Right-Wing Denier Sees Cost of Global Warming: Businessmen at GE See Opportunity

Iain Murray of the National Review claims to know exactly how much 3C of global warming will cost ($22 trillion) and exactly how much Al Gore’s plan to preserve the climate will cost ($44 trillion).

(For the moment, let’s put aside the fact that most experts consider 3C catastrophic.)

Since Al Gore’s plan happens to cost twice as much as the damage; well, of course, why bother?

But funny how those radical leftists at General Electric don’t see it that way. By spending $900 million this year on CEO Jeffrey Inmelt’s "Ecoimagination" efforts, they expect to prosper — forecasting "at least" $20 billion in revenue from such products in 2010.

Murray, a senior fellow at the far-right anti-environmental Competitive Enterprise Institute and a Exxonian, somehow sees only gloom and doom when it comes to global change — not the opportunity to make money, as well as to make a better world.

Sad.

By the way, GE is doing just fine, thank you. Revenue was up nearly 15% last quarter, which Inmelt called a "boomer." They have a huge backlog of orders, and see business growing by leaps and bounds around the world.

As a stockholder, I’m pleased, both with their results and their farsightedness.

Don’t tell Murray. He’s grumpy these days. Reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s immortal line:

"A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Infopp071012bulbbot

Global Warming News You Can Use

Some of the best climate reporting recently has come out of Seth Borenstein of (I think) the Associated Press.  (His stories are so often syndicated it can sometimes be hard to tell.)

Here’s his latest, which looks at climate change from a practical–comfort–angle. If you live in an area where humidity is a part of life, he explains why you’ll be sweating a little more in the summer now.

We’ve heard discussion of the evidence of climate change in the past, specifically in 2005 in relation to James Hansen’s not-very-famous "energy balance" study. He called it a "smoking gun," which didn’t click metaphorically, but at least it made the papers.

As far as I can tell, this latest evidence of a human "fingerprint" on climate change has gotten some local coverage, but essentially no national press at all until Borenstein’s piece. It’s a study that shows how humidity is rising as water vapor spreads poleward from the equator, driven by rising temperatures.

(This rise was discussed earlier this year in an interesting story in the Chicago Tribune, which has had problems with increased humidity this year, but that story seems to have gotten buried in the files.)

For those interested in climate change, the new study is worth a look. (And it’s fully available via the National Academy of Sciences, for once.) Let me just quote the lead author:

“When you heat the planet, you increase the ability of the atmosphere
to hold moisture,” said Benjamin Santer, lead author from Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory’s Program for Climate Modeling and
Intercomparison. “The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by
about 0.41 kilograms per square meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988,
and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture
change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the
human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”

Nice graph, too, of water vapor in the atmosphere in August, 2005. (h/t: climatespin)
 

Watervapor

Al Gore Does the Right Thing — Again

As many expected, Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize, but in conjuction with the often-derided and dully-named Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Gore, as usual, rose to the occasion in his statement:

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is
even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–the world’s pre-eminent
scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate
crisis — a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly
for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis
is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all
of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global
consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the
award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit
organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and
around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

Nice (if brief) on-line discussion with Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC, in the Wa-Po. My favorite question and answer:

Newfoundland, Canada:
Big question, but I’m curious:  October 2037.  What to you honestly see given your knowledge of science and politics?

Martin Parry: I
regret I am not that optimistic, given that 10 years have passed
without significant action to reduce emissions. It is now urgent.

And the best comment seen so far on why Al Gore isn’t running for president, from my editor at Grist, David Roberts, who also rises to the occasion in one of his best pieces, I think:

What many Americans don’t realize is that the rest of the world is
not distracted by the serial, lurid distractions that compose our
political dialogue. Our national conversation is dominated by the
resentful bile of core of nationalist, reactionary, authoritarian
ding-dongs, but it’s not like that when Gore goes overseas. In other
countries, they don’t care about his electrical bills or his waist size
or his clothing choices or his lack of that most important
qualification for leader of the free world, the ability to act like a
regular guy.

Gore can’t act like a regular guy. He’s smart, and he talks like a
smart person. He’s earnest and committed. He cares. He wants to help
save the world. Inside the glorified high school of U.S. politics,
those qualities make him a square, an easy subject of mockery. But
outside the U.S. they are assets. Gore can help bring governments
together; he can get powerful financiers, corporate titans, rock stars,
and energy scholars in the same room. He can help shape policy and
public opinion across globe, not just in the U.S.

Amen. Here’s Al at a book signing earlier this year in Redlands, CA.

Algoreatbooksigning

Global Warming: There Will Be Snacks

Why fight global warming when you can use it to bake cookies in your car?

That’s what folks in Los Angeles are saying, now that they’ve found a way to cook delicious chocolate chip cookies on their dashboards.

Somewhere Andrew Bird, a much-loved alternative rocker, must be smiling. In his droll and quite wonderful song about global warming (called "Tables and Chairs") he all but predicted this.

"Don’t you worry the atmosphere," he sang, promising "there will be snacks."

http://media.imeem.com/m/dHzrJDlrt2/aus=false/

Dashboardcookeis

Great Bird Poem

By Steven Hind, of Kansas.

Great Blue Heron
By Steven Hind

Behind the pond under a whispering

scarf of willows, heron does his lone

knifewalk beside the wind-fretted waters.

His deft movements make a death

defying progress: a life of mud transmuted

into sky life as he rows away on a river

of air and its melody of coyote song

through cedars beyond cedars, their

silhouettes swallowed by darkness

beneath the bright gravel of stars.

