency conference last week:

I am not a doomsayer, I am not one who wants to say we are beyond the tipping point. But I am afraid that we are getting close to that.

Read more at the Center for American Progress.

Global Boiling: ‘Global Warming Is A Medical Emergency’ »

As the debate over rising health care costs reaches a fever pitch, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) warns that “global warming is a medical emergency.” In a press teleconference unveiling a new report on the human cost of increased heat waves, PSR executive director Peter Wilk, M.D. described global warming as “one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity today”:

Global warming is one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity today. It’s life threatening, it’s affecting us now, and if we don’t take bold and effective action, it could dramatically affect how we life on earth.

“More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call,” jointly issued by PSR and the National Wildlife Federation, explains that scientists have found that global boiling will disproportionately threaten the health of the very old and very young, as well as the poor and those who live in big cities: More »« Less

Global Boiling: Filibustering Our Farmers’ Future

U.S. Senators are attacking the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act as threatening farmers even though America is suffering from the ravages of a climate out of control — heat waves, floods, storms, droughts, and seasonal shifts. Scientific studies show global warming has already hurt American agriculture, and that the damages will grow catastrophic if action is not taken. In a new video, the Center for American Progress Action Fund argues that passage of a strong climate bill is imperative, and senators should stop filibustering our farmers’ future. Watch it:

The rising tide of climate change — the catastrophic droughts in Texas and California, the heat waves in Louisiana and Nebraska, the storms across the High Plains and the Midwest, the floods in North Dakota and Minnesota — require action. Instead, both Democratic and Republican senators are arguing that a limit on carbon pollution would be too costly for farmers:

Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): “No farmers will escape the effect of this bill.” [Senate agriculture hearing, 7/22/09]

Jim Inhofe (R-OK): “I had the opportunity of going and talking to the national farm co-ops the other day and addressed to them if we were to pass the cap-and-trade system what that would do to my folks in Oklahoma and all of America . . . It would be disastrous for our farmers in America.” [Senate floor, 7/15/09]

Mike Johanns (R-NE): “The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would have a significant if not severe impact on agriculture. . . . Different studies come up with varied numbers but they all paint the same picture: agriculture loses.” [Senate floor, 7/20/09]

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR): “I just worry if you’ve taken the kind of look at USDA at the potential impact of the house legislation on the food processing industry and the disproportionate costs on that industry that could lead to really high, higher food prices in these difficult economic times.” [Senate agriculture hearing, 7/22/09]

Ben Nelson (D-NE): “I’m concerned that if this is going to be the approach that is taken, that it be the most benign approach to balancing the economy and the environment. It’s not just agriculture, it’s people turning on their lights and businesses as well.” [Senate agriculture hearing, 7/22/09]

John Thune (R-SD): “They’re worried about the EPA regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and what that would mean for the future of the production of agriculture.” [Senate agriculture hearing, 7/22/09]

The effort to filibuster clean energy legislation means that a minority of senators can block the effort to preserve the livelihood of farmers in America. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) have committed to cloture — standing against the filibuster. The rest of the senators need to join them.

California Republicans Will Use Any Excuse Other Than Climate Change To Explain Drought »

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

There’s something about the Endangered Species Act that brings out the worst kind of demagoguery on the right. Doubly so when climate change is involved.

Ever since the battle over the Tellico Dam and the snail darter in Tennessee in the 1970’s, the right has consistently fallen back on the same old, tired, and inaccurate construct: it’s always a tiny fish (or useless bird, or obscure snail) that is destroying jobs and threatening the economy.

The latest example has been unfolding over the past few months in California, where a three-year drought is being mis-characterized as a “manmade drought” brought on by federal efforts to protect an endangered fish, the delta smelt, in compliance with a 2007 court decision. Reductions in irrigation water deliveries by state and federal water projects to protect a 3-inch fish, scream the commentators and lawmakers, are crippling agriculture in the state’s Central Valley and throwing tens of thousands of people out of work.

“Because of this little fish, up to 80,000 people are going to lose jobs,” caterwauled Sean Hannity on Fox in mid-May. “This is madness.”

There’s madness out there all right, but it has a lot more to do with degradation of the Pacific coast’s largest estuary, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, climate change, mismanagement of the state’s water resources, and the right’s inability to look at the facts than it does with protecting a small fish.

Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, punctures some of the myths surrounding the California drought in a blog posting that shows Central Valley farmers are getting lots more water than is commonly reported, that the jobs impact has been overstated, and that the smelt is not to blame.

