The Wonk Room

ClimateGate: Hacked Emails Reveal Global Warming Deniers Are Crazed Conspiracy Theorists

Thousands of “emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server” — a top climate research center in the United Kingdom — “were hacked recently” and dumped on a Russian web server. Global warming deniers are sifting through the illegally obtained letters of private correspondence for “proof” that the scientific consensus on climate change is actually a global conspiracy.

— “If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW,” says the Telegraph’s James Delingpole.

– Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey claims the emails discuss “repetitive, false data of higher temperatures.”

– The National Review’s Chris Horner salivates, “The blue-dress moment may have arrived.”

– “The crimes revealed in the e-mails promise to be the global warming scandal of the century,” blares Michelle Malkin.

– The Australia Herald-Sun’s Andrew Bolt claims the emails are “proof of a conspiracy which is one of the largest, most extraordinary and most disgraceful in moderrn [sic] science.”

Evidently due to this e-mail conspiracy, Arctic sea ice is at historically low levels, Australia is on fire, the northern United Kingdom is underwater, and the world’s glaciers are disappearing. Oh yeah, and it’s the hottest decade in history.

Update FOXNews evidently agrees with Global Warming Skeptic Trollcat (see above):

After Inhofe’s Endorsement, Carly Fiorina Challenges Climate Science

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Following the endorsement of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) Wednesday for her campaign to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina questioned the science of climate change. Boxer, as the chair of the Senate environment committee, is the chamber’s leading advocate for action to create jobs, make America more energy independent, and cut global warming pollution. Ranking environment committee member Inhofe — “Senator Climate Change Denier” — led a failed boycott of Boxer’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733). After news of Inhofe’s endorsement of Fiorina came out, a reporter asked whether she believes in global warming. Fiorina admitted she is skeptical about climate science:

I think we should have the courage to examine the science on an ongoing basis.

Fiorina’s refusal to recognize the science of climate change and her belief that cap and trade legislation “will kill jobs” puts her in opposition to California’s business and political leadership.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), the leader of the California Republican Party, recently noted that California is “already experiencing” the devastating impacts of global warming:

In California, we are already experiencing rising sea levels eroding our coastal infrastructure, reduced snow pack in the Sierra leading to prolonged droughts and more conflict over water, drier forests suffering more frequent and ferocious forest fires, and worsening smog-related public health threats and crop damage. The implications for our state if these trends continue are simply staggering.

Fiorini’s opposition to binding reductions of global warming pollution will make it very difficult to encourage innovation and create jobs, accord to her Silicon Valley neighbor, venture capitalist John Doerr, who testified in July that the United States “must put a price on carbon and a cap on carbon emissions” because “no long-term signal means no serious innovation at scale, which means fewer new American success stories.”

On the same day he endorsed Fiorina, Inhofe “proudly” declared in a speech on the Senate floor that 2009 is “the Year of the Skeptic.”

Global Boiling Declares War On Thanksgiving

Our increasingly extreme climate is devastating American agriculture. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, strengthened by global warming, caused $1.6 billion in agriculture damage in Louisiana alone. Now it appears that a Thanksgiving mainstay — pumpkin pie — is next on the global boiling hit list. On Tuesday, Nestle Baking, “which controls about 85% of the pumpkin crop for canning, issued a rare apology and said that rain appeared to have destroyed what remained of a small harvest this year and that it expected to stop shipping the holiday staple by Thanksgiving.” Paul Bakus, vice president and general manager of Nestle Baking, bemoaned the devastating rains that made it impossible to harvest the Morton, Illinois pumpkin crop used for Libby’s canned pumpkin:

If only we could have changed the weather. We hope Mother Nature is nicer to us next year, hopefully delivering less rain and more sunshine.

In addition, waffles are on the hit list, as supplies of Eggos are disappearing. “Heavy rains that soaked Atlanta last month knocked out Kellogg’s waffle operations,” ABC News reported on Tuesday. September’s epic flooding actually exacerbated a shutdown caused by an earlier virulent outbreak of the deadly bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. Kellogg’s initially only referred to the food poisoning threat as “equipment issues,” preferring to let global boiling take the blame.

Unfortunately, we have changed the weather.

“2009 continues to climb up the rainiest-years-ever chart” in Illinois. This year’s rainfall in Peoria of 49.34 inches — 50 percent above normal — has already exceeded the total of 2008, itself 25 percent above normal. With only six more inches of precipitation, 2009 will break the record rainfall set in 1990.

Similarly, the September 21st flood in Atlanta, Georgia “was worse than what’s statistically projected to happen once every 100 years — even worse than every 500 years.” It was “extremely rare”, “epic” and so “stunning”, the U.S. Geological Survey says the “flood has defied its attempts to define it.”

This kind of extreme precipitation is part of the changes to our climate wrought by global warming, which increases the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold and changes circulation patterns. As the U.S. Global Change Program reported in June, 2009 on the impacts of climate change in the Midwest and the Southeast:

– In the Midwest, both summer and winter precipitation have been above average for the last three decades, the wettest period in a century. The Midwest has experienced two record-breaking floods in the past 15 years.

– According to climate models, precipitation in the Midwest is projected to increase in winter and spring, and to become more intense throughout the year.

