Once again, the opponents of climate action are relying on spurious, deceptive, dishonest, and possibly illegal practices to disrupt the world’s steady march to achieving a solution to a warming planet. Late last week, it was revealed that hackers broke into an email cache at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England, a top climate research group. The break-in was discovered when the hackers attempted to upload the emails, which include candid conversation between scientists, to RealClimate.org, an important Web portal for climate scientists. RealClimate notified the university.

Opponents of climate action immediately pounced on the emails as evidence of scientific doubts about the authenticity of the planet’s warming. RealClimate’s cogent and convincing response is below.

You only have to live in places like northern Michigan, where I have lived since the early 1990s, to understand and trust the scientific consensus that climate change is real and getting more dire. The winter snow sports season here is two weeks shorter, arriving a week later and ending a week earlier than it did in 1990. A year ago, as a journalist for Circle of Blue, which reports on the front lines of the global fresh water crisis, I spent nearly two weeks in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin, that country's prime food-growing region, to describe the consequences of the longest drought in the country's recorded history. After we left wild fires raced through the portions of Victoria between the basin and Melbourne and killed nearly 200 people.

Last July, we got another taste of the lengths to which the opponents to climate action will go to halt progress. Reporters in the United States revealed how Bonner and Associates, a contractor for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, forged the stationary of prominent progressive organizations, wrote fake letters of opposition to the House climate and energy bill, and sent them to a select group of House lawmakers. Before the email hack job it was the latest high visibility smear in a disinformation campaign that Al Gore has called an assault on reason -- “falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of evidence to the contrary” -- and that James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore describe in their important new book “Climate Cover-Up.“

For these reasons, and more told every day in India, Bengladesh, the poles, Tibet, Greenland a thousand other places whipsawed by drying, warming, flooding, freaky weather, the attack on science and the work to disrupt progress on climate action represents one of the significant scandals of our time.

Assessing a globally significant scientific breach

By RealClimate.org

As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently. Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution.

As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren’t going to post any of the emails here. We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.

Nonetheless, these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov. 12) are being widely circulated, and therefore require some comment.

Some of them involve people here (and the archive includes the first RealClimate email we ever sent out to colleagues) and include discussions we’ve had with the CRU folk on topics related to the surface temperature record and some paleo-related issues, mainly to ensure that posting were accurate.

Candor of Expression

Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published.

These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Scientists interact

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions;

Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. But it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times.
Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him.

Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.

Example

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear.

Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem” -- see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682).

Those authors have always recommend not using the post-1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it.

There are of course lessons to be learned. Clearly no one would have gone to this trouble if the academic object of study was the mating habits of European butterflies. That community’s internal discussions are probably safe from the public eye. But it is important to remember that emails do seem to exist forever, and that there is always a chance that they will be inadvertently released. Most people do not act as if this is true, but they probably should.

It is tempting to point fingers and declare that people should not have been so open with their thoughts, but who amongst us would really be happy to have all of their email made public?
Let he who is without PIN cast the the first stone.

Update: The official UEA statement in response to the breach:

We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites,” the spokesman stated. “Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.

This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation.

We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this inquiry.

This article first appeared on RealClimate.org on Nov. 21, 2009.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

AP: Since 1997 “climate change has worsened and accelerated”

If the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to stop the massive environmental destruction of historic mountain ranges and essential drinking water for a relatively tiny amount of coal, can we honestly believe they will be able to phase out coal emissions at the level necessary to stop climate change?        --Dr. James Hansen, June 22, 2009

Welcome to Copenhagen, U.S.A.

On Dec. 7, the opening day of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Americans from around the country will converge for a historic protest at climate change ground zero for our nation -- the Appalachian coalfields.

At the same time 65 heads of state and other world leaders and environmental regulators view a special Google Earth tour of the importance of Coal River Mountain in West Virginia at the Copenhagen conference, leading anti-mountaintop removal activists and citizens groups -- with Robert Kennedy, Jr. reportedly in their ranks -- will demand an end to mountaintop removal mining on Coal River Mountain and across Appalachia.

Their target: The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, in Charleston, W.Va., the embarrassingly inept and Big Coal-ridden state agency that has overseen one of the greatest environmental and climate change disasters in American history: Mountaintop removal's destruction over 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests in our nation's carbon sink of Appalachia.

The American citizens at climate change ground zero will not be alone in the coalfields.

As a wave of climate change protests rock London on Dec. 5, and throughout the world on the Dec. 12 Global Day of Action, the citizens groups and coal mining communities descending on the Big Coal-strangled halls of governmental incompetence are drawing a line in the sand at Coal River Mountain. 

Site of the Coal River Wind Project, the most symbolic clean energy project in the nation, Coal River Mountain is the last intact mountain in the historic range, and an area that has been plundered by mountaintop removal and left in ruins. Despite regulatory violations, Massey Energy began clear cutting the lush hardwood forests and setting off blasts for a massive 6,600 acre mountaintop removal operation on Coal River Mountain last month.

And just why should Coal River Mountain -- and the Appalachian coalfields -- be considered climate change ground zero for the U.S.?

The carbon connection: As an advisor on the Presidential Climate Action Project, and a leading environmental scholar and entrepreneur, David Orr has noted, "To permanently destroy millions of acres of Appalachia in order to extract maybe twenty years of coal is not just stupid; it is a derangement at a scale for which we as yet do not have adequate words, let alone the good sense and the laws to stop it." In a major paper, The Carbon Connection, Orr recounted a trip to a mountaintop removal site in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia and its link to our climate fate:

More complete accounting of the costs of coal would also include the rising tide of damage and insurance claims attributable to climate change. Some say that if we don't burn coal the economy will collapse and we will all have to go back to the caves. But with wind and solar power growing by more than 25 percent per year and the technology of energy efficiency advancing rapidly, we have good options that make burning coal unnecessary. And before long, we will wish that we had not destroyed so much of the capacity of the Appalachian forests and soils to absorb the carbon that makes for bigger storms and more severe heat waves and droughts.

