Recently, the U.N.’s official climate change body announced that extreme weather events are tied to climate change and we can expect even more mayhem as the century wears on. Among other climate disasters, the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report foresee more scorching days and longer and more frequent heat waves across much of the Earth. For climate advocates, the report was a belated validation of what many had been claiming for years – though several expressed pique at how carefully the climate scientists hedged the conclusions. But much of America, distrustful of about climate science and worried about the sluggish economy, likely shrugged the report off, if they noticed at all.

So in an effort to make this most recent climate science relevant to people’s lives for the coming Thanksgiving holiday, we decided to look at how climate change is affecting football. The effects of climate change, so far, have been most noticeable in Texas, where a terrible drought has dried up football fields in small towns that used to look forward to Friday nights above all. But climate change will have a terrible effect on communities throughout the cradle of football in the Southern and plains states. Here are a few ways it will happen:

Click here for more.

Article by Matthew Van Dusen, appearing courtesy Txchnologist.

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A new poll finds that the percentage of Americans who believe that the climate is warming has increased in the past year, a shift in opinion that follows one of the warmest summers in U.S. history and increased debate about climate change among Republican presidential candidates.

According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted from Sept. 8 to 12, 83 percent of respondents said they believe the climate is getting warmer, compared with 75 percent last year. Seventy-one percent said they believe human activities are partly or mostly to blame for climate change, while 27 percent said they believe it is the result of natural causes.

Stanford University Professor Jon Krosnick said this summer’s wild weather — including prolonged heat waves, droughts in some regions, and flooding in others — is changing public opinion. He also said that discussion of climate issues during recent Republican presidential debates seems to paradoxically have caused more people to believe the climate is warming; most of the Republican candidates have attacked climate science, but Krosnick said those attacks appear to have led more Americans to think about global warming and conclude that, in fact, its is real.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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Climatologist Raymond Bradley has come out fighting in his new short book Global Warming and Political Intimidation: How Politicians Cracked Down on Scientists as the Earth Heated Up. It’s a lively albeit sobering narrative which recounts his and others’ experience of harassment, character assassination and unfounded accusation from the politicians who serve fossil fuel interests in the US Congress.

Bradley has worked in climatology since the 1970s and explains in the prologue that it’s only as he has gradually learned more about the subject and scientific evidence has accumulated, that, like almost every other climatologist on the planet, he’s become convinced that global warming is a critical issue that requires urgent attention. He was one of the three authors of Michael Mann’s 1998 Nature article and follow-on studies which produced the so-called hockey stick graph demonstrating the recent warming as unprecedented in the last 1000 years. The graph became the focus of attack by deniers who seemed to think that if it was refuted the whole edifice of climate science would crumble.

“Nothing could have been further from the truth, as concern over global warming rests on a vast array of scientific evidence, of which the hockey stick is but a minuscule part.”

Bradley describes a Senate committee hearing in 2000 chaired by Senator McCain, who in a time before the issue became quite so heavily politicized along party lines had asked Senator Kerry to share in inviting scientists to testify. It was a positive occasion, and although John Christy, one of the five invited, trotted out the themes of carbon dioxide as a plant food and climate as always changing, the warnings of the others were “clear, consistent, and stark”. The senators listened and understood and McCain for a time became a global warming evangelist within the Republican Party.

Bradley’s next encounter with a congressional committee was deeply disturbing. In 2005 he and his co-authors of the hockey stick paper received an extraordinary letter from the chairman of the House Energy Committee, Congressman Joe Barton, and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Congressman Ed Whitfield. It referred to a Wall Street Journal article reporting methodological flaws and data errors in the authors’ studies of the historical records of temperatures and climate change. The chairmen wanted to know whether obligations concerning the sharing of information developed or disseminated with federal support had been appropriately met. They set out a long list of comprehensive demands regarding all financial support received for the research, all agreements related to funding, the location of all data archives and many details as to how the data was used, what response was made to requests for data and why. They also demanded explanation in detail of the authors work for the IPCC, right down to inquisitorial questions as to the steps they took to ensure the soundness of the data underlying the studies forming the basis for the key findings of the IPCC report. Finally they required a detailed narrative explanation of the errors in their studies alleged by McIntyre and McKitrick (neither of them climate scientists) in a paper in Energy and Environment.

