- Prometheus: Author: Vranes, K. Archives

Kevin Vranes is a CIRES Visiting Fellow, based at the Center. He also co-owns Point380, a climate and energy consulting company.

Contents:

November 20, 2007

Energy? Climate change? Linked? Huh?

How does a high-level federal policymaker go on and on about energy policy, energy "balance," energy technology, clean coal, etc. without the slightest nod to climate change? I'm not sure how it can be done with a straight face, but Texas Senator John Cornyn tried it here Monday in a Dallas Morning News op-ed, and it really is a work of art.

I won't reproduce the 700-word screed here, but it is captivating reading. The word "energy" appears 33 times. Climate? Warming? Not once.

It's not that the Senator ignores the climate change link. It's not even that I think a discussion of energy policy must in all cases discuss climate. No, what's fascinating is the pains it took to dance around the issue in the article without once mentioning it, as if trying to pretend the issue doesn't exist. You can't read the article without knowing that its entire existence owes itself not to the debate over energy security (as Cornyn pretends in the article) but to the debate over climate change responses running through the Senate and House. Senator Cornyn's article is really about the current field of play on climate change politics and how it does and will affect energy policy for Texas, yet he manages to rant on the subject without ever mentioning the climate context. The pointed stand I'm sure is lost on nobody. To his Texas constituents it says, No matter what we do on carbon, I'm fighting for unrestricted, even expanded fossil energy extraction.

At this point, with RGGI, then the WCI and now the MGA, almost the entire country except for the south/southeast is throwing down the gauntlet. Even Kansas is making bold moves in the energy/climate policy area. A look at Pew's map of regional climate initiatives is pretty telling. Hell, Senator, even OPEC is talking about climate change now.

Senator Cornyn's op-ed does one thing: it paints very clearly the climate policy battle lines, and provides a strong reality check for the attitudes that are and are not changing. If you can't get a U.S. Senator to deign to mention climate in a 700-word piece on energy balance, you can see dirt flying from the trenches as they get dug deeper. Of course, not everybody in Texas sees things the same way. When the private equity market speaks that loudly, it makes me wonder who the Senator is getting his advice from.

Posted on November 20, 2007 02:38 PM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change

November 05, 2007

An appreciation of Mr. Bloomberg

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is now out in favor of a carbon tax (see also this post by Charlie Komanoff). This is significant because it makes him one of the very few nationally-prominent (or at least nationally-known) politicians to stake out for a C tax over cap-and-trade.

Bloomberg's support for a C tax is important both because he is seen as a technocrat's technocrat and because he presides over eight million carbon consumers. Unfortunately, as Redburn illustrates well in his article, carbon tax proponents have more than an uphill battle to get their way on climate mitigation legislation.

It's not that the carbon tax or cap-and-trade? debate is over already (which, really, would be before it even began), it's that there is a strong perception in the community that it is over. Wonky types (which in my usage are political realists, not optimists), especially those with some influence on the policy development process, have been telling me personally and conference crowds (like this one) that it's all over and cap-and-trade is a done deal. This perception might be more important than (the way I see) reality, which is that nobody wants to deal with this problem and because of this, all options are still on the table. It's not that I am full bore on the C-tax train either, but I would like to see an honest, complete national debate on the two approaches before the "elites" declare the policy problem solved. In particular, I would love to see this issue come out during primary debates for both parties, to at least introduce the average Joe to the issue. Of course, the vagaries of carbon economics will be viewed by party handlers as too nuanced and difficult to explain during debate, but I'll preemptively call bullshit on that line. Try us.

Speaking of Mr. Bloomberg, I was flying back from NYC on Halloween and, caught in the captive state of the miserable United economy passenger, had nothing better to do but read deep into the nether regions of the NY Times metro section. There I found this article about a public stumble between the mayyuh and a deceased NYPD officer, James Zadroga, who had worked long hours at the World Trade Center site. Zadroga passed away a few years later and his family wanted the cause of his death to be declared working at the WTC site.

Before going further, I should explain this: there is emotion involved in the environmental problem of the WTC site that goes beyond the attacks. I lived in NY during the WTC attacks and the smell of the burning pile was strong for at least two weeks and was noticeable even far uptown (north) when the prevailing winds are westerly. My recollection is that near the site the smell was strong even a month after the attacks. Everybody in that city knows the smell of the WTC site, and I think that experience triggers an immediate sympathy in citizens for the workers (many of whom stayed on the site for weeks without going home) and what they were exposed to. The EPA debacle with air quality testing and the public relations of it didn't help. So the fact that a family claims that one of their sons was killed by WTC air after working on the site is bound to garner immediate sympathy for the claim.

Bloomberg perhaps forgot this context when he addressed Zadroga's case. A pathologist had declared Zadroga's death a direct result of WTC air, but NYC's medical examiner recently rejected that finding. In a clear case of dueling experts, Bloomberg picked his. Despite this strong statement from the NYC employee:

"Our evaluation of your son’s lung abnormality is markedly different than that given you by others," Dr. Hirsch wrote in the letter, dated Tuesday and also signed by Dr. Michele S. Stone, another medical examiner. "It is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son’s lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere."

the excess of objectivity problem is clear. The family's response:

"We knew the city was going to say this," Mr. Zadroga said. "They’ve been lying since Jimmy got sick. They've been lying about all these W.T.C. people getting sick. They would never admit that Jimmy got sick. They treated him like a dog all those years."

Instead of recognizing the excess of objectivity problem, and forgetting all of the other political context to this case, Bloomberg simply said Zadroga was "not a hero." Oops.

All of this isn't really what caught my eye, though. It was the way Bloomberg handled the backlash:

The tone of Mr. Bloomberg's comments yesterday veered sharply from statements he made on Monday after receiving an award from the Harvard School of Public Health. Asked why science could be unpopular, he said that it sometimes provided answers that people did not want to hear, as in the case of Mr. Zadroga. Referring to Dr. Hirsch’s finding, he said, "Nobody wanted to hear that."
"We wanted to have a hero, and there are plenty of heroes," he said. "It's just in this case, science says this was not a hero."

Yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg described Detective Zadroga as "a dedicated police officer" with an impressive record who "volunteered to work downtown, and I think that the odds are that he clearly got sick because of breathing the air — but that's up to the doctors."

So he doesn't exactly grasp that the word "hero" is loaded and dripping with emotion, especially in this case, and especially in NY where the tabloids use the word as an interchangeable synonym for police officers and firefighters. But at least he gets why he's being attacked for his statements and what science and the popular perception and acceptance of science has to do with it.

Posted on November 5, 2007 01:53 PM View this article | Comments (10)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change | Science + Politics

October 22, 2007

Water in the west

In case you missed it, the NY Times Sunday Magazine cover story yesterday was the western water problem. Brad Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment, which is closely affiliated with our Center, got a lot of ink, as did other CU and NOAA affiliates.

One thing (among many) hinted at in the article that deserves highlight: Western agriculture is done. Not tomorrow, not even in the next decade or two, but eventually. Without a check on urban expansion and with every drop of water spoken for, the economics are obvious: people in urban areas need water and have the cash to buy it from the agricultural senior rights holders.

