The Wonk Room

Jon Stewart Joins Critics: The Science Of SuperFreakonomics Is ‘Not Good’

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart has joined the critics who found that SuperFreakonomics got climate science wrong. When economist Steven Levitt came on the show to promote the book on October 27th, Stewart defended his work, wondering if critics were just part of a “secular religion.” Levitt had portrayed former Vice President Al Gore as the “patron saint” of the “religion” of global warming, who has chilled investigation into “cheap and simple” solutions because of his “moralism and angst.” However, two days later, Stewart interviewed Gore to discuss his own new book, Our Choice. In the mean time, Stewart belatedly did some reading up on this fundamental issue, and found that the “science was, according to actual people who know climate science, not good”:

We had on a guy on the show, Steve Levitt — Freakonomics — whose science was, according to actual people who know climate science, not good, but it seemed like the tone of the book was, “Why don’t we just think about these other things?” People came at him hard.

Watch it (Stewart mentions SuperFreakonomics at 4:20):

Levitt and Dubner have now admitted, begrudgingly, that they misportrayed climate scientist Ken Caldeira’s own views about his research. To be more precise, they have announced they will change the sentence that claimed Caldeira believes carbon dioxide “is not the right villain in this fight” to omit Caldeira’s name. Despite this one welcome change, the book continues to be a farrago of errors, personal attacks, and unfounded conclusions.

Stewart, however, continues to not understand why the book came under such withering criticism. In his interviews that touch upon global warming — with EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, global warming denier Chris Horner, journalist Bob Woodruff — Stewart has consistently acted bemused, which is often a good interview technique. But it also seems that Stewart’s bafflement is genuine, failing to understand that billions of dollars have been spent by polluters and their political allies for decades to distort the clear need for decisive action. He does not seem to know that greenhouse gases are already reshaping the world we live in, destroying ecosystems and economies.

At least Stewart is just a comic. Our nation’s journalists have no such excuse.

The ‘Party Of No’ Becomes The ‘Party Of Slow’ »

Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and energy team interns Jaren Love and Michael McGovern.

Senate Republicans are demanding lengthy economic analyses of progressive clean energy policy, despite having spent careers voting for and against major energy legislation without such delay. This week the Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted its debate on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of the economic impacts was not sufficiently thorough. Before they launched their boycott, committee ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) demanded a “full analysis” that satisfied their particular requirements:

As we’ve noted in previous letters and requests, getting a thorough, comprehensive economic analysis of the Kerry-Boxer bill is an essential component of a meaningful legislative process. To accomplish that, EPA needs to do a series of model runs examining key provisions in the bill, with a number of sensitivity analyses on critical issues, including, among others, the availability of offsets, potential growth in nuclear power, and the extent of emissions reductions by developing countries. Anything less than a full analysis of this kind will be unacceptable.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chair of the Senate Republican Conference, piled on: “We want to participate in any clean energy bill, but we’re not willing to do that until we know what it costs.”

“It undermines the credibility of the process,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). “It’s not constructive to the process to proceed without knowing what it costs.”

On Monday, senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) joined Inhofe to demand a “complete and substantive analysis of any bill that attempts to address this issue” and “complete data and a thorough vetting” before the EPW Committee took action.

Yesterday, senators Gregg, Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter to the EPA saying, “We cannot support legislation” without “a clear picture of the bill’s impacts on our economy,” saying the EPA analysis needs to be completed “prior to any action in EPW.”

Their arguments fall flat, however, because these and other senators routinely voted on energy and global warming bills without any analysis. Since 2001, the Senate has debated at least eight energy or global warming bills where there was no analysis by EPA, Congressional Budget Office or the Energy Information Administration completed in advance of Committee deliberations. In several cases, there was no full analysis before the bill was voted on by the entire Senate: More »« Less

Lindsey Graham Rebukes Fellow Republicans: ‘The Green Economy Is Coming’ »

While other Senate Republicans led by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) boycott action on the climate crisis, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has chosen a leadership role. In a press conference today with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the author of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Graham rebuked Republicans unwilling to address carbon pollution, asking, “If you can’t participate in solving a hard problem, why are you up here?” Saying that he has “seen the effects of a warming planet,” Graham called for the United States to “lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution”:

The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money.

Watch it:

Graham’s words recall the testimony of former Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and White House official Van Jones, who told Congress in January, “We can build a green economy Dr. King would be proud of.” Van Jones, the founder of Green for All, left the White House after talk show host Glenn Beck targeted him as an “avowed communist and radical activist.” Beck has warned that efforts to build a green economy are “socialism,” “black nationalism,” and “fascism.”

Sen. Kerry announced that the three senators would work in a “dual track” to the committee process now underway to craft clean energy legislation in concert with the White House, which they hope to present directly to the Senate leadership. The senators conducted the press conference in between meetings with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and White House climate advisor Carol Browner.

Graham also discussed how Americans of any party “really feel uncomfortable with the fact that our nation sends a billion dollars a day overseas to buy foreign oil from some countries who don’t like us very much,” saying that part of “this initiative is to create a vision for energy independence and marry it up with a responsible climate control carbon pollution controls and create a new economy.”

