Fossilized Leaders Mislead Americans About Fossil Fuels

Most Republican leaders and a few wayward Democrats fail to recognize several straightforward facts:

1. Fossil fuels are no longer cheap.

2. Besides fossil fuels no longer being cheap, if we take away subsidies from fossil fuels, Americans would really feel the cost.

3. But it gets worse. If we include the total costs of the damage that fossil fuel development and burning has on our country, and also the planet, the real cost of fossil fuels is in fact prohibitive. Our children and grandchildren will be paying the costs for generations to feed today's dangerous hunger for high profits by the fat cats in the fossil fuel industry.

4. If the United States began tomorrow on a massive alternative energy program, it would probably be decades before the United States would stop producing coal, natural gas, and oil. Why? Because it will take time to build up the alternative energy infrastructure. It takes time to build the factories, hire the people, train them as the technology changes, mine rare earth metals essential to alternative energy and again hire the people who will do the mining.

5. Jobs in the fossil fuel industries will take years to disappear. Why? Because as alternative energy grows, the jobs that will be lost are not the ones here at home but the ones overseas. The first thing that alternative energy will do is make the U.S. more energy secure and less dependent on the volatile politics of international oil.

6. And this is the most important: while fossil fuels are becoming more expensive, alternative energy is becoming less expensive.

Mary of The Left Coaster points out that high technology companies are increasingly turning to alternative energy. The trend towards alternative energy, despite the political fossils in Washington, is underway.

Paul Krugman in a recent column in The New York Times points out that that the costs of alternative is dropping. It's economics folks. It's capitalism the way its supposed to work.

For all the noise that Republicans make on Fox News, on the Rush Limbaugh comedy hour, and in Congress, they no longer much care about the kind of capitalism that made America great. Keep in mind this isn't the first time our country has lost its way. We lost our way in the 1890s and we lost our way at the end of the 1920s. When capitalism no longer works for a majority of Americans, something has gone very wrong.

Republicans, the ones who run the Republican Party, are the party of bankers and the wealthy. They have lost sight of why Americans usually like capitalism. Usually, and it certainly hasn't happened lately, capitalism is at its best when people pay less and less for more. Lately, for perhaps 30 years, or more, Americans have been paying more and more for less. Capitalism as today's conservative Republicans define it has failed.

Think of it: the cost of alternative energy is generally falling. Solar panels are cheaper. Windmills are cheaper. Batteries are cheaper. The price of alternative energy will continue to fall for many years to come. That's capitalism at its best. But the cost of most of other things, the real cost, including fossil fuels, are climbing—and the money that pours into the pockets of the top 1% gets larger and larger while jobs get sent to foreign countries. That is not capitalism at its best. If our democracy is to remain relevant, Washington needs to focus a great deal less on the privileges and wealth of the top 1%, and a great deal more on the creation of more jobs, productive jobs, jobs that ensure a future for a large majority of Americans.

Republicans Organize Grassroots for the Wealthy and Flirt with the 19th Century

The tea party mad hatters are threatening to take the United States back to the 19th century—but, the way things are going, these folks may be flirting with the 17th century when emperors, kings and various aristocrats forced average people into fighting for them so that the emperors, kings and various aristocrats could have a little more power and wealth for themselves and their heirs. In the Thirty Years War alone, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people died for the sake of a few hundred powerful people. It took ordinary people two or three generations just to get back to where their grandparents had been.

Timothy Egan has a post on the growing irrationality of a large number of Republicans (but is it irrationality or simply a stubborn refusal to do some homework?):

It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, who are notorious for uttering facts more by accident than by design, are only partially responsible for the current state of affairs. Certainly people like Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove manage to time their utterances to add kindling to the fire of right-wing anger. Never mind for a moment the damage news outlets not owned by billionaires like Murdoch are doing by not pointing out the outright lies. The fact is that the tea party people are being organized and some curious people are paying the bills. Here's a post from The Mahablog:

Kate Zernike writes for the New York Times that the “tea party” movement is largely being organized and funded by FreedomWorks, which isn’t really news.

FreedomWorks staffers are going around the country training the teabaggers how to be useful political tools and get out the vote for FreedomWorks candidates. It is this organizing that is behind the several upsets in recent Republican primaries, in which “tea party” candidates upset long-entrenched Republican incumbents.

(snip)

FreedomWorks itself evolved from another organization, Citizens for a Sound Economy, created in 1984 by the Koch Foundation with help from Big Tobacco. Joshua Holland of AlterNet has called FreedomWorks a “Wall Street front group,”, although I think it’s probably more accurate to call it “astroturf for hire.” FreedomWorks works with a number of PR firms to manipulate public opinion for a number of right-wing special interests.

According to SourceWatch, its funders in 2007 included –

Armstrong Foundation, $20,000
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, $80,000
Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, $100,000
Sarah Scaife Foundation, $200,000
Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation, $20,000

In other words — grassroots, my ass. What’s behind the “tea parties” are the same mega-wealthy familiy trusts that bankroll everything else that’s right wing in America.

The New Yorker has an article on a particular pair of right-wing billionaires who are behind the tea party folks, the Koch brothers:

[The Koch brothers own] virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. ... Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill....

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups.

Many Republicans, when they aren't complaining about immigrant and Muslims, continue to believe that the biggest danger to America is big government rather than big business. The Koch brothers show how unproductive that belief can be. Keep in mind that if the United States takes global warming seriously and turns to alternative energy in a major way, the oil giants will still be pumping oil and the coal giants will still be mining coal for many years to come. Switching to alternative energy is going to take time. There is still a lot of money that big coal and big oil can make, and a lot of work for those in those industries (however, very rapidly, there will also be many workers needed in alternative energy and the infrastructure projects). Rationally, the billionaires and other big investors who own coal and oil ought to know all this. Business is supposed to be rational, right? But greed and power do funny things to people. It seems people like that can never have enough. It's clear that right-wing billionaires have an itch to throw their weight around.

