Recently in Climate change Category

If you care about getting climate change legislation through Congress, I hate to tell you this, but we have a problem. Jon Stewart thinks its boring. Opposition may be difficult to defeat, but at least when people are interested, you have a chance of changing their mind. When they're bored, they don't even think there's anything going on that's worth their attention.

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Changing course on greenhouse gas emissions will require changing not only our minds, but our behaviors. If someone like Jon Stewart thinks the debate is boring, it's going to be hard to convince enough people that the debate is worth their attention and even harder to convince them that changing our course is necessary. I wish I knew how to do it, but I don't have a clue.¹

This is a real bet, not one that I'm offering, mind you, but one that Nate Silver is offering.¹ The bet? Simple. Nate will pay you $25 for every day that the average temperature where you live is at least 1°F lower than average provided that you agree to pay him $25 for every day that the average temperature where you live is at least 1°F higher than average (and provided that you're a regular blog contributor; see this post for details).

Among the details you'll find in that post are that you had to place your bet for August by yesterday. Nate posted his challenge on the 18th, and guess how many takers he got. Zero, nada, zip. Maybe John Hinderaker didn't see Nate's challenge. Maybe John will take it up later in the year. Or maybe he's not willing to put his money where his mouth is.²

Update (8 July): Andy Revkin has a brief discussion of the report mentioned below and several other ideas that have been proposed for "breaking the climate deadlock" on DotEarth.

If you are among the small number of people who read this blog, you undoubtedly know that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey bill recently mandating a cap and trade system to control emissions of greenhouse gases. It is currently being considered in the Senate, where its fate is uncertain, but President Obama congratulated the House on its action and has promised to sign it if it reaches his desk.

As you must also know, there is a lot of opposition to this bill. Some of it is from predictable sources who deny that climate change is real. But some of it comes from those who agree that climate change is happening and that it poses serious problems. They argue that cap and trade is the wrong policy. The Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science's Mackinder Programme have just released a report entitled, How to Get Climate Policy back on Course. In it the authors of the study argue that "the only policies that will work are those which focus on improvement in energy efficiency and the decarbonisation of energy supplies" (from Roger Pielke, Jr.'s Blog).

I haven't read the report yet, but I have to confess that I'm skeptical. I'm no expert on either energy or economics, but it seems to me that making carbon-based energy more expensive is the only way to encourage "decarbonisation of energy supplies." Roger would no doubt reply that paying more for energy isn't politically feasible. He's the political scientist, not me, so I won't argue with that. But I can't see a more effective way to encourage less use of carbon-intensive energy sources than to make them more expensive. To the extent Waxman-Markey doesn't do that, it's not going to work. From what I know about it, if Waxman-Markey has a flaw, it's that it's trying to make the switch to less carbon-intensive energy sources painless.

Maybe I'll see the light after I've read the new report. In any case, check back next week if you're interested. I hope to have some thoughts on the report by then.

In an open letter addressed to President Barack Obama and the United States Congress, twenty leading scientists and scholars assert that the currently stated objectives in limiting the climatic disruption are grossly inadequate and urge the nation's leadership to take clear leadership towards meet the objectives of the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, steps necessary to avert a "global climatic catastrophe". (source; Woods Hole Research Center)

You can download the full PDF here.

Our climate is changing. The scientific evidence is clear: our planet is getting warmer. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) - including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons - are increasing rapidly in our atmosphere. Human activity such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation is a major source of these gases. But since we can't see them, it's easy to forget they are there. Out of sight, out of mind. And if we aren't aware of these "carbon" gases, it's easy to ignore the urgent need to reduce their emission. The Carbon Counter displays the running total amount of long-lived greenhouse gasses in the earth's atmosphere, measured in metric tons.

If you think that the Carbon Counter was put together by some environmental group, you'd be wrong. It was put together by DB Climate Change Advisors, a division of Deutsche Bank Group. They currently have approximately $4 billion under management.

Oh, if you're wondering what the total is, here's a screen capture taken at 10:44am EDT today.

From Andy Revkin a few days ago.

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

...

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

And here's what Marc Roberts thinks. (Click on the image for a full-size version.)

From the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University

Based on a nationally representative survey of 2,164 American adults conducted last fall, this broad and a deep examination of how Americans are dealing with the issue of global warming yielded an important new perspective. On the whole, the American mind appears to be open to embracing a concerted national effort to address climate change. We invite you to download and read the full report.

That diagram sums up pretty well why it's difficult to get action on climate change. Only a third of us think climate change will harm us or our family, and only half of us think it will hurt the U.S. Climate change is perceived as someone else's problem. Until we realize it's our problem, we're not going to do much about it.

Curbing carbon emissions might not cost as much as previously thought.

The Environmental Protection Agency presented its analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill on Tuesday and said the contentious plan would cost households less than $150 a year. (source Environmental Capital, Wall Street Journal)

I can afford $150 a year. I'd even pay $450 a year if my extra $300 would pay for those who can't afford $150 a year. As Tim Haab points out, the impact of a carbon tax or cap and trade will be focused on those sectors of the economy responsible for releasing a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as it should be. When I see how small the costs are, any doubt I have about moving forward evaporates.

Let's do it.¹

Happy Earth Day!