Graham emphasized that his vision is to “help this planet” that “is in peril, create millions of new jobs for Americans that need them, and to become energy independent to make us safer,” because he believes that “controlling carbon pollution is good business.” Although he hoped for participation from his fellow Republicans, he said, “If you believe carbon pollution is not a problem, then you wouldn’t want to work with me, because I do.”

Transcript: More »« Less

In Reversal, Boxer Sharply Curbs Clean Air Act Regulation Of Greenhouse Gases »

In a major shift, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has changed the Clean Energy Jobs Act to significantly restrict the use of existing Clean Air Act provisions to regulate greenhouse gases. Unlike the climate bill passed by the House in June, the initial version of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, released by lead sponsor Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Boxer last month, did not strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s existing authority. The new language excludes global warming pollution from several sections of the Clean Air Act, limiting its regulation to operating permits for stationary sources emitting over “25,000 tons per year of any greenhouse gas”:

Notwithstanding any provision of this title or title III, no stationary source shall be required to apply for, or operate pursuant to, a permit under this title solely because the stationary source, including an agricultural source, emits less than 25,000 tons per year of any greenhouse gas or combination of greenhouse gases that are regulated solely because of the effect of those gases on climate change.

The 25,000 ton standard reflects the EPA’s plan for starting global warming regulation under a “tailoring rule” limited to the few thousand stationary sources of more than that amount of carbon dioxide a year — in large part coal-fired power plants. However, Boxer’s text is poorly written, as many greenhouse gases are thousands of times more powerful global warming pollutants than carbon dioxide.

The new text — like that of the House bill — completely forbids the regulation of greenhouse gases under the criteria pollutant, hazardous air pollutant, and international air pollution sections of the Clean Air Act.

Although several progressive and environmental organizations have made the preservation of existing Clean Air Act authority in the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act a key demand, Democratic members of the Committee on Environment and Public Works — which is now beginning to mark up the legislation — are split on this issue. Committee members Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are signatories, with Chris Dodd (D-CT), of a dear colleague letter in favor of allowing greenhouse gas regulation as a pollutant circulated by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). However, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) had questioned the provision, and influential member Max Baucus (D-MT), the Finance Committee chair, strongly opposes EPA regulation.

Organizations that have called on the Senate to “save the Clean Air Act” include Friends of the Earth, 1Sky, and MoveOn, supported by youth and other grassroots activists.

Other changes to the original version of the legislation reflect industry-friendly demands from Democrats on the committee. They include: increasing free allowances to major oil refineries, putting the Secretary of Agriculture in charge of the agriculture offset program, and making owners of abandoned mountaintop removal sites (”private or public abandoned mine land”) eligible for “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Incentives.”

The chairman’s mark also adds some provisions which strengthen the bill: Rep. Doris Matsui’s (D-CA) tree-planting program language, incentives for rapid renewable energy deployment, and a program to reduce black carbon emissions from diesel.

Text in chairman’s mark of Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act restricting Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gases: More »« Less

CNBC Exposes Hypocrisy Of Ben Nelson’s ‘Prairie Populism’

Last Friday on CNBC, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) bashed clean energy reform as a scheme to raise electricity costs and prop up Wall Street. Nelson reaffirmed his opposition to the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, legislation supported by President Obama which would establish a regulated market to cap carbon pollution. In a taped interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, the conservative Democrat argued that President Obama’s climate agenda would be costly to farmers, ranchers, store owners, manufacturers, and anyone who uses electricity:

I haven’t been able to sell that argument to my farmers and I don’t think they’re going to buy it from anybody else. I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home are going to be disadvantaged. As you turn on the lights, the lights, the electricity is going to cost more. Store owners, the same thing. Manufacturers, the same thing. I don’t think that the farmers or the ranchers necessarily buy the argument that it’s all going to be offset. And I don’t know why we want to create a system that sustains Wall Street once again .

Watch it:

In reality, the legislation makes multi-billion-dollar investment in clean energy jobs (including Nebraska) and scales back the pollution that threatens American agriculture, all at a cost of a postage stamp a day.

Nelson’s “prairie populism” doesn’t extend to his opposition to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “I don’t see creating a new agency is necessary,” he told Harwood, unless it is “scaled back or put in some other format.” When Harwood noted that Nelson is “with Wall Street on that,” Nelson offered the feeble reply, “Not for the same reason.”

Strangely, Nelson’s opposition to the president’s reform agenda precisely follows the interests of his top corporate donors. This year alone, Nelson has received $553,300 from agribusiness, $164,200 from oil and gas interests, and $140,199 from electric utilities. Nelson has even taken $31,500 from the virulently right-wing Koch Industries, the private pollution giant that has mobilized tea party opposition to climate and health care legislation. Berkshire Hathaway, whose subsidiary MidAmerican Energy is one of the nation’s largest coal-powered utilities, opposes climate legislation and has given Nelson $51,800. Coal-hauling Union Pacific is Nelson’s number-three contributor at $49,750.

When it comes to financial regulation, the story looks the same. Nelson has received $1,343,060 from Wall Street interests, from banks to insurers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In another remarkable coincidence, Nelson’s attacks on climate and financial reform are identical to those being offered by the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber’s head, Tom Donohue, sits on the board of Union Pacific, for which he has received approximately $5 million in compensation.

