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This guest post comes from Muskegon Critic.
Put away the shine and the polish. Put away the talking heads and their excellent hair and confidence opining with a certainty that is inversely proportional to their accuracy.
Give me a guy with callouses on his hands speaking from the heart, a woman speaking from experience, the coffee addled lab researchers talking about how they’re pushing the limits. Show me the folks in the trenches with reports from the day to day world.
How is a higher fuel efficiency standard working for America?
It’s working. It’s putting the Industrial Powerhouse Midwest to work is how it’s working. Here’s a whole website dedicated to real-life stories of real, actual, real-life people getting real jobs and real businesses hiring and innovating BECAUSE OF, not in spite of, the recent increase in fuel efficiency standards. Visit the Driving Growth site. Watch the videos and the stories from the ground.
Comments Off on Higher Fuel Efficiency Standards Putting Industrial States Back to Work: A dash of realityTags: 2012 Presidential Election · Energy
In his 14 November press conference, President Obama took a serious question about climate change. Amid his response,
So what I’m going to be doing over the next several weeks, next several months, is having a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out what can — what more can we do to make short-term progress in reducing carbons, and then working through an education process that I think is necessary, a discussion, the conversation across the country about, you know, what realistically can we do long term to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.
When we consider “an education process,” a critical skill of a quality educator is the ability to see and exploit “teachable moments“. When it comes to climate change, we have had all too many teachable moments just in the United States in 2012. Putting aside record-low Arctic Ice extent and mass, climate-influenced disasters in many nations and regions, the United States has seen dramatic weather events and conditions that reflect human-driven climate change’s increasing impact. These include
These climate disruption teachable moments are having an impact on Americans understanding of and concern about climate change. Sadly, these teachable moments have been ignored — or even worse, essentially repudiated — by the Obama Administration. There have been no serious discussions of how climate change impacts are driving up food costs nor discussion of how the heat wave is portending future weather patterns nor outlining how various storms fit directly within scientific predications as to climate change impacts. Instead, climate silence has dominated rather than skillful seizure of teachable moments to help move the national conversation forward
“to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.”
While the President’s comments Wednesday provided groups for (guarded) hope that the President and the Administration will move down a path toward seizing such teachable moments, comments the next day by White House press spokesman Jay Carney to a press gaggle demonstrate that this process should begin with senior White House staff up to and including the President.
As happened with the President, Jay Carney was launched a softball question related to Hurricane Sandy that offered opportunity to move the nation down the “education process”. Carney response (full question and answers after the fold) might be generously described as a swing and a miss while some might argue that it was an inning-ending strike-out.
Several items drive this. When asked about whether the President would discuss climate change in his speech in hurricane-devastated New York, Carney stated:
The President made clear yesterday that we can’t attribute any one single weather event to climate change.
Yes, the President did make that comment but, as scientists focused on extreme weather event attribution put it in a Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society peer-reviewed article, “scientific thinking has moved on”. The appropriate discussion, especially for non-scientists like the President and Jay Carney and this author, is not “did climate change cause this specific storm” but ‘Did change helped contribute to the conditions in which the weather event occurred and did climate change worsen the storm/impacts”. With Hurricane Sandy, as to that second question, the answer is an unequivocal yes. We can start with the simple fact that sea-level rise from human-caused global warming heightened the storm surge levels. Rather than iterating “we can’t attribute”, White House spokesman Carney could have helped moved the education process forward commenting that:
“As the President said yesterday, we cannot specifically attribute a single weather event’s cause to climate change however we know that we are having an impact on the climate system. Some scientists are using an excellent analogy: we are putting the climate system on steroids. And, just as we can’t say that any specific Barry Bonds’ home run came due to steroid use, it is impossible to look at his home run record without an asterisk as to his steroid use, we can’t look at Hurricane Sandy without understanding that climate change contributed to it.”
And, then, since the question focused on the speech of the day, Carney could have added: “In any event, today’s speech will focus on the immediate challenges that those hit by Sandy face and to engage with those helping those damaged by Sandy rather than to engage in the climate change education process that the President committed to yesterday.”
Another failure to seize the teachable moment (and, more appropriately, to use that moment to make a mistaken point) came with this exchange:
Q I’m just speaking of the aftermath yesterday — [President Obama] seemed to almost go out of his way to dismiss the idea of a carbon tax, kind of rule it out. Why did he — why was he so —
MR. CARNEY: We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one. The point the President was making is that our focus right now is the same as the American people’s focus, which is on the need to extend economic growth, expand job creation. And task number one is dealing with these deadlines that pose real challenges to our economy, as he talked about yesterday.
