No to nukes

It's tempting to turn to nuclear plants to combat climate change, but alternatives are safer and cheaper.

JAPAN SEES NUCLEAR POWER as a solution to global warming, but it's paying a price. Last week, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake caused dozens of problems at the world's biggest nuclear plant, leading to releases of radioactive elements into the air and ocean and an indefinite shutdown. Government and company officials initially downplayed the incident and stuck to the official line that the country's nuclear plants are earthquake-proof, but they gave way in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Japan has a sordid history of serious nuclear accidents or spills followed by cover-ups.

It isn't alone. The U.S. government allows nuclear plants to operate under a level of secrecy usually reserved for the national security apparatus. Last year, for example, about nine gallons of highly enriched uranium spilled at a processing plant in Tennessee, forming a puddle a few feet from an elevator shaft. Had it dripped into the shaft, it might have formed a critical mass sufficient for a chain reaction, releasing enough radiation to kill or burn workers nearby. A report on the accident from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was hidden from the public, and only came to light because one of the commissioners wrote a memo on it that became part of the public record.

The dream that nuclear power would turn atomic fission into a force for good rather than destruction unraveled with the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 and the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. No U.S. utility has ordered a new nuclear plant since 1978 (that order was later canceled), and until recently it seemed none ever would. But rising natural gas prices and worries about global warming have put the nuclear industry back on track. Many respected academics and environmentalists argue that nuclear power must be part of any solution to climate change because nuclear power plants don't release greenhouse gases.

They make a weak case. The enormous cost of building nuclear plants, the reluctance of investors to fund them, community opposition and an endless controversy over what to do with the waste ensure that ramping up the nuclear infrastructure will be a slow process — far too slow to make a difference on global warming. That's just as well, because nuclear power is extremely risky. What's more, there are cleaner, cheaper, faster alternatives that come with none of the risks.

Glowing pains

Modern nuclear plants are much safer than the Soviet-era monstrosity at Chernobyl. But accidents can and frequently do happen. The Union of Concerned Scientists cites 51 cases at 41 U.S. nuclear plants in which reactors have been shut down for more than a year as evidence of serious and widespread safety problems.

Nuclear plants are also considered attractive terrorist targets, though that risk too has been reduced. Provisions in the 2005 energy bill required threat assessments at nuclear plants and background checks on workers. What hasn't improved much is the risk of spills or even meltdowns in the event of natural disasters such as earthquakes, making it mystifying why anyone would consider building reactors in seismically unstable places like Japan (or California, which has two, one at San Onofre and the other in Morro Bay).

Weapons proliferation is an even more serious concern. The uranium used in nuclear reactors isn't concentrated enough for anything but a dirty bomb, but the same labs that enrich uranium for nuclear fuel can be used to create weapons-grade uranium. Thus any country, such as Iran, that pursues uranium enrichment for nuclear power might also be building a bomb factory. It would be more than a little hypocritical for the U.S. to expand its own nuclear power capacity while forbidding countries it doesn't like from doing the same.

The risks increase when spent fuel is recycled. Five countries reprocess their spent nuclear fuel, and the Bush administration is pushing strongly to do the same in the U.S. Reprocessing involves separating plutonium from other materials to create new fuel. Plutonium is an excellent bomb material, and it's much easier to steal than enriched uranium. Spent fuel is so radioactive that it would burn a prospective thief to death, while plutonium could be carried out of a processing center in one's pocket. In Japan, 200 kilograms of plutonium from a waste recycling plant have gone missing; in Britain, 30 kilograms can't be accounted for. These have been officially dismissed as clerical errors, but the nuclear industry has never been noted for its truthfulness or transparency. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki contained six kilograms.

Technology might be able to solve the recycling problem, but the question of what to do with the waste defies answers. Even the recycling process leaves behind highly radioactive waste that has to be disposed of. This isn't a temporary issue: Nuclear waste remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years. The only way to get rid of it is to put it in containers and bury it deep underground — and pray that geological shifts or excavations by future generations that have forgotten where it's buried don't unleash it on the surface.

No country in the world has yet built a permanent underground waste repository, though Finland has come the closest. In the U.S., Congress has been struggling for decades to build a dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada but has been unable to overcome fierce local opposition. One can hardly blame the Nevadans. Not many people would want 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste buried in their neighborhood or transported through it on the way to the dump.