‘Academic Malpractice’: Fellow U Of C Professor Calls Steve Levitt Out For ‘Laziness And Sloppiness’

University of Chicago professor Pierre Rayhumbert

Adding his voice to a chorus of criticism, a University of Chicago climate scientist finds his colleague, economist Steven Levitt, guilty of “academic malpractice” in SuperFreakonomics. Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, the Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences, responded to one of the many scientifically illiterate assertions into the book, that “the problem with solar cells is that they’re black” — so that the heat reradiated from the cells “contributes to global warming.” As Pierrehumbert explains in detail in the RealClimate science blog, the albedo debt of solar cells is minimal compared to the amount of warming from burning fossil fuels to produce a comparable amount of electricity:

The point here is that really simple arithmetic, which you could not be bothered to do, would have been enough to tell you that the claim that the blackness of solar cells makes solar energy pointless is complete and utter nonsense. I don’t think you would have accepted such laziness and sloppiness in a term paper from one of your students, so why do you accept it from yourself? What does the failure to do such basic thinking with numbers say about the extent to which anything you write can be trusted? How do you think it reflects on the profession of economics when a member of that profession — somebody who that profession seems to esteem highly — publicly and noisily shows that he cannot be bothered to do simple arithmetic and elementary background reading? Not even for a subject of such paramount importance as global warming.

“And it’s not as if the ‘black solar cell’ gaffe was the only bit of academic malpractice in your book,” Pierrehumbert continues, citing Levitt’s false portrayal of geoengineered stratospheric cooling as a “a harmless and cheap quick fix for global warming.” Pierrehumbert recommends Levitt walk five blocks for some “friendly help next time”:

May I suggest that if you should happen to need some friendly help next time you take on the topic of climate change, or would like to have a chat about why aerosol geoengineering might not be a cure-all, or just need a critical but informed opponent to bounce ideas off of, you don’t have to go very far. For example…

But given the way Superfreakonomics mangled Ken Caldeira’s rather nuanced views on geoengineering, let’s keep it off the record, eh?

Inhofe Orchestrates Shameless Boycott Of Clean Energy Jobs Act »

Our guest blogger is Josh Nelson, publisher of EnviroKnow.com.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, sponsored by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for this week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-OK) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Late Friday, Inhofe spokesman Matt Dempsey announced “Republicans will be forced not to show up” at the markup hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation:

– As Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) shepherded his American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) through the House Energy and Commerce Committee this June, committee ranking member Joe Barton (R-TX) employed multiple parliamentary tricks to “nitpick the bill into legislative oblivion.” Democrats responded to these “nefarious stall tactics” by calling Barton’s bluff, even hiring a speed reader.

– House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) filibustered the final vote on the ACES Act for hours by reading the text of the bill on the House floor.

– Last year during the debate over the Climate Security Act, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) demanded that the entire 491 page bill be read on the floor of the United States Senate. A strategy memo was leaked at the time detailing the Republican strategy for delaying the bill as much as humanly possible.

While this Republican obstructionism is not necessarily surprising, it is especially egregious this time. Here are a few things about this episode that struck me: More »« Less

The Western ‘Lords Of Yesterday’ Attack Climate Change Response

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

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Glenn Beck deny global warming.

In his book “Crossing the Next Meridian,” University of Colorado law professor Charles F. Wilkinson called the timber, mining, grazing and water development interests who for too long dictated how our western public lands should be managed the “lords of yesterday.”

Western lawmakers with their politics still stuck in a 19th-century time warp continue to do the bidding of the lords of yesterday, who now include big energy interests. Witness the letter 16 House and Senate Republicans sent to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar protesting his secretarial order creating a Climate Change Response Council that is designed to coordinate efforts among Interior agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cope with the impacts of climate change. The new council, the lawmakers said, represents an end-run around Congress and could be used to stifle oil and gas development and other activities on western lands on behalf of “special interest groups with narrow agendas”:

Businesses in the West are worried about potential court challenges and administrative action. These new rules will allow special interest groups with narrow agendas to block all existing and future activities on federal lands in the name of climate change.

Of course, the “special interest groups” these politicians attack are the Western people, with the “narrow agendas” of preserving their land and way of life against the ravages of uncontrolled development and runaway global warming.

Leading the charge in this effort to ignore the new realities of a changing climate is Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), one of the Senate’s leading opponents of legislation to regulate carbon pollution. Barrasso represents Wyoming, the nation’s top coal producer, and is the chair of the recently formed Senate Western Caucus, a latter-day reincarnation of the 1970s “Sage Brush Rebellion” that fought federal oversight of Western lands, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Barrasso has previously temporarily blocked the Obama administration’s choice to head the air office at the EPA, fought the establishment of a CIA climate change center, and accused the EPA of “silencing” a dissenting voice to its finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health.

Salazar, whose department oversees public lands comprising about one-fifth of the U.S., most of it in the West, issued his order on climate change planning in mid-September. It sets up a council made up of senior officials to coordinate the department’s response to climate change, and establishes eight regional climate change response centers and a network of conservation cooperatives to work with states, localities and the public in developing strategies to cope with global warming impacts.

