pNative status is a big deal. It affects where conservation dollars are spent, and our inherent reaction to a species. Most people believe that native equals good and alien equals bad, but in some cases, the distinction between a native and an alien species isn’t so clear-cut./p pDingoes, for example, arrived on the Australian mainland some 4-5000 years ago – they were here when Europeans arrived – yet we know that they were introduced by people (albeit a long time ago). How can we decide if they have been here long enough to be considered a native species?/p h2The impacts of new arrivals/h2 pWhen they first arrive in a new ecosystem, alien species (if they establish) can have big impacts. For example, dingoes probably sent the Thylacine, the Tasmanian native hen, and the Tasmanian devil extinct on the Australian mainland soon after they arrived. More recent arrivals include cats and foxes which are thought to have severely affected populations of many native mammals – such as woylies and numbats – as they spread across the country./p pSuch impacts often happen because a native species fails to recognise a new enemy, and to defend itself effectively. This occurs when introductions mismatch competitors, plants and herbivores, or in this case, native prey and an alien predator, as likely happened when dingoes first arrived in Australia./p pBut is this still occurring?/p h2Just ask the locals/h2 pGiven enough time, local species that don’t go extinct will “learn their lesson” and begin to recognise and respond to their new predator. This happens through learning, adaptation, or both. Eventually, local prey should treat the new predator in much the same way as any native predator./p pfigure class="align-left"img src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/7970/width237/3spj9pt6-1329889264.jpg"figcaptionBandicoots will put up with rain, but how do they feel about dingoes? span class="source"AAP/span/figcaption/figure/p pThis process has been repeated throughout history, as ecological communities exchanged members through natural means or human trade. Many species considered native in their communities today were in fact simply introduced to those communities a very long time ago./p pAs an island nation with a very recent history of multiple invasions of alien species, Australia has a distinctive perspective on this. In other countries and cultures, the lines aren’t so clear cut./p pHow can we tell if enough time has passed for this process to happen, and an alien to become a native species? We can ask the local species that interact with it./p h2A ready-made study system/h2 pWe decided to test this idea out on a ready-made experimental system in the northern suburbs of Sydney. In this area, bandicoots (a medium-sized native mammal) love to come out of the bush at night to dig up residential gardens in search of food. The diggings they leave behind in lawns are well known to residents, who are often less-than-pleased with the mess left behind by a foraging bandicoot./p pMany residents also own pet dogs or cats, and we thought that bandicoots might choose to avoid these yards when deciding where to forage. If so, it would imply that they recognise the danger posed by these pets./p pTo find out, we asked people who lived next door to Kuringai Chase and Sydney Harbour national parks to tell us about the quantity and frequency of bandicoot diggings that typically appear in their yards./p h2Dingoes are old news to bandicoots/h2 pWe found that bandicoots avoided back yards with resident pet dogs. They showed no such aversion to yards with cats, and dug happily in the lawns of backyards without pets./p pfigure class="align-centre"img src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/7969/width540/ts4dpjgt-1329889237.jpg"figcaptionDingoes and dogs seem much the same to bandicoots. span class="source"AAP/span/figcaption/figure/p pSo it seems that bandicoots do avoid dogs when looking for food. As domestic dogs are very closely related to dingoes, this suggests that thousands of years experience with dingoes has enabled the bandicoots to recognise the risk of dogs, but not cats, which have only been killing bandicoots for about 150 years./p pIn short, then, the predation risk of dingoes is old news to a bandicoot./p h2What does this mean for dingoes?/h2 pBefore making any important decisions we need to “ask” many more local species about their response to dingoes. Importantly though, simple recognition of a predator is not enough – prey also need to effectively defend themselves./p pWhile it has been suggested that dingoes suppress foxes and cats with a net benefit for native small mammal biodiversity, we believe that the finer scale behavioural interactions between predator and prey are a critical part of this equation./p pIf most native mammals remain naive towards cats and foxes, but defend themselves against dingoes, it would suggest that dingoes do have an important role to play in Australian ecosystems./ppemThis work was funded by an Ethel Mary Read Grant from the Royal Zoological Society of NSW (http://www.rzsnsw.org.au/), and by the Hermon Slade Foundation (Grant HSF 10/10 http://www.hermonslade.org.au/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript./em/p pemPeter Banks receives funding from the ARC and the Hermon Slade Foundation./em/pimg src="https://theconversation.edu.au/content/5433/tracker.pixel" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"/

BBC: Water company figures show that London and the Thames Valley have received below-average rainfall for 18 of the last 23 months. The amount of water in the River Lee, which runs through Hertfordshire and north east London, is only 24% of its usual level while the Kennet is only 31% of its average level. [...]

p“Truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”/p pWinston Churchill’s famous words were uttered during the war against the Nazis and referred to a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bodyguard"Operation Bodyguard/a, a deception that was intended to mislead the German high command about the date and location of the invasion of Normandy. Given the context, few would criticise Churchill’s statement./p pNow imagine a href="http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/12/madoff-ponzi-hedge-pf-ii-in_rl_1212croesus_inl.html"Bernie Madoff/a uttering the same words in defense of his acrobatic Ponzi schemes. Few would accept such glaring sophistry./p pWhere does a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/-the-origin-of-the-heartl_b_1289669.html"Dr Peter Gleick’s revelation/a that he lied to a conservative think tank to access climate change documents fit on this spectrum?/p pThis question gets us right to the heart of a central issue in moral cognition and philosophy: Are there immutable moral rules — such as “thou shall not lie” — or does morality legitimately involve a trade-off between competing ethical imperatives that includes consideration of the ultimate outcomes of one’s actions?/p pIf there are immutable moral rules then there is little daylight between Churchill and the hypothetical Madoff — both violated a moral axiom by admitting the possibility that lying may be justifiable./p pBy contrast, if morality involves a balancing of ethical costs and benefits, then Churchill’s deception of the German high command quite plausibly was a moral act that quickened the pace of battle, thus hastening the defeat of the Nazis and the liberation of Dachau./p pThe Allies’ deception paled in comparison to the lives saved./p pHistory is full of such moral balancing acts./p pWhen Daniel Ellsberg released the classified a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers"Pentagon Papers/a in 1971 he undoubtedly broke the law. However, when the papers revealed that four consecutive Presidents, from Truman to Johnson, had consistently misled the American public about their actions in Vietnam, the illegality of Ellsberg’s action paled in comparison to the good that arose from informing the public of their leaders’ deceptions./p pUltimately, all charges against Ellsberg were dismissed, and the Pentagon Papers arguably helped accelerate the move towards peace in Vietnam./p pWhat are we to make of the latest moral balancing act involving the a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/20/who-funds-thinktank-lobbyists"leaked Heartland documents/a?/p pOn Valentine’s Day an anonymous source emailed documents to various journalists that were leaked from the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank./p pAccording to its 2010 Prospectus, Heartland opposes “… junk science and the use of scare tactics in the areas of environmental protection and public health”./p pOpposition to “junk science”? What junk science?/p pAccording to the Heartland Institute, “junk science” is the research that has linked tobacco to lung cancer and junk food to obesity. It is also, of course, the “junk science” known as climate research./p pThe leaked documents put names and dollar figures to Heartland’s opposition to “junk science” and revealed that it funded climate denial in at least three countries — the US, a href="http://hot-topic.co.nz/puppets-on-a-string-us-think-tank-funds-nz-sceptics/"New Zealand/a and a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/web-leak-shows-trail-of-climate-sceptic-funding-20120217-1tegk.html"Australia/a. Well-known so-called “sceptics” were found to have been pay-rolled by the Institute, often contrary to those individuals’ earlier denials of funding by vested interests./p pGeorge Monbiot a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/20/who-funds-thinktank-lobbyists?INTCMP=SRCH"summed up the implications/a of the leaked information succinctly: “This is plutocracy, pure and simple.”/p pThen yesterday, another revelation./p pClimate scientist Dr Peter Gleick a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/-the-origin-of-the-heartl_b_1289669.html"wrote on the Huffington Post/a that he obtained the documents from Heartland by using someone else’s name, and then passed them on to journalists, thereby triggering an avalanche of exposure of the Heartland denial machine./p pIs Gleick another Churchill or Ellsberg?/p pLegal issues aside, how does his subterfuge compare to the potential public good that has resulted from the documents’ release?/p pMany philosophers who study ethics agree that it is important to consider the consequences of one’s actions in a moral dilemma to come to an acceptable judgment. Rather than relying on moral strictures, this “consequentialist” approach argues that the morality of an action is evaluated by whether it brings about the greatest total well-being./p pThis reasoning is mirrored in the cognitive laboratory, where people’s responses are also often informed by the consequences associated with competing paths of action (the data are quite complex but it seems safe to conclude that most people are sensitive to weighting the outcomes of competing actions rather than being exclusively entrenched in immutable moral rules)./p pDoes this mean there is an ethical imperative to consider Gleick to be another Daniel Ellsberg?/p pNo. But it does mean that one’s ethical concerns should consider competing actions and outcomes rather than focusing on an individual’s chosen action in isolation./p pGleick has apologised for his use of subterfuge. His actions have violated the confidentiality of a think tank but they have also given the public a glimpse into the inner workings of the climate denial machine./p pHad he not done so, no one’s confidentiality would have been violated, but then the public would have been kept guessing about the internal workings of one of the world’s most notorious serial impersonators of science. The Heartland Institute takes pride in its chimerical pseudo-“scientific” conferences and it is allied with “scientific” work that a href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2870492.html"denies that mercury is poisonous/a./p pIn the real world, mercury is poisonous. In the real world, the number of weather-related natural disasters has a href="http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyNormalization.html"tripled in the last 30 years/a, and the World Health Organization estimates that 150,000 people are a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7066/abs/nature04188.html"already dying annually/a from the effects of climate change. In reality, many of the IPCC’s 2007 predictions have been found to be a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378010000300"overly conservative/a rather than alarmist. And the latest IPCC report has a href="https://theconversation.edu.au/spinning-uncertainty-the-ipcc-extreme-weather-report-and-the-media-4402"reiterated the risks/a we are facing in the all-too-near future if we delay action on climate change./p pRevealing to the public the active, vicious, and well-funded campaign of denial that seeks to delay action against climate change likely constitutes a classic public good./p pIt is a matter of personal moral judgment whether that public good justifies Gleick’s sting operation to obtain those revelations./ppemStephan Lewandowsky receives funding from various federal agencies, such as the Australian Research Council, to conduct research in the public interest. He has no commercial interests or affiliations of any kind./em/pimg src="https://theconversation.edu.au/content/5494/tracker.pixel" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"/

An open letter from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund to the Heartland Institute: February 21, 2012 Ms. Maureen Martin General Counsel The Heartland Institute One South Wacker Drive #2740 Chicago, IL 60606 Dear Ms. Martin: As a community that has been through similar invasions of our privacy, we understand [...]

I’ll be the first to admit that cheap natural gas prices are one of the biggest short-term threats to deployment of renewable energy in the U.S. today. With a glut of gas dropping prices to historic lows, the competitiveness of technologies like wind, solar PV, and solar hot water are facing significant challenges.

But here’s the important thing to remember: The industry is being challenged, not beaten. Amidst all the hand wringing over what cheap natural gas will do to investment in renewables, we often lose sight of the fact that the cost and price of renewable energy technologies are still chasing the record price drops in natural gas. When the price of natural gas starts to climb back up (according to many estimates, it will fairly soon), renewables will be more competitive than ever.

Over the next couple of years, I believe that the age-old idiom will again be proven true: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Below are my top three reasons why natural gas won’t be the death of renewables.

1. Cheap gas won’t stay “cheap” for too much longer

Source: Slate.com

It’s often said that America has a 100-year supply of natural gas. However, those figures, which are based on estimates from the Potential Gas Committee, factor in “proved” reserves, “possible” reserves and “speculative” reserves. If we narrow these figures down to proven, technically-exploitable resources based upon current natural gas consumption rates, more cautious estimates put our supply at roughly 11-21 years.

With mature gas plays like the Barnett Shale and Marcellus Shale in decline or appearing to be nearing a peak, and drillers scaling back on operations because it’s not profitable to drill with such low prices, a growing number of analysts are questioning whether the U.S. gas industry is approaching peak production. Petroleum Geologist Arthur E. Berman recently wrote about the decline rates in conventional and unconventional gas fields at the Oil Drum:

“This development may expose the notion of long-term natural gas abundance and cheap gas as an illusion. The good news is that this adjustment will lead to higher gas prices in a future less distant than most believe. Higher prices coupled with greater discipline in drilling will allow operators to earn a suitable return and offer the best opportunity for supply to grow to meet future needs.”

