Greens opposed to Waxman-Markey are wildly unrealistic

Grist has been full of pro and con debates from enviros about the Waxman-Markey (one of the later salvos here). Just thought I'd add that it's pretty obviously the only game in town, and if it fails, it's unrealistic to expect anything else this year. Doing something is a whole lot better than doing nothing.

The only reason I can think of for holding off is the hope that next year, EPA will have come up with CO2 regulations that scare the bad guys enough to cut a deal in return for legislation that makes EPA back off. Too many problems with this, though, mostly problems of delay - EPA may not finish new regulations for over a year, and then the litigation will start and delay things even longer. Only after they've lost all the battles with EPA will the bad guys cut a deal.

A better approach is to get the best legislation that we can pass by 60 votes, now. When EPA issues draft regulations in a year or two, the polluters can try and strike a deal, but the baseline that they will have to improve from is the halfway-okay Waxman-Markey, as opposed to the present situation of nothing.

I don't think the relatively-smaller enviro groups opposing W-M have much of a leg to stand on.

UPDATE: a recent Nature Podcast commentary (not sure if it was June 4 or June 11) had another good point - if the US walks into the Copenhagen conference after the end of the year with no climate legislation in place, we will have no response to India and China saying they shouldn't put limit on their emissions either. If I were conspiratorial I'd think the polluters were cooperating on this tactic.

UPDATE 2: According to Mother Jones, the current version of W-M strips EPA of authority to regulate coal emissions for climate reasons (apparently not other aspects of climate change though). Consider part of my argument shot down, then.

Pielke Jr. and Dave Roberts are on the same (wrong) page

Recently Dave Roberts wrote two posts (here and here) telling people to ignore climate denialists, both those in the media and those in Congress:

Congressional Republicans are d******bags and everyone hates them. You might think from their program of uncompromising, unreasoning obstruction that they have some secret master plan to regain seats in Congress (which, as you might have noticed, they keep losing), but as Matt Yglesias points out, it’s not so. Even National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Cornyn (TX) admits that it’s all but a fait accompli that Democrats will reach 60 votes in the Senate in 2010.

That’s because everyone likes Obama, and everyone hates Republicans. As Chris Bowers has documented in an ongoing series, they are less popular among the American public than Obama, Congressional Dems, marijuana legalization, Venezuela, China, and probably this new pig flu, though no one’s polled that yet. They screwed up the country, they don’t have credible solutions to any of its problems, and the only people who listen to their increasingly loopy rhetoric are part of the 30% remnant.

Roberts might be surprised to learn that Roger Pielke Jr. preceded him in this opinion by over two years, arguing that a poll showing a majority of Congress members believed in climate change meant the following:

1. The issue of science is no longer relevant to debate in Congress. A majority in both chambers accepts the human role in climate change, and further a majority accepts the need for action, including mandatory caps on carbon dioxide.

Roger the crazy radical goes even further, saying one reason for Congressional inaction on climate back in 2007 was that "some scientists" like those at RealClimate spent time talking about skeptics' arguments. Damn you, RealClimate!

However nice it may be for Roger and Roberts to agree on something, they're wrong. You need 60 votes in the Senate to beat a filibuster over climate change, so 41 Senators can stop action. The bad guys have 30 votes in their pocket thanks to denialists, ones who listened the echo chamber enough to believe the nonsense. It's not as if all the remaining Congressmembers accept the consensus either - they can think there might be something to the critiques, a thought that would be magnified by the economic interests of their states and their financial contributors and friends. Unwarranted skepticism is a huge dead weight, something that keep politicians from doing the right thing, and knocking it down is still necessary.

Dyson isn't a right wing hack, but he'd rather be contrary than right

Revkin at NY Times writes about skeptic Freeman Dyson, recipient of a long profile:

Personally, I see Mr. Dyson (he never pursued a Ph.D) in a different camp, as one of a handful of scientists for whom ideological predispositions have no bearing on how they approach a technical question.

Maybe it's not a political predisposition - I'll get back to that - but the profile has Dyson saying three things: models projecting dangerous climate change are wrong, what change will occur is a net benefit, and technology can easily handle anything potentially dangerous.

