Gore's carbon-free challenge includes carbon sequestration

The We Can Solve It campaign has a video remix of Gore's challenge to have 100% carbon-free electricity sources in the US in 10 years.

One question I had of his idea was whether he rules out carbon sequestration - he doesn't:

The electricity system can be a mix of carbon-free baseload and distpatchable sources like solar thermal with storage, geothermal, wind, solar photovoltaics, biomass, existing nuclear and hydropower, and coal and natural gas power if they are able to capture the carbon.

I have mixed feelings about carbon sequestration. On the one hand, it might occupy the political sweet spot of requiring the least amount of change in power sources in order to eliminate carbon. Instead of needing sufficient political power to completely eliminate the entire coal industry, we just need the power to force them to pay extra to sequester carbon. On the other hand, the technology and most importantly the costs are undetermined. While many environmentalists noted the collapse of the FutureGen project as just one more failure of the Bush Administration, it's also a big setback for carbon sequestration.

So it's an open question in my mind whether carbon sequestration as an unproven technology with unknown costs, but great potential, can play a significant role within ten years. I think Gore's challenge is a reasonable one and that he is completely serious about it, but some results might not be reached by the deadline.

My 95% serious suggestion for Al Gore

He should become a celebrity contestant on Dancing With the Stars reality show. For those unfamiliar with it, the show features a diverse array of celebrities, paired off with professional dancers, and competing against other celebrity-dancer pairs to see who's the best.

Having seen a few of the shows, they do an interesting job with the backstory and with showing the celebrity practicing with their expert dancer. I really believe that going on the show could help Gore reach an audience that hasn't paid attention to climate change. To be received positively, he doesn't need to be the best dancer - all he has to do is to show he's making an effort and that he improves somewhat as a dancer. It could really help humanize him and remove the Gorebot image.

On a more serious climate communications note, here's a great, short movie disproving the "urban heat island is the cause of so-called warming" argument in about 10 seconds, assuming that urban sprawl isn't a major factor in the Sahara, Siberia, and the Arctic Ocean. (Via luminous beauty.) Also useful if you freeze the movie at the 1935-1944 frame and then compare it to modern times - a nice visual contrast showing that we're much warmer now.

I'm with Al on the travel thing, but not entirely on the house thing

I disagree with criticisms of Gore over his travel-related emissions, and I'm sure the people attacking him over his 10,000 square-foot house don't have the best interest of the environment at heart. But still, ten thousand feet is big.

David Roberts has his "Talking Points" in defense of Gore. That Al needs space for live-in security teams is legit. Office space may or may not be legit - I'll bet the Gores have office space elsewhere. It just seems hard still to add those needs up to 10,000 feet.

Buying carbon offsets is another significant point in Gore's defense, but he acknowledges that's just a backup plan - whether he's truly reduced emissions as much as possible is dubious.

In the end, it's a flaw, but a minor one compared to everything Gore is doing. I wish that all the people living in big houses did as much to help the environment, or any social cause, as Gore is doing.

(Hopefully my perspective on Gore's travelling and house have little to do with the fact that I travel a fair amount but live in a modest apartment, or with the fact that my professional work occasionally involves fighting "monster mansion" development.)

What Al Gore says about his travels

William at Stoat doesn't like Al Gore's "jet-setting lifestyle," and my defense of Gore also didn't impress him. While looking for something else in the book version of An Inconvenient Truth, I found this on pages 136-139:

From Pole to Shining Pole

One can read field studies, talk to scientists, and scrutinize charts, but there's nothing like seeing things for yourself

...my own journey toward understanding the crisis has also involved a literal journey to many hard-to-reach places where global warming is in clear evidence....I have been drawn to these excursions not only because of my hnger to learn as much as I can about the climate crisis, but also in part, I think, because they take me outdoors again and give me a chance to see many truly fascinating places...

I read that as saying he's travelled not just for the cause of fighting global warming, but acknowledges some personal reasons.

...The reasons for my two trips under the Arctic ice cap was to learn more about global warming and to convince the U.S. Navy to release top-secret data to the environmental scientists specializing in the study of global warming's effects on Arctic ice...the Navy has long used a special upward-looking radar to measure the thickness of ice above the subs as they make their long journey...It was that five-decade record of ice thickness, marked "top secret", that I was after....At first the Navy strenuously resisted...I worked with the Navy...Bruce DeMars...and President Reagan's CIA director, Bob Gates, were the ones who came up with an innovative solution...the information proved to be even more significant and alarming than the scientists had expected....

Since every journey took me back home, I have returned each time with a deeper conviction that the solution to this crisis that I have traveled so far to understand must begin here at home.

So he accomplished something with his trips, he doesn't claim to travel purely for altruistic reasons, and he says it helps renew his conviction to do something.

I expect that if Gore had never cared about warming and did the same travels just as a lark, no one would care. For all I know, maybe he could do a better job of avoiding travel, but I think the criticism is mostly misplaced.

Asking the wrong question about Al Gore's lifestyle

I disagree with criticism by Stoat and many others about Gore's "jet-setting" lifestyle, consisting of his riding commercial airplanes to give presentations about global warming, and occasional travel to exotic locations to see the effects of warming.

First and less important, Gore buys offsets to balance his carbon footprint, a fact noted by Stoat's commenters. Stoat makes a legitimate point that Gore might have addressed his lifestyle in his movie, but in turn, any critique of his lifestyle should also address his attempt to fix the problem.

There are questions about the effectiveness of the offsets, but it's unlikely that they're completely useless. I expect the market for voluntary purchases of emission credits will be driven by quality, and chintzy frauds will find themselves exposed by their competitors. Early adopters speed up this process. And yes, the whole world can't buy carbon offsets. I really wish that were the problem we face right now, though - we'd be in a much better shape if it were.

But more important than offsets is the better question to ask of Gore - whether he's doing the best possible job of reducing emissions overall (another issue noted by a Stoat commenter). I suppose that instead of travelling to presentations, Gore could stay home and do them by live teleconference feeds. He'd then get less than half the people to attend, and there would be no movie that has now been seen by millions worldwide. Overall, emissions would be worse.

Travelling to the South Pole is a somewhat closer question, but it has its justifications. One of the few things I remember from reading Earth in the Balance fifteen years ago was Gore's description of flying over the Amazon treetops in a tiny plane, watching clouds develop from the moisture of the rainforest. Instead of travelling there, he could've reproduced a conversation about the rainforest that he had with some professor, but bozos like me would retain no memory of that lesson. Eyewitness testimony is much more memorable.

Of course I've got my own biases, having travelled on two volunteer vacations to Montana and Alaska related to global warming. I certainly have less justification than Gore in travelling - millions of people won't learn about melting glaciers from me. I probably could have done more about global warming from home than by adding a tiny amount of data by lugging a GPS unit around glacier edges. But I'm imperfect, not a saint, and would not have spent my two-week vacation writing letters to the editor. Given the alternative, it was pretty good. Given how Al Gore chooses to spend his time compared to the vast majority of the elite, what he does is more than pretty good.

UPDATE: Stoat's response is here.