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Nov 19, 2008 02:45 PM | 16
You may recall that President George W. Bush pledged to do something about climate change when campaigning for the presidency back in 2000—but reneged on that promise once in office. But it appears that President-elect Barack Obama will not follow suit, telling a gathering of governors yesterday that "few issues facing America—and the world—are more urgent than combating climate change":
Obama vowed to take steps to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below that by 2050 via a cap-and-trade program (under which companies are allowed to pollute a certain amount and, if they come in under their limit, to sell credits to companies that exceed their quota). This despite fears that a price on carbon dioxide (CO2), which is emitted pretty much every time you drive a car, build a widget, or what have you, would further damage the U.S. economy, reeling from the credit crunch.
Obama argues in this Web video analogue to FDR's famed fireside chats that employing cap-and-trade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—paired with $15 billion over the next 10 years in new money for solar, wind, "clean coal" and nuclear energy as well as biofuels and energy efficiency projects—will actually create five million new jobs "that can't be outsourced," as well as reduce expensive oil imports (and that climate change, left unchecked, will damage the economy further).
"My presidency will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs," he told the meeting of governors and regional leaders convened by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to address climate change. Obama, however, will not be attending the next international meeting on climate change in Poznan, Poland, in December, because the U.S. "only has one president at a time," he said. "Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high, the consequences too serious."
Tags:
schwarzenegger,
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16 Comments
Add CommentDoes anyone have any theories about how unruly, experimental, scientific mishaps like that of Dow Chemicals, Chernobyl or the recent disaster of the Hadron Collider contribute or will contribute to climate change and global warming?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLawn fertilizer does far more harm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismr. Obama,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou have been given and are reciting outdated info concerning the temperature of the planet.
the earth has "COOLED" by .3 of a degree in the last three years which is nearly a third of the 1 degree of increase in the last 150 years!
get up to date on your science (see cosmoclimatology) before you finish U.S. off with irrecoverable bankruptcy by your unnecessary caps and trade policies as well as hurtful treaties!
Hahaha toothful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrightened, paranoid conservatives are funny when they're not in power.
For more on cosmoclimatology check out this site (http://www.realclimate.org).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt will enlighten toothfull on more subjects than just cosmoclimatology if he can pry his latest Michael Crichton (RIP) novel out of his hands. How is "State of Fear" anyways?
Cooling issues aside, why not be innovative and move to renewable resources anyways?
In response to the foregoing, I would only add that as someone familiar with the science literature, I'm aware that anthropogenic global warming, driven primarily by human carbon emissions (CO2 and to a lesser extent methane) is a universally recognized reality within the literature, based on an enormity of evidence one can find in the journals. The notion that it is controversial is a myth perpetrated by groups or individuals with ideological or political motivations threatened by action to curtail CO2 emissions. Denials can be found in blogs, news media, and statements from political groups, but not in the science journals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is not to say that all aspects of anthropogenic warming are noncontroversial. While a large majority of climate scientists estimate current warming trends, if continued, to constitute a serious threat to human, plant, and animal welfare, a few dissenters judge the threat to be minor. The problem is that the response of climate to human actions is so slow (mainly due to the thermal inertia of the oceans) that any delay designed to reach 100 percent certainty will inevitably make it impossible to avoid disastrous climate change if the majority view turns out to be correct. In that sense, we're compelled to act on the basis of near but not absolute certainty, realizing that our actions, and their cost, may be unnecessary, but that failure to act would be likely ultimately to prove far more costly than action in both economic and human terms.
It is this reality that the incoming administration appears to have grasped, and it signifies that the U.S., long a laggard in responding to an impending climate crisis, is now prepared to assume the leadership role that the rest of the world has hoped it would embrace.
Fred Moolten
Current climate models don't take into consideration melting methane hydrate emissions, which will soon overwhelm any cuts we make:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor instance, there is an area six times the size of Germany containing about 540 billion tons of carbon off the Siberian coast. That submarine permafrost is perilously close to thawing. Three to 12 kilometers from the coast the sea sediment is just below freezing. The permafrost has grown porous, there is a loss of rigor in the frozen sea floor, and the surrounding seawater is highly oversaturated with solute methane.
“If the Siberian (submarine) permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes, the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelve fold. The result would be catastrophic global warming.” --"A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia," Spiegel, 17 April '08
Furthermore, any carbon diet strategy would be dependent upon clean coal:
"The vast majority of new power stations in China and India will be coal-fired; not "may be coal-fired"; will be. So developing carbon capture and storage technology is not optional, it is literally of the essence." --"Breaking the Climate Deadlock," Tony Blair, June 26, 2008
But, Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon dioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide -- a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. "Beware of the scale," he stressed."
In other words, it is doubtful that even the unrealistic cuts President elect Obama committed to support in the campaign will significantly slow global warming.