Where I'd disagree with Revkin is that each assertion is an independent technical question, but they all, conveniently, are concluded by Dyson in a way that supports a position that we shouldn't reduce fossil fuel consumption. Many right-wing hacks also find the same conclusions, all against the scientific consensus. Dyson isn't a right-winger, but he is a contrarian, and I think he likes reaching a conclusion that opposes the consensus. Within his own field of expertise, he's occasionally done that correctly, but he's also been wrong. This isn't his field, other than some minor work Revkin points to from 30 years ago. (Mooney has more on this.) In other words, Dyson is biased.

And there's a political ideology driving Dyson as well. He clearly thinks coal should play a major role in Third World development. Even if he doesn't follow typical denialist politics, his political preference is driving his analysis.

Finally, since any accusation of bias could be turned around against the accuser, let's examine it. The models seem to have held up pretty well over the past 10-20 years, and the theory of destructive climate change is a century old and doesn't rely on modelling. The evidence strongly suggests changes will be net negative, as can be seen in significant part by the fact that we are adapted to the current climate. (If we could choose in advance, maybe we'd prefer a Jurassic climate, but switching to a warmer one from the present imposes huge costs.) Finally, technology might save us, but blindly counting on it is a huge mistake. Maybe I'm as blinded as Dyson by my ideology, but I doubt it.

Climate change is changing rain/snow mix in winter floods

Thought I'd try a local reference as part of the whole Roger Pielke Jr. kerfluffle, wherein Roger expresses outrage at the idea that present climate disasters are partially traced to climate change. He apparently doesn't dispute that climate change will make future disasters worse, so I fail to detect the bigness of the deal.

Something I put up at my work blog is relevant to climate disasters and flooding. Our local area winter storms and resulting flooding are a mix of rain at low elevations and snow at high elevations. California has definitely warmed, so this has likely increased the rain:snow ratio and made flooding worse, and will do so even more in the future.

And it's probably not just us that have this problem - plenty of other temperate areas could face fall and spring storms that would have been partially or completely snow instead of rain under natural conditions but will get rain-caused flooding instead because of warming. Not the most important climate impact by far, but directly relevant to Roger's field.

I expect his response would be to say you can't point to existing data on economic damages and separate out a climate signal from the noise of every other factor. So what? That doesn't mean the damage hasn't happened. It's a logical implication, and what's lacking is only the detailed information that lets us tease out the various factors.

Mashey on Lomborg, and virtual Mashey

Via Rabett, John Mashey's guest post deconstructing Lomborg as someone arguing with sophisticated political tactics, where the truth of the matter is secondary to the goal of stopping governmental regulation. Lomborg and his guest pals claim all sorts of other things are more beneficial worked on than fighting climate change, but since no one will do much to resolve those things, action on climate is effectively stopped, and their real goal achieved.

I especially liked this point:

Finally, as a thought question, consider another spending item that *might* have appeared [to be prioritized]:

- eradicate cigarette smoking
See about WHO report, 2008.

These days, smoking is growing in low-income countries, and WHO thinks a billion people will die of it in this century. After all, this is a business that depends on teenage addiction during brain-wiring time. That would seem an obvious win, right at the top of the list…

One could pay for a lot of those (good) things on the list.

but it’s not mentioned, is it? I wonder why :-)

I'd add fighting the introduction of junk food into middle income countries as another possibility whose prioritization wouldn't fit well with the glib ideology that Lomborg represents.

By the way, John Mashey can run but he can't hide any more. Here's a Google search for his stuff on blogs, and I'm adding his virtual blog to my list of climate blogs on the left of the page.

Sea level rise - I'd love to bet over it

Thanks to Steve Bloom for pointing towards a rather confident "skeptic" claiming he wants to bet over sea level rise for the next five years. Digging through we get this:

Pierre Gosselin (08:35:38) :

And what the heck,
I just e-mailed the following to MS EILPERIN:

———
Dear Ms Eilperin,
- Al Gore says: 20 ft sea level rise in about 100 years (i.e. 12 inches every 5 years).
- Prof Stefan Ramstorf (sic) of the Potsdamer Institute in Germany says: 4ft 8in by 2100. (i.e. 2.5 inches every 5 years).

