Get Energy Smart! NOW!

As we search paths to communicate with people about what some term Bright Green environmentalism: that we can via a variety of paths (policies, standards, building codes, better land management/land-usage planning, technology development, deployment of existing energy efficiency/renewable energy options, etc) tackle our economic, energy, and environment (E3) challenges to navigate the Perfect Storm of climate change and peak oil to come out at the other end with a prosperous and climate-friendly society. I am, in many ways, a devotee and advocate of ‘bright green’ opportunities and imperatives.

The ‘Green Crib‘ from the Alliance for Climate Education is a semi-comedic effort to communicate with people that our own, individual choices, amid a holiday season can be done in ways that actually will save us money while lowering our damaging footprint on the planetary system. Thus, the video below. It highlights one of my simplest ‘beefs’ related to gift-giving: the utter wastefulness of the gift-wrapping industry which leads to tangible financial costs and sends (additional) material directly to the dump. People ‘know’ I’m environmentally conscious and will give me a ‘green’ gift — wrapped up in plasticized wrapping paper that can’t be sent to a landfill. Thus, in my household, our gifts are given in bags or wrapped in amusing paper that can then be recycled (excess kids’ drawings, colorful pages from the newspaper / magazines / catalogues, etc …). (For a great elementary school level project highlighting wrapping paper waste, see Idaho Department of Environmental Quality “Doing the Three R Wrap”.)

Now, regretfully, this comedic interlude didn’t touch many of the other ‘holiday’ choices that can enable celebrating a holiday with great cheer and enthusiasm while putting a smaller footprint on the planet. For example, want holiday lighting? There is a big difference in energy demand between incandescent and LED bulbs … and the LED bulbs are safer and will pay for themselves due to longevity and lower energy costs.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu just finished a speech at the National Press Club entitled: Is the Energy Race our new “Sputnik” moment?

Chu outlined ways in which the United States either has already ceded or is ceding leadership when it comes to clean energy — in technology, manufacturing, and deployment.

Secretary Chu seeks to lay out a call to arms, as it may be, for Americans (and, more importantly, the political elite) to recognize that we either decide to invest for the long term in clean energy innovation or we risk abandoning future prosperity to others.

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PLASTIC
Fossil product all your crap’s made of
There’s one thing we can do
Ban bags made of plastic

Thanks to BenZolno … Full Lyrics after the fold along with thoughts re plastic in our lives …

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Anthony Watts (Watt’s Up With That) and others have long argued that there are quite serious problems with temperature records, problems that are so serious that they call into question what science is / scientists are telling us is happening in our planetary climate system due to human influence (through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but also land use practices and other actions). They have, among other things, argued that climate scientists are exaggerating the situation.

Let me be the first to write this: according to recent reporting, Watts and his compatriots look to have been absolutely right.

There has been, over the last decade or so, a systemic bias in a critical global temperature system that has created a serious error in reporting that has not been understood by scientists until quite recently.

A shift from ship-based to buoy-based sea surface temperature measurements evidently occurred without any reconciling the data between these two systems. This matters because ship-based and buoy-based temperature readings of water that is, in the natural state, the same temperature will not produce the same result.

Watts, et al, have been absolutely right. There has been a systematic bias in reporting that has been skewing our understanding of ongoing events.

You see, the buoy-based temperature recordings skew cooler than ship-based temperature recording. (Actually, the buoy data is more accurate with the water (slightly) warming when brought aboard ship.) While the pace of increased warming has slowed over the past decade, this data collection error roughly doubled how much warming might have been slower for the past decade.

As the New Scientist reported, Ships and buoys made global warming look slower

Since the 1970s average global temperatures have risen by 0.16 °C per decade, but over the past decade they seemed to rise by only 0.09 °C, an apparent slowdown of 0.07 °C. John Kennedy and colleagues at the UK Met Office have now found that the real slowdown was smaller.

Over the past decade, sea-surface temperature has mostly been measured by thermometers on buoys, whereas previously it was measured aboard ships. Ship measurements tend to be too high because the water warms up as it is taken on board.

So although the newer buoy measurements are more accurate, the switch in method has erroneously shown sea-surface temperatures appearing to level off.

“Compared with ships, buoys show cooler temperatures,” says Vicky Pope at the Met Office. “You have to be careful of false signals.”

The correction of the data make it likely that 2010 will top 2005 and 1998, which are currently the warmest and second warmest years on record in modern times. (And, well, do remember that all 10 of the hottest years have occurred from 1998 to the present, the past decade is the hottest decade on record, etc … sure, ‘warming’ might have slowed (in a pausing fashion) the pace of increase but we certainly aren’t seeing any ‘cooling’ despite what anti-science syndrome sufferers think and proclaim.)
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For a long time, I described myself as a pessimistic optimist (or an optimistic pessimist — just couldn’t remember which …). This changed recently as I learned a critical definitional issue.