First, why the unilateral disarmament to declare “we would never propose a carbon tax”. Carny could have said that “Of course, we’re hearing all this carbon tax discussion but the White House is not working on it and we have no intention of proposing one.” The first part of the response removes, unnecessarily, this legitimate policy option as something in the White House’s quiver. This seems absurd even if the President doesn’t intend to use it.
Second, and far more importantly, Carney’s response seems to imply that he (that the Administration) buys hook, line, and sinker the utter falsehood that it is ‘environment vs economy’ rather than ‘environment and economy‘. Focusing on Climate + Energy Smart practices and policies, somewhat in line with what the President promised in the press conference to focus on, will have economic benefits. And, as seen throughout our climate disruption disasters of 2012, leaving environmental issues on the policy-making cutting-room floor has huge negative economic impacts.
President Obama’s three key science-related appointments at the start of the Administration were quite telling. Steve Chu (Secretary of Energy), Jane Lubchenco (Director, NOAA), and John Holdren (Presidential Science Advisor) have a very strong career overlap: each of them were serious and accomplished scientists in their fields who determined that the need for better understanding of science issues (most notably related to climate change) demanded that they evolve themselves from ‘simply’ scientists to science communicators capable of communicating effectively with non-scientists (whether policy makers, business community, the general public, otherwise …). And, all three are quite effective communicators and educators with deep and substantive knowledge of climate change risks and opportunities. Considering this, the President’s “educational process” might best begin by having these three foster a deeper understanding in the White House staff along with, then, unmuzzling them for serious engagement with the American public as to how science can inform policy-makers on climate change risks.
NOTE: There are many places to look for effective climate communication, including among politicians. President re-elect Obama could do worse than looking to Presidential Candidate Obama in 2007:
“Most of all, we cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now.
In a state like New Hampshire, the ski industry is facing shorter seasons and losing jobs. We are already breaking records with the intensity of our storms, the number of forest fires, the periods of drought. By 2050 famine could force more than 250 million from their homes — famine that will increase the chances of war and strife in many of the world’s weakest states. The polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted. And if we do nothing, sea levels will rise high enough to swallow large portions of every coastal city and town.
This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.
But if we wait; if we let campaign promises and State of the Union pledges go unanswered for yet another year; if we let the same broken politics that’s held us back for decades win one more time, we will lose another chance to save our planet. And we might not get many more.
I reject that future. I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe that this time could be different.” “The first step in doing this is to phase out a carbon-based economy that’s causing our changing climate. As President, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming — an 80% reduction by 2050. To ensure this isn’t just talk, I will also commit to interim targets toward this goal in 2020, 2030, and 2040. These reductions will start immediately, and we’ll continue to follow the recommendations of top scientists to ensure that our targets are strong enough to meet the challenge we face.”
That, for the record, was Senator Obama back in 2007.
There is also President Obama as an example of excellent climate change communicator (2009) :
Now, the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline. We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy. We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.
America can be that nation. America must be that nation.
NOTE: And … if the President truly wants to start an educational process and get the ball moving, perhaps he should have senior staff attend Do The Math events and speak to those who will be outside the White House tomorrow, 18 November, to bring attention to reasons why Keystone XL costs are far higher than its benefits for the nation and humanity.
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President Obama held a press conference earlier today. Perhaps due to coming from a city still reeling from a climate disruption fed disaster, Hurricane Sandy, the New York Times White House reporter asked a strong question on climate change. Here is Mark Landler‘s interaction with President Obama:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Just going to knock through a couple of others. Mark Landler? Where’s Mark? There he is, right in front of me.
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. In his endorsement of you a few weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg said he was motivated by the belief that you would do more to confront the threat of climate change than your opponent. Tomorrow you’re going up to New York City, where you’re going to, I assume, see people who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which many people say is further evidence of how a warming globe is changing our weather. What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate change? And do you think the political will exists in Washington to pass legislation that could include some kind of a tax on carbon?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, as you know, Mark, we can’t attribute any particular weather event to climate change. What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago. We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years ago. We do know that there have been extraordinarily — there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.
And I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. And as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.
Now, there are many things to note about this exchange.
