The Climate Post

January 7, 2010

A Sleepy Start for 2010

Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions

First Things First: Our story left off at the COP-15 negotiations, minutes after world leaders released their three-page Copenhagen Accord [pdf], a broad statement of political intent to address the issues that–according to the (old) UN schedule–should have been addressed by now. This result begs the question: Did 2009 end with more or with less ambiguity about how to address climate change? The potential answers feel more like a Rorschach test than points of debate.

We do know certain things: No one has any illusions about the difficulty of bringing the community of nations to agreement on how to rebuild the global energy economy. We know that the United Nations process failed to produce a legally binding emissions-reduction and sustainable-development treaty. Or even a political agreement that offers clear guidance to a treaty. We know that China frustrated European and American leaders at key moments, even blocking discussion of national efforts in the Accord, a move that caused German Chancellor Angela German Merkel to demand, “Why can’t we even mention our own targets?” It will be interesting to watch the build-up to COP-16, in Mexico City this November, given the certainly dramatic, inevitably anti-climactic (anti-climatic?), year-long sprint to Copenhagen.

We are confident that we have very little idea what course the U.S. Senate will take in coming weeks and months. The leadership troika of Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) appears to be pushing ahead, despite the pessimism engulfing much of the chattering class. Political intrigue erupted this week when two Democratic senators, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, announced their retirements, putting at risk the majority’s ability to maintain a filibuster-defeating voting block. We continue to expect global media interest in geo-engineering to vary inversely with media interest in emissions reductions. And we know that observable phenomena consistent with warming predictions continue to emerge.

Continued international and U.S. policy uncertainty puts renewed spotlight on nascent regional programs, and on the private sector. Companies making up the FTSE 100 are, on average, projecting that they will meet the U.K.’s target of a two-to-three percent reduction annually, according to a new Carbon Disclosure Project report. Global investment managers (not, of course, compelled to act, as FTSE firms are, by a new U.K. law) have yet to substantially incorporate climate risk assessments into their portfolios. Perhaps Google will find a way to solve some of the complications involved in the struggle toward carbon neutrality.

The Center for Public Integrity prefaces the coming activity on climate legislation with a deep dive into lobbying records. The number of registered businesses and groups hovered steadily, around 1,160. But that number conceals about 140 newcomers to the debate, including highly visible consumer firms, such as Campbell Soup Company, Kellogg Company, and Del Monte Foods. “[T]he domestic politics are only growing ‘curiouser and curiouser,’ as Alice might say from Wonderland,” report Marianne Lavelle and M.B. Pell.

New Year’s Resolutions: The holiday break gave Climate Post some time to think about this project, the year passed, and the year ahead (and, for a goof, to begin reading the “climategate” e-mails). And a slow news week opens up space to share thoughts.

The conceit of traditional news-gathering, and by extension, this blog, is that what just happened is more important than anything else. After all, it is called “the news,” and not “the recentlies” or “the interestings.” But given the sweep of information available to each of us with the touch of a key, there’s no longer a reason to limit ourselves to the news, when “the recentlies” and “the interestings” can really enrich the conversation.

So, how can we enrich the conversation? First, by acknowledging that it’s a conversation. Climate Post is a community, a smallish, newish one, and I’m curious about how to make this fact a little bit more visible. This missive goes out to friends of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and Duke University, and is reproduced at the environmental magazine, Grist.org.

Energy and climate change, and all they encompass–economics, policy, science, business, competing values–are extraordinarily complicated, hence the initial idea for Climate Post to begin with. So, other than what’s “news” in a given week, what can we help you with? What came up at a dinner party over the holidays that no one could answer, or that sparked an hour-long discussion, or is reported in contradictory ways? There’s an opportunity here for Climate Post to become something of an information or research concierge, particularly in regard to policy and the work of my colleagues at the Institute. Again, in policy, science, business, behavior, it takes a lot of listening and learning just to become comfortable with what the solutions are.

Space restraints being what they are (ie, restraining), we won’t be able to hit every desirable topic every week. But hopefully the swarm will guide us all toward engaging, informative, and productive conversation, while still flying close to the original mission. This blog is my blog. This blog is your blog. This blog was made for you and me.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.

December 18, 2009

Rumors, Intimation, and, Eventually, a Deal

First Things First: Denmark’s most widely sought-after exports this week, at least until several minutes ago, were intimation and rumor.

World leaders have been locked in negotiation on the second floor of the Bella Center, trying to strike a political “Copenhagen Accord,” various drafts of which (confirmed or unconfirmed) have circulated for the past several hours. Confusion has reigned: Journalists filing quick observations over Twitter have reported in the last half hour that an Obama press conference is imminent; is not happening; will occur in an hour; will not occur in an hour; will occur after a two-minute warning at some point soon; and is not happening. Lisa Friedman and Darren Samuelsohn of Greenwire file this color-filled and informative piece via the New York Times. [Update: The press conference occurred at 4:30 pm U.S. Eastern time.]

Confusion reigned until word started leaking out, moments ago, that the leaders and negotiators have set down a political agreement. Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones writes that a Brazilian spokesman confirmed “that [President] Lula has left, but says that there is a deal and they are happy.” Moments later, a U.S. official told the Associated Press that negotiators had reached a “meaningful agreement” with China, India, and South Africa–the so-called BASIC countries, minus Brazil.

Conversation Accelerates–Transparently: Scrutiny of the U.S.-China dialogue intensified Friday, as world leaders remained locked in talks. President Barack Obama’s eight-minute address to the conference appeared neither to inspire nor offer new grist for negotiators. He and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met privately twice. The final agreement was wrenched out of bilateral and multilateral meetings, the last one lasting five hours and including Obama, Wen, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and South African President Jacob Zuma.

The national leaders spent Friday groping for a political agreement that contains three elements of major significance: pledged emission reductions; money; and international transparency–the “buzzword du jour,” or what the 2007 Bali “roadmap” called measurement, reporting, and verification, according to Nicholas Institute Director Tim Profeta writing on the “Good COP/Bad COP” blog. (Check it out: War is too important to be left to the generals, and, increasingly, journalism is too important to be left to the media–particularly as journalism evacuates the media.) Prasad Kasibhatla, associate professor at the Nicholas School for the Environment, documents the Copenhagen endgame here.