In its latest Annual Energy Outlook, the U.S Energy Information Administration also cut estimates of unproved technically recoverable resources by 42%. As energy analyst Chris Nelder recently wrote: “Everything you know about shale gas is wrong.”

2. Renewable energy is challenged, but still competitive

Source: Institute for Local Self Reliance, using data from Lazard

Over the years, the conversation around gas has changed dramatically in renewable energy circles. For example, up until 2008 when gas prices were at their peak and wind development was soaring, the industry’s message was simple: We’re a far more cost-effective, reliable investment than gas.

But the tide turned in 2009, when gas prices started their precipitous drop. I remember the American Wind Energy Association’s annual conference in 2010, when shale gas dominated the CEO roundtable discussion. “Our single biggest challenge is improving technologies to compete with these low prices,” said one executive.

The industry clearly took the challenge seriously. Today, due to bigger turbines, more reliable equipment and better materials, the cost of wind has dropped to record lows. In fact, some developers are even signing long-term power purchase agreements in the 3 cents a kilowatt-hour range. And last fall, Bloomberg New Energy Finance projected that wind would be “fully competitive with energy produced from combined-cycle gas turbines by 2016″ under fair wind conditions.

The same technological improvements and maturation in project development in wind are driving down the cost of solar PV as well. For example, in California, solar developers have signed contracts for power below the projected price of natural gas from a 500-MW combined cycle power plant. (That projection does include a carbon price).

These trends are driving record levels of interest from investors. In 2011, for the first time ever, global investments in renewable energy surpassed investments in fossil fuels.

The bottom line: the price of renewable energy continues to come down while the projected price of natural gas is only expected to rise.

We do have to be realistic about the situation: assuming gas prices stay near record low levels for a long period of time — which they likely won’t — renewables deployment won’t grow at the rate we need it to. But if you look at the where large-scale renewables stack up with the cost of energy from peaking gas plants and combined cycle plants (chart above), you can see that the industry is still nipping at the heels of gas — even with a “revolution” underway in accessing shale resources. That’s something that can’t be ignored.

3. Natural gas is a fossil fuel and still contributes to global warming

Source: Nature

When considering our energy investment choices, it’s important for us to remember why we want renewable energy in the first place. Sure, it’s a domestic resource that empowers local communities, encourages entrepreneurial innovation, and spurs new types of economic development. But ultimately, renewables are an important tool for helping us reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat global warming. We should never lose sight of this environmental context.

So while gas will be an important short-term tool to knock old coal plants out of the energy mix and provide a source of back up for intermittent renewables, the global warming challenge will eventually present limits to our investments in natural gas, if not this decade, then certain in the 2020s.

As we’ve pointed out numerous times, without a price on carbon, natural gas is not a bridge fuel — it is a bridge to nowhere. Under the International Energy Agency’s “Golden Age of Gas” scenario that assumes an aggressive build-out of “clean” natural gas plants, we would still see global temperatures rise 6° Fahrenheit.

While the science is still far from settled on the life-cycle emissions issue, measured emissions in some cases are well above what drillers claim (see chart above).

Even if natural gas is cleaner than coal, it is still a fossil fuel. When we get serious about addressing global warming and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, the current economic advantages of natural gas are diminished or disappear. Last October, three center-right economists — Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus — found that with a carbon price of $27 per ton, the cost of environmental and health damages from natural gas were greater than the resource’s added value to society.

In other words, natural gas isn’t nearly as inexpensive as current prices suggest (see also “Economics Stunner: Natural Gas Damage Larger Than Its Value Added For Even Low CO2 Prices“).

Writing to 415 of the world’s biggest global warming polluters this week, global investors representing $10 trillion put it best:

“The external costs of greenhouse gas emissions will become internalized into company cash flows and profitability,” Paul Abberley, chief executive officer at Aviva Investors in London said in the statement today. ‘‘Managing greenhouse gas emissions is therefore essential to delivering sustainable shareholder returns.’’

Natural gas certainly has a role to play in this long, complicated energy transition — assuming we properly value its environmental impact. But if we listen to these forward-thinking global investors and take their call for a low-carbon strategy seriously, renewables, efficiency and demand response will not be swept aside, no matter what the short-term challenges are.

pThree little words strike fear into the heart of at least 40% of Queenslanders: coal seam gas. These three seemingly innocuous words have managed to divide a state, and become the hottest topic in the Queensland election./p pA poll a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/elections/support-for-csg-collapses-queensland-newspoll/story-fnbsqt8f-1226275274873"published by the Australian/a earlier this week articulated what many have been thinking: 40% of Queenslanders don’t support coal seam gas (CSG) extraction (while 33% do)./p pAs for the rest… well the jury is still out with the remaining 27%. Should even half of those decide they’re not in favour, then over half of the Queensland population won’t support the extraction of CSG./p pThese statistics have an important message for Queensland politicians – the election may very well be decided on issues related to this highly controversial industry, worth $60 billion./p pSo what should the incoming Queensland government, whichever party that might be, do to increase community confidence in this energy source?/p pThe community is up in arms because the Queensland government has granted petroleum leases over land owned by the community, especially farmers. Legally the Queensland government a href="https://theconversation.edu.au/not-quite-the-castle-why-miners-have-a-right-to-whats-under-your-land-4176"can do that/a because it owns the petroleum under the ground. But this ownership brings a responsibility to all Queenslanders, not just the business sector./p pHere is how the government can take charge and take responsibility if it wants to make CSG more palatable./p h2Use the resource to benefit the people/h2 pCSG is touted as an important energy source and a way of securing our energy future, but the incoming government needs to take stock of the use of this resource./p pfigure class="align-centre"img src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/7901/width540/8mz7kdjh-1329801371.jpg"figcaptionCSG belongs to all Queenslanders: not only companies should profit. span class="source"AAP/span/figcaption/figure/p pIs it really for domestic consumption by Australians, or is the vast majority of it going overseas, sold by companies at a profit? And where profit is being made, how much of that money comes back to Queensland for the benefit of Queensland?/p pThe incoming government needs to remind itself that it owns these gas resources on behalf of the Queensland people, and therefore the resource should be used for the benefit of the Queensland people./p h2Protect water resources/h2 pIt does not take a rocket scientist to realise that extracting CSG has a huge impact on water resources. An enormous amount of water is required to extract CSG. At present much of this water is coming from the Great Artesian Basin, at a cost to all users of the Basin. The incoming government has to fairly and equitably allocate water use between farmers and gas producers./p pPerhaps companies should get water allocations in the same way farmers do. Farmers are asking for fairness in the use of water. This is not an unreasonable request: we need to eat food, but it is difficult to eat gas./p pWater use is only half the problem. The community is very concerned about the briny, chemical water that is produced by CSG fracking. The concern is that the water will not be properly disposed of, and will contaminate ground water and surface water./p pThe government needs to lead the management of water contamination and disposal. a href="http://www.epa.gov/hfstudy/"Studies/a by the United States Environmental Protection Authority on ground water contamination should be considered. Certainly, the government should fund independent research so that the community has evidence from independent experts, not just from CSG extractors./p h2Don’t let wells leak/h2 pWells can’t leak: not now, not ever. This is a tough issue for the government, since well integrity is geared toward ensuring that the wells don’t leak during CSG production (and we have seen how sometimes we a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/queensland-coal-seam-gas-well-blows-its-top/story-e6frg6nf-1226061049085"can’t even get that right/a)./p pfigure class="align-left"img src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/7907/width237/t2vqsngw-1329801567.jpg"figcaptionQueenslanders are sensitive about water. span class="source"AAP/span/figcaption/figure/p pBut as demonstrated in the United States, a href="http://ecohearth.com/eco-zine/green-issues/1609-abandoned-leaking-oil-wells-natural-gas-well-leaks-disaster.html"abandoned wells/a are leaking hydrocarbon into groundwater. This issue is not going to go away./p pThe government needs to ask CSG companies some difficult questions. How long are the wells guaranteed to not leak? If the wells do leak into the ground water, who will fix them, and how?/p pThe government could set up a well liability fund, similar to the Asbestos Fund a href="http://www.ir.jameshardie.com.au/jh/asbestos_compensation.jsp"established by James Hardie/a. The companies reaping the economic benefits of gas would deposit money into a fund for the future care and repair of the wells and rehabilitation of any lands affected by leaks./p pWith over 40,000 wells to be drilled in Queensland in the next 10 years, future planning and management of abandoned wells is an important issue for the government to consider. If people know the government has planned how to deal with leaks, they may have more confidence in the industry./p h2Don’t rely on industry self regulation/h2 pIf an organisation might harm the community, we don’t usually let it regulate itself. In the United States we allowed bankers to self regulate. We saw the results of that: GFC./p pMany in the community, including myself, believe that self-regulation of CSG extraction is ludicrous. I cannot fathom why a government that owns a resource would rely on those extracting that resource for profit to regulate themselves./p pThere is a legal framework that regulates CSG activities. The company submits a Well Operations Management Plan (WOMP) which is approved by the government, and then implemented by the company at the site. But companies do not always adhere to these plans, and sometimes wells are drilled by inexperienced companies who cannot comprehend the consequences of deviating from the plans./p pThe last time a company didn’t adhere to their WOMP, we ended up with an a href="https://theconversation.edu.au/first-montara-then-deepwater-horizon-is-australia-protected-from-catastrophic-oil-spills-996"oil spill in the Timor Sea/a, spewing over 25,000 barrels of oil into the sea for over 10 weeks./p pGovernments need to take the lead. They need on-site inspectors, lots of them, inspecting well activities at critical times such as when a well is being fracked, and when a well is being abandoned./p pThe incoming government will decry this suggestion with the old call of “how will we pay for it?”. Offshore petroleum safety is regulated on a cost-recovery basis: levies on the companies pay to regulate offshore petroleum safety. A similar levy for onshore well integrity would give the community more confidence in CSG extractors because the government would take a strong oversight role. Governments who undertake such inspections are to be applauded./p pWe are not desperate for this energy. The incoming Queensland government has the opportunity to take a leading role in regulating CSG activities. It will need to do so if it wants to capture the confidence of the 40% who are opposed to CSG activities, and the 27% who are undecided. Until water management, well safety and landholder use issues are addressed in a fair and sensible manner, the government will face increased opposition. And rightly so./ppemTina Hunter consults for several governments in Australia, including the Western Australian and the Northern Territory Goverments/em/pimg src="https://theconversation.edu.au/content/5451/tracker.pixel" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"/