When climate scientists like me explain to people what we do for a living we are increasingly asked whether we “believe in climate change”. Quite simply it is not a matter of belief. Our concerns about climate change arise from the scientific evidence that humanity’s activities are leading to changes in our climate. The scientific evidence is overwhelming.The President continued to respond to Landler with the following:
Now, in my first term, we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars and trucks. That will have an impact. That will take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere.
Need to take a moment for an editorial comment.
First, the Obama Administration deserves serious credit for the fuel efficiency standard work. This was a major achievement that will have significant impact.
Second, this is simply false: “That will take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere.” There is an important differentiation between the work “take” and “keep”. While the fuel standards mean that drivers will pollute less, they still will be burning fuel while driving — they will be polluting, still, with each mile driven even if polluting less. E.g., the fuel efficiency standards “will keep a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere” would have been a correct statement. This seemingly pedantic point has meaning — a 50 percent reduction in polluting, per mile driven, helps move us forward by reducing our polluting impact — it does not, however, solve our problems and it does nothing to “take carbon out of the atmosphere”.
We doubled the production of clean energy, which promises to reduce the utilization of fossil fuels for power generation. And we continue to invest in potential breakthrough technologies that could further remove carbon from our atmosphere.
But we haven’t done as much as we need to. So what I’m going to be doing over the next several weeks, next several months, is having a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out what can — what more can we do to make short-term progress in reducing carbons, and then working through an education process that I think is necessary, a discussion, the conversation across the country about, you know, what realistically can we do long term to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.
This is an important commentary — that the President is going to spark a national “education process” to build support for the policies and actions determined as necessary to deal with climate change. One might reasonably be scratching one’s head right now: we just finished a multi-year election campaign which should have been about laying out the differences between the two parties and outlining policies that each is proposing. And, in fact, the President’s comments about the coming months and education are eerily echoing comments he has made in the past (here and here and …). If the President and the Obama-Biden campaign had, as many had advocated, laid out climate change clearly over the past two years, that education process would be well underway and the President’s resounding electoral victory would have been a clear mandate for taking these actions.
I don’t know what — what either Democrats or Republicans are prepared to do at this point, because, you know, this is one of those issues that’s not just a partisan issue. I also think there’s — there are regional differences. There’s no doubt that for us to take on climate change in a serious way would involve making some tough political choices, and you know, understandably, I think the American people right now have been so focused and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth that, you know, if the message is somehow we’re going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don’t think anybody’s going to go for that.
Huh … Why is the President going out of his way to assert “that’s not just a partisan issue” when, at the core, climate change is one of the most partisan of all issues when it comes to the science (even as there a few ‘coal’ Democratic politicians who strive to ignore or reject the science).
And, why is the President using language that fosters the false economy versus environment framing so beloved by polluting industries? It is well past time to connect, strongly, the Obama Administration’s clean energy and green jobs efforts with their implications for climate science.
I won’t go for that.
Who – in terms of serious players in the US political discussion — “would go for that” tackling climate change with zero regard for employment implications. Bill McKibben and the 350.org crowd, far from anyone’s concept of a pansy and weak-willed group when it comes to climate issues, certainly are aware of jobs issues and don’t advocate action in ignorance of economic performance implications.
If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader, I think that’s something that the American people would support.
And, that “agenda” has been laid out multiple times over. See here …
So you know, you can expect that you’ll hear more from me in the coming months and years about how we can shape an agenda that garners bipartisan support and helps move this — moves this agenda forward.
Q: It sounds like you’re saying, though — (off mic) — probably still short of a consensus on some kind of — (off mic).
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I — that I’m pretty certain of. And look, we’re — we’re still trying to debate whether we can just make sure that middle-class families don’t get a tax hike. Let’s see if we can resolve that. That should be easy. This one’s hard. But it’s important because, you know, one of the things that we don’t always factor in are the costs involved in these natural disasters. We’d — we just put them off as — as something that’s unconnected to our behavior right now, and I think what, based on the evidence, we’re seeing is — is that what we do now is going to have an impact and a cost down the road if — if — if we don’t do something about it.
The President is partially right. We are already facing these costs, seriously, and it will be far worse than “a cost down the road if we don’t do something about” climate change.
One might question as to whether the President did, in fact, answer the question. Landler asked quite directly about the President’s intent during the second term for climate-related legislation and other Federal action. And, Landler asked for the President’s perspective on the political environment for action on climate change. Both of these quite significant issues were left, at best, partially addressed.