An optimist is assuming things will work out and it doesn’t necessarily rely on their efforts or necessarily require any special action to end up with the desired result.

Someone who is hopeful, on the other hand, understands — often very clearly — that there are challenges and risks to achieving a desired result with a conception that their actions can contribute to avoiding the dangers and coming out with a better result.

Thus, I have been transformed from optimist to hopeful — even as my concerns over our ability to navigate the treacherous Perfect Storm of economic and climate chaos, anti-science mania, and Peak Oil give rise to my pessimistic side.

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Very simply, across the economy, energy efficiency is almost certainly the top investment option — as individuals, businesses, communities, government … The rate of return possibilities are tremendous and unlike gambles to grow business or play the stock market, this is ‘guaranteed’ cash in the bank.

And, it is ‘cash in the bank’ in terms of cost savings. It is ‘cash in the bank’ in terms of job creation. It is ‘cash in the bank’ due to improved resiliency in the face of (manmade or natural) disaster. It is ‘cash in the bank’ due to reduced pollution impacts and reduced GHG emissions. It is ‘cash in the bank’ many times over in many different ways.

Sadly, too many people buy into the concept that we need some great invention to do anything meaningful on climate change.

Sadly, too many people falsely believe that there is some great unaffordable cost to Energy Smart practices.

We need to push those false notions aside to enable transformational opportunities toward a prosperous, climate-friendly future.

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WarrenS has taken on an admirable resolution: to send a letter to the editor (LTE) (or, well, a major politician) every single day, on the critical issues of climate change and energy. This discusses his approach and here is an amusing ‘template’ to for rapid letter writing.

Now, I have always written letters and even had many published — just not one every day. WarrenS inspires me to do better.

Many newspapers state that they will reject letters that have been published elsewhere, thus I have not been blogging letters … perhaps that should change. Thus, below is what might be the first in an “unpublished letters” series publishing those LTEs that don’t get picked up by the editors.

17 November 2010

To the Editor,

In “Cost-effective ways to address climate change” (opinion, 17 November), Bjorn Lomborg continues his traditional path of half-truths supporting misleading conclusions and dangerous recommendations.

While Lomborg misrepresents a myriad of items in this column, let’s highlight just one: painting cities white to reduce heat-island impact. Lomborg is correct: reflective roofing is a highly cost effective path to reducing urban heat. What is misleading is that Lomborg suggests that this has simply a local impact, that this is divorced from a larger program of climate change mitigation.

by painting roofs white, covering asphalt roadways with concrete-colored surfaces and planting shade trees, local temperatures could be reduced by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

In fact, white roofing is a preeminent example of a win-win-win strategy climate mitigation strategy. A ‘cool’ roof saves significant money through reduced air conditioning costs and reduced roof maintenance (which is Walmart white roofs every store). It also improves the local environment, saving money for others by lowering the ambient temperature. And, it helps ameliorate climate change due to the lowered energy use and by reflective solar radiation back into space.

And,  white roofing’s benefits are understood — and are being acted on. The Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, ordered earlier this year that all roofing projects be cool roofs. Flying into any major city and there are large numbers of commercial buildings with white roofs. What we need to see is integration of cool roofing into building codes and adapted as general practice to enable economy-wide capturing of these benefits.

Lomborg suggests that white roofing is an alternative to climate mitigation efforts when it is something central to a cost-effective and economy boosting climate mitigation strategy.

Lomborg’s systemic manipulation of facts is so legend that Yale University Press recently published The Lomborg Deception (by Howard Friel) that documents, in gory detail, deception after faulty citation after distortion. The Washington Post’s editors would do their readers a service in considering Friel’s work before again giving Lomborg space to confuse the public about such critical matters.

Sincerely,

A Siegel

Note:  Brad Johnson, at Wonkroom, used Lomborg’s column as a tool to test the new Climate Rapid Response Team.  Let’s just note that Bjorn “Smiling Dane” Lomborg’s assertions didn’t stand up well in the face of expert scrutiny.  While the whole post is strongly recommended, here is a small sample.

In separate e-mail interviews (the scientists also offered to conduct phone interviews), the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology’s Ken Caldeira, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Josh Willis, and Rutgers University’s Alan Robock independently confirmed that Bjorn Lomborg had misrepresented the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report. ….