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/69319?ns=guardianpageName=Gleick+apology+over+Heartland+leak+stirs+ethics+debate+among+climate+sci%3AArticle%3A1707078ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Climate+change+scepticism+%28environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CEnvironment%2CUS+news%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Suzanne+Goldenbergc7=12-Feb-21c8=1707078c9=Articlec10=c11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc51=MVT+group+h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change+scepticism" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Scientist Peter Gleick apologises for 'serious lapse in judgment and ethics', but supporters say Heartland remains the villain/ppThe outing of the researcher who exposed the Heartland Institute's efforts to discredit climate change has thrown the scientific community into tumult, with fierce debates raging on Tuesday over whether to brand his actions heroic, or misguided./ppPeter Gleick, a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute, admitted in a blogpost on Monday night to using a false name to dupe the thinktank into sending him confidential board materials, which he then forwarded to campaigners and journalists./ppHe apologised for the deception – which he described as "a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics" – but added in thea href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/heartland-institute-documents_b_1289669.html" blog post published at the Huffington Post/a: "My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often anonymous, well-funded and co-ordinated – to attack climate science." /ppGleick's admission – nearly a week after Heartland's financial plans and donors list was put online – set off a fierce online debate about whether his actions made him a hero or a villain, and whether he had helped or set back the cause of climate change./ppHe suffered his first fallout on Tuesday, when he decided against taking up a new position on a board that fights for science education in schools. Gleick was to have headed a new venture defending climate science in classrooms. /ppThe National Centre for Science Education said it had accepted his decision not to take up a board post, and that it did not condone his action./ppFor some campaigners, such as Naomi Klein, Gleick was an unalloyed hero, who should be sent some a href="https://twitter.com/#!/NaomiAKlein/status/171808698434453504""Twitter love", she wrote on Tuesday/a./pp"Heartland has been subverting well-understood science for years," wrote Scott Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team. "They also subvert the education of our schoolchildren by trying to 'teach the controversy' where none exists."/ppMandia went on: "Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist, just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him."/ppOthers acknowledged Gleick's wrongdoing, but said it should be viewed in the context of the work of Heartland and other entities devoted to spreading disinformation about science./pp"What Peter Gleick did was unethical. He acknowledges that from a point of view of professional ethics there is no defending those actions," said Dale Jamieson, an expert on ethics who heads the environmental studies programme at New York University. "But relative to what has been going on on the climate denial side this is a fairly small breach of ethics."/ppHe also rejected the suggestion that Gleick's wrongdoing could hurt the cause of climate change, or undermine the credibility of scientists./pp"Whatever moral high ground there is in science comes from doing science," he said. "The failing that Peter Gleick engaged in is not a scientific failing. It is just a personal failure."/ppBut other scientists said Gleick did far more harm than good. /ppRichard Klein, a climate researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said he was astounded at Gleick's actions. "All I can say is: what was he thinking?" he said. "It's an own goal. It's not just his own credibility, his own integrity on the line. It's a whole community of climate scientists who, with the odd exception, want to do good science and make sure science is recognised."/ppHe went on: "It doesn't just blur the line between climate science and science policy. It blurs the line between what are acceptable and what are not acceptable methods. He is not perceived by the outside world as acting in his personal capacity. He acted also by responding as Peter Gleick the scientist and of course that hurts other scientists as well."/ppJohn Nolt, a professor of environmental ethics at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said his big fear was that the furore over Gleick's deception would distract from efforts to act on climate change. The revelations in the Heartland document - many already familiar to the environmental community - were not worth that cost, he said. /pp"Nothing serves climate change deniers better than the loss of perspective that ensues when debate turns from urgent matters of science and policy to largely inconsequential disputes about personal behavior," said Nolt./ppNolt said he did not subscribe to the argument that Gleick's wrong was minor in comparison to the damage done by Heartland. "I do think he crossed a line. It is unethical to obtain documents through deception in that way and I don't think it matters what the other side is doing," he said./ppFor many veteran of the climate wars, there was an uncanny parallels to the breach of Heartland materials and the hack of scientists' emails from East Anglia's climate research unit in 2009. However, scientists almost invariably noted that Gleick had come clean, unlike those who carried out the East Anglia hack./pp"It's wrong to obtain documents under false pretenses, just as it was wrong for hackers to have taken scientists' emails from the University of East Anglia. There's no excuse for fighting deception with deception," Kevin Knoblach, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote. "Gleick has now come forward to publicly acknowledge his responsibility in this matter. Obviously, the person or persons who took scientists' emails have not felt a similar need to come clean."/ppThe climate science legal defence fund went even further, in a letter tweaking the Heartland Institute for its complaints about invasion of privacy./ppThere was also intense speculation on Tuesday about whether Gleick had exposed himself to criminal prosecution or a law suit brought by Heartland. The thinktank president, Joseph Bast, said the unauthorised release of confidential documents, and a two-page memo which Gleick said was sent to him anonymously, had caused permanent damage to its reputation./pp"A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage," Bast said in a statement. He said Heartland was consulting legal experts./ppHeartland claims the two-page memo, which summarises other documents that appear to be authentic, is a fake./ppIn a sign of combat to come, Gleick has taken on Chris Lehane, a top Democratic operative and crisis manager. Lehane, who worked in the Clinton White House, is credited for exposing the rightwing forces arrayed against the Democratic president. He was Al Gore's press secretary during his 2000 run for the White House./ppIn his admission, Gleick claimed that he carried out the hoax on Heartland as a means of verifying the authenticity of a document that appeared to set out the thinktank's climate strategy./pp"At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate programme strategy," Gleick wrote. "It contained information about their funders and the Institute's apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it. /pp"Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues."/ppGleick, a well regarded scientist, has been an important figure in the increasingly heated climate wars, and has sparred often in print against Heartland and others who deny the existence of climate change, such as the Republican senator Jim Inhofe./ppBut Gleick does not appear to have experienced immediate remorse. He did not move to claim the ruse until there was already feverish online speculation about his involvement. He responded to a request by the Guardian for comment last Wednesday by saying he did not wish to comment./ppThose actions may have undercut an entire career, the journalist Andrew Revkin wrote in his Dot Earth blog on the New York Times website./pp"Gleick's use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others," he wrote./pp"The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the "rational public debate" that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed."/ppBut there were relatively few in the campaigner or scientific community who shared that view on Tuesday. "I don't think there was ever going to be a kumbaya moment with the folks from Heartland anyway," said Jeff Ruch, director of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "When you have interests that are funding organisations to spread doubt regardless of the circumstances they are still going to find ways to spread doubt."/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism"Climate change scepticism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/suzannegoldenberg"Suzanne Goldenberg/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VQ6oJF-MN3u8HGfqbs_tyyOq2To/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VQ6oJF-MN3u8HGfqbs_tyyOq2To/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VQ6oJF-MN3u8HGfqbs_tyyOq2To/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VQ6oJF-MN3u8HGfqbs_tyyOq2To/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/59129?ns=guardianpageName=Climate+change+sceptic+thinktank+not+%27influential%27+enough+to+reveal+fund%3AArticle%3A1707035ch=Environmentc3=Guardianc4=Climate+change+scepticism+%28environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CScience%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CFreedom+of+information%2CPolitics%2CCharities+%28Society%29%2CVoluntary+sector+%28Society%29%2CSociety%2CUK+newsc5=Society+Weekly%2CPolicy+Society%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Living%2CSocial+Care+Society%2CCharitiesc6=Leo+Hickmanc7=12-Feb-21c8=1707035c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc51=MVT+group+h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change+scepticism" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Court denies freedom of information request for charity body to name seed funder of GWPF chaired by Lord Lawson/ppThe climate sceptic thinktank chaired by former chancellor Lord Lawson, the a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/" title=""Global Warming Policy Foundation/a (GWPF), has been ruled not "influential" enough to warrant making the Charity Commission disclose its seed funder, an information rights tribunal ruled on Tuesday./pp/pp/ppThe verdict followed a freedom of information request to identify the individual or organisation that gave the GWPF £50,000 when it was launched in 2009 to lobby against action on global warming, just days before a major a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/copenhagen" title=""climate change summit in Copenhagen/a attended by world leaders including Barack Obama./pp/ppThe GWPF's claim that it had significant influence over policymakers, said the judge, was "rather surprising" given its status as an educational charity. She added that the "claim [is] unsupported by evidence of actual influence" and, regardless, it is a matter for the Charity Commission to investigate, not the tribunal./pp/ppThe a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/23/climate-sceptic-lawson-thinktank-funding" title=""freedom of information request/a for the funding information had been pursued by a href="http://www.brendanmontague.com/home/" title=""Brendan Montague/a, an investigative journalist and director of the a href="http://requestinitiative.org/" title=""Request Initiative/a. He was seeking to appeal an earlier ruling by the a href="http://www.ico.gov.uk/" title=""information commissioner's office/a that had judged that there was no public interest in ending the secrecy around the financing of Lawson's educational charity./pp/ppMontague had learned via a separate freedom of information request that the Charity Commission has in its possession a bank statement which reveals the name of GWPF's seed donor. The only other clue released as to the donor's identity was that it was a "well-known" person of "considerable personal wealth"./pp/ppJudge Alison McKenna said in her ruling: "We are not satisfied that the charity is so influential as to make the disclosure of its financial affairs a matter of legitimate public interest outweighing the privacy rights of the data subject."/pp/ppa href="http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/profile/Alison-McKenna" title=""Judge McKenna/a, who used to work as a legal advisor for the Charity Commission, added that she found it "especially puzzling" that the GWPF's lawyers had sent an unredacted copy of the bank statement to the Charity Commission during the process of registering as a charity in 2009 "if a policy of [donor anonymity by the GWPF] was already in operation"./pp/ppMontague says he is now "seeking legal advice with a view to appealing this decision", but added that, if granted further leave to appeal by the tribunal, he is prepared to take his case all the way to the supreme court./pp/ppMontague told the Guardian: "Judge Alison McKenna has found against me on the grounds that Lord Lawson's climate sceptic thinktank is simply not as influential as the former chancellor has made out in his own company accounts. We provided evidence of Lawson enjoying private lunches with the current chancellor, George Osborne, and so I only wish I shared her view."/pp/ppHe added: "The tribunal has found the claims of influence over policymakers by Lord Lawson 'surprising' in light of the fact the Global Warming Policy Foundation is registered as an educational charity. The judge states this is 'a matter for the Charity Commission' and I hope the regulator will now properly investigate this highly-connected lobbying machine."/pp/ppAs part of his supporting evidence, Montague had gathered statements from prominent climate scientists, including Nasa's James Hansen, arguing that GWPF routinely misrepresents and casts doubt on climate science. Montague also argued that it was in the public interest to know if GWPF receives any funding from fossil fuel interests./ppBefore the case was heard by the tribunal, Lord Lawson told the Guardian that he had "no intention of responding to Mr Montague's political attack on me and on the GWPF"./pp/ppLawson did, however, refer to an earlier statement he published last year alongside the foundation's first set of accounts, which revealed that it received a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/20/global-warming-policy-foundation-donors" title=""an income of £503,302/a in its first year and had no more than 80 paying members. In the statement, he said: "The soil we till is highly controversial, and anyone who puts their head above the parapet has to be prepared to endure a degree of public vilification. For that reason we offer all our donors the protection of anonymity."/pp/ppThe GWPF has also stated that it does not accept donations from the energy industry, or anyone with a "significant interest" in the energy industry./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism"Climate change scepticism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/freedomofinformation"Freedom of information/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/charities"Charities/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/voluntarysector"Voluntary sector/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/leohickman"Leo Hickman/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5XWgL-X4xHmMLOdYJK8taQTqwLI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5XWgL-X4xHmMLOdYJK8taQTqwLI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5XWgL-X4xHmMLOdYJK8taQTqwLI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5XWgL-X4xHmMLOdYJK8taQTqwLI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Elizabeth Kolbert: It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

Humanity’s Choice (via M.I.T.):  Inaction (“No Policy” — the policy aggressively advanced by most professional disinformers and tacitly accepted by most in the intelligentsia and media — eliminates most of the uncertainty about whether or not future warming will be catastrophic.  Aggressive emissions reductions dramatically improves humanity’s chances.

Humanity is putting its foot on the accelerator even though the world’s top scientists and governments have repeatedly explained we are headed over a cliff. The people who will suffer the most are people who have not contributed to this  impending catastrophe —  future generations and the poorest among us.

This is such a colossally immoral and unethical act —  collectively and in many cases individually — that most people, including the overwhelming majority of the so-called intelligentsia, simply choose to ignore it on a daily basis. That won’t save a livable climate, however, nor it will stop future generations from cursing our names.

And so it is not surprising that many immoral and unethical acts that regularly occur on a far less grand scale are condoned or winked at or simply ignored.

Every day, countless organizations spread misinformation aimed at delaying the action needed to avoid destroying a livable climate, which will cause billions to suffer — and needlessly, since every major independent study makes clear that the cost of action is incredibly low. Many of the disinformers routinely attack and smear climate scientists. Some routinely publish their e-mails, encouraging their readers to cyber-bully scientists who are doing nothing more than trying to inform the world of the consequences of its untenable choices.  But we have become inured to it — heck, there’s a whole TV network devoted to spreading lies — yawn, let’s change the channel to something we like.

The media continues to reduce coverage of the story of the century — “Silence of the Lambs 2: Media Herd’s Coverage of Climate Change Drops Sharply — Again. The three network news stations broadcast 14 climate change stories with a total air time of 32.5 minutes in 2011,  down from 32 stories and 90.5 minutes last year and well below the 2007 peak of 147 segments totaling 386 minutes. This is a stunning collective lapse in judgment by editors and producers. But the media — in a classic act of circular benchmarking — sees everyone else in the media doing it, so the inconceivable becomes an accepted norm.