Coal River Mountain is a tipping point in climate change policy: As NASA climatologist James Hansen has pointed out for years, "we must move rapidly to carbon-free energy to avoid handing our children a planet that has passed climate tipping points." Calling mountaintop removal "an undeniably catastrophic way of mining," Hansen issued a personal plea to President Obama this summer to halt the blasting of Coal River Mountain, as part of a larger vision for the rapid phase-out of coal emissions now:

The coal barons at Massey Energy are not only destroying Coal River Mountain, but leading the anti-climate change propaganda campaign: As head of the fourth largest coal producer, and a gleeful mountaintop removal detonator, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship and his company's notorious denial of climate change and bizarre global warming-denying shows are the stuff of bad vaudeville. But Blankenship's wrath in Appalachia, and especially in the Coal River Valley, has not only resulted in record penalties for mining violations, and the devastation of the region, but placed him in the forefront of Big Coal's refusal to accept any compromises in cap 'n trade legislation. In a recent interview on stopping climate change legislation in the Senate, Blankenship referred to "the hoax and the Ponzi scheme of global warming."

Seventy foot coal slurry tidal wave: Blasting at Coal River Mountain risks a climate change catastrophe: Blasting within a football field of the class "C" Brushy Fork impoundment, one of the largest and potentially weakest coal slurry impoundments in the nation, Massey Energy is engaging in a blatant act of aggression against besieged coalfield residents. According to their own evacuation reports, a break in the coal slurry impoundment would result in certain injury or death for the nearly 1,000 residents downslope in the valley. Some area residents would have less than 15 minutes to escape a 72-foot tidal wave of coal slurry.

Coal River Mountain, like Copenhagen, is a battle over a clean energy or a regulated dirty energy future: As a study last year by Downstream Strategies noted, an industrial wind farm on Coal River Mountain would provide more jobs, tax revenues, and electricity over the long-term than the current mountaintop removal operation, which will exhaust the coal seams within 17 years. The study concluded:

The showdown at Copenhagen, U.S.A. is on: Dec. 7, 2 p.m., Charleston, W.Va.

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Paul Bakus in a ruined pumpkin patch.Photo: Wonk Room

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.

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 percent 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 Sept. 21 flood in Atlanta, Ga. “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.

Update: LinkTV discusses the "fluke storm" in Georgia "that killed almost a dozen people." Scientists say "weather this extreme is becoming the norm, due to rising global temperatures":

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

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A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

If someone offered you $100 today or an inflation-adjusted $100 in 10 years, it's unlikely you'd choose the latter. But if taking the money now cost your child's generation billions of dollars, that option would seem pretty miserly.

The debate over the economics of climate change boils down to that very calculation: how much are we willing to pay today to avoid climate risks in the future? The simple fact is that as we continue to use fuels that contribute to global warming today, we place major economic burdens on our kids and grandkids tomorrow.

In effect, we are forcing future generations to retroactively subsidize our decision not to increase energy efficiency and move to cleaner fuels. They will be the ones who will have to contend with the most severe effects of climate change -- increased insurance rates for larger flood areas, higher prices for food as farming becomes more difficult, and oceans becoming more acidic. 

For $2.50 per gallon, we can fill up our tanks, but when we do, we charge at least 19 cents per gallon to future generations. Americans use 380 million gallons of gas annually, running up a $26.9 billion tab on our children's credit card every year. After 30 years, that will add up to $807 billion if we go along with business as usual. 

Gasoline consumption represents a tiny fraction of world emissions, all of which will generate damages. The total tab for emissions world wide is almost a trillion dollars a year. Every year that we don't reduce emissions, we keep on piling onto the tab.

This figure assumes that we make a relatively normal transition to higher temperatures. It doesn't take into consideration catastrophic risks of flooding, droughts, and storms that scientists predict may kick into high gear near the turn of the century. When you measure up all of the costs we're pushing onto future generations, there is a serious transfer of wealth from the cohort of global citizens who have yet to be born. 

Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions will not be free -- the Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost about $10 per month per household. But major dividends will accrue with this investment -- some to us, but most in the form of benefits to our children and grandchildren's generations.  

By putting a little bit of money aside today, like refusing the $100 in the opening example, we spare future generations from having to make major sacrifices on our behalf. But for the time being at least, we are still holding on to that $100 today even though it will impose huge costs in the future.

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From a sharp-eyed reader comes this ad for Humble Oil (which later merged with Standard to become, yes, Exxon). It may win the All Time Millenial Award for Maximal Irony. It's from a 1962 edition of Life Magazine, available on Google Books (click for larger version):

How right they were ...

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A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

New photography project provides stark proof of melting glaciers on the roof of the world

"World leaders say Copenhagen to be a steppingstone to final climate deal," as I wrote on Sunday.   Here is an excerpt from Time magazine’s take on the matter, "World Leaders Put Off a Climate Change Treaty," by Bryan Walsh:

If there is a bright side, however, the deliberate downshift in expectations for Copenhagen could make it easier for world leaders, including Obama, to attend the summit and draft a stronger political agreement. In addition, diplomats could build out the framework of a future agreement, with the hope that, should the Senate pass carbon legislation early next year, a deal with real numbers could be finalized relatively quickly.

But there’s no getting around the fact that as the science of climate change grows more dire, the global political system seems increasingly unable to deal with that reality. "We don't want a global suicide pact," said Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, a low-lying Indian Ocean nation that could be swamped by global warming-caused flooding. "We want a global survival pact." But the world’s most influential leaders still aren't ready for that.

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Polling from 3 key states — and 5 key districts — finds strong support for the climate and clean energy bill.  Every major recent poll has come to the same conclusion (see Swing state poll finds 60% “would be more likely to vote for their senator if he or she supported the bill” and Independents support the bill 2-to-1).  Perhaps that’s why E&E News found “At least 67 senators are in play” on climate bill.

In the new polls, likely 2010 voters were asked:

“Congress is considering an energy plan that has two key parts. One part would require factories and power companies to reduce their emissions of the carbon pollution that causes global warming by 17% (20% in MO) by the year 2020 and by 80% by the year 2050. The other part would require power companies to generate 15% of their power from clean energy sources like wind and solar by the year 2025. Would you favor/oppose this entire plan?”

The results:

And this matches every recent poll:

The same question was asked in five swing House district and the result was the same:

This new polling was done August through October by “by The Mellman Group, a leading Democratic firm, and Public Opinion Strategies, a leading Republican firm” for The Pew Environment Group

“Our surveys consistently find that voters across these three states and five congressional districts support efforts to address global warming and require the use of more clean energy sources,” said Mark Mellman, president of The Mellman Group. “These voters see global warming as a serious threat that is happening now and favor action to reduce carbon emissions.”

