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A quick note just to let you know that a few days ago week in Spain wind farms supplied over 40% of all electricity consumed. Even though it was only for a brief period, this is interesting if it is considered that sevaral studies indicate 20% as the critical level of wind energy that can be managed by current electricity systems. 
A pretty haunting photo collection by Gerd Ludwig highlighting the impacts of pollution in the former Soviet Union:
File this one under co-benefits. An article to be published in Nature Geoscience (doesn't seem to be online yet) titled "Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon" has suggested that the IPCC has underestimated radiative forcing (RF) by black carbon (aka soot) by around 200%. The Guardian reports:
[Professor G] Carmichael [of the University of Iowa] and Professor V Ramanathan, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, put together data from satellites, aircraft and surface instruments on the warming effect from black carbon. They conclude that its effect in the atmosphere is around 0.9 watts per square metre, considerably higher than the estimate of between 0.2 and 0.4 watts in last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
To compare this number with other greenhouse gases, the IPCC's radiative forcing chart is here:
This is a notable result for the prospects of integrated climate and air quality policy: developing countries could contribute to future climate agreements by reducing their own air pollution (unilaterally, or through a CDM-like mechanism), providing global and local benefits.
In the context of ever-increasing GHG emissions (largely due to the rising fossil fuels consumption) and rocketing fossil fuel prices, the Energy Coalition, Co-op America and the Rain Forest Network have launched the "Fossil Fool Awards 2008".
This year's awards comprise 5 categories:
- Fossil Fools of the Year
- Most Inauspicious Newcomer
- Lifetime Achievement Award
- Biggest Human Toll
- Outstanding Performance in Corporate Greenwashing
The 5 lucky nominees for the Fossil Fools of the year category are the CEOs of the Bank of America (nominated for supporting coal), of ExxonMobile (for funding climate change denial groups), the Premier of Alberta (for promoting the extraction of oil from tar sands), the CEO of Dynegy Corporation (for promoting coal) and finally the CEO of General Motors (for keeping America addicted to oil and blocking laws that would reduce GHG emissions).
So far, the nominees who received most votes are:
- Ken Lewis (CEO of the Bank of America) as Fossil Fool of the Year
- Patricia Woertz (CEO of ADM) is far ahead for the "Most Inauspicious Newcomer" Award
- Bush and Cheney also have an extraordinary advance for the Lifetime Achievement Award
- it is nip and tuck for Don Blakenship and Dave J. Oreilly (CEOs of Massey Energy and Chevron) both running for the Biggest Human Toll Award
- finally, Rick Wagoner (CEO of GM) is almost certain to win the Outstanding Performance in Corporate Greenwashing Award
The Rainforest Action Network has performed a sample ballot that is not too different from the above results.
You can vote on http://energyactioncoalition.org/foolies/.
The Fossil Fool Award ceremony will be held on April 1st. We'll try to explain why the winners have won once we know the final results.
Happy Easter!
As an update to the ongoing saga of Canadian climate politics, according to the Globe and Mail, federal government lawyers have found a loophole to excuse Canada from undertaking its Kyoto commitment:
Signatories to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol outlined a series of options for penalizing countries who don't meet their targets by 2012, including requirements to buy credits or take on even deeper targets in the future.But federal government lawyers argue in their submission these rules have no teeth. "These consequences are not legally binding as they have not been adopted as an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol by agreement of all Parties," the document states. (link)
The background to this is the ongoing to-and-fro between the Liberal Party and the Conservative leaders about whether Canada should stick to its Kyoto targets - which it's woefully far from doing. The Liberal party claim that the Conservatives are in breach of a bill that requires Canada to meet its targets, the Conservatives say it will damage the economy and that the bill was nullified by last year's Throne Speech:
It is now widely understood that, because of inaction on greenhouse gases over the last decade, Canada’s emissions cannot be brought to the level required under the Kyoto Protocol within the compliance period, which begins on January 1, 2008, just 77 days from now.
Isn't minority government politics great?
I came across an interesting book review of Simon Critchley's Infinitely Demanding from last year, by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. The review (and the book) deal with opinions of how the remants of left wing politics should react to global capitalism and liberal politics, given capitalism's triumph in the last century. What form should the "struggle" take?
Third Way social democracy[?]... Acceptance of the futility[?]...Withdrawal into cultural studies where one can quietly pursue the work of criticism[?]
Žižek describes the position taken by Critchley's book:
Those who still insist on fighting state power...are accused of remaining stuck within the ‘old paradigm’: the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by...creating new spaces outside its control.
[New] politics has to be located at a distance from it. It must be a politics of resistance to the state, of bombarding the state with impossible demands, of denouncing the limitations of state mechanisms.
The argument here is that the 'old paradigm' of resisting from 'within' will never work, because the state can only deal with real-politics, rather than ideology.