It’s a chilling list, and Bradley’s conclusion when he’d recovered from the initial shock is well justified:

“This was not a legitimate inquiry; it was politics, impure but simple. We had unwittingly stumbled into a minefield where the players were the energy companies with infinite financial resources, along with Washington lobbying fronts and political hacks in Congress.”

Many rallied around the scientists in the face of this assault, including Republican Congressman Sherwood Boehlert to whom the book is dedicated. He wrote to Barton:

“My primary concern about your investigation is that its purpose seems to be to intimidate scientists rather than to learn from them, and to substitute Congressional political review for scientific peer review. That would be pernicious.”

The fact that the science was vindicated didn’t stop Congressman Barton announcing yet another hearing at which the infamous Wegman report was presented. Bradley summarizes:

“The goal of Congressman Barton, Senator Inhofe, and others like them is to ensure that legislation to control greenhouse gases is never passed by the U.S. Congress. Their strategy, like that of the tobacco industry in the past, is to sow the seeds of doubt about climate science, and if that means destroying the reputations of those who carry out the science, so be it.”

The book carries a very interesting account of the pioneering work which went into the reconstruction represented in the hockey stick graph, and the vast amounts of data involved. In the 1999 paper which extended the period covered by the graph back from 1400 to 1000 Bradley points to the title as a sign of the caution with which the authors proceeded: “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures during the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations.” He also offers an illuminating account of the role of peer review in testing advances in scientific knowledge. Indeed throughout the book there is a strong underlying sense of science as the work of a community of people constantly analyzing and evaluating the findings that emerge.

Mention must be made of the global warming primer provided in one of the chapters of the book. Maintaining the conversational tone which marks much of the book Bradley leads the reader through an admirably clear and logical traverse of the central findings of the science. His account of the warming globe includes explanations of how carefully the instrumental data from the last 150 years has been collected and given appropriate weight, an enterprise he was engaged with in one of his early research projects. He explains the part played by the trace greenhouse gases in producing the warming and highlights the threatening speed with which the changes are occurring.

Tackling the problem is already daunting. If we get to 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and were then to stop altogether it would still take a thousand years for the level to return naturally to 350 ppm. Bradley acknowledges the inadequacies of the Kyoto Protocol but still sees it as critically important because for the first time the greenhouse gas problem was universally acknowledged and it set most nations of the world on the path to emissions reduction. He finds some reason for hope on the grounds that we are moving, however laboriously, in the right direction.

The doubt merchants still do everything they can to stop the needed actions. Bradley surveys some of the campaigns they have mounted and continue to pursue. Climategate was one of the worst, and the hounding of Phil Jones appalling.

“Phil is a great guy, as honest as the day is long, and his research has always been careful, thoughtful and significant. The notion that he would purposely manipulate data to deceive anybody is completely ludicrous.”

Bradley’s book is a valuable insight into the harrying that many climate scientists have had to endure over the past two decades. It lets us see what it is like to be on the receiving end of political intimidation and ranting deniers in the media and the blogosphere. These scientists, who have simply gone about their work as they should, have been reviled and threatened, sometimes at high levels of government. Powerful vested interests have gone to war against the science which reveals the dangers threatening humankind. Bradley uses the word malevolent only once, and evil not at all, but both words came to my mind frequently.

Article by Bryan Walker, appearing courtesy Celsias.

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On May 14, the UK Guardian newspaper reported on a sweeping new carbon emissions deal crafted by the Committee on Climate Change, or CCC.

The deal is being put forth by UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat and the CCC’s strongest backer, and opposed by none other than Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, a Conservative, and Vince Cable, business secretary to Prime Minister David Cameron – a pair who together exercise enormous control over the UK government’s purse strings.