U.S. pressure on China to agree to transparent accounting of its emissions dominated discussion in U.S. media today. As Obama told the COP-15 audience this morning, “[W]e must have a mechanism to review whether we are keeping our commitments, and exchange this information in a transparent manner. These measures need not be intrusive, or infringe upon sovereignty. They must, however, ensure that an accord is credible, and that we’re living up to our obligations. Without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.”

Going into the final day of talks, the hall swollen with global political leaders and their entourages, uncertainty and fractures dominated, until news, without details, finally trickled out in the last hour. China watcher Julian Wong, at Green Leap Forward, first noticed progress in the two leaders’ public remarks that other observers either missed or did not see, and the World Resources Institute reports that the drama isn’t as dramatic as media depictions.

The Week That Was–Finance: If the run-up to and the first week and a half of COP-15 felt like watching a Go match played back in slow motion, the last 18 hours are the multilateral-environment negotiation equivalent–if there is one–to the last two minutes of an NCAA basketball tournament.

Following coverage in Copenhagen has been a little bit like trying to take a sip of water from Mardalsfossen, in Denmark’s northern neighbor. ClimatePost pushed publication to today to include as current a view as possible before the weekend.

Hours before Obama flew to Copenhagen, negotiators struggled to agree on some of the most divisive issues in international climate policy. Progress came emerged after the talks descended into despair Wednesday night. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Thursday morning a U.S. commitment to help build a $100 billion annual fund for developing countries by 2020, provided the largest emitters among them take on internationally verifiable emissions cuts. Previously, Senator John Kerry–chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and co-leader of two legislative initiatives–told the conference that the fate of the U.S. bill teeters on COP-15: “Frankly, meeting that challenge early next spring can be significantly assisted by what is achieved here.” In his remarks, Kerry also performed the possibly unprecedented rhetorical feat of referring to former Vice President Dick Cheney and Inspector Clouseau in successive sentences.

News= What’s Reported Before Anything Happens: Over the last two weeks we’ve seen developing nations outraged and surprised over a secretive “Danish draft” agreement that some had seen the week before. We’ve seen vivid street protests, tens of thousands marching for various goals and causes, and hundreds of arrests. African nations shut down negotiations for three hours on Monday, upset that the Kyoto Protocol framework might be in jeopardy, in a story that melted as quickly as it appeared. Thousands who traveled to the Danish capital from around the world found themselves locked out of the Bella Center because organizers, for lack of a better word, registered nearly 45,000 people, when the complex holds just 15,000. A document attributed to U.N. officials published by the Guardian analyzed pre-Copenhagen national pledges and found they miss the global 2 degree C warming limit by a wide mark.

Those are the things we talked about until we learn what, exactly has happened. Here was the general landscape going into Friday.

Developing nations feared that without aggressive U.S. participation, COP-15 could turn into “Hamlet, without the Prince of Denmark,” ie, the main character. The Obama administration’s nod toward a $100 million climate fund on Thursday, met with a welcome absence of howling outrage from China, India, and others. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who leads the African Group, had already given a nod to a $50 billion to $100 billion annual funding scheme. Developing nations, notably Indonesia, have heard the U.S. plea for transparency. The Washington Post‘s Juliet Eilperin summarizes the distance left to travel by putting these two statements together:

Clinton: “One hundred billion dollars is a lot. It can have tangible effects.”

Jairam Ramesh, Indian minister of environment and forests: “A hundred billion is never enough, but it’s a small step.”

The Future–Emissions Reductions: With a nominal deal in the bag placing no binding demands on the U.S., the conversation will return to the Senate–once they pass health care and financial reform–which will be the ultimate arbiter of U.S. emission goals.

ClimatePost will be off the next two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s. Watch this space in 2010.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.

December 10, 2009

Throngs Enter Copenhagen’s Climate Gates

First Things First: President Barack Obama last week shifted the date he will visit the Copenhagen climate talks from Dec. 9 to Dec. 18, the last and most consequential day. Three days into the 15th U.N.-sponsored Conference of Parties, this otherwise mundane fact carries the most symbolism. Whatever happens, whatever has already been settled or is left to do, the baseline expectation is that – whatever it is – the result is unlikely to be an embarrassment to the President of the United States.

The Thanksgiving holiday and then, more locally, the flu have kept this observer reluctantly quiet during two of the most consequential weeks in “climate history,” which have seen the unauthorized release of private e-mails from climate scientists working at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s formal declaration of heat-trapping gases as pollutants.

Copenhagen Briefing, in Brief: COP talks tend to generate fleeting controversy and misunderstanding as negotiators engage each other. This 15^th meeting is no exception. London’s Guardian reported a day after the opening ceremonies of the existence of a secret “Danish text” agreement, which would marginalize the United Nations and impose unacceptable requirements on poor nations most vulnerable to change. This is likely a souped-up version of what’s been occurring all year—punching up whatever news is out there, because there’s so little. As ExxonMobil’s Brian Flannery told Grist in the Danish capital, “I’m trying hard to understand what is happening, as I think everyone is… Because it’s very hard to know what is actually happening here.” This morning, Tuvalu walked out of the negotiations in protest over the perceived weakness of COP-15’s goals. Talks resumed in the afternoon.

What’s certain are the main issues that nations are sparring over: emissions goals and timelines; forestry; technology transfer; and adaptation. Distance among parties on emissions drove the talks toward a political agreement, rather than a treaty, weeks before talks began. That said, an upbeat news boomlet came in late November and December when the U.S. announced that it would propose 17 percent emissions reductions (below 2005 levels) in 2020 and China said it would reduced its carbon intensity by 40-45 percent in that time. Forestry may be the most promising area, even if recent studies have questioned the amount of global warming attributable to deforestation. This area of policy has advanced rapidly in the last decade, and Nicholas Institute colleagues are thought-leaders in the field. The Nicholas Institute and Nicholas School are sending a delegation of 18 people to Copenhagen. They will record their daily thoughts and observations at a new blog, Good COP/Bad COP: Visit early and often.