Barrasso and his co-signers see this as a conspiracy to get through administrative fiat what the Obama administration may not be able to get through climate legislation. “These regulations will hit the Western United States the hardest,” they charge in their letter. “Westerners will suffer from higher energy and fuel costs or simply be put out of work.”

If Barrasso et al. are genuinely worried about the western U.S. being hard hit, they should take a closer look at what climate change is already doing to the region. In the state of Wyoming alone, a mountain pine beetle epidemic spurred by climate change had claimed 1.2 million acres of forest by the end of 2008, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Elsewhere in the West, declining snowpack and earlier spring runoff will mean the Colorado River, the lifeblood for some 25 million Westerners, will be unable to meet demand as much as 90 percent of the time by mid-century, according to a recent study.

What Not To Name Your Geoengineering Project: Ice-Nine-One-One

Thanks to the “academic malpractice” of SuperFreakonomics on the one hand and rising scientific concern that radical measures will have to be taken within decades to preserve human civilization on the other, talk about geoengineering to combat global warming is on the rise. One such project is Ice911, an unfortunately named scheme:

Ice911 is an engineering approach to reduce the melting of the ice. It is a solution that can be rapidly implemented. It has the potential to slow down the melt, provide interim mammal habitat, and perhaps even rebuild the ice.

The Ice911 is in fact a project to develop a low-tech method to increase the Arctic Ocean’s albedo in order to stop the feedback loop that is causing Arctic ice to melt at catastrophic rates, using millions of small, white floats. Although filling the world’s oceans with yet more plastic trash isn’t the most desirable rapid-cooling strategy, it sure beats options like those promoted in SuperFreakonomics, which have possible side effects like destroying the ozone layer. Ice911 has an impressive advisory board, and is led by Dr. Leslie Field, a world-class technologist.

However, the name Ice911 recalls “ice-nine,” a substance from Kurt Vonnegut’s classic science-fiction novel, Cat’s Cradle, one of the great parables of the “unintended consequences” of finding the “cheap and simple fix” to complex, global problems. As summarized at Technovelgy, “A general had a problem: mud. Marines have slogged their way through it for generations. Is it possible to get rid of mud? Without having to carry anything heavy? Marines already have enough to carry. Dr. Felix Hoenikker, an original thinker, found the ‘outside-the-box’ answer: a single crystal of Ice-Nine would crystallize every bit of water it touched”:

“…suppose, young man, that one Marine had with him a tiny capsule containing a seed of ice-nine, a new way for the atoms of water to stack and lock, to freeze. If that Marine threw that seed into the nearest puddle…?”
“The puddle would freeze?” I guessed.
“And all the muck around the puddle?”
“It would freeze?”
“And all the puddles in the frozen muck?”
“They would freeze?”
“And the pools and the streams in the frozen muck?”
“They would freeze?”
“You bet they would!” he cried. “And the United States Marines would rise from the swamp and march on!”

The book ends with the world’s water turned to ice-nine, the book’s fictional author one of the last remaining survivors of the human race, writing down his story as he prepares for his death. The fictional Felix Hoenikker, a “father of the Atomic Bomb,” recalls Dr. Edward Teller , the Manhattan Project physicist who later championed the Star Wars satellite laser system and in 1998 promoted a “Sunscreen for Planet Earth” — “solving” global warming through the injection of particles into the stratosphere, reviving an idea first proposed in 1979 as a thought experiment by fellow nuclear physicist (and now aging climate skeptic) Freeman Dyson. Teller’s protegé, Lowell Feld, has continued to champion Teller’s ideas and worldview at Nathan Myhrovld’s Intellectual Ventures, now promoted on bookshelves everywhere in SuperFreakonomics.

Sen. Jeff Merkley: Kerry-Boxer Sets The Stage For A Clean Energy Future »

Our guest blogger is Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), a member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

The Senate is hard at work crafting legislation to create clean energy jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and fight climate change. I am very proud of what we’ve accomplished on the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act so far and I wanted to let you all know about the progress we’ve made. I want to point out how critical it is that we reach out to folks beyond the blogosphere to let them know why this legislation will benefit all Americans.

We have to face the fact that curbing global warming isn’t the top priority for every American. When I talk to folks back in Oregon who may be skeptical about the scientific consensus on the threat of global warming, I take the opportunity to point out that there is a consensus among Americans when it comes to the many benefits of this legislation:

– This bill will create jobs.
– It will make our air cleaner.
– And it will reduce our dangerous dependence on oil imported from countries like Saudia Arabia and Venezuela.

These are goals we can all get behind. When Americans are presented with the choice of jobs, clean air and self-sufficiency versus a stagnant economy, dirty air and billions sent overseas to purchase foreign fuel, it’s an easy choice.

Senators Kerry and Boxer have put together an excellent framework that adds up to a comprehensive plan that would create a number of new renewable energy and energy efficiency programs. In addition, the bill includes a pollution reduction and investment program that would go beyond what the House proposed, to cut pollution 20 percent by 2020 and more than 80 percent by 2050. It will reduce dependence on foreign oil by helping cities and states plan for cleaner and more efficient transportation infrastructure that reduces the pollution coming from cars and trucks and by investing in clean vehicle technology and electric vehicle deployment.