Over on the Post-Normal Times, Sylvia adds the variable to the west's water equation that the Sunday Mag article left out: the ecosystems and endangered species angle (here and here).

Posted on October 22, 2007 04:20 PM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Water Policy

October 19, 2007

Citing carbon emissions, Kansas rejects coal plants

Hard to say what John Marburger would say about this (more on him in a minute), but yesterday Kansas' Secretary of Health and Environment cited carbon emissions in rejecting the application to install two 700MW coal plants in western Kansas.

The move may be more about politics than about climate, but whatever the reasons, the decision was sold on climate and that's as important as it is surprising. It's also another loud declaration that the states aren't going to wait around for a national-level policy to move on climate mitigation. Here's hoping that the losers on this decision give more thought to developing a profitable wind project on the plains than to giving lawyers millions to argue the coal case. (The quote from the coal plant developer's spokesman, "We are extremely upset over this arbitrary and capricious decision" invokes the legal key phrase that spells l-a-w-s-u-i-t.)

News on the Kansas move comes on the heels of some bizarre statements on climate change from Mr. Marburger. I'm not sure what his agenda is, exactly, but the Washington Post today has him saying

...the target of preventing Earth from warming more than two degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, "is going to be a very difficult one to achieve and is not actually linked to regional events that affect people's lives."

and

Marburger said that while there is general agreement that human activity is producing too much carbon dioxide and "you could have emerging disasters long before you get to two degrees. . . . There is no scientific criterion for establishing numbers like that."

I'm wondering what the point of saying this is. Is he trying to pave the way for the Bush White House to say, "We're not going to target 2 degrees, we're going to target 3."? Certainly his "not linked to regional events" statement is an absurd misdirection, completely ignoring risk while seeming to make a case for inaction due to incomplete information. His second statement essentially does the same, this time acknowledging risk but implying that it is not well-enough characterized to make policy choices. Are Mr. Marburger's statements part of a White House communication strategy or is this really how he is approaching and advising the problem?

Posted on October 19, 2007 03:07 PM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change

October 18, 2007

NFIP reauthorization moving along

In what could become the most significant change to the National Flood Insurance Program since it started in 1968, yesterday Senate Banking unanimously passed out of committee its markup of H.R. 3121, which passed the House on September 27. H.R. 3121, the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2007, pushes through a small but significant number of changes to the NFIP, including some to address the biggest problem with the NFIP: that it does not (and cannot, because it is not isolated from political interference) charge actuarially-sound rates on the policies it writes.

The bill has 36 sections so I'm not going to pick it apart here, but here are a few things I latched on to (the Senate bill isn't available yet so the section numbers refer to H.R.3121.EH):

- Quite a few authorizations for studies or reports (yea, I know, I know, but it's something) on charging actuarially-sound rates, increasing policy holding, including building codes in flood management criteria (go figure); and the creation of a National Flood Insurance Advocate whose main purpose is to write reports.

- Section 4 specifically phases in actuarially-sound rates for non-primary residences and nonresidential properties. This is a great start, but of course specifically and purposefully leaves out setting actuarially-sound rates for most policy holders! It also caps the increase for buildings built before 1974 (known as "pre-FIRM" properties) at 20% and 25% for nonresidential and non-primary residences respectively.

- Section 11 raises the cap on annual policy rate increases from 10% to 15%. Again, at least it's something.

- The House bill carried Section 7, adding coverage for wind in addition to flood. This would be a major, major change. The Senate Banking-passed bill, perhaps responding to a White House veto threat over the provision, left that out with a marker (an amendment offered and withdrawn by Schumer and Martinez).

- Section 36 gives authorization for adding a neat little warning on flood maps. For any area within the 100-yr floodplain that is protected by a dam or levee the maps "may" carry the following disclaimer: "NOTE: This area is shown as being protected from at least the 1-percent-annual-chance flood hazard by levee, dike, or other structure. Overtopping or failure of any flood control structure is possible. Property owners are encouraged to evaluate their flood risk, based on full and accurate information, and to consider flood insurance coverage as appropriate." (A similar warning for the 500-yr floodplain is also included.) In the language of the legislative, the section uses "may" instead of "shall" for the warning. In other words, it authorizes but does not mandate a warning. That means it may never reach the flood maps and whether or not it does will be open to political pressure, but considering that mapmakers are geeks I can only assume that warning will appear on every map.

I haven't seen the Senate Banking-passed bill and of course we will have to wait for the bill that comes out of the full Senate and then the Conference Committee, but in general these are very positive developments. They don't go far enough in reforming the NFIP, but they are a solid start.

Posted on October 18, 2007 04:44 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Disasters

August 29, 2007

Twenty years of public opinion about global warming

Matt Nisbet has a good paper out now about polling results on global warming. The pdf is here and general paper link here.

The polling supports what we've been saying for a while: the public is there. They believe (even if they think the scientific consensus isn't as strong as it really is).

The science community has been freaking out for years about trying to answer the "we're screaming at them about this problem, why aren't they doing anything about it???" question. The stock answer from climate scientists is either about skeptics sowing doubt, or the problem is too complicated, or something like that, but it usually comes down to, "the public just isn't convinced that it's a problem." Matt's paper shows that clearly the public is aware of global warming and does think it is a problem.

So why are we (through our electeds) still not doing anything about it then? Because even the public realizes that the solutions are very, very difficult and will probably mean considerable pain. (And no politician wants to inflict pain on his/her constituents.) Perhaps the collective is making its own collective calculation: a world without potentially disruptive-to-catastrophic global warming or a world without coal-fired electricity and 20mpg family sedans?

This is really my insidious way of making a strong plea to the climate science policy (funding) community: stop spending money on GCMs. Start spending those billions we spend on basic climate research on climate solutions. We do not need 21 models feeding the IPCC process to see the risks. In a resource-limited science funding world, we know enough already about how climate works to see the risks.

What we don't see is how we're going to shovel ourselves out of this mess. We would do quite well to quit crying about science budgets, climate skeptics and inaccurate media representations and finally turn our energies to usable, useful science for a very uncertain future. Our politicians and policymakers will listen if we give them useful solutions, especially if we work with them to figure out what kind of information is useful to them. They will continue to NOT listen if we decide to pad our status quo by indefinitely giving them journals filled with GCM studies and 500-page IPCC reports that are all science and no ways out.

Posted on August 29, 2007 01:09 PM View this article | Comments (5)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change

August 20, 2007

New Changnon paper on winter storm losses

Keeping in line with similar research being done here on hurricanes (Roger and colleagues) and earthquakes (me), Stanley Changnon has a new paper out on winter storm losses. The abstract:

Winter storms are a major weather problem in the USA and their losses have been rapidly increasing. A total of 202 catastrophic winter storms, each causing more than $1 million in damages, occurred during 1949–2003, and their losses totaled $35.2 billion (2003 dollars). Catastrophic winter storms occurred in most parts of the contiguous USA, but were concentrated in the eastern half of the nation where 88% of all storm losses occurred. ... The time distribution of the nation’s 202 storms during 1949–2003 had a sizable downward trend, whereas the nation’s storm losses had a major upward trend for the 55-year period. This increase over time in losses, given the decrease in storm incidences, was a result of significant temporal increases in storm sizes and storm intensities. Increases in storm intensities were small in the northern sections of the nation, but doubled across the southern two-thirds of the nation, reflecting a climatic shift in conditions producing intense winter storms.