Osborne and Cable are reportedly backed by two governmental entities, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which has released its own report on (the inevitable) energy price increases in agriculture and food prices if the initiative is enforced, and the Department for Transport, whose 2005 report pooh-poohs any link between public awareness of climate change and transportation choices – a fact that would only be true if the poor had real choices, and the rich exercised theirs.

In spite of that juxtaposition, the Guardian reports that Huhne’s move passed only after Cameron’s intervention – an unexpected source of support for a new (and presumably bigger) carbon budget which is reportedly assured up to 2027. It also puts the UK at the forefront of the EU group of nations as the only one with “legally binding (emission) commitments past 2020.”

And what is this new emissions budget? It sets a goal of reducing carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. To do this, committee chairman David Kennedy has also stressed the need to hit the ground running; that is, to make cuts of 60 percent by 2030.

The CCC’s goals expand on the Kyoto Accord, and cost estimates as far back as 2008 calculate that reductions will require no more than 2 percent of GDP in 2050 – a projection that seems almost like magical thinking, given the more than 40-year gap.

The 80-percent goal is predicated on climate science that suggests enormous dangers for the planet and its inhabitants if global warming is allowed to proceed beyond the 2 degrees C limit recommended by climate scientists. Some, like James Hansen, NASA climate scientist extraordinaire, worry that even these 60- and 80-percent reductions won’t be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.

A handful of UK ministers, on the other hand, have focused their hopes on the possibility that these stringent goals will encourage major wind turbine and tidal turbine manufacturers to invest in the UK, which is a distinct possibility given the UK’s wind and tidal energy potential. According to the World Wind Energy Association, or WWEA, the UK ranks number 1 in total installed offshore wind capacity, with 1,341 megawatts.

So how much will the initiative cost? Experts say government will have to earmark at least £16 billion each year through 2050. Some of the funds may come from electricity price increases (no rate mentioned), but the fact that experts are using the words “urgency” and “resolve” in the same sentence suggests that austerity measures are not far off.

On May 7, the Guardian quoted environmentalist and former UK government advisor Jonathon Porritt as saying that the likelihood of government living up to its green promises is “vanishingly remote” – a gentle euphemism for what may end up being the biggest environmental retreat on record.

One could accuse Porritt of being jaded and bitter, except for the fact that, the same day the initiative was announced, 15 “green” groups, led by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, warned that Cameron was in danger of breaking his “greenest government ever” pledge almost before it was dry on paper.

Article by Jeanne Roberts, appearing courtesy Celsias.

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Mark Stevenson’s book, An Optimist’s Tour of the Future had me wondering in its opening pages. I warmed to the lively engaging style but I didn’t want to read about a scientist’s vision of human lifetimes lasting thousands of years. As I see it generations need to pass and leave space for others to experience life. However Stevenson rapidly optimist book shared his own doubts about extreme longevity and it became apparent that the book was not going to be a bland rendering of fantastical futurist visions but a serious account, albeit with a light touch, of some of the new science technologies of our time. It’s an account given largely through contact and interviews with scientists working in the various fields and leavened with personal reflection along the way.

Biotechnology, with all its promise for the treatment of disease as well as some of its dark possibilities, is the first area of investigation. “Give us the medicine. Save us from the weapons.” From there he moves to artificial intelligence, with some fascinating accounts of the robots laboratories are working on and reflections on the ultimate thinking capabilities of advanced machines. He gives reasons why we’re likely to remain the most intelligent machines on the planet. Nanotechnology comes next, under the chapter title Invisibly Small and Magical.

Acknowledging the uncertainties and anxieties surrounding its development Stevenson nevertheless highlights its real potential to make our world cheaper, healthier, more sustainable and cleaner. Spaceflight has a chapter. Then it’s on to the internet, with a discussion that finally centres on the adjective ‘entangled’, in a positive sense, as a description of where it has brought us.