In the meantime, people who deal with facts are getting uneasy. I live in Northern California and I learned something new about global warming this month. All over the world, we have been seeing record heat this year. Russia, still an important breadbasket for various nations, had record heat and drought that has drastically affected its agricultural output (I know, the Republican with his head in the sand is complaining that this has nothing to do with him).

But we have also been seeing other things. We have seen record floods in Pakistan and China. And yet, despite the record heat around the world, a very few places like the western counties of Northern California have experienced a very cool summer. Cool? Yes, and there's a reason for it. And it does not contradict the climate scientists. The interior counties to the east are experiencing long periods of record high temperatures and when the conditions are just right, the heat rising in the interior areas is allowing the marine layers to flow farther inland.

There is a reason the scientists prefer the term climate change to global warming. Most of the effects in the years to come will be rising temperatures but there will be any number of weird side effects around the world. We are seeing these things far earlier than we thought we would and it's only 2010.

Climate scientists are doing a lot of modeling trying to understand what is happening. The science is powerful but it is not exact. An example of powerful science was the development of the atomic bomb. In the beginning, no one knew exactly how much the first nuclear weapons would yield. Before the first explosion at White Sands, the scientists did their calculations and came up with a range. A few calculations suggested nothing might happen. One or two calculations suggested the Earth's atmosphere might catch on fire. The great bulk of the calculations were somewhere in between. But even the calculations near the actual power of the bomb had quite a range. It turns out the actual explosion was a little bigger than most thought it would be. We know nuclear weapons are real. Only a fool would say they're not.

Climate science is a less accurate science than physics but not by as much as one might think. Still, the calculations the climate scientists have made so far have not been entirely correct. So far, they have been underestimating the effect and speed of global warming. Some scientists are trying to get ahead of the curve and taking more seriously the possibility of worst case scenarios. For an article on the growing odds of worst case scenarios, check out this post at Early Warning on the probability distribution of various temperature scenarios.

In the Guardian, Bill McKibben has some thoughts on the record summer heat:

But this is no longer an environmental battle. As this summer demonstrates, if you're concerned about development, climate change is issue No 1 (how much development is going to go on in Pakistan, now that its bridges are all gone?). If you're concerned about war and peace, climate change is issue No 1 (when Russia stops sending grain to Egypt and Nigeria, and when wheat prices start to rise, what do you think comes next?). If you're concerned about the future, then climate change is issue No 1 – because this summer is a tiny taste of what the future is all about. So far we've barely raised the earth's temperature a degree, and that's caused all that we've seen so far. But climatologists assure us there's four or five degrees more by the century's end unless we work with incredible speed to end the fossil fuel era.

The Tea Party crowd is determined to turn the Republican Party into the American Taliban. If by Taliban we are talking about fundamentalism, xenophobia, self-righteousness, a turning away from rationalism toward authoritarianism and an inward turn toward the past, there can be no doubt the United States has a problem. The question this fall is whether enough Americans will join right-wing Republicans to form a majority or whether Americans will turn away from the kind of nonsense that has never done our nation any good.

Rare Earth Metals in China: A Case of Corruption Leading to Pollution

Lately, the government of China has been talking about honoring Chinese tradition. It's fine when societies, including our own, honor the best parts of our traditions but actual practices don't always match our publicly declared policies. China, in any case, is a bundle of contradictions. One could easily argue that the red octopus above represents the strange fusion of red communism and acquisitive capitalism that today is indicative of China. (Come to think of it, I ought to use the octopus later to represent Republican members of Congress and Washington lobbyists who wish to snarl up and otherwise obstruct useful legislation in Washington. It's a great image!)

For some time, China has been talking about cleaning up its pollution but not much happens. It is a sad fact that sooner or later China is going to have its Love Canal. But multiply that times ten given the pollution problems China already has.

I recently did a post on rare earth mining in California's Mountain Pass Mine in the Mojave desert. Even during its worst days, Mountain Pass seems to have been handled better than the Chinese mine discussed in the following New York Times article:

Here in Guyun Village, a small community in southeastern China fringed by lush bamboo groves and banana trees, the environmental damage can be seen in the red-brown scars of barren clay that run down narrow valleys and the dead lands below, where emerald rice fields once grew.

Miners scrape off the topsoil and shovel golden-flecked clay into dirt pits, using acids to extract the rare earths. The acids ultimately wash into streams and rivers, destroying rice paddies and fish farms and tainting water supplies.

Lovely. So much for 5,000 years of sustainable agriculture.

I don't want to minimize the environmental damage that has been done by the United States in the last 200 years but the worst stories that have come out of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe make the United States look rather green by comparison. There are growing concerns that China is repeating some of the worst damage done during the Cold War. The problem is that the dynamics are far too similar: despite China's commitment to capitalism and the loosening of strict authoritarian control, the government is over-centralized, overly authoritarian, and overly paranoid about a free press. On top of that, there is far too much corruption in government as well as in business.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabo seem bent on curbing corruption but they have the same problem the emperors had from the beginning: the inability of the central government to control events in distant provinces as well as in large cities such as Shanghai. Premier Wen has apparently found it useless to announce personal appearances around the country since that only leads to Potemkin moments as local officials try to put on a good but fraudelent show. Now Wen arrives unannounced and is not pleased with what he finds. And as noted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, not nearly enough is done to enforce laws against corruption:

Though the Chinese government has more than 1,200 laws, rules, and directives against corruption, implementation is spotty and ineffective. The odds of a corrupt official going to jail are less than three percent, making corruption a high-return, low-risk activity. Even low-level officials have the opportunity to amass an illicit fortune of tens of millions of yuan.