Could a Lack of Arctic Ice Bring Drought to Southwest?

That’s the theory emerging from young researcher Jacob Sewall, now at the University of Virginia, as explained in this thoughtful story from Rob Krier. I hope to have a chance to take a long look for myself at this question.

Three years ago, computer forecast models predicted that in 2050, the
reduced ice mass would cause climate shifts that would result in a
drought in the western United States.

But the ice is melting far faster than climatologists thought it would.

So much ice has disappeared that the Arctic today looks much
like what scientists thought it would in 2050. It’s as if the
atmosphere hit the fast-forward button.

The predicted climate changes also may have arrived, with much
of the West in the midst of the kind of severe drought that
geoscientist Jacob Sewall had envisioned for 2050.

Here’s a helpful graphic from NASA on the disappearing sea ice, without any confusing features, such as large land masses in the Arctic.

2006_seaice_graph_2

Bless the Animals — and St. Francis

Today is the feast day of one of the most revered of all Catholics, St. Francis of Assisi, and this weekend will come the famous Blessing of Animals. At Christmas, when we see a "nativity scene," what we are seeing is the American version of the Devotion of the Crib, a scene originally blessed by St. Francis.

Where does this come from? The life of a fascinating man, especially for an infidel such as myself. Literally a great believer in chastity, poverty, and charity, St. Francis not only inspired an order of monks, bringing thousands into the fold, but brought forward crucial concepts of kindness and dignity, central to the church today. With the reverence for the nativity scene comes a reverence for baby Jesus, and a deeper understanding of what it means to be kind. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Again, to medieval notions of justice the evil-doer was beyond the law and there was no need to keep faith with him. But according to Francis, not only was justice due even to evil-doers, but justice must be preceded by courtesy as by a herald. Courtesy, indeed, in the saint’s quaint concept, was the younger sister of charity and one of the qualities of God Himself, Who "of His courtesy", he declares, "gives His sun and His rain to the just and the unjust".

What a brilliant cast he puts on the words of Christ (in Matthew), who spoke of the rain that falls on the just and the unjust! His blessing of animals will be said this Sunday in countless churches. His is the gift of sympathy, but it comes out of a desire for universal justice, even for other species. How 21st century!

The very animals found in Francis a tender friend and protector; thus we find him pleading with the people of Gubbio
to feed the fierce wolf that had ravished their flocks, because through
hunger "Brother Wolf" had done this wrong. And the early legends have left us many an idyllic picture of how beasts and birds alike susceptible to the charm of Francis’s gentle ways, entered into loving companionship with him; how the hunted
leveret sought to attract his notice; how the half-frozen bees crawled
towards him in the winter to be fed; how the wild falcon fluttered
around him; how the nightingale sang with him in sweetest content in
the ilex grove at the Carceri, and how his "little brethren the birds"
listened so devoutly to his sermon by the roadside near Bevagna that
Francis chided himself for not having thought of preaching to them
before. Francis’s love
of nature also stands out in bold relief in the world he moved in. He
delighted to commune with the wild flowers, the crystal spring, and the
friendly fire, and to greet the sun as it rose upon the fair Umbrian
vale. In this respect, indeed, St. Francis’s "gift of sympathy" seems
to have been wider even than St. Paul’s, for we find no evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or for animals.

Why Bush Was Dumb to Veto SCHIP

Punditry of the Week:    

In vetoing reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program,
George W. Bush has fired the first shot in the battle over health-care
reform. The likely result will be to help mobilize support for further
government intervention in the health-care market, which would be a
very good thing. Thank you, Mr. President!

Timothy Noah

Hillary: Bush Declared War on Science

In a speech on the anniversary of the Sputnik launch, Hillary Clinton said today:

Fifty years ago, Sputnik marked the dawn of the Space Age and the
beginning of a new era filled with new challenges. Fifty years later,
there is no single, galvanizing event to steel our resolve and to lift
our eyes to the heavens. The challenges we face are more complex and
interconnected. From the rise of globalization to the threat of global
warming. These challenges require big ideas and bold thinking.

But instead of fostering a climate of discovery and
innovation, the Bush administration has declared war on science. The
record is breathtaking:

banning the most promising kinds of stem cell research, allowing
political appointees to censor studies on climate change, muzzling
global warming experts like Dr. James Hansen, overruling doctors and
the FDA on emergency contraception, suppressing and manipulating data
on mercury pollution, even delaying one report which found that 8
percent of women between 16 and 49 years of age have mercury levels in
their blood that could harm future children, denying the risks of
toxins like asbestos in the air after the 9/11 attacks, overruling
scientists who sought to protect animals under the Endangered Species
Act, eliminating scientific committees at the Department of Health and
Human Services that did not parrot the politically accepted ideology —
or packing those committees with industry insiders, altering scientific
tests on the lead content of children’s lunch boxes — and appointing a
lead industry consultant to a key panel formed by the Centers for
Disease Control, barring a USDA researcher from publishing or even
discussing his work on antibiotic resistant bacteria, censoring
government websites on breast cancer research, contraception, climate
change, and so much else.

To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, this administration doesn’t make
decisions on facts. It makes facts based on decisions. And to further
paraphrase – my predecessor, the extraordinary late Senator Daniel
Patrick Moynahan, everyone is entitled to his own opinion but no one is
entitled to his own facts. For six and half years under President Bush,
it has been open season on open inquiry. They’ve tried to turn
Washington into an evidence-free zone.

A credible Presidential candidate who quotes Stephen Colbert! That oughta win her some votes on the college campuses.