Brad DeLong

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?

Joshua Green writes:

Bad Climate for Global Warming: Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies announced that 2010 had registered as the hottest year on record. Nothing new here: nine of the last 10 years have been among the warmest ever.

The news highlighted one of Washington's biggest failures over the last two years: its inability to advance climate legislation...

Now let's stop right now. The inability to advance climate legislation wasn't "Washington's" failure: it was a failure of Republican legislators, their tame hacks and propagandists, the carbon-energy lobby, and coal-state Democratic legislators.

Joshua Green knows who the culprits are as well as I do. But for some reason he does not believe he can say so in his lead.

Why not, Joshua? Why not?

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Here is the full piece:

Bad Climate for Global Warming - Joshua Green - Politics - The Atlantic: Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies announced that 2010 had registered as the hottest year on record. Nothing new here: nine of the last 10 years have been among the warmest ever.

The news highlighted one of Washington's biggest failures over the last two years: its inability to advance climate legislation. It was also a grim reminder that things could get worse. Some crucial policy areas have always been neglected and some initiatives stalled. But rarely has a first-order concern like the nation's climate and energy policy actually regressed -- and so dramatically as we've seen since the last presidential election.

Not long ago, it appeared likely that the United States would take meaningful action to mitigate climate change. In the 2008 presidential campaign, both Barack Obama and John McCain touted plans to limit carbon emissions under a cap-and-trade scheme. Even Sarah Palin supported the idea. Much of the business community did, too. Adding momentum was the recent Supreme Court ruling, in Massachusetts vs. Environmental Protection Agency, that required the EPA, under the Clean Air Act, to regulate harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Lawmakers, it was presumed, would take the matter into their own hands rather than cede that authority.

Of course, this didn't happen. Over the strenuous objections of Republicans and coal-state Democrats, the House of Representatives passed a cap-and trade bill in 2009 that met an ignominious death in the Senate. Along the way, cap-and-trade -- originally a conservative idea -- came to be vilified as "cap and tax'' and regarded by a substantial part of the conservative base as a form of fascist oppression. Today, fewer Americans believe in the reality of global warming than did so two years ago, and many took out their wrath last November on Democrats who'd supported a climate bill.

But this doesn't capture the full scale of the setback. Since that debacle, momentum in Congress has shifted strongly against climate-change legislation. If you want to frighten one of the remaining Democrats, suggest that he or she take another shot at passing cap-and-trade.

There's still the EPA. When both parties favored cap-and-trade, this option was viewed as the less desirable one. The agency could limit greenhouse gas emissions, but not through a system as flexible and efficient as cap-and-trade, which included simple improvements like building-efficiency standards that lay beyond the agency's remit. EPA regulations would thus be less effective.

The cap-and-trade bill that passed the House aimed to reduce emissions 17 percent by 2020 from their 2005 levels. A World Resources Institute study found that the most aggressive implementation of EPA regulations would only reduce emissions by 12 percent in that time frame. Scientists say reductions of 36-48 percent would be necessary to halt global warming. "Having EPA set carbon-pollution reductions was everyone's second choice for slowing global warming,'' said Daniel J. Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. "It was like 'In Case of Congressional Gridlock Break Glass.' ''

Now, the backup plan is the only plan, and "aggressive'' regulations are off the table. Last year, the EPA issued a "tailoring rule'' signaling how it intended to proceed. The results in no way resembled the fears expressed by many detractors that a burdensome new system of regulations would be imposed on small businesses. Instead, the EPA will confine its attentions strictly to the largest polluters, such as power plants, oil refineries, and chemical manufacturers.

These modest steps won't do nearly as much to slow global warming as the other, broader plans. But because the battle has shifted from the legislative to the regulatory front, the EPA nonetheless finds itself under attack from the newly empowered Republicans. One of the first things they will do is try to block EPA from establishing pollution standards, possibly by denying funds or refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless the process is slowed or halted.

It's not clear whether they'll succeed. But given the heightened importance of stronger restrictions, environmentalists can't feel good about recent developments. Earlier this week, the Obama administration said it would focus on eliminating regulations, rather than strengthening them. That's probably an accurate reading of the political climate. But for the planet's climate, it's yet another blow.

Hudson's Bay Has Still Not Completely Frozen Over

Has this happened before?

Why Was Europe So Cold in the Hottest November on Record?

Joe Romm sends us to: NASA’s James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato and Ken Lo, “2010 — Global Temperature and Europe’s Frigid Air”:

This is the warmest January-November in the GISS analysis, which covers 131 years. However, it is only a few hundredths of a degree warmer than 2005, so it is possible that the final GISS results for the full year will find 2010 and 2005 to have the same temperature within the margin of error.... November 2010 surface temperature anomalies based only on surface air measurements at meteorological stations and Antarctic research stations... to allow extreme temperature anomalies to be apparent. Northern Europe had negative anomalies of more than 4°C, while the Hudson Bay region of Canada had monthly mean anomalies greater than +10°C. The extreme warmth in Northeast Canada is undoubtedly related to the fact that Hudson Bay was practically ice free. In the past, including the GISS base period 1951-1980, Hudson Bay was largely ice-covered in November.... Sea ice insulates the atmosphere from ocean water warmth, allowing surface air to achieve temperatures much lower than that of the ocean. It is for this reason that some of the largest positive temperature anomalies on the planet occur in the Arctic Ocean as sea ice area has decreased in recent years.

The cold anomaly in Northern Europe in November has continued and strengthened in the first half of December.... [I]s it possible that reduced Arctic sea ice is affecting weather patterns?... The fixed location of the Hudson-Baffin heat source could plausibly affect weather patterns, in a deterministic way — Europe being half a Rossby wavelength downstream, thus producing a cold European anomaly in the trans-Atlantic seesaw. Several ideas about possible effects of the loss of Arctic sea ice on weather patterns are discussed in papers referenced by Overland, Wang and Walsh. However... the few years just prior to 2009-2010, with low Arctic sea ice, did not produce cold winters in Europe. The cold winter of 2009-2010 was associated with the most extreme Arctic Oscillation in the period of record.... 7 of the last 10 European winters were warmer than the 1951-1980 average winter, and 10 of the past 10 summers were warmer than climatology. The average warming of European winters is at least as large as the average warming of summers, but it is less noticeable because of the much greater variability in winter.

Hottest November on Record...

Joe Romm:

NASA: Hottest November on record, 2010 likely hottest year on record globally — despite deepest solar minimum in a century « Climate Progress: NASA released its monthly global temperature data, revealing November was easily the hottest in the temperature record.  The “meteorological year” — December to November — was also the hottest on record.  Calendar year 2010 appears poised to be the hottest on record. These records are especially impressive because we’re in the middle of a strong La Niña, which would normally cool off temperatures for a few months (relatively speaking), and we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.”

Something No Human Has Ever Seen Before

Courtesy of Climate Progress: Masters: “It appears that this year’s record [sea surface temperatures] have significantly expanded the area over which major hurricanes can exist over the Atlantic.”:

Circumnavigate the North Pole!

NSIDC:

Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis: The Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route are largely free of ice, allowing the potential for a circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean. At least two expeditions are attempting this feat, the Norwegian explorer Borge Ousland and the Peter I yacht from Russia.

Here Comes Earl...

Looks Like the Northeast Passage Will Open This Week...

Henry Hudson, eat your heart out...

Yes, the World Is Getting Warmer

Another all-time temperature record:

Jeff Masters: Weather Underground: At 4pm local time today in Moscow, Russia, the temperature surpassed 100°F for the first time in recorded history. The high temperature of 100.8°F (37.8°C) recorded at the Moscow Observatory, the official weather location for Moscow, beat Moscow's previous record of 99.5°F (37.5°C), set just three days ago, on July 26. Prior to 2010, Moscow's hottest temperature of all-time was 36.6°C (98.2°F), set in August, 1920. Records in Moscow go back to 1879. Baltschug, another official downtown Moscow weather site, hit an astonishing 102.2°F (39.0°C) today. Finland also recorded its hottest temperature in its history today, when the mercury hit 99°F (37.2°C) at Joensuu. The old (undisputed) record was 95°F (35°C) at Jvaskyla on July 9, 1914. There is little relief in sight, as the latest forecast for Moscow predicts continued highs in the 90s for most of the coming week.

Given that the planet as a whole has seen record high temperatures the past four months in a row, it should not be a surprise to see unprecedented heat waves like the Russian heat wave. A record warm planet "loads the dice" in favor of regional heat waves more extreme than anything experienced in recorded history.... Fourteen extreme national high temperature records have been set in 2010. This year now ranks in second place for the most number of countries that have set extreme heat records, according to a list supplied to me today by Chris Burt.... Finland recorded its hottest temperature on July 29, 2010, when the mercury hit 99°F (37.2°C) at Joensuu. The old (undisputed) record was 95°F (35°C) at Jvaskyla on July 9, 1914. Qatar had its hottest temperature in history on July 14, 2010, when the mercury hit 50.4°C (122.7°F) at Doha Airport. Russia had its hottest temperature in history on July 11, when the mercury rose to 44.0°C (111.2°F) in Yashkul, Kalmykia Republic, in the European portion of Russia near the Kazakhstan border.... Sudan recorded its hottest temperature in its history on June 25 when the mercury rose to 49.6°C (121.3°F) at Dongola.... Niger tied its record for hottest day in history on June 22, 2010, when the temperature reached 47.1°C (116.8°F) at Bilma. That record stood for just one day, as Bilma broke the record again on June 23, when the mercury topped out at 48.2°C (118.8°F). The previous record was 47.1°C on May 24, 1998, also at Bilma. Saudi Arabia had its hottest temperature ever on June 22, 2010, with a reading of 52.0°C (125.6°F) in Jeddah.... Chad had its hottest day in history on June 22, 2010, when the temperature reached 47.6°C (117.7°F) at Faya.... Kuwait recorded its hottest temperature in history on June 15 in Abdaly, according to the Kuwait Met office. The mercury hit 52.6°C (126.7°F).... Iraq had its hottest day in history on June 14, 2010, when the mercury hit 52.0°C (125.6°F) in Basra.... Pakistan had its hottest temperature in history on May 26, when the mercury hit an astonishing 53.5°C (128.3°F) at the town of MohenjuDaro.... Myanmar (Burma) had its hottest temperature in its recorded history on May 12, when the mercury hit 47°C (116.6°F) in Myinmu.... Ascention Island (St. Helena, a U.K. Territory) had its hottest temperature in history on March 25, 2010, when the mercury hit 34.9°C (94.8°C) at Georgetown.... The Solomon Islands had their hottest temperature in history on February 1, 2010, when the mercury hit 36.1°C (97°F) at Lata Nendo (Ndeni).... Columbia had its hottest temperature in history on January 24, 2010, when Puerto Salgar hit 42.3°C (108°F)...

Incentives and the Environment: Ryan Avent Critiques Jim Manzi:

RA:

The Bellows » Innovation, and the Gas Tax: I’m not sure why anyone would argue that the imposition of a carbon price, even a relatively modest one, wouldn’t spur innovation. Price increases — the market’s signal for scarcity — lead to a range of human responses, among the most important of which is invention. The opinion that a price increase will likely lead to innovation is little more than a ratification of the idea that markets generally work. But Jim Manzi seems skeptical of this connection. And he cites variations in the gas tax rate as evidence:

Consider as an important example that most major Western European countries have had very high gas taxes – typically several dollars per gallon – for decades. But despite the efforts of lots of very smart engineers, the automobile has been a pretty stable technology for these same decades. Raising the price of gas does reduce consumption, and will of course induce some incremental innovation. But Western Europe seems to me to a big enough market so that if a low-carbon technology could be developed globally that was competitive with internal combustion in the face of a ~$5 per gallon gas tax, we already have a big enough end-use market to induce it. Why would increasing prices in America work when it hasn’t for Europe? There might be some carbon price that would radically accelerate innovation across the array of uses of fossil fuels (the limit case is simply outlawing coal and petroleum), but it has never, to my knowledge, been imposed anywhere at scale, presumably because it would impoverish any country that tried.