It is worth adding that “all respondents heard this argument summarizing the opposition’s strongest case”:

Opponents of the plan say this cap and trade plan is nothing more than a hidden $2,000 per year tax on average families.  This proposal puts a tax on companies which will be passed on to all Americans forcing them to pay more every time they drive, buy groceries, or flip on a light switch. This backdoor tax will make our struggling economic situation worse, costing us hundreds of thousands of jobs and making it harder for average families to survive the recession. And, people in the Midwest and South who rely more on coal will end up paying significantly more for energy. It makes no sense to hurt our own economy as long as China, India, and others continue to build polluting coal plants.

And “after hearing strongly worded messages from both sides,” voters still strongly supported the climate and clean energy bill.

You can find details on the 8 polls here.  The polling reveals the strongest arguments for the climate and clean energy bill and has some interesting implications for messaging, which I will cover in a later post.

Related Post

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving

You might not hear that exact question any time soon, but don’t be surprised if companies start shifting carbon risk from their balance sheets to someone else’s, using the time-honored marketplace tool of insurance. And when that happens, expect the price of products to reflect the new reality.

China, India, and other emerging economies argue that we became prosperous using up the atmosphere and must now bear a disproportionate share of the burden to fix the problem, at least in the first few years of any new global deal. One proposal floating around before the global climate talks in Copenhagen next month is for developed countries, like the US and EU, to buy insurance for climate change-related impacts that are likely to occur to developing nations. Flood insurance for low-lying areas of Indonesia, for example. That might be a way, some argue, to deal with the rich/poor nation divide that threatens to undermine any new global deal.

Insurance premiums may be cheaper than other forms of “compensation” or aid, but like any cost borne by governments or companies, it will be passed on to taxpayers or consumers. There is also a growing movement to be more transparent about such costs, adding them as surcharges. California is flirting with car insurance paid at the gas pump, so you’re actually paying based on how much of highway system you use - - and how much carbon you pump into the air - - and are reminded each time you fill up. A carbon insurance premium could easily be included in such a gas pump surcharge so drivers pay the true cost of operating their vehicles in terms of all relevant risks, including their fair share of creating both fender benders and climate change collisions.

Allstate, State Farm, and Progressive are considering the idea and already lower rates for customers who drive less than average annual mileage. Because such discounts today are based on the honor system, doing real carbon or mileage-based insurance would require technology on the car to verify the driver’s habits. That’s where innovative companies like MileMeter (at milemeter.com) come in, a company already doing this in Texas. Research by the Brookings Institution concluded that such verified pay-as-you-go insurance would incentivize motorists to combine shopping trips and otherwise cut back on fuel consumption, saving about $270 a year per car and cutting oil consumption by 4%.

Indeed there are already profits being made by insurance companies in the carbon field. Chartis Insurance and AIG both provide insurance on carbon offset projects, essentially guaranteeing that the carbon-reducing project is completed so the buyer of offset credits will actually get the benefits purchased. As the carbon market heads towards the trillion-dollar range in the next five or 6 years, insuring that marketplace will also rapidly increase in value.

Swiss Re has been insuring agricultural crops against potential losses from climate change-related impacts like drought and new pest infestations. Knowing the science behind the climate change predictions, this is clearly another valuable growth area for the insurance industry.

Although I don’t know if any company has insured a coffee crop against climate change risks just yet, given the high value of the morning brew you can bet that this commodity will soon have carbon insurance percolating around somewhere. Which should put your mind at ease about always being able to get your daily dose of caffeine - - even if that latte costs a few pennies more for the insurance.

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Treat energy efficiency like a utility

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished….

“I would argue that, from a practical perspective, we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now, because multiyear sea ice is the barrier to the use and development of the Arctic,” said Barber [Canada's Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba].

The latest tracking of Arctic sea ice extent from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that we’ve hit the record low Arctic sea ice extent for this time of year.  In a post last week, “Warm winds slow autumn ice growth,” NSIDC noted “October 2009 had the second-lowest ice extent for the month over the 1979 to 2009 period.”

As Reuters noted in their remarkable piece on Canadian cryosphere scientist David Barber, “Scientists link higher Arctic temperatures and melting sea ice to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.”

Duh.

Here’s more on what Barber found in a recent expedition:

“We are almost out of multiyear sea ice in the northern hemisphere,” he said in a presentation in Parliament. The little that remains is jammed up against Canada’s Arctic archipelago, far from potential shipping routes….

Barber spoke shortly after returning from an expedition that sought — and largely failed to find — a huge multiyear ice pack that should have been in the Beaufort Sea off the Canadian coastal town of Tuktoyaktuk.

Instead, his ice breaker found hundreds of miles of what he called “rotten ice” — 50-cm (20-inch) thin layers of fresh ice covering small chunks of older ice.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my 30 years of working in the high Arctic … it was very dramatic,” he said.

“From a practical perspective, if you want to ship across the pole, you’re concerned about multiyear sea ice. You’re not concerned about this rotten stuff we were doing 13 knots through. It’s easy to navigate through.”

Rotten ice — good term.  That’s what human emissions of greenhouse gases have done to the Arctic, covered it in rotten ice.

Reuters photo caption: “Broken Arctic sea ice as seen from a window in from a U.S. Coast Guard C130 flight over the Arctic Ocean September 30, 2009.”

Scientists have fretted for decades about the pace at which the Arctic ice sheets are shrinking. U.S. data shows the 2009 ice cover was the third-lowest on record, after 2007 and 2008.

An increasing number of experts feel the North Pole will be ice free in summer by 2030 at the latest, for the first time in a million years.

“I would argue that, from a practical perspective, we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now, because multiyear sea ice is the barrier to the use and development of the Arctic,” said Barber.

Fresh first-year ice always forms in the Arctic in the winter, when temperatures plunge far below freezing and the North Pole is not exposed to the sun….

The Arctic is warming up three times more quickly than the rest of the Earth, in part because of the reflectivity, or the albedo feedback effect, of ice.

As more and more ice melts, larger expanses of darker sea water are exposed. These absorb more sunlight than the ice and cause the water to heat up more quickly, thereby melting more ice.

Barber said the ice was now being melted both by rays from the sun as well as from below by the warmer water.

For more on this well known positive feedback (see “What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?)

Scientists are also seeing more cyclones, which pick up force as they absorb heat from the warmer water. The cyclones help generate waves that break up ice sheets and also dump large amounts of snow, which has an insulating effect and prevents the ice sheets from thickening.