The result is that nuclear waste is stored on-site at the power plants, increasing the risk of leaks and the danger to plant workers. Eventually, we'll run out of space for it.

Goin' fission?

Given the drawbacks, it's surprising that anybody would seriously consider a nuclear renaissance. But interest is surging; the NRC expects applications for up to 28 new reactors in the next two years. Even California, which has a 31-year-old ban on construction of nuclear plants, is looking into it. Last month, the state Energy Commission held a hearing on nuclear power, and a group of Fresno businessmen plans a ballot measure to assess voter interest in rescinding the state's ban.

Behind all this is a perception that nuclear power is needed to help fight climate change. But there's little chance that nuclear plants could be built quickly enough to make much difference. The existing 104 nuclear plants in the U.S., which supply roughly 20% of the nation's electricity, are old and nearing the end of their useful lives. Just to replace them would require building a new reactor every four or five months for the next 40 years. To significantly increase the nation's nuclear capacity would require far more.

The average nuclear plant is estimated to cost about $4 billion. Because of the risks involved, there is scarce interest among investors in putting up the needed capital. Nor have tax incentives and subsidies been enough to lure them. In part, that's because the regulatory process for new plants is glacially slow. The newest nuclear plant in the U.S. opened in 1996, after having been ordered in 1970 — a 26-year gap. Though a carbon tax or carbon trading might someday make the economics of nuclear power more attractive, and the NRC has taken steps to speed its assessments, community opposition remains high, and it could still take more than a decade to get a plant built.

Meanwhile, a 2006 study by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research found that for nuclear power to play a meaningful role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the world would need to build a new plant every one to two weeks until mid-century. Even if that were feasible, it would overwhelm the handful of companies that make specialized parts for nuclear plants, sending costs through the roof.

The accelerating threat of global warming requires innovation and may demand risk-taking, but there are better options than nuclear power. A combination of energy-efficiency measures, renewable power like wind and solar, and decentralized power generators are already producing more energy worldwide than nuclear power plants. Their use is expanding more quickly, and the decentralized approach they represent is more attractive on several levels. One fast-growing technology allows commercial buildings or complexes, such as schools, hospitals, hotels or offices, to generate their own electricity and hot water with micro-turbines fueled by natural gas or even biofuel, much more efficiently than utilities can do it and with far lower emissions.

The potential for wind power alone is nearly limitless and, according to a May report by research firm Standard & Poor's, it's cheaper to produce than nuclear power. Further, the amount of electricity that could be generated simply by making existing non-nuclear power plants more efficient is staggering. On average, coal plants operate at 30% efficiency worldwide, but newer plants operate at 46%. If the world average could be raised to 42%, it would save the same amount of carbon as building 800 nuclear plants.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government spends more on nuclear power than it does on renewables and efficiency. Taxpayer subsidies to the nuclear industry amounted to $9 billion 2006, according to Doug Koplow, a researcher based in Cambridge, Mass., whose Earth Track consultancy monitors energy spending. Renewable power sources, including hydropower but not ethanol, got $6 billion, and $2 billion went toward conservation.

That's out of whack. Some countries — notably France, which gets nearly 80% of its power from nuclear plants and has never had a major accident — have made nuclear energy work, but at a high cost. The state-owned French power monopoly is severely indebted, and although France recycles its waste, it is no closer than the U.S. to approving a permanent repository. Tax dollars are better spent on windmills than on cooling towers.

Source: Los Angeles Times Editorial, July 23, 2007

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Liquid Coal Getting the Smashing it Deserves

Two proposed amendments to the federal energy bill have been soundly defeated.

The first, proposed by Sen Bunning (R-KY), would have set requirements that the U.S. use six billion gallons of coal-derived fuel by 2022. On June 19 this amendment went down 55-39 - click here to see how your Senator voted. A 'nay' vote is the vote for the environment, and I have to give credit where credit is due, Sen. Obama, long a proponent of liquid coal voted against this amendment.