The interesting zeroth- or first-order conclusion is that when using damage trends as a proxy for climatic trends, no climatic trends can be seen in hurricanes while a strong one can be seen in winter storms. From the latest Pielke et al. hurricane paper:

...it should be clear from the normalized estimates that while 2004 and 2005 were exceptional from the standpoint of the number of very damaging storms, there is no long-term trend of increasing damage over the time period covered by this analysis.

Whereas from the Changnon paper on winter storms:

Significant temporal increases in storm losses, storm sizes, and storm intensity have occurred in the United States. The national increase over time in losses, given the decrease in storm incidences, was a result of the increases over time in storm sizes and intensities. The marked temporal increases in storm sizes and storm intensities were greatest across the southern two-thirds of the nation.

Posted on August 20, 2007 02:38 PM View this article | Comments (6)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change | Disasters

July 17, 2007

Where is public confidence in science?

Coming in a little late to this one, but on 30-June the WSJ ran an op-ed by Roy Grinker of George Washington University on the vaccines-autism circus. The article is moneywalled, of course, so you'll need special access to see it, but a couple of snippets should give a good idea of his arguments.

I base my opinion on scientific literature and no court decision is going to change it. Neither will a court decision change the minds of the antivaccine advocates. Two distinct communities have emerged, and though they both employ the language of science, their ideas are simply incommensurable. The two groups co-exist, like creationism and evolutionary biology, but they operate on such different premises that a true dialogue is nearly impossible.

The real problem here, as we have pointed out a few thousand times, is Dan Sarewitz's excess of objectivity. There is enough ammunition for both sides to keep firing.

We should not expect too much out of this trial, or the next eight. The scientific community and antivaccine parent groups will each continue to look for clues under their own lampposts, because that is where the light is. But we should pay careful attention to this conflict. The antivaccine movement may be evidence that public confidence in science is eroding, which means that public health is at risk too.

Grinker may be right here, but I think something else is important that he misses. The vaccines debate is not and has never been about the science, and it will continue to not be about the science. It is about whether it is reasonable for the government to mandate (whether it does so explicitly or implicitly) that all children receive vaccines. This is a social liberty and public health policy question, not a science question. The antivaccine movement has been forced to debate in the world of science when they want to be debating in the world of social policy. But science as a machine is a hard thing to stand up to, and the antivaccine movement must have sensed that they would get more traction making arguments about bad science than about social liberty. Clearly the argument "I don't want the government to force my kid to get a shot" is a lot less compelling than "the government is poisoning our kids and covering it up with bad science."

Posted on July 17, 2007 08:27 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Health

June 27, 2007

The nothingness that is the new energy bill

First, as an aside, my favorite quote on the new web in a long time: 'This is what happens, he suggests, "when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule."' From this review of Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur. I suspect Roger will agree with that sentiment as applied to blogs (the review specifically singles out blogs as fitting that mold). I actually don't. I think it takes some combing, but some blogs provide just as much insight and detailed intellectual analysis on our societal issues as the best full-time "professional" commentators.

Second, you've probably realized that Prometheus is now in the midst of its normal summerly slowdown. We are academics after all, and we like to take the summers off. I (and probably Roger, despite his telling y'all that he was done) will be throwing posts up here and there throughout the summer, but it's going to be slow until late August or early September.

Finally, to the subject of this post. For now I'll let Thomas Friedman say it for me about the "new" energy bill that the Senate passed last week:

The whole Senate energy effort only reinforced my feelings that we’re in a green bubble — a festival of hot air by the news media, corporate America and presidential candidates about green this and green that, but, when it comes to actually doing something hard to bring about a green revolution at scale — and if you don’t have scale on this you have nothing — we wimp out. Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is that we are really doing something about it.

Then again, the debate on this energy bill was a lot less about climate than about energy independence. Watching how hard it was to get even this pidly little bill passed, that Congress will address energy independence and climate simultaneously now seems as remote as ever. It really makes you wonder who is talking to the editorial page writers of the major papers, some of whom ate the bait and ponied up that this was a significant new change in energy policy. The weakness of this bill tells me more than ever that we better start thinking a lot harder about adaptation to anthropogenic climate change, lest we follow the fate of Jared Diamond's not-so-shining examples.

Posted on June 27, 2007 08:32 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Energy Policy

June 12, 2007

Aren't new problems always old problems?

Congress is back at trying to reform the problematic National Flood Insurance Program. What's curious is the claim that NFIP's problems are recent and related to the 2005 hurricane season. This CQ article says:

The program, which provides virtually all water-damage insurance in the country, had to borrow that amount to pay out the unprecedented number of claims generated by Hurricane Katrina and the other 2005 storms that ravaged the Gulf of Mexico coast.
Lawmakers and experts say the 2005 storms revealed weaknesses in the program that must be addressed to put it back on sound financial footing.

The number of claims may have been unprecedented but the borrowing from the federal treasury to back up the insurance pool certainly was not unprecedented. And it is absurd to suggest that it took the 2005 storm year to "reveal weaknesses in the program." The literature is deep on the NFIP's problems and one of the biggest is that rate-setting isn't protected from political tinkering, so NFIP can't charge actuarially-sound premiums. So it's nice to see that Congress is trying to address NFIP's problems, but the question is will Congress protect NFIP from Congress?

Posted on June 12, 2007 04:42 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Disasters

June 11, 2007

A little percolation on energy policy

Two things I noted today:

1- From the No S#%@! category, the Bush Administration seems eager to let everybody know that there will be no movement whatsoever on regulating carbon until January 2009 at the earliest. If you caught even a bit of the G8 news you already knew that (and somebody got me saying as much before G8). But apparently the Bush Administration wants to drive the point home, so last week they turned EPA Administrator Johnson loose at a House hearing:

U.S. President George W. Bush wouldn't sign into law an anti-global warming bill that includes a so-called cap and trade program, the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator told U.S. lawmakers Friday.
During a congressional hearing, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash. asked Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson if the president would sign into law legislation that would create the nation's first cap and trade program aimed at specifically limiting climate change-causing pollutants.

Johnson simply replied, "No."

In response, Inslee, a cap and trade policy proponent, criticized Johnson, saying he hopes Johnson has his prediction wrong.

"I hope you're premature. I hope you haven't checked with the president," he said, during a hearing held by the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "I hope you're not authorized to say that."