Many in the media who do cover the story continue to downplay the science or fail to connect the dots, even between extreme heat waves and global warming. Worse, many in the media, including some at New York Times, quote long-debunked disinformers and confusionists who routinely smear climate scientists — people who should have zero credibility.  This is also a collective lapse in judgment that merits multiple apologies and retractions, but it has become the “norm” in journalism. Future generations will marvel at how the once lofty  profession of journalism destroyed its own credibility and misreported the story of the century.

In this sewer of unethical and immoral activity, we all have tough choices, most especially climate scientists, the victims of many of the worst attacks. These modern day Cassandras have become increasingly blunt and outspoken for obvious reasons — they understand best what is likely to happen if we keep listening to the disinformers and their enablers in the media.

Even the formerly reticent Lonnie Thompson explained why he and other climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.” He continues:

That bold statement may seem like hyperbole, but there is now a very clear pattern in the scientific evidence documenting that the earth is warming, that warming is due largely to human activity, that warming is causing important changes in climate, and that rapid and potentially catastrophic changes in the near future are very possible. This pattern emerges not, as is so often suggested, simply from computer simulations, but from the weight and balance of the empirical evidence as well.

That is simply what the science says, as my review of 50 recent studies makes clear (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

What is a scientist to do in such a casually self-destructive world? The prestigious journal Nature editorialized 2 years ago, “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”

That is all prologue for the events of the last week or so.

As Climate Progress reported earlier this week, Heartland Institute documents revealed plans to dupe children and ruin their future. The AP worked to independently verify the documents and concluded, “The federal consultant working on the classroom curriculum, the former TV weatherman, a Chicago elected official who campaigns against hidden local debt and two corporate donors all confirmed to the AP that the sections in the document that pertained to them were accurate. No one the AP contacted said the budget or fundraising documents mentioning them were incorrect.”

Subsequently, several climate scientists who “had their emails stolen [in 2009], posted online and grossly misrepresented,” slammed Heartland for “spreading misinformation” and “personally attacking climate scientists to further its goals.” The scientists specifically noted:

In 2009, the Heartland Institute was among the groups that spread false allegations about what these stolen emails said. Despite multiple independent investigations, which demonstrated that allegations against scientists were false, the Heartland Institute continued to attack scientists based on the stolen emails. When more stolen emails were posted online in 2011, the Heartland Institute again pointed to their release and spread false claims about scientists.

You can read Heartland’s reply to similar charges here.

Last night I, and I imagine everyone else, was stunned to learned that Dr. Peter Gleick was the one who put these documents into the public domain. In a Huffington Post piece, he acknowledged “a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics,” an assessment I would not disagree with. He then apologized for his mistakes, a move that distinguishes him from Heartland or his critics in the media, like Andrew Revkin, whose too-rapid response to these events certainly crossed the line.

As an important aside, when considering whether the boundary between ethical violation and criminal act has been crossed, we should in all fairness use the Revkin rule. When someone posted on Climate Progress that the Climategate emails were stolen — the assertion made by the University of East Anglia and others — Revkin himself posted:

Just to be clear, no British law enforcement agency has yet said whether a crime has been committed. I have called the Norfolk Constabulary more than once and mum’s still the word.

Seriously! So we’ll just have to wait until some law enforcement agency makes its judgment — and I’m going to make a wild guess that we’ll have a long wait on that.

Here is Gleick’s statement:

At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute’s climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute’s apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.

Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues. I can explicitly confirm, as can the Heartland Institute, that the documents they emailed to me are identical to the documents that have been made public. I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication.

I will not comment on the substance or implications of the materials; others have and are doing so. I only note that the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed. My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected.

Yes, we live in an age where a large fraction of people pretend to be someone they aren’t online, where reporters routinely practice deception, where bloggers and other even pretend to be famous people to get a scoop or embarrass someone.

But Gleick is right that he committed a serious lapse of my professional judgment and ethics. He is right to regret his actions and make a personal apology.

When exactly will the Heartland Institute apologize for “spreading misinformation” and “personally attacking climate scientists to further its goals”?

And when exactly will Revkin apologize for his various lapses, including his absurd and I think hypocritical response to Gleick’s post?

Here are the key parts of what Revkin wrote:

Now, Gleick has admitted to an act that leaves his reputation in ruins and threatens to undercut the cause he spent so much time pursuing….

The Heartland Institute had already signaled that it plans to seek charges and civil action against the person who extracted its documents under a false identity….

I won’t speculate on how the legal aspects of this story might play out.

Another question, of course, is who wrote the climate strategy document that Gleick now says was mailed to him. His admitted acts of deception in acquiring the cache of authentic Heartland documents surely will sustain suspicion that he created the summary, which Heartland’s leadership insists is fake.

One way or the other, Gleick’s use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others. (Some of the released documents contain information about Heartland employees that has no bearing on the climate fight.) That is his personal tragedy and shame (and I’m sure devastating for his colleagues, friends and family).

The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the “rational public debate” that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed.

I haven’t seen so much nonsense since, well, since I read something from Heartland.

Revkin has ZERO credibility in making these attacks.  Zero.

First off, if one act of this nature could ruin a reputation or destroy his credibility, then what precisely is Revkin doing routinely quoting and citing people who have been repeatedly debunked, the disinformers and confusionists.

Seriously, Revkin — and the NY Times itself — quote all manner of people who simply should have no credibility whatsoever on a regular basis (see “Revkin’s DotEarth hypes disinformation posted on an anti-science website” and “In yet another front-page journalistic lapse, the NY Times once again equates non-scientists — Bastardi, Coleman, and Watts (!) — with climate scientists“).

Revkin smeared Al Gore — equating his science-based talks with George Will’s long-debunked falsehoods — based on the false claims of one of the most debunked people in the blogosphere (see “Yes, the false accusation that Gore was exaggerating came from none other than Roger Pielke, Jr.: And yes, I just re-confirmed with Gore’s office that Pielke is as wrong today in his false claims as he was 2 years ago”).

But Revkin has never retracted his attack or apologized.  And he keeps quoting Pielke (as does the NY Times), even though Pielke’s statements on climate scientists inspire objections from scientists like Ken Caldeira (see here).  Heck, now Pielke brags about the ability to team up with the hard-core anti-science websites and drive traffic to his site. Revkin’s defense is that Pielke  has published articles in the peer-reviewed literature. Gosh, Gleick has published many more articles. So I guess his reputation remains intact for the New York Times.

Revkin himself has made countless mistakes that he has never formally retracted or apologized for [see, for instance, "NYT's Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!) and repeats outright misinformation"].

The closest he ever came was his 2009 stunner on NPR: “I’ve made missteps. I’ve made probably more mistakes this year in my print stories than I had before. That’s kind of frustrating.”  Yes, the top reporter in the country made missteps and mistakes on the story of the century, but all he can offer up is “That’s kind of frustrating.”

Why haven’t that series of missteps and mistakes destroyed his credibility and ruined his reputation?

Again, Revkin has zero credibility in his statements about Gleick and he should retract them.

Revkin writes, “I won’t speculate on how the legal aspects of this story might play out.” Gosh, he’s happy to say there’s no crime in Climategate until the police weigh in.

He writes, Gleick’s “admitted acts of deception in acquiring the cache of authentic Heartland documents surely will sustain suspicion that he created the summary, which Heartland’s leadership insists is fake.”  Why? Does Revkin have any evidence to back up this “suspicion.” Is he no longer a journalist but just a guy who passes on suspicions from the blogosphere and from an organization known for “spreading misinformation” and “personally attacking climate scientists to further its goals”?

To repeat, that sentence is dreadful and should be retracted. Revkin doesn’t even say where the “suspicion” came from or what its basis is. He just repeats it. We used to call that gossip. Now I guess it’s in the New York Times manual.

I’ll have to do a separate blog on the subject but its quite clear that Revkin does not think very much of climate scientists. In a dreadful February 1 column that once again quoted the long-debunked Pielke, he dismisses a letter to the Wall Street Journal from 39 of the leading climate scientists in the world this way:

The reality for most of the signatories of the rebuttal letter is that they are more akin to medical technicians — making sure the thermometers gauging a fever are reliable — and radiologists — interpreting a CT scan — than diagnosticians prescribing the appropriate treatment.

Seriously.  Trenberth, Somerville, Caldeira, Overpeck, Mann, Rignot, Watson — they are just technicians who test whether your hospital thermometer works! No wonder Revkin is so quick to jump on these guys.

What Gleick did was wrong and Gleick not only knows it, he admitted it and apologized, thereby preserving his reputation in a world where everyone makes mistakes, but few admit it.

All of us wait for the same from Heartland and Revkin.

How we can use tax breaks to help rebuild our infrastructure

by Donna Cooper, Richard W. Caperton, Kate Gordon , Daniel J. Weiss

Last year was a bonanza for the top five oil companies—BP plc, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil Corp., and Royal Dutch Shell Group—posting combined net-income earnings of $137 billion, a new record. Undeterred, Republican leaders in Congress are seeking to pass transportation legislation that will expand oil and natural gas drilling and will force the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project. House Republicans hope the Senate will concur and give these companies access for oil and gas production to some of our natural crown jewels.

Republicans in the House want to boost drilling offshore and on protected lands so that the federal revenues gained by this expansion of drilling can be used to pay for the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act—the House Republican five-year highway funding bill.

The Center for American Progress has a better idea: Tap the geyser of oil company earnings by imposing a tax on imported oil and ending antiquated federal subsidies for oil companies. Doing this will pay for an environmentally and fiscally sound plan to upgrade our crumbling transportation, water, and energy infrastructure.

CAP’s new report, “Meeting the Infrastructure Imperative,” recommends doing just that, among other things, to put more federal funds and state, local, and private money to work investing in infrastructure over the next 10 years. Our report details why $129 billion more per year is needed to meet our country’s infrastructure capital repair and improvement needs. CAP found that direct federal spending for infrastructure would need to rise by $48 billion a year, or about a 1.3 percent increase in total federal spending. Boosting federal spending by $48 billion would mean an increase approximately the same size as what was spent on the Iraq war in fiscal year 2011.

CAP projects that with this level of increased federal investment, as much as $60 billion in private infrastructure investment and $11 billion in new state and local investment could be mobilized as well. But where will the new federal money come from?

For decades federal gas tax revenues were dedicated to covering the cost of road, bridge, transit, and rail improvements. But Congress hasn’t raised the 18.4-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax in 19 years, and as a result, its value has eroded by one-third, leaving federal transportation programs chronically short of funds. If that tax had been indexed to inflation, it would be 28 cents per gallon today.

Instead of raising the gas tax now—or doing as House Republicans suggest and relying on mythical revenues from expanding oil drilling or scarring our nation’s heartland with a pipeline that could leak and pollute air and water—CAP calls for a tax of $9.50 per barrel on imported oil, alongside ending $4 billion in annual tax breaks for oil companies, both of which will help pay for the additional federal infrastructure investments to meet our transportation, water, and clean energy infrastructure needs. By CAP’s calculations an oil-import tax and the termination of the oil and gas subsidies would generate approximately $40 billion annually. These funds are needed on top of the approximately $36 billion generated by the federal gasoline tax.

Recent Republican proposals also look to oil companies to shoulder some of the financial burden of infrastructure improvements, but they do so by relying on revenues from an environmentally devastating expansion of drilling offshore and on protected lands. CAP instead proposes to broaden the user-fee model of infrastructure funding to include oil companies’ tax contributions since they are significant beneficiaries of infrastructure improvements.

Under CAP’s plan tax revenues on imported oil and the revenues gained by ending antiquated subsidies would help pay for a decade of investment at the scale needed to bring our infrastructure back up to world-class standards. Specifically, our plan would enable us to:

• Build out our transit, regional, and passenger rail capacity and as a result make a real dent in air pollution: With better transit and new federal investment in better roads, drivers would face less congestion and save an average of $335 per year due to fewer car repairs and better fuel economy.
• Stimulate $40 billion a year in private investment in clean energy generation, distribution, transmission, and smart grid infrastructure: At this level of investment, we can achieve an 80 percent reduction in carbon pollution by 2050 compared to the carbon pollution levels in 2005.
• Make it possible for older water systems to ensure the quality of our drinking water is safe, and that wastewater treatment and storm water overload systems can adequately protect our rivers and lakes by removing industrial and household pollutants from wastewater.

In addition to spending more on what needs to be done, this plan also shows how we can do a better job deciding where and how to invest.

