Van Gogh Weather Patterns in Pacific: a climate change connection?

by A. Siegel, "Get Energy Smart! NOW!", July 6, 2015

Science combined with nature can turn terrifying realities, at times, into gorgeous art. At this moment, there are three active typhoons in the Pacific.  Above is an image capturing them.

This reminds me strongly of last August when the Pacific Ocean (centered around the Hawaiian Archipelago) had a major meteorological phenomena: a massive set of hurricanes.

Regard this image from that event.

From West to East, these are hurricanes Halong, Genevieve, Iselle, and Julio.

Documentation of severe weather often provides quite striking and even beautiful images.

On first glance, last year and today, my impression was “Van Gogh, not “storm disaster.”

And, even when registering this as a rather impressive (and beautiful image from a) weather pattern, my first thought was not ‘climate change’; yet, this set of four hurricanes is not just occurring within the context of global climate change but could well be a strong indicator of actual change.

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2015/07/06/van-gogh-weather-patterns-in-pacific-a-climate-change-connection/

HEADS UP! TOMORROW NIGHT, MONDAY ALL-NIGHTER: Democratic Senators to pull #Up4Climate all-nighter

by A. Siegel, "Get Energy Smart! NOW!," March 9th, 2014

Monday night, the Democratic Party Senate leadership will take to the floor with speeches on climate change.

Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has pledged in recent weeks to continue allowing time for anyone who wants to discuss the issue during the weekly Democratic caucus lunch or on the Senate floor. The format planned for Monday is an extension of floor speeches given regularly by Whitehouse that usually begin with him saying that “it’s time to wake up” to climate change.

The majority of the majority will follow, through the night, with speech after speech focusing on climate change issues.

Participating Senators:

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
Senator Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md.
Senator Bernard Sanders, I-Vt.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
Senator Mark Udall, D-Colo.
Senator Tom Udall, D-N.M.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.
Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
Senator Al Franken, D-Minn.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
Senator Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.
Senator Angus King, I-Maine
Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Senator Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.
Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J.

Here is one of Senator Whitehouse’s 60+ floor speeches on climate … this one about the need for Congress to wake up to reality (text here), that “it is time for my colleagues to wake up.”

After the fold are extracts from Senator Whitehouse’s 11 December 2013 speech (the video) and Senator Warren’s request for supporters’ comments re climate impacts 25 years from now …

Senator Whitehouse’s speech … excerpts … really worth reading …

This is the 52nd consecutive week we’re in session that I have come to the Floor to ask us, please, for Lord’s sake, to wake up to the damage carbon pollution is already doing to our atmosphere, oceans, and climate; and to look ahead, to use our God-given sense, and to plan for what is so obviously coming.

In those weeks, I’ve talked about all different aspects of carbon pollution: its effect on sports and our economy, its effect on oceans and coasts, its effect on agriculture and wildfires, its effect on storms and insurance costs.

I’ve talked about the measurements — measurements — we can already make of the harm already happening: sea level rise, which you measure with a yardstick, basically; ocean temperature, which you measure with a thermometer; and ocean acidification — the fastest in fifty million years, according to research published in Nature Geoscience — which you can measure with litmus tests.

I have, I hope, to anyone listening with their logic turned on, thoroughly rebutted the deniers’ phony arguments against solving carbon pollution, whether those arguments purported to be based in science, or religion, or economics, or our competitiveness.

I have listed the thoughtful and responsible groups — from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, from WalMart to NASA, from Ford and GM to Coke and Pepsi, from America’s Garden Clubs to just last month our major sports leagues — who understand the truth about climate change and are saying so.

I’ve done my best to expose the calculated campaign of lies that we’re up against, and the vast scandalous apparatus of phony organizations and engineered messages that are designed to propagate those lies. I’ve traced the connections back to — of course — the big carbon polluters and their billionaire owners. And I’ve been obliged to point out that the money of those big polluters and billionaires floods this Chamber, that their lobbyists prowl the outer halls, and that to a sad and disappointing degree this Congress is bought and paid for by that polluter influence.

One factor we have yet to consider is whether, as an institution, Congress has just become completely irresponsible. Maybe this Congress just can’t operate as an institution at an intelligent level. Some Congresses are going to be smarter and more responsible than others — that’s just the natural order of variation. Some Congress is going to be the sorriest Congress ever. Maybe we’re it.

Some organizations, like NASA, for instance, are very smart. That’s why NASA is driving a rover around on the surface of Mars right now. That is a seriously smart organization.

Some organizations take ordinary people and call them to be their very best, to play at a level above their natural talents, to heed a higher calling than their selfish inclinations. At their best, our military and our churches tend to achieve that.

Some organizations, however, take even the most talented people, and drag them down to the lowest common denominator, and stifle the best and bring out the worst in even those very talented people.

Well, I ask people watching: which type of organization do you think Congress is right now? Which type do you think we are?

As an organization, it is hard to say anything kinder of Congress than that it is now a really irresponsible organization. We couldn’t even keep the United States government running. Standard and Poor’s estimated that our Tea Party shutdown foolishness cost Americans tens of billions of dollars, for no gain — none. We can’t sort out the basics of building and maintaining our American infrastructure: our own American Society of Civil Engineers gives our country a D+ for infrastructure.

And that’s not complicated stuff, yet we flub it; like a football team that fumbles the ball at the snap.

….