Two things caught my attention here. As far as I can tell, Johnson's appearance before this House Select Committee was entirely voluntary [that's the first item of note] since this is a select committee with no legislation-writing authority, no subpoena power, no budget authority, and no jurisdiction over any federal agency. So Johnson's willingness to appear was either:

a) a really nice gesture, showing that he, the EPA, and the Bush Administration genuinely want to discuss climate change in the open in front of this House committee; or

b) a way for the Bush Administration to make a strong and very public statement to Congress to not bother wasting anybody's time on trying to pass a carbon tax or cap-and-trade [that's the second item] because it's going to be vetoed faster than Bush can click-click his ballpoint pen.

2- Senator Bingaman has been crazy busy getting energy legislation to the floor. His package passed cloture today and will start seeing floor action tomorrow. I am still very interested in how the whole coal synfuel mess will play out. I won't be surprised if the final bill includes either mandates or heavy subsidies for liquid coal synfuels without mandating that any coal-derived liquid fuels include carbon capture and sequestration. If this happens Congress will essentially be encouraging a strong ramp up in the carbon intensity of our fuel supply.

Secondly, if you peruse the legislation on the floor and the ancillary materials out there you might notice the conspicuous absence of yesterday's hot energy item: hydrogen. Hydrogen hype has apparently been replaced with biofuels hype, perhaps because there is a natural constituency for biofuels (the entire Midwest) and a much diminished one for hydrogen production. Or perhaps because energy thinkers finally got through to the speech writers that hydrogen is and always will be EROI negative?

Finally, I note the sad passing of Senator Craig Thomas of Wyoming. His absence might change the tenor of the coal debate as he was a strong supporter of coal, the Powder River Basin being in his state. This change in debate might be a good thing, but Senator Thomas' passing was not, obviously for his family but also for the Senate in general. He was one of the nicest men I came across in my short time there, I had great interactions with his staff and I know he was well respected across both sides of the aisle.

Posted on June 11, 2007 10:59 PM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Energy Policy

June 06, 2007

Curious quote from the recalcitrant

It's nothing new: rather than make better cars Detroit would lobby. So it's no surprise that the big-3 chiefs are running to DC together to beg that they not be held to even the most milquetoast efficiency regulations. What is curious, though, is GM's CEO's choice of words:

"It looks like within the climate that's being experienced now, it's very likely there will be increases in CAFE," Rick Wagoner, General Motors Corp. chairman and chief executive, said Tuesday in Wilmington, Del. "I think our concern is, let's make sure that we also fix the real problems while we're doing that."

Of course he meant "political climate" not "Earth's climate," which makes his quote ironic. But what I'm really curious about is what he sees as "the real problems" that Congress should be addressing instead of getting America far more energy efficient than it is, both for climate and energy supply reasons. It never ceases to impress me that Detroit can scream and cry about how being forced to improve the efficiency of their product will lead to a loss of jobs, without being challenged in the slightest. As if fewer cars will be sold because the cars are made slightly more efficient? Somebody explain....

Posted on June 6, 2007 11:47 AM View this article | Comments (19)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Energy Policy

May 30, 2007

Here comes the rain, kids. NASA administrator says global warming ain't no stinking problem.

Hat tip (and bow and all praise thee) to Mr. Fleck who passed it along. NPR just sent out a press release previewing a Steve Inskeep interview airing on tomorrow's Morning Edition with NASA Administration Michael Griffin. The title of the press release? How about

NASA ADMINISTRATOR MICHAEL GRIFFIN NOT SURE THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS A PROBLEM

Ok. The rest of the press release goes on to say [my bolds]

May 30, 2007; Washington, DC – NASA Administrator Michael Griffin tells NPR News that while he has no doubt “a trend of global warming exists, I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”
In an interview with Steve Inskeep airing tomorrow on NPR News’ Morning Edition, Administrator Griffin says “I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

Oh my. Here is the transcript that NPR released:

STEVE INSKEEP: One thing that’s been mentioned that NASA is perhaps not spending as much money as it could on is studying climate change, global warming, from space. Are you concerned about global warming?
MICHAEL GRIFFIN: I am aware that global warming -- I’m aware that global warming exists. I understand that the bulk of scientific evidence accumulated supports the claim that we’ve had about a one degree centigrade rise in temperature over the last century to within an accuracy of 20 percent. I’m also aware of recent findings that appear to have nailed down -- pretty well nailed down the conclusion that much of that is manmade. Whether that is a long term concern or not, I can’t say.

MR. INSKEEP : And I just wanted to make sure that I’m clear. Do you have any doubt that this is a problem that mankind has to wrestle with?

MR. GRIFFIN: I have no doubt that global -- that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

MR. INSKEEP : Is that thinking that informs you as you put together the budget? That something is happening, that it’s worth studying, but you’re not sure that you want to be battling it as an army might battle an enemy.

MR. GRIFFIN: Nowhere in NASA’s authorization, which of course governs what we do, is there anything at all telling us that we should take actions to affect climate change in either one way or another. We study global climate change, that is in our authorization, we think we do it rather well. I’m proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to quote “battle climate change.”

Ok, let's start with the last -- and least important -- point. Griffin is right: nobody is asking NASA to battle climate change, only study it. (Somebody should be asking the DoE to battle it and we shouldn't need the Supreme Court to direct that EPA try to address it, but that's another issue.) Inskeep lets the issue blend into NASA "battling it" as a funding issue when he should have kept up on the more salient point that Griffin led him directly to: does your personal opinion that global warming isn't a problem translate into deemphasizing the study of global warming and climate change across NASA's budget? Inskeep let Griffin get away without answering that question directly.

The next question could have been: 'were you picked for this job because of this opinion? Before offering you the post did Bush Administration officials give you a litmus test that included your views on climate change?'

The next question might be: 'On your statement, "I understand that the bulk of scientific evidence accumulated supports the claim that we’ve had about a one degree centigrade rise in temperature over the last century to within an accuracy of 20 percent." Are you trying to downplay scientific certainty by saying this (the "within an accuracy of 20 percent" part); or do you really not have a solid grasp of the science basics; or did you just slip up?'

There are a lot of avenues Griffin could have gone down in this interview, but the one he chose seems to me be only slightly better than the worst tack he could have taken (denying outright that there is a problem). Although I don't agree, even with this statement I don't have a huge problem: "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with." But what comes next,

To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

indicates to me that Griffin has absolutely no appreciation for the risk that anthropogenic climate change poses. Risk implies both knowledge and uncertainty and if Griffin simply wanted to make a point about uncertainty I'd concede it. But instead he seems to simply cast out the severe risks that do exist in favor of some sort of fig leaf that says "we may have altered the climate but we're too arrogant if we think we should stop altering it because our alterations might be good for other people." Unbelievable.

Posted on May 30, 2007 04:30 PM View this article | Comments (28)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change

May 29, 2007

The messy and messier politics of AGW solutions

Back on May 2nd I wrote about the looming coal vs. global warming fight in Congress. Today the NY Times put the issue up as its lead article (at least in the national edition). Edmund Andrews covers the issue well, bringing out various issues of price, competing priorities and constituent politics. (To recap my post: despite Senate ENR staffers trying to paint a rosy picture about a four-bill markup of some easy and no-brainer energy packages, coal state Senators still made a big stink about mandating coal synfuels.)