I say that the average annual sea level will not increase more than 1.25 inches in the next 5 years. Far below what you and the two above mentioned gentlemen are warning.

So, being the generous guy I am, I’m asking you to bet $1,500.00. If the average sea level is more than 1.25″ higher in 5 years (2013) than it is in 2008, then I’ll pay you $1500. If it is less, then you pay me $1500.

What are you waiting for? The overwhelming consensus says you will win the bet!
———————-

Anyone think she’ll respond?
Bet she doesn’t.

Gore said nothing of the sort, first of all. I watched the movie and have the book, no time frame for the 20 foot rise was given, but it is right in the long run. (I have, fwiw, mildly criticized Gore's omission of a time frame.)

Rahmstorf also didn't say 1.2 meters by 2100, he said between .5 and 1.2 meters by 2100. Gosselin's proposed bet "against" Rahmstorf's position actually works out to be .6 meters, so Gosselin would win even if Rahmstorf had been proven right. Gosselin's bet is even worse though, because the predictions assume that the rise would accelerate later in the century with increased warming, while Gosselin simply allocates the entire warming proportionately, an equal amount each year.

So what's a fair bet? From the viewpoint of those who are under the impression that temperatures have fallen over the last 11 years, I would guess they anticipate random change in sea level over the next five years. From a position based in reality, which is this:


I'd expect the current rate of 3.1mm/yr to continue (not much acceleration should be noticeable in just five years). Half way between delusion and reality is 1.55 mm/yr for five years, and that should be a fair bet. Of course, temperatures haven't really fallen in the last 11 years, but that's what the other side wants to argue.

I could lose this bet simply due to random noise, but it's unlikely. I'll add it to my list of proposed bets, and we'll see if Gosselin or anyone else is interested.

For some more info on sea level rise, see Deltoid.

UPDATE: edited for politeness.

The climate treaty won't be the international agreement with teeth

Jonathan Zasloff, a friend/law prof/Same Facts blogger, is publishing a proposal in the Northwestern University Law Review suggesting that the US Trade Representative rather than the State Department should take the lead in negotiation a new international climate agreement. (Abstract here, you should also be able to download the full text.) His argument that USTR is better suited than State to coordinate positions of many US governmental agencies makes sense to me. He also argues that the climate agreement could include trade concessions.

This argument reminds me of one I've made for several years, that trade agreements instead of treaties should provide the real teeth for international climate agreements. The main reason is that treaties need 67 votes in the Senate while trade agreements only need 60 to overcome an initial filibuster.

I've thought I've been making a lonely argument, but maybe not. I corresponded with Jonathan, and he goes even further. Relevant parts of his email, with his permission to blog them:

I suppose that I disagree with your position because it's not clear to me why climate change agreements need to be submitted as treaties. The Third Restatement of US Foreign Relations Law endorses a pretty broad interchangeability argument.

To be sure, there are those scholars who argue against interchangeability, but it may prove too much. Laurence Tribe has at least suggested quite strongly that all agreements must be submitted as treaties, and so I think he rejects the trade/climate distinction. That could throw out more than 90% of America's international agreements! John Yoo says that something must be submitted as a treaty if it is outside Congress' Article I power, which makes sense, but then he lists a whole lot of things outside that power, which doesn't....

The most recent scholarly statement on the matter is Oona Hathaway's piece in Yale, where she basically says that outside very narrow limitations (not relevant to climate), everything can and should be submitted as an executive-legislative agreement. Her argument is basically policy-based, saying that it makes more sense to do agreements through executive-legislative agreements, and saves the treaty clause from superfluity by these very narrow limitations.

My very tentative approach is what might be called the Meat Loaf principle, i.e. two out of three ain't bad. The Treaty Clause makes sense because it essentially says that if you're going to ignore the House, you've got to get 2/3 of the Senate; if you're going to override a Presidential veto of a law implementing an international agreement, then you've got to get 2/3 of both Houses. (Interesting and subtle questions of whether an "executive-legislative agreement" can be passed over a Presidential veto, i.e. what's the difference between an executive-legislative agreement and a normal law?). It's a political issue--the way in which an agreement should be submitted depends upon the political context, i.e. whether you can get it through the House or not.