If you look closely, you’ll find that Manzi has gone and made the case for a carbon price in as compelling a fashion as you’re likely to find. Manzi thinks about automobiles and gas taxes and pictures a certain kind of innovation — new cars with new engines that don’t run on gas. And when he looks at Europe he doesn’t see it. But does that mean that there has been no innovation in response to the higher gas tax rates? Clearly that’s not the case. In general, Europeans do drive different automobiles, which tend to be smaller and more efficient. Some of these have been innovative enough in their design to generate raised eyebrows from American tourists (see: the Smart car). In Europe, the scooter is far more popular and differentiated (the scooter with roof is a common sight). Bicycles are also more common and differentiated, and the institutional supports for cyclists are more highly developed (cycle superhighways are old news in Europe).

And then there’s public transport....

And then, of course, there are innovations in the physical structure of the landscape....

And so on. The end result is that Europeans use a lot less gas, as Manzi acknowledges. But they don’t just reduce their consumption, as he intimates. They don’t lead lives exactly like ours, only they opt to sit at home while Americans go for Sunday drives. They have adapted and innovated their way around higher gas prices.

And the great breadth and variety of responses to higher rates is important to note. A country that sets its mind to innovating will approach problems with certain preconceived notions. They’ll say, “Well, we need to innovate our way around gasoline, so let’s see what new fuel we can find to replace it. Ethanol? Hydrogen? Electricity? We’re bound to hit on the right solution eventually.” But if you allow prices to do some of the work, you get many different solutions to the problem, many of which are far cheaper and more effective than the pre-conceived idea you had in mind. You get folks coming up with bike-sharing programs, car-sharing programs, and so on. You get effective innovation, which is exactly what we want. Manzi looks for the innovation he thinks he should see, and in the process he misses all the innovations that are actually there. And that’s precisely why the carbon price signal is so crucial.

Richard Schmalensee and Rob Stavins Are Horrified by the Republican Party

They provide yet another set of reasons why it would be good for all of us if we were to dry it up and let it blow away right now:

Beware of Scorched-Earth Strategies in Climate Debates: [C]onservative Republicans... should resist demonizing market-based approaches to environmental protection and reverting to pre-1980s thinking that saddled business and consumers with needless costs.... [M]arket-based policies should be embraced, not condemned by Republicans.... Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency successfully put in place a cap-and-trade system to phase out leaded gasoline... at a savings of some $250 million per year.... George H. W. Bush... a cap-and-trade system to cut by half sulfur dioxide emissions... has cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 50 percent, and has saved electricity companies... some $1 billion per year compared with a conventional, non-market approach.... If some conservatives oppose energy or climate policies because of disagreement about the threat of climate change or the costs of those policies, so be it. But in the process of debating risks and costs, there should be no tarnishing of market-based policy instruments....

Conventional approaches advanced as “painless alternatives’’ — a plethora of standards, special-interest technology subsidies, and tax breaks — won’t do the job, and will be unnecessarily expensive.... A price on carbon is the least costly way to provide meaningful incentives for technology innovation and diffusion, reduce emissions from fossil fuels, and drive energy efficiency.... Demonizing cap-and-trade in the short term will turn out to be a mistake with serious long-term consequences...

Why Is Ross Douthat on the New York Times's Editorial Page?

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Is there any respect--any respect--any respect at all in which the New York Times would not be a better publication if Ross Douthat were removed, and replaced by David Leonhardt?

I cannot think of any.

Here's David Leonhardt explaining why what the New York Times prints from Ross Douthat on its op-ed page is worse than tripe:

Armageddon Wars: I — like many others, I imagine — would be thrilled if [global cooling] were what the future held. But I think there are two big reasons to doubt that... The first is basic economics. When the problem is resource scarcity, companies and individuals have a powerful incentive to become more efficient. It keeps their costs down. Mr. Simon understood this, and it’s the fundamental reason he won the [resource price trend] bet [with Ehrlich]. But global warming is different. The fact that carbon emissions are warming the planet doesn’t make it more expensive to produce those emissions. So companies do not have an ever-increasing incentive to emit less — the way they would if the problem were, say, a lack of oil. Global warming doesn’t solve itself the way that resource scarcity does.

The second reason is the accumulation of evidence. Almost as soon as Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. Simon made their bet in 1980, Mr. Simon’s prediction started looking good.... In recent years, though, anyone who had bet against global warming would look as wrong as Mr. Ehrlich did. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are shrinking at an accelerating rate. Scientists have recently revised upwards their predictions of sea-level rises. The planet’s 10 hottest years on record, according to NASA, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008. This year is on pace to displace 2005 as No. 1.

The ultimate goal of climate legislation — be it the bill that the House passed last year or the bill that died in the Senate last week — is to align the incentives better, so human ingenuity can be harnessed to fight global warming. The bills would increase the cost of emitting carbon, thereby giving companies reason to emit less. Absent that, the best bet seems to be that emissions will keep rising and the planet will keep getting hotter.

Yes, It Is Warm

From NOAA:

State of the Climate | Global Analysis | June 2010: The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 16.2°C (61.1°F), which is 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F). The previous record for June was set in 2005. June 2010 was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record (March, April, and May 2010 were also the warmest on record). This was the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985. The June worldwide averaged land surface temperature was 1.07°C (1.93°F) above the 20th century average of 13.3°C (55.9°F)—the warmest on record. It was the warmest April–June (three-month period) on record for the global land and ocean temperature and the land-only temperature. The three-month period was the second warmest for the world's oceans, behind 1998. It was the warmest June and April–June on record for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole and all land areas of the Northern Hemisphere. It was the warmest January–June on record for the global land and ocean temperature. The worldwide land on average had its second warmest January–June, behind 2007. The worldwide averaged ocean temperature was the second warmest January–June, behind 1998...

David Leonhardt on the Disfunctional U.S. Government and the Global Climate

David:

Economic Scene - Overcome by Heat and Inertia: This city just endured its hottest June since records began in 1872, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So did Miami. Atlanta suffered its second-hottest June, and Dallas had its third hottest. In New York, the weather was relatively pleasant: only the fourth-hottest June since 1872. Then again, New York is on pace for its hottest July on record. Yet when United States senators and their aides file into work on Wednesday, on yet another 90-degree day, they may be on the verge of deciding to do approximately nothing about global warming. The needed 60 votes don’t seem to be there, at least not at the moment.... [T]he odds of a major climate bill are not great. And if this White House and this Democratic Congress can’t pass one, you have to wonder what the future of climate policy looks like. All the while, the risks and costs of climate change grow. Sea levels are rising faster than scientists predicted just a few years ago. Himalayan glaciers are melting. In the American West, pine beetles (which struggle to survive the cold) are multiplying and killing trees.

According to NASA, 2010 is on course to be the planet’s hottest year since records started in 1880. The current top 10, in descending order, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008.

Hot is the new normal.

The most efficient way to begin attacking the global swelter is no mystery. It involves raising the price of carbon emissions, which are warming the planet, and then letting the private sector find innovative ways to use less dirty energy. Conservative economists, like Gregory Mankiw, support this approach. So do liberals, like Joseph Stiglitz. But taxing carbon has never had much of a political chance. It’s too honest. It acknowledges that the best way to reduce the use of a product is to increase its price. We would all prefer a free lunch. So Congress has been laboring to disguise a price increase in a more palatable package.... Republican leaders, though, were only too happy to cast cap and trade as “cap and tax.”... The sad paradox is that cap and trade — which trusts in the efficiency of markets — was originally a Republican policy, signed by the first President Bush to reduce acid rain....

[T]he fuel economy rules from the 1970s that required car companies to make fewer gas guzzlers. The newly imposed scarcity of guzzlers, in turn, increased their price. But the relationship wasn’t obvious. Americans do not think of fuel economy rules as a tax on large vehicles. This explains why the rule-based approach seems to be the best bet for winning Republican votes. Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, has proposed new rules not just for vehicles but also for appliances, building codes and power plants. If these regulations were tough enough, they could make a difference, as the fuel economy rules have. So some Democrats and environmentalists see this approach as their best remaining chance.... On the other hand, such rules would require government regulators to make all kinds of decisions — about which dishwashers qualified as efficient, about which alternative energies power plants had to use and the like.... The result would almost certainly be higher, albeit better disguised, costs than with a carbon cap or tax.... Thus the opposition among other Democrats and environmentalists to accepting the Lugar approach as a compromise — and Mr. Reid’s difficulty in finding 60 votes for it....

Robert Stavins, the Harvard economist, told me he would actually prefer a bill that cut emissions less in the short term but created a template for much bigger cuts in the future. “Success, to me, would be the beginning of political acceptance of carbon pricing,” he said. I’ll confess to being torn about these arguments. A utility-only cap, even a flawed one, really would represent a whole different kind of progress than a souped-up version of fuel economy rules. A cap — any decent cap — remains the best benchmark of success. Yet if the Lugar approach were the only one that could pass, should we be so confident that it would put off further action? It’s not clear to me how another failure on energy policy will somehow make success more likely in the future.

All of this will be decided in the next few weeks, before the Senate breaks for its August recess, or in September, before the midterm election campaign takes over. Meanwhile, the temperature in Washington this week is supposed to hit 99.

Global Temperature Anomalies...

Menzie Chinn sends us to NOAA:

Econbrowser: May Global Surface Mean Temp Anomalies: Business Week on record temperatures on the East Coast; AOL on global climate change and the probabilities of record-setting temperature episodes. See also Christian Science Monitor:

Indeed, 2010 is set to be one of the world’s hottest years on record, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the first five months of the year was the warmest on record, and 1.22 degrees F warmer than the 20th century average, the NOAA states in its May 2010 State of the Climate Global Analysis.

I wonder whether the paperback edition of SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance will still claim that recently the globe has been cooling...

Looks Like the Northwest Passage Will Be Open Soon...

Henry Hudson: only 400 years too early...

The Hottest Spring in Our Records...

Joe Romm:

NASA: Easily the hottest spring — and Jan-May — in temperature record: Lmonth tied May 1998 as the hottest on record in the NASA dataset.  More significantly, following fast on the heels of easily the hottest April — and hottest Jan-April — on record, it’s also the hottest Jan-May on record.... The record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.”  It’s just hard to stop the march of manmade global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is....

Of course, there never was any global cooling — see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.”... NASA’s recent draft paper reported:  “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.”

For the record, it was the second hottest April in both satellite records (UAH and RSS), which are more sensitive to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) than the land records and have biases of their own (as Hansen discusses here). Although I’m sure it’s just another coincidence, but just as NOAA noted “North American snow cover for April 2010 was the smallest on record,” Rutgers University’s Global Snow Lab again reports a record low snow cover in the entire northern hemisphere for the month of May...

We Seem to Be Losing Arctic Sea Ice at a Rather Rapid Pace This Spring...

Tropical Storm AGATHA

Deepwater Horizon Live Video Link

Live video link from the ROV monitoring the damaged riser

Obama Fail: Why Cass Sunstein Should Not Repeat NOT Repeat NOT!! Be Director of OIRA. Never. No Way. No How

Umm... This ain't rocket science. This really ain't rocket science at all...