“Technology transfer” is a grab-bag of issues that includes everything from intellectual property protections for U.S. inventors to trade. Nations are also pairing off to help ease trade issues. The U.S. and India secured clean-tech partnerships during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent state visit [pdf]. China and the Obama administration continue talks on these matters.

“Endangerment Is My Middle Name”: Scientists have understood that carbon dioxide traps heat since 1859. (The 150^th anniversary of John Tyndall’s famous experiment was this year.) Carbon dioxide has legally been a pollutant in the U.S. since Monday, an event Tyndall couldn’t have imagined. That’s when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the agency’s final “endangerment finding,” a legal hurdle that, now overcome, enables the U.S. to regulate greenhouse gases from large cars, factories, and utilities. Colleagues’ policy study [full pdf] earlier this year found that only a small percentage of U.S. firms might be regulated under new programs.

This afternoon, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman released a new framework for the climate change legislation they expect to introduce in coming weeks. The four-page document avoids no major issue that senators will have to wrangle if they are to pass legislation next year.

What We Know. What to Do?: If ever a topical item recommended reading beyond one’s regular news and dispassionate consideration it is the release of ten years worth of University of East Anglia climate scientists’ e-mails. In mid-November an unknown hacker or hackers uploaded more than 1,000 e-mails on to a public server in Russia. A couple of dozen e-mails raise integrity questions about scientists’ discussion of a peer-reviewed journal and the public release of their data. If nothing else, it’s heartening to see the release of such a wide latent interest in paleodendrology and a great opportunity for many people to update themselves on the state of climate science.

Two of the most helpful pieces about the e-mails–quickly dubbed “climategate” by whatever computer algorithm instantaneously adds “-gate” to the end of key words in American public controversies—are Columbia University geochemist Peter Kelemen’s Popular Mechanics take and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change’s report.

Last night, CNN’s Larry King hosted two garden-variety conservative men and two garden-variety liberal women simulating an argument on various issues, including the UEA e-mails. The guests groped for intelligible things to say before moving on to analysis of Sarah Palin’s book tour. This segment was one of many low-points in the UEA saga, along with CNN’s titling of a new topical series, “Climate Change: Trick or Truth.”

Climate change is neither trick nor truth. It is the sum of observed changes in the Earth system, analysis of further risks, understanding of past climate behavior, and questions of ongoing research. The volume of scientific material is vast, following independent lines of evidence; the leading solutions are expensive or complicated or both; the pace and scale of predicted effects are uncertain, both physically and economically; the moral questions of international and intergenerational equity are searing. Even right now, observed changes can trip up those living through it. The reality of human-induced climate change is a different matter than the possible lapses in scientific integrity within the e-mail conversations. The University of East Anglia has launched an investigation on that matter.

Earth system science, with neuroscience and genomics, is the most exciting, influential, and complicated endeavor researchers are working on these days. And yet in a way it’s the easiest part of the larger climate change debate to tackle: What to do is proving more difficult than discovery. The robustness of scientific understanding of manmade climate change appears to have prevented policymakers from getting distracted by the procedural and integrity questions raised within the scientific community by the UEA e-mails. Here’s one quick take on “what we know”

Certain atmospheric gases, notably carbon dioxide, absorb heat, the way an antenna absorbs radio waves or eyes absorb white light. Humans are transforming underground carbon minerals, fuels, into atmospheric carbon dioxide, increasing its volume by about a third in 150 years. More gas traps more energy. More energy raises global temperatures. Higher temperatures melt ice, which raises sea levels and lowers the Earth’s reflectivity (consequently admitting more energy). As oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, they become more acidic, creating a threat to many living things and ecosystems. Climate historian Spencer Weart told the New York Times: “The physics of the greenhouse effect is so basic that instead of asking whether it would happen, it makes more sense to ask what on earth could make it not happen. So far, nobody has been able to come up with anything plausible in that line.”

Scientists predict climate impacts and attribute observed changes to human actions with varying levels of confidence. The tree ring studies at the core of the UEA e-mail debate have already been picked over for a decade and are not considered front-and-center evidence for warming. The temperature studies are quite important; that’s why the raw data has been studied at two other research centers, too, with compatible results. Leading clmatologists have recommended, some forcefully, that global carbon emissions should peak in 2015.

How we respond to this information is still, and is likely to always be, a work in progress. As Obama said today at the Nobel ceremony, “There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement — all of which will fuel more conflict for decades.”

Short-term forecast: Things will continue to heat up in wintry Copenhagen this week – and everywhere else, too.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.

December 3, 2009

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program…

Friends,

The last weeks have seen several events of great importance, many of them quite complicated. However, due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, this week’s Climate Post will be unavailable until Monday morning, Dec. 7. We are always grateful for your interest and try every week to honor that asymptotic “Thursdays at Three” billing. We apologize for any inconvenience. See you Monday–and then at the appointed time on Thursday.

Thank you,

The Editors.

November 19, 2009

You Heard It Here First

First Things First: A week of anticlimaxes saw President Barack Obama conducting a less-than-exuberant swing through China, the international community conceding a binding climate treaty at the COP-15 negotiations in Copenhagen, and U.S. lawmakers postponing to the spring of 2010 consideration of climate policy–even as talk of a legislative “plan B” surfaced. A Wall Street Journal piece on Obama’s China visit characterizes how hemmed in the president is abroad and at home, balancing as complex a portfolio as any new president has faced in a century, at least.

Obama left China with seven commitments to work more closely on energy matters, particularly the development of an inventory for China’s greenhouse gas emissions. This technical cooperation may have a political echo in Washington, where Senate Democrats making up their minds about climate change policy have expressed concern that the world’s leading CO2 producer, China, is unable to quantify its pollution. A close read of language in the U.S.-China agreement reveals “subtle but important shift” in climate positions, writes NRDC’s Jake Schmidt.