And that brings us to climate change. Yeah, it’s complicated, when you’re trying to predict and model something as complex as what our climate is going to do in the years ahead. But, it is also simple, when you look at the stuff that everyone agrees on, on the stuff that you can measure, the stuff that you’d have to be a nut or a crank or an eccentric to dispute.

Nobody responsible — nobody responsible disputes the principle that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere raises the temperature of the Earth, and that it does so through the so-called “greenhouse effect.” A scientist named John Tyndall figured that out at the time of the American Civil War. I brought his musty old paper in here several speeches ago. Its old leather binding was flaking and peeling. When that report was first published, Abraham Lincoln had just been elected President. In all the years since then, this principle of science has always been confirmed and validated. It is not some questionable theory. The greenhouse effect is real. It would not just be wrong, it would be irresponsible to deny that.

Nobody responsible disputes that for over a century our modern economy has run on fossil fuels, and that burning those fossil fuels has released gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Global Carbon Project estimates that mankind has pumped about 2000 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since 1870. That’s a pretty solid estimate, and I’ve never even heard anyone dispute it.

So we know those two things: adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere traps more heat; and we have released an estimated 2000 gigatons — 2000 billion tons — of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Let’s go on from there. It is a known principle of science that a significant portion of that multi-gigaton carbon load is absorbed by the oceans, and that the chemical reaction when that absorption happens into the oceans makes the oceans more acidic. No responsible person disputes either proposition. It’s not some theory, it’s something that you can actually do and measure in a lab. Again, it wouldn’t just be wrong, it would be really irresponsible to deny that.

We also know that the oceans do more than absorb carbon — they absorb heat. Indeed they have absorbed most of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases– over 90% of the heat between 1971 and 2010 according to the recent IPCC report. And what happens when the oceans absorb heat? They expand. Thermal expansion is a basic physical property of liquids. It can also be shown in a very simple lab. It is not a theory. Again, it would be not just wrong but irresponsible to deny that, too.

It would not just be wrong, it would be irresponsible to deny what those simple measurements and clear principles tell us.

But we do. We do. We deny it. Congress won’t wake up and address this problem: like those monkeys: see no carbon, hear no carbon, speak no carbon.

Because we are so irresponsible, because we deny this reality, we are failing to take precautions, and as a result many people will suffer.

For those of us who love this country and are proud of it, and are proud of our government, and want this country and its government to be a beacon of hope and promise and rectitude, it hurts a little extra for the United States Congress to be such a failure. It hurts a little extra that we, in our generation, have driven Congress, the hub of our noble American experiment in democracy, the beating heart of this great republic, down to that low level.

It is a harsh judgment that this body is an irresponsible failure. But on climate, this Congress got it the old-fashioned way — it earned it.

I will close with a final observation. Compare the irresponsibility of this “see no carbon, hear no carbon, speak no carbon” Congress with the recent exhortation from Pope Francis. Here is what the Pope said – I’ll quote him at some length:

“There are other weak and defenceless beings who are frequently at the mercy of economic interests or indiscriminate exploitation. I am speaking of creation as a whole. We human beings are not only the beneficiaries but also the stewards of other creatures. Thanks to our bodies, God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement. Let us not leave in our wake a swath of destruction and death which will affect our own lives and those of future generations. Here I would make my own,” the Pope continued, “the touching and prophetic lament voiced some years ago by the bishops of the Philippines.” And he quotes them: ‘An incredible variety of insects lived in the forest and were busy with all kinds of tasks… Birds flew through the air, their bright plumes and varying calls adding color and song to the green of the forests… God intended this land for us, his special creatures, but not so that we might destroy it and turn it into a wasteland… After a single night’s rain, look at the chocolate brown rivers in your locality and remember that they are carrying the life blood of the land into the sea… How can fish swim in sewers like the . . . rivers which we have polluted? Who has turned the wonderworld of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft of color and life?’ Small, yet strong in the love of God, like Saint Francis of Assisi, all of us, as Christians, are called to watch over and protect the fragile world in which we live, and all its peoples.”

What is our answer to the Pope, to this great Christian leader? In Congress, it’s the monkey answer: hear no carbon, see no carbon, speak no carbon.

We still have time to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. We can actually do it in painless ways. We can even do it in advantageous ways, in ways that will boost our economy. But we have got to do it. We have got to wake up. We simply have got to wake up.

Here is the message that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent her supporters:

There are a lot of people in Washington — a lot of lobbyists and a lot of politicians — who are determined to block any new laws that might reduce pollution.

Year after year, evidence grows about the damage we suffer from carbon pollution, and yet, the science deniers stay locked in place. It’s so bad that we can’t even have a serious conversation about the growing evidence that the earth is in real trouble.

So I have a question for you.

If we don’t do anything at all to stop climate change, what do you think the world will look like 25 years from now?

Monday night, several other senators and I are pulling an all-nighter on the floor of the Senate to talk about the importance of pollution and climate change. We are going to do our best to bring attention to a topic that a lot of people in Washington don’t want to talk about.

I’ve been assigned a block of time to talk, and I want to spend a chunk of it talking about as many stories as I can from people like you.

So take the question wherever you want: What do you think the planet is going to look like 25 years from now if we don’t tackle climate change head-on? What small thing will be different? What big thing will change everything?