That’s the overview of why we must pass this bill. But the details are important too: More »« Less

Inslee Slams SuperFreakonomics For ‘Absolute Deception’ On Climate Science »

Today, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) rebuked the authors of SuperFreakonomics for participating in a “continuing effort to deceive the American public” on the science of climate change. During an investigative hearing on forged letters sent by the coal industry to oppose climate action, Inslee condemned the industry’s effort to “hoodwink, defraud, and deceive the American public now to cover up the toxicity to the world environment” of global warming pollution. Inslee then turned to Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, criticizing them for “absolute deception” in their work on global warming:

The second thing I want to note is this is not the only continuing effort to deceive the American public. I want to note a book called Freakonomics, or SuperFreakonomics, that some authors wrote, that basically said or asserted we don’t have to control CO2, we’ll just pump sulfur dioxide up into the atmosphere and that will solve the problem. They purported to quote a scientist named Ken Caldeira from Stanford who’s one of the predominant researchers in ocean acidification to suggest that Dr. Caldeira didn’t think we should control CO2. Which is an absolute deception. Dr. Caldeira I’ve spoken to personally. He’s told me we have to solve ocean acidification. You can’t solve ocean acidification without controlling CO2 and yet people are still trying to write books to deceive the American public. And we ought to blow the whistle on them, we’re blowing the whistle on one today, we’ll continue to do it, because ultimately science is going to triumph in this discussion.

Watch it:

Levitt and Dubner’s promotion of geoengineering as a “cheap and simple” alternative to carbon mitigation is in direct opposition to the views of Dr. Ken Caldeira, Paul Crutzen, and the world’s scientific community. Although Caldeira objected to the chapter and has since repeatedly said he was misrepresented in multiple ways, the SuperFreakonomics authors have continued their deception, joining the billion-dollar effort by fossil-fuel companies and the radical right to thwart action on climate change.

Transcript: More »« Less

FLASHBACK: ACCCE Said It ‘Cannot Support’ Waxman-Markey

In the hearing investigating fraudulent letters forged on behalf of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) to attack the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), ACCCE chief Steve Miller told Congress his organization has never opposed the legislation.

The record shows otherwise.

ACCCE Called Waxman-Markey A ‘High-Risk Proposition.’ On June 18, a week before the House of Representatives voted on the legislation, ACCCE ran a full-page ad in Politico with the headline, “If a climate bill goes too far, too fast it could keep us from getting where we need to go.” The ad described the greenhouse gas pollution reductions in H.R. 2454 as a “high risk proposition.”

ACCCE Criticized Waxman-Markey For ‘Skyrocketing Energy Costs.’ On June 18, ACCCE published on its website the claim that Waxman-Markey could “have consumers paying higher costs for decades.” “In its current form, H.R. 2454 does not do enough to guarantee that consumers are protected against skyrocketing energy costs.”

ACCCE Said It ‘Cannot Support’ Waxman-Markey. Following the passage of the legislation in a 217-213 House vote on June 26, ACCCE issued a statement in opposition to the legislation: “ACCCE cannot support this bill, as it is written, because the legislation still does not adequately protect consumers and the domestic economy or ensure that the American people can continue to enjoy the benefits of affordable, reliable electricity, which has been so important to our nation.”

Jon Stewart Argues That Concern About Global Warming Is Just A ‘Secular Religion’ »

On last night’s Daily Show, host Jon Stewart heaped praise on the contrarian approach to global warming taken by SuperFreakonomics author Steve Levitt, a University of Chicago economist. Stewart was baffled by the widespread criticism of Levitt and co-author Stephen Dubner, asking, “Have you stepped on a secular religion?” Stewart, often a tough interviewer, coddled Levitt, saying, “I’m sorry you’ve taken so much s**t for it.” He blamed the uproar over SuperFreakonomics on people who “feel you are betraying environmentalism”:

I’ve been somewhat surprised at how angry people are. The global warming chapter, you don’t deny global warming. You don’t say that CO2 isn’t a factor, but they feel you are betraying environmentalism or our world. Why are people so mad?

Watch it:

SuperFreakonomics mischaracterizes the field in order to argue that “moralism and angst” has blinded scientists and policymakers from pursuing the “cheap and simple solution” of geoengineering. Although the book condemns scientists for fearmongering and promotes a radical alternative to existing policy, Levitt tells Stewart, “I don’t try to pretend I know the science.”

In reality, the critics of Levitt’s treatment of climate science and policy are not “dogmatic” believers of a “secular religion” — they are highly respected climate scientists, energy experts, and economists, including climate scientist Ken Caldeira, who has said Levitt and Dubner misrepresented his views. The widespread criticism isn’t based on the book’s personal attacks on Al Gore or its mocking of global warming as a “religion,” but on the multitude of factual errors, misrepresentations, and false conclusions that the authors use to promote their mindless contrarianism. As science journalist Eric Pooley writes, “The book claims the opposite of what Caldeira believes.”

Levitt recommends untested, planetary scale geo-engineering to block the sun as a “band-aid” that “buys us time” if “we might need to do something,” because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a long time. However, scientists concerned that global warming needs to be reduced rapidly have already found a well-proven approach that’s cheaper and safer than pumping unlimited amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere: stopping black carbon emissions of soot from diesel and biomass burning.