I have doubts that a complex cap and trade system will do much good. I think a simple carbon tax would be more more efficient and more easily managed. Simply having the carbon tax start at 5% and increase by 5% every year would be more than enough to curtail the use of oil, coal and natural gas to nothing within 20 years. It might hurt our pocketbooks at first, but it needs to. Big business makes products because people buy them. If we don't buy expensive oil/coal/natural gas burning products, then they won't make them. Use the money gained from the tax to fund education and alternative energy sources. It's not nearly as complex and there's less room to be able to cheat the system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to apologize for double posting, but this is an extremely important point to drive home:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Japan, like the European Union, hasn't let its failure so far to meet Kyoto emissions-reductions targets stop it from setting even more ambitious goals, like a 50% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. But how to do that? If getting within shouting distance of Kyoto's targets could cost Japan $500 billion, how much would it cost to cut emissions twelve-fold more?" --Keith Johnson, WSJ, 19 March 2008
"By the year 2050, the Census Bureau projects that our population will be around 420 million. This means per capita emissions will have to fall to about 2.5 tons in order to meet the goal of 80% reduction. It is likely that U.S. per capita emissions were never that low – even back in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood. " --"The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change," WSJ
"I know of no realistic person who thinks carbon dioxide emissions are going to do anything but grow. Most European countries are not meeting their emissions goals, and of the ones that have, it's because their economies are collapsing. In the United States, this notion that we're going to reduce our emissions by 80 percent is pure fantasy." --Pete Geddes, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, 2 April 2008
"I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't: we may not be able to stop global warming. We need to begin curbing global greenhouse emissions right now, but more than a decade after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the world has utterly failed to do so. Unless the geopolitics of global warming change soon, the Hail Mary pass of geoengineering might become our best shot." --Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine, 17 March 2008
Wall Street is just chomping at the bit for a cap and trade system. Look at the mess they created with sub-prime mortgages. Do you really trust them to run something that touches every aspect of the economy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBesides, AGW is disproven. The scientific concensus now supports that sunspot cycles are the real issue and that CO2 is irrelevant. But Wall Street would love to trade carbon anyway.
Doberman - a catastrophic release of methane from permafrost, triggered by further CO2-driven warming,is certainly a source of concern, but current methane leakage is minor, and so this "tipping point" scenario is generally considered remote. You're right that we have no realistic prospect of preventing further growth of CO2 emissions in the immediate future, but reasonable, if somewhat optimistic, emissions scenarios include short term future rises followed by later reductions as we transition from fossi fuels to alternative energy sources, and in this context, an eventual 80% emissions reduction is not necessarily "fantasy".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may not be useful to ask whether we can avoid global warming - we can't - but with prompt and vigorous international action to curtail CO2, we may hope to avoid the worst consequences of unmitigted warming, while taking measures to adapt our civilization to those consequences we can't avoid. In fact, within science, the consensus is now nearly unanimous that both CO2 mitigation and adaptation will be critical to maintain a tolerable future climate.
To Shoshin - The scientific literature almost universally recognizes a predominant role for CO2 in the past century of warming. Although sunspots have been hypothesized to contribute as well, the past two decades refute a correlation between sunspot activity and climate change, and so a contribution from sunspots is now judged by most authors in the literature as minimal at most.
Fred Moolten: Thank you for the reply. You seem very optomistic about the feasibility of medium term emission reductions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Processes that would normally regulate climate are being driven to amplify warming. Such feedbacks, as well as the inertia of the Earth system — and that of our response — make it doubtful that any of the well-intentioned technical or social schemes for carbon dieting will (work). What is needed is a fundamental cure." --Dr James Lovelock
Remember, those new dirty coal-fired power plants have a lifespan of about 30 years, and their total emissions for three decades will (in my opinion) trigger runaway global warming. Besides, as the Earth warms, the carrying capacity of the Earth will lower, leaving mankind few resources to switch to more expensive low emission energy production.
"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07
Perhaps you are saying to yourself that Dr Lovelock is an alarmist?
"NASA's top climate scientist, James Hansen, says that the release of methane clathrates from permafrost regions and beneath the seabed will unleash powerful feedback forces that could produce runaway climate change that cannot be controlled - the so-called methane time bomb - a prediction of radical environmental transformation far worse than the worst-case scenarios theorised by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
Here is what Climate Code Red says:
--Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.
--There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to "thermal inertia", or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.
--If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don't increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).
--Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assuming very optimistically that emissions don't increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, nor for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.
Read anything by James Lovelock and take a look at his most recent interviews, if you can find them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly after the last treee has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten...
The planet is way to overpopulated and developed nations have lost all sense of living in harmony with nature,however, the Earth will have the last laugh upon us if we continue "business as usual". Unfortunately, more an more scientists think that we are already past the point of no return.
J.
skycomm and hotblack, toothfull is right. This isnt about politics when analysis says that the Earth has cooled 1/3rd degree. Its about facts. If anyone seems to be politically motivated, its you two. Another thing thats funny is the fact that 30 years ago, scientists across the nation agreed that we were going to be in a "global cooling" period at about this time and it could possibly destroy the nations cropfields and send us into utter economic and agricultural collapse. Thats what sealed the deal for me telling myself that scientists know jack shit about climate and what its going to do in 30 years more much less hundreds. I have the pdf document if your "deer in headlights moment" is too much for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[quote]In that sense, we're compelled to act on the basis of near but not absolute certainty, realizing that our actions, and their cost, may be unnecessary, but that failure to act would be likely ultimately to prove far more costly than action in both economic and human terms. [quote]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFred Molten,
The scientific principle that "unusual theory requires an unusual level of proof " seems lost in your "MAY" caveats of weasel lawyer talk. The US economy has lost trillions
on this probability scenario, and all Industries that are dependant on energy have an unclear future. We havent reached bottom yet but Obomas plan will insure we do
In 4.5 billion years & 11 ice ages not ONE human can be found to have contributed to ONE of those violent & sudden climate Changes.. How can any respectable scientist claim humans are responsible. Nature is beyond simple science speculation
Fred Molten,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe scientific principle that "unusual theory requires an unusual level of proof " seems lost in your "MAY" caveats of weasel lawyer talk. The US economy has lost trillions on this probability scenario, and all Industries that are dependant on energy have an unclear future. We haven’t reached bottom yet but Oboma’s plan will insure we do
In 4.5 billion years & 11 ice ages not ONE human can be found to have contributed to ONE of those violent & sudden climate Changes.. How can any respectable scientist claim humans are responsible. Nature is beyond simple science speculation