The second amendment, proposed by Sen. Tester (D-MT), allowed for $10 billion in loan guarantees to produce liquid coal for uses beyond just transportation fuel. This one went down 61-33. You can check out the vote count here. Again, a 'nay' vote is the right vote, though here, Sen. Obama voted 'yea'. Admittedly, this amendment would be less horrible than the other, since it does offer some language on fighting global warming, but the simple reality is that with current technologies, any form of liquid coal is going to be dirtier than what we've got. And that doesn't even mention the insane cost inherent in getting liquid coal up and running.

Kudos to the Senate for shutting down these two amendments!

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Appetite for destruction

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year

The growing myth that corn is a cure-all for our energy woes is leading us toward a potentially dangerous global fight for food. While crop-based ethanol -the latest craze in alternative energy - promises a guilt-free way to keep our gas tanks full, the reality is that overuse of our agricultural resources could have consequences even more drastic than, say, being deprived of our SUVs. It could leave much of the world hungry.

We are facing an epic competition between the 800 million motorists who want to protect their mobility and the two billion poorest people in the world who simply want to survive. In effect, supermarkets and service stations are now competing for the same resources.

This year cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption. The problem is simple: It takes a whole lot of agricultural produce to create a modest amount of automotive fuel.

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year. If today's entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into fuel for cars, it would still satisfy less than one-sixth of U.S. demand.

Worldwide increase in grain consumption

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that world grain consumption will increase by 20 million tons this year, roughly 1%. Of that, 14 million tons will be used to fuel cars in the U.S., leaving only six million tons to cover the world's growing food needs.

Already commodity prices are rising. Sugar prices have doubled over the past 18 months (driven in part by Brazil's use of sugar cane for fuel), and world corn and wheat prices are up one-fourth so far this year.

For the world's poorest people, many of whom spend half or more of their income on food, rising grain prices can quickly become life threatening.

Once stimulated solely by government subsidies, biofuel production is now being driven largely by the runaway price of oil. Many food commodities, including corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, and sugar cane, can be converted into fuel; thus the food and energy economies are beginning to merge.

The market is setting the price for farm commodities at their oil-equivalent value. As the price of oil climbs, so will the price of food.

In some U.S. Cornbelt states, ethanol distilleries are taking over the corn supply. In Iowa, 25 ethanol plants are operating, four are under construction, and another 26 are planned.

Iowa State University economist Bob Wisner observes that if all those plants are built, distilleries would use the entire Iowa corn harvest. In South Dakota, ethanol distilleries are already claiming over half that state's crop.

The key to lessening demand for grain is to commercialize ethanol production from cellulosic materials such as switchgrass or poplar trees, a prospect that is at least five years away.

Malaysia, the leading exporter of palm oil, is emerging as the biofuel leader in Asia. But after approving 32 biodiesel refineries within the past 15 months, it recently suspended further licensing while it assesses the adequacy of its palm oil supplies. Fast-rising global demand for palm oil for both food and biodiesel purposes, coupled with rising domestic needs, has the government concerned that there will not be enough to go around.

Less costly alternatives

There are truly guilt-free alternatives to using food-based fuels. The equivalent of the 3% of U.S. automotive fuel supplies coming from ethanol could be achieved several times over - and at a fraction of the cost - by raising auto fuel-efficiency standards by 20%. (Unfortunately Detroit has resisted this, preferring to produce flex-fuel vehicles that will burn either gasoline or ethanol.)

Or what if we shifted to gas-electric hybrid plug-in cars over the next decade, powering short-distance driving, such as the daily commute or grocery shopping, with electricity?

By investing not in hundreds of wind farms, as we now are, but rather in thousands of them to feed cheap electricity into the grid, the U.S. could have cars running primarily on wind energy, and at the gasoline equivalent of less than $1 a gallon.

Clearly, solutions exist. The world desperately needs a strategy to deal with the emerging food-fuel battle. As the world's leading grain producer and exporter, as well as its largest producer of ethanol, the U.S. is in the driver's seat.

Lester R. Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble."

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Bush's 'new climate strategy'

Today's headlines are full of the news that President Bush is "unveiling a new climate strategy." If your immediate reaction is cynicism, well ... looks like you learned something over the last seven years. Let's look a little closer.

In a speech today, Bush said he wants to convene a series of meetings of the 15 major GHG emitting countries to hammer out "global emissions goals."