Still, despite problems, we need to be careful not to underestimate what the top Chinese leadership can do. There are indications that the global warming deal in Copenhagen wasn't as bad as some on America's far right and far left have claimed. Having any kind of deal that involves China and the United States is better than anything we've had in the last nine years. But no one should kid themselves. Not China. And not the United States. In a real sense, a number of American corporations have been sending their pollution to China for almost thirty years. Further, it's been apparent that many U.S. corporations don't have the kind of quality control that all of us took for granted back in the 1970s—instead too much money seems to go to public relations and Washington lobbyists. In the meantime, a lot of crap is put on the American market by American companies that shouldn't be sold.

A real climate change agreement will only be possible as the U.S. and China build up mutual trust and respect. Eventually mutual inspections will be needed and those inspections will have to extend beyond just the U.S. and China. I know, these things will be difficult but they are necessary and not impossible. And they will take time.

How Many Pollutants Come From Coal?

There's been so much talk about clean coal in the last year or two that I can only shake my head. There's no such thing, not even close. One could argue that there's such a thing as slightly cleaner coal but that's it.

I find it curious that Republicans use clean coal jargon quite often, but a website for the coal industry doesn't seem to use the phrase as much. What the World Coal Institute talks about is carbon capture and storage. Worldwide, despite all the hype, there appear to be only seven operational sites in the entire world with none in the U.S. (when you go to the site, click on the 'show operational projects' bar). There are several test sites in the U.S. and a number of projects that are planned but the numbers are still low, though the graph maker doesn't miss a trick to make it look like more.

Given that coal is used to generate about half the electricity in the U.S., how many sites are actually going to have carbon capture and storage? And how many of these sites are actually going to work?

Years ago my father was in chemical packaging and some of the finished products were sent to underground storage tanks that were installed in the 1950s. Those tanks were standard for the era and were supposed to last a hundred years. They lasted about 25-35 years before they began leaking into the soil. So who will be around a hundred years from now to make sure the captured carbon dioxide isn't escaping? It's far better to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the first place than to bank on permanent storage.

In a way, with all the focus on carbon dioxide, global warming is helping to create a myth about coal. Take a look at the following paragaph from the World Coal Institute:

The deployment of all energy generating technologies invariably leads to some degree of environmental impact.

(snip)

The use of coal for power generation is not exempt from these impacts and has been associated with a number of environmental challenges, primarily associated with air emissions. Coal has demonstrated the ability to meet such challenges in the past and the expectation is that it will successfully meet future environmental challenges.

Isn't that wonderful? Actually, I've read worse propaganda. Good propaganda admits there's a little bit of a problem but, gee whiz, coal producers are just folks like you and me and they're doing their best.

And yes, I'm perfectly aware of the people who earn a living from coal. In fact, the coal problem is so huge it's not controversial to say coal will continue to be used for many years to come and most people will remain employed for all those years. But there are other jobs and other ways to make money that don't cause the damage that coal does.

Coal is the dirtiest fuel there is, period. "Some degree" of impact doesn't cut it in terms of the history of coal and the damage it does and the enormous damage it will continue to do if we do not develop clear plans to switch to alternative energy.

Let me quote another section from the Institute:

Mined coal is of variable quality and is frequently associated with mineral and chemical material including clay, sand, sulphur and trace elements. Coal cleaning by washing and beneficiation removes this associated material, prepares the coal to customer specifications and is an important step in reducing emissions from coal use.

Coal cleaning reduces the ash content of coal by over 50% resulting in less waste, lower sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions and improved thermal efficiencies, leading to lower CO2 emissions. While coal preparation is standard practice in many countries, greater uptake in developing countries is needed as a low-cost way to improve the environmental performance of coal.

Yes, developing countries should do a better job of using coal (or perhaps not using it if they can find better alternative energy sources), but those same countries use only a fraction of what the U.S. and China use. But let's focus on the sleight of hand encompassing 'coal cleaning'. What is used to clean the coal? Water. Where does that water go? Into our rivers, water tables and oceans. The pollution involved is not small.

Where I come from, trained physicians who are concerned about the impact of pollution have far more credibility than politicians in Washington, Beijing and Copenhagen who take money from Big Coal and Big Oil. Physicians for Social Responsibility is one group of doctors who have made an issue of coal. They have published a medical report, "Coal's Assault on Human Health." They point out that coal impacts health from mining to transporting it to power plants to the actual process of burning to the disposal of the ash. Not pretty. If you go to their site, you can download the full report report (pdf file). Here's a section from Chapter 2: Life Cycle of Coal:

It is dring the combustion phase of coal's lifecycle that our dependence on coal energy exacts the greatest toll on human health. Coal combustion releases over 70 harmful chemicals into the environment and contributes significantly to global warming (see Table 2.2). This section describes the pollutants emitted by coal combustion.

Coal combustion creates both solid and gaseous byproducts. Gas byproducts are emitted into the atmosphere through smokestacks. Some solids go into the atmosphere as well. Other solids are left behind at the plant as solid waste, also called coal ash. Some of the pollutants entering the air stay in the atmosphere for long periods; others fall to the earth and in turn pollute soil and water bodies. Some substances are not directly harmful but undergo chemical reactions in the atmosphere that create harmful secondary pollutants.

(snip)

Notwithstanding local differences in pollutant composition, coal combustion causes pollution nationwide. Though coal supplies roughly 50% of the nation's electricity, it produces a disproportionate share of electric utility-related pollution. Coal plants emit approimately 87% of total utility-related nitrogen oxide pollution, 94% of utility-related nitrogen oxide pollution, and 98% of all utility-related mercury pollution. ... Coal combustion is also responsible for more than 30% of total U.S. carbon dioxide pollution, contributing significantly to global warming.