I think Jonathan is disagreeing with my exclusive reference to trade agreements, and I think he's right that any executive-legislative climate agreement would be constitutional. Doing it as a trade agreement makes political sense, though.

The other argument for why treaties shouldn't and don't need to be used was in yesterday's New York Times. Johns Yoo and Bolton argue that treaties must be used for a next climate agreement. Anything written by those two johns, particularly by them together, is guaranteed to be both wrong and evil. In particular I don't seen a logical reason why trade agreements under their own argument shouldn't be subject to two-thirds vote. I'm sure Yoo has his nonsensical reason for excluding them, but meshing a climate agreement into a trade agreement would help tie their arguments even further up in knots.

Here's hoping that Obama listens to the johns and does the opposite.

(One additional note - this isn't to say there should be no treaty at all. A treaty in addition to some other agreement would be fine, but the teeth should be elsewhere.)

UPDATE: Just checked, and Jonathan wrote about this issue yesterday.

Climate change and the snows of San Francisco Bay

I went on a run yesterday up at Castle Rock State Park, passing by my favorite waterfall/rock climbing spot. The creek surprised me by only trickling over the cliff at the same rate we'd see in late summer, despite all the stormy weather in the last week.

The potential explanation for the low flow was in patches on the forest floor around me - a lot of that precipitation came down as snow, some of it hadn't melted, and what had melted had slowly seeped into the ground instead of flashing into the streams.

A lot of non-locals don't realize the Bay Area gets snow every year (and even some local economics professors should know better). There are hundreds of thousands of acres in the Bay Area that lie above 2,000 feet in elevation, are virtually uninhabited, and get ephemeral snow for a few hours at a time each year. Tens of thousands of acres are above 3,000 feet, and snow can last for a few days at a time each winter, in addition to the ephemeral snow.

I've not seen anywhere how places like San Francisco Bay will be affected by the climate change switch from occasional snow to rare snow. I'd guess it will be a less-severe version of what will happen in the Sierras - higher winter stream flows, lower groundwater tables and lower summer flows. And while there'll be fewer hard frosts, there will also be fewer occasions where snow will protect plants from hard frosts.

And finally, fewer chances to bring some snow down to throw at your loved ones, like I did.

Planet Gore laughs at a potential extinction it doesn't understand

I slummed around at Planet Gore recently, where they've been chortling over a possible extinction of the white lemuroid possum, a variation on the lemuroid possum that some scientist think may have become extinct, and may have been killed off by global warming. Planet Gore reprints what they think are some good questions about this issue:

1. If the warmth of 2005 killed them all, how did they get through the Medieval Warm Period?

2. If warming is so devastating to them, why were they allegedly so easy to find after the warm year of 1998 but prior to 2005?

3. As a rule of thumb, if we don't see an animal after only 20+ hours of spotlighting, can we safely declare it extinct?

4. Is it a complete coincidence that this story is being released at the same time as the climate meetings in Poznan?

One suggestion I have for our denialist friends is that they actually try and answer their own questions first, before trumpeting them into the echo chamber. But let's help them out.

#1. Typical laziness in denialists thinking they know something they don't - in this case, that Australia was warm during the "Medieval Warm Period." I've redirected the link in #1 above from a denialist site in the original to wikipedia - turns out we don't know what the temperatures were like in Australia. Equally important, a millenium ago the possums didn't have to deal with habitat loss from deforestation that they face now, where they can't survive in second-growth forests. Climate change is the follow-up punch that knocks out a species reeling from habitat destruction.

#2. More generalizing - while 1998 was warm in Australia (not that the denialists bothered to even look that up), the warmth "came from significantly warmer than usual minimum temperatures," when it's maximums that kill possums. This graph shows the really bad maximums for eastern Australia have been in the last seven years, and that 1998 wasn't bad at all (and what really counts anyway is temperatures in the much smaller highland region where the animals live).

#3. Twenty-plus hours of spotlighting over three years may not be enough to declare a species extinct, as seen by the fact that the scientists didn't declare it extinct, just that they were very worried and going back for another look. Going from seeing lots to seeing none in three years would qualify for being worrisome, I'd think.

#4. I expect they call that a news hook. Is there any coincidence in that Planet Gore is seeking to shoot down the story around the same time as the Poznan conference? The only difference is between doing science on one side, and incredulous, unresearched objections on the other.