To give credit where it's due, there is considerable symbolic significance to the news that the U.S. is shifting from a stance of truculent foot-dragging to active engagement. Perhaps he's desperate for a PR boost, or perhaps he's just realized the pressure is too great to keep fighting directly, but for whatever reason, Bush's rhetorical shift sends a welcome if long overdue signal. Unfortunately, the shift is only rhetorical.

Take the series of meetings. You'll recall that the international community has already been holding a series of meetings on climate change, ever since 1995, under the unwieldy rubric of Conferences of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Just last November, COP-11 was held in Montreal. It was marked, as the previous COP meetings have been, by U.S. intransigence.

The G8 summits have struggled to address climate change as well. Indeed, Tony Blair tried to make climate change a top agenda item for 2005's G8 summit; he even flew to D.C. to beg for Bush's support. But that summit was marked by ... U.S. intransigence.

Then there was the 2005 Davos World Economic Forum, where Blair again begged Bush to move on climate change. Again ... intransigence. And that's not all. Virtually every international summit or meeting of the last few years has been marked by urgent concern over climate change and a refusal by the U.S. to engage in good-faith efforts to tackle it.

So what will be different about these meetings? Here's a couple of key facts to keep in mind:

• The meetings will be convened by the U.S. and held on U.S. territory; the U.S. will control the agenda.
• Merkel and Blair want the G8 countries to commit to immediate action; the talks Bush proposes will run through to the end of 2009. That's a lot of talk on a subject that's been talked to death.
• The U.S. has strongly and unambiguously rejected the emission targets agreed to by the other developed nations (~50% cuts from 1990 levels by 2050). That's why the meetings are about emissions goals rather than targets. The difference? Goals are voluntary. The U.S. under Bush will never agree to hard targets or mandates.
• There's great significance to the fact that Bush wants the "top 15 GHG emitters" at the meetings. That means he won't get any commitments that aren't agreed to by China and India, which are among the only other nations to refuse to agree to binding targets. Two things are accomplished by setting things up so that China and India have veto power over a final agreement: 1) you won't get any binding targets, and 2) you establish that China and India are obligated to pledge GHG reductions equal to the U.S. and other developed countries, despite the fact that the developed countries are responsible for the vast bulk of the GHG already in the atmosphere, and still far exceed China and India in per-capita emissions. The last thing Bush wants is for the world to agree that the developed countries owe a greater commitment based on economic and social justice concerns.
• Judging by Bush's speech, one of his principal goals is to "eliminate tariffs on clean energy technologies." In plain English, that means giving U.S. companies favorable trade deals to sell "clean coal" and nuclear technology to developing countries. This is something Bush's corporate backers have long wanted; climate change is a way to sell it. I'm guessing Bush will not be proposing to remove any U.S. tariffs, like, say, the one on sugar-cane ethanol from Brazil.

As you can see -- and as you would expect -- this announcement from Bush is not a genuine change of heart on climate change. The U.S. still will not agree to any emission reduction targets. It will not agree that the developed countries bear primary responsibility for climate change. It will not sign on to the growing consensus among developed nations about how to tackle the problem

This announcement is an attempt to run out the clock on the Bush administration without committing to anything but sweetheart deals for corporate backers.

Same as it ever was.

by David Roberts of Grist Mill on 31 May, 2007

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California attorney general urges EPA to allow stricter emission standards

California Attorney General Jerry Brown appealed Tuesday to the Environmental Protection Agency for a waiver so that it and 11 other states can impose rules on car and truck emissions more stringent than those permitted by the Clean Air Act in an effort to combat global warming.

Later, Brown took his message to Capitol Hill, telling the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that nothing is more essential now than for the United States to act boldly to curb carbon dioxide emissions that most scientists believe are causing the Earth to warm at a dangerous rate.

"This is bigger than Iraq," Brown told the Senate panel, headed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, also a California Democrat. "It is bigger than immigration. It's not tomorrow but it's coming around. The stakes have never been higher."

But there was no indication that Brown's pitch would move the EPA to grant the needed waiver that has been pending since 2005. Bush administration critics, including Brown, charged that the EPA is stalling any action in concert with the U.S. auto and petroleum industries.