Uh, what was that again about "...all energy generating technologies invariably leads to some degree of environmental impact"? Coal clearly has far more impact than any other energy producing sector. It's dirty. And always will be. Even without considering global warming, burning coal for our electricity is dirty. Add in global warming and we should be closing down coal plants as alternative energy begins to grow. Not only do we need to get the government to help grow alternative energy faster than our population growth, we need to switch to natural gas as a transition fuel since it burns far cleaner than coal.

Some years ago I was shocked when I learned how much coal is being burned in the United States. An unnoticed irony over the last sixty years is that the use of coal was actually dropping during the 1950s despite the early years of the baby boom and our rising population. There was also a lot of talk in those days about new sources of energy. The United States—and China—need to start walking the talk.

A Thought Experiment on Global Warming

Hard numbers tend to put people to sleep. But numbers can tell a story. Imagine a warlord of some faraway country who's awakened in the middle of the night and told his enemy has sent 100 soldiers across the border. "You awakened me for a hundred soldiers? Take care of it and don't bother me!" says the warlord before falling back asleep. An hour later, another aide comes in and wakens the warlord to tell him 500 soldiers have crossed the border. "What? Can't my pitiful generals take care of 500 soldiers? Wake me when a real army comes or I'll have your head!" Three hours later a third aide comes in. "How many?" growls the warlord. "One million, sir." The third aide finally has the full attention of the warlord.

The scenario, by the way, has happened in the past. It pretty much happened to Stalin in 1941 when Hitler sent his troops across the border. Stalin first refused to believe the early reports and pretty much panicked hours later when he realized how big the invasion was. Stalin eventually threw the Germans back but without the help of the United States, it is highly probable that Hitler's invasion would have succeeded.

Today many people can't believe global warming is real. One part of the problem is that numbers are clearly putting people to sleep. But another part of the problem—besides coal and petroleum companies with vested interests—is that there are people who can't believe humans can have that much impact on the environment. I find this odd since there are plenty of examples of human impact if one simply takes a good look around. I've seen, for example, large deforested areas that once held logging communities back in the 1930s. Those communities are now ghost towns so old and neglected there isn't much left of them.

My grandmother many years ago showed me any number of areas in Southern California that used to be wetlands before they were drained and turned into large housing developments. It takes willful ignorance to pretend that we haven't had a major impact on biological life. We have driven many species to extinction or near extinction. We have now been over-harvesting the world's oceans for a number of years. But even by the 1960s, the average person ought to have known we were having an impact on fish populations. Why? Because many types of fish people were catching were considerably smaller than the ones caught in the 1920s.

In California, it's almost startling to realize that many of the mining areas famous during the Gold Rush haven't produced significant ore for over a hundred years.

Actually humans have been having an impact for a very long time. The pyramids have been visible from space for thousands of years. Today, from space, one can see smog covering many large areas around the world.

For some reason, many examples of human impact get ignored. So I'm going to suggest a thought experiment that might suggest just how much influences humans have on the earth. Thought experiments are just illustrations and after I present the following thought experiment, I'll add some sensible qualifications.

First, we have to start with some numbers. In 2008, humans consumed at least 474,000,000 terajoules of energy. Other estimates are in the same ballpark but this number comes from various published sources (though it does not include minor sources of energy such as burning firewood). The important thing to know is that 80-90% of the consumed energy has come from burning various kinds of fossil fuels. It's not a quaint metaphor to say we live in the age of oil.

Now there are 6.8 billion people in the world and maybe it's not all that amazing that so many people would produce so many terajoules. But consider this: the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 produced some 60 terajoules of energy. That's a tiny fraction of the energy humans now produce in a year. The largest hydrogen bomb the United States exploded was a bit more than 45,000 terajoules but that's still a very tiny percentage of yearly energy production.

Let's look at this another way. At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union had in excess of 20,000 nuclear weapons. The yield of the weapons ranged from 1 kiloton up to something like 15-45 megatons of dynamite. If we assume an average size of 100 kilotons, the destructive yield of 20,000 nuclear weapons is 6,000,000 terajoules. That is still less than 2 percent of the energy humans produce and consume in a year.

Now many global warming naysayers say humans don't have enough impact on the climate to affect global warming. So now for the thought experiment. It's actually just the reverse of a thought experiment that was done some thirty years ago. Scientists asked what if 20,000 nuclear weapons were released in a massive all-out nuclear war. The affect on the climate was interesting. It was argued at first that all-out nuclear war would lead to a nuclear winter lasting two years. The reason was diminished sunlight as a result of all the dirt and debris from the explosion thrown up in the air as well as all the smoke from the ensuing fires. However, later calculations showed that the result would only be a kind of nuclear autumn lasting a few months. Nuclear war of such size of course would create an unimaginable level of destruction. Notice that exploding 20,000 nuclear weapons would not raise the temperature of the earth in the ensuing days (at least not at first). That's because most of the heat would be radiated into space but the debris would have the effect of blocking out sunlight.

As it happens, heat is also supposed to escape into space when we release all that heat from burning fossil fuels. To a large extent that's exactly what happens even now. Except that greenhouse gases are trapping a certain percentage of escaping heat and reflecting it back to earth.

There is a possible though far-fetched way that humans could accelerate global warming with only a tiny percentage of our annual energy production—not that anybody in their right mind would do it. But we're talking about a thought experiment. If 20,000 nuclear weapons were sent to Greenland for use in late spring or summer, a geologist with knowledge of glaciers and the specific underlying drainage basins working together with a demolition expert could probably figure out where to explode the weapons to release somewhere around a third of the ice pack. This would be sufficient to raise the world's sea levels by seven feet. Even if the released radiation is discounted—which of course it can't—the result of the higher sea level alone would be devasting within days, if not hours. In addition, there would be very little in the way of fires and most of the material that would enter the atmosphere would be water. It is probable that the remaining ice would melt at an accelerated rate thus eventually raising sea levels even further.