This is an issue setting itself up well (and early) to be one of the major boondoggles in crafting policy that effectively brings down GHG emissions. It essentially pits energy independence goals against GHG reduction goals when they should be addressed simultaneously in the same direction. Smart policy will reduce exposure to global warming risk and energy provenance issues together; bad policy will allow the two issues to battle each other.

The elephant in this room, only hinted at in Andrews' article and only briefly mentioned in my post, is setting government targets for specific fuels. Coal state Members want to write into any energy/climate legislation either mandated volume purchase targets for liquefied coal fuels or heavy subsidies for the industry. But the coal-to-liquid conversion process releases a lot of carbon dioxide, and when confronted with this, coal supporters point out that carbon dioxide can be captured during the process and sequestered (known as carbon capture and storage, or CCS).

The key here is "can be" as in can be captured. It should be appended with "but won't" unless any legislation mandating or heavily subsidizing liquefied coal also provides a mandate that any fuel derived from coal captures CO2, and also provides the subsidies to make that CCS possible. Will legislators go that far? Listening to Congress, especially the language coming out of Jeff Bingaman's committee, I've heard a lot of discussion of subsidies to build synfuel plants and a lot of discussion about mandating fuel quotas or providing generous per-gallon tax credits, but nothing about also footing the bill for CCS. Keeping in mind that some lawmakers already want to give coal synfuels a $0.50/gal subsidy before even considering the carbon capture issues, requiring carbon CCS on the coal synfuel process means pricing coal synfuels well out of economic competitiveness.

The coal issue illustrates again the problems with government picking winners and losers instead of setting generalized targets to be met across a wide swath of economic players. Doing this with ethanol has already led to a international socioeconomic backlash, rightly or wrongly drawing in Mexican citizens decrying the rising price of the corn they depend upon for food. Anything close to a mandate for coal synfuels will mean a new avenue for climate change politicization. Have we learned yet from past lessons? Edmund Andrews hints that we probably haven't:

But some energy experts, as well as some lawmakers, worry that the scale of the coal-to-liquid incentives could lead to a repeat of a disastrous effort 30 years ago to underwrite a synthetic fuels industry from scratch.
When oil prices plunged in the 1980s, the government-owned Synthetic Fuels Corporation became a giant government albatross that lost billions and remains a symbol of misguided industrial policy more than 25 years later.

Posted on May 29, 2007 03:41 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

May 09, 2007

--It's sort of a screw-up--

From the LA Times today:

California homeowners are rejecting new rebates for solar power equipment, saying the state has made installing the rooftop panels far more costly than expected.
As a result, Public Utilities Commission reports show a decline of 78% in rebate requests in the first three months of this year, compared with last year, and the solar installation industry says it is threatened with collapse across much of California.

At issue is a requirement the state added Jan. 1 for getting a rebate under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Million Solar Roofs program. Applicants must first sign up for costly pricing plans offered by utilities that charge more for their electricity during hours of peak demand.

etc....

Posted on May 9, 2007 10:39 AM View this article | Comments (2)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Energy Policy

May 04, 2007

Proxmire alive and well reports Enquirer

There was a minor storm in the science community over the past couple of days as two Republican House members offered amendments (here's one, here's the other) to the NSF authorization bill (H.R. 1867) to strip funding for existing projects.

This kind of debate has been going on for decades, really since the beginning of post-WWII science policy, but it's important to revisit the issue. Should Congress step in for peer-review panels of experts in determining project funding? Maybe. It's an open values question that we are constantly rehashing, and for good reason. Elected politicians should constantly question how the taxpayer's money is spent. That's their job. But should individual Members perhaps read past the title and abstract of a project they object to when speaking on the House floor? Probably.

The latest iteration of this long-running fight is covered well by Jeffery Brainard in a Chronicle of Higher Ed story posted today.

Posted on May 4, 2007 10:31 AM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Science Policy: General

May 02, 2007

A preview of things to come

In case you were one of those optimists thinking that the change in Congressional control meant a coming slew of passed legislation dealing with GHGs, or that January 2009 means welcome to the new era of GHG regulations or even clear sailing for logical no regrets policies that address oil dependence and carbon mitigation, you got a nice preview today of battles to come.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources, now chaired by Senator Bingaman of New Mexico, tried to hold an easy combined markup on four bills that deal with biofuels (S.987), energy efficiency (S.1115) and carbon CCS (S.962 and S.731). There was apparently a "divisive" roadblock in that the coal-state Senators wanted a new mandate on coal-derived transportation fuels (apparently they think we should be adding more CO2 to the atmosphere per VMT rather than less). There was a tentative deal to allay that issue until the bill package went to the floor, where it could be debated by the full Senate, but the deal broke down in a rather nasty way and forced a party-line vote, with some Dems voting against the coal fuels amendment that they otherwise supported. Ah, the era of bipartisan cooperation to solve our nation's most pressing problems.... (CQ story here) (And if you think the politicking on this was constrained to the ENR hearing room, see the players deployed to lobby in this story.)

That this package could not pass easily, with the contentious issues worked out before markup, is certainly a sign that meaningful climate mitigation legislation is going to be bloody and a long time in coming. It also illustrates some of the messy compromises that will come with climate legislation, some of which may actually increase carbon emissions. Sure, CO2 could be captured at the coal-to-synfuel plant, thus preventing the extra CO2 that coal synfuel production emits from hitting the atmosphere and leaving a zero-sum between burning synfuel or gasoline. But with a liquefied coal mandate sitting alongside a biofuels mandate who actually thinks that in the end a requirement for capturing CO2 at the coal synfuels production site is going to happen? With all the people who want to make it and want to use it (i.e. the military), the economic pressures on not driving up the price by requiring carbon CCS are already clear.

Posted on May 2, 2007 02:27 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change | Energy Policy

May 01, 2007

taking options off the table....

Interesting exchange between Bill Maher and Sheryl Crow and Laurie David. Or not. I saw it on the NEI Nuclear Notes blog, so you can go there to get the exchange, or see it on youtube. Basically the upshot that NEI reports is yes yes yes we need to cut GHG emissions but no no no way do we need nuclear to do that.

What's interesting to me is not the content but the tone of the conversation. Listen to Crow adamantly cut off Maher from bringing nuclear into the discussion. We want to talk about low-carb energy but we don't want you to talk about nuclear. When Crow stalls out on giving good reasons to disavow nuclear David comes in with a little misdirection, laying fuel economy standards down as a step to be taken to avoid bringing nuclear into the picture.

I'll give Crow/David the benefit of the doubt that they didn't have the time or the prep to really get into the hidden subsidy issues that make nuclear a more expensive option than it appears. But for being so concerned about GHGs, a staunchly anti-nuclear stance -- taking a major GHG reduction option off the table -- is curious.

The non-idealist reality is that all options need to be on the table, and all options -- including nuclear -- need to be honestly accounted for. Hidden subsidies of nuclear, including insurance issues (the U.S. government insures nuclear plants because private companies won't -- Price-Anderson was just renewed through 2025), should be compared to the true cost of solutions like wind, which currently gets a generous PTC to keep it competitive.