After a long search, Barber’s ice breaker finally found a 16-km (10-mile) wide floe of multiyear ice that was around 6 to 8 meters (20-26 feet) thick. But as the crew watched, the floe was hit by a series of waves, and disintegrated in five minutes.

“The Arctic is an early indicator of what we can expect at the global scale as we move through the next few decades … So we should be paying attention to this very carefully,” Barber said.

We should be paying close attention, since this positive feedback is linked to another, even more dangerous one (see “Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss“).

I asked NSIDC director’s Mark Serreze for a comment on this article, and he wrote me:

Dave Barber’s observations give the sort of on-the-ground confirmation of the situation that lends confidence to predictions that we’re headed towards a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean.  Dave’s been up there looking at sea ice conditions for many years. He knows what he’s talking about.

NSIDC Research Scientist Walt Meier also replied:

This is an interesting article. To some extent Dave’s statement depends on how you define multiyear year. Certainly the older ice (e.g., >5 years) is virtually gone and there’s very little 3-4 year-old ice.  However, the past couple years, each summer has retained a fair amount of first-year ice (which ages into second year, and now third year ice). So there is some build-up of what you would term “young” multiyear ice. In theory, that ice could eventually stabilize or even increase (for a time) the multiyear pack. On the other hand, multiyear is constantly moving out of the Arctic as part of the natural drift. So, much of the “young” multiyear ice may be gone before it can mature into older ice.

The most interesting thing in the article is that the old multiyear ice is so broken up now. Even if there is a considerable amount, it is all in broken (or even rotten) floes of ice and not a largely consolidated pack like it used to be. That is a significant change in the character of the ice cover beyond the basic changes in extent and age distribution.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving

There's a great new book out called How the West Was Warmed (www.howthewestwaswarmed.com), about responding to climate change in the Rockies. It's got intros and conclusions from two of the nation's leading implementers/rock stars of the new green economy--Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.

It also offers readers a candy store of great essays by excellent writers and thinkers in the West, including Outside contributor/N.Y. Times journalist Florence Williams, Water and drought expert Brad Udall, and editor Beth Conover, who has been in the green trenches for 20 years.

The book includes an essay I originally wrote for Orion magazine on why solving climate change offers humanity a shot at the kind of broad meaning that humans have always yearned for. In fact, I argue, solving climate change has the ability to endow our lives with some of the oldest human desires: a life of dignity, grace, and meaning. The last time we had a shot a something that so comprehensively addressed core human needs was when the world's great religions were created between two and four thousand years ago. Here's an excerpt from that essay.

To read more, please buy the book, you'll enjoy it!

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from one essay in the book, titled "Climate Revelations: God, Climate and Hope."

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What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Some scary prospects of where people are turning - geoengineering, the false solution that once seemed like science fiction, is actually being taken seriously. Seriously?

Diana Bronson, ETC Group

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

- Albert Einstein

As global climate negotiations in Barcelona enter into the last week of talks before December’s Copenhagen summit, there continues to be more aggravation than agreement amongst negotiators. Despite the litany of warnings about the devastation a failure in Copenhagen will cause – mass migrations, floods, worsening hunger and elimination of entire small island states – the most powerful countries in the world have failed to significantly reduce emissions, let alone commit to new targets or adequate funds to pay for adaptation. Unwilling to muster collective political will to dramatically reduce consumption, wealthy countries are looking for ways to continue business as usual.

The surprising announcement that the US Congressional Committee on Science and Technology will be holding hearings on geoengineering in Washington later this week has some participants in Barcelona wondering if the lack of collective political will on the part of industrialized countries has something to do with Plan B moving a whole lot faster than we thought.  Plan B is geoengineering: the intentional, large-scale plans to modify the climate and related systems.

Geoengineering technologies include, for example, schemes to simulate a volcanic eruption by shooting sulphur particles into the stratosphere to reflect the sun’s rays back to outer space. Other technologies whiten clouds to make them more reflective. Some geoengineers propose dumping iron particles in the oceans to feed algae that might soak up CO2. Others want to change hurricane paths and rainfall patterns.

This is not science fiction. In just the last year, high-profile and influential scientific bodies, including the U.S. National Academies and the UK Royal Society, have begun evaluating the pros and cons of different technological fixes. The UK Parliament has already held hearings on geoengineering, new research institutes are opening and public funds are being allocated to geoengineering research. In a bewildering turnaround, former opponents of action on climate change like the self-described “skeptical environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg in Denmark and Lee Lane of the American Enterprise Institute have now jumped on the geoengineering spaceship, calling not only for more research but also for experimentation and deployment of these extreme techno-fixes.

While these developments remain below the public’s radar, we need to pay attention. Ties are tight between the research, corporate, and political players in geoengineering. To cite one example, Steven Koonin – the current Under Secretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy and former Chief Scientist at the world’s second largest oil company (BP) – recently led a group of ten scientists in thinking through the  “technicalities” of shooting sulphates into the stratosphere. Such high-risk interventions are being contemplated and global permission is unlikely to be asked in the current regulatory vacuum for geoengineering.

Geoengineering is not part of the ongoing negotiations at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – at least, not yet – but we must question the strategies of those refusing to make progress on a post-Kyoto plan. Are they waiting for conditions to ripen for a rollout of geoengineering? Was Gordon Brown disingenuous or just badly briefed when he said there was “no plan B” on climate change? His own Royal Society recently recommended the UK government invest £100 million for geoengineering research, assessing the possibilities precisely as  “Plan B.”

The belief that technology will save the world from climate change runs deep amongst government delegates in Barcelona.   Technology is virtually the only negotiating topic where some progress has been displayed, albeit with all the familiar battles over intellectual property.  And it is quite possible that the spin doctors will try to portray some modest agreement on technology in Copenhagen as a “success,” while the thornier issues of emission targets and money are set aside for “later.”  

We need to make sure that whatever comes out of Copenhagen strengthens the struggle for real climate justice and a sustainable path forward. If geoengineering becomes a silver bullet distraction, rich countries will have not only walked away from the Kyoto Protocol, they will have begun to abandon any semblance of a multilateral approach to the climate crisis.                               