There’s plenty of focused and dedicated scientific activity going into all these fields, and they’re all wide open to the future which is what Stevenson wonders about. But the litmus test for me of his realism about the future was what he had to say about climate change. I can no longer read any projections of the human future without querying whether those making them are treating the threat of climate change with the seriousness it deserves. Interesting though Stevenson’s surveys of the areas indicated above were, I needed to see what he was going to say about the issue which overshadows all the others.

He’s gentle with the sceptics in the general public, though obviously clear himself on the basics of climate science. He asks what risks it is wise to take in the face of the worries expressed by the scientists. Their picture may be incomplete, but that doesn’t mean it is wrong. He’s not happy to bet against them. He visits Wally Broecker and Klaus Lackner. Broecker is one of the world’s top climate scientists. He knows the consequences of burning all the fossil fuels, but thinks the world is going to go ahead and do it anyway. To counter the consequences he strongly backs Lackner’s scheme to pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and sequester it in suitable rocks. Lackner explains the scrubbing effect of his machine to Stevenson and reports on progress to date and the money needed to advance the scheme further. It’s a very clear explanation of the process and one can understand the enthusiasm Stevenson obviously feels in response.

He moves to consider energy, remarking on the staggering inefficiency of our energy production and use and the clear economic case for improving energy efficiency as a first step. The chapter’s consideration of renewable energy centres on Stevenson’s visit to the American Konarkas factory that is making photovoltaic solar cells by printing plastic ink on to a roll of plastic. Molecules of ‘organic conductive polymers’ can be either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ and they are mixed up together in the inexpensive ink. The levels of power generated by this jumble are lower than in the ordered wafers of silicon cells, but the cells are much cheaper and can work in low light. The discussion Stevenson reports with the CEO opens up other fascinating possibilities for conducting polymers, such as a printable polymer-lithium battery.

Suddenly Stevenson had arrived here in New Zealand. He came to meet and enjoy the company of the directors of two small companies. Carbonscape is making biochar and associated fuels by microwaving processes. Aquaflow is extracting wild algae from sewage ponds as a feedstock for fuel and chemicals and in the process cleaning up the water so that it is well on the way to becoming fresh and clean. I’ve written articles about both companies in the past, and it was good to see them figuring in a book of this scope.

Stevenson moves next to Australia, where gets to see some remarkable farms which have taken on recommended management changes that enable them to work successfully in dry conditions. The partnership offering the advice has big plans for extensions in Australia to make the land ‘look right’. It’s a suitable place in the book for a very useful discussion about how to build up the carbon content of soils and the enormous potential that holds for carbon sequestration.

And where better to end this section of the book than in a visit to the Maldives where Stevenson watches the famous underwater meeting of the Maldives Cabinet and gets to talk to President Mohamed Nasheed about his plans for the Maldives to at least be an example of climate change mitigation to the rest of the world, while pleading for that world to take the steps needed to protect countries like his from the destructive sea level rise that will accompany ice sheet melting. He asks Nasheed finally what his one tip is for approaching the future. “Never give up hope, you know? Never give up. Just keep moving.”

In his concluding chapters Stevenson tries to make sense of the bewildering variety of understandings he has gained in the course of writing his book. He reflects on the exponential growth of information technology, nanotechnology and biotechnology, growth accelerating so fast that it makes it almost impossible to discern the shape of their future. He might have mentioned that exponential growth may also worryingly figure for climate change, but as one of his resolutions in conclusion is to embrace the exponential I guess that won’t go overlooked.

The book is breezy in style and easy to read, with lots of interest in the personal encounters it incorporates. However it’s far from lightweight. It communicates a great deal of accurate and useful information about the topics it covers. And its optimism is cautious, with plenty of doubt and acknowledgment of negative possibilities.

Article by Bryan Walker, appearing courtesy Celsias.

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America versus Canada might conjure up images of hockey. However, the Brookings Institution put out a new study that looks not at hockey but perceptions of climate change. The findings show that there are some key similarities and differences between the two countries’ citizens.