Benjamin Wallace-Wells:

Cass Sunstein Wants to Nudge Us: In OIRA’s cost-benefit calculations, the government’s willingness to spend depends on how expensive the damage will be — on what economists call the social cost of carbon. Sunstein and others in the government have spent several months trying to define this cost, and he talked me through the process. One of the most important issues is the discount rate — the depreciation of money over time. All else being equal, if given a choice between paying $1 million now and $1 million five years from now, economists will choose to pay later. After all, if money depreciates at say, 3 percent a year, then spending $1 million today is the equivalent of spending only about $860,000 of today’s dollars five years from now. Over very long periods, like those involved in climate change, the discount rates that are applied to short-term problems like budgets build toward absurdity: using one common method, spending $1 million today to forestall climate change would be the equivalent of spending $2,300 in 2100. Calculations like this seem to argue against doing anything now. The problem, Sunstein says, is that we might do irreversible damage to the planet while blithely waiting for the price of action to drop just enough.... As an academic, Sunstein seemed to side with economists like William Nordhaus at Yale, who set the discount rate at about 5 percent, which would counsel patience. “It’s not clear what direction the risk of error cuts in,” he told me. “If we err, 7 percent could be bad,” he said, but “if we err, 1 percent could be bad also.” A low a discount rate might protect the environment by spurring us to sacrifice now — while damaging the economy, increasing poverty and putting more people out of work. The difficulty is that the experts are lined up “out the door and down the block on both sides of this issue,” one economist told me...

Here we have yet another example of why law professors should simply not be allowed to practice law and economics or moral philosophy without a license--and of how Cass Sunstein has never bothered to do the work necessary to acquire a license to practice law and economics.

First, "irreversible damage": we are doing irreversible damage to the environment every day in that every day human activity brings more species closer to extinction, and natural or artificial selection would never be able to resurrect them no matter how much money we would spend trying to do so. The question that must be asked: is how much we care--how damaging is the "irreversible damage," and what other goods are we willing to forego in order to avoid it? What Sunstein implies--that "irreversible damage" is something that must be avoided and that trumps cost-benefit calculations--is simply incoherent, and does nothing other than perform the function of getting him onto Obama administration message without admitting that he does not understand why the cost-benefit analysis tools he loves so much are leading him to what is for an Obama administration official an off-message conclusion.

Second, the cost-benefit analysis tools Cass Sunstein loves so much are leading him to an off-message conclusion only because Sunstein does not understand how to use them. Nick Stern's Climate Change Report uses the same tools and leads to a very different conclusion than "argu[ing] against doing anything now." The shortcut way to understand why is that there are actually three discount rates to be used in cost-benefit analysis here--(i) a nominal interest discount rate to be used for money values, (ii) a real interest discount rate to be used for real values, and (iii) a human discount rate to be used for human lives and their quality. (Plus there are risk adjustments that I won't go into here.) We tend to read the money-discount and the real-discount rates off of the market yields on long-term Treasury bonds and on long-term TIPS. But neither is appropriate if what is at stake is human lives and their quality--then something more like the TIPS yield minus the expected rate of growth of labor productivity is appropriate.

At the moment the real TIPS yield is 1.79% per year. The expected labor productivity growth rate is something north of 1.6% per year. That calls for a human-lives-and-their-quality discount rate, to be applied to global warming expenditures now, of 0.19% per year AT MOST.

Wallace-Wells's and Sunstein's 3% per year discount rate would be the right one if the human, life, and welfare cost of a given tragedy were the same in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2100 as it is today--if the amount of real value we would wish to spend to avoid a chance of 10,000,000 Bengalis drowning in 2110 would be the same as the real value we would spend to avoid a chance of 10,000,000 Bengalis drowning in the next hurricane season. But it won't be: we expect technology to progress over the next ninety years, and thus for us to be capable of and want to and be willing to spend much more money to guard against human catastrophes a century hence. Today we have 6 billion people on the world with income per capita of $7,000 a year. In 2110 we expect to have 9 billion people on the world with income per capita of $56,000 per year. Thus we expect that inasmuch as they will be richer than we are that they will value human lives and high quality lives more highly in real values and be willing to spend more to preserve and enhance them than we are.

To argue that they will not be--that avoiding a 1% chance of 10,000,000 drowned Bangalis will be worth spending no more in real value on in 2110 than it is today--is to be a moral monster.

Or a cost-benefit analyst who does not understand how to use his tools.

Earth Day Special II: More on My Global Warming Panic Attack

And we are live at The Week:

Global Warming Panic Attack - The Week: Media personalities and Freakonomicists claim that the planet has recently experienced global cooling. But according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, we have just experienced the hottest twelve-month period in at least a thousand years.

If global temperatures continue rising at the rate they have risen for the past generation, then the world of 2100 will be 2.3 degrees Celsius – that’s 4.1 degrees Farenheit -- hotter than the world of the 1970s. If global warming accelerates, however, as industrializing China, India and other countries pour more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and as Indonesia, Brazil, and others cut and burn their forests, the world in 2100 will be 5 Celsius -- 9 Farenheit -- degrees hotter than the world of the 1970s.

In a more hopeful vein, if we are lucky, we might discover powerful carbon-sink processes that absorb carbon dioxide or reflective-cooling technology that reduces warming. Or we might discover magical new  non-greenhouse-gas emitting technologies that can be deployed more cheaply than current carbon-based technologies. In any of these scenarios, we may wind up with a world in 2100 that is little warmer than the world of the 1970s. At least we can hope.

But hope is not a plan. The world was supposed to plan at Kyoto. It did not. Subsequently, it was supposed to plan at Copenhagen. Again it did not.

So right now I am panicking. And in my panicked state, I become shrill and unrealistic. So I am calling for four actions--at least one of which, in particular, is robustly unappealing.

1. Beg the rulers of China and India to properly understand their long-term interests;

2. Nationalize the energy industry in the United States;

3. Pour money into research on closed-carbon and non-carbon energy technologies in order to maximize the chance that we will get lucky on energy technologies if not on climate sensitivity.

4. Restrict future climate negotiations to a group of seven -- the U.S., the E.U., Japan, China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil -- and enforce agreement by substantial and painful trade sanctions on countries that do not accept the demands of the resulting negotiated system.

In a later column, I will address points (3) and (4). Meantime, let me just talk about (1) and (2).

First, I want us to beg the rulers of China and India to understand their own situation. Unless the North Atlantic Conveyor shuts down and Europe returns to the climate of the Younger Dryas Era (the big freeze of more than 10,000 years ago), global warming will not be hugely problematic for the North Atlantic economies -- at least not for a century. We’ll mourn the loss of our glaciers and snow packs. We’ll lament the extinction of polar bears, the coral reefs, and the giant sequoias. But we’ll welcome extra sunny days to go to the beach. We’ll move a few miles north, relocate economic activity to get out of the paths of hurricanes and droughts, turn down our heaters, turn up our air conditioners, and live our lives. It would be expensive for us to adapt to warming -- more expensive, I believe, than dealing with the problem -- but we could do so.

But China, India and their neighbors in the great river valleys of Asia will soon be home to three billion farming peasants. These farmers depend on the regular monsoon rains and the river flows of the Indus, the Ganges, the Mekong, the Yangtze, and the Yellow Rivers. Global warming means their climate will change. There will either be much more precipitation in the valleys feeding the rivers, or much less. If there is much less, hundreds of millions will face drought and famine. If there is much more, millions will likely die in floods and the dwelling and working places of hundreds of millions will be washed away. Unlike North Americans, Asia’s peasant-farming populations are not rich enough simply to adapt.

So we need to beg the rulers of China and India to understand their long-term interests. The welfare of their countries over the next four generations depends on gaining rapid control of global warming. Their own personal survival — unless they want mobs descending on their homes, dragging them and their descendants into the streets — depends on it. And because either China or India is going to be the globe’s dominant superpower in a century, even if they are clobbered by climate change, pleasing that future superpower now is in every country’s interest. So we need to beg the rulers of China and India to recognize their own long-term interest, and to help us get this climate-control party started.

Allow me to make the first entreaty. Rulers of China and India: I beg you. Get on board. Please.

Second, I want us to nationalize the open-carbon-cycle energy industry in the United States.

In the 1960s it became clear that the price of oil in the United States should be higher. Because of powerful congestion and pollution externalities, we were over-investing in the automobile civilization. A larger tax on oil would have nudged the economy closer to the social optimum.

In the 1970s it became very clear that the price of oil in the United States needed to be even higher. Because of instability in the Middle East, our dependence on that region as a major source of energy created unacceptable geopolitical risks. A larger tax on oil would have nudged the economy into a new configuration, mitigating the danger.

At the start of the 1990s it became painfully clear that the price of carbon energy needed to be higher: the global warming threat was upon us. Yet the price increase never materialized. It never happened because of what the inner circle around my ex-boss, former Texas Senator and U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, used to call the “ullengaz” industry – “oil and gas.” This potent industry has blocked desirable public policy regulation for nearly fifty years now.

In general, I am opposed to state-run, nationalized industries: managing industry is without a doubt the private sector’s role, not the government’s. As a neoclassical economist, I risk having my union card revoked when I advocate government ownership of what otherwise could be a profit-making private enterprise.

But the interaction of rent-seeking industry with a flawed political system has made me willing to make an exception in the case of America’s carbon-based energy industry. True, government ownership will increase inefficiency and the misallocation of resources. But it will also increase political efficiency, since the energy industry will no longer be able to purchase Members of Congress and use them to strangle the policy innovations needed to advance the national interest. So nationalize the carbon energy sector -- not to expropriate wealth or to penalize shareholders, but to remove a selfish and destructive political force that threatens our future.

Radical proposals? Yes.

Indeed, you may think they are shrill, impractical, and utopian proposals. (I, also think they are shrill, impractical, and utopian proposals.) You may think we should instead continue down the energy and environmental policy path we have traveled so many times before, meeting the same legislative roadblocks. You may think that we should simply try again, and hope that this time it turns out differently.

Earth Day Special: The Great River Valleys of Asia

We are live in the Los Angeles Times:

Global warming, new NASA data: It is about time to panic.

According to the NASA data, we have just experienced the hottest 12-month period in more than 100 years, which means that the past 12 months have been the hottest in at least the past 1,000 years.

What does this mean? Well, if global temperatures continue to rise at the rate that they have risen for the past generation, then the world of 2100 will see a world 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the world of the 1970s. New York will get the climate of Washington. Los Angeles will get the climate of Tijuana.

But global warming might accelerate, especially if China, India and other industrializing powers continue to increase the amount of carbon dioxide they pour out. Perhaps the world by 2100 will be 9 degrees hotter than the world of the 1970s. That would give Washington the climate of Miami and Los Angeles the climate of Cabo San Lucas.

And we might get lucky. We might learn that the climate is in fact immensely stable on the upside. Even though past ice ages have ended quickly with very rapid warming, perhaps there are factors in the Earth's biosphere that allow it to soak up excess carbon dioxide quickly, like a sponge, and perhaps the world of 2100 will not be much warmer than the world of today. Or perhaps we will discover magical new energy technologies that are actually cheaper than our current technologies and will be rapidly adopted without the governments of the world lifting a finger to take action.

But that is not the prudent way to bet. The prudent thing to do is to plan, and to hedge: to plan for the most likely case, and to hedge by taking precautions — insurance — against the worst case. The world was supposed to plan how to deal with our global warming future at Kyoto. And then the world was supposed to plan for how to deal with our global warming future at Copenhagen. It did not do so.

So what do we do now?