Robock’s response reaffirmed Willis and Caldeira. Furthermore, when asked the research the IPCC summarized still “the best research we have” on the likely range of sea level rise, Robock said, “Absolutely not”:

Absolutely not. It was the best we had five years ago, but there has been a lot of work since then, including better observations of the rate of melting from Greenland and Antarctica and better models. …

He is also wrong in asserting that we know how to adapt to climate change. If that were true, nobody would be worried about it. How do we adapt to massive extinctions of natural species? How do we adapt to all the major coastal cities of the world having to deal with flooding from stronger storms and rising sea level? Dikes will not do it.

And there are no geoengineering techniques that have ever even been tested, let alone shown to produce less risks than the risks of global warming.

Sources / References provided are now incorporated as links above. Please note that the Lomborg’s history of misrepresentations include twisting material taken from The Washington Post even as Lomborg has often been given space to publish in the Post. For an example, see the discussion here: Energy Bookshelf: The Lomborg Deception leads to a question: Does the Washington Post have any honor left?

Previous posts on Lomborg:

• Energy Bookshelf: The Lomborg Deception … leads to a question: “Does the Washington Post have any honor left?” reviewing Howard Friel’s painstaking dissection of Lomborg’s academic dishonesty.
• The Lomborg chill effect hits again dissects Lomborg misrepresentations in an OPED.
• Not misrepresenting, but lying about evidence … providing an example where a Lomborg footnote simply did not provide a basis for his sweeping claim.
• Reviews are coming in … to cool interest in COOL It … highlighting a Tim Flannery Washington Post review of (the book) Cool It.

Trends that go against ‘common wisdom’ are often hard for people to absorb and realize. A journalist’s job, however, should be to question (even challenge) common wisdom rather than simply parroting talking points that are, in fact, misleading if not outright false. When it comes to energy and environmental reporting, sadly, such questioning often seems to fall by the wayside.

Today’s New York Times provides a case in point. Amid a discussion of how nations that are seeking to develop stronger climate change policies are, at the same time, increasing coal exports to China, Elisabeth Rosenthal writes:

the love-hate relationship many wealthier countries have with coal: while environmental laws have made it progressively harder to build new coal-fired power plants, they do not restrict coal mining to the same extent.

That is partly because emissions accounting standards focus on where a fuel is burned, not where it is dug up; because the coal trade is a lucrative business; and because the labor-intensive mining industry creates jobs.

Such benefits are particularly hard to forgo in the midst of a recession.

Amid a recession and searing jobs reports, JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! should be priority 1, 2, and 3 for any politicians seriously interested in securing their position while helping their population. Thus, the “jobs” argument is obviously quite strong in getting any sort of political support for a (potentially) controversial program.

Sadly, however, when it comes to coal mining, it might just be a sleight-of-hand, Potemkin Village argument.

the labor-intensive mining industry creates jobs

What has been happening, globally but certainly in the United States, in coal mining is something quite similar to industrial manufacturing: technology is improving efficiency and reducing the labor hour per output. In the United States, for example, coal output has grown by over four times over the past 100 years (269 million short tons in 1900 to 1162 in 2006) while mine employment has fallen by over 80 percent (from 448,581 miners in 1900 to 82,595 in 2006). One of the ways to describe mountain top removal: the companies’ objective is not to get the miner out of the mine, but the miner out of mining. And, as per the employment numbers, its working.

There are other, more productive, energy investments paths that truly are job creators.

It looks likely that US solar employment will exceed, in 2010, US coal mining employment. Several years ago, in fact, wind power jobs exceeded coal mining jobs in the United States.  As noted there,

Wind-power supplies about two percent of America’s electricity. Coal about 50 percent. Wind already provides more jobs than mining. Hmmm … What happens when wind is ten percent of electricity supply? 20 percent?

In addition to any discussions about global warming or mountain-top removal or fly ash, the next time you have a discussion with anyone about renewable power versus fossil fuel remember this: When it comes to JOBS!!! JOBS!!! JOBS!!!, clean energy beats dirty energy, hands down.

Sadly, we’re not talking some third-rate B- movie to be released only on DVDs nor is this some Zombie Walk flash mob action. Sadly, its reality.  Come January, Climate Zombies will dominate the majority party in the House of Representatives and have more seats in the most exclusive club on the planet (e.g., the U.S. Senate). Brad Johnson, in The Climate Zombie Caucus Of The 112th Congress, highlights that

In January, 2011, the 112th Congress will open session, with a huge contingent of Republicans who have explicitly rejected the threat of manmade global warming pollution. These climate zombies express the classic variants of global warming denial: that it is not warming, that cold weather refutes concerns about global warming, that man’s influence is unclear, that climate scientists are engaged in a hoax, scam, or corrupt conspiracy, and that limiting greenhouse pollution would have no impact on global temperatures. Of special note are the conspiracy theorists who argue that hacked emails from climate scientists prove corruption, calling for kangaroo trials against practicing researchers.