The report, released earlier this month, summarizes the results of polls taken in both countries. Overall, results shows Canadians are more accepting of the science of climate change than Americans by a long shot.

The Results
Eighty percent of Canadians accept that the globe is warming while only 58 percent of Americans do. Conversely, the percent of Americans who don’t believe the globe is warming is nearly double that of Canadians.

In both countries, political affiliation plays a role in determining views on climate change. Conservatives were much less likely to accept the reality of a warming world. However, the differences are much more dramatic in the U.S. with Republicans significantly less likely to think climate change is occurring.

What’s interesting, though, is how liberals in each country compare. Sixty-nine percent of Democrats in the U.S. are on board with climate science. But in contrast, around 90 percent of the members of Canada’s four more liberal parties* are. U.S. Democrats are actually more on par with Canada’s Conservatives, 64 percent of whom accept the reality of climate change.

Which of these groups is closest to the people who know the most about climate change i.e. climate scientists? It turns out liberal Canadians. A 2010 report showed that 98 percent of climate scientists accept the evidence that humans are causing climate change.

So how do 42 percent of Americans manage to justify such a high level of disagreement with the experts? By believing scientists are overstating the case of climate change of course. Currently, about half of the American public believes scientists are masters of embellishment. In comparison, only about a third of Canadians subscribe to this view.

All of this leads to some perhaps unsurprising answers on how much each group of citizens is willing to spend to mitigate climate change. Nearly 60 percent of Canadians were willing to pay up to $50 a month for cap and trade while only 18 percent of Americans were.

So What?
The survey is the first of its kind to do a cross-country comparison between the US and Canada. It reveals some pretty stark differences when it comes to accepting that climate change is happening. What might the cause for difference?

I spoke with a colleague who is a citizen in both countries. Her take? The difference in media between each country is a major factor. In the US, opinion often passes as fact, particularly in the case of Fox News. In contrast, Canada recently decided not to let Fox News set up shop in part because in Canada there are pretty stringent laws about actually telling the truth if you’re a news channel. Surprisingly, Fox didn’t pass this litmus test.

Unfortunately for the U.S., that means Americans are exposed to a lot more opinion about climate change than their Canadian counterparts. The result of this is clear in the poll results.

The other big difference between the two countries is the role of special interest money. The influence of the billionaire Koch brothers in proliferating climate denial in the US has been well documented. They’ve recently set up shop in Canada, too, but they’re far behind the curve in comparison to the work they’ve done in the US.

This isn’t to say that Canada is a bastion of progressive climate change action. Tar sands are being extracted at ever-increasing rates. Canada also owns the dismal title of biggest emitter per capita.

And despite having an informed and willing citizenry, Canada shares an unfortunate similarity with the U.S.: a lack of political effort to address climate change. The Canadian Senate killed a climate bill last year under very contentious circumstances. Perhaps they were following the lead of the U.S. Senate, where a climate bill also died earlier last year.

Canada also happens to be holding elections on May 2. Yet the leaders of all the parties have been distinctly quiet about addressing climate change. Ditto for Barack Obama in the U.S., who only mentioned climate change four times in his energy speech a few weeks ago.

If there’s one silver lining in this scenario, it’s that young people in both countries care far more about climate change than older generations. As they become a larger part of the voting public, it will hopefully translate into a political system more proactive about climate change.

*For American readers unfamiliar with Canada’s political system, there are five major parties. Or four if you were watching the Leader’s Debate last night (which is comparable to presidential debates in the US). For readers looking to better understand the Canadian political system, the Wikipedia page on Canadian politics is pretty solid. The Awl also recently published an interesting piece on the current state of Canadian politics and the recent string of minority governments.

Article by Brian Kahn, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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Lately, Republicans in the House of Representatives have been derided for their attitudes for climate change here. This is not because of any political ill will but because of their ignorance that is absolutely appalling. It brings me no pleasure to write about people who earn $174,000 a year to be informed decision makers being anything but. But in the interest of shedding light on what goes on on Capitol Hill, here’s the latest installment.