As Gleick notes, a couple of weeks before Beck’s tirade, the head of California’s Department of Water Resources said that if the Endangered Species Act didn’t exist there would only be a five percent increase in water deliveries to farmers. “If the ESA goes away this afternoon, we still have a drought,” said Lester Snow.

The delta smelt is a handy whipping boy for the likes of Rep. Devin Nunes, who has tried to suspend the ESA to prevent what he calls a “government imposed dust bowl.” But the smelt is only a symptom of the collapse of one of America’s most important ecosystems, a collapse that has been building for decades and affects not just the smelt, but salmon, steelhead and about 750 other species of fish, birds and animals – 18 of which are designated as threatened or endangered by the state and federal governments.

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Global Boiling Means More Billion-Dollar Droughts For Farmers

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Farmers and those in the agriculture economy have a lot to lose if the trends in billion-dollar weather disasters continue — particularly when it comes to drought and water shortages, as recent news indicates. “Central and South Texas are in the midst of an epic drought that has sapped soils of their moisture, dried up stock ponds and turned cornfields from green to beige.” California’s “Central Valley farmers will receive an additional 100,000 acre-feet as part of a water loan to deal with the three-year drought plaguing the state.” As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee begins hearing testimony this week on climate change legislation, “Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters” — a catalog of 90 costly weather-related disasters dating back to 1980 assembled by the National Climatic Data Center — is a good place to start when considering the costs of inaction on global warming:

– In 2007, a severe drought with extreme heat across the Great Plains and the East brought some $5 billion in damages and costs. Wildfires in the West that same year cost more than $1 billion.

– In 2006, widespread drought affected the Great Plains, the south, and the far west, costing about $6 billion.

– In 2002, a broad drought cost $10 billion, affecting large parts of 30 states from the West to the Great Plains and much of the East. Western wildfires associated with the drought cost $2 billion.

– In 2000, a drought and heat wave centered on the south central and southeastern United States caused 140 deaths and cost $4 billion.

– In 1999, An eastern drought and heat wave brought “extensive agricultural losses” of more than $1 billion and cost 502 lives.

– In 1998, “Very severe losses to agriculture and related industries” accompanied a drought affecting the central and eastern U.S. with estimated costs of $40 billion and 5,000 to 10,000 deaths.

The House’s narrow approval of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 on June 26 came only after House leaders satisfied some of the concerns of farm state lawmakers. Senators, too, will be sensitive to those interests, so it is critical they understand some of the stakes for agriculture if Congress fails to pass comprehensive clean-energy jobs and climate legislation.

Drought and changes in water supply will be one of the main challenges. Over the last half century, the recently released government report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” says, droughts associated with rising temperatures have become more frequent in much of the Southeast and Western regions of the country. That trend is expected to continue. “In the future, droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe,” particularly in the Southwest, according to the report.

Water shortages will likely affect a whole range of critical economic sectors, from limiting electricity production by nuclear and coal-fired power plants that have high water demands to increasing shipping costs on the Great Lakes and Mississippi River — as happened in 1988 when a drought stranded 4,000 barges on America’s most important commercial waterway. Drier conditions in the West will also increase the extent and cost of wildfires, which have already soared in the last decade.

These events and their impacts are not abstractions. They are costly, disruptive, and affect millions of Americans, including many who make their living raising food and livestock. Few lobbyists for these interests will mention these costly impacts to our already challenged rural economies.

Senators have a responsibility to protect farmers from more and worse droughts even if the farmers’ hired guns won’t.

Read more at the Center for American Progress, and view a map of past and projected droughts at Science Progress.

Peterson Denies Global Warming Hurts Agriculture: ‘My Farmers Are Going To Say That’s A Good Thing’ »

House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN), who has been blocking the passage of comprehensive climate legislation, dismissed a White House report on the damaging effect of global warming on U.S. agriculture. Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the chief of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association and one of the top scientists in the Obama administration, called the climate impacts report released yesterday a “clarion call for action” for a problem that “is happening now, and in our own backyards.” However, the Wall Street Journal reports that Peterson, “when asked by reporters Tuesday about the report’s findings, said they run counter to what many in his region are experiencing“:

We’ve just had the biggest floods and coldest winters we’ve ever had. They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing since they’ll be able to grow more corn.