For more information, see http://etcgroup.org/en/issues/geoengineering                                                                                                                                                                  

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Copenhagen talks ready for take off: 5, 4, 3…

Of all the amazing stories that emerged from last month’s historic International Day of Climate Action, the one that really caught my eye (and made my jaw drop in disbelief and admiration) was that of 15,000 Ethiopian students swarming though the streets of Addis Ababa brandishing 350 signs and whooping it up big time in support of bold global climate solutions.    

If you haven't seen the video yet, check it out. It’s definitely something to behold.

Less jaw-dropping was the turnout at our action in D.C. which topped out at less than a thousand. Considering the massive outreach and buzz-building effort my fellow organizers and I invested in the event, that number should have been much closer to what they got in Addis Ababa. But somehow we didn’t even come close. So what exactly did the Ethiopians have going for them that we didn’t?

Sunny weather, sans monsoon-style rain was certainly one factor. But there had to be more to it than that. After all, this was supposed to be the mother of all climate actions, our last big change before Copenhagen, before one of the most vitally important meetings in human history to give our leaders the kind of big grassroots push they need to really do something. With so much at stake how could anyone who cares about this issue have let a little rain keep them away from marching with us? Why wasn’t everyone there?

Roz Savage asked the same question about the turnout at her Oct. 24 rally in London, and she suggested a pretty good answer: global warming is a downer. People just don’t want to think about it. They’ve got enough problems to deal with in their everyday lives. And, you know, she’s absolutely right. The real reason for American activist apathy is that to most Americans, climate change is just another problem -- one of a million things to worry about instead of the ultimate crisis. Worse, for most of us it actually sits pretty low on the totem pole of problems. In polls Americans consistently rank the economy, war, and health care well above climate change in the triage of issues to worry about. And this isn’t because people don’t appreciate how serious climate change is. It’s just that we only appreciate it intellectually. We don’t yet feel it in our everyday lives with the same kind of visceral immediacy with which we feel economic or health care problems, and for that reason most people just aren’t ready to take to the streets for it, rain or shine.

Photo courtesy 350.org via Flickr And this brings us back to those kids in Ethiopia. Sunny weather and good organizing aside, I’d wager that what really drove them to the streets was the one thing that the climate movement in America (and most of the industrialized world) is missing: a sense of urgency, a visceral appreciation of the problem. The kind of urgency and visceral appreciation that comes from experience with the kinds of hardships that catastrophic climate change will impose: drought and famine, political, social, and economic instability. Ethiopia’s effort to escape such miseries has been slow and arduous, and the fall back into their grip wouldn’t be very far. The country ranks at 171 out of 182 countries on the U.N. human development index, making it one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the catastrophic impacts of runaway climate change. Such vulnerability has a way of inspiring serious street stomping action on the scale that we just saw in Addis Ababa.

So does this mean Americans may have to experience a few climate induced disasters like an agricultural collapse or a string of additional Katrinas before our climate movement can reach the kind of scale that we really need right now? Maybe, but I certainly hope not. I hope the movement expands along the lines suggested by my colleague Ted Glick -- not as an explosive reaction to a national trauma, but as a kind of outgrowth and blossoming of the many seeds climate activists have been planting recently via the mounting anti-coal demonstrations and big days of action like the 24th. But however that growth occurs, one thing is for certain: if it’s going to have any serious impact on policy in the time frame that we need, it has to happen fast. And to make that happen we’re going to have to somehow quickly shake off our remaining climate complacency and start feeling the kind of visceral urgency that seems to be inspiring the Ethiopian climate movement.

That’s right, America: In order to help save the world, we’ve got to wake up and start thinking and acting a lot more like Ethiopians.

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A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

AP: Since 1997 “climate change has worsened and accelerated”

Photo: Shi! There’s a new fashion trend this fall: saving Indonesian rainforests. The Gucci Group, the prestigious conglomerate of fashion and luxury brands that owns Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, and Balenciaga, has decided to eliminate all paper made from Indonesian rainforests. That includes everything from its letterhead to the pretty paper bags with ribbon handles that they give to shoppers to hold their new couture.

A paper policy, you say? That’s not really fashionable, is it?

Turns out it is. Gucci Group’s policy puts it at the front of a list of major companies -- including Tiffany & Co., H&M Group, Hugo Boss, Bulgari, and Ferragamo -- that have decided  they don’t want their brands to be associated with the destruction of rainforests or with encouraging climate change.

Worldwide, the degradation and destruction of tropical rainforests is responsible for 20 percent of all annual greenhouse emissions. In Indonesia, which supplies much of America’s paper, a lot of this deforestation is driven by the pulp and paper industry -- notably the notorious paper company Asia Pulp and Paper.

This hurts the climate as well as the forests. The carbon emissions resulting from Indonesia’s rapid deforestation account for around 8 percent of global emissions -- more than the combined emissions from all cars, trucks, buses, planes, and trains in United States.

The Gucci Group’s comprehensive policy commits it to one of the strongest paper standards in the industry. With its new policy, the Gucci Group has pledged to reduce the amount of paper it uses, eliminate fiber from high-conservation-value forests, and only purchase recycled products or those certified by the Forest Stewardship Council by December 2010.

“Standing rainforests are not a luxury, they’re a necessity if the world wants to stop climate change,” said Mimma Viglezio, executive VP for global communications at the Group. “Our actions are lowering our own carbon footprint, but we hope that they will also raise awareness inside the fashion industry that it’s possible for our industry to make a difference for rainforests and for the climate.”

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A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

AP: Since 1997 “climate change has worsened and accelerated”

As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began hearings on carbon regulation, debate ran along traditional battle lines, but with a new script. Democrats Barbara Boxer (CA) and John Kerry (MA) moved away from discussing the environmental impacts of climate change - - and the reason, therefore, to take action to reduce carbon emissions - - and focused instead on the economic benefits of a domestic clean energy economy. Meanwhile, Republicans James Inhofe (OK) and Lamar Alexander (TN) complained that energy bills would rise and Americans would lose jobs.

It’s a good thing that Congress is finally looking at the economics of climate change and carbon reductions, because the overwhelming amount of data - - buttressed by common sense - - shows that reducing carbon will be very good for our economy overall. One of the biggest sources of carbon reductions will be in the area of energy efficiency and that doesn't cost money, it saves money. Walmart, for example, said that if each of their 100 million customers bought just one compact florescent light bulb to replace an incandescent bulb, those consumers would save over $3 billion in electricity costs over the life of the bulbs (after deducting the higher up-front cost of the new bulbs).