Make it personal or make it public. Do some research or talk about what worries you. But however you want to do it, write it up — maybe a paragraph or two? — and send it to me. I want to post some of your answers online and read some of your answers on the floor of the Senate because I want other people to think about this question: If we don’t act, what could happen?

I think about what we could lose. I think about our natural treasures here in Massachusetts, from the Cape to the Berkshires, from hidden away gems to defining features of our great state. I think about what a more acidic ocean will mean for our fishermen, and whether we can sustain great oceanfront cities if sea levels continue to rise. I think about increasing rates of asthma and toxins that work their way into our food chain. I think about the threats to our economy and to our safety.

I also think about my three little grandchildren, and what kind of world we will leave to them. Are they going to live in a world where it’s not safe to breathe the air or drink the water because powerful corporations and their lobbyists blocked real change?

Twenty-five years is not such a long time. In 25 years, what will you be doing? What about your family and friends? And what about our earth?

I’m hopeful that if we think more about the future — if we really think hard about the path we’re on and the place it leads — then the urgency to change will be stronger and change will be within reach.

So back to my original question: If we don’t make serious changes, what happens to our world? Take a minute to answer that question now.

Remember, I’m going to read as many of these stories as I can on the floor of the United States Senate, so please make them good! If you find some good research, add a link. If you want to add a picture, I’ll include as many as I can. And if you want some friends or family to think about this question too, please forward the email and ask them to write. More voices will make us stronger.

Thank you for being a part of this,

Elizabeth

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2014/03/09/democratic-senators-to-pull-up4climate-all-nighter/ 

Will the SEC investigate State Department’s Climate Bomb?

by A. Siegel, "Get Energy Smart NOW!", January 31, 2014

A typical Washington ploy — release late on Friday afternoon material that you hope disappears into the dustbin of weekend inattention to serious matters. The State Department’s release, earlier today, of a flawed look at the Keystone XL pipeline’s climate impact derived from a highly questionable (highly questioned with Inspector General investigations ongoing) process is a classic example. The world, however, is changed.  The movement of information has changed. And, this is not something watched solely by people locked to their M-F, 9-5 jobs.

To start with, based on a quick initial read, here are a few examples of how this looks to be a flawed report?

• It essentially assumes away the reality that not building the Keystone XL pipeline would lead to reduced production of Tar Sands dilbit.
  • This is highly questionable.
    • The reason for the pipeline: to get the oil to Gulf Coast refineries so that it can be sold into Chinese and European markets at world prices, rather than depressed Midwest US prices. Taking the oil out of the US market and sending to China would create roughly $20 per barrel greater profit for the producers. (This is, of course, the absolute core reason for building the pipeline — to maximize profits for those devastating Alberta digging up tar sands.) Hmmm … according to the State Department, against the logic of basically every single economic textbook ever written, more or less profit is irrelevant for (dis)incentivizing more or less aggressive efforts to expand production.  Harvard MBAs watch out — everything you learned is, evidently, wrong.
    • Even with rapid growth in rail transport capacity, the issue is not just price but capacity for moving dilbit out of Alberta.  Keystone XL would be like opening a valve to release pressure, giving confidence to those considering Tar Sands extraction investments that they would be able to send their product to market for
  • If you assume that the Dilbit will get produced and burnt no matter what you decide to do, of course the pipeline construction will not “significantly” impact climate change. The carbon will be pumped, according to this assumption, no matter what.
• The report is at odds, in essence, with stated US policy on climate change.
  • It, in essence, uses a “business as usual” case for examining the KXL impact rather than “business as necessary.”  This choice is a policy one and was not, as far as I can tell, ordained by law.
• For additional flaws, see, for example, 7 Facts Not in State Department KXL EIS.

These examples of flawed (if not biased, skewed, questionable, ….) analysis are not, however, perfectly relevant for this posts’ title.

In Washington, DC, information is currency. On Wall Street, information translates into massive currency.

For the past few days, key oil interests and players with, evidently, insider knowledge – such as the American Petroleum Institute’s Jack Gerard — created a buzz, telling reporters and who knows who else, that the State Department review of Keystone XL would come outFriday and that it would be favorable to the project.  Hmmmm … their creation of buzz seems to have, clearly, been based on some real information.

Who in the Department of State (or elsewhere) provided this information to Gerard?

Let’s be clear — the Keystone XL pipeline is a multi-billion dollar project with tens of billions of dollars of impacts for the Tar Sands industry and other business interests.  Many — probably most — of these are publicly traded firms whose business prospects and, more specifically, stock prices can be impacted (if not driven) by major government reports and decisions.  Those with  insider knowledge of Government decisions — able to place trades minutes, hours, or days before anyone else with that information in hand — have an unfair (hmmm, might one say illegal) advantage on Wall Street.

Consider, for a moment, some other scenarios:

• Someone gained information from a source that a government report was going to recommend  FDA approval of a drug with $10s of billions of potential revenue.  Would they be in an advantageous — illegally advantageous — position for trading that stock?
• Company executives began telling reporters, days beforehand and accurately it turns out, that the Pentagon was going to announce that their company won a major project that would double their revenue.  Would it make sense for the SEC to take a look at seeing whether there was any unusual trading in the stock in the week(s) before the announcement and to look into how the company executives knew (and were stupid enough to tell people what they knew) that they had won the project prior to the announcement?

Again, in Washington, DC, information is currency.  On Wall Street, information is massive currency.

Doesn’t it seem reasonable to wonder how petroleum interests had an inside track on this currency this week?