For several months now, Forecast the Facts has led a campaign called “climate silence“, which chastised President Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney for their failure to address climate change seriously in the Presidential campaign (and elsewhere). In essence, they have sought to have serious discussion of climate change from two angles:
In considering that campaign, one might see Landler’s question as providing a prompt for the President to ‘end’ that climate silence. The President’s response, however, responded to just the first element (acknowledging climate change as serious) and did not provide a solid response to the second in terms of specific actions. One might suggest that something like this would deserve description as ending the climate silence:
“Most of all, we cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now.In a state like New Hampshire, the ski industry is facing shorter seasons and losing jobs. We are already breaking records with the intensity of our storms, the number of forest fires, the periods of drought. By 2050 famine could force more than 250 million from their homes — famine that will increase the chances of war and strife in many of the world’s weakest states. The polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted. And if we do nothing, sea levels will rise high enough to swallow large portions of every coastal city and town.This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.But if we wait; if we let campaign promises and State of the Union pledges go unanswered for yet another year; if we let the same broken politics that’s held us back for decades win one more time, we will lose another chance to save our planet. And we might not get many more.I reject that future. I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe that this time could be different.” “The first step in doing this is to phase out a carbon-based economy that’s causing our changing climate. As President, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming — an 80% reduction by 2050. To ensure this isn’t just talk, I will also commit to interim targets toward this goal in 2020, 2030, and 2040. These reductions will start immediately, and we’ll continue to follow the recommendations of top scientists to ensure that our targets are strong enough to meet the challenge we face.”
That, for the record, was Senator Obama back in 2007.
Yet, the President’s comments today certainly imply (if not directly state) an intent to end climate silence.
The President’s commitment to speak on climate issues and spark a real national discussion to help foster support for necessary actions is welcomed and something could lead to substantive change in the months and years moving forward.
As to the post’s title, an interesting tidbit on the President’s press conference: the New York Times Washington Bureau evidently didn’t consider their own reporter’s question to be newsworthy as the Times’ report on the press conference is silent on climate issues.
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This simple and to the point guest post comes from Greg Laden.
I have two questions:
Answers:
Number 1 has been on the increase, number 2 on the decrease, on average.
The former owing mainly to the burning of fossil fuels, the latter to the disestablishment of the hareem system.
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Starting at 8 pm (east coast) tonight, starting in New York City, Al Gore is running another “24 Hours of Reality” — bringing searing (and searingly accurate) discussions of climate disruption reality, from a global perspective and, hour-by-hour, regional discussions. Whether scorched by hot temperature records, burned out of home by wild fires, sitting in darkened homes due to Derecho(s), digging out sand from Hurricane Sandy, paying higher prices for food due to crop failures, and …, we are all feeling the impacts of climate disruption in our daily lives: whether we realize it or not.
While the American political system teeters on collapse due to the created “Fiscal Cliff” crisis and pundits waxed endlessly about the need to avoid leaving such a debt to and creating future generations, the political elite remain mainly within their climate silence bubbles with too rare excursions into mentioning of “climate change” with rapid retreats to the comfort zone of battling over whether the poor, embattled multi-billionaires can handle a few tenths of a percent reduction in the tax subsidies for the real takers of 21st century America: the super-wealthy who want everything from government while seeking all tools to avoiding paying to maintain and improve the society that enabled them to amass such fortunes.
Amid the Do The Math tour (eloquently discussed here and here), this 24 hours of Climate Reality discussion is a tool to help spark the nation to focus on the real burden that we are creating for ourselves and future generations: the mounting risks of climate disruption driven by our fossil foolish energy practices.
Comments Off on “Dirty weather” reports …Tags: climate change
We can build seawalls, we can raise highways, but it’s a losing proposition if you don’t stop sea-level rise.
Comments Off on A Tale of Two ArticlesTags: climate change · Global Warming · journalism · unpublished letters · Washington Post
With Clean Break, a recommended 99 cent ‘Kindle Single’ purchase/read, Osha Gray Davidson has provided English speakers an enjoyable and illuminating look at Germany’s Energiewende — that wholesale societal shift commonly translated as “energy shift” and “energy transition”. Despite its booming economy — in the powerhouse position of Europe — and the mounting role that solar power is playing in its electricity system, despite having the solar resources of Alaska, anti-clean energy attack sound machine (like too much of the Grand Oil Party) pound home misdirections and erroneous information about Germany’s move toward a clean-energy economy. Clean Break, which reads like a collection of short essays, provides an easy-read counterpoint to that sound machine.