Renewable energy, another carbon-reducing technology, creates jobs in the US and saves money too. Alan Horn, President and CEO of Warner Brothers, told me recently that his studio is covering large soundstages with enough solar to provide up to 10% of their massive energy needs. After a 7 to 10 year payback, they will get that amount of their electricity free for decades to come. Moreover, that multi-million dollar project put people to work in Burbank, California, not China or India, and didn’t take away a single job from anyone.

It’s misleading when some Senators focus on trivial or entirely bogus costs, but especially troubling when their carbon smokescreen obscures a bigger truth - - inaction will cost far more than tackling the problem. No better example of the mammoth costs associated with denial can be found along our coastlines.

As discussed at a the recent H209 Water Forum in New York, cities around the world are building barriers to protect against rising sea level and increased storm activity that is related to the impacts of climate change and it costs real money - -  Venice: $7 billion; London: $8 billion; New Orleans: $700 million; the California coast: $14 billion, plus $1.4 billion a year for maintenance.

In New York itself, $400 million was just spent to upgrade pumps that remove rising waters out of subways. Experts at the conference predicted billions more will be needed to protect telecommunications, power lines, and other NY infrastructure that sits below sea level. Even at the lowest end of the range of catastrophic climate impacts predicted, NY will suffer massive street flooding and property damage unless more protections are built. Further inaction on reducing carbon will only drive these costs higher.

“I'm sure the worker at a cement plant, when he loses his job, won't find much consolation in green welfare programs," said Senator Inhofe at the hearing. Ironically, building this entire additional infrastructure to deal with rising waters will use a lot of cement, so Inhofe was aimed in the wrong direction again. In fact, companies like W.L. Gore make devices to scrub carbon and other pollution from cement kiln smokestacks and create lots of American jobs in the process (and valuable exports too!).

Given all of the obvious economic benefit of evolving to energy that is considerably more efficient/clean/domestic, one can only be left to wonder if Inhofe’s positions mean that Oklahoma just doesn’t like New York? Or California? Or Venice? Maybe the Senator is just jealous that his state doesn’t have a coastline, but unless he and his colleagues start making decisions based on real economic data, his state may also be left without a share of the 21st century industries that will power the globe and lead us out of the current recession.

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A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Hotel managers in Gambia say without the beach the tourists will not come. But the beach in front of the country’s two landmark hotels is disappearing pretty fast. It is a very serious state of affairs for a country that derives a major percentage of its income from tourism.

Beach erosion is clearly visible at tourist areas in Gambia.Lynn Morris / Atlantic RisingEuropean tourists lie baking themselves on sun loungers outside the five-star Kairaba and its neighbor Senegambia, a hotel so famous an area of town was named after it, but the patch of sand on which they lie is getting narrower each month.

Five years ago, the government embarked on a $20 million beach replenishment project. Head of coastal and marine environment at the National Environment Agency, Momodou Suwareh explained how the government identified the areas of greatest economic importance threatened by erosion.

He said: “The hotel areas were targeted first.” Part of the work involved bringing sand from off shore to the beach in front of Kairaba and Senegambia creating a beach more than a 100 meters (328 feet) wide. After just two years half the sand had disappeared and now it is back to the state it was in before the work with just 26 meters (85 feet) between the hotel’s fence and the high water mark.

Mr Suwareh said he was disappointed with how quickly the sand has been lost but for the hotels struggling to compete for tourists the situation is increasingly urgent.

Landing Singhateh, front office manager at the Kairaba, said: “We are hopeful the government will do something.”

He thinks a solution is in the pipeline but said if the state does nothing about the beach then perhaps the hotels have to work out a solution for themselves.

He said: “We use the beach in the adverts for the hotel. If there was no beach people would not come.” Judging by the importance of tourism to the country’s economy it seems the government will be compelled to act but long term solutions to the problem of coastal erosion are both expensive and elusive.

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A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

James Hoggan and his DeSmogBlog.com posse might be our nation's most important sleuths -- and they ain't even from the United States.

Not that climate destabilization knows any boundaries. Not that climate change deniers and public relation firms hired by dirty energy corporations pledge allegiance to any country's well-being.

Drawing on their brilliant muckraking and breakthrough research, Canadian DeSmoggers (and public relations insiders) Hoggan and Richard Littlemore have just released a blockbuster new book, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.

As the U.S. Congress grapples with various incarnations of climate change bills and world leaders and climate experts ready to gather in Copenhagen in December, Climate Cover-Up is an indispensable guidebook to anyone concerned about our planet's climate future; in fact, it should be required reading for all American citizens, journalists, public policy makers -- and President Obama.

A page-turning expose of industrial fossil-fueled machinations to muck up the scientific debate over climate change, Climate Cover-Up takes readers through a blow-by-blow account of how bankrolled public relations firms and their bogus fronts and campaigns have deliberately sought to manipulate the media, mangle the language of real science, and effectively derail any public policy or action to halt the spiraling climate crisis.

In the end, unfolding like a chilling and disturbing thriller, Climate Cover-Up is about one of the greatest campaigns of misinformation in our time: The dark corporate roots of astroturfing, whitewashing dirty coal and denying climate change.

Hoggan and his team hold no punches in their investigation. They ask: Where were these purported skeptics getting their money?

Examining the role of the Hawthorn Group, one of the top public relations firms in the U.S., and its bankrolled mandate to launch a "clean coal" whitewashing campaign for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) last year, Climate Cover-Up found:

The end result?

Canadians are no strangers to U.S. energy policy. On his first trip abroad, Obama stood with his Canadian counterpart in Ottawa, Canada last February and declared: "The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal, but we have our own homegrown problems in terms of dealing with a cheap energy source that creates a big carbon footprint."

Let's hope Climate Cover-Up makes it to the White House before the next round of Big Coal lobbyists.

Here's an interview with author James Hoggan on Democracy Now this week.

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What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Maybe they’re right. Maybe the rightwing crazies have a point. Maybe global warming has all been part of vast leftwing conspiracy to stop us from funding terrorist states to the tune of $1 trillion a year through our oil imports; maybe the real agenda of the socialists is to reduce our use of coal, since it would be crazy to decrease the severe air pollution that kills thousands every year, despoils the American landscape, and provides some of the worst employment in the nation; maybe the liberal media really wants to divert our attention from the fact that China is now the leading producer of solar panels because they want American industry to fail; maybe those big-government fanatics just want the American economy to become more efficient so that they can have more money for their radical agenda, like making education more affordable and ensuring everyone access to quality healthcare.