NOTE: There are a wide range of reasons why Keystone XL is not in US interest.

Oil Change Interestional had a strong reaction:

“The State Department’s review, written by Big Oil’s cronies, presents a fatalistic view of a future devastated by extreme and catastrophic climate change. But we, and millions of Americans, know there is a different way.

This report assumes business as usual, which is not surprising for an industry-written report.  Despite that, the report concedes that the emissions impact could be “1.3 to 27.4 MMTCO2e annually,”[1] equivalent to as many as 5.7 million new cars.

5.7 million new cars is clearly a significant increase in carbon emissions.

There’s a new scenario we’re seeing grow stronger every day, one of concerned citizens rising up and saying no to Big Oil wrecking our communities and our climate.  As recently as two years ago no one in Washington thought this pipeline could be stopped.  Importantly, this report also concedes that other pipelines, such as the Northern Gateway, are looking less likely because of strong opposition.

The President says he understands climate and is committed to acting in the interests of posterity and not big donors.  That means rejecting Keystone XL, plain and simple.  The President and Secretary of State Kerry have all the information they need to reject this pipeline.

As a new phase of public comments begins, we know the President will be hearing loud and clear that this report is an artifact of a corrupt process, and the pipeline is a disaster for our climate, our communities, and our future.”

[1] Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project Executive Summary, January 2014, page 15: http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/221135.pdf

For  comments made on the basis of the fossil-fuel industry driven buzz about the report’s eminent release.

“Why in the world does Big Oil seem to know the findings of the State Departments report before Congress and the American people do? Because this process has been corrupted by the money and power of Big Oil since the beginning,” said John Sellers.

 http://getenergysmartnow.com/2014/01/31/will-the-sec-investigate-state-departments-climate-bomb/ 

Bjorn Lomborg's deceptions and immorality

Energy Bookshelf: The Lomborg Deception … leads to a question: “Does the Washington Post have any honor left?”

April 21st, 2010 · 5 Comments

by A. Siegel, "Get Energy Smart! NOW!," April 21, 2010

At a recent conference, a scientist made a comment about how we need to understand trade-offs in investments, advocating action on climate change but noting that we need to understand opportunity costs. In doing this, he referenced Bjorn Lomborg  (with a somewhat condescending tone). In my bag, as he spoke, Howard Friel’s devastating dissection of The Lomborg Deception.  Afterwards, I went to bring Friel’s work to his attention and the conversation turn to: who is more dangerous for the planet’s future, George Will or Bjorn Lomborg.  He asserted Will, due to the reach of his deceitful columns.  I countered Lomborg, because he created a facade of pseudo-environmentalism, fostering confusion among those who we would expect to care deeply about our looming environmental catastrophe.  After all, when it comes to Lomborg,

• The Guardian named him “one of the 50 people who could save the planet” in 2008
• Foreign Policy listed him 14th on its list of “the top 100 public intellectuals.”
• Esquire named him as one of the world’s 75 most influential people of the 21st century in 2008
• Foreign Policy and Prospect named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals
• Time magazine named him as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2004

Multiple TED Talks, interviews on Colbert Nation and on  NPR interviews, and, sadly, so on …

Let’s move on to another scientist who is a most brilliant scientist, able to speak from the grandest theories of astrophysics to detailed biology of algae, working near 24/7 to convince people of the climate challenges we face and working to help create a serious Silver BB in the struggle for a sustainable future. This other scientist was in Copenhagen for the climate talks. He bumped into Lomborg there, not knowing anything about him prior to that meeting. This impassioned climate warrior found Lomborg reasonable with important points to consider about the need to think about trade-offs and opportunity costs when investing to mitigate climate change.  He had no clue of Lomborg’s serial deception.

In contrast, what knowledgeable person takes George Will’s opinions on climate change seriously?

The brief overview

Bjorn Lomborg could be described as the articulate, charming, smiling Dane fancied by the global warming denial and skeptic crowd.  He claims to be a reformed environmentalist, arguing that there is little reason to be so fearful of global warming, and that economics leads to the conclusion that focusing on climate change mitigation (reducing carbon emissions) is a mistaken investment.  His two books, The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It were best sellers and, as per above, he has an easy time ‘making the media circuit’.

In essence, Lomborg argues that “environmentalists” are exaggerating the threat of climate change, ignoring the ways in which the environment is getting better, and asserting that we have better ways to spend our resources today than on efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

When pulling back the covers, Lomborg’s work almost always seems to have twists and games that fall into the ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’ category. For example,in an oped attacking UK climate mitigation efforts, Lomborg costs out the carbon reduction benefits of planned wind investments by 2030. He talks, however, solely of carbon reductions by 2030 (even while asserting that he is discussing “cumulative emissions reductions”) not, of course, mentioning that at least half the carbon reduction benefits from those investments would come post 2030.

Lomborg is seriously deceptive …

Even more deceptive than I had realized … and I was already aware that Lomborg (politely) selectively quoted and was creative in citations — having footnotes that led nowhere near the point he claimed they supported. There have been scientific reviews (and rebukes) of Lomborg, fora in multiple arenas highlighting his deceptions, articles, letters, blog posts, and otherwise making clear that Lomborg was a serial deceiver. Friel has taken this to a, sadly necessary, next level with a detailed examination of Lomborg’s footnoting.