Stewart hit the nail on the head when he concluded, “I really don’t know what I’m talking about, do I?” However, he failed to understand his mistake when he concluded that he had “apparently frightened our audience by suggesting that conservation isn’t the only way out of any of our problems.”

Stewart has excoriated other media darlings for their laissez-faire approach to serious issues, from Tucker Carlson to Jim Cramer, and just last week skewered CNN for its failure to do even basic fact-checking of its guests. Unfortunately, this time Stewart ended up being just like those he usually mocks — neither funny nor accurate.

Transcript: More »« Less

Who’s Who On The EPW: Senate Committee Begins Landmark Climate Hearings »

This week, hearings begin in the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733). This comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), will establish a mandatory global warming pollution reduction market that will fund clean energy and climate adaptation, as well as establish new renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. The 19 members of the committee — 12 Democrats and 7 Republicans — are overseeing a three-day marathon of legislative hearings this week, starting with Administration witnesses today.

The committee members can be sorted by their degree of support for clean energy, progressive reform, and strong climate action:

– STRONGEST ACTION: Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
– STRONG ACTION: Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Tom Udall (D-CO)
– CENTRIST: Max Baucus (D-MT), Tom Carper (D-DE), Arlen Specter (D-PA)
– ANTI: Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Mike Crapo (R-ID), George Voinovich (R-OH)
– EXTREME ANTI: John Barrasso (R-WY), Kit Bond (R-MO), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), David Vitter (R-LA)

Below is the Wonk Room’s summary of some key issues that will be debated at the hearings, ranging from support for policies to ensure a clean energy future to favored attacks on any action by the Republican members.

CLEAN FUTURE

CLEAN AIR: “We must act to reduce black carbon,” Carper says, “a dangerous pollutant emitted by old, dirty diesel engines like those in some school buses and thought to be the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide.” “Among my top priorities was to be sure that we not only address challenges that carbon dioxide poses to our planet, but sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and mercury.”

COAL PLANT GREENHOUSE GAS REGULATION: Kerry-Boxer follows Gillibrand’s call that “the EPA has to have authority to regulate coal plants under the Clean Air Act.” Baucus opposes the retention of this authority.

EMISSIONS LIMITS: As Sens. Cardin, Lautenberg, Merkley, Sanders, Whitehouse requested, the 2020 target for greenhouse pollution reductions has been strengthened to 20 percent below 2005 levels, instead of Waxman-Markey’s 17 percent target. Baucus has criticized the stronger targets.

GREEN TRANSPORTATION: Kerry-Boxer includes Sen. Carper’s push for green transportation, devoting “a guaranteed share of revenues from carbon regulation to transit, bike paths, and other green modes of transport.” The SmartWay Transportation Efficiency Program is modeled on the Clean, Low-Emission, Affordable, New Transportation Efficiency Act (S. 575 / H.R. 1329), co-sponsored by Sens. Specter, Merkley, Lautenberg, and Cardin.

NATURAL RESOURCE ADAPTATION: Whitehouse and Baucus have submitted language to support efforts for natural resource adaptation.

INDUSTRY

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SuperFreaks Claim Their Book Doesn’t Have ‘A Moral Or Policy Perspective’

Yesterday morning, SuperFreakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner continued their national media tour, appearing on public radio’s Diane Rehm Show. They dismissed the widespread criticism of their book by Nobel Prize-winning economists and climate scientists as the “work of an activist,” evidently referring to physicist and former Department of Energy official Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Levitt and Dubner even tried to laugh off the on-air criticism of Dr. Peter Frumhoff, a global change ecologist who is the director of Science and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The authors represent their book as merely a quizzical look at interesting issues, without “a moral or policy perspective“:

Just in case you’re happening upon this conversation in the middle and haven’t grasped the kind of perspective that we’re coming from — we don’t write about prostitution, or terrorism, or global warming or any of these things, really, from a moral or policy perspective. We just try to lay out what’s going on and from that let people proceed how they want to think about it or how they want to draw conclusions. So this is not meant to be an endorsement or a condemnation of any of these things. We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on.

Listen here:

This depiction, like most of the SuperFreaks’ defense of their work, bears little resemblance to the actual text. The authors discuss global warming explicitly through a “policy perspective”:

It is this specter of catastrophe, no matter how remote, that has propelled global warming to the forefront of public policy. . . . So how should we place a value on this relatively small chance of worldwide catastrophe? . . . One good reason for waiting is that we might have options in the future to avert the problem that cost far less than today’s options.

The authors condemn a broad array of existing policy efforts: to limit carbon dioxide emissions (”not the right villain”), to establish carbon pricing (”all we can say is good luck”), expand renewable energy (”cute”), limit deforestation (trees are an “environmental scourge”), clean up transportation (”not that big of a sector”), or reduce coal use (”economic suicide”).

They also discuss global warming explicitly through a “moral perspective,” condemning “the movement to stop global warming has taken on the feel of a religion,” with a “high priest,” “patron saint,” and “doomsayers” responsible for a “drumbeat of doom.” The authors quote Microsoft billionaire Nathan Myhrvold, who accuses advocates of policies other than geo-engineering of being “global-warming activists” who want to “do a set of things that could have enormous impact — and we think probably negative impact — on human life.”

