The Wonk Room

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.

George Will’s Latest Denier Column Links To Global Boiling Document

A day late for an April fool’s joke, George Will returned Thursday to Fred Hiatt’s editorial pages at the Washington Post to attack climate science and lightbulbs. He repeats a variant of his lie about the U.N. World Meteorological Organization’s temperature record, writing that “according to statistics published by the World Meteorological Organization [WMO], there has not been a warmer year on record than 1998.”

In a marked improvement from his previous lie-filled columns, this misleading claim now includes a link to the WMO’s latest publication about the status of global climate (2007), which states:

– The size of the uncertainties is such that the global average temperature for 2007 is statistically indistinguishable from each of the nine warmest years on record.

— January 2007 was the warmest January since global surface records were instituted.

– The linear warming trend over the past 50 years (0.13°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the past 100 years.

– Global averaged sea level continued to rise through 2006 and 2007.

– At the end of the melt season, the Arctic sea ice extent was 39 per cent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000 and 23 per cent below the previous record set in 2005.

– Since 1960, the thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of glaciers and ice caps are the largest contributions to sea-level rise. There has also been an increasing contribution from surface melt from the Greenland ice sheet over this period. These contributions are directly related to recent climate change.

Furthermore, the WMO recorded the “record-breaking temperature anomalies throughout the world,” “severe to extreme drought,” “extreme flooding,” a “new worldwide record rainfall,” and “unusual sea-surface temperature patterns”:

Significant climate anomalies and events in 2007. Click to enlarge. Chart: WMO. Data: NOAA.

While the Washington Post takes right-wing oil money to syndicate George Will’s lies in carbon-based newsprint across the nation, the World Wide Web has responded.

This column, Media Matters notes, comes less than two weeks after Fred Hiatt published a letter from the WMO Secretary-General calling Will’s “no recorded global warming for more than a decade” claim “a misrepresentation of the data and of scientific knowledge.”

“I’m all for newspapers giving their columnists latitude,” Jon Chait opines, “but at some point I wonder if some very basic, low level of factual knowledge ought to be required to propound upon a topic in their pages.”

Turning up the heat, Joe Romm calls for Hiatt to be fired, and Matt Yglesias argues that “anyone working at The Washington Post or in conservative journalism who has a shred of intellectual conscience has a duty to stand up to this kind of nonsense.”

Global Boiling Roulette: The Margin For Error Is Gone

In 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change designed the “Greenhouse Gamble” roulette wheels to depict the “probability of potential global warming over the next hundred years,” based on the latest scientific research. They compared the gamble of warming with and without an international agreement to reduce emissions through programs like the cap and trade system proposed by President Obama. Today, they released updated roulette wheels, reflecting how much worse the gamble has gotten:

The ‘No Policy’ Gamble (2002 v. 2009)
2002	2009
These wheels assume a scenario in which “no policy” action is taken to try to curb the global emissions of greenhouse gases. In the previous wheel the likelihood of exceeding 5°C was about 4%, but in the new wheels that likelihood is 57%. MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, 2009.

The ‘Policy Action’ Gamble (2002 v. 2009)
2002	2009
If greenhouse gas emissions are controlled to relatively low levels then the Earth systems feedbacks are much lower, but there is no longer any possibility of less than 1°C warming. MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, 2009.

The “policy” scenario reflects the establishment of mandatory policies to reduce emissions, such as building standards and cap and trade systems, that limit total carbon dioxide concentrations to 550 parts per million. However, as climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf recently explained, even limiting warming to two degrees Centigrade cannot be considered safe, which is why there is a growing demand for policies that limit CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm.

The new roulette wheels were initially released in February 2009, with a reset color scale that made a direct comparison between the old and new scenarios difficult. The Wonk Room thanks the Global Change Program for taking our suggestion to update the wheels.