Wind and solar are not viable options for baseload power, which is what coal provides. What we should be talking about is replacing the dirty, old baseload coal plants with nuclear plants while also bringing renewables online. And while David is right that [aggressive] efficiency and waste issues would make a big dent in demand, thinking that we're going to solve our energy supply issues through efficiency gains shows a pretty deep misunderstanding of the way incentives and the market works here. You can wait and wait for efficiency gains to significantly reduce GHG emissions and you're going to be waiting for a very long time.

Beyond the sound bites, fairly thorough studies on the competing economics (and other issues) of nuclear, coal and renewables are here and here.

Posted on May 1, 2007 11:45 AM View this article | Comments (4)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Energy Policy

April 30, 2007

What's a poor science type to do?

I saw in Point Carbon's daily update today the following headline:

"ENVIRONMENTALISTS CALL FOR IPCC TO PROVIDE STRONG MESSAGE ON CLIMATE CHANGE"

So you already know what this is about. The subline on Point Carbon's article is

Environmental groups today called on the world’s scientists not to water down a long-awaited report on mitigating climate change when it is published this Friday

But I wonder if the advocacy groups pushing this kind of message have really thought through the consequences of such advocacy. The message is unequivocal: make the science report say what we want it to say. Oh, and do it by Friday. Thanks! But what if the IPCC WGIII authors were to respond to Greenpeace et al.'s pressure?

Changing the report at the last minute in either direction as a result of interest group pressure would mean an instant loss of credibility for what should be the single most credible document on climate change. Advocacy groups must realize that they rely on the IPCC's credibility when they talk about climate change. Without a credible third-party document to point to, advocacy groups are left to preach to the choir. With an international consensus document behind them they can stand on its results to push their message to a larger audience.

Although it doesn't exactly happen this way in practice, scientists have cachet because they have the reputation of responding to scientific results, not political pressure. Respond to Greenpeace et al.'s pressure now would mean tanking their credibility (the news would most definitely get out), taking Greenpeace's with it. So why are the let's do something about climate change now! advocates trying to undercut the credibility of their strongest pillar?

My guess is that advocacy groups know this already. They don't expect the IPCC to change anything based on their advocacy, but are simply looking for a quick route to broad media coverage (which hasn't happened yet ... Point Carbon is the only site I found the news on). But I suspect there are smarter ways to garner media attention than by publicly asking a group of ostensibly independent scientists to change a major report to their liking.

Posted on April 30, 2007 01:23 PM View this article | Comments (11)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Climate Change

April 10, 2007

The series of tubes pumps internets and horses and oil and gas

A few days ago Roger had seen everything when Jim Hansen came out with some STSish words. This morning I heard an NPR interview with Alaska Senator Ted Stevens made me think the same thing – now I've heard everything.

I've been watching Alaska's R electeds dance around climate change for a while now – my experience starting with a Senate EPW markup of a transportation bill in 2003 where Sen. Murkowski tried to attach an amendment to study the effects of permafrost melting on infrastructure. (Stay with me now – it's in Section 502(c)(14)(D) of this bill and reads in total "develop better methods to reduce the risk of thermal collapse, including collapse from changes in underlying permafrost" in a section about research. Sniffing even the barest hint of global warming legislation, then-Chair Inhofe tried to kill the amendment but it passed with all of the Democrats and (I think) Senator Chaffee's vote.)

What to do in a state built on oil royalties but suffering under noticeable warming? Well, one thing you can do (especially if your name is Ted Stevens) is say that you have a problem while denying that you are in any way part of the problem. And so that's what Senator Stevens did this morning on NPR:

INSKEEP: "...Senator, you've been speaking out more and more about climate change." (minute 1:50)

Stevens then goes on to say that the noticeable effects on Alaska are that the storms are greater, the trees are growing further north and the permafrost is thinner. ("...we see the effects of change...")

And then it gets weird. Stevens starts talking about the results of climate change and that "we want to deal with the results now and let other people argue about the causes." Then, "the causes, if there are causes, are caused in Chicago and New York and not caused by our small population in Alaska."

Ok. Then it gets indecipherable. At minute 2:47 Inskeep asks if that explains why Stevens has signed on to a fuel economy bill. It slides into something about people "trying to shut down the area that is not any part of the cause" (he means North Slope oil). Inskeep presses again and you can hear Stevens get heated at 3:29 and then say (no joke), "oil and gas doesn't have anything to do with global warming! How do you make the connection between producing oil in Alaska and global warming?!? That global warming comes from the millions of automobiles that are burning the oil!" And so on... He tries to make the point that if the US didn't get it from Alaska it would get it from somewhere else (true I suppose, but totally missing the point) and that Alaska isn't part of the problem because there are only a couple of roads in the whole state. Truly bizarre.

Note to Senator Stevens' staffers: you are paid to prevent things like this episode. You just made it worse.

Posted on April 10, 2007 01:58 PM View this article | Comments (12)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Energy Policy

April 06, 2007

Still responding to the last disaster

Eric Berger, the Houston Chron's SciGuy has a Q&A up with David Paulison, the current FEMA chief. There are some interesting things in there:

Q. At some point do you advise someone in the federal government that programs like federal flood insurance should be revisited?
A. We need to re-look at the whole flood insurance program itself. How we provide flood insurance, what we're going to charge for it, what requirement we're going to have to get flood insurance. I don't have all the answers for that right now, I can tell you that.

From what I've seen, the main problem is that NFIP is not allowed to be a true insurance market because political interference from Congress will not allow NFIP to charge actuarially-sound rates. Maybe Mr. Paulison is just being demure in not wanting to poke at Congress in describing the true problem here, but if he's not going to do it who is?

What really catches my eye in the interview, though, is the last question and answer:

Q. Is there a particular disaster scenario that keeps you up at night?
A. What keeps me up at night is a category-4 or 5 coming into this area (New Orleans.) It really does. We could talk about the terrorist issues, with the nuclear bombs, or pandemic flu, but we know we're going to have hurricanes. We've got so many people in travel trailers, so many people in mobile homes, an area that the infrastructure is so fragile. For another category-4 or 5 storm to come in here would be devastating for this entire country. That keeps you awake at night.

There it is. You need no other evidence that FEMA is still fighting the last war. I sincerely hope that FEMA is being a lot more forward thinking than just worrying about another hurricane hit on New Orleans. Just to bring up one example, the next earthquake in LA or SF that rivals the shaking of the 1906 San Francisco quake is projected to do $200 billion in damage, roughly double what Katrina brought to New Orleans.

Posted on April 6, 2007 02:24 PM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Disasters

What to think about (western) water?

Wednesday's NYT had a long article about western water by Randal Archibold and Kirk Johnson. The issue is nothing to new to us out here, but holds important lessons for the rest of the country as well.