Let us start with our global institutions. It is a fact that global warming is not likely to be a total human catastrophe here in California during the next 100 years. We will mourn the losses of our glaciers and our snowpack. We will lament the extinction of the polar bear, the coral reefs and the giant sequoias. We will be distressed at the transformation of California's Central Valley into the north Mojave Desert. But many San Franciscans really won't mind having the climate of Los Angeles. And many Angelenos will not be greatly distressed to have the climate of Tijuana. We will probably move a few miles north and relocate economic activity to get out of the paths of hurricanes and droughts. We will turn down our heaters and turn up our air conditioners. We will live our lives. It will be expensive for us to simply adapt, and it would be cheaper over the next century to deal with the problem. But here in California, there's little question we will be able to adapt without immediate human catastrophe for the next century.

That's not the case for Asia. China, India and their neighbors will soon have 3 billion peasants farming in the great river valleys of Asia. They depend on regular monsoon rains in the valleys and water flows down the channels of the Indus, the Ganges, the Mekong, the Yangtze and the Yellow rivers. Global climate change means that there will either be more precipitation in the valleys and feeding the rivers — or much less. If there is more, millions will die in floods, and the dwelling and working places of hundreds of millions will simply be washed away. The 3 billion are not rich enough to abandon their land and move away. They are also not rich enough to protect themselves. If there is much less water, hundreds of millions will die in famine and drought. Again, the peasant farming populations of Asia are not rich enough to abandon their land and move away. And they are also not rich enough to bring icebergs up from the Antarctic and pipe the water uphill from the sea to their farms.

The peasant farming populations are not rich enough to simply adapt. So the first thing we need to do is to beg the rulers of China and India to understand their nations' long-term interest.

But even if China and India understand and join the North Atlantic and the island nations of the Pacific in understanding the immensity of the long-run problem, that will not be enough. In the current international forum, China and India are simply two out of a 150 nations, and consensus is required. That is just too big a body with too many conflicting interests.

So the second thing we need to do is change the forum. We need a climate council made up of the seven governments that have the biggest power to influence the climate and the most at stake: the United States and the European Union, along with Japan, China, India, Indonesia and Brazil. Once the council has agreed to a treaty, it should be enorced by using aggressive and substantial trade sanctions against outsider countries that do not want to come up to the mark.

Utopian? Yes. Impractical? Probably. But what is the practical and realistic alternative that it would be better to push for?

2010 Peder Sather Symposium: After Copenhagen: What Can Be Done to Meet the Economic and Environmental Challenges?

AudioL Download After Copenhagen- Peder Sather Symposium (04.15.2010 05-54-19 PM)

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After Copenhagen: 2010 Peder Sather Symposium | IIS:

AFTER COPENHAGEN: What Can Be Done to Meet the Economic and Environmental Challenges?

4 p.m., Goldman Theater, David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way at Fulton St., Westside of UCB Campus, Berkeley, CA 94704

The Peder Sather Symposium represents an ongoing collaboration between the governments of Norway and Sweden and UC Berkeley. The goal of the symposium is to promote the understanding of political, economic, and cultural issues. The event is designed to foster interdisciplinary discussion among scholars and policymakers from Europe and the U.S. on global and national issues of mutual concern.

About Peder Sather: Peder Sather was born in Norway in 1810. He emigrated to New York and then to California, where he founded the banking firm of Sather and Church. Peder Sather was one of the early trustees of the College of California and an active participant in aiding the institution that has become the University of California. Upon his death, the Sather and Church banking firm was absorbed by the Bank of California. Although it was Peder Sather who had accumulated the wealth and resources that helped fund education in California, it was the work of his wife, Jane Krom Sather, a native of New York State, who made the Sather name part of UC Berkeley's history. Through her generous endowments to the University's teaching resources and beautification effort (notably Sather Gate, which was the main entrance to the UC campus), the Sather name has come to symbolize a legacy of collaboration between Norway and the University of California. With the Sather legacy in mind, the University of California and the Royal Norwegian Consulate General of San Francisco inaugurated the first Peder Sather Symposium in 1991.

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After Copenhagen, What?

J. Bradford DeLong
Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley
Research Associate, NBER

April 15, 2010

We have just experienced the hottest twelve-month period in at least the past thousand years.

Media personalities and freakeconomists claim that in recent years there has been global cooling. They lie.

If global temperatures continue to rise at the rate that they have risen for the past generation, then the world of 2100 will see a world 2.3C—4.1F—hotter than the world of the 1970s. If global warming accelerates, as industrializing China, India, and other countries pour more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and as Indonesia, Brazil, and other countries cut and burn their forests. We are looking at a world that by 2100 will be 5C—9F—hotter than the world of the 1970s. If we are lucky, we might discover that there are powerful carbon-sink processes and reflective cooling processes that have not yet swung into action, and we might discover magical new non-greenhouse gas emitting technologies that can be deployed more cheaply than our current open carbon-cycle technologies, and we might wind up with a world in 2100 that is little warmer than the world of the 1970s. We can hope.

But hope is not a plan. We can hope. We should also plan.

The world was supposed to plan at Kyoto, and then again at Copenhagen. It did not.

So what do we do now? I think we should do four things:

• Pour money like water into research into closed-carbon and non-carbon energy technologies in order to maximize the chance that we will get lucky—on energy technologies at least, if not on climate sensitivity.
• Beg the rulers of China and India to properly understand their long-term interests
• Nationalize the energy industry in the United States.
• Restrict future climate negotiations to a group of seven—the U.S., the E.U., Japan, China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil—and enforce their agreement by substantial and painful trade sanctions on countries that do not accept their place in the resulting negotiated system.

Let me briefly outline the reasons for these four things we should be doing:

Research. Into closed-carbon energy technologies, into non-carbon energy technologies, into geoengineering. It would be really nice to find a technological magic bullet. It would mean that all kinds of painful and difficult political negotations would not have to be carried through and we could devote the energy to all kinds of things. And it would mean that all kinds of investments economizing on energy use would no longer have to be carried through and we could spend the wealth on other things. Plus it would be cool to watch the gigantic 8000-mile in diameter sunshade being moved into its position at the appropriate Lagrange point for the Earth’s orbit. And it would be fun to watch the giant cannons throwing dust into the atmosphere—and to watch the beautiful sunsets that would result (if such a world would not be a Blade Runner-esque world in which our oceans were turning into acid soda water).

Beg the Rulers of China and India. Unless the North Atlantic Conveyor shuts down and Europe returns to the climate of the Younger Dryas Era, global warming is not a huge deal for the North Atlantic economies for a century. We mourn the losses of our glaciers and our snowpacks. We lament the extinction of the polar bears, the coral reefs, and the giant sequoias. We welcome the extra sunny days to go to the beach. We move a few miles north, relocate economic activity to get out of the paths of hurricanes and droughts, turn down our heaters, turn up our air conditioners, and live our lives. It would be expensive for us to simply adapt—more expensive I believe than dealing with the problem—but we could do so.

But China and India will soon have, along with their neighbors, three billion farming peasants in the great river valleys of Asia. They depend on the regular monsoon rains and the river flows of the Indus, the Ganges, the Mekong, the Yangtze, and the Yellow Rivers. Global warming means the climate will change. There will either be much more precipitation in the valleys and feeding the rivers, or much less. If there is much less, hundreds of millions will die in famine and drought. If there is much more, millions will die in floods and the dwelling and working places of hundreds of millions will be washed away. The peasant-farming populations are not rich enough to simply adapt.

So we need to beg the rulers of China and India to understand their long-term interest: The welfare of their countries over the next four generations depends on rapidly controlling global warming. Their own personal survival—unless they want mobs descending on their homes when they are in retirement, dragging them and their descendants out into the street, and carrying their heads on pikes—depends on rapidly controlling global warming. And because one of either China or India is going to be the globe’s dominant superpower in a century, pleasing that future superpower now is in every country’s interest. So we need to beg the rulers of China and India to recognize their personal and their countries’ long-term interest, and to use their power as future global superpowers to help us get this climate-control party started.

I hereby do so. Rulers of China and India: I beg you. Get on board. Please.

Nationalize the American Energy Industry. In the 1960s it became very clear that the price of oil in the United States needed to be higher: Because of powerful congestion and pollution externalities, we were overinvesting in the automobile civilization. A larger tax on oil would nudge the economy closer to the social optimum. In the 1970s it became very clear that the price of oil in the United States needed to be even higher: Because of instability in the Middle East, unacceptable geopolitical risks were being generated by our dependence on the Middle East as a source of energy. A larger tax on oil would nudge the economy into a configuration in which this geopolitical danger would be lessened. And at the start of the 1990s it became very clear that the price of carbon energy needed to be higher: global warming.
 Yet it never happened. It never happened because of what Lloyd Bentsen’s aides used to call the “ullengaz” industry—“oil and gas.” Powerful enough to block desirable public policy regulation and adjustment for nearly fifty years now. In general I am opposed to state-run nationalized industries: that is definitely the private sector’s place, not the government. But the interaction of rent-seeking politics with the flaws of America’s political system have made me willing to make an exception in the case of America’s oil industry: the increased allocative inefficiency that will flow from government ownership and management is, in my judgement, likely to be much less than the increased political efficiency that will flow from no longer having the energy industry able to purchase enough Representatives and Senators to block needed policy moves that it fears will be adverse to its interests. So nationalize—not to expropriate or to penalize the shareholders, but to get this particular selfish and destructive political voice out of American governance.

Restrict Future Climate Negotiations to a Group of Seven. When the United Nations was founded, key decision-making power was restricted to a group of five important countries that had been the victorious allies of World War II: The U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China—those are the five Security Council veto powers. One of the things that Copenhagen has, I think, demonstrated is that climate-control negotiations are too complex and too fraught for them to be successfully achieved via grand multilateral processes. So allow everybody to kibbitz. But require only the agreement of a Climate Council of Seven in order to implement a treaty. And let those seven be the seven who have the biggest power to influence the climate and the most at stake: U.S., the E.U., Japan, China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil. Then enforce the treaty by using aggressive and substantial trade sanctions against outsider countries that do not want to live up to their responsibilities according to whatever plan is negotated by the Climate Council of Seven.

You may think—and you may even say—that these four proposals of mine are all unattainable and radical. You may think—and you may even say—that we should continue to walk down the road we have been walking, even though every time we do we seem to run into and bruise our noses against the same stone wall. We should, you may think, try again to walk the same road, and hope that this time it turns out differently.

But hope is not a plan.

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Hoisted from Comments: No Snow in Minnesota in March

Neil:

NASA GISS Estimated Global Temperature Anomalies: No snow in Minnesota in March---has not happened before in 125 years of records. "Ice out" on lakes at record early dates--two or more weeks in most instances 9a big time difference...

NASA GISS Estimated Global Temperature Anomalies

From http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt.

David Appell points out:

David Appell: Quark Soup: 12-month Temperature Record: I was playing with the GISS temperature anomaly data, and it turns out that the last 12 months (April 2009- Marc 2010) have been the warmest 12-month period in their records.

Eat Your Kangaroo Steak, Sport! Eat Your Kangaroo Steak!