It is not apparent what farmers Peterson is talking about. As the report explains in its section on the agricultural impacts of climate change, global warming brings not only warmer temperatures but also heavier floods. Despite the relatively cold winter of 2008, over the past thirty years winter temperatures in Peterson’s Minnesota have risen more than 7°F. In fact, floods and higher temperatures associated with global warming have already damaged America’s corn crops, with worse to come:

Analysis of crop responses suggests that even moderate increases in temperature will decrease yields of corn, wheat, sorghum, bean, rice, cotton, and peanut crops.

Responding to Peterson’s argument on a telephone briefing organized by the Center for American Progress, USDA Global Change Program director Bill Hohenstein explained that scientists have estimated that “the effects on the corn yield in the Midwest” from observed changes in temperature and carbon dioxide levels “are a decrease of about 3 percent, not accounting for changes in water availability.” Hohenstein was citing an earlier U.S. Global Change Program report, The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States:

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Global Boiling: One Year Later, Iowa Still Devastated By Extreme Floods

As the White House releases a report on the devastating impacts of global warming to the United States today, Iowans are still struggling to rebuild from the extreme floods that ravaged their state one year ago. This kind of terrible flood was predicted in the 2000 edition of the U.S. Global Change Research Program report as a consequence of the warming climate in the Midwest. Cedar Rapids took the brunt of the floods, suffering over $5 billion dollars in damage:

Iowa sustained $8 billion to $10 billion in statewide damage from the floods and tornadoes that struck in 2008, according to state estimates. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $517 million in new community block grants for Iowa last week as part of a $3.7 billion package for 11 states. Iowa’s share will help pay for home buyouts, public works projects, business aid and new flood safeguards as well as other needs. The federal government has now sent more than $3 billion to Iowa since the disasters, Gov. Chet Culver said last week in Cedar Rapids. Culver’s $830 million I-JOBS bonding plan, an effort to create new jobs and upgrade state infrastructure, includes nearly $300 million for flood-related projects that include housing assistance and building repairs at the University of Iowa. Culver also signed a $56 million aid package in February that includes forgivable loans, grants and other assistance for home and business owners. — USA Today

Thousands of flood-damaged homes lie vacant in the core of Cedar Rapids, a city of 120,000 hard hit by June 2008 flooding that inundated towns and farms across the Midwestern United States. “Are we satisfied with that progress? No, clearly not,” Cedar Rapids City Manager Jim Prosser said. “A lot of people whose lives aren’t even close to being whole yet have a lot of unanswered questions, bills to pay, and don’t have the resources to recover.” . . . Some 1,300 property owners in neighborhoods that resemble war zones have asked the government to buy them out, but the city cannot act until funding arrives. — Reuters

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shawn Donovan, who was in Cedar Rapids this week, promised that the Obama administration would work to streamline the bureaucratic process. He also announced $500 million in new federal flood recovery funds for Iowa. Some of that money will go toward the long-awaited buyouts. But local officials say much more federal funding is needed, and it may take 10 years or more for Cedar Rapids to fully recover. — NPR

Even as some of Iowa’s elected officials, including Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) and Rep. Steve King (R-IA), still question the need for strong legislation to halt global warming, their state is dealing with the catastrophic costs of weather gone out of control.

Global Boiling: A Stormy Forecast For Agriculture

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

A yield loss of three percent of the U.S. corn crop due to a rise in temperature of 2 degrees F totals $1.4 billion. Environment America, April 2009.

Farm-belt lawmakers are posing a challenge to passage of clean-energy legislation in Congress, but torpedoing the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) would hurt farmers because harms linked to global warming — including drought, flooding, and other crop damage — would continue unabated. House Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) has threatened to bring down the entire green economy legislation if he doesn’t get his way on the renewable fuel standards and jurisdiction in the agriculture committee:

If they don’t want to change it, they’ll have to find the votes some other place. In my district a “no” vote would be a good vote.

Without congressional action on climate change legislation, global greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise and the impacts on agriculture would grow. The link between global warming and extreme weather events is evident, and research predicts that the trend will intensify in coming decades:

Heatwaves, Extreme Storms, And Droughts Will Increase In Frequency And Intensity. Changes in extreme weather are “among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate,” a 2008 federal report indicated. In the future, the report predicts, “With continued global warming, heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity. Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity.” [U.S. Climate Change Science Program, 2008]

Climate Disasters Have Increased Sixfold Since The 1950s. An insurance company database showed that weather-related disasters have increased sixfold since the 1950s, compared to only a slight increase in non-weather disasters. At a meeting of climate and insurance experts in 2006, “delegates reached a cautious consensus: Climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes.” A Government Accountability Office investigation in 2007 found that private and government insurers including the federal crop and flood insurance programs paid out more than $320 billion for weather-related losses between 1980 and 2005. [Nature, 6/2006; GAO, 5/3/2007]