Global Boiling: Unprecedented Flooding Of Red River Leaves Fargo ‘On The Brink Of Disaster’

Friday afternoon, the Red River of the North reached unprecedented flood levels in Fargo, North Dakota, twenty-four hours before it is expected to crest. Last night, President Obama added “seven northwest Minnesota counties” to the federal emergency already declared in North Dakota as “Fargo and Moorhead teeter on the brink of disaster” from this “historic flood.” The Red River has been in flood in Fargo since last Saturday. The United States Geological Survey river gage at Fargo — which has continuous flow data since 1902 — recorded new records in both streamflow (28,900 cubic feet per second) and height (40 3/4 feet) at 4:15 PM EST. Enough water is flowing through the Red River right now to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every three seconds, 48 times the normal rate:

STREAMFLOW: 28,900 cfs

FLOOD HEIGHT: 40.73 ft

This is the eighth “ten-year flood” of Fargo since 1989, with streamflow greater than 10,300 cfs. That is to say:

In the last twenty years, Red River floods expected to occur at Fargo only once every ten years have happened every two to three years. 2009 is the third year in a row with at least a “ten-year flood.” In the 90 years before 1990, there were only eight ten-year floods.

ANNUAL PEAK FLOW, RED RIVER OF THE NORTH AT FARGO, ND

The standard for a hundred-year flood of the Red River of the North at Fargo set by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2001 is 29,300 cfs, a discharge rate never yet recorded.

A key consequence of global warming predicted by climate scientists is an increase in overall precipitation as well as extreme precipitation events, leading to increased flooding. As President Obama warned on Monday:

If you look at the flooding that’s going on right now in North Dakota, and you say to yourself, “If you see an increase of 2 degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there,” that indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously.

Inside The Beltway, Political ‘Reality’ Trumps Actual Reality

After it was reported that House Democrats do not intend to include President Obama’s carbon cap legislation in a non-filibusterable budget reconciliation bill, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos called health care “the survivor“:

Cap and trade will not get the same budget protection, and there are nowhere near 60 votes for it. Keeping it out of the reconciliation process recognizes reality: Congress can’t pass it in the middle of a recession.

Delaying climate legislation doesn’t “recognize reality” — it ignores it. As top climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf explained at the Copenhagen Climate Change Congress last week, the observed reality is worse than climate models have been predicting. Even limiting global warming to two degrees Centigrade above historical levels — 1.3 degrees (2.3 F) above current temperatures — isn’t as safe as Russian roulette:

I personally as a climate scientist, I could not honestly go and tell the public that two degrees warming is safe. We’re already seeing a lot of impacts of the 0.7 degrees warming that we’ve had so far. So I consider two degrees not safe. And John Schellnhuber this morning asked about the question “Is Russian roulette dangerous?” and in Russian roulette you have a one in six chance of something terrible happening, I think that when we go to two degrees we probably have more than a one in six chance of really bad impacts occurring.

Watch it:

Jim Manzi, Ross Douthat’s ‘Kick-Ass’ Global Warming Guru Has His Head In The Sand

Ross Douthat, the young conservative taking Bill Kristol’s spot as a New York Times op-ed writer, heralds the climate policy work of Jim Manzi, a software executive who is now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, specializing in “the economics of energy & climate change.” Douthat described Manzi’s 2007 National Review piece “Game Plan” as “one of the smartest right-of-center policy manifestos I’ve read in a long time”:

Everyone should read it: Conservatives will find a sensible blueprint for moving from the denialist fringe to the political mainstream, and liberals will get a taste of how a wised-up, heads-out-of-the-sand Right could kick their ass on the issue.

Manzi’s “wised-up,” “sensible blueprint” boils down to the claim that emissions don’t need to be reduced because the risk of global warming is so uncertain:

Global warming is a real risk, but its impact over the next century could plausibly range from negligible to severe. . . Adaptation should take center stage, as it is by far the most cost-effective means of addressing climate risk. We can reduce the climate impact of carbon that is emitted, often using such simple techniques as planting more trees or using more reflective paint.