First read the article. Then realize the most important lesson not discussed in the article: this is not just a western issue. I and colleagues at Eastern Kentucky University and Columbia University are conducting research which I'll describe here over the next few months on New York City and drought (part of our project is developing the paleoclimatology of Hudson River precip, the other is the policy implications). NYC has declared drought emergency after emergency over the past twenty years in what has been a relatively wet two decades compared to the previous five centuries. This has happened not amid increasing use, but decreasing use. New York City isn't the only example of a perhumid region experiencing drought or water availability crises, as areas of the southeast and Pacific Northwest battle over water.

Second, perhaps inadvertently the article perfectly illustrates the shortsighted response to water supply issues under future climate. Many communities over the past decades have put strong focus on consumption reductions (see that NYC water page again, which shows a steady decline in total consumption and per capita consumption). But when water supply issues come out and politicians start getting asked about the response, one keyword is thrown like a ninja star at the reporter: concrete. More steel, more infrastructure, more technology. In other words, more serial engineering.

If you've flown into Los Angeles or Las Vegas with a window seat you know the real problem. Every backyard in LA has a large turquoise rectangle and the number of golf courses in Las Vegas seems to equal the number of slot machines. But these are just small manifestations of the real problem: mentality. It would be hard to dispute the west's unlimited consumption mentality, starting from the grass roots of lawn watering at single family homes and spreading all the way up to the top:

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has sounded alarm bells by pushing for a ballot measure in 2008 that would allocate $4.5 billion in bonds for new water storage in the state. The water content in the Sierra Nevada snowpack has reached the lowest level in about two decades, state hydrologists have reported, putting additional pressure on the nation’s most populous state to find and store more water.

That paragraph neatly sums up the engineering response mentality for western water. The keywords are alarm bells, pressure, and store. Alarm bells are appropriate and it's good to see water/climate change risk translated into political concern. Pressure is also appropriate, but only if responded to intelligently. But store should be replaced with leadership, creativity and management. Four point five billion dollars in concrete will create a lot of jobs, but will not solve California's water issues.

The curious left-right fight on these issues always seems to slide back to growth, with clear anti- and pro-growth lines. In this context water supply issues are taken as a proxy on growth; if you're for limiting water consumption you must be anti-development (and thus a dirty Communist?). But beyond the rhetoric are two clear realities: we will continue to grow, sometimes even where there appears to be too little water; we're running toward a brick wall of water supply and continuing to live a no-questions-asked consumptive lifestyle that is at best shortsighted. In the future political leadership must raise and address the consumptive issues first as the primary challenge to tackle, and then see extra concrete only as a consequence of policy failure.

Posted on April 6, 2007 10:26 AM View this article | Comments (7)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Water Policy

March 28, 2007

if you want an example of selling science...

...see this post by Eric Berger. Eric details AccuWeather's chief hurricane forecaster making ... well, you can see for yourself what he's doing. Real solid work.

Posted on March 28, 2007 12:22 PM View this article | Comments (3)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Disasters

March 24, 2007

a little slowdown....

Roger is still spring breaking for a while and I'm going to be traveling a lot for the next three weeks, so Prometheus is going to get a bit thin, unless we can corral the occasional posters around here to get some material up. I'll try to post from the road but some of my travel will be computerless.

For you NY-based readers I'll be giving an earthquake mitigation policy talk at Lamont-Doherty on April 9th to the CHRR.

And I'll be in northern Michigan week of April 2 ... anybody up there want to invite me to give a talk so I can call that a business trip? 8-)

Posted on March 24, 2007 02:24 PM View this article | Comments (1)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K.

March 23, 2007

Who is SAIC?

I'm guessing that most of you inside or slightly inside or have-been inside the DC circuit know about SAIC and what they do for the government, but even those who know about SAIC probably don't know much. Vanity Fair has a long, detailed and fascinating piece up on SAIC and how they basically are the government. It's well worth the time. My favorite line:

Whether SAIC actually possesses all the expertise that it sells is another story

Right. That is, I suppose, the essence of the contracting scene. You want somebody to pay you to figure out how to do something so you can sell it to the next person at a profit....

Posted on March 23, 2007 02:23 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | government

March 22, 2007

Who is talking national cat insurance now?

The Florida Senators, of course. The Palm Beach Post has a story up about a new bill package from Sens. Nelson and Martinez. The bills aren't up yet in the Congressional tracking system so all we have is the PBP article, but there are some tantalizing clues in there:

But Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican, said their main legislative vehicle would be a bill Nelson filed in January that would create an advisory commission to recommend a federal catastrophic insurance program.
...

Among the bills introduced Tuesday is a proposal to create a national catastrophic insurance fund financed through insurance premiums.

Such a fund would operate as a national reinsurance program to backstop commercial reinsurance plans and state catastrophic insurance funds in the event of a major disaster.

This is a good start, but I hope they are planning on dealing with the underinsurance and adjustment problems in the other bills. The thinking might be that with federal backstop reinsurance, premiums offered by the direct insurers can be lower and the options greater, thus leading to higher rates of policyholding, but it's not clear. If that's not the thinking that I'm wondering what they are going for here, because I didn't see much problem with the reinsurance world absorbing Katrina's payouts.

The other measures include a Martinez bill, with Nelson co-sponsoring, to give a 25 percent tax credit to property owners for home improvements designed to help a the home withstand the impact of a natural disaster.

Nice to see somebody thinking about how to get individual homeowners to voluntarily undertake resilience upgrades. A point I've been making about the quake policy outlook is that it's focused far too heavily on basic and applied research and not on implementation strategies. And by implementation, I'm talking about issues just like this – how to get homeowners, business owners and municipalities to build resilience into their infrastructure based on the hazards knowledge we've already developed.

Martinez also offered a bill to streamline insurance regulation and a plan to create a 10-year, $4.3 billion national hurricane research initiative through the National Science Foundation.

That sounds good, but maybe not so good in the context of the $7B Pres. Bush asked for avian flu and the $8B the Senate authorized for it in 2005? (It was in the Senate-passed H.R. 3010 in the 109th session but the $8B didn't survive conference with the House.) Avian flu? Hurricanes? Hmmm.... You're going to argue that we can do both. I'm arguing that the message sent is that avian flu is a bigger direct and potential threat than hurricanes. Is it?

Posted on March 22, 2007 01:48 PM View this article | Comments (0)
Posted to Author: Vranes, K. | Disasters

March 21, 2007

Al Gore's appearance before Senate EPW

Today's climate change hearing at Senate EPW with Al Gore as sole witness just finished. A few thoughts.

The hearing had a format slightly altered from the usual, with Chair Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe giving opening statements, Mr. Gore getting 30 minutes to talk, Inhofe getting 15 minutes to question him, then the rest of the Senators getting their chances.

Sen. Inhofe tried hard to clown the hearing into irrelevance but Boxer struggled successfully to keep him in line and Gore did a good job of battling back. By the end of the hearing it was pretty clear that Inhofe has been pushed out to the fringes. He already was, of course, but previously he has had caucus members either behind him or willing to read directly from his sheaf of talking points. This time when the dust settled he looked startlingly alone.

During his talk Mr. Gore pushed a bunch of ideas, some of which were new and worth highlighting.