For instance, to attract more private financing for clean energy, the CAP plan calls for a national infrastructure bank with a clean energy loan program and at least a 10-year extension of the investment and production tax credits for renewable energy generation that have been so effective at stimulating private investment in many wind and solar projects. The plan also proposes the creation of a national infrastructure council that would bring together federal agencies to strategically align their infrastructure investments to promote water and energy efficiency efforts and to reduce both traffic congestion and carbon dioxide pollution.

Unfortunately, the Republicans in the House are suggesting cutting funds for transportation infrastructure and suggesting that we rely on the expansion of offshore oil drilling that has very little potential to produce the needed revenues to pay for badly needed investments. In addition, House Republican leaders also plan to hold transportation investments hostage until the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, which would bring dirty tar sands oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf coast for refining, with a large portion sent overseas.

The House Republican leaders hope to move their transportation package after this week’s congressional recess. We suggest they consider a sounder approach that both protects our environment and ensures sufficient revenues to rebuild our infrastructure. CAP’s proposal is a game-changing strategy that could succeed with support from labor, business, environmentalists, and officeholders of both parties. It’s time to get to work on it.

Donna Cooper is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Richard Caperton is the Director of Clean Energy Investment at American Progress. Kate Gordon is the Center’s Vice President for Energy Policy. Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at American Progress.

This piece was originally published at the Center for American Progress.

By Rob Hopkins, posted Feb 21, 2012: pimg width="300" height="224" style="padding-left: 10px" class="image-right" title="" alt="" src="http://energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/images/hops_harvest_dry-300x224.jpg" /Sometimes the simplest ideas carry with them, when thought through, such a powerful taste of how the future could be that they are quite irresistible. One such idea has led me to spend the last couple of days immersed in trying to find out as much as I could about it, and it has been time well spent, which I want to share with you here. The idea came in a href="http://city-farmers.co.uk/?p=200"a post on the City Farmers website/a, entitled lsquo;Brixton Beerrsquo;. The idea is a simple one: rather than breweries in London buying their hops from wherever they can source them (sometimes as far afield as New Zealand), people across London grow hops in their back gardens, on their patios and balconies, allotments and community gardens, which are then used by local brewers. As they put it, ldquo;we want to grow hops across a network of individual and community gardens, get local breweries to make beer out of them and drink the result. Simple!rdquo; As someone involved in efforts to create a Totnes Community Brewery, the idea held huge promise and intrigue and warranted further exploration./p pstrongBrixton Beer/strong/p pI started my investigations by catching up with Helen Steer from City Farmers. She told me that the idea had first emerged at the AGM of a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=Damp;q=http://www.incredibleediblelambeth.org/amp;usg=AFQjCNG6xRPAUdsZ0-VaQ5ABKD14Nxawbg"Incredible Edible Lambeth/a in October 2011, inspired by the a href="http://brockwell-bake.org.uk/"lsquo;Brockwell Bakersquo;/a where people grow urban wheat on allotments which is then milled to make local bread. She met with the Independent Brewers Association in London who were very enthusiastic, in fact as she put it ldquo;they bit our hands off!rdquo; when the idea of their buying and using these locally grown hops was raised./p pOne of the unexpected side effects they have found is that the idea acts as a great way to get men involved in gardening, a nice antidote to the fact that the majority of people involved in community gardens apparently tend to be women. The plan is to pilot the idea over the 2012 growing season in a number of gardens across London, and to produce a starter pack of rootstock and tools, as well as instructional videos for backyard hop growing. The idea then is to gather the harvest together in September and to brew a beer from the hops, which would then be shared at a harvest party. Longer term plans include the possible launch of a Brixton Brewery. Here is the longer interview I did with Helen em(I am trying an approach in this post of mixing audio with writing, and making my research available for you to go into more depth if yoursquo;re interested: I hope it works for you)/em:/p piframe width="100%" scrolling="no" height="166" frameborder="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F36533968amp;show_artwork=true"/iframe/p pstrongThe idea in practice/strong/p pimg width="227" height="300" style="padding-left: 10px" class="image-right" title="" alt="" src="http://energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/images/brewers-garden-227x300.jpg" /This is a wonderful and very attractive idea, especially as a way of making a community brewery truly feel like a community brewery. But is it practical? What are the obstacles such a project might encounter? Well it turns out itrsquo;s already being tried in at least one brewery. I spoke to Greg Pilley of a href="http://www.stroudbrewery.co.uk/"the Stroud Brewery/a, and it turns out hersquo;s been growing hops in his garden (40 plants), as have a number of other people close to the brewery. On one day in September, the hops are harvested, brought to the brewery, and a pale ale called a href="http://www.stroudbrewery.co.uk/our-beer-and-ale/seasonal-beers-and-ales/43-brewers-garden"lsquo;Brewers Gardenrsquo;/a is created which everyone involved then gets 9 pints of when it is ready./p pStroud Brewery describes it thus:/p blockquote pldquo;These hops have been grown by members of our lsquo;Hop Clubrsquo; in their gardens and allotments. The hop bines were harvested on Sunday 5th September 2010, and members congregated at the brewery to hand pick the hop cones, and enjoy a few ales. Hops are dried in our home made lsquo;oastrsquo; and go into this years brew of lsquo;Brewers Gardenrsquo;rdquo;./p pnbsp;/p /blockquote pstrongStarting with the basics: a crash course in hops/strong/p pLetrsquo;s go back to the beginning and have a quick crash course in hops. One great place to start is with a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mz6pr"an episode of BBC Radio 4prime;s lsquo;Food Programmersquo;/a that looked at the revival of the UK hop industry. It would appear that the first hops to arrive in the UK turned up in 1524 when Flemish planters arrived and started growing them here. Initially they were grown for their medicinal and herbal properties. They were introduced into brewing as a preservative and also to introduce a bitterness to the beers, replacing the use of herbs and other bittering agents, such as bog myrtle, that was used up to that point./p pThe role of hops in brewing is two-fold. According to Ray Daniels in a href="http://www.brewerspublications.com/books/designing-great-beers-the-ultimate-guide-to-brewing-classic-beer-styles/"lsquo;Designing Great Beersrsquo;/a:/p blockquote pHops provide bitterness to counteract the sweetness of malt, this making the beverage more palatable. They also provide some antibacterial properties that at one time increased the safety and potability of beer. Today this quality still aids the preservation of beer. Hops also contribute more than just bitterness. Although it seems incredible that a single element of one plant could do so much, hops also contribute appealing flavours and aromas to been when handled in the proper way by the brewer hellip; hops are indeed a source of tremendous richness and variety in beer flavourrdquo;./p pnbsp;/p /blockquote pI spoke to strongMartin Crawford/strong of the Agroforestry Research Trust (who has produced a href="http://www.agroforestry.co.uk/publorders.html"an essential fact sheet about hops/a), who told me that traditional varieties grow up to 6 metres tall, but that there are dwarf varieties which grow to 2 metres which are better suited to back gardens. According to Martin, there is only one dwarf hop that is commercially available, called lsquo;First Goldrsquo;. Herersquo;s my full interview with him:/p piframe width="100%" scrolling="no" height="166" frameborder="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F36531598amp;show_artwork=true"/iframe/p dl class="image-right captioned image-inline" dtimg width="300" height="225" title="Dr Peter Darby: outstanding in his field" alt="Dr Peter Darby" src="http://energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/images/112-300x225.jpg" //dt dd style="width:300px" class="image-caption" div p class="discreet"font size="-2"Dr Peter Darby: outstanding in his field (sorry)/font/p /div /dd /dl pAt the moment, almost all the hops grown in the UK are either grown in Kent (as was documented in George Orwellrsquo;s fantastic ldquo;Keep the Aspidistras Flyingrdquo;) or in Herefordshire. I spoke to strongDr Peter Darby/strong, who is in charge of the National Hop Association for Wye Hops, and is one of the UKrsquo;s leading experts on hop breeding, and asked him why that was. Does it indicate that those are the places with the best soils and the best microclimates for hop growing? Apparently not. It turns out that with the industrialisation of brewing, and the demand for large amounts of beer that was generated by the British Empire, that large workforces of pickers were required, so the large urban centres of London and the West Midlands provided that, and it fitted in nicely with the picking of other crops, most notably apples. Prior to the British Empire hugely increasing demand for beer, hops were grown in most parts of the country./p pHe told me that the UK hop industry is now relatively stable after years of decline, due mainly to a shift from growing hops to add bitterness to growing hops to add flavour. This has been helped by the emergence of a strong microbrewing culture and more craft brewers. About a quarter of hops grown in the UK are exported, and the UK imports about a third of what is used here. Current production, were it all to be retained for UK brewing, would only be enough to meet two-thirds of demand. Most brewers like to use a mixture of UK hops and imported hops, because, he told me, imported hops grown in sunnier climes, can give beers a lsquo;high impact flavourrsquo;. Traditionally though, they were grown in every county in the UK, and could be again. Here is the interview I did with Dr. Darby:/p piframe width="100%" scrolling="no" height="166" frameborder="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F36690575amp;show_artwork=true"/iframe/p pstrongThe advantages and disadvantages of growing urban hops/strong/p pIn some ways, growing hops in lsquo;patchwork farmsrsquo;, that is, a number of gardens across a city, is ideal. According to Martin Crawford, the two main challenges that affect hop growing, aphids and mildrew, will sweep through hops on a field scale, but in a more dispersed context, in a more biodiverse setting, should be less of an issue. They can be grown in containers, although they would need to be pretty deep containers as hops need a deep soil. Again though, growing them in containers could actually be a benefit, as it prevents them from suckering, something they are prone to./p pAlso, given their inclination to climb and to clamber, being able to grow up buildings and other structures, so long as they are accessible for harvesting, can be an advantage. Dr. Darby added that hops are well suited to urban growing because they are classed as horticulture, rather than agriculture. He also stated that hops are a plant that needs quite a lot of attention, something that is easier to provide on a small scale. He added another dwarfing variety that would be suited to urban growing, called Golden Tassels, or lsquo;Divarsquo;. There are others too, but they are fiercely protected, and can only be grown under licence from the National Hop Association./p pDr Darby cautioned, however, against the idea that growing hops is an easy thing for the amateur to pick up. The pests and diseases to which hops are vulnerable can be dealt with, but knowing what you are looking for and how to deal with it takes some training. City Farmers are already assembling their team of volunteer hop growers, and have been surprised by the levels of interest, and the quarters from which it is coming. One of their local councillors has asked be become one of the growers. It will be interesting to see the degree to which the skills required to to prevent pests and diseases trashing their first harvest can be communicated through videos and leaflets./p pAnother key challenge revolves around drying herbs on a community scale. On the large scale, hops are dried in huge warehouses where warm air is blown through them. According to Dr Darby, hops must either be used straight off the plant (what is known as ldquo;green hoppingrdquo;) or dried within about 4 hours of being picked. This is to avoid them becoming musty or losing a lot of their volatile oils. To dry them they need to be warmed at 30-60strongdeg;/strongC, in a long steady dry (10-12 hours), with a high air throughflow in a darkened space in order to bring their moisture down from 80% to 10%./p pOn the home/community scale this is tricky. It is too low a temperature for the domestic oven, and more like a greenhouse on a hot day (hardly reliable when you have only 4 hours to get the drying underway! Martin Crawford suggests a blacked-out polytunnel or the use of an attic (this is September wersquo;re talking about remember, attics should be pretty hot then). He also states that building a thermostatically controlled medium-sized drier shouldnrsquo;t be too complicated. Greg Pilley at Stroud Brewery dries some, but only on the domestic scale. Here is my interview with Greg:/p piframe width="100%" scrolling="no" height="166" frameborder="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F36532241amp;show_artwork=true"/iframe/p pAnother challenge for brewers using green hops is that as brewers they are, in effect, flying blind, in that hops usually arrive having been tested for bitterness and so it is not clear what they are introducing into their brew. For this reason, when Greg Pilley brews his lsquo;Brewerrsquo;s Gardenrsquo;, he still has to use some bought-in hops for the bitterness, and the garden-grown green ones for flavour./p dl class="image-center captioned image-inline" dtimg width="475" height="356" title="Hops drying" alt="Hops drying" src="http://energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/images/2942179469_ecc9b3136c_o-490x367.jpg" //dt dd style="width:475px" class="image-caption" div p class="discreet"font size="-2"Drying hops at home. Photo courtesy of GreenWellies/flickr/font/p /div /dd /dl pAnother practicality is how much could actually be grown in urban gardens. Greg grows 40 plants in his garden, which he reckons yield him 5kg of green hops, which would dry to 3kg. Each year his brewery requires 600kg of hops for its brewing, by which calculation he would need 200 other gardeners doing the same if he were to be drying and using Stroud-grown hops. Do-able but ambitious. The beauty of hops is that, as a climber, you can still grow other things underneath them, and allow them to clamber up buildings or ramble through trees. You can also, as Martin pointed out, eat the young shoots, lightly steamed, they are sometimes referred to as ldquo;the poor manrsquo;s asparagusrdquo;./p pstrongSo, should the hop fields come to town?/strong/p pLooked at in isolation, encouraging lots of untrained amateurs to take on planting potentially demanding crop in a dispersed way across a city doesnrsquo;t perhaps seem like the brightest idea. However, placed in the context of creating a community growers, sharing their experiences, focused around a community brewery initiative in which they have an interest, it starts to make a lot more sense. As a way of land use and gardening helping to build social capital, it is very valuable. As a story to unpin and help promote a social enterprise it is fantastic. Me, Irsquo;m intrigued, and think that certainly for our initiative, this will be a central part of what we are planning to do./p piOriginally published February 20, 2012 at a href="http://transitionculture.org/2012/02/20/when-the-hop-fields-come-to-town/"Transition Culture/a./i/p

