Reelected U.S. President Barack Obama has won four more years in which to cement his legacy.
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Speaking last week in Washington DC, US President Barack Obama reminded voters of the plan they had effectively endorsed by re-electing him. One of his key objectives, Obama said, would be to ensure that the United States “is a global leader in research and technology and clean energy, which will attract new companies and high-wage jobs to America”.
A different objective will be in the spotlight this week when Obama visits New York, a city still recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy on October 29th. Climate change could make storms like Sandy more common in the future. And New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, cited climate concerns when he endorsed Obama for re-election (see Nature 491, 167–168; 2012), saying that the president has “taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks”. When he accepted that endorsement, Obama acknowledged that “climate change is a threat to our children’s future, and we owe it to them to do something about it”.
Yet this new opportunity to confront climate change and invest in science and technology comes with towering obstacles. The election did not end the polarization of Congress — Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives, and the Democrats only slightly strengthened their narrow majority in the Senate. And the ‘fiscal cliff’ looms large — automatic tax increases and spending cuts, the legacy of earlier budget battles, will hit on January 2nd unless the outgoing Congress finds a way to avert them in the session that begins this week (see Nature 487, 414–415; 2012).
The cuts, totaling some $136 billion, would apply to all discretionary spending next year, including defense, and would eat deeply into federal science budgets (see ‘At the precipice’). Congressional leaders expect Obama to play an active part in brokering a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, which economists say could plunge the fragile US economy back into recession. The outcome will foreshadow Obama’s prospects for achieving other objectives — including those relevant to science — during his second term.
Climate Opportunity
Obama may have to develop his climate plans without some high-profile lieutenants. Energy secretary Steven Chu and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lisa Jackson are both rumored to be stepping down. During Obama’s first term, both became lightning rods for Republican attacks — Chu for his role in approving a $535-million government loan guarantee to Solyndra, a solar-energy company that later went bankrupt, and Jackson for implementing greenhouse-gas regulations. But even without Chu or Jackson, the administration’s approach to renewable energy and global warming would change very little, says Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York. “I suspect we would have continuity in the broad policy approaches.”
Obama’s election victory, combined with growing alarm in the United States over severe weather events, such as Hurricane Sandy and the severe drought in the Midwest this summer, could bolster efforts to curb carbon emissions. Jackson laid the foundation for such reductions after the US Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, which allowed the EPA to regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act. Jackson went on to craft the first US greenhouse-gas regulations for vehicles, and in March proposed a rule that would effectively ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants unless they are equipped to capture and sequester roughly 50% of the carbon dioxide they emit. The agency next plans to propose rules for existing power plants, then oil refineries. The details of those rules are unclear. The EPA could, for example, set energy-efficiency standards for different types of power plant or take a more flexible approach that would let states — which normally implement air-quality rules — decide how to proceed.
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29 Comments
Add CommentI hope that he really implements a carbon tax. That would actually be the single best thing for the government, the economy, and the world right now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat planet do the authors live on?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is ZERO chance of the Congress passing a carbon tax....ZERO. Even if the Democrats controlled both houses they would not support it.
The pros or cons of a carbon tax are irrelevent...it won't happen in the USA in this universe.
Just maybe the party that was surprised it lost the Presidential election will realize how dangerous wishful thinking is and figure out that is what it's doing regarding climate change and come to realize there is a real problem that must be addressed. But then the oil industry and coal industry and auto industry lobbies will swing into full gear and pretty soon no one will remember that anyone thought Romney would win. Never mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObama has time and time again tried to champion Clean Energy Sources. Public access to real facts is being whitewashed by this rhetoric while conservative hands paint the Blackface on our President. Watch them mix and apply the paints to his face in a portrait of Obama being Bamboozed by the Far Right at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/10/bamboozling-obama.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy a Carbon Tax? This is a tax on all Americans it will increase the cost on every thing for everybody. All costs to industry will work its way down to all of us. If your on the east coast your electricity bill will double as coal is the greatest producer of CO2. I thought the idea was to tax the rich. But I know the real idea is to control all of us, how we work, where we live, how we travel, what we eat, what we do for fun, almost every aspect of life has something to do with energy. If they wanted to reduce our CO2 production by 50% they could do it in ten years by switching to natural gas for power and transportation. The cost would be minimal, off set by savings in fuel costs in transportation. The power to tax is the power to control People. You will never control the weather with a tax. This is not about science, there is a lot of science that conflicts with the theory of AGW. This is about politics and power. I know that conflicting views are not reported here but there is more and more science that brings AGW into doubt. You should look into real experimental science like the Sky and Cloud experiments. They show another aspect of the Suns almost complete control of the climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am very disappointed how political a once respected magazine Like Scientific America has become. Thanks to the Billions of government dollars that have been poured into AGW, Climate science has been politically corrupted Too.