Crank magnetism in action

Deltoid finds that Senator James "Won't Bet" Inhofe's list of not-650, mostly-not-scientifically-qualified climate denialists includes some evolution deniers.

A day later, RealClimate reports on a technicality involving the Antarctic ozone hole, indicating there's little likelihood that cosmic rays have anything to do with it, and cites climate denier Timothy Ball (who gave this blog its subtitle) as someone who counted on cosmic rays as somehow being crucial. Ball, of course, is one of Inhofe's 600 denialists (see page 111). I expect that besides the five evolution deniers, there'll be even more CFC-ozone deniers on Inhofe's list (Patrick Michaels and Fred Singer come to mind), united by a political desire to deny human influence even though the scientific issues of ozone loss and global warming have different mechanisms.

It's all an excellent example of crank magnetism, "cranks are magnetically attracted to other crank arguments, and in the process show how shallow their understanding of science and nature truly is."

I'm sure there's more kinds of denial in Inhofe's list on a variety of issues.

Finally, a related note - Obama has repeatedly use the word "denial" in referring to climate change, so as far as affecting political discourse is involved, someone with Obama's ear for politics thinks it's a good term.

Watts Up With That mistranslates Norwegian glacier news

Watts Up With That says:

Scandinavian nation reverses trend, mirrors results in Alaska, elsewhere. After years of decline, glaciers in Norway are again growing, reports the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE).

The link provided is to a source reporting in Norwegian only.

Fooling around with automatic translation from several websites gave me this:

Senior Engineer Hallgeir Elvehøy in the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) said that the NTB in a note to the message that brefronten (the front/terminus) in 22 of 32 surveyed glaciers in Norway have pulled back in the past year.

Hardly matches Watts saying a trend has reversed when over two-thirds are still declining. In Watts' defense, the Norwegian headline says "Glaciers growing afresh," and there's signs that the decline is slowing but that's a statement about some glaciers, not a reversed trend.

Still more foolishness in Watts' statement:

The flow rate of many glaciers has also declined. Glacier flow ultimately acts to reduce accumulation, as the ice moves to lower, warmer elevations.

Is he fooled himself or trying to fool others? He makes it sound as if glacier retreats are a good thing. A retreating glacial terminus, except in really unusual circumstances, is an excellent sign that the glacier is losing mass - it can no longer push glacial ice downhill fast enough to keep up with the melt at the lower end.

Watts also gave no evidence of glaciers growing "elsewhere" besides Alaska and Norway. There will inevitably be a few due to local conditions, but he apparently couldn't come up with more nonsense to back up his subtitle.

Denialism originally found at Tigerhawk.

2008 to be the warmest La Nina-influenced year with no El Nino events?

Unless something happens in the last two months of this year, 2008 will be the warmest La Nina-influenced year discounting 1998, a year that was split between La Nina and an even stronger El Nino.

The list of El Ninos and La Ninas is here, with recent La Ninas in 2008, 2000, 1999, 1998, and 1995 (prior La Nina years weren't nearly warm enough to compete). This graphic shows how 2008 is stacking up so far, while this chart shows temperatures for 1880-2007. Eyeballing the graphic to 2000, 1999, and 1995 shows this year trending towards being warmer than the others.

Another way to consider it is to use the first link and scroll to the bottom for years that only had La Nina and no El Nino events: this year (probably), 2000, 1999, 1971, 1974, and 1975 (and a few earlier ones). This year's on track to be the warmest year in the instrumental record with La Nina and without El Nino.

McCain record not better than "most Democrats" on climate change

This week's Economist endorsement of Obama gives undeserved credit to John McCain for "having a better record on global warming than most Democrats." I've heard that before and it's not true.

In 2003, Joe Lieberman (who despite his many flaws, remains a good environmentalist) introduced the Climate Stewardship Act, meaning he was mainly responsible for moving the bill forward. McCain was just one of 9 co-sponsors. McCain's name got on the bill because they try to have both a Democrat and a Republican name, but it was still Lieberman's bill.

The bill ultimately failed to pass the Senate on a 43-55 vote, and most Democrats voted for it.