Today the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology held climate science hearings. The committee brought together a panel to discuss what the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas regulations would mean to the economy and if they were even warranted.

One of those scientists was Richard Muller, a physicist from the University of California-Berkeley. Climate deniers have often championed his work because of he’s criticized of the temperature records used to show the globe is warming. He recently started reviewing the different temperature datasets, using new methods to pinpoint more exact temperature trends over land.

He presented his preliminary findings at the hearing, and they probably weren’t what Republican lawmakers were hoping for. They showed the datasets tightly correlated with each other. What’s more, each one shows a distinct warming trend. In his testimony he said: “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups… ased on our initial work at Berkeley Earth, I believe that some of the most worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought.” (emphasis added)

The datasets Muller tested include one from the Climate Research Unit, which was at the center of the Climategate non-controversy. Could Climategate finally be retired?

Of course not. Despite the evidence, Republicans and one of their witnesses, State Climatologist of Alabama John Christy, repeatedly went back to Climategate throughout the hearing. It became so ridiculous that Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) at one point irately pointed out the seven reports that have exonerated the scientists, saying, “we have to get off of this.”

Unfortunately, Climategate is one of two major Republican talking points so we’ll likely be subjected to it for quite awhile.

The other big non-issue Republicans consistently brought up is a Time magazine cover from the 1970s with a headline about global cooling. Yes, one of the US’s major political parties is using a magazine cover as proof climate scientists don’t know what they’re talking about. Unfortunately for Republicans, this claim is also patently false.

Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the scientists that testified today, called this argument out. In the 1970s, there was no consensus on global cooling at all. Rather, the media built a story around a small set of scientists’ work. A 2008 article published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society shows this in a crystal clear graph showing academic papers from 1965 to 1979 that predict warming, cooling, or neutral temperatures in the near future.

But why let facts get in the way? Republicans cited it again and again. Rep. Morris Brooks (R-AL) even pulled up the cover image on his phone during the hearing.

At least the voice of reason showed up at a few points in the hearing. Emanuel had the quote of the day. His work primarily focuses on hurricanes and climate change. During the hearing, he railed against politicians lionizing researchers like Christy: “politicians who make mascots out of mavericks are invariably engaging in advocacy.”

No Republican had a good answer, though Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) got sufficiently flustered about it. And the reason they had no good answers is that that’s what the Republican argument against climate change has been reduced to: a few discredited talking points and a mascot who will preach the party line and conspiracy theories.

The lasting irony of Emanuel pointing this out is his politics: he’s a Republican. Unfortunately, his fellow Republicans in the room today didn’t share his views or intellectual curiosity.

Article by Brian Kahn, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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Australian Paul Gilding straddles the NGO and the corporate worlds. A former international head of Greenpeace, he subsequently moved into consultancy with global corporations and others on the transition to sustainability. Transition can sound a comfortingly gradual process, but that’s far from the case with the transition foreseen in his striking new book The Great Disruption: How the Climate Crisis Will Transform the Global Economy.

Gilding stands firmly with those who have been warning for half a century that our economies are pressing environmental limits to breaking point. Their warnings have now become realities. We have passed the limits of the planet’s capacity to support our economy. Ecosystem change and breakdown is now under way globally. Gilding takes his stand on the science, whether of climate change or the many other areas where sustainability is crumbling.

We didn’t heed the warnings. So now change will be forced upon us by actual physical consequences. The laws of physics, biology and chemistry defy the dream of ever-growing economies. We will throw everything we can at keeping growth going, as we did in 2008, and there will be measures of apparent success, but we can’t succeed because of the physical restraints of resource availability and the physical response of the global ecosystem, particularly the climate, on which our economy depends. The economy cannot keep growing and we will soon experience what Gilding calls the Great Disruption.