On flights around the United States, when coming into cities, I find myself looking for the (too) rare white roofed commercial structure and the even scarcer solar panel. When arriving in Germany, even while prepared for this intellectually, the ubiquitous nature of ‘white roofs’ (energy efficiency) and solar panels (renewable energy) flabbergasted me. Davidson had a similar experience:
The pervasiveness of the Energiewende was driven home for me on a six-hour train ride through the German countryside. Gazing out the window as the train raced from Hamburg in the north to near the border with Switzerland in the south, massive wind turbines and rooftops covered with solar panels were seldom out of sight. A couple of hours into the journey we rounded a bend and the scene took on a surreal quality. Yet another cluster of barns and outbuildings came into view, the red ceramic roof tiles nearly hidden by blue, solar photovoltaic panels. The buildings swam in a sea of bright yellow rapeseed the raw material of biodiesel fuel. On a distant slope, the long thin blades of three wind turbines revolved in unison as if choreographed. I was suddenly seized by the desire to grab the well-?dressed man in the seat next to me, who was engrossed in today’s Die Zeit, and demand that he look out the window and tell me if this Energiewende parade is real or a moveable tableau staged for foreign journalists.
In Clean Break, Davidson lays out that Germany’s Energiewende is no Potemkin village of feel-good activities, but a wide-ranging set of projects that are both loosely and tightly linked to the long-term objective of ending Germany’s reliance on fossil fuel and nuclear power electricity systems.
There are several key elements to the ‘story’:
Germany’s Energiewende was put into legal framework with comprehensive legislation in 2000. On reading this book, my mind turned to the Supreme Court and Florida in December 2000 with an alternative history questioning as to whether President Gore might have forged a trans-Atlantic Energiewende … Ah, the “could’ve been moment” … Twelve years later, with a Democratic Party candidate (again) elected President without an opening for Supreme Court disruption of the election results, perhaps Clean Break,will provide a useful tool for moving the conversation toward accelerating such a trans-Atlantic power shift in the coming years.
NOTE: Tuesday, 13 November, the author and commentators will be giving a two-hour presentation at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, from 0900-1100.
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Today’s core GOP (accurately called the Grand Obstructionist Party) can be easily summarized as:
The first three are quite well understood and are a key part of the chattering class analysis about the reasons for Republican Party failures yesterday and their inevitable failures in elections to come. With a political base that is significantly older white males , the Republican Party is leveraging and relying on a demographic that is a dwindling part of the overall population. This is not a path toward electoral success. As Markos put it today:
George W. Bush won 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004. John McCain won 31 percent of it. Mitt Romney won 21 percent. The trend is unmistakable.
Thirteen percent of the vote was African American, 10 percent was Latino, 3 percent was Asian. In 2008, it was 13 African American, 9 percent Latino, 2 percent Asian. Whites went from 74 to 72 percent of the vote. They’ll be under 70 percent in 2016.
Pollsters assumed that non-whites would stay home last night. They didn’t. But they’re still not voting at their percentages of the overall population. Democrats need to keep registering those voters and getting them politically engaged. It’s already exceedingly difficult for Republicans to win the White House without non-white, heavily male vote. It will be virtually impossible.
The fourth, “addicted to the tall tale,” is as critical a description of the core Republican base:
“Reality-based politics” is something at odds with a significant share of the Republican Party base. And, perhaps just as inevitably as the other descriptors, this is something that will make it harder and harder for Republicans to win elections in the coming years.
How many non-Tea-Hadists were captured by asserting that Obama wasn’t born in the nation?
With all the disastrous weather of 2012 (heat records broken, drought, wildfires, Derecho, Hurricane Sandy), how many fewer Americans were sympathetic to the Global Warming denial of the Republican Party machine? And, as climate disruption ever-more seriously impacts our lives, how many will be in the future?
The Republican base’s addiction to tall tales doesn’t just make it a laughingstock, it will increasingly reduce the odds of Republicans winning elections — if we work to make it clear to voting Americans how Republicans live in a fantasy-land that, if allowed to influence actual policy, fosters creating nightmares in the real world.
And, until it changes, the Republican Party’s strategy of reliance on the pale, male, stale and leverage of the tall tale will increasingly fail in the American electoral system.
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And, as the President was speaking in front of the cameras, youth climate activists were speaking in front of the White House:
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