More than 1 in 3 U.S. counties could face a “high” or “extreme” risk of water shortages by 2050

by Dave Levitan, reposted from OnEarth

When the heat turns up in an overcrowded bar, patrons waiting for service tend to get thirstier. In the coming decades, a similar scenario may play out in the United States. According to a new study, more than a third of U.S. counties may be at “extreme” or “high” risk of water shortages by 2050. This won’t be due to a dearth in bartenders, of course, but the result of a swelling population, along with the potential temperature increases and precipitation changes associated with climate change.

The research, funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council (which publishes OnEarth), appeared last week in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The first strike against water supplies comes from increases in population. Projections suggest fairly linear growth between now and mid-century, meaning the U.S. will have about 419.9 million people in 2050 (up from its current population of 313,000,000). All of those additional Americana will have to drink, and eat food grown with water, and turn on lights powered by water-guzzling power plants.

Then there’s climate change. Temperature is expected to increase somewhere between 1.5 and 3° Celsius, and the warming air will be able to hold more water. The resulting changes in precipitation aren’t uniform by any means. Models suggest that Texas and the Gulf states will lose more than one inch per year, while the northeastern U.S. could get between two and four extra inches per year.

Notably, the study’s results are not meant to be taken as strict prognoses. “This is not intended as a prediction that water shortages will occur, but rather where they are more likely to occur, and where there might be greater pressure on public officials and water users to better characterize, and creatively manage demand and supply,” said the study’s lead author Sujoy Roy of Tetra Tech Research and Development, in a press release.

The end result of all this — hotter temperatures, changed precipitation, more people withdrawing more water — is that 412 of 3,141 counties (13 percent) in the lower 48 might be at “extreme” risk of water shortages in 2050. Another 608 counties will be at high risk, while 1,192 and 929 will be at moderate and low risk, respectively. Without climate change? Just 29 counties (less than 1 percent) would be at extreme risk, 271 at high risk, and more than 2,000 would be at low risk. It’s enough to make you thirsty for real action on this whole climate change thing. I’ll cheers to that.

Dave Levitan is a freelance journalist based in Philadelphia. This piece was originally published at OnEarth.

Other stories below: Civilization faces a “perfect storm of ecological and social problems”; California leads the nation in cleantech venture capital funding

Climate change increased likelihood of Russian 2010 heatwave – study

The extreme Russian heatwave of 2010 was made three times more likely because of man-made climate change, according to a study led by climate scientists and number-crunched by home PC users. But the size of the event was mostly within natural limits, said the scientists, laying to rest a controversy last year over whether the extreme weather was natural or human-induced.

The 2010 heatwave broke all records for Russia – temperatures in the central region of the country, including Moscow, were around 10C above what they should have been for the time of year. More than 50,000 people died from respiratory illnesses and heat stress during that time. The temperatures also had a substantial impact on that year’s Russian wheat harvest, leading to economic losses of more than $15bn.

Two studies published in 2011 looked at the causes of the extreme weather, but they disagreed on whether it was a natural event or whether it was a result of anthropogenic climate change.

See also “Bombshell: Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming.”

Civilisation faces ‘perfect storm of ecological and social problems’

Celebrated scientists and development thinkers today warn that civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign technologies.

In the face of an “absolutely unprecedented emergency”, say the 18 past winners of the Blue Planet prize – the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has “no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us”.

The stark assessment of the current global outlook by the group, who include Sir Bob Watson, the government’s chief scientific adviser on environmental issues, US climate scientist James Hansen, Prof José Goldemberg, Brazil’s secretary of environment during the Rio Earth summit in 1992, and Stanford University Prof Paul Ehrlich, is published today on the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the UN environment programme (Unep). The paper, which was commissioned by Unep, will feed into the Rio +20 earth summit conference in June.

Santorum again hits Obama on energy, drops ‘phony theology’ barb

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum blamed the “radical environmental policies” of the Obama administration Monday for rising gas prices, and said he would promote “responsible environmental stewardship” as president, including support for the coal industry and approval of the Keystone Pipeline.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he told a cheering crowd of several hundred in this once-booming steel town, “we need someone who understands, who comes from the coal fields, who comes from the steel mills, who understands what ordinary working people in American need to provide for themselves and their families.”

Santorum grew up not far away, in the coal and steel country of western Pennsylvania, and often tells the story of how his grandfather came from Italy to work in the coal fields. As he introduced his wife, his in-laws and three of his seven children to the throng, he said, “It’s great to be back home.”

California leads nation in green-tech venture capital funding

When it comes to U.S. venture capital funding for the most promising new green technology firms, there’s California and there’s everybody else.

California companies raked in $2.8 billion, or 57%, of the $4.9 billion in venture capital offered up in the so-called clean-tech category of funding nationwide last year, according to a recently released analysis from Ernst & Young.

Massachusetts companies were a distant second with $465.1 million, followed by Colorado companies, which pulled in $363.3 million.

“It’s a good indicator of the innovation that can be found here and of the opportunities available in California,” said Mark Sogomian, an Ernst & Young partner and leader of its clean-tech group in Los Angeles.

Climate change reduces genetic diversity

Global warming has forced alpine chipmunks in California to higher ground, prompting a startling decline in the species’ genetic diversity, researchers say.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, say their study of chipmunks in Yosemite National Parks is one of the first to measure the impact on the genetic diversity of a species whose geographic range changes because of climate change.

Engineers Take Aim at a Barrier in LED Technology

In a brand-new factory here, Eric Kim, chief executive of Soraa Inc., cradles a palm-size light that he refers to as “LED 2.0.” The light has a circular snowflakelike cooling frame surrounding a lens that emits a bright white light.

But it also radiates a mystery — and a continuing controversy.

Over the past few years, energy-saving LED lights have popped up nearly every place where low power is required. They provide the backlighting for cellphones, smartphones and laptops as well as for headlamps for hikers, for instance.

But in the United States in particular, LED lights have not yet caught on for home lighting, still a bastion of the incandescent light bulb — which to this day is not much more efficient than when it was invented by Thomas Edison in 1879.

Feds identify 237,100 acres in Arizona for renewable energy projects

The Bureau of Land Management has recommended 237,100 acres of public land in Arizona are suitable for renewable energy development, part of an effort to speed up the process for clean-energy companies looking to set up shop in the state.

The agency Friday released a draft environmental impact statement for its Restoration Design Energy Project, recommending a middle course among six alternatives that ranged in size from 43,700 acres to 321,500 acres.

“Arizona has great potential to build a strong renewable energy economy,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a prepared statement.

The BLM project is unique to Arizona, but supporters said it is being looked at for other parts of the country. A similar effort has been launched across the West by the bureau.

The Arizona report looked for lands that could become Renewable Energy Development Areas (REDA) for solar and wind energy projects. The option recommended Friday identified agency lands that are either within five miles of points of demand – such as cities or towns – or of utility corridors and existing transmission lines that could carry energy to market.