The 1988 And 1993 Midwest Climate Disasters Caused $79 Billion In Damages Alone. Not only are the costs of climate disasters high, they come in the form of unpredictably catastrophic events. A report in 2000 by Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment found that extreme weather events have “caused severe crop damage and have exacted a significant economic toll for U.S. farmers over the past 20 years” and “could rise significantly due to greater climate variability, and to increases in insects, weeds, and plant diseases.” Total damages — including agricultural losses — from the 1988 drought and 1993 Midwest floods were $79 billion. In the future, “variability of precipitation — in time, space, and intensity — will make U.S. agriculture increasingly unstable and make it more difficult for U.S. farmers to plan what crops to plan and when.” [Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, 5/2000]

Crop Losses To Rise To Billions A Year, Doubling By The 2030s. Crop losses insured by the federal government have also risen substantially in the past two decades, due to higher participation by farmers, rising crop prices, and big loss years like 2008, when the federal program paid out nearly $8.6 billion, much of it because of flooding in the Midwest. Looking just at increased soil moisture that comes with higher precipitation driven by climate change, authors of a study published in 2002 by Global Environmental Change estimated that the roughly $1.5 billion per year in crop damage could double by the 2030s. And an April report by Environment America found that U.S. corn growers could face annual losses of $1.4 billion due to future climate change, looking just how higher temperatures reduce yields. [USDA Risk Management Agency; Global Environmental Change, 11/15/2002; Environment America, 4/2009]

Return Of The Dust Bowl? A 2007 report cites a potential agricultural loss of as much as $10 billion by 2090 in the Edwards Aquifer region of Texas, and productivity losses exceeding 50 percent for wheat and soybeans in the southern and Great Plains regions. Other research predicts that the American Southwest will by mid-century face extremely difficult choices between supplying water for agriculture and the region’s booming cities. A study reported in Science in April 2007 said that a drought similar to conditions during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s could become the norm in the Southwest by 2050. [Center for Integrative Environment Research at the University of Maryland, 10/2007; Science, 4/2007]

In 2007, the Center for Integrative Environment Research at the University of Maryland report, “The U.S. Economic Impacts of Climate Change and the Costs of Inaction,” included a review of previous studies on climate change impacts on agriculture and water for various regions of the United States:

The uneven nature of climate change impacts throughout the country makes the net impacts of global warming on the agricultural sector uncertain . . . Some northern regions are likely to experience fleeting economic benefits with more profitable crops migrating there (as the climate becomes hospitable to those crops.) As climate conditions continue to change, however, those temporary benefits may be lost. Other regions, such as the Southeast, West, and southern Great Plains may face challenges from increased temperatures, water stress, saltwater intrusion, and the potential increase in invasive species and pests — the impacts of which may cause costs to outweigh benefits.

American farmers, like all of us, have a huge stake in the fight to stem global climate change. To hold their future hostage to a rulemaking battle over ethanol would be a grave, shortsighted disservice.

Read an extended version of this post at the Center for American Progress website.

Scalise On Building Efficiency Standards: ‘We’re Setting Up A Global Warming Gestapo!’ »

Invoking a Nazi reference today, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) argued that establishing national energy efficiency standards for buildings would create a “global warming Gestapo.” Scalise attacked the provision in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454) to create a federal building efficiency code (Section 201), calling it “ludicrous”:

Let’s go to the bill and look at the penalties. Because there are actually civil penalties in this bill. We’re actually creating a global warming police. . . And then further to page 236: “Each day of unlawful occupancy shall be considered a separate violation.” We’re setting up a global warming Gestapo that can literally come in and now this new term, “unlawful occupancy.” Now living in your home is considered unlawful under this bill.

This is ludicrous.

Watch it:

Putting aside Scalise’s inflammatory rhetoric, his understanding of the provision — which would save working families and businesses millions of dollars, create hundreds of thousands of green jobs, and tackle the nation’s biggest source of global warming pollution — is flawed. Scalise ignored the difference between energy efficiency building codes and safety codes. Scalise was also seemly ignorant that the legislation explicitly preserves local building codes that meet or exceed the national standard, while providing federal support for states to implement new standards. Federal enforcement would only take place if states failed to act.