Jeroen van Bergeijk in Adelaide

?A nondescript building on the edge of Adelaide houses the largest processor of kangaroo meat in Australia: Macromeats. There is no sign on the door. The trucks loading and unloading kangaroos don't advertise what they carry. On the outside, nothing reveals that 3,000 kangaroos are turned into steaks, sausages and minced meat here every day. "I used to be compared to the folks who club baby seals," Macromeats owner Ray Borda said about the industry's image problem. Kangaroos are generally seen as cuddly animals and the mere thought of putting a 'Skippy' on the barbecue appals many Australians. But the attitude they have towards the consumption of their national symbol is changing. "The government used to scorn me," Borda said. "But this year, I was asked to host a kangaroo barbecue in the parliament building." This turnaround is credited to the environmental and health benefits of kangaroo meat compared to sheep and cattle. A recent report by Ross Garnaut, the principal environmental advisor to prime minister Kevin Rudd, stated that traditional farming is responsible for a substantial share of the emission of greenhouse gasses in Australia. The government now encourages eating kangaroos instead. "If you look at the impact on the environment, you find that kangaroo is a better choice than beef or lamb," said Euan Ritchie, a biologist affiliated with the James Cook University in Queensland state. "Kangaroos have a different digestive system from cattle or sheep. They produce less methane, a strong greenhouse gas. In short: cows fart and kangaroos don't." This limited contribution to greenhouse emissions is not the only environmental benefit the kangaroo has. "Cows and sheep need huge amounts of water and their heavy hooves erode the fragile Australian soil,” said Richie...

Worth Reading #5: Global Temperatures This Year (March 18, 2010)

Paul Krugman writes:

Hot Stuff: [H]ere’s global temperatures so far this year. The yellow line shows 2005, the warmest year to date.

1998 used to be the "warmest year to date."

Do We Need a Big Carbon Tax Now? Paul Krugman, Bill Nordhaus, and Nick Stern on the "Climate Policy Ramp"

Fifteen years ago... no, thirty years ago... no, forty years ago we should have impose a carbon tax. Pollution externalities and the national security externalities of relying on and paying people in an unstable and undemocratic part of the world to be the key energy link on our economy both strongly militated for conservation and alternative energy--and a carbon tax was the best way to do that.

Twenty years ago with the recognition of human carbon-emission caused greenhouse gas global warming, a third decisive reason was added to the case for a carbon tax.

Yet here we are now, without one. And many of those who believe in a carbon tax argue that our absence of one now is not that big a deal--that ideally we would start with a low carbon tax now and gradually ramp it up over the next generation or two:

Paul Krugman tries to understand the issues:

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/toyclimate.pdf Nordhaus and other [ramp-up-gradually] modelers, making their best possible estimates, come to the conclusion that while emissions must eventually be brought way down and carbon concentration stabilized, it’s not worth doing this until K has risen a long way above current levels. So it’s a mega-St. Augustine: "O Lord, make us carbon-neutral, but not yet."... [W]... [have] a long way to go up the saddle path, and hence a low carbon price is appropriate now. This is the “climate policy ramp”.... [I]n Figure 1... [because] there doesn’t seem to be much disagreement about the economic costs of carbon abatement... it’s about dλ/dt=0. Now, it’s obvious if we’ve gotten this far that there are two ways to argue that this locus should be set higher, and hence imply a lower long-run level of atmospheric carbon: you can either increase the numerator in equation (3) or reduce the denominator.

What Nicholas Stern did was reduce the denominator, arguing that we should use a much lower discount rate than the private sector appears to. I’m still wrapping my head around what I believe about that. But what about the numerator? This... [is] the sensitivity of temperatures to carbon concentration... [times] the sensitivity of [social] welfare to temperature.... Lately, climate models have begun suggesting a lot more sensitivity to concentration, with a number of groups doubling their predicted temperature rise.... Marty Weitzman has managed to scare me, by pointing out that there’s a pretty plausible case that a rise of 5 degrees C – which is no longer an outlandish prediction – would be utterly catastrophic. You don’t have to be sure about this; just a significant probability is enough...

I think Krugman goes astray when he characterizes Stern. Nick Stern assumes something different than a "low discount rate." He assumes:

1. No pure time preference--that the welfare of somebody born in 2100 does not count less than the welfare of somebody born in 1960 simply by virtue of birth date.
2. The costs of global warming scale with the economy: double the size of the economy and you double the costs of global warming.

Stern's first assumption seems to me to be trivially and obviously correct as a proposition in utilitarian or, indeed, any other view on moral philosophy.

Stern's second assumption is debateable: if you thought that the costs of global warming rose not with the size of the economy but with the square root of the size of the economy, then all of a sudden the r in equation (3) would be much, much bigger.

Arctic Seabed Methane Stores Destabilizing?

I have long thought that the fact that there have been a bunch of ice ages recently when the world was significantly colder than it is now is evidence that there are powerful multiplier mechanisms in our climate on the downward side: as I think I understand it, small solar forcings produced by the evolution of the earth's orbit are powerfully amplified by changes in albedo and thus produce much larger swings in temperature. I had, however, thought that this was not true on the upside: that the absence of recent episodes in which the earth was a bunch warmer than it is now tells us that positive-feedback multiplier amplification on the warming side is limited.

There is growing evidence that I am wrong.

Matthew Yglesias tells us to go read:

Matthew Yglesias: Arctic Seabed Methane Stores Destabilizing: It’s a good thing this is all part of some giant conspiracy, because if I thought scientists at the University of Alaska were undertaking good-faith scientific research I’d be really worried about this:

A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov. The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

But there was a freakishly large amount of snow in DC earlier this year! Meanwhile, climate science deniers are now teaming up with creationists to mount a broad political front against accurate understanding of the world.

Physorg.com:

Study: Arctic seabed methane stores destabilizing, venting: University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov... published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming. “The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.” Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material—which contains carbon—stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under oxygen-free conditions, gradually release methane. Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a methane-rich area that encompasses more than 2 million square kilometers of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean. It is more than three times as large as the nearby Siberian wetlands, which have been considered the primary Northern Hemisphere source of atmospheric methane. Shakhova’s research results show that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is already a significant methane source: 7 teragrams yearly, which is equal to the amount of methane emitted from the rest of the ocean. A teragram is equal to about 1.1 million tons. “Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilization already,” she said. “If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger.”

Shakhova notes that Earth’s geological record indicates that atmospheric methane concentrations have varied between about .3 to .4 parts per million during cold periods to .6 to .7 parts per million during warm periods. Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years, she said. Concentrations above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are even higher. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a relative frontier in methane studies. The shelf is shallow, 50 meters or less in depth, which means it has been alternately submerged or terrestrial, depending on sea levels throughout Earth’s history. During Earth’s coldest periods, it is a frozen arctic coastal plain, and does not release methane. As the planet warms and sea levels rise, it is inundated with seawater, which is 12-15 degrees warmer than the average air temperature. “It was thought that seawater kept the East Siberian Arctic Shelf permafrost frozen,” Shakhova said. “Nobody considered this huge area.” Earlier studies in Siberia focused on methane escaping from thawing terrestrial permafrost. Semiletov’s work during the 1990s showed, among other things, that the amount of methane being emitted from terrestrial sources decreased at higher latitudes. But those studies stopped at the coast. Starting in the fall of 2003, Shakhova, Semiletov and the rest of their team took the studies offshore. From 2003 through 2008, they took annual research cruises throughout the shelf and sampled seawater at various depths and the air 10 meters above the ocean. In September 2006, they flew a helicopter over the same area, taking air samples at up to 2,000 meters in the atmosphere. In April 2007, they conducted a winter expedition on the sea ice...

A Carbon Tax Last Year Would Have Been Nice... A Carbon Tax Last Year Would Have Been Really Nice...

Hell, a BTU tax seventeen years ago would have been even better.

Reuters: World warming unhindered by cold spells: The pace of global warming continues unabated, scientists said on Thursday, despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards.... "It's not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven't warmed in the past 50 years," veteran Australian climate scientist Neville Nicholls told an online climate science media briefing. "January, according to satellite (data), was the hottest January we've ever seen," said Nicholls of Monash University's School of Geography and Environmental Science in Melbourne. "Last November was the hottest November we've ever seen, November-January as a whole is the hottest November-January the world has seen," he said of the satellite data record since 1979. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in December that 2000-2009 was the hottest decade since records began in 1850, and that 2009 would likely be the fifth warmest year on record. WMO data show that eight out of the 10 hottest years on record have all been since 2000....

Scientists say global warming is not uniform in all areas and that climate models predict there will likely be greater extremes of cold and heat, floods and droughts. "Global warming is a trend superimposed upon natural variability, variability that still exists despite global warming," said Kevin Walsh, associate professor of meteorology at the University of Melbourne. "It would be much more surprising if the global average temperature just kept on going up, year after year, without some years of slightly cooler temperatures," he said in a written reply to questions for the briefing...

I think it's time for me to make a formal apology to Al Gore for not doing enough to boost his issues and his voice over the past two decades.

Will 2010 Be the Hottest Year in Recorded History?

Hoisted from Comments: Jeffrey Davis:

Jeffrey Davis on Global Warming: Re: "The current lack of warming us forecasted to last until at least 2020 leaving us with no warming for at least1/4 of a century." Well, no. This year looks to be the warmest on record. It could change but even with a relatively weak El Nino, temps [so far] are above 1998....

Monthly Global Mean Surface Temperature Anomalies

"Economist" Russ Roberts: Liar Gullible

UPDATE: Russ Roberts writes that it's not his fault--that he wasn't lying to his readers--but that it's the Daily Mail's fault: the Daily Mail was lying to him:

Finally, Brad DeLong calls me a liar: Brad doesn’t like this post.... I had read (and linked to) this article from the Daily Mail.... "Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon. And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming." How would you interpret that last sentence?.... Had I read the BBC version, I also would have known that Jones thinks there is a warming trend rather than merely a trend that is not statistically significant. I should have said that Jones admits that “for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.” My mistake. Dear readers, I did not mean to trick you. (I refrain from mentioning that Brad knew that I had linked to the Daily Mail story rather than the BBC version. I’ll just assume he made an honest mistake.)

Well, I would interpret "that last sentence," being that it was from the Daily Mail, as needing to be carefully checked and handled with tongs.

It's not an accident that the BBC version and reality conflict with the Daily Mail.

To get your information about the world from the Daily Mail is first of all to lie to yourself:

Daily Mail - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Libel lawsuits:

• On 27 April 2007, film star Hugh Grant accepted damages over claims made about his relationships with his former girlfriends in three separate tabloid articles published in the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday on 18, 21 and 24 February. His lawyer stated that all of the articles' "allegations and factual assertions are false." Grant said, in a written statement, that he took the action because: "I was tired of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday papers publishing almost entirely fictional articles about my private life for their own financial gain. I'm also hoping that this statement in court might remind people that the so-called 'close friends' or 'close sources' on which these stories claim to be based almost never exist." World football governing body, FIFA, also filed a lawsuit against the Daily Mail due to comments made by sportswriter >* Andrew Jennings against the organisation and its president Sepp Blatter.
• The Daily Mail falsely reported that former child star Mark Lester assaulted his ex-wife and had allowed his son to share a bedroom with Michael Jackson. In 2008 substantial damages along with legal costs were awarded to Mark Lester after he launched a libel case against the paper.