This means sustained economic downturn and a global emergency lasting decades. Climate change, particularly melting polar regions, extreme weather events and changes to agricultural output, will drive a series of ecological, social and economic shocks. This will lead to strong government intervention and generate a sense of global crisis. Sustained increases in food prices will trigger economic and geopolitical instability. The key ecosystem services of water, fisheries and agricultural land will be further reduced in capacity. Oil prices will continue to rise. Risk in global share markets will be repriced, leading to a dramatic drop in the markets and a tightening of capital supply.

Too pessimistic? A natural optimist, Gilding doesn’t think so. But he is at pains to say that he’s not foreseeing an inevitable slide into collapse. He’s talking about major and highly unsettling disruption, but a disruption that will in turn drive a transformation of extraordinary speed and scale. People ask why he thinks we can escape collapse. He explains. First, climate science denial will evaporate virtually overnight when the risk of collapse is in our faces. When climate change hits it will hit economically and people at large will pay attention because they are directly affected. Second, we can respond quickly when we choose to. We are slow but not stupid. Third, we can make an absolutely remarkable turnaround. There will be a Great Awakening.

But won’t it be too late? It will certainly be very late. He doubts that we will accept the need for the change for another few years, which means that a great deal more will be required than would have been the case if we had started earlier. He looks at what is necessary, concluding that we need to return to below one degree of global warming. Two degrees is an inadequate goal and a plan for failure. To those who say it is impossible he points to the impossible things that were achieved quickly during World War II. He and his friend and colleague Jorgen Randers, one of the authors of the Club of Rome 1972 report The Limits to Growth, have worked out a one-degree war plan which is outlined in the book. (A draft copy of the full plan can be seen here.)

The plan has three phases. The first, years 1-5, is the climate war. Modeled on the action following the entry of the US into World War II it launches a mobilisation to achieve a global reduction of 50 percent in greenhouse gas emissions within five years. This would shock the system into change and get the job half done by 2023 if we start in 2018. Phase two is a fifteen-year push to move the world to net zero climate emissions by 2038. Phase three is a subsequent eighty-year haul to remove sufficient CO2 from the atmosphere to move the climate back towards the preindustrial “normal”.

Some excerpts from the plan give a flavour of what is proposed for the climate war five-year phase. They include cutting deforestation and logging by 50 percent, closing one thousand dirty coal power plants, rationing electricity and rapidly driving efficiency measures, refitting one thousand coal power plants with carbon capture and storage, creating huge wind and solar farms in suitable locations, reducing airplane capacity, recycling and reusing all used materials, binding 1 gigaton of CO2in the soil, and so on.

Although governments will play a leading role as we pull ourselves back from the brink Gilding sees adequately regulated and guided business and markets as a vital part of the mobilisation, and gives space to discussing how they will deliver the required changes. There are some hard lessons here about business complacency and failure to read the science. Many companies won’t make it. Many will. Gilding draws on the creative destruction theories of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, of an economic structure incessantly revolutionised from within.

In crude terms for business and investors, where is the money to be made? Gilding offers some cautious predictions himself in the energy field. He sees a likely dramatic marking down of the value of oil and coal companies as it becomes apparent that a high percentage of known economic reserves may never be extracted. Carbon capture and storage he thinks remains unlikely to be employable on a wide enough economic scale to rescue coal. Nuclear power, though far preferable to climate change, is surrounded by serious safety questions. He plumps for renewables, particularly wind, solar and geothermal, recommending Al Gore’s book Our Choice for an analysis of the whole picture.

Successfully meeting the challenge of climate change is only the beginning. We still have to cope with the end of growth. Climate is not the only boundary we have come up against. There isn’t room here to explain in any detail Gilding’s take on an economy no longer dependent on material growth, but he espouses the steady-state economy which he considers long understood by capitalism’s founding fathers as a logical point we would eventually arrive at. He tackles the questions of poverty and inequity, neither of which have been well served by the current growth economics, and sketches the rough outlines of a fully satisfying life with less stuff and more human interchange.