Without irony, Scalise argued that fighting global warming would threaten the health and safety of Lousianans in danger of “hurricanes and flooding” and tornadoes:

Safety and health have always been the main driving factors behind a building code. What this bill does in Section 201, it’s literally taking global warming, and using global warming to trump safety and health. Because now, if I’m in South Louisiana, and I want to rebuild after hurricane damage — which by the way we had 120,000 homes in Louisiana that had more than 50 percent damage due to Hurricane Katrina — under this bill in section 201, when people are rebuilding those 120,000 homes, they would have to follow the federal building code, and in many cases that would mean they can’t use the same types of strength that they might want to use in their windows. They might want to use stronger windows because they don’t want the storm to blow out their windows. But under this bill, a federal standard could say their windows are out of the federal code.

Global warming likely significantly intensified the devastating power of Hurricane Katrina. As the state of Louisana itself has explained, “Coastal Lousiana is more vulnerable to the effects of global climate change than any other region in the United States. Its low elevation, high rate of subsidence and rapid loss of wetlands expose this area to the worst consequences of climatic change — a rising Gulf, possibly stronger storms, unpredictable rainfall and warmer weather.”

Full transcript: More »« Less

Global Boiling: Storms And Floods Bring States Of Emergency In Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, And West Virginia

Even as polluter-powered politicians have been obstructing climate legislation, the United States has been suffering devastating climate disasters, fueled by global warming. Deadly storms swept across the nation’s heartland last week, killing eight with high winds and flash floods, destroying and damaging thousands of homes, and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers.

Floods caused by a rapid spring thaw in Alaska have destroyed an entire village and forced evacuations along the length of the Yukon River. Wildfires are burning in drought-ravaged California and Florida. The governors of Alaska, Missouri, West Virginia, Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas have declared states of emergency or made disaster declarations for their ravaged states. The National Guard is being deployed in Alaska, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

ALABAMA

A tornado caused damage across two counties in north Alabama last Wednesday, causing “a path of destruction nearly 11 miles long that was up to 75 yards wide in places.”

ALASKA

A record flood of the Yukon River caused by an unusually warm spring thaw “totally destroyed” the village of Eagle. Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) declared a state of emergency on May 6. The “Weather Service still had flooding warnings in place for Stevens Village, Rampart, Tanana and Ruby as of yesterday afternoon.” Alaska Guard personnel “are being dispatched for at least 14 days with trucks carrying clean, potable water for residents in need.”

ARKANSAS

Governor Mike Beebe (D-AR) “has declared 32 Arkansas counties disaster areas from heavy rains and flooding that have hit the state over the past two weeks.” from heavy rains and flooding. Beebe’s declaration “also authorizes $200,000 in individual assistance from the Governor’s Disaster Fund for flood victims in Clark, Dallas, Jefferson, Garland, Lonoke, Miller, Monroe, Phillips, Poinsett and Saline counties.”

CALIFORNIA

30,000 people were ordered to flee a raging Santa Barbara fire that consumed 8,700 acres, “destroyed 78 homes and damaged 22 others.” Costs totaled “more than $12.2 million.” “Global warming and other factors have led to longer fire seasons that now stretch well beyond mid-May to November.”

FLORIDA

“This year alone Florida has already had more than 2,000 wildfires that burned about 56,000 acres.” “A Martin County sheriff’s deputy was injured as wildfires burned more than 1,400 acres near Indiantown, Fla., emergency officials said.”

ILLINOIS

68,000 customers of Ameren Corp. lost power in Friday’s storm in southern Illinois. Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL) designated six southern Illinois counties “state disaster areas after last week’s deadly storms.” “Eighty-seven-year-old George Arbeiter died after a limb crashed onto his Murphysboro home and hit him on the back of his head, sending him down a flight of stairs.”

KENTUCKY

Gov. Steve Beshear (D-KY) declared an emergency in central and southeastern sections of his state Saturday. On Friday, a tornado killed two people and damaged dozens of homes and structures in the Kirksville community of Richmond in Madison County. “42-year-old Glenda Charbonnel and 35-year old Mike Yarber, died when the trailer they were in was blown into a pond.” A Gilbert firefighter “had a heart attack while providing aid to flood victims.” “More than 100 Kentucky Guard members are helping more than 10,000 citizens left without power” in seven counties.

MISSISSIPPI

“Homes and businesses in 18 counties received damage from the weekend severe weather that brought strong winds, heavy rains and flash flood warnings to much of the state,” including “about 48 homes and a dozen businesses” in Adams County.

MISSOURI

Friday’s “severe storms across southern Missouri” prompted Governor Jay Nixon (D-MO) to declare a state of emergency. “Four deaths and 12 injuries” are blamed on the storm. “Ted Agee, 61, of rural Dallas County was killed when his house was destroyed by high winds. Two other deaths happened in Poplar Bluff, when a tree fell on a car.” 150,000 utility customers lost power.