As the evidence mounts that global warming is accelerating at an alarming pace, it is equally evident that progressives have done a terrible job of getting people to care about it. Barely a month goes by without polls showing that climate change nears the bottom of the list of most people’s concerns. Much of this is driven by the horrible messaging that begins with the basic terms themselves; neither global warming nor climate change conveys a sense of urgency.

But it’s more than that: the idea of global warming is simply too abstract and long-term for most people to grasp (despite some incredible weather events every year or two), and the solutions are presented in the worst possible ways, either completely dry and academic (i.e. cap and trade), or in terms which immediately invoke negative reactions (i.e. carbon tax).

And there are much better ways to convince people to do the things that will help avert catastrophic climate change, all of which are intuitive, and require no complex scientific knowledge, extended power point presentations, or fancy charts.

1: Gas guzzlers are the best friends of terrorists and Middle Eastern dictators

We have fought two wars in Iraq and are deeply engaged in the Middle East largely (not exclusively) because of the oil in the region; no one denies that. And the dictators and rogue regimes that dominate the Middle East exist because of the petrodollars we give them. It should incense Americans that our presidents have to pay respect to the Saudi Royal Family, which is one of the most Medieval, reactionary, and despicable regimes in the world, in which women can’t even walk alone or own a driver’s license. That a single dollar of our money goes to these despots or makes its way into the pockets of the Iranian mullahs should be an affront to our very sense of decency. Every time we fill our gas tanks some portion of that money is ending up in the pocket of someone who hates our values and wants to kill us. That should be enough to seal the deal on reducing our oil consumption. It should be talking point #1, repeated over and over again at every opportunity.

2: If you don’t believe we can do better than coal, then you don’t believe in America

Coal is cheap and abundant but it’s just about the dirtiest fuel out there. And it not only causes extreme forms of air pollution but getting it out of the mountains destroys them and the surrounding landscapes. It’s an 18th century technology that has carried us into the 21st century, but its time has passed. What jobs would be better for Americans, coal mining or building and installing wind turbines and solar panels? It’s that simple. The former is something most people couldn’t be paid enough to do, while the latter seems like a pretty attractive form of employment. And if we can get our energy without polluting the air and water and blowing up mountains, why wouldn’t we do that? And how on earth did we let the Chinese beat us at making solar panels? We should view it as a national disgrace that a communist government is beating us in the green technology race, and there’s little Americans love more than a good challenge to get them riled up, especially against an economic rival.

3: Wasting energy is for suckers

A recent report by McKinsey and Company estimates that energy efficiency improvements in the U.S. could save us $1.2 trillion. Letting the status quo continue is like throwing money down a rat hole; it is simply stupid. Retrofitting U.S. infrastructure would employ millions of workers in good jobs and end up saving us all money. What’s not to like? Being opposed to something like this is like being opposed to check-ups for infants.

The bottom line: so what if global warming is a hoax? There are clear and inarguable reasons that we should be doing everything in our power to reduce our use of fossil fuels and become leaders in the green energy revolution. Anything less should be viewed as un-American.

And for a bonus we might also help to reduce climate change and ensure a reasonably hospitable planet for generations to come.

Not bad for a leftwing conspiracy.

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A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

This article by Michael Lewyn is part of a collaboration with Planetizen, the web’s leading resource for the urban planning, design, and development community.

Some of my acquaintances believe that climate change may end human life (or at least civilization) and that the only way to save humanity is to massively reduce economic growth and consumption. Other acquaintances believe that climate change is, if not an outright hoax, a minor problem -- and that even the slightest attempt to regulate emission-creating industries will itself destroy American civilization.

Whole lotta head-shakin' going on.Most of these people are not scientists (let alone scientists specializing in climate-related science), so I strongly suspect that their opinions come from Al Gore's movie and Rush Limbaugh's talk show, rather than from a comprehensive review of the footnote-filled scientific papers addressing climate change. Nevertheless, they are as certain in their opinions as real scientists are. How come?

A plausible explanation was supplied by a Harvard Law Review article I recently read. The article links disputes over technical issues to clusters of values that form competing cultural worldviews, most notably "egalitarian" and "individualist" worldviews.

The article asserts that egalitarians are "naturally sensitive to environmental hazards, the abatement of which justifies regulating commercial activities that produce social inequality." In other words, egalitarians are predisposed to be hostile to large-scale capitalism, and will thus naturally believe any theory that supports this predisposition. When capitalism failed to deliver economic growth in the 1930s, some intellectuals supported communism as more likely to do so (and perhaps more likely to enhance the status of intellectuals by dragging down corporate elites that outrun them in the race for wealth and power). And when capitalism has delivered economic growth, modern egalitarians decided that growth wasn't so great after all.

By contrast, the article notes, "individualists" generally "dismiss claims of environmental risk as specious, in line with their commitment to the autonomy of markets." In other words, individualists believe that (1) government should only regulates transactions that cause harm to others, and (2) this no-harm rule justifies a small government that does not interfere with commercial activity except to prohibit force and fraud. But proposition (2) makes sense only if most commercial transactions in fact do not cause significant harm to nonparties (or to use an economic term, "externalities"). But if nearly all commerical transactions do in fact create dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, proposition (2) fails, which means that the entire ideology of individualism is based on a falsehood (the idea that business activity does not generally create externalities justifying regulation). Because climate change appears to threaten the core idea of individualism, individualists will engage in considerable intellectual gymnastics to avoid climate regulation.

In sum, most people (other than a few scientists and economists who actually know what they are talking about)* with strong opinions on climate policy are responding less to objective reality than to their cultural values. As a practical matter, this means that Americans are going to have a great deal of difficulty reaching a popular consensus on climate policy; because the issue is so technical, ill-informed public opinion is likely to be impervious to new scientific evidence. The stalemate can only be broken through policies that appeal to both sides.

Indeed, the climate change stalemate provides a lesson for policy entrepreneurs in other fields, such as planning-related issues. Policies that attract broad popular support will be policies that attract support from both egalitarians and individualists. For example, zoning (despite its many flaws) is popular because it appeals to both egalitarians' desire to bridle developers and to individualist homeowners' desire to protect their property rights -- since even individualist homeowners often see their neighborhood as part of their property.

*I make no claim to be part of this group.

