In Newsweek, Sharon Begley quotes Nate Lewis of Cal Tech who has done some math:

“It’s not true that all the technologies are available and we just need the political will to deploy them,” he says. “My concern, and that of most scientists working on energy, is that we are not anywhere close to where we need to be. We are too focused on cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020—but you can always shave 20 percent off” through, say, efficiency and conservation. By focusing on easy, near-term cuts, we may miss the boat on what’s needed by 2050, when CO2 emissions will have to be 80 percent below today’s to keep atmospheric levels no higher than 450 parts per million. (We’re now at 386 ppm, compared with 280 before the Industrial Revolution.) That’s 80 percent less emissions from much greater use of energy.

Lewis’s numbers show the enormous challenge we face. The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.) Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon. That’s a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially since renewables kicked in a measly 0.2 terawatts in 2006 and nuclear provided 0.9 terawatts. Are you a fan of nuclear? To get 10 terawatts, less than half of what we’ll need in 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d have to build 10,000 reactors, or one every other day starting now. Do you like wind? If you use every single breeze that blows on land, you’ll get 10 or 15 terawatts. Since it’s impossible to capture all the wind, a more realistic number is 3 terawatts, or 1 million state-of-the art turbines, and even that requires storing the energy—something we don’t know how to do—for when the wind doesn’t blow. Solar? To get 10 terawatts by 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d need to cover 1 million roofs with panels every day from now until then. “It would take an army,” he says. Obama promised green jobs, but still.

My friend and colleague Tom Yulsman expresses some sincere conflict about noting Al Gore’s latest exaggeration. Tom writes of his blog post:

I thought quite hard about whether to post this, because I know people are going to attack me for undermining the cause of action on climate change. So let me clear: My intent is exactly the opposite. I fervently believe that we must take action both to reduce carbon emissions and to adapt to climate changes that are inevitable no matter what we do. And that’s why I published this. Because rallying support for action will depend on whether people can trust what they read in the press about climate change, and what public leaders on this issue are saying.

What is it that Gore said and Tom was reacting to?

[Businesses leaders] are seeing the complete disappearance of the polar ice caps right before their eyes in just a few years.

Tom writes:

I really do want to give former Vice President Al Gore the benefit of the doubt when it comes to global warming, since he has accomplished so much to raise awareness on the issue. But he just seems to be hard-wired to exaggerate — to his own detriment, as well as to the cause of reining in climate change.

And in this case, the failure of a journalist to challenge Gore’s assertion that all polar ice will be gone in a few years just makes the problem worse.

If Gore’s heart is in the right place, shouldn’t he get a pass on some slight exaggerations? Or is there some way to interpret Gore’s statements in such a way as they are not incorrect? It’s not like he is George Will or anything, right?

In what reminded me of the 1999 conversion error that led to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter, Scientific American’s 60 Second Science Blog noted a math error that contributed to the shuttering FutureGen, a clean-coal test-bed project, in 2008.  The Government Accountability Office released a report last week noting that the cost assessments for the project failed to consistently account for inflation.  This led to cost figures that appeared higher than they actually were, and the perceived cost overruns led to the cancellation of the project.

It’s entirely possible that FutureGen may not be able to deliver on what is promised.  But that gamble is better made when cost estimates, and other related math, are done properly.

This quote from an anonymous White House official in The Washington Post sums up the core tension of cap and trade.

We think a well-designed cap-and-trade program will not have an adverse short-term impact on energy prices. But if we’re completely eliminating the price signal, then we’re removing the incentives for investments in energy efficiency.

No cap and trade bill can at once send a meaningful price signal while at the same time not have an adverse impact on energy prices (in short or long terms). The following description of cap and trade in the Washington Post story also reflects this core tension:

. . . climate legislation will aim to reduce emissions by putting a price on carbon, raising the cost of everything from gasoline to plastics to electricity.

Will Congress act to raise the cost of everything? I don’t think so.

One of the best things about running Prometheus is the high caliber of discussions that take place in the comments. In response to President Obama’s recent comments on cap and trade, Roger Caiazza, an authority on such policies, shared the following in the comments and I thought it was worth highlighting for further discussion. I’d be happy to feature other expert perspectives as well.

Roger Caiazza on Cap and Trade

I have been involved with market-based pollution control programs since the inception of the acid rain program so I want to comment on the history of acid rain vs. CO2.

I disagree with the following [statement of President Obama]:

“Now, the experience of a cap and trade system thus far is that if you’re giving away carbon permits for free, then basically you’re not really pricing the thing and it doesn’t work, or people can game the system in so many ways that it’s not creating the incentive structures that we’re looking for.”

If the President is in fact making the distinction between CO2 cap and trade programs and those for other pollutants then we agree that they don’t work for CO2 but only disagree why.

Respectfully Mr. President I think that cap and trade programs work because they price the “thing” efficiently. For pollutants that can be controlled with add-on equipment or fuel characteristic changes the cap and trade model works well. Remember what we are talking about: a cap is established to limit pollution, allowances are allocated to affected sources equal to the cap and those sources are required to meet the cap by turning in an allowance for each ton of pollutant emitted. It works because the cost of controls varies, primarily because the cost per ton removed is lower for a larger unit. As a result, the cost of allowances eventually equals the costs of control.