McCain's overrated willingness to buck his party is deserved in this one, very important issue, and for that he deserves credit. That doesn't make him better than most Democrats, though. I suppose he may have put more effort than most Democrats on this bill, but that's a pretty slim reed.

Rauch's "perverse voting" = contrarian = stupid

My grand theory on being contrarian as a general preference is that it: a. only works reasonably well in the business field; and b. even there it only works a minority of the time. When it does work in business, though, it pays off big, addicting some people to the idea that being contrarian in general is more likely to be right than otherwise. Perfect example of this wrong approach:

The Lab's work is guided by two founding principles:

1. Just because an idea appeals to a lot of people doesn't mean it's wrong.
2. But that's a good working theory.

Jonathan Rauch is another example of this, saying that people who want action on climate change should support McCain, because only bipartisan legislation will stay enacted in the long run (Dems would run over minority Republicans otherwise) and because "McCain is running on carbon-emissions limits that are not much different from what Democrats want."

As to Rauch's first point on the necessity of bipartisan legislation, he provides no evidence. I can think of several counter-examples (tax cuts by Reagan and Bush, increases by Clinton) that weren't bipartisan and have been fairly stable. I can't think of dramatic (mono?)partisan legislation that was later overruled.

And on the issue of climate change, they're not the same. Obama would auction carbon permits that McCain would give away freely, and use the money to finance investments in alternative energy. McCain makes fewer promises for alternative energy, doesn't say where he'll get the money from, and his combined Iraq war support plus one-year non-military spending freeze plus tax cuts for the rich would severely limit his budget options.

I agree that McCain could convince Republicans to support climate legislation better than Obama can, but the converse possibility of Republican pressure on McCain to weaken his position is equally likely, as promised by McCain surrogates Tim Pawlenty and Steve Forbes on national television. That's a wash.

Finally, I think it's appropriate to punish the incumbent president's party for malfeasance in office when the incumbent's termed out. If McCain had run on a complete repudiation of Bush that would be one thing, but he didn't. There should be some form of accountability for the disaster that Bush has been on climate.

Being contrarian on the choice of president is like between contrarian on the reality of climate change.

UPDATE: I should add that on a one-time basis, a few scientists have done well with a single contrarian position that's ultimately proven correct, giving them enormous street cred in the science ghetto, with their paradigm shifts and all that. What I'm not aware of is non-crank scientists who consistently take contrarian positions and generally are right. Nor can I think of a single public policy based on a scientific opinion of a tiny minority that's worked out well.

UPDATE II, Feb. 2010:  Well, given the problems in getting climate legislation past, I'm less certain that I was right.  McCain has veered hard right, showing questionable political integrity, but maybe he would've been different in the imaginary world that would have elected him as president.

Note to Chicago Climate Exchange: your product quality IS a business concern

Interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal despite its overblown headline, "Pollution Credits Let Dumps Double Dip". It's about potential problems with carbon offset additionality although it fails to use the term.

The particular problem it talks about isn't all that bad - some landfills that decided some years ago to capture outgassing methane for sale are now selling carbon credits. Sounds like it fails additionality until you learn deep in the article that landfills legally required to capture methane can't get credits, leaving only smaller ones eligible. The only time they gave actual money figures was for one system that makes a 3% return on the capture system by selling methane without offset credits, and it's not even clear if that's net of ongoing maintenance costs. Three percent isn't much financial incentive, so I think in most cases the additionality criteria will be met, and the few times it's not aren't very important.

If this constituted the worst scenario for offsets, I'd lose all my caution about them.

On the other hand, there's this part of the article interviewing Richard Sandor of the Chicago Climate Exchange:

Mr. Sandor says the exchange's main goal is to help develop a commodity that has financial value under any possible future U.S. law that to regulates greenhouse-gas emissions. The debate over whether or not a polluter would have cut its greenhouse-gas emissions without the financial incentive of credit sales is "quite interesting, but that's not my business," Mr. Sandor says. "I'm running a for-profit company."

If the product doesn't provide additionality, it doesn't provide value, and I should hope they realize that.

(UPDATE: edited with better link for "additionality".)

Alliance for Climate Protection ad censored by ABC

This has appeared in a few places (best coverage at Grist), but it's an ad criticizing fossil fuel lobbyists that ABC wouldn't run, while the network is happy to run lots of feel-good messages from those industries.



