If you want a sense of how difficult it will be for 6.5 billion people to reduce, much less eliminate, their emissions of fossil fuels, consider this telling vignette from the University of Colorado, my home institution, here in Boulder.

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If you think we, RealClimate, ClimateAudit, etc. have it bad with the occasional troll, you have to see what happened to Heidi Cullen.

Heidi is the Weather Channel’s on-air climate expert with a Ph.D. in oceanography/climate from Lamont-Doherty (yes, same degree as me; yes, same place; yes, she’s a friend). She started up the Climate Code, which has a weekly TV component and an in-depth web component, including a blog.

Heidi might be excused for not having been in this game for long. In her third post she went out on a limb and basically said that if an on-air meteorologist can’t be bothered to get themselves educated about the science of AGW before spouting off about it from their position of authority, then they don’t deserve to carry the AMS seal of approval:

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There is no doubt that Congress is (belatedly) ramping up interest in climate change policy. I wrote about EIA’s reaction to Sen. Bingaman’s cap-and-trade proposal here (note: don’t misinterpret what I wrote just because certain people linked to it).

Now via CQ, Majority Leader Pelosi is setting up “a special task force to examine global warming issues, but the panel will not have legislative authority.”

Pelosi’s decision to create a task force without bill-drafting powers followed days of pushback by some Democratic committee chairmen who feared her plan would encroach on their panels’ powers.

The Speaker has ordered the eight or so chairmen whose panels have jurisdiction over some part of the global warming issue to produce legislation addressing the problem by June.

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A number of prominent scientists — including the well-known James Hansen, Judy Curry, Paul Epstein, and Rita Colwell — have joined with the National Association of Evangelicals to advocate for political action on climate change. They released a statement (PDF) yesterday which stated:

We believe that the protection of life on Earth is a profound moral imperative. It addresses without discrimination the interests of all humanity as well as the value of the non-human world. It requires a new moral awakening to a compelling demand, clearly articulated in Scripture and supported by science, that we must steward the natural world in order to preserve for ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment. For many of us, this is a religious obligation, rooted in our sense of gratitude for Creation and reverence for its Creator.

Here at Prometheus we often call out scientists who hide their political agendas behind science, particularly on climate change. But in this case, there is none of that, to these scientists’ credit. These scientists are explicit about their political values and their efforts to use a seemingly “strange bedfellows” association with a major religious group to influence the political process (PDF).

The role of science in policy and politics is much more straightforward when scientists clearly identify when they are advocating for values that they strongly hold, rather than suggesting that it is science that compels particular political outcomes.

In today’s New York Times Stanford’s Ken Caldeira has a thought provoking op-ed on the impact of planting trees on the global climate system. His basic argument is that planting trees is not a solution to rising carbon dioxide levels, even though trees remove carbon from the atmosphere. Although perhaps not intentioned, Caldeira’s op-ed indicates that the approach of the Framework Convention on Climate Change may be fatally flawed. Caldeira ends up, as these discussions often do, focused narrowly on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. However, his own argument suggests that a broader perspective is needed. In the end we return to the start — what is the problem posed by climate change, anyway?

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Here is a column by Cathy Young in the Boston Globe that (obviously) I think is pretty much on target.

Ms. Young cites a blog post by Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy studies at UCLA and a blogger (two appealing characteristics, if I say so myself) which can be found here.

Sid Perkins of Science News did a nice little write up of the poster I presented at AGU. Unfortunately it’s moneywalled, but if you get the paper copy or have e-access it’s on page 14 of the Jan 6, 2007 issue.

The poster and SN write-up cover what is in a paper I currently have under review at Natural Hazards Review on earthquake damages. As I teaser I’ll tell you this: it looks like quakes do about $2.5B in annual average damages in the U.S., which is far less (by about a third) than the catastrophe models (HAZUS) estimate.

You wonky wonks who have nothing better to do but follow the ins and outs in D.C. will remember what happened on climate change in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. (The quick answer is, “nothing.” The more astute answer is, “horsetrading.”)

Then-Ranking Member (now Chair) of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Jeff Bingaman, wanted to offer a cap-and-trade amendment to the Energy Bill. He initially had then-Chair Domenici’s support, but without House support, and watching previous energy bills derailed due to irreconcilable differences in Conference, Domenici pulled his support late. That led Bingaman to agree to withdraw the cap-and-trade amendment in exchange for a promise to discuss the issue in-depth in the following year. (Good recap by the AIP here.)

Sen. Bingaman then sent a letter with five other Senators (3 D’s, 3 R’s) to the Energy Information Administration (which resides in DoE), requesting that the EIA examine how Sen. Bingaman’s cap-and-trade proposal would affect the U.S. economy.

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The folks at Demos (my favorite think tank) in London have done it again. Alan Irwin, Kevin Jones, and Jack Stilgoe have produced a magnificent, readable, and erudite report on the role of expertise in decision making titled The Received Wisdom. Their report complements nicely (rather than makes obsolete before release, whew!) my forthcoming book, The Honest Broker. Below I’ve provided a set of lengthy excerpts on points I thought interesting and/or exceptionally well made. Anyone interested in the role of experts in democratic decision making should read this report carefully. I’ll be adding it to my syllabus for the spring.

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J. Marshall Shephard, a professor at the University of Georgia, and Tom Knutson, NOAA GFDL, have just published a review paper titled “The Current Debate on the Linkage Between Global Warming and Hurricanes” with the journal Geography Compass, which publishes review articles. The full text of the paper can be found here in html and it is also available from that page in PDF.

The paper reinforces the conclusions of the recent consensus statement of the World Meteorological Organization (note that T. Knutson was a lead author of the WMO statement), concluding:

Significantly more research – from observations, theory, and modeling – is needed to resolve the current debate around global warming and hurricanes.