Brown vowed to sue the agency if it doesn't issue the waiver by October.

California needs the waiver if it is to enforce a 2002 state law requiring automakers to cut emissions from cars and trucks by 30 percent by 2016. The California standard has since been adopted by 11 other states, and a half-dozen more are looking at it. A waiver for California would open the door to the tougher standard applying to a third of the cars and light trucks sold in the country.

The issue has taken on huge significance for the states because only California can seek exceptions under the Clean Air Act to national emission standards, because of its unique air quality problems. Many of California's large population centers have trouble combating air pollution that gets trapped in the valleys of this mountainous state.

Other states can adopt California standards once a waiver is issued. Many of those states, including New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Maine, sent witnesses to the EPA hearing to back California's claim.

Despite the overwhelming show of force by the states, the auto industry sent just one witness - Steve Douglas of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Douglas said California had not proven the need for the waiver, claiming that if it were granted, the auto industry would face a "patchwork" of unnecessary regulations.

"The auto industry seems to feel the White House is in their pocket," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an environmental watchdog group. "My guess is that this will drag on, and it will be up to the next administration to see this through."

At the Senate hearing, Case Western Reserve University law school professor Jonathan H. Adler said California might not even qualify for a waiver in the case of global warming.

Adler said the act authorized waivers for California because of its "unique circumstances." But "global climate change by definition is global," he said.

Brown's appearance sparked some fireworks when Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the panel's senior Republican and the Senate's leading global warming skeptic, charged that the former state governor and one-time presidential aspirant was "grandstanding" on behalf of the state.

Inhofe called it the "height of hypocrisy" for the state to condemn the Bush administration for not acting on the waiver when it was in violation of the Clean Air Act for exceeding soot and ozone levels.

But Brown said soot and ozone problems would only worsen unless global warming is brought under control. He called the state's case "overwhelming," and he blamed the slow pace of the EPA on "raw politics."

"We know Bush is colluding with the automobile companies and the oil companies," Brown said. "He's an oil man."

EPA officials sat through the administrative hearing but gave no hint of how - or when - the agency might rule.

Boxer said she was calling Johnson to a hearing before her committee on June 21 and pledged that "I will personally leave this podium and give him a big hug" if the EPA head announces approval of the waiver then.

by David Whitney
McClatchy Newspapers

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Climate Change: Why We Can't Wait

The country's leading climatologist gives us the five necessary steps we need to take to prevent
catastrophic climate change.

There's a huge gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known about global warming by those who need to know: the public and policy-makers. We've had, in the past thirty years, one degree Fahrenheit of global warming.

But there's another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline due to gases that are already in the atmosphere. And there's another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline because of the energy infrastructure now in place -- for example, power plants and vehicles that we're not going to take off the road even if we decide that we're going to address this problem.

The Energy Department says that we're going to continue to put more and more CO2 in the atmosphere each year -- not just additional CO2 but more than we put in the year before.

If we do follow that path, even for another ten years, it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet -- one without sea ice in the Arctic; with worldwide, repeated coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level; and with regional disruptions due to freshwater shortages and shifting climatic zones.

I've arrived at five recommendations for what should be done to address the problem. If Congress were to follow these recommendations, we could solve the problem. Interestingly, this is not a gloom-and-doom story. In fact, the things we need to do have many other benefits in terms of our economy, our national security, our energy independence and preserving the environment -- preserving creation.

First, there should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2. That technology is probably five or ten years away. It will become clear over the next ten years that coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester CO2 are going to have to be bulldozed. That's the only way we can keep CO2 from getting well into the dangerous level, because our consumption of oil and gas alone will take us close to the dangerous level. And oil and gas are such convenient fuels (and located in countries where we can't tell people not to mine them) that they surely will be used. So why build old-technology power plants if you're not going to be able to operate them over their lifetime, which is fifty or seventy-five years? It doesn't make sense. Besides, there's so much potential in efficiency, we don't need new power plants if we take advantage of that.