If these people actually believed what they were saying was true, they would not allow us to Pay a Carbon Tax to continue polluting!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour ruining the planet and were all gonna die from your pollution, but if you would like to give us some Money, you can put all the carbon you want into the atmosphere!
Debate the policy choices, carbon tax, carbon cap and trade, mpg requirements, power plant emission caps, or none of the above. Those are legitimate topics to argue. It is not legitimate to distort the science because you'd rather not have the policy debate. The science is pretty clear, CO2 from burning fossil fuels along with deforestation is causing an energy imbalance, global warming. The exact amount of warming, how fast, and what the climate impacts in different regions of the world will be remain to be determined, but there is real potential we're talking serious effects. The debate needs to be how we react, what we do, including doing nothing. Make the case for doing nothing if you want, but don't distort what we know about the science. That is destroying our democratic form of government by misinforming the people about the science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is good policy discussion, debating the merits of a tax, switching to natural gas, and I'd add gearing up more nuclear. Lots of ideas to consider, including doing nothing if you want to make that argument. But you veered off course with the statement "there is a lot of science that conflicts with the theory of AGW". From that point on you are dealing in misinformation and deception. Stick to the policy and stop letting the powerful denialist lobby mislead you about the science. Yeah, it's easier to believe what you want to hear, but in the long run, it will hurt our democracy. That at least should concern you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe climate is very complicated the sun the ocean currents have much more to do with our weather than a gas that is 380 ppm. AGW is based on Computer models. The models and computers are in no way capable of predicting the climate 100 years from now. We do not understand the earth climate well enough to explain that mankind is responsible for our warming now but, not during the Roman and medieval warm periods which were warmer or the Marraunder minimum which was very cold. CO2 does not explain These but the sun does. Government paid for this science and got what they paid for. You should look at the skeptical side the real science is happening there. In science all theories need to be tested. I happens in Astronomy in this magazine why not Climate. The reasons are purely political.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake your ideological blinkers off. It is the DEMOCRAT majority of the Senate who said there will be no proposals for a carbon tax and this was confirmed yesterday by a spokesman for the DEMOCRAT president.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishint...there will be no carbon tax.
"""The climate is very complicated the sun the ocean currents have much more to do with our weather than a gas that is 380 ppm. """
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd you think that the models don't account for that? Really?
"""AGW is based on Computer models. """
So? Where do you think the models got the data that they use? Real-world observations of global warming.
"""The models and computers are in no way capable of predicting the climate 100 years from now. """
Lie. This one's just juvenile.
"""We do not understand the earth climate well enough to explain that mankind is responsible for our warming now but, not during the Roman and medieval warm periods which were warmer or the Marraunder minimum which was very cold. """
Pants on fire. Technically, we should be in a mild cooling period right now, but we screwed that up.
"""CO2 does not explain These but the sun does. """
Pants on fire.
"""Government paid for this science and got what they paid for. """
Pants on fire.
"""You should look at the skeptical side the real science is happening there. """
Yeah, real science is believing something because some idiot congressman said so? Yeah, right.
"""In science all theories need to be tested. """
And AGW has. Many, many times.
"""I happens in Astronomy in this magazine why not Climate. """
Huh? That isn't even grammatically correct.
"""The reasons are purely political."""
LIE!!! Pants on fire again.