On the other hand, cap and trade is not a good model for CO2 because there are no cost-effective control options for existing sources and fuel switching to a different fuel type is necessary to get reductions. Ultimately then meeting the cap has to be done indirectly and it becomes difficult if not impossible to price CO2 rationally.

If that was the primary rationale for going to cap and auction in CO2 programs, then I would not be as disappointed by the rhetoric: “people can game the system in so many ways that it’s not creating the incentive structures that we’re looking for”. However, the proponents for cap and auction are as interested in sticking it to the affected sources by making them pay up front as any other reason. Ultimately, the CO2 incentive structure envisioned is a tax by another name to pay for renewable energy, energy conservation and energy efficiency.

If you really want the free market to reduce CO2 then replace other taxes with a CO2 tax. The free market will decide how best to incorporate the cost of carbon in society. Unfortunately, the cap and trade charade will create the ultimate system for gaming. The feeding frenzy of lobbyists over all the aspects of the CO2 cap and trade is ugly now and will only get worse.

Earlier this week the U.K. Higher Education Funding Council released its funding allocations based – in part – on performance of U.K. universities in the periodic Research Assessment Exercise.  I wrote about the RAE earlier this year, and rumblings that various top-tier universities were frustrated by the outcomes. Unlike the funding structures in the United States, government research funding in the U.K. is awarded directly to institutions via the Research Councils.  Performance on the RAE matters, as well as an algorithm (all the better to crowd out expert judgment), and government priorities for specific research fields.

Reading this analysis from Times Higher Education, and a snapshot of affected universities (H/T ScienceInsider) suggests a few reminders with the whole process of government support of universities (and of research).

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Professor John Beddington, The U.K. Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, recommended in remarks with BBC News (H/T Nature News) that the European Union needs stronger scientific advice.  He specifically recommended following the American model, oddly enough, pointing to President Obama’s “dream team” as a good example for Europe to follow.  Professor Beddington was positive about the research support provided to the Commission, but feels that more “brutal” policy advice was needed.

Perhaps he didn’t want to appear self-serving, but it appears to me that the American model is not nearly as well suited to what Professor Beddington wants as the U.K. model is.  Throughout the BBC News piece you’ll note descriptions of the British system (which includes scientific advisers in 17 different departments) as independent, proactive and sometimes irritating.  While that certainly describes science policy advocates in this country, American science advisers are not set up to be independent or proactive.  At least not those advisers with formal government positions.  So I am a bit perplexed as why the less independent system would be advanced as the example to follow.

A Guest Post by
Professor Mike Hulme
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia

This article is co-published with SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

The largest academic conference that has yet been devoted to the subject of climate change finished yesterday in Copenhagen. Between 2,000 and 2,500 researchers from around the world attended three days of meetings during which 600 oral presentations (together with several hundred posters on display) were delivered on topics ranging from the ethics of energy sufficiency to the role of icons in communicating climate change to the dynamics of continental ice sheets.

I attended the Conference, chaired a session, listened to several presentations, read a number of posters and talked with dozens of colleagues from around the world. The breadth of research on climate change being presented was impressive, as was the vigour and thoughtfulness of the informal discussions being conducted during coffee breaks, evening receptions and side-meetings.

What intrigued me most, however, was the final conference statement issued yesterday, a statement drafted by the conference’s Scientific Writing Team. It contained six key messages and was handed to the Danish Prime Minister Mr Anders Fogh Rasmusson. The messages focused, respectively, on Climatic Trends, Social Disruption, Long-term Strategy, Equity Dimensions, Inaction is Inexcusable, and Meeting the Challenge. A fuller version of this statement will be prepared and circulated to key negotiators and politicians ahead of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in December this year – also in Copenhagen.

The conference, and the final conference statement, has been widely reported as one at which the world’s scientists delivered a final warning to climate change negotiators about the necessity for a powerful political deal on climate change to be reached at COP15. (Some commentators have branded it The Emergency Science Conference’). The key messages include statements that ‘the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised’, that ‘there is no excuse for inaction’, that ‘the influence of vested interests that increase emissions’ must be reduced, and that ‘regardless of how dangerous climate change is defined’ rapid, sustained and effective mitigation is required to avoid reaching it.

There is a fair amount of ‘motherhood and apple pie’ involved in the 600 word statement – who could disagree, for example, that climate risks are felt unevenly across the world or that we need sustainable jobs. But there are two aspects of this statement which are noteworthy and on which I would like to reflect: ‘Whose views does the statement represent?’ and ‘What are the ‘actions’ being called for?’

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was no IPCC. This was not a process initiated and conducted by the world’s governments, there was no systematic synthesis, assessment and review of research findings as in the IPCC, and there was certainly no collective process for the 2,500 researchers gathered in Copenhagen to consider drafts of the six key messages or to offer their own suggestions for what politicians may need to hear. The conference was in fact convened by no established academic or professional body. Unlike the American Geophysical Union, the World Meteorological Organisation or the UK’s Royal Society – who also hold large conferences and who from time-to-time issue carefully worded statements representing the views of professional bodies – this conference was organized by the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), a little-heard-of coalition launched in January 2006 consisting of ten of the world’s self-proclaimed elite universities, including of course the University of Copenhagen.