• The biggest bombshell was his second proposal: eliminate employment/payroll taxes and replace the revenue with a new carbon/pollution tax. This is the first time I've heard Mr. Gore specifically endorse a carbon tax, which automatically gives it new life in the policy debate. But more startling is the proposed revenue offset by eliminating payroll taxes.

• Mr. Gore's fourth proposal was to place an immediate moratorium on any new coal plant that is not outfitted with carbon capture and storage (sequestration) technology (CCS). This point was refreshed again and again throughout the hearing, especially as coal-state Senators asked their questions. This proposal is perhaps most interesting because it is not currently feasible and doesn't look like it'll be able to be implemented any time soon, so essentially Mr. Gore is saying, "stop building coal plants right now."

• The sixth proposal was to create an "electronet," meaning a distributed power system where small scale (to the level of individual homes) generators could put their power on the grid. This is an idea that has been around for a while and is the current buzz in clean energy policy, pushed pretty strongly by Amory Lovins and RMI. The thought is that centralized power in the form of massive coal and nuke plants is less efficient than distributed energy that can be used directly by the producer with excess sold back to the grid.

• The eighth proposal was to create a new federal mortgage lender that specifically deals in carbon neutral energy upgrades to homes (and call it "Connie Mae" following Fannie Mae). It was hard for me to grasp where he was going with this, but as far as I could tell it would be a lending instrument to borrow money for efficiency upgrades against the saving in energy costs produced by the upgrades. The loan would become a market-tradable financial instrument like home loans.

• Finally, Mr. Gore pressed for corporations to be required to disclose their carbon emissions to shareholders. He didn't say it, but I assume he meant that it would go on corporate SEC filings. This is something that has already been going around in the business world a bit, with companies starting to wonder if they need to disclose.

On the science: I was disappointed to see Mr. Gore stretching the science to his audience of Senators, but I'm willing to concede to Tom Yulsman (made in the 3rd comment to this post) that: "Should Gore be faulted for being an advocate? By definition, that's what politicians do. He is making a strong case for action, so of course he is going to emphasize some of the worst-case scenarios while downplaying less dire possibilities." Still, in his hearing testimony Mr. Gore highlighted recent sightings of manatees in unusual places, fires in Oklahoma and fires "raging out of control" all over the west as prime examples of global warming. I'm sticking to my point: Mr. Gore is representing the science now in a far more prominent way than any scientist, his words and presentations are based on many, many meetings with top climate scientists, and thus in a very real way, Mr. Gore is representing scientists. This time it wasn't even future projections but current events. No scientist would call the sighting of one manatee far up the Atlantic coast a clear indication of global warming. (These things happen –my graduate school advisor wrote a note in Nature describing why it wasn't strange to find coelacanths in the Sulawesi Sea.) The use of those examples to say "this is global warming, right here, right now!!" is perhaps not representing the science well.

Finally, some quick thoughts on Mr. Gore's interactions with the individual Senators on the panel. As the hearing went on I started to focus more on the R's than the D's and I finally realized why: the D's have been on board for a while, but up to this point the R's have been stalling. They aren't any longer, and almost to a person the R's made loud and positive noises about accepting the science and wanting to do something about it. So I started wanting to hear the next R, to hear how he (no female R's on EPW right now) was positioning himself on climate change, knowing that the R's are playing catch up.

Inhofe vs. Gore: Mr. Inhofe tried to trap Mr. Gore into a pledge to not use more energy than the average American household and to not use offsets/credits to buy off his increased energy use. This was a direct hit on the either well- or under-publicized (depending on your politics) blog post from the TN Center for Policy Research that Mr. Gore's house in TN uses more than twice the energy in one month than the average American family uses in one year. It seemed tough to wiggle out of but Mr. Gore responded by saying he buys wind power. Should have ended the conversation right there, but Inhofe had to keep clowning about it, of course. Still, I think Gore made his point.

Sen. Isakson (R-GA) was the first of many to push nuclear. Roger discussed Gore and nuclear previously here and Gore hasn't shifted much. He held throughout the hearing that nuclear would be part of the energy solution but only a small part. When pushed by the many pro-nuclear Senators he said the biggest reason for his bearish attitude was the cost. But I have to say: the cost-per-BTU of nuclear vs. the cost-per-BTU of coal with full CCS installed? I'm not sure CCS-coal is going to win that one.

Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) made a point I've been pushing for a while: that we are already passed the political tipping point for movement on climate change. I think if you consider the rhetoric and tone of the debate both among the elected and in the press, we are passed a tipping point on moving on climate change. Lieberman made the point that we better get past that political tipping point before we hit the climatological tipping point, which I suppose is a reference to a sudden Atlantic meridional overturning shutdown (few believe this is an immediate threat). Gore, however, disagreed that we've reached a political tipping point. But if we are not yet passed a tipping point, that implies that we could still slide back down, forget about all this and do nothing on climate change. I don't think that's going to happen; I think action is inevitable.

Sen. Craig (R-ID) pushed nuclear again (Idaho has a big national nuke lab) and accused the Clinton/Gore administration of killing some important nuclear funding. I find that pretty comical considering that Congress appropriates and Senator Craig has a very plush position on the approps committee. Craig also mentioned a new Dorgan/Craig bill on CAFE standards, but when I looked on Thomas I didn't see anything yet.

Sen. Baucus (D-MT) is an important voice in this debate because he is Chair of the Finance Committee. Remember Gore's proposal to kill payroll taxes and replace them with pollution (carbon) taxes? Anything like that would start and end with Baucus. And I have to say, Gore reiterated instituting a carbon tax and Baucus actually looked interested and engaged in thinking about it. Baucus also proclaimed his support for a cap-and-trade system and was adamant that it be economy-wide (i.e. not sector-based) without exemptions. Gore ended the interaction by saying, "put a price on carbon – tax is the best way, cap-and-trade will also do it."

Sen. Clinton (D-NY) is clearly engaged in the meat of these issues, regardless of her D'08 status. She asked pointed questions about whether we would need both a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade and when Gore said we should have both, she wanted to know how and why it would work to have both. (Kudos to her, I was wondering the same thing.) She also wanted more detail on the Connie Mae mortgage scheme and got into a quick back-and-forth with Gore on the details. Clinton's questions on the detail reminded me of her portrait in Joshua Green's Atlantic Monthly article.

Sen. Thomas (R-WY) – Here's where I saw the best bit of psychology of the afternoon. You could just tell from his first question/comment and demeanor that Thomas, like almost everybody else, was on board with trying to do something about climate. That he's from a coal state is only part of the equation; every time coal came up Gore went straight to the CCS card. But then Thomas, suddenly reading from his crib sheet, had to go to the standard dumb question about if weather prediction is bad so why can we rely on climate models? followed on by another ill-prepared skeptic standard. His staff should be fired.

Sen. Carper (D-DE) (one of my favorite policy wonk Senators) got into an exchange with Gore about the allocation of carbon pollution permits and input vs. output based caps. Gore had a chance to reiterate that if a cap-trade scheme comes along the permits should be auctioned, not distributed. Fine bit of inside policy there.

I've skipped a few of the more mundane exchanges.

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« Author: Vranes, K. »