One path of Lomborg’s deception is through massive citations. After all, Lombor’gsSkeptical Environmentalist has almost 3000 endnotes. That number, that quantity, is a rather damning point seemingly hammering the last nail in the coffin to prove Lomborg right. With so many citations, he must be right?   No?  That, of course, is the common assumption. The reader assumes that the author is (at least somewhat) honestly citing work that backs up his comments, that going to those notes will provide the reader additional information — but won’t contradict the point the author makes.  And, even more fundamentally, that the footnote will actually lead to something relevant to the sentence (or paragraph) the note is attached to.  Well, in case after case after …, this is simply not the case with Lomborg’s citations as Friel lays clear.

Page after page, citation after citation, Friel’s forensic work finds situations where cited material doesn’t seem to exist, the cited documents don’t have material relevant to Lomborg’s point, and — all too frequently — the cited material actually contradicts Lomborg’s point.

Not just deceitful …

Well, not only is Lomborg’s scholarship go beyond shoddy into outright deceitful, Lomborg’s conclusions and assertions are simply wrong.

Many … studies published after Cool It confirm that Lomborg was wrong on virtually every major claim that he made about supposed exaggerated threats of global warming. In Cool It Lomborg argued that the issue of melting glaciers “

Whether it was threats to polar bears, glacier melting, warming in Antarctica, or otherwise — scientific work shows that Lomborg isn’t just deceitful, but is simply wrong.

Friel’s damning conclusion:

the favorable coverage of Lomborg and his books are to global warming what the triple-A ratings for mortgage-backed securities were to the U.S. financial system — misguided seals of approval with catastrophic conclusions. Even worse, financial systems and economies presumably can be reinvented and restored, but the Earth, its climate, and its environment–upon which economic well-being and human civilization ultimately depend–cannot. Lomborg’s success largely reflects an ability of elite publishing houses and news organizations to construct an alternative  but counterfeit network of knowledge about an issue of the highest public importance.

Book doesn’t end Friel’s travails …

Not surprisingly, Friel’s work led Lomborg to issue a truthiness-laden (failed) effort to rebut Friel. In his devastating 20-page response, Friel notes several of his own errors but finishes, appropriately, that one-paragraph discussion as follows:

What we’re talking about here are mistakes; however, my book about Lomborg’s scholarship is not about mistakes but rather a persistent pattern of misrepresenting his footnoted sources.

Returning to the opening …

This review opens with mention of George Will and Bjorn Lomborg with a question in the title “Does The Washington Post have any honor left?” In addition to its continued publication of George Will’s dangerously deceitful prose, The Posthas published praising reviews of Lomborg’s books and given him prominent placement in Post editorial pages (including above-the-fold, front-page Sunday Outlook opinion section pieces).  As with Will, The Post has published follow-up letters to Lomborg that provided at least a hint of the absurdities of what they are publishing yet, repeatedly, they choose to publish them again.

The Post’s editorial board, however, should take on the task of actually reading Friel’s work — perhaps even just looking at the cases where Lomborg’s deceitful practices extend to misrepresenting Washington Post reporting. Pages 38-39, in a discussion of polar bears, is an excellent example. In Cool It, Lomborg cites Juliet Eilperin’s 2004 narticle Study Says Polar Bears Could Face Extinction for the following comment

We are being told that the plight of the polar bears shows “the need for stricter curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions linked to global warming.”

Lomborg then continues with a paragraph that is utterly misleading (and, in several cases, simply false) arguing that polar bears aren’t under threat. Yet, how did Eilperin’s article begin?

Global warming could cause polar bears to go extinct by the end of the century by eroding the sea ice that sustains them, according to the most comprehensive international assessment ever done of Arctic climate change.

The thinning of sea ice — which is projected to shrink by at least half by the end of the century and could disappear altogether, according to some computer models — could determine the fate of many other key Arctic species, said the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, the product of four years of work by more than 300 scientists.

This detailed and high-quality (not unusual for Eilperin) article has much substance about why polar bears are threatened, such as:

The sea ice in Hudson Bay, Canada, now breaks up 2 1/2 weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, said Canadian Wildlife Service research scientist Ian Stirling, and as a result female polar bears there weigh 55 pounds less than they did then. Assuming the current rate of ice shrinkage and accompanying weight loss in the Hudson Bay region, bears there could become so thin by 2012 they may no longer be able to reproduce

This, however, is an article that Lomborg cites (misrepresents) as part of his truthiness-laden falsehoods about the science of Global Warming.

The Washington Post has given over valuable oped space to Lomborg multiple times in the past decade. In each and every case, Lomborg’s glib work has twisted truths and fostered misunderstanding. If The Post’s editorial board has any honor left, it should end that practice. And, to remove some of the stain it brought on itself through giving prominence to the Lomborg deception, The Post should consider commissioning an oped from Howard Friel to bring light to The Washington Post’s readers about The Lomborg Deception.

The larger challenge

Too often, it is easier to be a deceiver trying to confuse people about not just climate change, but other issues, than to remain reality-based, especially in the absence of ‘fact checkers’ or a fact-checking approach that includes actually looking at where endnotes lead.  And, once the deception has caught hold, the factual rebuke has a hard time breaking through the ‘meme’ the deceiver(s) created. When it comes to climate change, we see this with the truthiness-laden ‘climate-change is natural’ (of course it is, the question is how much is humanity putting its thumb on the scale to make natural unnatural), the statistical falsehoods related to ‘hasn’t warmed since 1998′, and outright falsehoods misrepresenting cited works. All of these (and other deceptions) are throughout Lomborg’s work and, well, George Will’s as well — and in their Washington Postpublications.