On the other hand, the SuperFreaks provide a strong endorsement for pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere forever as a “cheap and simple solution” that is “practically free” with a “proof of harmlessness.” Its biggest problem, they claim, is that it is “too simple and too cheap.” They claim climate scientist Ken Caldeira has endorsed this policy “solution,” but policymakers only listen to “people like Al Gore,” who think “it’s nuts.” Somehow Levitt and Dubner fail to mention that Caldeira himself has actually said the SuperFreaks’ policy perspective is ridiculous:

As a long-term strategy, it’s nuts.

Bizarrely, Levitt and Dubner never once mention the one policy area that is universally recognized as being “cheap and simple” by economists and scientists alike — boring energy efficiency. Guess they were too busy chatting with call girls and mosquito-laser billionaires.

Answers For DeLong About The SuperFreaks, Part Three: Solar Power And Warming Debts »

This is part three of a three-part series. Read parts one and two here.

Blogging economist J. Bradford DeLong has read the “global cooling” chapter of SuperFreakonomics and has asked six wonkish questions about climate science and policy. DeLong’s final two questions were about the lifecycle costs of deploying solar power. In SuperFreakonomics, Dubner and Levitt cite billionaire mosquito-laser inventor Nathan Myhrvold’s argument that solar power is not actually a “good thing” when it comes to tackling global warming.

Solar panels, Myhrvold argues, create both an “albedo debt” and a “warming debt.” If a “black” solar panel is placed on a light-colored surface, even as it generates electricity it will increase air temperatures. Furthermore, the construction of large-scale solar plants generates global warming pollution, which Myhrvold claims would counteract the benefit of replacing coal-burning plants. He makes the radical claim that the “warming debt” from solar plant construction would make “emissions and global warming worse every year until we’re done building out the solar plants, which could take 30 to 50 years.” DeLong, not surprisingly, finds these claims a bit dubious:

5: “The problem with solar cells is that they are black… designed to absorb light from the sun…. But only about 12 percent gets turned into electricity, and the rest… contributes to global warming.” Surely the heat energy reradiated from a solar panel is a small fraction of the heat trapped by all the carbon dioxide that would be produced by the coal-fired plants that would otherwise generate the electricity, isn’t it?

6: “The energy consumed by building the thousands of new solar plants necessary to replace coal-burning and other power plants would create a huge long-term ‘warming debt’.” I had thought that practically none of the power plants that we will use in 2050 are now in operation, and that building them–whether for open-carbon cycle, closed-carbon cycle, or non-carbon–will cost about the same amount of energy, and thus that there is no significant extra power-plant construction debt from going green in our new power-plant construction over the next forty years as long as it is done gradually. Am I wrong?

Myhrvold has defended his arguments, saying that when he said “black,” he didn’t mean black, just, well, rather dark. Although Dubner and Levitt radically misrepresented Ken Caldeira’s opinions in their chapter, they were spot on with Myhrvold, who blogged:

If we go hell-bent for leather in building solar plants for the next 50 years or so, it is entirely possible that we won’t see much small benefit for 30 to 50 years.

This is nonsense. Take a simplified model of the world that starts with 100 percent high-emission coal plants emitting 10,000 MMT of carbon dioxide a year and no zero-emission solar plants. Let’s assume that the construction of each solar plant has a three-year “warming debt” and that the use of each plant has a two-year “albedo debt,” in line with Myhrvold’s estimates. We’ll also assume slow growth in total energy demand (an assumption which does not affect the results of this thought experiment). If all the coal plants are replaced over a forty-year period (by 2050), the world starts seeing the benefit in only twenty years (by 2030): More »« Less

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.

Obama: ‘It’s Hard To Say’ Why Critics Of Clean Energy Accuse Him Of Socialism

This afternoon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President Barack Obama challenged the nation to explore the “new frontiers” of the “clean energy economy of tomorrow.” He praised Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for working on legislation to make our energy system “more efficient, far cleaner, and provide energy independence for America.” But Obama challenged critics “whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action,” saying the status quo “endangers our prosperity” and the “only purpose” of those who question climate science “is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary”:

The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized. But I think it’s important to understand that the closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action that we’re engaged in. There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim — make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary. So we’re going to have to work on those folks.

Following the speech, the Wonk Room asked President Obama why such critics accuse the president of socialism. Obama replied:

You know, it’s hard to say. Maybe if you have an answer to that, you’ll let me know.

Watch it:

Among the critics of President Obama’s clean energy agenda who say it will destroy the economy are Glenn Beck, Marc Morano, Fox News, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and even Democratic candidate for the governor of Virginia, Creigh Deeds. Beck believes the White House energy and environment adviser Carol Browner is a socialist. Morano, Inhofe’s former blogger, argued limits on global warming pollution is the “biggest threat to freedom” at the Accuracy in Media conference today. Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer calls the regulation “cap and tax.” Inhofe warns of a “global tax” from the United Nations. And Deeds is now running ads claiming the “cap and trade bill” would “hurt the people” of Virginia.