Žižek's counter is this:
[This position] simply demonstrate[s] that today’s liberal-democratic state and the dream of an ‘infinitely demanding’ anarchic politics exist in a relationship of mutual parasitism: anarchic agents do the ethical thinking, and the state does the work of running and regulating society.
The big demonstrations in London and Washington against the US attack on Iraq a few years ago offer an exemplary case of this strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance...The protesters saved their beautiful souls...Those in power calmly accepted it, even profited from it: George Bush’s reaction [was] in effect: ‘You see, this is what we are fighting for, so that what people are doing here ... will be possible also in Iraq!’
He proposes this:
The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’
The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.
I think that this discussion is highly relevant to the environmental movement, and its resistance to market failures and environmental damage. What angle should our policy recommendations take? Should we make infinite demands, or work within the framework of feasible market mechanisms?
I was reading this article about people testing the limits of solar energy at high altitude and I discover the solar airplane. My first reaction was of great scepticism, but the website of the Solar Impulse projects (which by the way is aiming to have an airplane ready by 2011 for a world tour) made me dream about it. I have to say that the Jule Verne quote on the "challenge" page did part of the job.
"All that is impossible remains to be achieved" Jule Verne
Dreaming aside, I was surprised to discover that there is already an history of Solar aviation..
After finishing yesterday's post on the skeptics conference, I found this:
How many scientists doubt global warming? It's looking like it could be about 20 -- compared to the more than 2,500 globally who have reached the conclusion that climate change is really happening. That's pretty strong evidence of a scientific consensus."The meeting was largely framed around science, but after the luncheon, when an organizer made an announcement asking all of the scientists in the large hall to move to the front for a group picture, 19 men did so," the Times reported. (link)
And this:
Talking to speakers here ... [I've] found they're loosely sorted into three categories, based on their views: 1. Those who say global warming is not happening at all 2. Those who say global warming is happening, but it's not due to human activity 3. Those who say global warming is happening and it is due to human activity, but climate action will surely destroy our economyBut the more I've listened to these speakers, the more I've realized that for most of them, it's not about the science. Panels don't go five minutes without attacking Al Gore or comparing climate activists to socialists who want to destroy capitalism. Deniers are part of a political culture that frames the world in terms of left and right, so they've absorbed global warming into that broader paradigm of partisan politics.
Today was the last day of the The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change organized by the The Heartland Institute in New York. The Heartland Institute is a think tank that promotes "free-market solutions to social and economic problems" and "market-based approaches to environmental protection"; and one of the aims of the conference is to "generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science". (This sounds eerily like the 'Teach the Controversy' strategy by creationists in the US.)
It's not difficult to imagine what the conference entailed - the same rag-tag group of skeptics, with the same old arguments. Reading the speaker list, it appears that the conference may even have been too off-the-wall for some of the scientists seen in the Great Global Warming Swindle - Lindzen, Friis-Christensen, Svensmark are notably missing (may be for other reasons, of course). And for a climate conference, there are an awful lot of economists, lawyers, businessmen, and "analysists" presenting. See RealClimate for some more background on the conference.
DeSmog has been blogging from the "Denial-a-palooza", dropping some interesting updates:
While Heartland wants to position the conference as a "smashing success," the New York Times, CNN - even that raving left-wing apology sheet the Wall Street Journal - have all lifted their delicate hands and snickered. CNN, in a spot that left the cool dudes at Newsbusters apoplectic, went so far as to call the assembled skeptics "flat earthers."
Andrew Revkin from the NYT complained about having had to cover the conference, rather than hang out with his wife and kid:
When I’m forced to cover the edges of the discourse (and I know each edge would like to think it’s the new middle), that threatens to obscure the enormous body of established science that is not in dispute, which should be enough to inform smart policy.
He goes on to comment on what was presented:
[The] group — among them government and university scientists, antiregulatory campaigners and Congressional staff members — displayed a dizzying range of ideas on what was, or was not, influencing climate.On Sunday night, the dinner speaker was Patrick J. Michaels, [who] projects a three-degree Fahrenheit warming by 2100 — but disputes the value of cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases.
At lunch on Monday, the message from S. Fred Singer, a physicist who runs a group challenging climate orthodoxy, was that climate change was mainly driven by vagaries in the sun.
[Other] presenters critiqued computer simulations of global climate and the quality of temperature records. Others focused on the societal and economic impact of both climate change and proposed responses, including limits on carbon dioxide. Some speakers focused on past warm periods in which civilization flourished, and cold periods in which people struggled against famine.
Any of that material sound familiar to you guys?
The conference finished with their "Manhatten Declaration":
We recommendThat world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as "An Inconvenient Truth."
That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.
And finally, the "Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change" was unveiled. A summary, it turns out, of a non-existant report. Rabett Run has started an open review of the document, and Stoat seems to have promised to comment on it soon.
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