To be fair, Manzi wrote this piece in early 2007, before Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report was completed:

Members of the panel said their review of the data led them to conclude as a group and individually that reductions in greenhouse gases had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster, which could leave island states submerged and abandoned, African crop yields down by 50 percent, and cause a 5 percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

Following the IPCC’s grim consensus assessment, new scientific research found that warming oceans are strengthening hurricanes and Arctic sea ice loss predicted by the IPCC to happen by 2050 may instead occur within four or five years, among hundreds of other portents of disaster ahead, including unprecedented floods, droughts, wildfires, and storms across the globe. If Manzi’s head really is “out of the sand,” one might think his policy recommendations would reflect the new evidence. However, Manzi’s plan remains to “just say no” to restricting emissions, explaining that “We can win the cap-and-trade fight” in the December 2008 National Review:

Even if one accepts the scientific and economic projections used by cap-and-trade advocates, the costs of restricting emissions can’t be justified based on the benefits that it is expected to provide. This is why getting drawn into a discussion of how to improve cap-and-trade is a strategic error. The Republican reaction should be to “just say no.”

Douthat may “generate a conservative column that progressives will have reason to read and take seriously,” as our colleague Matt Yglesias argues. He may be “funny and smart and sharp,” as Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal calls him. Perhaps “his writing steers away from partisanship,” as Times writer Richard Perez-Pena claims, despite his authorship of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.” But if Douthat continues to think that Manzi — someone without an academic background in economics, energy, or climate change — is a “kick ass” expert, it will be hard to take him seriously on the issue of global warming.

New Yorker Reporter Elizabeth Kolbert: Global Boiling Inaction Is A ‘Total System Failure’

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, New Yorker reporter Elizabeth Kolbert explains that everyone, from journalists and scientists to politicians and economists, are responsible for the inability of the United States to respond to the threat of climate catastrophe:

This is a total system failure, okay? We’re not talking about an isolated little problem, and that’s the problem. It’s a total system failure that we’re in this situation and it’s a total system failure that we can’t seem to steer away even when the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that we better do something.

Discussing the “terrible heat wave” and “terrible drought” in Australia that has led to hellish wildfires, Kolbert notes:

And it has woken the Australians up pretty quickly, and there’s a lot of coverage on climate change issues if you are reading the Australian media. So unfortunately, I think it does take something that’s very, very palpable, really affecting people’s lives. And as I say, precisely the message that scientists have been trying to give us is, do not wait until that drought hits you, because that’s too late.

California, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin are in moderate to severe drought, with large swathes of Texas in an exceptional, multi-year drought.

Kolbert, the award-winning author of Field Notes From a Catastrophe, makes a special call for “scientists to make their voices heard.” Although she is “not at all optimistic” that we’re going to do what actually needs to be done, she admits she “was one of those people who was pessimistic about Obama, the prospect of electing a black president seemed to be not that plausible, and here we are today. So things do happen that surprise you.”

Wolf Blitzer Parrots Right-Wing Talking Points On Global Warming

Last week on the Situation Room, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer parroted right-wing talking points on global warming. His program emphasized that Monday’s climate crisis protest took place in the cold — a talking point pushed by Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) office and global warming deniers from Glenn Beck to Nancy Pfotenhauer. He then followed the Heritage Foundation’s reasoning to challenge Tony Blair on the urgency of establishing a cap on carbon pollution, asking if it is “wise” to “effectively impose a new tax on consumers” instead of dealing with “bread-and-butter issues”:

At a time of this extraordinary economic distress, not only here in the United States but around the world, why go forward right now as a priority with all of these global warming related projects? It seems there are so many other key bread-and-butter issues literally on the table. … Is it wise to go ahead, effectively impose a new tax on consumers right now, an energy-related tax, this uh, uh cap-and-trade if you will, to try to reduce carbon emissions right now? In effect that’s going to be higher costs on consumers who use either gasoline or other electricity, forms of energy. Is that wise at a time of economic distress?

Watch it:

Blitzer summarized: “You say do it now despite all the economic issues.”