NORTH CAROLINA

Some “50,000 North Carolina residents were without power Sunday” as crews cleaned up after quick-moving thunderstorms blew through the region. “Straight-line winds as strong as 125 mph snapped trees from Scotland County to Columbus County. Damage appeared heaviest in Robeson County, where at least two homes were destroyed and seven others were damaged ” The extent of the damage “was similar to an EF-2 tornado and winds of a Category 3 hurricane.” A tornado that hit Johnston County last Tuesday “destroyed one home and damaged 18 others,” leaving behind about $1.65 million in damage.

WEST VIRGINIA

“Heavy rain and flooding Friday and Saturday” prompted Gov. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) “to declare a state of emergency in six West Virginia counties and to call up 330 members of the National Guard.” Guard members of the 111th Engineering Brigade “are helping in two of those counties — Mingo and Wyoming – where a steady rainfall combined with a recent thunderstorm has caused mudslides and flooded homes and roads,” destroying at least 300 buildings. Nearly 10,000 Appalachian Power customers in southern West Virginia were without electric service Saturday.

Byron Dorgan Tells His Flood-Ravaged State That A Repowered America Is ‘Not Going To Happen’

Even though his state is still rebuilding from unprecedented floods, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is committed to coal and wary of fighting climate change. Dorgan told the North Dakota Senate that he was concerned that the market created by capping global warming pollution could be open to manipulation:

I’m not very interested with having a bunch of folks with a bunch of money get their mitts on trading credits, and have our future and our destiny tied to their interests. I feel very strongly there’s something going on with our climate. We need to be attentive to it, we need to deal with it, but as we do, we have to be smart.

It’s legitimate to have a concern about the regulatory structure of a carbon market, about one-tenth the size of the fossil-fuel commodity markets, and Sen. Dorgan has the expertise to design the legislation. But he seems to be letting a policy detail obscure the real issue — that global warming pollution is completely unregulated, allowing corporate polluters to make astronomical profits while destroying the atmosphere.

This carbon loophole has allowed pollution giants like Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Peabody Coal, and Massey Energy to ravage the planet, sicken our children, and rake in obscene profits for decades. Now, as North Dakota reels from its third extreme flood in as many years, scientists are warning that the climate crisis is outstripping their projections.

Yet Dorgan seems to be confusing political “reality” with actual reality, when he summarily dismissed Vice President Al Gore’s “Repower America” call that “the nation should rely solely on renewable fuels by 2020″:

Not going to happen. Not even close. We need to continue to use our most abundant resource, but to be able to do that, we have to be able to unlock the technology … to decarbonize coal, and we’re going to do that.

Again, Dorgan is missing the forest for the trees. Dorgan is strikingly pessimistic that America can free itself of fossil fuel dependence, even though the sun, wind, and human ingenuity are much more “abundant” resources than coal. Yet he willing to guarantee the success of experimental carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal-fired power plants Of course, a $300 million loan to a North Dakota coal plant for CCS development may help it along. If Dorgan truly wants CCS to happen, he should recognize that the most important thing the government can do is to create a market for clean energy by passing strong cap-and-trade legislation as soon as possible. Unfortunately, his voting record reveals he puts GOP filibusters of clean energy legislation above the security and health of the United States.

The Environmental Inverted Pyramid, Corrected

538.com’s Nate Silver noted that a recent survey from the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication “reveals part of the problem that advocates of more aggressive measures to curb climate change may be encountering as they seek to push forward initiatives like cap-and-trade”:

The survey, conducted by George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, reveals that Americans are concerned about global warming in the abstract — but perhaps only in the abstract. Just 32 percent of Americans think global warming will harm them “a great deal” or a “a moderate amount” personally. The further we get out from the individual, however, the more impactful people think climate change will tend to be: more impactful on their families than themselves; more impactful on their communities than their families; more impactful on their country than their communities; more impactful than other counties than on the United States; more impactful on future generations than the present one, and finally, more impactful on plants and animals than on humans.

Although Silver’s observation that “advocates of cap-and-trade may need to find ways to personalize the terms of the debate” is quite accurate, his post is accompanied by a misleading infographic. The poll results are presented as an “inverted pyramid,” with global warming impacts affecting “You” just a tiny nub.