It’s an invigorating book. Gilding doesn’t sell his readers short on sustainability or the climate issue which is right at its heart. He is utterly realistic about climate change and the drastic measures now required to avert it. Whether he is equally realistic in believing that we will in the next few years take those drastic measures may be debated by some. Perhaps we will take the path to collapse rather than the more immediately demanding alternative. Gilding himself has faced that possibility. But his conviction that we will do whatever it takes to avoid terminal decline once we realise what is happening doesn’t sound hopelessly idealistic, nor does the kind of plan he outlines to get us there.

Article by Bryan Walker, appearing courtesy Celsias.

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NASA will launch satellite technology next month that scientists say will provide a clearer understanding of how solar energy and aerosols affect Earth’s climate. Traveling at about 438 miles above the Earth over three years, the Glory satellite will collect data on the Sun’s total energy output and provide new details on the tiny aerosols that reflect and absorb those solar rays passing through the atmosphere.

Combined, the instrumentation will help scientists better understand the Earth’s overall “energy budget,” said Hal Maring, a NASA project scientist. “This really is a climate mission,” he said. “We’ve got to know how much energy is coming in, if it’s changing, and how that energy affects the climate system.” The mission is the first satellite-related component of President Obama’s initiative to better understand climate science.

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How strong is your knowledge of climate change? If you’re the average American, sad to say you’d probably get a failing grade according to a new study by Yale University’s Project on Climate Change Communication. A shocking 57% of Americans recently surveyed got an “F,” indicating that there’s a steep hill to climb to an educated public.

This is but one of a few striking findings in the survey. What stands out most is what a poor job of scientists and the media are doing communicating their work and their positions. Only 11% of those surveyed considered themselves “well-informed” on how the climate system works. Of course it takes individual initiative to seek out news on climate science (thanks for being here, dear reader!), but researchers and the media also have an obligation to make climate news more accessible. We need more than 11% of the population to be well-informed if we’re to craft realistic solutions.

Also interesting, 39% of people believe most scientists think global warming is happening while 38% believe there’s a lot of disagreement between scientists. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least in the field of science where it matters most: climate science. Poll after poll has shown that almost 100% of climate scientists accept the evidence of climate change and believe we’re the main cause. This shows a deep failure by the media to show the true nature of the debate.

The two percent of researchers who aren’t in agreement deserve to heard. But they do not deserve equal time in the media. Imagine if you owned 98% of a business but your less-knowledgeable partner with only two percent had as much sway as you. It’s a ridiculous way to approach business and a ridiculous way to present such an important issue.

The report also has a bit of a bad news about our understanding of the causes and effects of climate change. A large majority of survey respondents believe reducing toxic waste will reduce global warming. If only that were true. While there would certainly be local benefits, it would have zero impact on reducing the effects of climate change.

In addition, the survey asked questions about glaciers and oceans. Most respondents were unable to identify that most glaciers in the world are melting or that thermal expansion and not melting sea ice is what is causing most sea level rise. I can see how these are difficult questions to answer, but it once again indicates a huge gap between the public and the scientific community.

So the question is how to bridge that gap. The Yale survey has some answers. First, it means talking about climate change in schools. Luckily, 75% of respondents want to have the subject taught in schools and 68% believe the government should spend more time teaching Americans about climate change. (Are you listening, President Obama?)

More importantly is where people get most of their information. Currently, 82% of people get their climate change information from television, 72% from the newspaper, and 64% from the internet. This is unfortunate because climate change doesn’t get a lot of face time on TV (which may in part contribute to the lack of a well-informed populace). On the bright side, 61% of respondents indicated the internet would be their first stop to learn more about climate change.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Pew Center Project for Excellence in Journalism has shown that global warming gets much more coverage in the blogosphere and through social media like Twitter than in traditional media. That means legitimate, knowledgeable voices are need more than ever in this realm if the public is to better understand the science and the policy prescriptions. And based on the findings in the survey, we have a long way to go.

Article by Brian Kahn, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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