Now this is just a thought experiment to show how just a tiny fraction of the energy we use every year could be channeled so that the physically world would dramatically change. Just as no one in their right mind would launch an all-out nuclear war, no one in their right mind would send 20,000 nuclear weapons to melt a third of Greenland ice sheet. When we understand the possible consequences of our actions, there are certain things human beings do not do. Let me repeat that: there are certain things human beings do not do.

Every year the evidence of global warming grows stronger, not weaker. When any corporation talks about cleaning up the environment, find out if they're simply exporting their excess carbon dioxide or even their pollution to a third world country. Most global warming naysayers are funded by coal companies and the oil corporations. These are the same people who have taken years and years to clean up their own pollution in other areas involving their operations. When there are oil spills, the first response of many oil companies is to call the lawyers before they call the clean-up specialists. The climate doesn't pay much attention to lawyers. If humans do certain things, there are consequences. That's just the way it is. It is the early 21st century and it's time for all of us to bite off some responsibility. It begins by agreeing there are certain things human being do not do.

Global Warming, Polls and Know-Nothingism

Poll numbers go up and down. During last year's presidential elections, poll numbers could vary by ten points in the last six weeks before the election. In addition to fluctuations due to sampling size, polls can vary because of what candidates do, events in the world, what methods and questions pollsters are using and sometimes simply because of the contrariness of respondents. But most polls showed that Barack Obama was going to win the presidency. It's not hard to argue that in politics, polls matter.

Admittedly, when it comes to polls about such things as whether or not one believes in global warming, the truth is that the physical world doesn't pay much attention. The ice keeps melting, the average temperatures keep climbing.

Fortunately, although most scientists believe humans are causing global warming, they also have good reason to believe that humans may be able to do something about it. Here, polls matter. A majority of Americans still believe global warming is real. That's a good thing if we are to head off disaster in coming years. If you believe there's a problem, and you discover you have the capacity to deal with the problem, you might be able to stop it or at least slow it down. Of course, the longer we go without doing much, the more difficult it will be to deal with global warming.

So we ought to be concerned that a recent poll suggests global warming naysayers may be having an effect. Here's the story from The Boston Globe:

The number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the earth is warming is at its lowest point in three years, and the number who see the situation as a serious problem has also declined, according to a survey released yesterday.

And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the United States and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.

This is important news since it tells us Congress, President Obama, newspapers and various other news outlets need to find better ways to get the message across that global warming is a major threat and that it requires global cooperation and leadership. It is a fact, at least for a few more years, that the only leader out there that can provide world leadership is the United States.

But there's a segment of our population that wants to play ostrich on a wide range of issues, including global warming. Actually, one of the disappointing things about this era are the number of people who offer up trivial arguments or who clearly show they haven't done much homework before issuing an opinion. Here's an example that by the end borders on the silly:

If there is no arctic ice the Northwest Passage opens up for shipping, at least it will be open in the summer if professor Wadhams is to be believed. This will cut from one to two weeks off the travel time for shipments of material goods traveling between Europe and Asia. Rather than having to round the Cape of Good Hope or weather the Magellan Straits, vessels can sail a more direct and shorter route across the north pole.

The author has a point but the point ignores the larger picture. We'll get to that in a moment, but here's something the author said in an earlier article:

The news reports are full of it: arctic temperatures are the highest in the last 2,000 years – big hairy deal, and probably incorrect to boot.

I call this the Fox News style of argument: the news is not important and even if it is, it's probably not accurate. Technically, it's an example of two kinds of denial (with a little attitude thrown in) but mostly it's muddle. There are other kinds of denial and they are found frequently on the far right, and on Fox News.

Let's go back to the author's most recent article:

Oh but the alarmists say that sea levels will rise if the arctic ice disappears. Not really. The arctic sea ice floats on water. Any melting of this ice will have no effect on sea levels. You can check this out in your own kitchen. Put an ice cube in an empty glass and then fill the glass to the brim with water. Wait until the ice cube melts. Did any water spill out of the glass? No, so why should we expect different results from melting the floating sea ice in the arctic?

The problem with this argument is that it pretends to counter an argument that in fact does not exist. No reputable scientist and no one who has bothered to inform themselves on the arctic ice cap and its relationship to global warming say that the melting of the ice cap alone will raise ocean levels. But the melting ice in the ocean is direct evidence of warming, at least as it is measured over a number of years. Obviously, if the Arctic Ocean is warming, so is the atmosphere and the surrounding land.

When scientists speak of the risk for rising sea levels, the immediate focus is on places like Greenland. Three-fourths of Greenland is in the Arctic Circle. And it is generally growing warmer. The ice sheet on Greenland is enormous. If the glaciers melt and all that water ends up in the drink, it will raise the level of the ocean. That's a physical fact you can bank on.

Yes, the melting arctic ice appears to be giving the world a new ocean route, but the price will be extraordinarily disruptive if it also leads to Greenland losing much of its ice. Even if the ocean rises only two or three feet, tens of millions of people around the world will have to move. Trillions of dollars of damage will be done to economies around the world, including the United States.

One of the problem I have with global warming naysayers is that the evidence for global warming in the last three years has grown stronger, not weaker. If the models are correct, the last thing we need to do is throw even more carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But that's exactly what we're already doing. The world is turning increasingly toward heavily polluting heavy crude, tar sands and coal. We're at a crux and we need more people who can explain what's going on.

Here's an interview with Henry Pollack, a scientist who, along with others, shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore. I'll end today's post with just one question and answer:

You talk at one point about the argument some have made that CO2 will boost agriculture, make winters shorter, and generally make life better. You call that argument "parochial and simplistic." It seems to me that many of climate contrarians' talking points similarly seize on part of the story to appeal to a kind of know-nothingism. How can complicated data win out over these efforts?

You have to create analogies that help people understand better. In the "contra" mentality, they see science as a long chain of evidence and that if they can break one link in the chain, the whole thing is going to collapse.