Again, however, the problem of a “counterfeit network of knowledge” isn’t limited to climate change and the difficulty, for example, of breaking through the noise to educate people that every serious review of “Climate Gate” is backing up the embattled scientists and not showing some form of criminal conspiracy. For example, ACORN was essentially destroyed through a rapid dissemination and spinning of what has turned out to be false videos. Americans are aware of ClimateGate (and supposed problems with climate science) and supposed ACORN fraud (the falsehoods about giving advice to pimps), not the context and facts that make clear those issues are incredibly overblown — and, in fact, actually manipulated falsehoods to a large extent. Giving prominence to truthful discussions, that set the record straight, should be on the top of the agenda for any media outlet that seeks to hold its head high with any allegiance to journalistic ethics.

For two excellent reviews of The Lomborg Deception, see:

Sharon Begley, Debunking the claims of the climate-change skeptic, Newsweek

I don’t want to be as trusting as the reviewers who praised Lomborg’s scholarship without (it seems) bothering to check his references, so rather than taking Friel at his word just as they took Lomborg at his, I’ve done my best to do that checking. Although Friel engages in some bothersome overkill, overall his analysis is compelling.

Byron Walker, Celsias

Is it worth spending a whole book dissecting the writing of Bjørn Lomborg, the “skeptical environmentalist”? Certainly not in terms of the quality of Lomborg’s argument, which simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. But Lomborg’s writing has been permitted to exercise a widespread and harmful influence. For that reason Howard Friel’s painstaking book The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming represents time well and usefully spent. …

Friel provides a telling analogy: “…the favourable coverage of Lomborg and his books are to global warming what the triple-A ratings for mortgage-backed securities were to the US financial system – misguided seals of approval with catastrophic consequences.” More catastrophic, he notes, in the case of climate change than in the case of financial systems which can presumably be repaired. His verdict on the part played by publishers and journalists: “Lomborg’s success largely reflects an ability of elite publishing houses and news organizations to contruct an alternative but counterfeit network of knowledge about an issue of the highest public importance.”

Joe Romm, Climate Progress

Another op-ed by Bjorn Lomborg, another Gish Gallup of non-stop disinformation.  The good news is that the task of debunking the Septical Environmentalist (sic), has been made easier by the publication of whole book dedicated to that tedious task, The Lomborg Deception.

“Septical Environmentalist” is not a typo.  Sure, it may seem like a mistake to use the word “environmentalist” to describe Lomborg.  But it’s the very fact that he calls himself an environmentalist while dedicating his life to spreading disinformation and delaying serious action on the seminal environmental issue of our time that makes him septical.  What else would you call the Typhoid Mary of anti-science syndrome (ASS)?

And, for fun: Lomborg Errors Site. Or, these excellent Solve Climate discussionsand the Grist list and WRI’s nine things journalists should know and …

A few ‘admin’ like remarks

Friel has done a real service with The Lomborg Deception yet …

• First off, there are few who will find this an easy cover-to-cover read, in part because Friel is diligent. This is an extensively documented work, with many long extracts from articles and otherwise to bring clarity to how Lomborg misrepresented a specific work or misled readers with a comment.  He isn’t covering all of Lomborg’s deceptions, yet this is an over 200 page book with 43 pages of endnotes.  Writ large, it is easier for glib deceivers to create an entertaining best seller than for the fact checker to write something that will get a fraction of the attention …
• Endnotes are, fundamentally, more difficult for a reader than footnotes.  In a work that is dissecting another’s deceit via creating false trails via endnotes, footnotes would have helped underline Lomborg’s fundamental deceptions. [Note: this is not Friel's doing, almost certainly, but a general failure, imo, of the publishing world.]
• Friel’s notes have at least a few problems . For example, on page 6-7 he discusses the (sadly) favorable  Washington Post review of Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist and brands it as “in its review” without in the text or notes identifying the actual review author. (Note: this is almost certainly a publishing house issue, as end-notes about articles from newspapers do not have the authors identified.) In this case the review author is identified as follows: “Denis Dutton is a professor of philosophy who lectures on the dangers of pseudoscience at the science faculties of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He is also editor of the website Arts & Letters Daily.”  Dutton also doted on Lomborg, with multiple published reviews, and is more accurately described as a “libertarian media commentator/activist.”  While The Washington Post deserves a rebuke for turning its pages over to such an activist without identifying his agenda and bias to readers, this was a signed book review — not a Post editorial.

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2010/04/21/energy-bookshelf-the-lomborg-deception-leads-to-a-question-does-the-washington-post-have-any-honor-left/

Climate Change is the Top Threat according to the Commander of US Forces Pacific

by A. Siegel, "Get Energy Smart! NOW!" blog, March 9th, 2013

According to the Commander of U.S. Forces Pacific (PACCOM),

significant upheaval related to the warming planet “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’

Admiral Samuel Locklear had a meeting the other day with national security experts at Tufts and Harvard. After this session, he met with a reporter who asked him asked what the top security threat was in the Pacific Ocean. Rather than highlighting Chinese ballistic missiles, the new Chinese Navy aircraft carrier, North Korean nuclear weapons, or other traditional military threats, Admiral Locklear looked to a larger definition of national security.