The Call Is (Also) Coming From Inside the House: Other international voices sound increasingly nonplussed with U.S. performance in the global climate arena. Critics blame Obama, who personifies America abroad, for what they see as a continuation of President George W. Bush’s policies against Kyoto-style international climate agreements. The German newsweekly Spiegel publishes a deeply critical view of Obama’s young presidency. It echoes voices heard elsewhere, voices Climate Post heard a little bit in India last month and that were documented in a post this week over at the New York Times‘ DotEarth blog. The Catch-22: The U.S.’s critics abroad feel that their complaints will not be heard here, since, as Christian Schwägerl charges in Spiegel, “Americans Do Not Look Beyond Their Own Borders.”

Naomi Klein, the activist, globalization skeptic, and writer, provides a fine example in Rolling Stone of how some Americans do not look within their own borders. Klein’s breathless call for climate reparations paid by rich nations to poor, vulnerable nations overlooks major and minor “real-world” issues, beginning with which bank account — previously unrevealed — is she writing her checks from? The piece makes a fine bookend with George Will’s latest effort, as naive as Will’s piece is ignorant. (Both writers seem equally angry.)

Thomas Friedman thumps opponents of measures to reduce national emissions of heat-trapping gases, condensing observations of his recent book into his New York Times column.

You Heard It Here First!: The COP-15 talks in Copenhagen were a cautious success. After months of increasingly dour headlines, 15,000 people (18 of them from the Nicholas Institute and Nicholas School) will have descended three weeks from now on this elegant Scandinavian capital and will have reached a political agreement, in a spirit of collaboration and goodwill that will be expected to lead to a binding legal treaty next year. Whatever will have happened in Copenhagen to make it a success–after all, we just don’t know–it’s likely that high-profile attendees will trumpet its successes, however defined. There has been too much anticipation, too much pre-game show, too many resources spent, to not produce something tangible. Even if it receives headlines similar in tone to Obama’s China trip.

A casual observer to the now year-long run-up to next month’s talks in Copenhagen might be forgiven for thinking that a treaty is an end in itself. The treaty is a means by which countries force themselves and each other to transform their economies toward non-polluting energy systems. The Guardian lassoes some top thinkers on climate policy, who emphasize the urgency to inject capital into energy technologies that do not emit heat-trapping gases. The public emphasis on a deal next month has overshadowed this urgency, the Guardian contents, and, unless investment picks up, nations will continue to build out fossil-fuel powered 20th-century-style infrastructure projects.

Without national or international guidance, businesses already working toward a clean tech economy face considerable uncertainty. Players in the $126 billion global carbon market–concentrated in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme–are particularly exposed. The impetus for that market came after the Kyoto Protocol. Its 2012 expiration date threatens investments, money, and projects tied up in the system. Developing nations, particularly China and India, have made up to hundreds of millions of dollars executing carbon-reduction projects that generate emission credits that rich nations use to “offset” their pollution. The global market for carbon offsets traded under the current regime adds up to $6.5 billion.

Americans in “green jobs” needn’t work for U.S. companies, it turns out. With Obama in China, Suntech, the world’s largest maker of solar panels, announced it would build a factory near Phoenix. The Chinese company’s move may ease some lawmakers’ concerns that less expensive labor costs will push clean-energy manufacturing jobs overseas, BusinessWeek reports. That the profit motive is drawing a Chinese solar giant to the U.S. should fuel the ongoing confusion about whether solar energy is affordable or not.

Roger Pielke Jr, the University of Colorado Boulder political scientist who plays Ugolino to more liberal climate bloggers’ Ruggieri (or vice versa), reminds us with a picture, and his own quick romp through the headlines, what’s happening, and keeps happening, far beneath lofty discussions and aspirations of Copenhagen

A Day in the Life: Washington’s mystique might emerge in the contrast between the monumental things that occur here (and that are expected to but don’t), and the patient, gradual, and frequently silent steps it takes to achieve them. It takes a piece like Barry Yeoman’s profile of Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions (and Climate Post‘s “publisher”) to add depth to the generally superficial headlines about events in Washington. The piece, just published in Duke magazine, lays out with dimension and color the Institute’s mission and the way we do the things we do.

Climate Post will be off next week for Thanksgiving.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.

November 12, 2009

Where There’s a Will There’s a Fray

Tquad — Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions

First Things First: U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-moon expressed confidence that international negotiators can resolve impediments to a global climate agreement, and that Copenhagen will be a productive step in that process. Ban visited Washington, DC, where he and climate adviser Janos Pasztor spoke with lawmakers about the international community’s expectations for U.S. leadership on global climate policy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation that the Copenhagen COP-15 talks can be a useful “stepping stone toward full legal agreement.”

President Barack Obama may visit Copenhagen in December if he can help clinch a deal, although his track record on visiting Copenhagen to clinch deals has a 100 percent fail rate (with a sample of one). A quiet-ish week for climate on Capitol Hill pushed news out to the states, where politicians and scientists are fighting what for a while it seemed like were yesterday’s battles.

Let’s Call a Spade a Rake: Political speech sometimes has a duplicitous relationship to the record of observations and understanding that makes up what we know on any given day about “physical reality.” Few things highlight this duality quite like global warming, and no prominent columnist spends more energy prying climate rhetoric and understanding farther apart than Newsweek and Washington Post columnist George Will.

Will’s most recent column about climate change, “Everyone Out of the Water!”, makes a useful touchstone for a week marked by a widening gap between political rhetoric and scientific observation. Space limitations limit analysis of Will’s column to two points, a falsehood and a self-deflating contradiction.

Falsehood: Will dubs as “cooling” conditions that have conspired to make 10 of the hottest years on record all occur between 1997 and 2008, despite flat temperature readings. A recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report explains how it is possible to have a decade of sub-record breaking temperatures within a warming trend [see pp 23-24 here]. If Newsweek editors follow the lead of their Washington Post colleagues, the magazine will issue no correction, and in fact, allow him to repeat this in a later column. In April, Washington Post reporters went to the possibly unprecedented length of correcting him in a news article.