But it's not a chain with links in it; it's like a web hammock: Even if you snap one strand, the hammock doesn't fall apart, it's still filled when many other strands of evidence.

Some people say, "This must be part of a natural cycle." Well, that's true, there certainly was climate change in before there were people. But that doesn't mean that all climate change today is due to natural causes.

The analogy that I use is to ask the question, Were there ever forest fires before there were people? We know that lightning can cause forest fires, but that does not imply that all forest fires today are caused by lightning. And, just because there are natural causes [for climate change], it does not mean that today those are the only factors that are operating. There are almost 7 billion of us now; collectively, humans are the largest agents of geological and climatological changes. We're moving earth, we're clearing forests, we're changing ocean chemistry, and, incidentally, we're also changing the climate.

The Need to Fight the Horse and Buggy Mentality

I would like to believe that the United States is still the leader in innovation in the world and there's evidence to suggest we still lead in innovation in several areas. But that innovative leadership won't last if Washington, and particularly today's crop of K street Republicans continue to protect a horse and buggy mentality. The problem is even deeper than that, though. What we're really talking about is the protection of privilege.

We have heirs in the tobacco, beer, forestry, railroad, oil and auto industries who haven't worked the source of their wealth in two or three generations but they want their wealth protected at taxpayers expense and at the cost of our nation's economic future (this is a broad problem but it strikes me that Bush thinks of himself as an oil man but it's not certain that he ever learned much about the oil business).

And then there's outsourcing; some of the biggest flag wavers in our country are also the same characters who turn their backs on our history and values by looking for cheap labor and destroying American jobs by sending those job overseas; these flag wavers are also weakening our country and in some cases there are serious national defense issues involved when some critical products and parts are made exclusively overseas with no backup plan if something happens to the source of those products.

The most dangerous trend is the amount of our energy that is now outsourced and that we have to import from overseas. It's not likely that America will become energy independent any time soon, but we can clearly improve our situation. And of course, dependence on oil has the longterm economic drawback of global warming. And then there's the issue that there's only so much oil and we need to start making a transition to other forms of energy and increased efficiency for using the energy we have. The more we can produce new, non-fossil fuel, sources of energy domestically, the better off we will be.

The Energy Bulletin has a useful graph illustrating that slowing global warming doesn't necessarily have to slow the economy (hat tip to The Oil Drum):

SOME ways of cutting carbon are cheaper than others. So, at different carbon prices, different sorts of methods of abatement become worthwhile. Vattenfall, a Swedish power utility, has tried to quantify which ones would be worth undertaking at what price (see chart 3).

The chart may or may not be relevant to the longterm scenario of how carbon dioxide will be taken out of our atmosphere (at some point, in the next fifty years, it's probable that all the solutions mentioned by the chart will have to be used for one reason or another), but it's worth pointing that the most expensive methods of reducing carbon emissions seem to be getting the most attention from big business and their friends in Washington. And yet, the four most effective ways of lowering carbon emissions are in the hands of average people: better light bulbs (rather than incadescent), home insulation, fuel efficient cars and better water heaters. The problem with so many corporate answers to our problems these days is that taxpayers or consumers eventually pay for them in one form or another. When the auto industry or the oil industry get together as a group and put pressure on Washington, they're not looking for the cheapest or even the most sensible solutions, but rather the most lucrative.

I remember a story from some years back about an African nation that was having a serious water quality problem and it asked several American companies for a solution. The companies came back with several bids, the lowest being $2 billion. The African nation could not afford the price tag. But the companies were thinking in terms of big projects and big profits. Someone else came along who was more interested in helping the African nation than in making huge profits and pointed out that the water quality could be vastly improved for $2 million by digging wells and putting in numerous public faucets at different locations; it wasn't an ideal solution and it wouldn't be a vast American solution with high quality water but it would be economically feasible and therefore doable. One of the reasons reconstruction in Iraq has gone so badly is that we went in with gold-plated projects that never had much chance of succeeding but that had the benefit of large profits for the companies running these projects.

In the end, innovation should not be about what has the most bells and whistles, but what actually works. We're losing the knack we had in our first 200 years of just figuring things out. To my mind, we are beginning to face things that innovation may not be able to solve, but innovation is still our best chance of getting through the next 100 years. We have a number of corrupt and powerful people who refuse to think that far ahead.

Real innovation may require changing how we think about the world and what our obligations are not just to our own children but coming generations as a whole. It wasn't all that long ago that innovators, particularly those in medicine, donated their ideas to the world without regard to the fat profits they might earn. I have nothing against profits but sometimes we end up encouraging too much of a good thing and it begins to stifle real innovation, the kind of innovation that is critical for surviving the 21st century.

UN Signs Off on Global Warming Threat

A UN panel has issued a warning that global warming is probably being caused by human activity and that we may have to do something about it. Okay, that's a somewhat watered down warning but here's the story from Beth Daley of The Boston Globe:

In a report released by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists for the first time linked changes being observed in nature on every continent and in most oceans to rising temperatures from greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, emitted by power plants, factories, and cars.

If emissions are not reduced, the panel warned, 20 percent to 30 percent of plant and animal species could face increased risk of extinction, and rising temperatures could cause widespread human suffering from more frequent droughts, floods, and outbreaks of disease.

(snip)

The report's release in Brussels was delayed for several hours in part because officials of several governments, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, and China, debated wording with scientists, including how the report characterized scientists' certainty that global warming is already influencing physical and biological systems. According to IPCC rules, all governments had to sign off on the document; its release was preceded by four days of intense negotiations with officials from more than 100 countries. The wording was ultimately changed to reflect less certainty, over the objections of the panel's scientists. The final report says it is "likely" that manmade warming has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems.