Michael Lewyn is an assistant professor at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, FL, where he teaches a seminar on sprawl and the law, as well as numerous other courses.

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A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Climate talks timeline: From 350 to Kyoto to Copenhagen and beyond

October 13, 2009

Notwithstanding the Superfreaks, a lot of good books on global warming and its solutions are coming out right now (see “The Invention of Lying about Climate Change“).  One of the best is Lester Brown’s “Plan B 4.0:  Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”  In his book, Brown lays out the too-little-discussed but devastating impacts unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases will have on agriculture, expanding on his Scientific American piece “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?”

He also lays out one of the most comprehensive set of solutions you can find in one place, including important subjects and strategies that don’t get enough attention, with a full chapter on “Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population,” another one on “Restoring the Earth,” which focuses on regenerating forests, soils, and fisheries, and, of course, “Feeding Eight [!] Billion People Well” — the exclamation point is mine.

I had lunch with him recently, an eye-opener even for someone who follows these issues closely.  I asked him to submit some blog posts.  What follows is his first, about his new book, which was just released September 29.

In early 2008, Saudi Arabia announced that, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the non-replenishable aquifer it had been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted.

In response, officials said they would reduce their wheat harvest by one eighth each year until production would cease entirely in 2016. The Saudis would then import virtually all the grain consumed by their Canada-sized population of nearly 30 million people.

The Saudis are unique in being so wholly dependent on irrigation.  But other, far larger, grain producers such as India and China are facing irrigation water losses and could face grain production declines.

Water Shortages Undermining Food Security

Fifteen percent of India’s grain harvest is produced by overpumping its groundwater. In human terms, 175 million Indians are being fed with grain produced from wells that will be going dry. The comparable number for China is 130 million. Among the many other countries facing harvest reductions from groundwater depletion are Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen.

The tripling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices between mid-2006 and mid-2008 signaled our growing vulnerability to food shortages. It took the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression to lower grain prices.

Past decades have witnessed world grain price surges, but they were event-drive-a drought in the former Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, or a crop-withering heat wave in the U.S. Corn Belt. This most recent price surge was trend-driven, the result of our failure to reverse the environmental trends that are undermining world food production.

These trends include-in addition to falling water tables-eroding soils and rising temperatures from increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Rising temperatures bring crop-shrinking heat waves, melting ice sheets, rising sea level, and shrinking mountain glaciers.

With both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting at an accelerating pace, sea level could rise by up to six feet during this century. Such a rise would inundate much of the Mekong Delta, which produces half of the rice in Viet Nam, the world’s second-ranking rice exporter. Even a three-foot rise in sea level would cover half the riceland in Bangladesh, a country of 160 million people. And these are only two of Asia’s many rice-growing river deltas.

The world’s mountain glaciers have shrunk for 18 consecutive years. Many smaller glaciers have disappeared. Nowhere is the melting more alarming than in the Himalayas and on the

Tibetan plateau where the ice melt from glaciers sustains not only the dry-season flow of the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers but also the irrigation systems that depend on them. Without these glaciers, many Asian rivers would cease to flow during the dry season.

The wheat and rice harvests of China and India would be directly affected. China is the world’s leading wheat producer. India is second. (The United States is third.) With rice, China and India totally dominate the world harvest. The projected melting of these glaciers poses the most massive threat to food security the world has ever faced.

An Early Sign of Decline?
The number of hungry people, which was declining for several decades, bottomed out in the mid-1990s at 825 million. In 2009 it jumped to over 1 billion. With world food prices projected to continue rising, so too will the number of hungry people.

We know from studying earlier civilizations such as the Sumerians, Mayans, and many others, that more often than not it was food shortages that led to their demise. It now appears that food may be the weak link in our early twenty-first century civilization as well.

Will we follow in the footsteps of the Sumerians and the Mayans or can we change course–and do it before time runs out? Can we move onto an economic path that is environmentally sustainable? We think we can. That is what Plan B 4.0 is about.

Mobilizing to Save Civilization
Plan B aims to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the economy’s natural support systems. It prescribes a worldwide cut in net carbon emissions of 80 percent by 2020, thus keeping atmospheric CO2 concentrations from exceeding 400 parts per million.

Cutting carbon emissions will require both a worldwide revolution in energy efficiency and a shift from oil, coal, and gas to wind, solar, and geothermal energy.

The shift to renewable sources of energy is moving at a pace and on a scale we could not imagine even two years ago. Consider the state of Texas. The enormous number of wind projects under development, on top of the 9,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity in operation and under construction, will bring Texas to over 50,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity (think 50 coal-fired power plants) when all these wind farms are completed. This will more than satisfy the needs of the state’s 24 million residents.

Nationwide, new wind generating capacity in 2008 totaled 8,400 megawatts while new coal plants totaled only 1,400 megawatts. The annual growth in solar generating capacity will also soon overtake that of coal. The energy transition is under way.

The United States has led the world in each of the last four years in new wind generating capacity, having overtaken Germany in 2005. But this lead will be short-lived.  China is working on six wind farm mega-complexes with generating capacities that range from 10,000 to 30,000 megawatts, for a total of 105,000 megawatts. This is in addition to the hundreds of smaller wind farms built or planned.

Wind is not the only option. In July 2009, a consortium of European corporations led by Munich Re, and including Deutsche Bank, Siemens, and ABB plus an Algerian firm, announced a proposal to tap the massive solar thermal generating capacity in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Solar thermal power plants in North Africa could economically supply half of Europe’s electricity. The Algerians note that they have enough harnessable solar energy in their desert to power the world economy. (No, this is not an error.)

The soaring investment in wind, solar, and geothermal energy is being driven by the exciting realization that these renewables can last as long as the earth itself. In contrast to investing in new oil fields where well yields begin to decline in a matter of decades, or in coal mines where the seams run out, these new energy sources can last forever.

At a Tipping Point
We are in a race between political tipping points and natural tipping points. Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid the resulting rise in sea level? Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save at least the larger glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau? Can we stabilize population by lowering fertility before nature takes over and halts population growth by raising mortality?

Yes. But it will take something close to a wartime mobilization, one similar to that of the United States in 1942 as it restructured its industrial economy in a matter of months. We used to talk about saving the planet, but it is civilization itself that is now at risk.

Saving civilization is not a spectator sport. Each of us must push for rapid change. And we must be armed with a plan outlining the changes needed.

– Lester Brown

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