Second, and this is the hard recommendation that no politician seems willing to stand up and say is necessary: The only way we are going to prevent having an amount of CO2 that is far beyond the dangerous level is by putting a price on emissions. In order to avoid economic problems, it had better be a gradually rising price so that the consumer has the option to seek energy sources that reduce his requirement for how much fuel he needs. And that means we should be investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies at the same time. The result would be high-tech, high-paid jobs. And it would be very good for our energy independence, our national security and our balance of payments.

But a price on carbon emissions is not enough, which brings us to the third recommendation: We need energy-efficiency standards. That's been proven time and again. The biggest use of energy is in buildings, and the engineers and architects have said that they can readily reduce the energy requirement of new buildings by 50 percent.

That goal has been endorsed by the US Conference of Mayors, but you can't do it on a city-by-city basis. You need national standards. The same goes for vehicle efficiency. We haven't had an improvement in vehicle efficiency in twenty-five or thirty years. And our national government is standing in court alongside the automobile manufacturers resisting what the National Research Council has said is readily achievable -- a 30 percent improvement in vehicle efficiency, which California and other states want to adopt.

The fourth recommendation -- and this is probably the easiest one -- involves the question of ice-sheet stability. The old assumption that it takes thousands or tens of thousands of years for ice sheets to change is clearly wrong. The concern is that it's a very nonlinear process that could accelerate. The west Antarctic ice sheet in particular is very vulnerable. If it collapses, that could yield a sea-level rise of sixteen to nineteen feet, possibly on a time scale as short as a century or two.

The information on ice-sheet stability is so recent that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report does not adequately address it. The IPCC process is necessarily long and drawn out. But this problem with the stability of ice sheets is so critical that it really should be looked at by a panel of our best scientists.

Congress should ask the National Academy of Sciences to do a study on this and report its conclusions in very plain language. The National Academy of Sciences was established by Abraham Lincoln for just this sort of purpose, and there's no reason we shouldn't use it that way.

The final recommendation concerns how we have gotten into this situation in which there is a gap between what the relevant scientific community understands and what the public and policy-makers know. A fundamental premise of democracy is that the public is informed and that they're honestly informed.

There are at least two major ways in which this is not happening. One of them is that the public affairs offices of the science agencies are staffed at the headquarters level by political appointees. While the public affairs workers at the centers are professionals who feel that their job is to translate the science into words the public can understand, unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case for the political appointees at the highest levels.

Another matter is Congressional testimony. I don't think the Framers of the Constitution expected that when a government employee -- a technical government employee -- reports to Congress, his testimony would have to be approved and edited by the White House first. But that is the way it works now. And frankly, I'm afraid it works that way whether it's a Democratic administration or a Republican one.

These problems are worse now than I've seen in my thirty years in government. But they're not new. I don't know anything in our Constitution that says that the executive branch should filter scientific information going to Congressional committees. Reform of communication practices is needed if our government is to function the way our Founders intended it to work.

The global warming problem has brought into focus an overall problem: the pervasive influence of special interests on the functioning of our government and on communications with the public. It seems to me that it will be difficult to solve the global warming problem until we have effective campaign finance reform, so that special interests no longer have such a big influence on policy-makers.

James Hanson
The government's leading climatologist and Director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

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GOP Nuclear Reaction to Global Warming

Last year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?” Of the respondents, 23 per cent said yes, 77 per cent said no. In the year since that poll, of course, global warming has seized a massive amount of public attention. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a study, with input from 2,000 scientists worldwide, finding that the certainty on man-made global warming had risen to 90 per cent.

So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results? Only 13 per cent of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved. As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are getting more skeptical. Al Gore’s recent congressional testimony on the subject, and the chilly reception he received from GOP members, suggest the discouraging conclusion that skepticism on global warming is hardening into party dogma. Like the notion that tax cuts are always good or that President Bush is a brave war leader, it’s something you almost have to believe if you’re an elected Republican.

How did it get this way? A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the entire conservative movement. Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average non-conservative. But we non-conservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

National Review magazine, with its popular Web site, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is “Planet Gore.” The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative might not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue. Meanwhile, Republicans who do believe in global warming get shunted aside. Nicole Gaudiano of Gannett News Service recently reported that Rep. Wayne Gilchrest asked to be on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio refused to allow it unless Gilchrest would say that humans have not contributed to global warming. The Maryland Republican refused and was denied a seat. Reps Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md, and Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich, both research scientists, also were denied seats on the committee. Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification; if the GOP allowed Republican researchers who accept the scientific consensus to sit on a global warming panel, it would kill the party’s strategy of making global warming seem to be the pet obsession of Democrats and Hollywood lefties.