...the United States, Saudi Arabia, and China. Let's put that in context. The United States is the biggest consumer of oil and probably has the world's largest deposit of coal. China is increasingly a big consumer of oil and also has one of the largest deposits of coal in the world. Saudi Arabia is the biggest producer of oil. The United States and now China are the two biggest polluters in the world. It's not hard to notice a major conflict of interest. All three countries are going to have to deal with reality sooner than they would like. It's time to adapt.

Of the three, the United States is the most capable of innovation and in fact it is probably still the leading innovator in the world though one can argue that Europe as a whole is pretty much even with the US. Nevertheless, it's time for the United States to show leadership again instead of simply protecting the investments of the wealthy. Innovation has always meant jobs. Finding new ways to clean the environment and produce energy will create jobs. It's in our interest then to lead.

Good Post on Coal Mining at Firedoglake

Of and on, I've been reading a book by Jeff Goodell called Big Coal. Coal, of course, has a big problem that is far from being solved when it comes to pollution and Global Warming: it's dirty. There's talk about carbon sequestration but it's not certain how well that's going to work or what percentage of carbon dioxide will be pulled out of burning coal. There's also talk of using coal to create a hydrogen economy but that has a number of hurdles to cross before it becomes reality. For one thing, using coal to create hydrogen is still only a stopgap measure in the long run. Then there's the problem that a hydrogen fuel tank may be more of a problem than it's worth except for large vessels such as boats or perhaps trains. And these are only a few of the issues with coal, some of which may be solved and others maybe not.

Despite the problems with coal, the reality is that there will be coal mining for some time to come. And there's an economic and human side to the story. Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake lives in West Virginia and has a personal perspective on coal; here's a short excerpt:

...the opportunity to earn a good wage, with the risks laid flat out whan an individual makes the decision to work for a particular company, isn't some exercise in fraud (for the most part, although there is certainly an argument to be made where a particular company' shoddy safety record comes into play on occasion), but simply a matter of how much money one is willing to take in exchange for how much risk to one's life in the process. Not nearly that cut and dried, though, in the real world as it might be argued in the abstract, as anyone who knows any person who works in the mining indiustry can tell you — be it management or miner alike.

But so much of our state's history and culture — including the immigrants who swarmed here to work the mines from Scotland, Ireland and Italy, among many others — that form so much of the bedrock of who we are still today, comes from the mines and the folks who worked them.

I am a very proud mountaineer, but I also know that this legacy of strength, of tenacity in the face of so much adversity and tragedy, was bought and paid for with so many lives in the name of expediency and cutting corners for profits. Accidents happen, certainly, and they are unavoidable in an industry as dangerous as mining has always been and will continue to be, but there are a lot of questions that need to be asked and answered about the sheer number of mining disasters that my state has undergone — along with a whole ot of other states — in the past few years as prices for energy have skyrocketed and the push for profits has led to some ricky decisionmaking by some folks who ought to know better.

Give Smith's post a read and follow a couple of the links.

"Doomsday" Clock Closer to Midnight

After mentioning the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last night, it shouldn't really be a surprise that they're in the news today. Keeping in mind that the "Doomsday" clock is primarily a symbol of the danger nuclear weapons pose to the world and that the purpose of the Bulletin is to alert people to changing conditions when it comes to nuclear weapons (and sometimes other problems), the magazine has moved the minute hand closer to midnight.

Here's the story from Tom Zeller Jr. of The New York Times:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which 60 years ago began keeping tabs on humanity’s temporal distance from self-annihilation with the concept of a “Doomsday Clock,” apparently found things sufficiently dire to nudge the minute hand forward two clicks, indicating that we are now “five minutes to midnight” — or Doomsday.

(snip)

Rather than bore you with more exposition, however, we figured we’d we’d render a graphic for your viewing pleasure. So with no further ado, here’s a very rough sketch of how the experts interpreted our distance from the bitter end over the last 60 years....

Given the seriousness of what's going on, Zeller's sarcasm isn't particularly useful and doesn't reflect well on The New York Times. But take a look at the graph anyway.

Here's the announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. It is now 5 minutes to midnight. Reflecting global failures to solve the problems posed by nuclear weapons and the climate crisis, the decision by the BAS Board of Directors was made in consultation with the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

BAS announced the Clock change today at an unprecedented joint news conference held at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC, and the Royal Society in London. In a statement supporting the decision to move the hand of the Doomsday Clock, the BAS Board focused on two major sources of catastrophe: the perils of 27,000 nuclear weapons, 2000 of them ready to launch within minutes; and the destruction of human habitats from climate change. In articles by 14 leading scientists and security experts writing in the January-February issue of theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists (http://www.thebulletin.org), the potential for catastrophic damage from human-made technologies is explored further.

(snip)

By moving the hand of the Clock closer to midnight — the figurative end of civilization — the BAS Board of Directors is drawing attention to the increasing dangers from the spread of nuclear weapons in a world of violent conflict, and to the catastrophic harm from climate change that is unfolding. The BAS statement explains: "We stand at the brink of a Second Nuclear Age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth."

The BAS statement continues: "The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival."

Stephen Hawking, a BAS sponsor, professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of The Royal Society, said: "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."

From its inception, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has always had big names in the field of science associated with the organization. These issues must be taken seriously. The Bush Administration pays lip service to the issues but does a poor job of handling them. Many of Bush's Republican supporters explicitly refuse to take the issues seriously and have obstructed useful things that might have been done over the last six years. Leaving these issues to Bush and his Republican friends is something Americans cannot afford.

Just a Warm Winter or Global Warming?

Denver may be cold and getting its share of snow but if you look at the price of oil, it's been dropping because for most Americans it's been a relatively warm winter and natural gas and heating fuel have been needed less than usual. Global warming is a longterm trend and no weather event can be directly tied to it. Still, it could be a sign of things to come. Think Progress says Congress may now start taking Global Warming more seriously:

This morning on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos reported that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “is considering setting up a special committee in the House to deal with climate change and global warming.”