Self-Deflating Contradiction: Will questions whether “computer models are correctly projecting catastrophic global warming.” This is a fine thing to question. In fact, the entire reason we have computer models is to question them. What they do, sometimes, is give us a sense of probabilities, and among them, a sense of the probability for catastrophic, non-catastrophic, and bearable global warming. Say that you aren’t interested in climate-model projections at all. Say you are interested in U.S. population growth. You might construct a scenario based on what we know of U.S. population growth and conditions for the next few decades. In fact, later in his column, Will writes of emissions targets in the recent House climate bill, “The last time this nation had that small an amount [of emissions] was 1910, when there were only 92 million Americans, 328 million fewer than the 420 million projected for 2050.” Interesting: Why should Will ask us to dismiss any value of climate modeling, and then build his argument for ignorance and inaction based on population modeling? Climate Post bets George Will would never say to a successful hedge fund, Well, you didn’t really make all of that money because you were just using computer models to project probabilities of market behavior and bet accordingly.

Will is only the most prominently published politico to distort scientific habits of mind and the results of vetted observation. In Illinois, five of seven Republican gubernatorial candidates have taken positions against documentation and observation. Utah’s governor and state legislators this week received a “stinging rebuke” from Brigham Young University scientists for privileging “fringe positions.” In this kind of environment, credit goes to the U.S. Senate House Republicans who are pushing back at the Interior Department’s recent move to set up a climate operation: Their letter appears to keep the conversation focused on “What to do” rather than “What’s going on.” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who signed the letter, is helping address a hole in science-and-technology research by co-sponsoring a bill that would set up awards for developers of technologies to gobble up airborne carbon dioxide economically and dispose of it.

What’s Going on: Politics and scientific data have typically driven the climate conversation in the U.S. That’s changing, as, across the country, professionals are realizing that warming might challenge or change standard operating procedures. Western water managers face “a pretty daunting and disconcerting reality that we’re beginning to get our heads around,” according to a Nevada official quoted in Climate Wire. The Army Corps of Engineers sees at least some benefit to projections of potential climate change so that “make stupid large investments that are difficult or impossible to undo.” Observational data bear out their concern. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) announced this week for the last decade record-high temperatures have occurred twice as frequently as record-low ones.

Welcome to Our Growing Indian Audience: Nothing could be less surprising than, even 14 years after a international scientific collaboration detected a “discernible human influence” on global warming, a writer as influential as George Will being allowed by editors to put forth demonstrable falsehoods about the topic. This criticism is not leveled on policy issues. Deciding to do nothing about warming is one reaction to the preponderance of evidence demonstrating the risks of change. Deciding to reduce U.S. emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020–as developing nations argue we should–is another take. The latter route might lead to an economic contraction worse than the Great Depression. The former might also lead to an economic contraction worse than the Great Depression–just not in our lifetimes. Or it might not. That’s the charm of climate change: You really have to decide how much you want to jeopardize the future based on scientifically generated risk data. George Will might argue something like the former, if he would like. He might argue something like the latter, if he would like. But whatever he argues, he might help everyone by looking more deeply at his characterization of climate risk. There’s a big difference between “catastrophic global climate change” and “the risk of catastrophic global climate change.” (Climate Post called Will’s office earlier this year, proposing a year-long team climate reporting project, but never received a response.) After all, what difference can a few degrees make?

[Late addition: Will’s irresponsible columns are a greater tragedy when placed against the sad backdrop of U.S. media dematerialization. Newsweek announced a new round of layoffs this week.]

After a month spent talking in India in part about all the new, interesting, and productive climate–related developments occurring in the U.S, it’s a shame to have to spend time pushing back against mean-spirited factual incorrectness. To boot, our national conversation is no longer a national conversation. It’s “global” warming, not “America” warming. Many of the people who may live with the economic, social, political, and physical consequences of change are listening, looking to the U.S. for leadership, and not always finding it.

November 5, 2009

The Gods Must Be Crazy

Fist Things Fist: If this section heading doesn’t look quite right it’s because there are a few r’s missing. That was true this week of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, a panel of Democrats whose Republican sparring partners boycotted work on the climate bill co-sponsored by Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). The Republican senators criticized the majority for moving ahead without an EPA analysis of the bill, which is similar to one that the House approved in June. The bill passed out of the committee this morning by a vote of 11-1, with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) voting against it, and all the R’s abstaining.

Committee drama set the stage for Sens. Kerry, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to announce yesterday that they are pursuing parallel negotiations on a climate bill, and are in discussion with the administration, Senate colleagues, and outside interests, including the newly minted American Businesses for Clean Energy.

Expectations for the Copenhagen climate talks continue to drop so low that the conference might end up being declared a success solely on the basis of having enough folding chairs and scratch paper for attendees. Climate envoy Todd Stern told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that in Copenhagen the U.S. hopes to lay groundwork for agreements on contentious issues in the near future.

About Our Recent, Unexcused Absences…: What many Indians lack in understanding “global warming,” they make up for in knowledge that their climate is changing. That’s a central takeaway from Climate Post‘s recent three-week voyage through India. It’s also the central problem in writing about climate change: Scientists commonly define “climate” as a statistical average of weather events, somewhere, over a long period of time. So personal observations, such as, the rainy season isn’t so rainy lately, are of limited scientific value. We can note that extreme events–flooding, drought, erratic weather, coastal erosion, the rest–resemble predictions, if they do. But there’s “no man behind the curtain” of climate change.

These on-the-ground observations may be of limited scientific value. But what makes them tangible is the way that en masse they begin to shape the very non-scientific public awareness and politics. Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay, a Times of India special correspondent, told me that editors have focused attention on climate change prompted not by politics, as is frequently the case in the U.S., but with declining agricultural productivity. The eastern Indian state of Odisha (called Orissa until 2 weeks ago) has many concerns. If there is an environmental problem happening anywhere in India, or the world, it can also be found in Odisha. And climate risks in this region are halting. Last week marked the 10th anniversary of a supercyclone that killed 10,000 people and dislocated more than 1.5 million there. Poorer areas never recovered and fears linger. “They shouldn’t call [storms] ‘low-pressure systems,'” said Prafulla Kumar Dhal, who works for a local social welfare agency called BISWA. “They should call them ‘normal-pressure systems.'”