Locklear commented that “People are surprised sometimes” that he highlights climate change — despite an ability to discuss a wide-range of threats, from cyber-war to the North Koreans. However, it is the risks — from natural disasters to long-term sea-level rise threats to Pacific nations that has his deepest attention.

“You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level. Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”

Climate Change merits national security — military — attention for very pragmatic reasons.

The ice is melting and sea is getting higher,” Locklear said, noting that 80 percent of the world’s population lives within 200 miles of the coast. “I’m into the consequence management side of it. I’m not a scientist, but the island of Tarawa in Kiribati, they’re contemplating moving their entire population to another country because [it] is not going to exist anymore.”

And, Admiral Locklear is now — almost certainly with Joint Chiefs of Staff and Office of Secretary of Defense knowledge and support — taking this up seriously with other nations.

“We have interjected into our multilateral dialogue – even with China and India – the imperative to kind of get military capabilities aligned [for] when the effects of climate change start to impact these massive populations,” he said. “If it goes bad, you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of people displaced and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly.’’

The Pacific region has seen some of the largest multi-national disaster relief operations. Operation Sea Angel in 1991, following a devastating typhoon on Bangladesh, involved numerous military forces — including the Chinese Navy. Similarly, many nations used military forces to respond across the Indian Ocean to the disastrous December 2004 Aceh Tsunami. Admiral Locklear is looking to the reality of mounting seas, more damaging severe weather, and looking to other climate impacts — and is working to set the stage for the region’s military forces to work together more effectively in responding to climate disruption driven disasters.

This interview is not an isolated comment by Admiral Locklear but an indication of increasing concern about and focus on climate change. In December 2012, he raised climate change in a speech to the Asia Society. From this speech highlighting the importance and complexity of the Pacific region. His first example of a non-region specific complicating issue:

this complexity is magnified by a wide, diverse group of challenges…challenges that can significantly stress the security environment…. 

– Climate change – where increasingly severe weather patterns and rising sea levels will threaten our peoples and even threaten the loss of entire nations…and of course the inevitable earthquakes and tsunamis will continue to challenge all of us in a very unpredictable way as our planet ages. Just as today our friends and partners in the Philippines are dealing with the challenges of the most recent super typhoon.

Admiral Locklear spoke a month ago to the U.S. Indonesia Society. In the speech, he linked climate change to the military, the need for resiliency and the ability for coping with mounting disaster relief requirements.

As Indonesia’s capabilities grow, the Indonesian military should also build on its tradition of contributing forces to U.N. peacekeeping operations…yet another area where the Indonesian and American militaries can collaborate more closely to increase the level of interoperability between our forces.

While resilience in the security environment is traditionally understood as the ability to recover from a crisis, using the term in the context of national security expands its meaning to include crisis prevention. 

With large populations vulnerable to the effects of climate change and natural disasters, both our nations have a significant interest in improving our ability to quickly respond and mitigate the ongoing risk these threats bring.

We learned how local communities prepare themselves for the inevitable disruptions are critical to the region’s efforts to maintain peace, security and prosperity. 

This means working on disaster response alone is no longer the answer for the types of scenarios that we face.
 
Disaster risk reduction through mitigation, planning, and recovery that starts at the community level is required if we are to create more resilient societies. 

Private businesses and communities must look within and beyond their current capabilities to ensure that they are prepared to handle what may occur as a result of some catastrophe.

Admiral Locklear as a strong voice on climate change issues might surprise some. Consider, for example, the range of Combatant Commander formal statements to Congress as to the discussion of climate change. Writ large, not much there — and Admiral Locklear is no exception in that list.
 
Admiral Locklear has mentioned climate change before, such as commenting that it would be a stress factor in Europe (where he commanded Operation Odyssey Dawn, the attack on Qaddafi’s Libya during the Arab Spring). That Admiral Locklear is putting climate change on the top of the long-term security challenge seems to be new — to be news.
 
That a four-star flag officer is publicly stating that climate change dominates the long-term strategic discussions in his command matters.
 
http://getenergysmartnow.com/2013/03/09/climate-change-is-the-top-threat-according-to-the-commander-of-us-forces-pacific/

A. Siegel: Elementary arithmetic beyond Joe Nocera’s grasp?

by A. Siegel, "Get Energy Smart! NOW!" blog, February 19, 2013

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera has put up How Not to Fix Climate Change. In private correspondence, in bringing this to my attention, one person commented that reading this “lowered my IQ by 20 points,” another “elementary arithmetic seems beyond his grasp,” and third that the title should have been “demonstrating multiple levels of ignorance in a highly public way.” Nocera, in short, is arguing for Keystone XL using some arguments that quickly become head-scratching with even the briefest of scrutiny:

Let’s quickly tackle these points.

Like it or not, fossil fuels are going to remain the world’s dominant energy source for the foreseeable future, and we are far better off getting our oil from Canada than, say, Venezuela.

Sigh. Why does the New York Times editorial staff let such propagandist errors to go through. What is the basic point of the Keystone XL pipeline? To take DilBit (diluted bitumen) from the Canadian Tar Sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries and make them available for export into the international market place. Right now, upper Midwest refineries are buying DilBit at a discount from world prices because Tar Sands producers don’t have cheap and easy ways to get their product onto the world market (and into Chinese diesel fuel supply). Keystone XL will actually facilitate not just increased tar sands production but also the reduction of Canadian tar sands production in the U.S. market place and an increase in fuel prices in much of the Midwest.

the climate change effects of tar sands oil are, all in all, pretty small.