Also on ABC, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) called climate change “the most serious environmental problem” we face... ...

USA Today has a story on the temperatures, though it doesn't say much about Global Warming:

Bill Weigle's tree service in Lyndeborough, N.H., usually delivers five to 10 cords of firewood a day this time of year. He's sold only one in the past two weeks.

(snip)

The combination of El Niño and global warming prompted Britain's Meteorological Office to say Thursday that 2007 could become the hottest year ever recorded. It said there is a 60% chance to break the record set in 1998, when global temperatures were 1.2 degrees warmer than the long-term average.

I can't say it's been all that warm in California. In fact, there have been a few days in the last few weeks that have been chilly, at least for us. I half-facetiously tell my wife it's those glaciers melting in Alaska—all that icy water is flowing to the sea and the currents are carrying all that cold water down our way—so it's still global warming...I think. I have no idea if my pet theory is true, but it sounds good!

Then there's Susie of Suburban Guerilla who says the temperatures reached 72 in Phily. That's warmer than my part of California!

When Reality Ignores Republicans....

For six years, we have noticed a disconnect between what right wing Republicans claim and what the facts are. For example, it took a bipartisan report led by James Baker to make it clear that conditions in Iraq are, unfortuantely, not quite the way our president would like to paint them (Bush would like nothing more than to paint a rosy picture before handing his failed policies in Iraq off to the next president). To be honest, it's not always clear when right wingers believe what they're saying and when they're just playing politics; either approach, however, is detrimental to our nation.

Chris of Americablog notes that right wing Republicans in Congress like to say there's nothing real to Global Warming, but the insurance companies are betting that there probably is and are increasingly refusing insurance to homeowners in low-lying land close to the ocean:

With the seas warming, it's no wonder they want nothing to do with insuring properties in the danger zone. The storms are getting worse and moving up the coast, but the GOP doesn't believe global warming is an issue. When a Fortune 500 company makes a move like this, you would think some might take notice.

Laura Smitherman of The Baltimore Sun has the story on the growing problems of insuring coastal property:

Allstate Corp., one of Maryland's largest insurers, will stop writing homeowners' policies in coastal areas of the state, citing warnings by scientists that a warmer Atlantic Ocean will lead to more strong hurricanes hitting the Northeast.

The company will no longer offer new property insurance beginning in February in all or part of 11 counties mostly along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Existing customers won't be affected

(snip)

This has been happening for years in states such as Florida, where homeowners saw rates multiply or lost insurance altogether after Andrew flattened much of South Florida in 1992. Now the trend is edging north.

There are still plenty of Republicans and even conservative Republicans who reasonably have both feet in the real world. After all, in the business world, those who operate like the late Kenneth Lay of Enron don't usually last long. But where in the world are these right wingers coming from and why are they still in Washington peddling their foolishness on issue after issue? It's important to remember that while the Democrats won in November, most of the Republican politicians in Washington are still very right wing and very out of touch.

Do Oil Companies Agree with Rep. Barton?

I recently wrote a post on the $100 million campaign the oil companies are launching to improve their image. Is it possible for the oil companies to improve their image without dealing with pollution and Global Warming? I doubt it. There are plenty of signs that the American people have had enough and it's not just about the price of gasoline (though there are a few holdouts, most Democrats in Congress get it).

If the oil companies want to improve their image, they need to explain themselves if they still agree with Texas repesentative Joe Barton who calls Global Warming science nonsense; here's the story from Think Progress:

For six years, Congress has done nothing to address the climate crisis, thanks in no small part to the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, “Smokey” Joe Barton (R-TX). The 110th Congress will have new leadership, but Barton has pledged to continue fighting against legislation intended to address the problem.

(snip)

Barton says his action is justified because global warming science is “pretty weak stuff.” Barton added, “But for us to try to step in and say we have got to do all these global things to prevent the Earth from getting any warmer in my opinion is absolute nonsense. It’s not going to happen.”

For a little more background on Barton, here's this from SourceWatch:

Barton, a former consultant for Atlantic Richfied Co., serves as the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was the primary House author of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. A number of his former staffers are now lobbyists for the energy industry. The Washington Post reported that, "In his quest for the chairmanship... A network of former Barton staff members-turned-lobbyists-including Jeffery M. MacKinnon (clients: Reliant Energy, Philip Morris, MCI and at least 36 others), Stephen Sayle (American Chemical Council, AT&T and 19 others) and Stephen Waguespack (Duke Energy, Ford Motor Co. and eight others)-worked the crucial corporate and trade association community on Barton's behalf." [Washington Post, 4/14/05]

"Since 1997, oil, gas, electricity, nuclear, coal and chemical companies have contributed $1.84 million to Barton, more than to any other House member." [Washington Post, 4/14/05]

There are Republican conservatives and Republican ultraconservatives (sometimes we just call them right wingers). When it comes to energy, the environment and Global Warming, Barton is the kind of ultraconservative who subscribes to the Republican blowhard style of making his case: if he says something loudly and repeatedly, it must be so even if any evidence he offers is largely worthless. A blowhard can be a blowhard based on principles, whatever they may be, or he can be motivated by his connections to those with a vested interest in his position. Readers can make their own judgment.

But let's go back to the oil companies. What's it to be? A $100 million campaign to continue business as usual while painting a pretty picture? Or a $100 million campaign with some reality to it? Democrats are committed to jobs, good business and a strong economic future (though a few Democrats with vested interests will require close monitoring). No matter what policies come out of Washington, the oil companies will continue to produce oil and they will continue to make money. Will the oil companies join together in protecting the environment and limiting CO2 emissions and cooperating on alternative energy or will they continue their foot-dragging on these issues? The times are changing. It may be time for the oil companies to part company with people like Rep. Joe Barton.