IARU is not accountable to anyone and has no professional membership. It is not accountable to governments, to professional scientific associations, nor to international scientific bodies operating under the umbrella of the UN. The conference statement therefore simply carries the weight of the Secretariat of this ad hoc conference, directed and steered by ten self-elected universities. The six key messages are not the collective voice of 2,500 researchers, nor are they the voice of established bodies such as the World Meteorological Organisation. Neither are they the messages arising from a collective endeavour of experts, for example through a considered process of screening, synthesizing and reviewing of the knowledge presented in Copenhagen this week. They are instead a set of messages drafted largely before the conference started by the organizing committee, sifting through research that they see emerging around the world and interpreting it for a political audience.

Which leads me to the second curiousity about this conference statement. What exactly is the ‘action’ the conference statement is calling for? Are these messages expressing the findings of science or are they expressing political opinions? I have no problem with scientists offering clear political messages as long as they are clearly recognized as such. And the conference chair herself, Professor Katherine Richardson, has described the messages as politically-motivated. All well and good.

But then we need to be clear about what authority these political messages carry. They carry the authority of the people who drafted them – and no more. Not the authority of the 2,500 expert researchers gathered at the conference. And certainly not the authority of collective global science. Caught between summarizing scientific knowledge and offering political interpretations of such knowledge, the six key messages seem rather ambivalent in what they are saying. It is as if they are not sure how to combine the quite precise statements of science with a set of more contested political interpretations.

Which brings us back to the calls for action and the ‘inexcusability of inaction’. What action on climate change exactly is being called for? During the conference there were debates amongst the experts about whether a carbon tax or carbon trading is the way to go. There were debates amongst the experts about whether or not we should abandon the ‘two degrees’ target as unachievable. There were debates about whether or not a portfolio of geo-engineering strategies now really needs to start being researched and promoted. And there were debates about the epistemological limits to model-based predictions of the future. There were debates about the role of behavioural change versus technological change, about the role of religions in mitigation and adaptation, and about the forms of governance most likely to deliver carbon reductions.

These are all valid debates to have. And they were debates that did occur during the conference. Experts from the natural sciences and social sciences, from engineering and policy sciences, from economics and the humanities, all presented findings from their work and these were discussed and argued over. These debates mixed science, values, ethics and politics. This is the reality of how climate change now engages with the worlds of theoretical, empirical and philosophical investigation.

It therefore seems problematic to me when such lively, well-informed and yet largely unresolved debates among a substantial cohort of the world’s climate change researchers gets reduced to six key messages, messages that on the one hand carry the aura of urgency, precision and scientific authority – ‘there is no excuse for inaction’ – and yet at the same time remain so imprecise as to resolve nothing in political terms.

In fact, we are no further forward after the Copenhagen Conference this week than before it. All options for attending to climate change – all political options – are, rightly, still on the table. Is it to be a carbon tax or carbon trading? Do we stick with ‘two degrees’ or abandon it? Do we promote geo-engineering or do we not? Do we coerce lifestyle change or not? Do we invest in direct poverty alleviation or in the New Green Deal?

A gathering of scientists and researchers has resolved nothing of the politics of climate change. But then why should it? All that can be told – and certainly should be told – is that climate change brings new and changed risks, that these risks can have a range of significant implications under different conditions, that there is an array of political considerations to be taken into account when judging what needs to be done, and there are a portfolio of powerful, but somewhat untested, policy measures that could be tried.

The rest is all politics. And we should let politics decide without being ambushed by a chimera of political prescriptiveness dressed up as (false) scientific unanimity.

Yesterday, speaking at the Business Roundtable President Obama offered some extensive comments on cap-and-trade and climate impacts.  Does he have his history right (cap and trade for acid rain)?   Is acid rain a good analogy for climate change policy?  Is his attribution of climate impacts due to greenhouse gases appropriate?  Did his miss the Chicken Little analogy?  Ultimately, do any of these details matter?

Courtesy of E&E News this morning, here are those comments in their entirety (PDF):

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The New York Times (H/T The Questionable Authority) is reporting that the Senate Science, Commerce, and Transportation Committee met in markup and formally approved the nominations of Dr. Holdren (Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy) and Dr. Lubchenco (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).  The nominations have been held up by what appears to be a series of holds by various Senators.  As the holds are traditionally anonymous, only one of them has been connected to a particular Senator – Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey).  But his hold lapsed a few days ago, meaning that other Senators have been holding up these nominations.  As Senator Menendez held the nomination in connection with Cuba policy, there is no way of knowing if the current holds have anything to do with policy areas under the jursidiction of these nominees.  There is well-reasoned speculation about who is involved, but I’m not inclined to repeat it absent a confirmation.  In any event, there’s a good chance this has nothing to do with science or science policy.  Once again, it’s not at all about science and technology, but that’s a hard lesson to learn in some circles.