First, this basic argument is like saying “who cares if a kid pees in the swimming pool, there is a lot of water …” Every increment, in and of itself, can be portrayed as somehow “small,” but there is the impact of many incremental inputs. 100 kids peeing … 1,000?? When do you say no to pissing into waters where others want to swim?

And, well, contrary to Nocera’s shallow claims, the Tar Sands represent a lot of carbon emission risk. As per Scientific American’s reporting:

Alberta’s oil sands represent a significant tonnage of carbon. With today’s technology there are roughly 170 billion barrels of oil to be recovered in the tar sands, and an additional 1.63 trillion barrels worth underground if every last bit of bitumen could be separated from sand. “The amount of CO2 locked up in Alberta tar sands is enormous,” notes mechanical engineer John Abraham of the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota, another signer of the Keystone protest letter from scientists. “If we burn all the tar sand oil, the temperature rise, just from burning that tar sand, will be half of what we’ve already seen”—an estimated additional nearly 0.4 degree C from Alberta alone.

Pretty small, Joe???

And, continuing with the misleading  and faulty logic and attacks on those trying to forestall tar sands development, Joe wrote

very clear about what they hope to accomplish. Oil companies have invested upward of $100 billion to extract the unconventional oil in the sands. A pipeline is the only way to export it. The Keystone pipeline is Canada’s Plan A. Plan B is a pipeline to British Columbia, which would get the oil to China. If the president blocks Keystone, and the First Nation tribes continue their staunch opposition to the western pipeline, then Canada will have the second largest oil reserves in the world — and no place to sell it. The assumption of the activists is that by choking off the supply of new oil sources like the tar sands, the U.S. — and maybe the world — will be forced to transition more quickly to green energy.

As Joe highlights in a set up to criticism of “activists” is that the tar sands are bottled-up in the central US and central Canadian market space without a truly cost-effective path to international markets.   And, if one thought getting Keystone XL approved is difficult, watch out for “plan B” dying in the face of First Nation opposition.

However, the point is not just what the companies have invested but what they might invest. Right now it is difficult and expensive to export DilBit, which sells at a serious discount into the Upper Midwest compared to world market prices. Keystone XL will create something like $40 million per day or over $10 billion per year in additional profit opportunities. With the ability to earn perhaps $20 more per barrel, would that not encourage more destructive Tar Sands operations and at an accelerated pace?

As KC Golden laid out, The Keystone Principle is quite simple:Stop Making It Worse!

Joe’s piece isn’t utterly wrong and perhaps he gets it partially.

The emphasis should be on demand, not supply. If the U.S. stopped consuming so much of the world’s oil, the economic need for the tar sands would evaporate.

True, if demand collapsed and if prices fell dramatically, then the incentive to devastate Canada’s boreal forests for expensive tar sands oil would collapse as well. Joe’s argument that we need lower oil prices to stop tar sands is perhaps the only one that’s actually correct. However, the reason why the oil companies are exploiting tar sands is precisely because we’ve run out of the cheap stuff and now need to go for the dirty and expensive one to feed our addiction. (Which, by the way, is proof (okay, strong evidence) in itself that high prices are not sufficient to reduce our demand massively.)

Truly, while there has been and continues to be a serious focus on reducing demand, there has become a serious recognition of a basic mathematical truth: if humanity exploits all of the carbon ‘on the financial books’ we have cooked the planet’s ability to support modern human civilization. There is not a single person involved in the efforts to forestall Keystone Xl who is not supportive of efforts to reduce demand (through efficiency, better planning, conservation, alternative fuels, etc. …) even as they recognize the importance of stopping Keystone XL as part of the path toward constraining destructive Tar Sands exploitation.

like to see oil companies pay a fee, which would rise annually, based on carbon emissions. He said that such a tax could reduce emissions by 30% within 10 years. Well, maybe. But it would also likely make the expensive tar sands oil more viable

Okay, see some problems here?

A carbon fee — which makes any and all fossil fuels (including carbon) more expensive — is somehow going to make tar sands more viable? Please explain how making, lets say, every barrel of oil — due to carbon fees — more expensive by $25 will incentivize more tar sands production rather than foster drives for greater energy efficiency and alternative fuels? And, since tar sands exploitation has a higher carbon footprint than other oil production, wouldn’t this actually put tar sands at a competitive disadvantage with other lower carbon footprint options?  Isn’t such a carbon fee directly addressing Nocera’s claim that focus should be on reducing demand? In fact, the carbon fee would disincentivize investment in “expensive tar sands” because it would favor lower cost production (by definition), raise tar sands costs more than lower polluting oil options, and create financial uncertainty for investors and businesses considering 20, 30, 40 year implications of $10 billion+ investments. A carbon fee (especially one that is guaranteed to increase) would create tremendous uncertainty and would undermine tar sands oil viability in multiple ways.

Nocera states “the strategy of activists … is utterly boneheaded.” On reflection, what Nocera has provided an accurate depiction of his self-contradicting broadside against those working to foster paths to avert catastrophic climate disruption.

See: Why not Keystone XL. Clear reasons why Keystone XL is not in the U.S. national interest

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2013/02/19/elementary-arithmetic-beyond-joe-noceras-grasp/