Blitzer is missing a few key facts:

Obama’s Cap-And-Trade System Begins In 2012, Not ‘Right Now.’ Nobody is proposing to “impose a new tax on consumers right now.” Instead, global leaders, including President Obama, are working to negotiate the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2010. The United States needs to have a national climate policy as soon as possible in order to lead these negotiations. Instead of taking action to lead the international community to stop global warming, the Bush administration obstructed efforts. The seeming rush to action is a consequence of these lost years. [WRI, 2002; Platts 2/24/2009]

An Emissions Cap Drives Investment In A Clean Economy. As McKinsey & Company has found, putting a cap on carbon emissions corrects market failures by driving investment into efficiency and fuel economy improvements that actually saves everyone money. Then it spurs investment into the expansion of renewable energy, creating new jobs and a competitive advantage in the international marketplace. Economic analyses of the effect of an increasingly stringent cap, applied over decades, find that the economic impact of the transition to a clean economy is dwarfed by the high volatility of fossil fuel prices. [McKinsey & Co., 11/2007; EDF, 3/11/2008; NRDC 1/28/2009]

Global Warming Is A ‘Key Bread-And-Butter Issue’ That ‘Effectively Imposes’ A Tax On The Most Vulnerable. Global warming is only one of the most serious symptoms of our fossil-based economy, which benefits polluters at the expense of everyone else. Hundreds of billions of dollars flow out of the U.S. economy to oil suppliers; inner-city children suffer from asthma and communities in Appalachia are decimated by the coal industry. And deadly weather like Hurricane Katrina, Iowa’s floods, California’s wildfires, and Texas drought are becoming the new normal. Limiting carbon pollution is key to preserving prosperity today and for future generations. [U.S. Climate Change Science Program, 2008; Tufts University, 4/2008; MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change, 2009]

Cap And Trade Is Only ‘A New Tax’ If Polluters Pass On The Costs. A cap on emissions only raises costs for those energy producers who can’t find money-saving investments in efficiency and conservation. With the recovery act, Obama has already initiated major federal incentive programs for efficiency and clean energy that subsidize those investments. Obama plans to invest $15 billion a year from the cap-and-trade program to further drive clean energy investment and benefit the power industry. Only if polluters pass on additional costs to consumers — instead of, for example, taking executive pay cuts — will a cap-and-trade system “effectively impose a new tax on consumers.” [Barack Obama, 8/3/2008; Center for American Progress, 1/21/2008]

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has explained that a properly designed cap-and-trade system tackles global warming, spurs a clean-energy economy, and insulates working Americans from both energy price volatility and costs passed on to them from industrial polluters:

Auctioning the emissions allowances under a cap-and-trade system would generate more than enough revenue to pay for this consumer relief. Less than 60 percent of the auction revenues would be sufficient to provide relief to a substantial majority of U.S. consumers.

President Obama has proposed to return more than 80 percent of the auction revenues to provide relief to U.S. consumers through a tax cut to make work pay, not pollution.

On Day Of Youth Climate Protest, Extreme Weather Grips Nation

Today, thousands of youth activists participating in Power Shift ‘09 are descending on the U.S. Capitol to demand Congress take action to fight climate change. While students from South Dakota to North Carolina lobby their elected officials, others will be engaging in mass civil disobedience to protest the United States’ continued use of coal.

They will be in the halls of Congress and surrounding the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant despite a wicked snowstorm that is ensnarling the East Coast — or, in many ways, because of it. In a basic sense, what these activists are trying to do is save our weather, growing out of control.

As predicted by models of climate change, the South and West is increasingly gripped by extreme storms and extreme drought: California is in its third consecutive year of drought conditions and now in a state of emergency. Drought conditions in Oklahoma are “terrible.” Despite the triple storms of Dolly, Gustav and Ike in 2008, nearly 97 percent of Texas is in drought — already this year, “about 3,400 wildfires have been reported across the state, scorching nearly 105,000 acres.”

The youth activists are trying to keep it snowing in the Northeast, raining in Texas, cold in the Rockies, and sunny in Florida. They’re trying to prevent California from burning up, Iowa from being flooded out, and Alaska from melting away. They’re trying to get our elected leaders to take action to put an end to the destabilization of our climate. Droughts are increasing. Hurricanes are stronger. Floods and storms are more intense. And it will only get worse.