The phenomenon here is that a tiny number of influential conservative figures set the party line; dissenters are marginalised, and the rank and file go along with it. You can tell that some conservatives who want to fight global warming understand how the psychology works and are trying to turn it in their favour. Their response is to emphasise nuclear power as an integral element of the solution. Sen. John McCain, who supports action on global warming, did this in a recent National Review interview. The technique seems to be surprisingly effective. When framed as a case for more nuclear plants, conservatives seem to let down their guard. In reality, nuclear plants might be a small part of the answer, but you couldn’t build enough to make a major dent. But the psychology is perfect. Conservatives know that lefties hate nuclear power. So, yeah, Rush Limbaugh listeners, let’s fight global warming and stick it to those hippies!

Source: Johnathan Chait, The Peninsula

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Supreme Court Rules Against Bush on Global Warming

The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration Monday for its inaction on global warming in a decision that could lead to more fuel-efficient cars as early as next year. The court, in a 5-4 ruling in its first case on climate change, declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate those emissions from new cars and trucks under the landmark environment law, and the "laundry list" of reasons it has given for declining to do so are insufficient, the court said.

"A reduction in domestic emissions would slow the pace of global emissions increases, no matter what happens elsewhere," Justice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion. "EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change." The reasoning in the court's ruling also appears to apply to EPA's decision not to impose controls on global warming pollution from power plants, a decision that has been challenged separately in court, several environmental lawyers said.

Whatever else comes of the decision, "this administration's legal strategy for doing nothing has been repudiated," said David Doniger, counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group involved in the case.

This is a huge, huge deal. The proximate effect is that California's pioneering efforts against climate change are safe from federal interference.

More broadly, the Supreme Court has put the weight of the judicial branch of the federal government behind the effort to fight global warming. There is no longer a shred of doubt, if there was any left, that federal action is inevitable.

Bush's isolation on this issue is now total. No one stands with him -- not Congress, not the business community, not the religious community, not the public at large, not the courts. Only James Inhofe. That's a grim assessment indeed.

Court's opinion here: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf

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Global Warming and Overpopulation

We are heading towards a train wreck, yet few in the public eye are raising the alarm about one aspect of this multi-faceted calamity. As our numbers increase, the human population could exceed our small planet’s ability to sustain it – in fact, we might have already passed this mark – we don’t really know.

The majority of scientists and the public now accept that global warming is an undeniable reality and there has been much discussion of its causes as well as various solutions. However, one area has not received much attention among policy makers and the public, and is the “elephant” in the debate – the contribution of overpopulation to the problem and what to do about it. The issue is, plain and simple, a hot-button and elicits passionate intensity from both the right and the left. It bridges many areas, from religion to civil rights to environmentalism. It is an issue for both sides because it affects us all and the future of our planet hangs in the balance. The time to address this is now.

http://www.rockridgenation.org/blog/archive/2007/03/22/train-wreck-ahead-global-warming-and-overpopulation

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Coastal Mega-Cities in for a Bumpy Ride

About 643 million people, or one-tenth of the world's population, who live in low lying coastal areas are at great risk of oceans-related impacts of climate change, according to a global research study to be released next month.

The study, by researchers at Columbia University's Centre for International Earth Sciences Information Network and the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, is the first of its kind. The researchers identified populations, particularly urban populations, at greatest risk from rising sea levels and more intense storms due to climate change.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37119

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Al Gore's Ten-Point Plan to Fight Global Warming

Here’s a video and written summary of Gore’s testimony before Congress detailing his ten-point plan to confront the threat of global warming.

http://fypower.org/news/?p=1017

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White House Efforts to Stifle Climate Research

This report was presented today to the Investigation and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee. The report charges broad White House efforts to stifle climate research.

Article:
http://www.whistleblower.org/content/press_detail.cfm?press_id=853
Report:
http://www.whistleblower.org/doc/2007/Final%20Combined%20Redacting%20Climate%20Science%20Report.pdf

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