538.com’s “Environmental Inverted Pyramid” does not accurately portray the results of the George Mason survey.
538.com’s “Environmental Inverted Pyramid“	Climate Change In The American Mind’s results about perceptions of harm.

When the data is proportionately displayed, the inverted pyramid still exists, but does not as impressively support Silver’s argument that Americans are concerned “only in the abstract”:

Of course, the essential matter is that the American public’s perception of the threat of climate change, after decades of deliberate disinformation from corporate polluters, is disconnected from reality. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency related in its greenhouse gas endangerment finding this month, the harm from global warming is real and already with us, here in the United States:

The Administrator concludes that, in the circumstances presented here, the case for finding that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endanger public health and welfare is compelling and, indeed, overwhelming. The scientific evidence described here is the product of decades of research by thousands of scientists from the U.S. and around the world. The evidence points ineluctably to the conclusion that climate change is upon us as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, that climatic changes are already occurring that harm our health and welfare, and that the effects will only worsen over time in the absence of regulatory action. The effects of climate change on public health include sickness and death. It is hard to imagine any understanding of public health that would exclude these consequences. The effects on welfare embrace every category of effect described in the Clean Air Act’s definition of “welfare” and, more broadly, virtually every facet of the living world around us.

Top Obama Officials To Testify Next Week On Behalf Of Clean Energy Legislation

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), chair of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, announced that top Obama officials will testify next week on the immediate need for clean energy legislation. Speaking at an event on building a clean energy economy hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rep. Markey said that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson will testify in hearings on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, beginning on Tuesday, April 21.

John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told attendees that “significant harm to human well-being is already occurring” from global warming — including agricultural impacts from monsoon changes in China, greater floods “on practically every continent,” increased drought and soil drying, increased wildfires, worse air pollution and heat stress, and timber losses from Alaska to Colorado due to pest explosion — and “worse is yet to come.”

The MIT event is being webcast live.

Thoughts On An Easter Morning

I’ve been blogging for the ThinkProgress Wonk Room for a little more than a year now. This weekend — one in which both the Christian and Jewish faiths contemplate the miracle of life and renewal — has provided me an opportunity to step back from the daily onslaught of political strife and think about why I continue to fight.

To deal with global warming progressively requires commitment to progressive values: fairness, opportunity, and honesty. Fairness means that those who have benefited the most from our pollution-based economy bear the greatest responsibility in building a clean energy economy. Opportunity means giving those who have benefited the least hope for a better tomorrow. Honesty means bridging the divide between political reality and actual reality.

In reality, moving to a green economy is necessary to save the planet.

The window for directing this nation on a sustainable path is rapidly closing. The disintegration of the global thermostat –- the Arctic ice cap, the world’s glaciers, the Antarctic ice shelves –- is accelerating. Wide swaths of the world, from Australia to Texas, are in droughts that may be the beginning of permanent desertification. Sea level rise is accelerating. The acidifying oceans are absorbing less carbon dioxide. Increasingly powerful forest fires not only destroy ecosystems but emit stored carbon. Even if global pollution goes down tomorrow, weather disasters, heat waves, hurricanes, floods, the oceans themselves will continue to rise for decades. Global boiling is destroying Tuvalu and the polar bear — and it’s also already struck New Orleans and Cedar Rapids.

Weather disasters are the al Qaeda of climate change. The September 11th attacks cost this nation $80 billion and thousands of lives. This nation woke up to the threat of international terrorism, fueled in part by the global dependence on Middle East oil. Hurricane Katrina cost this nation $80 billion and thousands of lives (and displaced a million). We haven’t woken up.

Building a green economy takes a trillion-dollar shift in resources that has the potential to radically reform the power structure in the United States. A green economy involves moving from capital-intensive energy to labor-intensive energy — instead of McMansions heated by giant power plants financed by the Bank of America, it’s homes greened by insulators and solar panel installers, linked on a smart grid. By making work pay instead of pollution, the economy will thrive but established interests will be forced to change.

Like health care and labor reform, limiting carbon pollution threatens the corrupt business model of the corporate right. So there are 2000 full-time corporate lobbyists, and multimillion-dollar campaigns — run by ACCCE (coal interests), ASWF (right-wing financiers), AFP (pollution industry), COC (corporate right), and NAM (heavy industry) — with one message: we can’t afford change.

In reality, they’re the only ones who can afford the status quo — energy costs and polluter profits rising, oil drilling and oil dependence rising, greenhouse emissions and climate disasters rising, poverty and inequity rising, wages and jobs and health declining.

So for those who fear that we can’t afford change, yes we can. And we must.