Here's the link for emailing ABC about it.

Volokh Correction #23: RealClimate v. Volokhs on climate change - guess who wins

Zywicki at Volokhs is unimpressed with Biden's statement that climate change is "clearly" man-made when the IPCC gave it an over 90 percent chance of being true. Somehow he sees a huge gap in the two positions.

RealClimate says, "maybe he left out the kind of caveats and qualifications you'd attach to the attribution of the recent loss of (North) polar sea ice if this were an AGU talk instead of a vice-presidential debate. Overall,though, the statement gets to the heart of the matter."

Zywicki thinks Palin's confused response, what RealClimate calls a garbled attempt to reiterate her old denial of human caused warming together with McCain's position, is "nuanced." Right.

As Biden, RealClimate, and any normal human being could point out, you have to understand a problem, or know if there is a problem, before you can find a solution. Palin's position that you don't need to understand the problem makes no sense.

In other news, McCain was a lot stronger on climate change in tonight's debate than he's been in the past. Not that it matters though, since he won't be president.

Full remarks of Republican National Convention speakers on climate change

Think Progress says the words "climate change" and "global warming" were mentioned all of one time each at last week's Republican National Convention. Neither mentions were by McCain, let alone by his denialist running mate.

I dug up the two references. Here's the first:

In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025....By expanding domestic oil and natural gas exploration and production; by changing the way we power our cars; by investing in clean, alternative sources of energy ... and under President McCain's leadership we will become a leader in the new global green economy; by protecting our environment and addressing climate change; by promoting energy efficiency; and, finally, by cracking down on the speculative pricing of oil.

That grammatically-suspect reference is from the remarks of Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuno.

The other reference:

If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have led the fight to fix our broken immigration system or to do something about global warming.

But he did!

From Joe Lieberman, who apparently failed to notice McCain not leading the fight on Lieberman-Warner, the less-than-adequate climate-change legislation from this year.

That's the extent of attention this issue received, which should give some idea of what priority it would get in a McCain-Palin Administration.

Unilateral geoengineering against the global interest

A RealClimate piece on geoengineering through pumping massive amounts of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere doesn't make it seem very attractive. While it can control temperature, it does nothing to stop ocean acidification, and I assume we end up with the Mother of All Acid Rain-damaged ecosystems on land (pretty sure that's the case but I've not seen verification). Massive pollution would have to be continued as long as humans kept adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and for many decades afterwards, or temperatures would quickly rebound to the highs they would otherwise have achieved. Finally there's the issue RealClimate addresses, that significant decreases in precipitation could result from this plan.

Two points I would add to this depressing picture: first, as bad as it sounds, it's not as bad as what the Lovelock-types project. While I don't think 11C warming will happen, if it did head that way, we'd choose the sulfur-geoengineering future instead.

Second, all climate scenarios, including this geoengineering scenario, have winners and losers. Right now this looks like a bad deal for everyone, but we can't predict with certainty how specific countries will be affected. Twenty years from now, some medium-sized or larger nation may figure out that its precipitation pattern won't do too badly, and so for that specific nation, geoengineering will be the best option, and then it will simply go ahead and do it.

I came up with this little problem myself, but it turns out of course that a lot of others have thought of it too. Solution's not clear other than a treaty forbidding geoengineering without international consent (along with coordinated punishment against a transgressor). I expect that would tie conservatives into knots - they'd hate a treaty, but don't want to give China a free hand.

Error bands and known unknowns

Mostly just rehashing something I've mentioned in the past, but this time in response to Mark Kleiman's point regarding climate change that "uncertainty actually argues for more precaution, not less. Current estimates could be wrong in either direction; that's what 'error band' means."

Yes he's right, but there's more. The error bands involve uncertainty about currently-quantifiable factors, but there are a number of as-yet unquantifiable factors that with best-case scenarios have no effect but under any other outcome will make things worse. I'm not aware of unquantified factors that work in the reverse direction. In other words, the "true" error bars should be skewed to show a greater chance that things will be worse rather than better than the predicted outcome. All the more reason to start reducing emissions, quickly.

This point doesn't get enough attention, IMHO.