It's an upside down world when you believe the phony stuff reported by web sites created by denialist lobbies, and decide that the professionals at universities and government labs, who spent years learning how to do the research, and many more years doing the hard work, are not worth listening to?! Got news for you pal, the real scientists (see RealClimate.org) want to know what is happening to the climate, period. They are not in the service of Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, or any other liberal boogey man you happen to dislike. Just like George Will and Karl Rove, who let themselves be persuaded by the words they so longed to hear about the recent election, you have fallen for a sophisticated con game.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe con game is run by the denialist lobby, you can figure out who they are. The game is to sow doubt about the science, that is all that is necessary to win the policy debate. It's a much easier hurdle than having the policy debate, much easier to win. You may enjoy the policy debate as much as the science debate, but the powers that want to win know that the science debate is the one they need to fight, because all they have to do is create a reasonable doubt, which is simple to do in any field of science. Science is all about probability, science never proves anything true, so all the denialist lobby has to do is pound home that something is not "proven", and they win the policy debate by default. Never have to say a word about whether we should do something, 'cause there's still uncertainty out there. The problem is with that kind of logic, we would have no airplanes today, no rockets or spaceships, no satellites, no vaccines, no surgery, because you see, all those things were (and still are) surrounded by uncertainty. The denialists argue that because we don't have proof, it's not time to do anything. BUT proof never comes in science, and they know that very well, but most lay people do not. Do you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisListen to yourselves its like you are all defending your religious beliefs. Why can we not question AGW. It is a theory. It is based on a guess, not that CO2 warms the atmosphere, which it will slightly and with no harm, but that there is a positive feedback with water vapor that would cause dangerous warming. That part of the theory is a guess that is open to discussion even buy AGW believers. So is the role of clouds which, can both keep the planet warmer or colder. A 1% change in clouds could explain all the warming we have had. Look at the Cloud and Sky experiments that show the role of cosmic rays in cloud formation. The Suns electromagnetic field influences the amount of Cosmic rays that hit the earth. This is science you can dispute or try to disprove, but calling me and other who truly love the scientific method and disagree with you, names is unbecoming science and what this magazine used to be about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI pose this question. At many times this planet, in the millions of years its been around, had CO2 concentrations ten times greater than now and according to your AGW theory it should have gone into out of control warming as all positive feedback systems will do, it did not. And as a side note we had ice ages with 10 times as much CO2.
I do not want you to call me names or call to authority. I want scientific references from peer reviewed studies to explain this to me. And while your at it explain the Medieval warm period. I bet you can't.
So many people with so little understanding of the facts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe headline suggested that in the president's second term that a carbon tax or emissions reductions may be implemented in the US.
Let's analyze each idea.
1. Carbon tax- The United States certainly needs additional revenue so if this proposed tax were implemented in a very simple manner it would efficiently raise additional revenue. If that was the only goal of the tax it might be effective in achieving the goal. If the goal was to lower stop worldwide CO2 concentrations from rising and to help prevent bad weather for taxpayers then it will not be effective. Worldwide CO2 emissions will continue to rise for decades due to developing countries and not due to the US. Consumption of fossil fuels in the US today is NOT highly elastic to changes in price. People have already implemented the changes that they can to save on fuel spending so a additional price increases would not reduce comsumption in the near term. Study the example of the tax levied in Ireland as an example. It did not reduce comsumption.
2. Emissions reductions-What would be the positive impact of emissions reductions? It might mean that atmospheric CO2 concentrations will be at 450 ppm instead of at 455 ppm in 2060. Is this important for some reason? The weather will not change and damage from severe weather will still be dependent on whether or not robust infrastructure has been put into place.
Find the answers to these questions at RealClimate.org and compare their answers to the ones you have read elsewhere. Then decide for yourself who to believe, the folks doing the research day in and day out, or someone else. These are not new questions. The climate scientists have been considering them for years, and though some are still the topics of active research, none warrant dismissing our real concerns about climate change. It's just what I said about raising doubt. There are powerful interests out there who want you to think that any degree of uncertainty is cause to dismiss the whole issue. It is not. Start reading up on where the real science stands at RealClimate.org.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIve been there (Real Climate) they don't. It is just as political as Climate Depot, except Climate depot reports both sides of the question and does not delete opposing views. In any case I posed the questions, site your studies. Tell me the answers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTry out Judith Curry's site Climate etc. There are many scientists and engineers from all sides of the debate that visit and post there. You will often interact with many of the major names in climate science there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFull debunking:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"""Listen to yourselves its like you are all defending your religious beliefs. """
You don't know just how ironic that is.
"""Why can we not question AGW. It is a theory. """
There! A reason. No data exists to challenge AGW theory and models, so it should not be questioned (unless and until more data appears that might contradict it).
"""It is based on a guess, """
That has been proven true.
"""not that CO2 warms the atmosphere, which it will slightly and with no harm, """
LIE!!! Have you seen just how effective a greenhouse gas CO2 is? Have you looked outside recently?
"""but that there is a positive feedback with water vapor that would cause dangerous warming. That part of the theory is a guess that is open to discussion even buy AGW believers. """
OK. Back to the old H2O dodge. This one's so old it creaks.