Other libel awards against the Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday) include:

• November 2009 - Actress Kate Winslet awarded £25,000 in damages after an article in the Daily Mail titled "Should Kate Winslet win an Oscar for the world's most irritating actress?" accuses her of lying about her exercise regime.
• 2009 - September — Metropolitan police commander Ali Dizaei accepts 'substantial' damages after a story falsely accusing him of being a bigamist.
• 2009 - May — Labour MP Tom Watson accepts 'substantial undisclosed damages' over untrue allegations he 'was not only copied into emails between former Downing Street press adviser Damian McBride and activist Derek Draper but "encouraged" them.'
• 2009 - May — three women whose stories had appeared in an article about women who'd adopted children, suggesting they did so for 'selfish' reasons, were awarded £10,000 each in damages.
• 2009 - January - £30,000 award to Dr Austen Ivereigh, who had worked for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, accused of hypocrisy over abortion.
• 2007 - May — Actress Keira Knightley awarded £3,000 for an article in which it was falsely claimed she was anorexic.
• 2006 - May - £100,000 damages for Elton John, falsely accused of rude and dictatorial behaviour
• 2006 - April — Undisclosed damages paid to actress Sharon Stone following a story falsely claiming she'd left her child in a car unattended while she ate at a nearby restaurant.
• 2006 - March — A formal apology and substantial damages awarded to businessman Sheldon Adelson, in a case estimated to have cost £4m.
• 2004 - April — Actor Rowan Atkinson was paid 'substantial' damages after story falsely stating he was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
• 2003- October — Actress Diana Rigg awarded £30,000 in damages over story which 'wrongly portrayed her as an embittered woman who held British men in low regard'
• 2003 - August — Actress Nicole Kidman awarded 'substantial' damages after false story accused her of having an affair with actor Jude Law
• 2001 - February — Businessman Alan Sugar was awarded £100,000 in damages following story which falsly accused him of 'being "miserly" in his stewardship of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.'

---

He doesn't even try very hard...

Russ Roberts:

Cafe Hayek: Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times: "Of the festivals of nonsense that periodically overtake American politics, surely the silliest is the argument that because Washington is having a particularly snowy winter it proves that climate change is a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. Just drill, baby, drill..."

He’s right in principle. One observation doesn’t make a trend. Of course Phil Jones has said recently that there’s no trend for the last 15 years. But never mind...

What Phil Jones said was:

BBC News - Q&A: Professor Phil Jones:

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods...

Russ Roberts knows as well as I do--as well as anybody who has taken even one semester of statistics does--that "no trend" does not mean the same thing as "no statistically significant trend," that you are unlikely to find statistical significance when you restrict your attention to a short period because your statistical tests then lack power, and that everyone literate in statistics asked for their point estimate of the warming trend since 1975 would say that it is almost as much as the overall trend since 1860: 0.012C per year as compared to 0.015C per year.

Russ Roberts knows all this. But he hopes to trick some of his readers by hiding it.

Lyingest economist alive...

On "Declining" Global Temperatures: "This Little-Discussed Fact... Over the Past Several Years... Average Global Temperature... Has in Fact Decreased..."

Of all the strange things in Steve Levitt and Steve Dubner's Superfreakonomics, perhaps the strangest of all is page 186:

with its remarkable claim that that "there is this little-discussed fact about global warming: while the drumbeat of doom has grown steadily louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased."

Back when Superfreakonomics first came out, this cliam puzzled everybody: when an economist says that something has decreased, he or she means that there is some way of estimating a trend over some period of time that produces a statistically-significant declining trend. Nobody could figure out how to do that with global temperature data..

John Timmer: NASA: 2009 tied for 2nd-warmest year, 00s hottest decade

Now it turns out that what Levitt and Dubner meant was something different: that 2005 was the hottest year on record, and that that record high temperature had not yet been broken--so global temperatures had "decreased" from their high back in 2005.

There have been thirteen new global annual temperature records set in the past 130 years--about one per decade. Since a new global temperature record is set once every ten years, Levitt and Dubner's methodology would thus lead them to say that over the past century and a third global temperatures have been decreasing 90% of the time--yet over that interval temperatures in total have risen by almost a full 1C. There have been eight new global annual temperature records set in the past forty years. That's one every five years. So by their methodology over the past sixty years global temperatures have been decreasing 80% of the time--yet over that interval temperatures in total have risen by a full 0.5C.

What odds would you need in order to take a bet that we will not see a hotter year than 2005 before 2020?

Does This Mean That Our Drought Is Over?

In the inbox:

Currently, the strong El Nino is reaching its peak in the Eastern Pacific, and now finally appears to be exerting an influence on our weather. The strong jet has been apparent for quite some time out over the open water, but the persistent block had prevented it from reaching the coast. Now that the block has dissolved completely, a 200+ kt [this means approximately 230 miles per hour] jet is barreling towards us. Multiple large and powerful storm systems are expected to slam into CA from the west and northwest over the coming two weeks, all riding this extremely powerful jet stream directly into the state.

The jet will itself provide tremendous dynamic lift, in addition to directing numerous disturbances right at the state and supplying them with an ample oceanic moisture source. The jet will be at quite a low latitude over much of the Pacific, so these storms will be quite cold, at least initially. Very heavy rainfall and strong to potentially very strong winds will impact the lower elevations beginning late Sunday and continuing through at least the following Sunday.. This will be the case for the entire state, from (and south of) the Mexican border all the way up to Oregon. Above 3000-4000 feet, precipitation will be all snow, and since temperatures will be unusually cold for a precipitation event of this magnitude, a truly prodigious amount of snowfall is likely to occur in the mountains, possibly measured in the tens of feet in the Sierra after it’s all said and done.

But there’s a big and rather threatening caveat to that (discussed below). Individual storm events are going to be hard to time for at least few more days, since this jet is just about as powerful as they come (on this planet, anyway). Between this Sunday and the following Sunday, I expect categorical statewide rainfall totals in excess of 3-4 inches. That is likely to be a huge underestimate for most areas. Much of NorCal is likely to see 5-10 inches in the lowlands, with 10-20 inches in orographically-favored areas. Most of SoCal will see 3-6 inches at lower elevations, with perhaps triple that amount in favored areas.

This is where things get even more interesting, though. The models are virtually unanimous in “reloading” the powerful jet stream and forming an additional persistent kink 2000-3000 miles to our southwest after next Sunday. This is a truly ominous pattern, because it implies the potential for a strong Pineapple-type connection to develop. Indeed, the 12z GFS now shows copious warm rains falling between days 12 and 16 across the entire state. Normally, such as scenario out beyond day seven would be dubious at best. Since the models are in such truly remarkable agreement, however, and because of the extremely high potential impact of such an event, it’s worth mentioning now. Since there will be a massive volume of freshly-fallen snow (even at relatively low elevations between 3000-5000 feet), even a moderately warm storm event would cause very serious flooding. This situation will have to monitored closely. Even if the tropical connection does not develop, expected rains in the coming 7-10 days will likely be sufficient to cause flooding in and of themselves (even in spite of dry antecedent conditions).

In addition to very heavy precipitation, powerful winds may result from very steep pressure gradients associated with the large and deep low pressure centers expected to begin approaching the coast by early next week. Though it’s not clear at the moment just how powerful these winds may be, there is certainly the potential for a widespread damaging wind event at some point, and the high Sierra peaks are likely to see gusts in the 100-200 mph range (since the 200kt jet at 200-300 mb will essentially run directly into the mountains at some point). The details of this will have to be hashed out as the event(s) draw closer.

In short, the next 2-3 weeks (at least) are likely to be more active across California than any other 2-3 week period in recent memory. The potential exists for a dangerous flood scenario to arise at some point during this interval, especially with the possibility of a heavy rain-on-snow event during late week 2. In some parts of Southern California, a whole season’s worth of rain could fall over the course of 5-10 days. This is likely to be a rather memorable event. Stay tuned.

England's Green and Pleasant Land (and Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall too)

From orbit:

Not Good. Not Good.

Fish Out of Water:

Daily Kos: Freak Current Takes Gulf Stream to Greenland: An unprecedented extreme in the northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation has driven a strong direct connecting current between the Gulf Stream and the West Greenland current. The unprecedented negativity of the "Arctic Oscillation" and the strong connection of the Gulf Stream with the Greenland current are exceptional events. More exceptional weather events are predicted with anthropogenic climate change, but this could be a natural variation of weather and currents.

Listen to the IMF on Cimate Change

Carlo Cottarelli:

Climate Change—Some Simple (and Quite Convenient) Truths: As world leaders gather in Copenhagen, climate change is again in the headlines. The science of the issue can get pretty incomprehensible pretty quickly. And the politics are clearly very ugly. Let’s not forget, however, that much of the economics is simple.

It’s an externality, stupid—so price it

Climate change is an “externality” problem. Individuals, firms, and, yes, governments, do not take full account of the harm that others suffer when they emit greenhouse gases. So they emit too much. And the best way to stop them doing this is to charge them a price for the carbon content of what they emit: a “carbon price.” Admittedly, climate change is a particularly complicated externality. Since the damage will fall largely on future generations, the proper price depends very much on how we value their well-being relative to ours. The importance of such long-lived investments as power-stations, and the heavy sunk costs of investing in new technologies, mean that the carbon prices people expect in the future are even more important than the price now. And the fact that the world’s supply of fossil fuels is ultimately fixed means that the effect of carbon prices on total emissions is not as clear cut as it may seem. But the basic principle remains—polluters should pay...

"Anyone Telling You Uncertainty About Climate Change Is a Reason for Inaction Is Either a Fool or a Scoundrel"

There is one set of circumstances in which uncertainty is a reason for inaction: (a) the measures you would take would be expensive, (b) the measures you would take will be irreversible, and (c) you will get a lot of new information soon to help you judge the situation better.

That set of circumstances does not apply here.

Mark Kleiman:

Precaution, uncertainty, insurance, and morality: [G]reater uncertainty argues for more caution--more willingness to accept certain current losses to avoid possible large future losses--not less. That’s because it’s easier to adjust to small changes than it is to large ones, so damage is likely to increase more-than-proportionally as the size of the change increases. Assume some climate model predicts that... temperature would rise 3° C by 2100. If the model were very accurate and precise, that might be 3°± 1°. If the mechanisms involved remain obscure and the data unclear--as is the case today – that might be 3°± 5°.... Given how bad a 3° increase would likely be, if we knew for sure that would be the outcome in the face of inaction there would be a strong agument for making big and expensive policy changes to prevent it from happening. And if we knew that for sure, it would be very hard politically to argue against doing something about the problem. By contrast, 3°± 5° means that proponents of inaction get to say “We’re not even sure there’s any problem at all.” That makes the political case for action much weaker. But it makes the logical case for action much stronger....

[A]n 8° C average temperature increase... rendering much of the tropics virtually uninhabitable and, quite plausibly, hitting various triggers for positive-feedback effects such as the melting of the polar ice caps, which would reduce the amount of solar energy reflected back into space, and the melting of the Siberian permafrost, which would release a huge amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.  (Most systems are more stable in the face of small changes than they are in the face of large changes.)  Thus a primary increase of 8° might really mean an increase even larger than that: an increase that might not be reversible even if greenhouse-gas emissions were then sharply curtailed. That would be the kind of disaster to which some version of the precautionary principle reasonably applies....

Ordinarily, it is the proponents of action who bear the burden of persuasion.  But in this case political inaction means, in effect, licensing a massive gamble.... [N]one of the arguments for the freedom of economic activity appl[y]... there is simply no “invisible hand” mechanism that directs private action in such a situation in the direction of the public interest.

The willingness of some politicians and pundits to bet the planet on the claim that climate scientists are talking through their hats, which involves the larger claim that they have managed to assemble an enormous conspiracy to perpetrate a hoax, calls either their intelligence or their morals into serious question.  And that goes for the journalists and media moguls who treat their ravings as if they represented simply one side in a reasonable argument.

If anyone tries to tell you that uncertainty about climate change is a reason for inaction, he’s either a fool or a scoundrel. Probably a bit of both.

In Which Thers Arms Himself for the Climate Wars' Intellectual Battles of Wits...

Ahem:

Thus wroth against the deniers he put on the gift of the god,
Which Hephaistos had wrought for him by his art.
First on his legs he set the fair greaves fitted with silver ankle-pieces,
Next he donned the cuirass about his breast.
Then round his shoulders he slung the bronze sword silver-studded;
lastly he took the great and strong shield,
And its brightness shone afar off as the moon's....
And forth from its stand he drew his father`s spear, heavy and great and strong:
That spear could none other of the Akhaians wield...