The reason Obama’s critics accuse him of socialism is because, for reasons of “interest or ideology,” they support a system of economic inequity based on an unsustainable fossil-fuel economy. The current system has reaped great rewards for the ultra-wealthy and the industrial polluters at the expense of the health and welfare of their fellow Americans. To avoid blame for their malfeasance, they must paint Obama as the villain, and his essential reform agenda as even scarier than the status quo, with language that taps into the darkest fears of the American public.

Report: Burning Coal And Oil Kills 20,000 Americans A Year

Our guest blogger is Jonathan Aronchick, an intern with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress.

The burning of coal and oil is killing 20,000 Americans each year, a new Congressional report has found. After the Senate completes its work on health insurance reform, it will have the chance to pass major legislation to further improve our nation’s health, with the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs Act. The National Research Council (NRC), an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, recently found that the United States is paying a heavy price in health and lives lost for its dependence on fossil fuels. In the newly released report, “The Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use,” the NRC explores the “externalities” of energy use, costs that are not factored into its market price. Requested by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the report monetizes these unseen energy costs at $120 billion annually by tracing the full cycle of our energy use—extraction, development, deployment, and waste:

Based on the results of external-cost studies published in the 1990s, we focused especially on air pollution. In particular, we evaluated effects related to emissions of particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and oxides of nitrogen (NOx), which form criteria air pollutants. We monetized effects of those pollutants on human health, grain crop and timber yields, building materials, recreation, and visibility of outdoor vistas. Health damages, which include premature mortality and morbidity (such as chronic bronchitis and asthma), constituted the vast majority of monetized damages, with premature mortality being the single largest health-damage category.

Shockingly, the NRC’s estimates for the death toll of a school bus worth of Americans every day are very conservative — a 2004 report by the Clean Air Task Force estimated 24,000 people died prematurely due to coal pollution alone.

Most of the hidden costs of energy use come from coal-fired electricity generation ($62 billion a year) and motor vehicle transportation ($56 billion a year). The NRC did not take into account the cost of global warming pollution, including only the estimates for some of the non-climatic costs imposed by our energy use, specifically those costs related to health, agriculture, and built infrastructure. Although other pernicious side-effects of our dependence on dirty fuels — such as ecosystem disruption, mercury contamination, and national security risks — were examined in the report, they were excluded from the final cost figures.

Comparatively, the report shows that renewable energy such as wind, solar, geothermal power costs us very little in external damages. If we cannot direct our use of energy towards those forms that do not carry hidden burdens, we better hope that Americans have good health insurance.

Obama Plants Monsanto And CropLife Officials In Key Agriculture Posts

Our guest bloggers are Kathy Ozer, the executive director of the National Family Farm Coalition, and Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, PhD, the senior scientist at the Pesticide Action Network North America and a lead author on the UN-sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

Roger Beachy

Lobbyists “won’t find a job in my White House,” President Obama assured us upon inauguration. And yet he just nominated to two key posts “Big Ag” industry power brokers, who come straight from the chemical pesticide and biotechnology sectors. While they may not be registered as lobbyists, both men come from organizations representing powerful agribusiness interests, which every year spend millions of dollars in lobbying to advance their companies’ chemical and transgenic products.

Obama has tapped Roger Beachy, long-time president of the Danforth Plant Science Center (Monsanto’s nonprofit arm) as chief of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Created by the 2008 Farm Bill, NIFA is the new means of awarding the USDA’s external research dollars. As the director of NIFA (a nomination that doesn’t require congressional approval), Beachy will oversee the distribution of nearly $500 million in grants and other research funding. Sustainable agriculture initiatives are likely to suffer, as research dollars are awarded to projects that promote Beachy’s vested interests in biotechnology.

Islam Siddiqui

Islam Siddiqui, currently the VP of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife USA, was nominated to the post of Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. Why the president would nominate someone from the group that infamously chided the First Lady for refusing to use pesticides on the White House garden is a bit of a mystery. This critical position is designed to use free trade agreements to open up foreign markets for U.S. agriculture goods — in the past, mostly to promote chemical-intensive, genetically modified products that undermine local food cultures in developing countries.

It’s crucial that the Senate Finance Committee hears from public witnesses while investigating his past roles. At CropLife International, Siddiqui led an initiative to weaken restrictions against fertilizers and pesticides, as part of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations. He also served as the senior agricultural trade adviser during the Clinton administration, and pressed for getting genetically modified crops and seeds approved for commercial use in the United States.

Now the United States will continue its efforts to export the worst aspects of U.S. agriculture to other countries, many of which are deeply wary of genetically modified seeds and the impacts of toxic pesticides on their communities. Mirroring those concerns, a comprehensive United Nations and World Bank- sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has said that one of the best ways to feed the world is to increase investments in agro-ecological science and farming.

We don’t need more genetically modified seeds. What we need is enforcement of antitrust laws to break up monopoly control of the global food system, and fairer — not “freer” — trade arrangements to overcome poverty and hunger around the world.

The Obama administration has made tremendous strides towards encouraging the growth of the local food movement, and its connections to human health and ecological impacts. The White House organic garden and the farmers market spearheaded by Michelle Obama are important symbolic gestures, as is the USDA’s new “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative.

However, these latest appointments of industry insiders to two of the most influential offices that will shape U.S. food and agricultural policy at home and abroad call into question just how committed the Obama administration is to promoting sustainable agriculture and reducing hunger in the developing world.