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/44543?ns=guardianpageName=Heartland+Institute+leak+exposes+strategies+of+climate+attack+machine+%7C+%3AArticle%3A1706695ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Climate+change+scepticism+%28environment%29%2CScience%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironmentc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Bob+Wardc7=12-Feb-21c8=1706695c9=Articlec10=Commentc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc51=MVT+group+h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change+scepticism" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"The documents show how groups play up controversy to undermine confidence in well-established scientific findings/ppAfter a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487" title=""the leak from the Chicago-based thinkthank the Heartland Institute/a, much attention is now being focused on the alleged deception a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents?intcmp=122" title=""used by the water scientist Peter Gleick to obtain the sensitive internal documents/a./pp/ppAnd while acts of deception cannot be condoned, it is also important to note that the documents obtained by Gleick provide an insight into how some of those groups that are fundamentally opposed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases attempt to convey the impression that their arguments are founded on science rather than on ideology./pp/pp/pp/ppThe Heartland Institute a href="http://heartland.org/about" title=""states on its website/a that its mission is "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems", and that a href="http://heartland.org/issues/environment" title=""the aim of its work/a on climate change is to promote "market-based, rather than government-based, solutions to environmental problems". The Institute has been one of the most active lobbyists against policies in the United States to curb emissions, primarily by attempting to undermine confidence in the findings of scientific research that climate change is driven mainly by human activities./pp/ppa href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/(1-15-2012)%202012%20Fundraising%20Plan.pdf" title=""One of the newly released documents/a shows very clearly how the institute intends to target teachers and schoolchildren with this strategy. It begins by claiming:/pp/ppblockquote"Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 [kindergarten to 12th grade] students on global warming that isn't alarmist or overtly political. Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success. Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective."/blockquote/pp/ppThe document then suggests that it will pay Dr David Wojick, described as "a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the US Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science", to produce teaching materials which emphasise controversy and uncertainty:/pp/pp/pp"Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact ("environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather"), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on."/pp/ppThis, of course, is a biased and distorted representation of current scientific knowledge, and conflicts with the approach to school lessons outlined by a recent workshop on climate change education, a href="http://www.nap.edu/nap-cgi/report.cgi?record_id=13224type=pdfxsum" title=""hosted by the United States National Academy of Sciences/a, which begins with the statement: "The global scientific and policy community now unequivocally accepts that human activities cause global climate change"./pp/ppHowever, the emphasis on uncertainty and controversy is very much in line with another famous leaked document, the so-called a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange" title=""Luntz memo, which came to light in 2003/a. It was prepared by Frank Luntz, the favourite opinion pollster of President George W Bush, and contained advice for Republican activists on how to talk to potential voters about environment issues. On climate change, a href="http://www.ewg.org/files/LuntzResearch_environment.pdf" title=""the memo/a offers the following recommendation:/pp/ppblockquote"The scientific debate remains open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."/blockquote/pp/ppThe strategy of playing up controversy and uncertainty to undermine confidence in well-established scientific findings was pioneered by the tobacco industry to avoid and delay regulation of its products. As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway point out a href="http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/index.html" title=""in their book Merchants of Doubt/a:/pp/ppblockquote"Doubt is crucial to science – in the version we call curiosity or healthy scepticism, it drives science forward – but it also makes science vulnerable to misrepresentation, because it is easy to take uncertainties out of context and create the impression that everything is unresolved. This was the tobacco industry's key insight: that you could use normal scientific uncertainty to undermine the status of actual scientific knowledge."/blockquote/pp/ppThe Heartland Institute documents also contain details of another activity designed to give its ideological campaign against emissions regulations a veneer of scientific credibility. It notes that the Heartland Institute sponsors the "Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), an international network of scientists who write and speak out on climate change"./ppAgain this echoes an approach outlined in the Luntz memo:/pp/ppblockquote"You need to be even more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view, and much more active in making them part of your message. People are much more willing to trust scientists, engineers, and other leading research professionals, and less willing to trust politicians. If you wish to challenge the prevailing wisdom about global warming, it is more effective to have professionals making the case than politicians."/blockquote/pp/ppAnd it also copies the tactics of cigarette companies which, according to Oreskes and Conway, hired a renowned geneticist in the 1950s to "head the Tobacco Industry Research Committee and spearhead the effort to foster the impression of debate, primarily by promoting the work of scientists whose views might be useful to the industry"./pp/ppThe Heartland Institute documents demonstrate once again how those driven by ideological dogma or vested commercial interests attempt to hide their true motives behind a facade of false controversy and uncertainty in science./pp/pp• Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/grantham" title=""Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment/a at London School of Economics and Political Science/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism"Climate change scepticism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/bob-ward"Bob Ward/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/16EeEF1CRtv39X6ArQgHIQ0e0dI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/16EeEF1CRtv39X6ArQgHIQ0e0dI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/16EeEF1CRtv39X6ArQgHIQ0e0dI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/16EeEF1CRtv39X6ArQgHIQ0e0dI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/75752?ns=guardianpageName=Climate+change+increased+likelihood+of+Russian+2010+heatwave+*+study%3AArticle%3A1706373ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Climate+change+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CScience%2CRussia+%28News%29%2CEurope+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CEnvironmentc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Alok+Jhac7=12-Feb-21c8=1706373c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc51=MVT+group+h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Although the heatwave was made three times more likely, the size of the event was within natural limits, say scientists/ppThe extreme Russian heatwave of 2010 was made three times more likely because of man-made climate change, according to a study led by climate scientists and number-crunched by home PC users. But the size of the event was mostly within natural limits, said the scientists, laying to rest a controversy last year over whether the extreme weather was natural or human-induced./pp/pp/ppThe 2010 heatwave broke all records for Russia – temperatures in the central region of the country, including Moscow, were around 10C above what they should have been for the time of year. More than 50,000 people died from respiratory illnesses and heat stress during that time. The temperatures also had a substantial impact on that year's Russian wheat harvest, leading to economic losses of more than $15bn./pp/ppTwo studies published in 2011 looked at the causes of the extreme weather, but they disagreed on whether it was a natural event or whether it was a result of anthropogenic climate change./pp/ppAn American team led by Randy Dole of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/tao.zhang/2010GL046582.pdf" title=""suggested/a that the heatwave was mostly natural in origin. "They based that on the fact that there was no basis for anticipating the heatwave given the conditions which applied at that time in Russia," said Myles Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University. "Heatwaves of that nature had happened in the past on a 100-year timescale and there wasn't an obvious significant trend in temperatures in that region or in the statistics of hot temperatures in that region. They came to the conclusion this was an event that was mostly natural in origin. There was no need to induce climate change to explain this event."/pp/ppA separate study by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/108/44/17905.short" title=""suggested otherwise/a. "What they [said] was that the risk of the heatwave occurring had gone up by a substantial factor, the odds of it occurring were 80% due to the large-scale warming trend and, of course, most of that large-scale warming is attributed to human influences on climate," said Allen./pp/ppTo resolve this apparent condundrum, Allen and his team ran a series of climate models that simulated the weather in different parts of the world, using observed data from the 1960s and the 2000s. This allowed them to observe the frequency of extreme weather events in Russia during each decade, with and without the effects of the warming due to human-induced climate change./pp/pp"What we conclude about the Russian heatwave is that the risk has gone by a factor of three, perhaps not as high as Rahmstorf's estimate, but within error bars consistent with theirs," said Allen. "But we also point out that Dole et al's conclusion is also correct in the sense that the size of the human contribution to the event was only perhaps a degree or so, whereas the actual event itself was 10C."/pp/ppIn terms of size, the 2010 heatwave was mostly natural. In terms of probability of the event occurring at all, the risk had been increased caused by human activity./pp/pp"We have a tendency, whenever a weather event happens to say "it was caused by x" but that's never the case, you have multiple causes for an event," said Allen. "People just have to learn that there's no such thing as a weather event that has only a single cause. This is a complicated, interacting system."/pp/ppThe latest study, published in the journal a href="http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/" title=""Geophysical Research Letters/a, was carried out with the resources of the a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/17/climate-prediction-system-launched" title=""Weather at Home project/a, which runs regional weather models on the idle processing capacity of the home computers of volunteers. Members of the public can download some software that runs atmospheric models of Europe, southern Africa or the western US, to a resolution of 120km./pp/pp"To say with any confidence what caused an extreme weather event, such as the Russian heatwave, you need to run not one but a whole series of climate models," said Friederike Otto of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University and an author of the latest research. "Our work, using the a href="http://climateprediction.net/weatherathome/" title=""weatherathome.net/a project, demonstrates that you don't need a supercomputer to do this, we ask volunteers to run climate prediction experiments on ordinary computers. We show how you can use such an ensemble of simulations to investigate the magnitude and frequency of occurrence of intrinsically unpredictable extreme events."/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/russia"Russia/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news"Europe/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alokjha"Alok Jha/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EwbjxqqJ0_HXWfZu5XrhGf7jYaM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EwbjxqqJ0_HXWfZu5XrhGf7jYaM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EwbjxqqJ0_HXWfZu5XrhGf7jYaM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EwbjxqqJ0_HXWfZu5XrhGf7jYaM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/94637?ns=guardianpageName=Climate+scientist+Peter+Gleick+admits+he+leaked+Heartland+Institute+docu%3AArticle%3A1706619ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Environment%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+scepticism+%28environment%29%2CPolitics%2CThinktanks%2CWorld+news%2CUS+news%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CPeople+in+science%2CSciencec5=Policy+Society%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Suzanne+Goldenbergc7=12-Feb-21c8=1706619c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc51=MVT+group+h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Peter Gleick, a water and climate analyst, says he was blinded by his frustrations with ongoing attacks on climate sciencebr /br /• a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/heartland-institute-leak-climate-attack?intcmp=239"Bob Ward: Heartland Institute documents expose strategies of climate attack machine/a/ppA leading defender of climate change admitted tricking the libertarian Heartland Institute into turning over confidential documents detailing its plans to discredit the teaching of science to school children in last week's sensational expose./ppIn the latest revelation, Peter Gleick, a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute who has been active in the climate wars, a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/-the-origin-of-the-heartl_b_1289669.html"apologised on Monday for using a false name to obtain materials from Heartland/a, a Chicago-based think tank with a core mission of dismissing climate change./pp"My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often anonymous, well-funded and co-ordinated – to attack climate science," Gleick wrote in a piece for Huffington Post./ppThe admission – nearly a week after Heartland's financial plans and donors' list was put online – looked set to further inflame the climate wars, in which a network of fossil fuel interests, rightwing think tanks and politicians have been working to block action on climate change./ppIn a sign of combat to come, Gleick has taken on a top Democratic operative and crisis manager, Chris Lehane. Lehane, who worked in the Clinton White House is credited for exposing the rightwing forces arrayed against the Democratic president. He was Al Gore's press secretary during his 2000 run for the White House./ppAs one environmental campaigner said: "Now it's gone nuclear."/ppHeartland's president Joseph Bast said the unauthorised release of confidential documents – and a two-page memo it has condemned as a fake – had caused permanent damage to its reputation. /pp"A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage," he said in a statement. /ppBast also disputed Gleick's account that he had received the first document – the faked two-page memo – from an anonymous source./ppHe said Heartland was consulting legal experts./ppIn the piece, Gleick made the odd claim that he carried out the hoax on Heartland as a means of verifying the authenticity of a document that appeared to set out the think tank's climate strategy. Heartland declared the two-page memo a fake./pp"At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate programme strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute's apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it," Gleick wrote./pp"Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues."/ppGleick's admission was seen by some as crossing a new line in the increasingly vitriolic debate between scientists, campaigners, businesses and politicians who want action on climate change and a small but well-funded group of those who deny the existence of man-made climate change./ppSome were dismayed the revelations. Others suggested that Heartland had got what it deserved – given its support for efforts to discredit science./pp"Heartland has been subverting well-understood science for years," wrote Scott Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team. "They also subvert the education of our school children by trying to ;'teach the controversy' where none exists."/ppHe went on: "Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him."/ppGleick, a well regarded water scientist, has been an important figure in the increasingly heated climate wars, and has sparred often in print against Heartland and others who deny the existence of climate change, such as the Republican Senator Jim Inhofe./ppLast month, Gleick a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/13/teachers-support-climate-change-lessons in schools"signed on with a new initiative to defend the teaching of climate change/a./ppHe offered that bruising experience on Monday as an explanation for his actions./ppBut Gleick does not appear to have experienced immediate remorse. He did not move to claim the ruse until there was already feverish online speculation about his involvement. He responded to a request by The Guardian for comment last Wednesday by saying he did not wish to comment./ppa href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/"Those actions may have undercut an entire career/a, the journalist Andrew Revkin wrote./pp"Gleick's use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others," he wrote./pp"The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the "rational public debate" that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed."/ppKert Davies, the research director of Greenpeace USA, said it would be unfortunate if the row over Gleick and his methods to obtain the documents distracted from Heartland's work to block climate action. /pp"There are a lot of people involved with Heartland's multimillion dollar climate denial machine who want to change the subject to anything else."/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism"Climate change scepticism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/thinktanks"Thinktanks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/people-in-science"People in science/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/suzannegoldenberg"Suzanne Goldenberg/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/eHLqou-285lEXkc0UJe_hX_khkI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/eHLqou-285lEXkc0UJe_hX_khkI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/eHLqou-285lEXkc0UJe_hX_khkI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/eHLqou-285lEXkc0UJe_hX_khkI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pThere is a trade war brewing between the United States and China over intellectual property relating to clean technologies – particularly solar power./p pSteven Chu, a scientist, Nobel Laureate in Physics, and Secretary of the United States Department of Energy, commented: “When it comes to the clean energy race, America faces a simple choice: compete or accept defeat”./p pThe United States and China have a volatile relationship when it comes to intellectual property and climate change. They vacillate between co-operation, mistrust, and outright conflict./p pThe rivalry between the United States and China will have important implications for energy security, climate change, and trade in the global economy./p h2Co-operating and collaborating on clean energy/h2 pThere has been scientific co-operation and collaboration between the United States and China in some areas of clean technology./p pNotably, the US and China signed a a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/july/126592.htm"Memorandum of Understanding/a to Enhance Cooperation on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment 2009. The agreement recognised that “co-operation between the United States and China is critical to enhancing energy security, combating climate change, and protecting the environment and natural resources”./p pfigure class="align-centre"img src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/7850/width540/swqtd94p-1329779922.jpg"figcaptionAgreement between China and the US could move wind power ahead. span class="source"Danish Wind Industry Association/span/figcaption/figure/p pThe a href="http://www.us-china-cerc.org/"US-China Clean Energy Research Center/a (CERC) is facilitating joint research and development of clean energy technologies by United States and Chinese researchers, focussing on:/p ul litechnologies for clean vehicles/li licarbon capture and storage/li lienergy-efficient building technologies./li /ul pIn September 2011, the US and China reached a href="http://www.us-china-cerc.org/pdfs/CERC_IP_Agreements_DOE_Press_Release_23_Sep_2011.pdf"an agreement/a on a href="http://http://www.us-china-cerc.org/pdfs/US/US_China_CERC_Protocol_and_IP_Annex_English_17_Nov_2009.pdf"managing the ownership and exploitation of intellectual property/a developed by the Center./p h2When the friendship breaks down/h2 pHowever, there has also been much rivalry and competition between the two nations on other clean technologies – such as solar panels and wind turbines./p pWhile the United States has a comparative advantage in patent holdings in clean technologies, China has quickly a gained market advantage in the manufacturing of solar technologies./p pa href="http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/39356/?p1=Nav_Magazine_Feature"Kevin Bullis/a observes: “Today Chinese manufacturers make about 50 million solar panels a year — over half the world’s supply in 2010 — and include four of the world’s top five solar-panel manufacturers”./p pThere has been increasing patent conflict as the United States competes with China to own the more important clean technologies./p pfigure class="align-centre"img src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/7851/width540/qcgwjrz9-1329779922.jpg"figcaptionChina is moving fast on alternative energy. span class="source"Danish Wind Industry Association/span/figcaption/figure/p pWestinghouse Solar Inc. filed for patent infringement against Chinese solar-panel maker Canadian Solar Inc., and Zep Solar Inc. in the United States International Trade Commission. In response, Zhang Hanbing, senior global marketing director with Canadian Solar, maintained that such claims were groundless./p pThere has also been disquiet about the acquisition of intellectual property rights from United States companies, bankrupted in the global financial crisis. The United States Department of Energy has expressed its intention to “prevent foreign entities from gaining control over federally funded technology and competing with American industry unfairly”./p pThe department is trying to block the sale of solar patents from the bankrupt Massachusetts solar panel company, Evergreen Solar, to Chinese purchasers. They are also concerned about who will acquire the patent portfolio of collapsed Californian solar company, Solyndra./p pAnd there have been conflicts over the ownership of wind power. American Superconductor Corp, which makes wind turbine components and transmission grid systems, has sued Chinese wind turbine maker Sinovel Wind Group Co Ltd for US$1.2 billion in China for the theft of trade secrets and breach of contract./p h2Climate wars /h2 pThere has been much bickering at an international level between the United States and China over standards of intellectual property protection in relation to clean technologies./p pAt international climate summits in a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=QxsDk32hYYACamp;dq=matthew+rimmer+intellectual+property+climate+changeamp;source=gbs_navlinks_s"Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban/a, China has promoted intellectual property flexibilities – such as the use of technology transfer, patent pools, public sector licensing, compulsory licensing, and patent exclusions./p pfigure class="align-centre"img src="https://c479107.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/7872/width540/yd8jy2vw-1329785329.jpg"figcaptionThe US is nervous about American solar patents heading to China. span class="source"Suntech/span/figcaption/figure/p pIn response, United States industry and trade representatives have promoted strong protection of intellectual property rights in clean technologies./p pRepresentative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from the 7th District of Tennessee, feared that any concessions “would lead to outright theft of our American intellectual property and indirectly benefit the world’s most prominent CO₂ emitters”./p h2Heading for a trade war?/h2 pThere have already been trade skirmishes between the two nations./p pIn June 2011, China ended certain wind power equipment subsidies, after complaints by the a href="http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2011/june/china-ends-wind-power-equipment-subsidies-challenged"United States Trade Representative/a./p pIn October 2011, United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk complained to the World Trade Organization about a href="http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2011/october/united-states-details-china-and-india-subsidy-prog"China’s clean energy subsidies/a. He observed that China had failed to notify the trade body of nearly 200 subsidy programmes, including Chinese policies and practices that affected trade and investment in green technologies./p pThe Chinese Chamber of Commerce for the Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products feared that a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/29/us-china-solar-idUSTRE7AS0HE20111129"any trade dispute/a would “unavoidably cause serious impairment to the sustainable development of the green industries as well as consumers' interests in both China and the US”./p pa href="http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/02/solar-ceos-letter-urges-president-focus-solar-energy-trade-china/"Some United States solar companies/a have pleaded for the US President to show restraint: “We believe that you and Vice President Xi have a unique opportunity to avoid such a trade war and find agreement that benefits the solar industries in both countries."/p pIn his 2012 State of the Union address, though, Barack Obama complained that “it’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized”./p pSteven Chu has observed: “America faces a choice today: are we going to recognise the opportunity and compete in the clean energy race or will we wave the white flag and watch all of these jobs go to China, Korea, Germany and other countries?”/p pSuch tensions indicate there could well be a trade war between the United States and China over the ownership of intellectual property and clean technologies./p pSuch a battle will have important implications for energy security, climate change, sustainable development, and the global economy./ppemDr Matthew Rimmer is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, working on Intellectual Property and Climate Change. He is an associate professor at the ANU College of Law, and an associate director of the Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture (ACIPA). Dr Matthew Rimmer receives funding as an Australian Research Council Future Fellow working on quot;Intellectual Property and Climate Change: Inventing Clean Technologiesquot; and a chief investigator in an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, “Promoting Plant Innovation in Australia”/em/pimg src="https://theconversation.edu.au/content/5193/tracker.pixel" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"/