The U.S. climate debate often feels hollow (mostly–anyone remember Katrina?) because it is largely driven by political concerns and scientific data, not people experiencing the meteorological weirdness that, if nothing else, Occam’s Razor suggests may be partly influenced by climate change. It’s a common assertion in the climate community that poor and vulnerable nations will experience the severest dislocations. It’s a less common assertion that poor and vulnerable nations are already beginning to see strain, are aware of it, and are unhappy. In some ways I learned more about it my first two days in India than in the previous 10 years I’ve spent writing out it.

Beyond the Foreign Section: The Indian trip was organized by the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Information Programs, though I traveled as a private citizen unencumbered by any official messages, tasks, or requests. Mostly, I was asked to go over and meet with Indian journalists so that we can compare notes about what works and doesn’t in climate coverage, and find ways to work together. The trip culminated in a New Delhi journalism conference, organized by the International Federation of Environmental Journalists, about bridging the gaps between climate change reporting in the North and South.

Discussions frequently turned to how difficult it is for Indians to see anything beyond Washington, and for Americans to see anything beyond Delhi. Some Indians I met tend to see America as monolithic or a cartoon. President Obama is seen by some as no different from President Bush on climate policy, even if he has the Senate to fault. Many Americans who think about it see India only as the first part of the phrase “India and China,” without recognizing the complexities, that 99 percent of Indians live below the U.S. poverty line or that there are 100 million-200 million more Indians without electricity than there are Americans in total. There is much work to do bringing Indians and Americans together electronically.

Now Appearing on the International Stage: India’s Minister of Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, is interesting to watch. He must balance the demands of his government, which is reluctant to amend its incalcitrant position in the climate negotiations, and his interlocutors in the West, who are reluctant to amend their incalcitrant positions in the climate negotiations. This week he is encouraging Indians to see climate change as a leadership opportunity–and a responsibility to the future, and to internalize its meaning rather than play victim to a problem of the West’s creation.

The Obama administration appears poised to make more progress in its bilateral relationship with India than with any other nation. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Washington this month and enjoy President Obama’s first state dinner. Trade and geopolitics are bringing the two nations together, cautiously.

Statistical Threats Leave No Fingerprints: India may be more vulnerable to large-scale climate change than any other nation. Seventy percent of its rainfall comes during monsoon season. Unusual variability in the monsoon has led to drought and flooding. Melting Himalayan glaciers threaten fresh water supplies for hundreds of millions. The Bay of Bengal is eroding a string of Odisha villages I visited. BISWA’s Prafulla Kumar Dhal spoke of an important temple, the adjacent wells to which had dried up. “The gods know that the climate is changing,” he said, seemingly incredulous. Maybe so, maybe not. Some weird stuff is happening in India. The question, what if anything will we do about it, remains unanswered–in Washington, New Delhi, Copenhagen, and elsewhere.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.

October 8, 2009

U.S. to Kyoto Protocol: Just Not That Into You

First Things First: The U.S. Senate is looking at new climate change legislation as the COP-15 global talks in Copenhagen approach this December. These two stories have fed off and driven each other all year. That they are happening together offers a clear view of just how stark differences are on what the U.S. should do.

There’s money. Rich nations have it, but are reluctant to part with it. Poor nations want it, to gird climate adaptation strategies and to alleviate energy poverty with low-carbon systems. The U.S. dropped opposition to a new international organization that would oversee climate-related fund transfers from rich to poor countries.

There’s trade. U.S. states dependent on exports and energy-intensive manufacturing fear a loss in their economic competitiveness if the U.S. adopts a low-carbon strategy and key competitors don’t. The U.N.-mediated process in fact excludes developing nations from such a requirement. That’s not changing so quickly, even against the steady background hum that the two-tiered system, for rich and poor nations, is flawed, possibly by Western “sabotage.”

Fortunately, there are also the ministers of the Maldives, willing to inject gallows humor into the proceedings.

Dating Advice for Negotiators: President Barack Obama is unlikely to receive as cool a reception in Copenhagen in December, if he goes, as he did last month when Chicago’s Olympic bid took him to, uh, Copenhagen. John Fortier of the American Enterprise Institute muses in Politico about the differences in public opinion on climate change between the U.S. and Europe. His conclusion is the international climate negotiation version of, “He’s just not that into you.”

At least a handful of senators and executive branch officials are struggling daily to challenge that conclusion by making new policy. Democrats, particularly Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) has discussed the inclusion of nuclear energy provisions in the climate bill with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (D-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). The bill is not expected to pass before the Copenhagen talks, Carol Browner, Obama’s chief climate adviser, said publicly this week.

The White House is expected to regulate heat-trapping gas emissions, despite its stated preference for legislation. A path through the Environmental Protection Agency may be fraught with domestic political risks for the administration and lawsuits over new rules.

Model Universe?: A scientific paper [pdf] published last year by Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and a team that includes several paleoclimatologists came to the tentative conclusion that the world should shoot for a climate stabilization target of 350 parts carbon dioxide for every million parts of air, or 350 ppm. (The preindustrial value was about 280 ppm. We’re currently near 390 ppm.)

A new study looks at economic implications. Frank Ackerman of Tufts University and the Stockholm Environmental Institute has led a team of economists in modeling economic scenarios by which the world stabilizes at 350 ppm by 2200. The researchers use the common Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy (DICE), but make assumptions that treat the possibility of extreme climate change with greater emphasis. They assume a much higher value for the climate’s temperature sensitivity to increased carbon dioxide, a much lower value for the depreciation of the dollar over time, and vary the scale of climate damages.

Is Seeing Really Believing?: A British environmentalist is suing his former employer, a major property company, on the grounds that it violated his religious or philosophical belief that climate change is real and people should alter their lifestyles to eliminate carbon pollution. This approach, that climate change is a belief system, must be maddening to scientists. After all, scientists make a living by collecting and explaining data. Science writers filter it for people less inclined to read peer-reviewed journals. So the notion of “believing”–which is generally not driven by skeptical data collection– runs in the opposite direction how scientists learned about climate change in the first place and how they keep tabs on it. On the other hand, unless you’re collecting and analyzing all the data yourself, which no human being possibly has time for, chances are that on some basic level you end up having to choose to “believe” somebody…

A Passage to India: India has undergone a significant makeover on its public climate rhetoric in the last two months or so. Its central positions haven’t changed. The “per capita principle” remains in effect, the guarantee that Indian per capita emissions will never pass that of rich nations. U.S. emissions are on the order of 20 tons per person. In India that figure is just higher than 1 ton. India will not accept binding emission reduction targets. It will not abide U.S. protectionism in climate policy. There are at least 100 million more Indians without electricity than there are all Americans, in total.