– In the Southeast, average autumn precipitation has increased by 30 percent for the region since 1901. There has been an increase in heavy downpours in many parts of the region.

SuperFreak Dubner: Our Critics Have Issued A ‘Fatwa’

In the latest of many fawning interviews promoting SuperFreakonomics, author Stephen J. Dubner claimed the critics of his “global cooling” chapter have issued a “fatwa for entertaining alternate theories.” On Public Radio International’s morning program, “The Takeaway,” Dubner told hosts John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee that he was right to call global warming a “religion.” In fact, he considers the criticism the book has received from economists, climate scientists, and energy experts to be “essentially a fatwa“:

In terms of the biggest result, I’d say is: We argued that the movement to stop global warming has the feel of a religion. I think if anything we should strengthen that sentence, because what’s been issued here is essentially a fatwa for entertaining alternate theories.

Listen here:

A fatwa is an Islamic clerical legal ruling. Dubner is evidently alluding to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s twenty-year-old fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie, whose novel Satanic Verses was considered blasphemous by hardline Muslims. Rushdie has suffered assassination attempts and decades in seclusion. Translators of the book were stabbed, shot, and killed, and bookstores were firebombed.

Despite this supposed global warming “fatwa,” however, Dubner is heroically appearing all week on the Takeaway to flack his book, co-written with University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. The SuperFreakonomics authors have now enjoyed softball interviews from Charlie Rose, Jon Stewart, 20/20, the Guardian, the UK Telegraph, and others. The Diane Rehm Show did a much better job, bringing in IPCC lead author Peter Frumhoff to debunk their nonsense.

SuperFreakonomics has been edged out on the bestseller list by Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, and Glenn Beck’s Arguing with Idiots.

SuperFreaks Retrench: ‘It’s Harder To Know’ Whether Global Warming Is ‘Man-Created’ »

Appearing on PBS’s influential Charlie Rose Show last week, SuperFreakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner expanded upon their destructively uninformed portrayal of climate science, even throwing into question man’s influence on global warming. When Rose asked him about the controversial “global cooling” chapter, Levitt fatuously claimed that “what we actually said is not even very controversial.” Levitt said that SuperFreakonomics is “not denying that the Earth has gotten warmer.” After Rose interjected, “And it’s man created,” Levitt stammered, “It’s harder to know whether it’s man created”:

I-i-i-i-it’s harder to know whether it’s man created. It’s always harder to know whether it’s some — you know, why something happened than whether it did. That’s not even our question.

Watch it:

Later during the interview Dubner attempted to justify the book’s claim that “carbon dioxide is not the right villain,” arguing that it was the decrease in sulfur dioxide and other pollutants that has caused global warming, rather than the accumulation of carbon dioxide.

This is of course utter nonsense — aerosols like sulfur dioxide certainly masked the heat-trapping effects of greenhouse gases, but global warming is caused by the greenhouse gases. If a methamphetamine addict is using alcohol to blunt the side effects of his meth habit, his hyperactivity isn’t due to a lack of binge drinking.

Dubner and Levitt’s quest to deny the reality of climate change and promote radical geoengineering to block the sun as a “sensible” alternative to reducing greenhouse gases is, as the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert writes, “horseshit.” Their strategy is like counseling the meth addict to become a full-blown alcoholic instead of reducing his drug use.

Despite Levitt’s argument that “it’s harder to know” whether global warming is “man created,” in reality the scientific evidence is clear and has been for years, according to the scientific organizations of the world: More »« Less

Fourteen Democratic Senators Stick Up For Coal »

Today, fourteen Democratic senators, led by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), affirmed their allegiance to the profits of polluting industry at the expense of the health and jobs of their constituents. In a letter to Senate leaders, a bloc of senators with powerful coal interests in their states called for “fair emissions allowances in climate change legislation.” Their definition of “fair,” unfortunately, turns out to be full taxpayer subsidies for global warming polluters. They call for the free allocation of pollution permits to electric utilities to be distributed “fully based on emissions“:

We urge you to ensure that emission allowances allocated to the electricity sector – and thus, electricity consumers — be fully based on emissions as the appropriate and equitable way to provide transition assistance in a greenhouse gas-regulated economy.

The signatories on the letter defending coal-heavy polluters are Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Al Franken (D-MN), Roland Burris (D-IL), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Russell Feingold (D-WI), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Mark Udall (D-CO), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Carl Levin (D-MI), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

Their demand is a basic violation of a core principle of environmental economics — that companies should pay based on their pollution. The transition-period formula in the House bill, Waxman-Markey, and the current Senate legislation, Kerry-Boxer, at least distributes the free permits based 50 percent on electricity production. This formula was negotiated with the U.S. Climate Action Partnership and has received the endorsement of the Edison Electric Institute, the largest lobbying organization for the nation’s utilities. In contrast, President Barack Obama called for a full auction of pollution permits to avoid rewarding polluters at the taxpayers’ expense, instead dedicating the revenues to creating jobs, lowering taxes on the middle class, and building a clean energy economy.

The argument that the most “fair and effective,” “appropriate and equitable” way to help the constituents of their states is to increase subsidies to coal-powered utilities is frankly absurd.

Read the letter: More »« Less

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.

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

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.

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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.

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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:

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