Thers:

Eschaton: Here are the places I personally go when I want the lowdown on the most current wingnut lies about climate change, particularly, nowadays, to do with the email theft. List not remotely definitive (I'm in the humanities, dammit). Deltoid -- Tim Lambert is worth reading for his own stuff, but the real fun is the comments, where you'll see silly denialist trolling avant la lettre. Tomorrow's bullshit, today! And just as quickly debunked. DeSmogBlog: Don't miss the Crock of the Week. SwiftHack is a good repository. Real Climate, and responses: here, here, here. This Nature editorial. George Will, filleted. And I like Eli's site.

Hoisted from Comments: Robert Waldmann on Positive Climate Feedback Loops, Snowball Earth, and Evolution

Robert writes:

More Bad Climate Science from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page...: One doesn't have to go all the way back to snowball earth to know that the Lindzen is full of it. Ice ages come and go with, evidently, very subtle forcing due to the Earth's wobble. I don't see how anyone can doubt that there is strong positive feedback around the current temperature.

Now snowball earth is fascinating for the reason that Hoffman and Schrag just started when you stopped the tape. According to H and S, the Earth was a snowball just before the Cambrian explosion -- All sorts of fossiles suddenly appear. Now one hint of an explanation is in the "grinding glaciers" and then "extreme erosion" parts of their story. Since I heard of the snowball earth hypothesis I wonder if the cambrian explosion is so explosive partly because late pre-cambrian fossils were destroyed by glaciers and erosion and such -- crushing, grinding, dissolving eroding all sound like destroying the then relatively recent fossil record.

Also maybe the explosion had something to do with the near extinction of life. Geographic isolation of small groups of organisms causes an increase in diversity. It is suspected (by Sewell shifting balance Wright et al) that such isolation is required for major evolutionary change which almost has to pass through not very fit halfway to the new life form stages and so might require random drift down a fitness gradient.

If life was restricted to isolated patches around volcanos one could imagine that the life in each hot spot would end up very different. Then when the ice melts you have great diversity (for a while).

Finally constrained areas can promote gigantism. When organisms can spread it helps to reproduce quickly. When they are stuck with each other, fighting over meager food, it helps to be a bit bigger than the other guy. It is sometimes suspected that there was a whole lot of variety in the pre-cambrian but the animals were just not big enough to leave fossils.

So the part they were about to get to when you cut their mikes is great too.

In Celebration of a DMCA Takedown Notice: I Link to Elizabeth Kolbert on “SuperFreakonomics”

Well, this is new. My first ever DMCA takedown notice--from HarperCollins, publisher of Levitt and Dubner's Superfreakonomics. While other publishers these days are happy to have sample chapters of their authors' works read and distributed on the internet, not so with HarperCollins.

One thing I can do in response is--tit-for-tat--to remove my praise of and link to E.M. Halliday's Understanding Thomas Jefferson: there are other better (albeit longer) Jefferson biographies published by firms that have not sent me DMCA notices: read them instead.

I urge everybody--authors and readers alike--to just say no to HarperCollins in the future.

A second thing I can do is to link to Elizabeth Kolbert's review of Superfreaknomics in the New Yorker:

“SuperFreakonomics” and climate change: Then, almost overnight, the crisis passed.... By 1912, autos in New York outnumbered horses, and in 1917 the city’s last horse-drawn streetcar made its final run. All the anxieties about a metropolis inundated by ordure had been misplaced.

This story—call it the Parable of Horseshit—has been told many times, with varying aims. The latest iteration is offered by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, in their new book, “SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance”.... Levitt and Dubner tell the horseshit story as a prelude to discussing climate change: “Just as equine activity once threatened to stomp out civilization, there is now a fear that human activity will do the same.” As usual, they say, the anxiety is unwarranted. First, the global-warming threat has been exaggerated; there is uncertainty about how, exactly, the earth will respond to rising CO2 levels, and uncertainty has “a nasty way of making us conjure up the very worst possibilities.” Second, solutions are bound to present themselves: “Technological fixes are often far simpler, and therefore cheaper, than the doomsayers could have imagined.”

Levitt and Dubner have in mind a very particular kind of “technological fix.” Wind turbines, solar cells, biofuels—these are all, in their view, more trouble than they’re worth. Such technologies are aimed at reducing CO2 emissions, which is the wrong goal, they say. Cutting back is difficult and, finally, annoying. Who really wants to use less oil? This sounds, the pair write, “like wearing sackcloth.” Wouldn’t it be simpler just to reëngineer the planet?... “Once you eliminate the moralism and the angst, the task of reversing global warming boils down to a straightforward engineering problem,” Levitt and Dubner write....

Neither Levitt, an economist, nor Dubner, a journalist, has any training in climate science—or, for that matter, in science of any kind. It’s their contention that they don’t need it. The whole conceit behind “SuperFreakonomics” and, before that, “Freakonomics,” which sold some four million copies, is that a dispassionate, statistically minded thinker can find patterns and answers in the data that those who are emotionally invested in the material will have missed.... Levitt and Dubner claim to have solved the mystery of why crime, after soaring in the nineteen-eighties, dropped in the nineteen-nineties.... They also have proved—at least to their own satisfaction—that names like Ansley and Philippa will be popular for girls in the coming decade, that reading to your kids doesn’t matter, and that drunks should be encouraged to drive rather than walk.

Given their emphasis on cold, hard numbers, it’s noteworthy that Levitt and Dubner ignore what are, by now, whole libraries’ worth of data on global warming. Indeed, just about everything they have to say on the topic is, factually speaking, wrong. Among the many matters they misrepresent are: the significance of carbon emissions as a climate-forcing agent, the mechanics of climate modelling, the temperature record of the past decade, and the climate history of the past several hundred thousand years. Raymond T. Pierrehumbert is a climatologist who, like Levitt, teaches at the University of Chicago. In a particularly scathing critique, he composed an open letter to Levitt, which he posted on the blog RealClimate....

But what’s most troubling about “SuperFreakonomics” is... [t]hough climate change is a grave problem, Levitt and Dubner treat it mainly as an opportunity to show how clever they are.... Among the many likely consequences of shooting SO2 above the clouds would be new regional weather patterns (after major volcanic eruptions, Asia and Africa have a nasty tendency to experience drought).... There are eminent scientists—among them the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen—who argue that geoengineering should be seriously studied, but only with the understanding that it represents a risky, last-ditch attempt to avert catastrophe. “By far the preferred way” to confront climate change, Crutzen has written, “is to lower the emissions of greenhouse gases.”...

To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction. This is the turn that “SuperFreakonomics” takes, even as its authors repeatedly extoll their hard-headedness. All of which goes to show that, while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us.

There's This Little-Discussed Fact...

Seth Borenstein of AP writes:

AP IMPACT: Statisticians reject global cooling: Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.

(In this book cover image released by Random House, "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance," by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is shown. (AP Photo/Random House))....

Apart from the conflicting data analyses is the eyebrow-raising new book title from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. A line in the book says:

Then there's this little-discussed fact about global warming: While the drumbeat of doom has grown louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased....

That led to a sharp rebuke from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which said the book mischaracterizes climate science with "distorted statistics." Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, said he does not believe there is a cooling trend. He said the line was just an attempt to note the irony of a cool couple of years at a time of intense discussion of global warming. Levitt said he did not do any statistical analysis of temperatures, but "eyeballed" the numbers and noticed 2005 was hotter than the last couple of years. Levitt said the "cooling" reference in the book title refers more to ideas about trying to cool the Earth artificially...

---

More from Seth:

AP IMPACT: Statisticians reject global cooling  | ajc.com: Only one problem: It's not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs? In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time. "If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated inopinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller "Freakonomics." Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it's not that simple. Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend. "The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880. Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers. Identifying a downward trend is a case of "people coming at the data with preconceived notions," said Peterson, author of the book "Why Did They Do That? An Introduction to Forensic Decision Analysis"...

If This Were to Be Played Upon the Stage, I Would Condemn It at Once as an Improbable Fiction...

I am completely bemused. This is either a proof of the existence or of the nonexistence of God, depending on your taste.

Stanford's Ken Caldeira attacks:

Yale Climate 360: The main misrepresentation [of my work and my beliefs by Steve Levitt and Steve Dubner] is the quote [in Superfreakonomics] that says that CO2 is not “the right villain”.... [P]ull back to the case of the biosphere taking up 70 percent of CO2--well, yes, we have a published study that said that. It also... [said we] risk melting Antarctica.... [T]here is a selective use of quotes. If you spend several hours talking to somebody and they take a half-dozen things and put it in a book, then it’s going to be in the context and framing of arguments that the authors are trying to make... very different from the context and framing that I would put those same facts in... So I think that the casual reader can [get]... a misimpression of what I believe and what I feel about things...

And Steve Dubner counterattacks:

The Anatomy of a Smear: Most gravely, we stand accused of misrepresenting the views of one of the most respected climate scientists on the scene, [Ken Caldeira,] whom we interviewed extensively. If everything they said was actually true, it would indeed be a damning indictment. But it’s not...

The world is indeed a most remarkable place...

On second thought, this is definitely a conclusive proof of the existence of Coyote...

Robert Waldmann's Realpolitik: Beat China and India with an Eighteen-Mile Long Sulfur-Filled Rubber Hose...

Hoisted from comments: A recommendation for "harsh measures" from Robert Waldmann:

Ken Caldeira on Levitt and Dubner and Geoengineering: That's an excellent interview [with Caldeira]. On the other hand, I think we are getting close to the point where we ought to let Caldeira get back to doing research.

I would like to focus on one point "China or India then went into a decade or two of deep drought." That is not just a scary story Caldeira pulled out of his hat. Simulations tend to suggest that SO2 geoengineering will cause reduced precipitation in India and China. To be very very frank, I think that there is a silver lining to that cloudlessness. A big global warming problem is getting China and India on board. If, say, the USA could honestly say:

that's a nice monsoon you have there. It would be a pity if something were to happen to it.

Oh and by the way, we really really don't want to send SO2 into the stratosphere, because it might cause you a terrible drought. But if we see no alternative way to fight global warming, we might feel forced to send the SO2 up the tubes and hope for the best."

I'd say the effect on geopolitics is a feature not a bug of SO2 geoengineering research.

My personal position is that China and India are poor, so rich countries should pay all of the costs of reducing their emissions. But that's not going to happen is it? Might as well put our faith in global cooling ponies. So I conclude that threatening them with an 18 mile long tube is third best.

Ken Caldeira on Levitt and Dubner and Geoengineering

With Jeff Goodall, of Yale Environment 360:

Geoengineering the Planet: The Possibilities and the Pitfalls: Caldeira argues that sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions is by far the most prudent course. Still, given the huge volume of carbon dioxide that humanity continues to pour into the atmosphere, Caldeira says it would be folly not to undertake research into geoengineering. With the prospect that the world could reach a level of dangerous warming this century, Caldeira maintains it’s necessary to determine which projects — such as putting particles in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight into space — might work and which will not. He likens geoengineering schemes to seatbelts — a technology that might reduce the chance of injury in case of a climate crash. But, warned Caldeira, “Thinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, ‘Now that I’ve got the seatbelts on, I can just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat.’ It’s crazy.”

Yale Environment 360: I want to start with this little dust-up over SuperFreakonomics. In the book, you are quoted as saying, when it comes to global warming, “Carbon dioxide is not the right villain.” Is that accurate?