Climate Equity Alliance Establishes Principles For Green Economic Reform »

As corporate lobbyists and conservative politicians strive to maintain a pollution-based economy, a new progressive alliance has formed to fight back. The Climate Equity Alliance is calling for policies to ensure that energy legislation reaches President Obama’s desk benefiting people instead of polluters. The green economy legislation introduced in draft form by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) — sets national standards for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and global warming pollution — but leaves open whether polluters will be subsidized to achieve those standards.

Today, more than two dozen organizations from the research, advocacy, faith-based, labor and civil rights communities came together as the Climate Equity Alliance. Alliance members include the Center for American Progress, Green for All, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Service Employees International Union. Their principles recognize that clean energy legislation needs to be sustainable, honest, and fair:

– Protect people and the planet: Limit carbon emissions at a level and timeline that science dictates.

– Maximize the gain: Build an inclusive green economy providing pathways into prosperity and expanding opportunity for America’s workers and communities.

– Minimize the pain: Assist low and moderate income families in meeting their basic needs.

– Shore up resilience to climate impacts: Assure that those who are most vulnerable to the direct effects of climate change are able to prepare and adapt.

– Ease the transition: Address the impacts of economic change for workers and communities.

– Put a price on global warming pollution and invest in solutions: Capture the value of carbon emissions for public purposes and invest this resource in an equitable transition to a clean energy economy.

The Climate Equity Alliance’s recognition that attention needs to be paid to global boiling impacts is critical, as every state in the nation already suffers from major climate-related costs — costs which will continue to rise as the planet heats up. The full list of members is below.

The alliance specifically calls for “public and private investments that help rebuild and retrofit our nation,” “training and job readiness programs,” “direct consumer rebates” to low- and moderate-income households, “assistance and tools” for workers in carbon-intense industries, and the use of carbon price revenues to invest in the public good, instead of “windfall profits for corporations.” More »« Less

Report: Global Boiling Places California’s Economy At Great Risk

Written by Kalen Pruss, intern with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress and a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in environmental studies and history, and Brad Johnson.

Our pollution-based economy threatens California with tens of billions of dollars in global boiling damages a year, a new report has found. To block plans for a clean energy economy, opponents are lying about the costs of change, but they — and the mainstream media — typically ignore the tremendous costs of inaction. A draft report by the California Climate Action Team (CAT) consolidates dozens of scientific research papers in a groundbreaking attempt to gauge the economic risks of unmitigated climate change. The biennial report argues for aggressive and immediate action for a green recovery, concluding that “any delay” in changing the status quo puts California’s “economic stability” at risk.

The Climate Action Team found that California is even more vulnerable to global warming harms than previously thought. Greenhouse gas emissions are currently outstripping 2006 projections, exacerbating the already significant costs created from climate change. Linda Adams, Secretary for Environmental Protection and Chair of the state’s CAT, concluded that “any delay in fighting global warming” puts her state’s economy in danger:

Any delay in fighting global warming would be detrimental to our economic stability — costing us billions of dollars and dampening the state’s most important economic sectors.

The impending costs of damages from inaction include:

– Rising sea levels: Sea levels could rise 11 – 18 inches by 2050, and 23 to 55 inches by 2100, from 2000 levels. The cost of replacing at-risk property could reach $100 billion, while building and maintaining seawalls and levees to protect vulnerable areas would cost $15.4 billion.

– Wild fires: Increased risk of wild fires could total $2 billion per year by mid-century, and up to $14 billion per year by 2100. Forests would burn at twice their current rate by 2085. California spent $1 billion fighting forest fires in 2008.

– Skyrocketing energy demand: Increased use of air conditioning due to higher temperatures would cost an additional $1.6 – $10.2 billion annually by 2100, more than offsetting any reduction in reduced heating costs.

– Diminishing agricultural returns: Water loss would greatly reduce the irrigated crop area in the Central Valley, resulting in declining yields that could cost farmers $3 billion annually by 2050.

– Widespread drought: Southern California could become up to 15% drier, and urban water scarcity could cost up to $427 million annually by 2085.

It is still possible to avert disaster. The report concluded that “climate change will impose substantial costs to Californians in the order of tens of billions of dollars annually, but that costs will be substantially lower if global emissions are curtailed” to a low-emissions scenario. The corporate beneficiaries of the status-quo pollution economy and their conservative allies are falsifying and exaggerating the cost of change. Their economic fearmongering would in reality saddle Americans with billions of dollars in global boiling damages.

Download the Climate Action Team draft report.