Well over half (55 percent) of the incoming Republican caucus are climate zombies. Thirty-five of the 46 (76 percent) Republicans in the U.S. Senate next year publicly question the science of global warming. Of the 240 Republicans elected to the House of Representatives, 125 (52 percent) publicly question the science.

Of the freshmen Republicans, 36 of 85 in the House and 11 of 13 in the Senate have publicly questioned the science. There are no freshmen Republicans, in the House or Senate, who publicly accept the scientific consensus that greenhouse pollution is an immediate threat.

Not a single freshman Republican member of Congress openly acknowledges a Scientific Theory?

There are even Republicans dismayed by this.

In today’s Washington Post, Republican Sherwood Boehlart (who served in Congress from 1983 through 2007) decries his party’s abandonment of science:

Watching the raft of newly elected GOP lawmakers converge on Washington, I couldn’t help thinking about an issue I hope our party will better address. I call on my fellow Republicans to open their minds to rethinking what has largely become our party’s line: denying that climate change and global warming are occurring and that they are largely due to human activities. …

GOP Senate challengers declared that the science of climate change is either inconclusive or flat-out wrong. Many newly elected Republican House members take that position. It is a stance that defies the findings of our country’s National Academy of Sciences, national scientific academies from around the world and 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists.

Why do so many Republican senators and representatives think they are right and the world’s top scientific academies and scientists are wrong? I would like to be able to chalk it up to lack of information or misinformation.

While Boehlart glazes over how anti-science (promoting “sound science” isn’t a ‘pro-science’ stance) the Republican Party has been for too long, he rightly points out that the real debate should not be over the science but over what to do about the science. He asserts that, ‘over the long term’, the Republican Party will suffer due to its anti-science ideology. While Boehlart might (and should) be right, the question is whether any remaining chance to avoid catastrophic climate chaos can wait for that reaction to the Republican anti-science syndrome ideology.

Note: John Broder of The New York Times came up with a new word today, “Leftier,” in its discussion of the Wonkroom report, The Night of the Living Congress People. Broder points to the Zombie invasion’s implications for protecting Americans’ health and prosperity.

President Obama entered office promising to take swift and aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including an economy-wide cap and trade system to reduce emissions and create a market in pollution permits. That effort foundered in the Senate, and Mr. Obama has acknowledged that the next Congress is unlikely to take it up again.

It is more likely that the new Congress will take steps to derail the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned program to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, starting with the biggest sources, including power plants, cement factories and oil refineries.

Instead of providing a path to reduce the over $100 billion per year that burning fossil fuels costs the US economy due to health impacts, expect Republicans to push measures that will create more asthma in our children, foster higher cancer rates, decrease future IQs, and otherwise weaken American security and prosperity.

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This evening, NBC will broadcast Harmony. Harmony could be described, perhaps, as the Prince Charles entry into the documentary film arena, with Prince Charles narrating a discussion both of the global challenges climate change creates and providing thoughtful / meaningful paths to address these challenges to help avert catastrophic climate chaos.

For decades, The Prince of Wales has worked with environmental activists, business leaders, artists, architects and government leaders seeking paths (and tangible action) to transform the world, address the global environmental crisis and find ways toward a more sustainable, spiritual and harmonious relationship with the planet. (For some idea of the net of activities, see The Prince’s Charities.)

As per the Harmony’s promotion,

Harmony looks at the root causes of the global problems we face and offers solutions. HARMONY paints a picture of an awareness that is arising in people around the globe across boundaries of geography, race religion and socio-economic status. At a moment when we hear daily about challenges on an unprecedented planetary scale, Harmony proposes a way forward and provides the audience with a new perspective on the need to change our relationship with the planet. Harmony is a global call to action. We invite viewers to get involved and join those who are working to restore balance in their lives and on the planet.

And, this comment from the filmmakers highlights that this isn’t just something to watch …

“The people we meet in Harmony are visionary thinkers and doers who are working to solve our greatest environmental and social problems in ways that make sense, and can impact the day-to-day lives of all of us,” said filmmakers Julie Bergman Sender and Stuart Sender. “Our collaboration with TckTckTck on the mosaic:EARTH call-to-action is a great example of how we can translate the message of the movie into real actions and results.”

“Translate the message … into real actions and results.”

Something that we can — and should — all do.