The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledges that the climate threat is real, and is expected to introduce domestic legislation next month targeting fuel efficiency and building codes. India itself may be at risk for some of the most perilous regional changes, in the monsoon that brings the region 70 percent of its precipitation, and in the Himalayan glaciers that feed major rivers–and provide drinking water to 1 billion people.

For the next three weeks Climate Post will be traveling through India–Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai, New Delhi–speaking mostly with colleagues in journalism, but also with audiences at companies, universities, and NGOs to talk about what we can learn from each other on this global problem. Posts will come as close to their usual “Thursdays at three” as circumstances allow (Perhaps even closer than usual…). Again, circumstances permitting, more frequent updates will come through CarbonNation (http://www.CarbonNation.org), a (much-neglected) personal blog. The trip is sponsored by a U.S. State Department grant.

My goal for this trip is to help build a bridge between journalists and interested observers in the U.S. and India, some kind of electronic journalism “buddy system. Details TK. Feel free help us out: Send questions and comments about all things India here. Let’s try to get them answered and addressed.

See you next week in Kolkata…

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.

October 1, 2009

Gentlemen, Start Your Lawsuits

First Things First: The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a regulation that if approved would force the largest industrial emitters, including utilities, energy-intensive manufacturing, and refineries, to invest in the cleanest available technology for new projects or major renovations. The announcement’s potential importance overshadowed the nearly simultaneous official release of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, the latest “climate” bill that dare not speak its name. These twin events occur as global climate negotiators meet in Bangkok to shrink the disagreements now widely expected to eclipse a comprehensive deal in the Copenhagen talks in December.

Zero to 60(Votes) in 5.4 Seconds?: The EPA’s proposed regulation imposes restrictions on industrial facilities that emit more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. This threshold exempts small businesses and other concerned institutions (ie, large new schools). The Los Angeles Times characterizes the move as a “warning shot to Congress” that the EPA is ready to move if lawmakers are not. The Washington Post lede looks outward, suggesting that the EPA action and Senate bill could influence the COP-15 talks. The rules apply to as many as 7,500 industrial facilities, including 4000 power plants, all of which under the Clean Air Act must meet requirements for emissions of a registered pollutant. They could take effect in 2011.

The Senate climate bill tweaks the legislation that barely passed the House of Representatives in late June. The bill, sponsored by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.), would lead to 20 percent emissions cuts below 2005 levels by 2020. It girds against disruptive price swings in the market for greenhouse gas emission permits by letting the EPA auction credits to dampen demand. [For relevant Nicholas Institute policy material, click here.] The new bill also empowers a single federal agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with preventing fraud and “excessive speculation,” an important consideration after last year’s Wall Street shenanigans and consequent chaos. The key Senate committee, Environment and Public Works, has internal rifts far more serious than anything in memory.

The government has been presenting a menu of options increasingly unattractive to private stakeholders opposing national climate policy. And lately it seems like one option is less desirable than the next, particularly to business interests. Enter the climate lawsuit: A court ruling of potentially great consequence snuck under many newspaper editors’ radar. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of eight states, New York City, and green NGOs, allowing lawsuits charging emissions from coal-burning utilities as a public nuisance.

Drip, Drip, Drip…: Three companies have quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in recent weeks, charging the influential voice of business with retarding the national climate debate. Nike’s exodus follows PNM Resources, PG&E’s, and Excelon’s, which also came this week. General Electric remains in the Chamber, the world’s largest business association, but a GE spokesman said, “The Chamber does not speak for us on climate legislation.” The Chamber and its members, along with the National Association of Manufacturers, are key voices of opposition to climate legislation that has been proposed. (Duke Energy quit the NAM in August.) The big question is, would a larger exodus send a political signal to the Senate that industrial opposition to a U.S. carbon program has eroded to the point where lawmakers can strike the deals necessary to put one in place?

However the voices of business organize themselves in the climate debate over the next few months, longer term trends are much clearer. Business schools around the world are internalizing carbon-constrained business and building curricula accordingly [including Duke].

Not So Radioactive: Nuclear power remains a sticking point in the U.S., but not in India and China. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pledged to boost India’s nuclear capacity 100-fold by 2050, to 470 gigawatts, with (“untested”) fast breeder reactors. A longtime nuclear power supporter, China would like to increase its nuclear energy production 10 times by 2020, from 11 plants now in operation.

China may announce in Copenhagen its intention to establish a cap-and-trade system. The Guardian cites Philippe Chauvancy, the head of climate exchange at BlueNext, which is working with China to develop standards for voluntary emission reduction products. The article might overstate the speed at which this system might get up and running, given the complexity of building standards and acquiring know-how to certify carbon credits. More likely, China may run pilot emissions trading systems on sulfur dioxide and water pollution.

Do-It-Yourself Climate Change: If the major economies enacted the most aggressive suite of climate proposals, how might they soften climate change by 2050? A new climate model attempts to bridge the gap between discussions on the international stage and scientific predictions about the mitigating effects of aggressive energy policy. C-ROADS started as an MIT doctoral dissertation in 1997, and has been developed into a tool that can project, in real time, the climate results of a given suite of policy. The model’s developers have been shopping it around the world, recently introducing it to Chinese climate experts, so that policymakers can better understand the potential implications of plans and decisions at moments in time up to 2100. The Climate Interactive Web site offers “Climate Bathtub Animation” for viewers playing the home game.

What life in the U.S. might look like in 2050 is hard to say, even with a nimble new climate model. The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s business section grapples with this statement, prompted by a chat with Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy. John Funk’s article points out the proverbial elephant in the room of climate politics: the risks and cost of inaction. the Nature blog Climate Feedback frames the question as an either-or, asking, “If we are trying to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less but 4 degrees is possible even within some of our lifetimes, which world do we prepare for?”