Ace researcher John Mashey, whose indispensable investigation into the anti science movement’s leading players and finances has now been posted online, concurrent with release of internal documents from the anti-science “think” tank, Heartland Institute. Among the gems John has rediscovered, a 1999 love letter (and boot licking appeal for funding) from Heartland chairman Joe Bast [...]

Jeff Biggers, Huffington Post: As millions of pounds of explosives from mountaintop removal strip mining operations continue to devastate historic mountain communities in central Appalachia, a powerful new music video released this week by the beloved American Roots band Magnolia Mountain captures the haunting grief and stories of stricken families in America’s cradle of roots [...]

In the world we must strive to achieve, however difficult or implausible it may seem today, there is no place for a major expansion of the tar sands

Climatologist Andrew Weaver asks me to direct folks to this website and this video, ”in case the tar sands piece that Neil [Swart] and I published yesterday gets spun as a ‘tars sands is good’ story”:

I do think Weaver’s study — “The Alberta oil sands and climate” in Nature Climate Change (subs. req’d) – is a tad confusing. For instance, it doesn’t even include the extra emissions from tar sands extraction in its calculations!! So people who don’t actually read it carefully are likely to misreport its findings.

According to Time magazine, “Pipeline Politics: Are the Oil Sands ‘Game Over’ for the Climate? One Study Says No”:

The good news from the Nature Climate Change paper is that, should environmentalists lose their battle, the consequences might not be quite as bad as they’ve made it out to be.

Except that isn’t what the study finds. Indeed, the final paragraph states

If North American and international policymakers wish to limit global warming to less than 2 °C they will clearly need to put in place measures that ensure a rapid transition of global energy systems to non-greenhouse-gas-emitting sources, while avoiding commitments to new infrastructure supporting dependence on fossil fuels.

In short, if you care about the 2C (3.6F) target, building something like the tar sands pipeline is a really bad idea.

By the way, if you care about a 3C (5.4F) target, building something like the tar sands pipeline is also a really bad idea — see IEA’s Bombshell Warning: We’re Headed Toward 11°F Global Warming and “Delaying Action Is a False Economy.” Risking 3C, roughly 550 ppm [assuming there aren't major carbon-cycle feedbacks], is not a good idea at all, as many studies make clear (see, for instance, New study of Greenland under “more realistic forcings” concludes “collapse of the ice-sheet was found to occur between 400 and 560 ppm” of CO2).

If 7+°F global warming — 10+°F warming over most of U.S. — by century’s end is fine with you, then the tar sands is not worth bothering about. Of course that is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e.  4°C [7F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level),” according to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain (see here).

NASA’s James Hansen himself says of the new paper:

“The argument that the currently known amount of carbon in the tar sands pit is small compared to the total fossil fuels burned in two centuries is fallacious and misleading — every single source, even Saudi Arabia, is small compared to the total. If we once get hooked on tar sands and set up infrastructure, the numbers will grow as mining capabilities increase. Tar sands are particularly egregious, because you get relatively less energy per unit carbon emitted and there is associated environmental damage in the mining.”

Indeed, the point of the new study is pretty much the same as the forthcoming paper from Hansen (see figure below).  I’d put it this way:

There are big pools of carbon that the world must not burn.  Since the United States is responsible for more cumulative CO2 emissions than any other country and has to cut emissions by more than 80% in four decades to do our fair share to avert catastrophe, it’s quite safe to say that from America’s perspective, the huge pool of unconventional oil vastly dirtier than conventional oil up north is definitely on the no-burn list.

The study makes that point in a fairly straightforward way:

To have a 66% chance of limiting warming to less than the 2 °C limit put forth in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, one carbon– climate modelling study estimated that total future global carbon emissions should be limited to less than 5.9×1017 g C (ref. 9). If this amount were to be distributed equally among the current global population, the resulting allowable per capita cumulative carbon footprint would be 85 tonnes of carbon. The eventual construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would signify a North American commitment to using the Alberta oil-sand reserve, which carries with it a corresponding carbon footprint. For comparison, by fully using only the proven reserves of the Alberta oil sands, the current populations of the United States and Canada would achieve a per capita cumulative carbon footprint of 64 tonnes of carbon.

Let me clear up one serious confusion about the study right now.  The study does not actually include the extra emissions from tar sands extraction in its core calculations, as it states clearly:

Additional emissions resulting from natural gas, diesel and electricity use during bitumen extraction, upgrading and refining have not been included here, but could increase these numbers (see Supplementary Information).

The authors separately do a calculation on their website that indicate those extra emissions would add some 17% to the emissions they calculate.

What this means is that if the U.S. and Canada use only the proven reserves of the Alberta oil sands – 170 billion barrels, which we could do this century if production is quadrupled — then in fact we’d hit 75 tonnes of carbon per capita cumulative carbon footprint.  The point is, even this modest exploitation of the tar sands — a small fraction of the total “oil in place” — would blow out any chance of the U.S. and Canada contributing our share to the 2C target.  Or a 3C target.

That is the point Hansen and McKibben and I and many others have been making over and over again:

CO2 emissions by fossil fuels [1 ppm CO2 ~ 2.12 GtC, where ppm is parts per million of CO2 in air and GtC is gigatons of carbon] via Hansen. Significantly exceeding 450 ppm risks several severe and irreversible warming impacts. Hitting 800 to 1,000+ ppm — which is our current emissions path and the inevitable outcome of aggressively exploiting unconventional fuels like the tar sands as Nocera advocates — represents the near-certain destruction of modern civilization as we know it as the recent scientific literature makes chillingly clear. [Estimated reserves and potentially recoverable resources are from EIA (2011) and GAC (2011).]

This is also pretty clear from Weaver’s paper.  But it is presented in a way that the global warming hand-wavers — those who never tell you what their temperature or concentration target is — can, well, wave away with their hands:

As you see, by including all of the coal and gas, it looks like the tar sands make such a tiny contribution as to be insignificant. But the tar sands contributions is only insignificant in a world with a climate that is ruined, one that simply will not support 9 billion or more people.  In short, if we destroy civilization with coal, tar sands isn’t a big deal. Woo-hoo!

As Bill McKibben puts it:

Today’s study is akin to saying: “True, smoking six packs a day is going to kill you. But if you want to make certain you die, smoke a hundred packs a day. And if you really want to make sure you die tomorrow, lie down in front of a train.”

Time magazine reports

Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart of the University of Victoria in Canada first modelled the warming impact of burning the 170 or so billion barrels of crude believed to be technically recoverable from the Albertan oil sands. They found that burning all of that carbon would produce just 0.02 to 0.05 C of warming. As David Biello of Scientific American points out, global warming to date is 15 times greater than that.

Should energy companies figure out a way to mine and burn all 1.8 trillion barrels of oil believed to be in the oil sands, the warming would obviously be greater—but not that much greater. Weaver and Swart estimate all that oil would lead to an additional 0.36 C of warming. Given that many scientists believe we need to prevent 2 C of warming above pre-industrial levels to avoid catastrophic effects—and that we’re already a little less than halfway there—the oil sands seem to represent an important but not decisive front in the climate battle.

The 170 billion isn’t the technically recoverable oil. It’s the “economically viable proven reserve,” which will rise over time as oil prices rise (and extraction technology improves).

And burning it, including all related emissions from extraction and the like, is probably at least 0.04 C of warming, which is about 10% of the total additional warming we can risk if we are sane.

So just the “economically viable proven reserve” we could well burn this century are a big, big deal. The oil-in-place is an unmitigated disaster.

Now you can certainly argue that we aren’t going to stabilize at 2C, but that is a political conclusion and has no bearing on whether climate scientists and climate hawks are right that going beyond 2C is dangerous and immoral.

Certainly if we do going beyond 2C it’d be nuts not to try as hard as humanly possible to stabilize at, say, 2.5C (4.5°F), which again means we need to stop wasting staggering amounts of money to expand  dirty fossil fuel resources like the tar sands.

David Biello of Scientific American writes on the study with this sub-hed, “The Keystone XL pipeline wouldn’t be a major environmental calamity, but oil addiction is.”  He concludes:

Nevertheless, building the pipeline keeps us in the carbon habit, through which the U.S. burns roughly 20 million barrels of oil a day along with copious quantities of coal and natural gas. Ending our fossil fuel addiction is the only way to truly combat climate change.

So Keystone is no big deal, yet we need to end our fossil fuel addiction. But if we are planning to end our fossil fuel addiction in a timely enough fashion to avert catastrophic warming, then, as the study says, we ought to be “avoiding commitments to new infrastructure supporting dependence on fossil fuels” which would certainly include Keystone.

Bottom Line: In the world we must strive to achieve, however difficult or implausible it may seem today, expanded extraction of the tar sands has no place.