Ken Caldeira: That is not accurate. I don’t believe I said anything remotely like that because I believe that we should be outlawing the production of devices that emit carbon dioxide, and I don’t think we can solve this carbon climate problem unless we drastically reduce our carbon dioxide emissions very soon.

e360: They also write that you are convinced that human activity is responsible for “some” global warming. What does that mean?

Caldeira: I don’t think we can say with certainty whether we’re responsible for 90 percent of it or we might be responsible for 110 percent of it...

e360: Another thing that plays in to the same kind of sensibility is the idea that the doubling of CO2 traps less than 2 percent of the outgoing radiation emitted by the Earth. When that’s phrased like that, it makes it sound like it’s not really much of a problem.

*Caldeira: *You should think of the whole global warming problem as a 1 percent problem, at least for doubling of CO2. In absolute temperature Kelvin — scientists like to use the Kelvin scale — the current Earth temperature is around 288 degrees Kelvin, and a 3-degree warming on top of that is basically a one-percent additional warming. And so this whole issue of climate change, when viewed from an Earth-system perspective, is a story about 1 percents and 2 percents...

e360: The authors also cite you as saying that a doubling of CO2 yields a 70-percent increase in plant growth, suggesting it would be a boon to agricultural activity. It sounds like one of those old CO2-is-good-for-you ads. Can you explain that?

Caldeira: Yes... the 70-percent increase in plant growth... came out of a paper that we produced, I believe, in 2005. We took a model... which has a very low climate sensitivity, and what I would consider a hyperactive land biosphere--produced 9-degree Centigrade warming globally and 20 degrees around East Antarctica. Now that’s 16 degrees Fahrenheit globally, and something like 36 degrees around Antarctica.... So we were showing, look, even if CO2 fertilization is at the high end of anybody’s imagination, we still produce rather frightening temperatures. But I do believe the basic sign is correct, that with more CO2, plants can use water more efficiently... agricultural productivity will increase in the mid and high latitudes, where warmer weather will help the plants grow, but will decrease productivity in the poor equatorial nations where heat is already stressing crop yield.

e360: Overall, do you feel like your work has been accurately and fairly represented in this book?

Caldeira: The main misrepresentation is the quote that says that CO2 is not “the right villain”... but if you say what’s the primary gas responsible for the planetary warming, I would say it’s carbon dioxide.... [T]he other statements that are attributed to me... based in fact and based on studies.... [P]ull back to the case of the biosphere taking up 70 percent of CO2--well, yes, we have a published study that said that. It also presented results saying that we might warm up the planet enough to risk melting Antarctica.... [T]here is a selective use of quotes. If you spend several hours talking to somebody and they take a half-dozen things and put it in a book, then it’s going to be in the context and framing of arguments that the authors are trying to make... the contexts and the framing of those issues are very different from the context and framing that I would put those same facts in... So I think that the casual reader can... come up with a misimpression of what I believe and what I feel about things.

e360: Let’s talk a little bit more broadly about geoengineering. I was struck by something one of the authors said on NPR the other day — that he got interested in geoengineering when he realized that the problem with global warming is not that there is too much carbon in the air; it’s that it is too hot. Do you agree with that?

Caldeira: The reason it is too hot is that there is too much carbon dioxide in the air. Now the carbon dioxide itself, of course, has big negative implications for ocean acidification and ecosystems, including coral reefs. So there are direct CO2 effects.... [I]f we had some magic thing that would reverse all effects of CO2 perfectly, then you could say, “Well the problem is not CO2.” But nobody really expects that we are going to have some magic, perfect CO2 nullifier.... [T]o present it as if, “Well, it not’s really CO2, but the effects of CO2,” it’s like if you got shot by a bullet and you said, “Well, it wasn’t really the bullet that was the problem, it was just that I happened to have this hole through my body...”

e360: Right. Well, a lot of people think of geoengineering as a quick and cheap fix for global warming. Is it?

Caldeira: Let’s pretend for a moment that putting dust in the stratosphere is easy to do and works reasonably well... and that China or India then went into a decade or two of deep drought. Whether the system caused that drought or not, I think the Chinese or the Indians would rightly suspect that the reason they have this drought and ensuing famines might be due to this system that was put up by these other countries. And you could easily imagine that there would be a great amount of political tension.... Then, of course, the system is not going to work perfectly... not going to address... ocean acidification... not going to perfectly offset global warming.... [G]eoengineering options [are] something we would only want to consider if our backs were really up against the wall... because the alternatives look so frightening.

e360: I know that some scientists have suggested that there should be some kind of taboo on geoengineering research. But I know that you’ve been outspoken in the need for a federally-funded geoengineering research program. Can you explain that?

Caldeira: Yes, I think we don’t know right now whether these kinds of approaches have the potential to reduce risk or not. In our climate models, the amount of climate change can be reduced by these kinds of approaches, but the climate models are an imperfect reflection of reality.... Let’s say geoengineering doesn’t work, and that it would add to risk. It seems to me it would be worth having a research program to demonstrate that beyond a reasonable doubt so we can all forget about this and move on. On the other hand, if these options do have the potential to reduce risk, then it seems to me that we would like to have the option to reduce that risk should a time come where that would seem necessary. I kind of think of these geoengineering options as seeing, “Well, can we invent some kind of seatbelts for our climate system?” We need to drive the climate system carefully, we need to greatly reduce emissions. But even if we’re driving carefully we still run the risk of getting into an accident. And seatbelts can potentially reduce the damage when we’re in an accident.... I’m much in favor of a very broad-spectrum approach.... [T]hinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, “Now that I’ve got the seatbelts on, I can’t just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat.” It’s crazy.

e360: Can you sketch briefly what a geoengineering research program might look like?

Caldeira: The first thing I would do is use the plural, and say “programs.” Because many different things are lumped into the same category.... David Keith and Klaus Lackner have been looking at capture of carbon dioxide from the air.... [T]hat’s very different from, say, putting sulfur dust in the stratosphere.... [T]wo new programs — one looking at what are the scalable, fast-acting things we could do in the event of an emergency. What could we do fast that would start the earth cooling within a couple of years if we really wanted to? And then I think we need another research program in saying how can we backpedal out of our high greenhouse gas concentrations....

e360: Do you think it’s inevitable that we’re going to try to engineer the Earth’s climate?

Caldeira: First of all, nobody can really see the future.... I think that there are pathways that we might start regionally and slowly ramp up to something more global. I think that’s a possibility. The other possibility is a real emergency situation where there’s a phase change in public opinion, [where] it becomes conventional wisdom that we can’t tolerate this climate change any more, that we have to do something.... I would wager that we would never deploy any geoengineering system, and that we’re more likely just to try our best to adapt to it. But I think there’s enough of a risk that it’s worth investigating whether there are options to reduce risk and damage....

[W]e’re talking here about people’s lives... I don’t think we’re going to deploy these systems to save polar bears... [but] to help people from dying of famines, or something dramatic like that. And I think that these techniques have a potential to save lives and reduce suffering, and we should explore whether that’s true or not.... [W]e’re obviously interfering with the climate system wholesale now, and it’s possible that more intelligent interference could reduce the damage from the first interference. But it could make it worse. I don’t think we know, which is why we need the research program.

The Word from Mauna Loa, and the Northwest Passage

In Which Daniel Davies Tells Nathan Myhrvold and Steven Dubner to Stand Up, Stop Whining, and Take Their Floggings Like Men

Daniel:

Rules for Contrarians:

1. Don’t whine.

That is all....

I know a little bit about contrarianism. So I’m disturbed to see that people who are making roughly infinity more money than me out of the practice aren’t sticking to the unwritten rules of the game.

Viz Nathan Mhyrvold:

Once people with a strong political or ideological bent latch onto an issue, it becomes hard to have a reasonable discussion; once you’re in a political mode, the focus in the discussion changes. Everything becomes an attempt to protect territory. Evidence and logic becomes secondary, used when advantageous and discarded when expedient. What should be a rational debate becomes a personal and venal brawl....

The whole idea of contrarianism is that you’re “attacking the conventional wisdom”, you’re “telling people that their most cherished beliefs are wrong”, you’re “turning the world upside down”. In other words, you’re setting out to annoy people. Now opinions may differ on whether this is a laudable thing to do – I think it’s fantastic – but if annoying people is what you’re trying to do, then you can hardly complain when annoying people is what you actually do.... If Superfreakonomics wanted a calm and rational debate, this chapter would have been called something like: “Geoengineering: Issues in Relative Cost Estimation of SO2 Shielding”, and the book would have sold about five copies.

Viz also, Stephen Dubner:

They have given the impression that we are global-warming deniers of the worst sort, and that our analysis of the issue is ideological and unscientific. Most gravely, we stand accused of misrepresenting the views of one of the most respected climate scientists on the scene, whom we interviewed extensively. If everything they said was actually true, it would indeed be a damning indictment. But it’s not....

The other point of contrarianism is... you assemble... points which are individually uncontroversial... and put them together to support a conclusion which is surprising and counterintuitive.... [T]he aim of the thing is the overall impression you give.... [T]he entire point is to make a defensible argument which strongly resembles a controversial one. So... you don’t get to complain that people have “misinterpreted” your piece by taking you to be saying exactly what you carefully constructed the argument to look like you were saying. Fair enough, you might not care to defend the controversial point it looked like you were making, but a degree of diffidence is appropriate here, because the confusion is entirely and intentionally your fault:

(That is the “global cooling” in our subtitle. If someone interprets our brief mention of the global-cooling scare of the 1970’s as an assertion of “a scientific consensus that the planet was cooling,” that feels like a willful misreading.)

No it doesn’t; it feels like someone read the first two pages for the plain meaning of the words and didn’t spot that you were actually playing a little crossword-puzzle game where the answer was “consensus”. In general, whatever “global cooling” meant, it was put on the cover in full knowledge of the impression it would give to a normal reader so once more, it is not legitimate to complain that this phrase was interpreted in the way in which it was intended to be interpreted.

In general, contrarians ought to have thick skins, because their entire raison d’etre is the giving of intellectual offence to others. So don’t whine, for heaven’s sake. Own your bulls---...

Hoisted from Comments: Neil B. Joins the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill

And, you know, the first two times I read chapter 5 of Superfreakonomics I missed this one totally. It was only after Yoram Baumann started raving and weeping like a child that I picked up on it...

Neil B ♪ said...

Yet More Superfreakonomics Blogging. Yes. I Know. I Know...: “When Al Gore urges the citizenry to sacrifice… the agnostics grumble that human activity accounts for just 2 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions, with the remainder generated by natural processes like plant decay.”..

Absolutely no even marginally competent writer would put out fraudulent drivel like that about plant decay. That's like loon Beck blabbering about exhaled CO2. The existence of a surface carbon cycle (get it - cycle?) that runs carbon around between the atmosphere and plants etc. is one thing, and the new CO2 from underground is another. This is what you learn in eighth grade earth science. Levitt et al are either flaky incompetents or deliberate frauds.

Supertrees!!

Will Wilkinson called for SUPERTREES!!:

For More Responsible Climate Politics: This is all very hand wavey. Take a technology like artificial carbon sequestering "trees." What that would do is simply remove carbon from the atmosphere, like real trees, but at a much greater rate. They would be relatively easy to calibrate and fine tune. This is the sort of thing I had in mind. It wouldn't "throw a wrench" into the climate. It would pretty straightforwardly change "too much" carbon in the atmosphere to "not too much" carbon in the atmosphere. That is to say, it would fix the problem. That would be fantastic, right?

It would be. And carbon tqxes (or, second best, cap-and-trade) would be a wonderful way to get John Galt's mammoth brain set to work inventing them, wouldn't it? But somehow Will doesn't see it that way...