The Climate Archipelago: The many specialities and sub-specialities, topics and subtopics within the climate change conversation really might be imagined as a vast group of islands, each barely visible from the others. Residents of one island might know their own really, really well, but not others’. The several islands of climate skepticism are well-represented in the blogosphere.

Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit is one of the few rigorous sites that actually scrutinizes scientific data, searching for malfeasance and incompetence. McIntyre has earned headlines over the last few years by raising questions about some prominent studies, and laudably forcing a correction or two. But it’s good to keep in mind that disputing one line of evidence of global warming–kicking it out of the climate archipelago–still leaves all the other islands untouched: There are many, many lines of evidence suggesting that human industrial activity is changing the climate. The scientists at RealClimate.org, often the target of Climate Audit’s audits, respond to McIntyre’s recent work, pointing out that climate change is sufficiently well-documented that even “a statistical quirk or mistake” doesn’t erase climate risk–or reduce the size of the archipelago.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.

September 24, 2009

The Whole World Is Talking

First Things First: The journal Nature has published a study that attempts to find numerical “planetary boundaries” for global change, an effort that the authors believe will help policymakers better understand humanity’s impact on the planet and its life. A team of Earth scientists, led by the Stockholm Resilience Center, has identified and defined nine natural systems, and sifting through mountains of data and studies, assigned tentative thresholds beyond which environmental stress might cause them to fail. We have already tripped three such systems–climate change, extinction rate, and the nitrogen cycle, they contend. The study is likely to infuriate scientists who think assigning single numbers to such complex systems is absurd; confuse nonprofessionals trying to parse the value of boundaries so laden with caveats and lacunae in knowledge; and succeed in focusing the global conversation on the best available metrics for the speed at which civilization is swallowing the Earth.

NY Midtown Traffic Linked to Climate Change: The ultimate audience for whom the Nature study was conducted met in New York City two days before its publication. President Barack Obama addressed Tuesday’s day-long U.N. climate change summit. He noted the urgency of the issue and his administration’s role in turning around the U.S.’s policy. He outlined investment in renewable electricity and fuel economy and proposed a global phase-out of oil subsidies. But he couldn’t give the audience what it wanted: a U.S. climate policy to back up the president’s international goals.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hosted the event, a political pick-me-up on what has otherwise been a muddy road to the December COP-15 talks in Copenhagen. The parade of world leaders past the podium set off the inevitable question of who is leading the global climate debate. Noble speeches and goals were largely deflated by vague language. Chinese President Hu Jintao vowed the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter would cut down by a “notable” amount, without assigning a numerical target. India sent its environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, who talked up domestic legislation likely to appear in November that could set voluntary targets for fuel efficiency in 2011, building codes in 2012, and carbon capture and storage by 2020. The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog asks, Has China suddenly become the “good guy” on climate?

All the activity may indicate that a new kind of global deal is emerging, in which individual nations design their own goals and programs, in what adds up to a more federalized system. More theoretically, if global emissions were limited to an amount thought to keep the Earth below 2 degrees Celsius of warming by 2050, and the access to these emissions were assigned out based on population, the U.S. would run out in six years and have to stop polluting.

A new series in ClimateWire will provide an in-depth look at development and climate issues inside China. The first piece cites U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern’s observation that parts of China resemble the developed world, even if most of the country is developing. Writer Lisa Friedman nails a central frustration with the status quo international climate regime: “Stern’s problem is that the current global climate change regime doesn’t allow for this kind of nuance.”

List of Lists to Grow: The Stockholm Resilience Institute is only the most rigorous attempt to list issues as a way for people to understand them better. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Browne turns in a New York Times op-ed enumerating five global issues that need attention over the next six months–the most consequential for global cooperation since 1945. Climate change tops the list. Sheila Olmstead and Robert Stavins, of Yale and Harvard respectively, identify three essential pillars of an international agreement: inclusion of key rich and poor nations; allowing enough time for emissions reductions; Tribune Newspapers points out nine potential stumbling blocks to a global treaty. Half of the top 10 most environmentally responsible companies are in information technology, according to a Newsweek study of the green 500.

Capitol Ideas: Conflict in the Senate made Washington a climate center this week, even as the war in Afghanistan distracted people from kicking back and reading Sen. Max Baucus’ centrist health-care legislation. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), ranking member of the Energy Committee, threatened to introduce legislation that would delay enactment of the EPA’s new greenhouse gas regulations emissions, as they would affect stationary sources, such as power plants or manufacturing facilities. Though the situation is now resolved, it occupied senators on both sides of the aisle for several days.

Activity on climate activity proceeds in the Environment and Public Works Committee, where Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), committee chairwoman, and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) will introduce a bill next week. It is based on the legislation that passed the House of Representatives in June. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) is expected to introduce a stripped-down, 33-page “cap-and-refund” bill that would sell emissions credits at auction to energy companies. Seventy-five percent of the funds would return to consumers. The balance would go toward investment in new energy technology and other climate-related matters.

No (Science) News Is Good News: Upbeat climate-related stories abound, as venture capitalists plow funds into shiny and clean energy technologies and city managers find better ways of living. It is difficult to travel long in this space without acknowledging that dangerous climate change would be a bummer. Precise satellite measurements show that ice melt on Greenland and in Antarctica is accelerating. The Western U.S. may have a hard time planning for change, when officials don’t recognize scientific observations. Overall, the science can be characterized as, if not worrisome, then hard.

Naming Names: One upside to a failure at Copenhagen has gone unremarked upon, until the following conversation with Mrs. Climate Post occurred en route to work earlier this week:

MCP: “So wait… if they strike a deal in Copenhagen, then we’ll have to call it the Copenhagen Protocol, like the Kyoto Protocol?”
CP: “That’s pretty much the idea, yeah.”
MCP: “It’s kind of a mouthful.”
CP: “Next year is Mexico City.”
MCP: “Still a lot of syllables.”
CP: Maybe they can go back to Milan. The Milan Protocol.”
MCP: “That’s nice. I like that.”
CP: “Or Perm…”

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.