"""So is the role of clouds which, can both keep the planet warmer or colder. A 1% change in clouds could explain all the warming we have had. """
LIE!!! Do you really think that these side issues are not accounted for in models and data?
"""Look at the Cloud and Sky experiments that show the role of cosmic rays in cloud formation. The Suns electromagnetic field influences the amount of Cosmic rays that hit the earth. """
Cosmic rays cause global warming? That's a new one.
"""This is science you can dispute or try to disprove, but calling me and other who truly love the scientific method and disagree with you, names is unbecoming science and what this magazine used to be about."""
Translation: I'm not really a scientist, but I'll try to pretend to be one and cry if you tear up my arguments. WAAAAA!!!
"""I pose this question. At many times this planet, in the millions of years its been around, had CO2 concentrations ten times greater than now and according to your AGW theory it should have gone into out of control warming as all positive feedback systems will do, it did not. """
Ever hear of the Early Triassic? During the Smithian stage, global warming got so out of control that the tropics were literally too hot to support animal life and ocean water surface temperatures reached 40 degrees C.
"""And as a side note we had ice ages with 10 times as much CO2. """
Lie, and anyway, with a ludicrous claim like that you need a trustworthy citation.
"""I do not want you to call me names or call to authority. """
Trans: WAAAAA!!!!! Mommy, the nasty scientists tore up my illogical arguments!
Con't on next post.
"""I want scientific references from peer reviewed studies to explain this to me. And while your at it explain the Medieval warm period. I bet you can't."""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou shouldn't have said that. You denialists just love to tout the MWP, even though (a) it was only a noticeable event in the North Atlantic region and (b) the current AGW event is ten times as large as the MWP, and still rising.
The medieval warm period was a minor climatic event that is currently (I believe--someone who specializes in something other than paleontology can probably correct me here) pinned on a minor alteration in the Milkanovitch cycles.
Debunking done.
I'm not one to waste time, You most certainly are not a scientist. I myself don't pretend to be one I am a fairly prominent audio design engineer. I know how science works in the real world. I have been looking into AGW for 10 years started neutral and became a doubter. You are completely wrong about the MWP there is peer reviewed studies that show it was world wide, lasted hundreds of years and was warmer than now. I just read one from China. If not for the total corruption for climate science by government and the WWF Green peace etc. AGW would be relegated to the trash can of History. The Cloud study was done at CERN, read the study, It proves cosmic ray inter action with cloud formation. You don't really know much about this except the political BS you spout. I was willing to talk, just like a child denying the truth, you scream.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou refuted nothing, you can go watch MSNBC. Im going to watch TCM.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJimmytubes...excellent points.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the former socialist countries, a social model B Obama looks being fond of, companies that emitted unacceptable polluting wastes were given high fines, that made them lacking the funds necessary to implement the changes needed to stop polluting. Any taxation on high CO2 and other contaminating products emissions will reduce the enterprises' ability to improve their processes, the good and wise way to stimulate the implementation of clean and energy saving procedures and facilities is thru tax reductions for those doing the right thing, positive reinforcement of adequate behavior has always been better than punishment of wrongdoing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe free market is nothing but evil. Regulation is necessary for the good of the public. Then again, I am just a socialist pinko who idolizes Theodore Roosevelt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[I am a genuine socialist, BTW, unlike our Reaganoid President. ]
Hey bird, tree, PBS snob, You did not disprove anything I have said, but to make point. We had 4,500 ppm of CO2 during an ice age in the Ordovician Period. We now have one of the lowest concentrations of CO2 in our planets history. Be not afraid of the gas that is responsible for all life to exist on our planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Ordovician was far from an ice age. Check your facts. CO2 is not responsible for all life; and beofer you say that plants can't live without it, there are several species of quillwort that do just that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do you consider liking PBS to be snobbery? I happen to enjoy TCM too, but I don't get to watch it very much. Besides, for nonfiction television, PBS is the best. Period.
Biomass Pyrolysis is now capable of sequestering atmospheric carbon and producing hydrogen to plug the gap when solar or wind power are down. Big oil companies have now jumped on the bandwagon as the technology is economically viable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee www.eprida.com
As anyone who has studied Industrial Ecology knows, eliminating pollution is good for business efficiency, as pollution eliminated means raw materials economised. So carbon tax is good for the economy, as it creates energy efficient technologies. Ressource economy means negative growth can actually improve living standards...
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