Capitol Hill briefing draws needed attention to challenges of climate change impacts and adaptation

Posted on Tuesday, January 12, 2010

A January 8 Capitol Hill briefing by four leading analysts on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation reflected a growing awareness that scientific research and assessment per se don’t necessarily lead to effective action to enhance resilience to the impacts of global climatic disruption. The briefing began with the scientific foundation for understanding climate change impacts and moved to an insightful discussion of the challenges of putting adaptive preparedness into practice.

Climate Science Watch attended a Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation briefing on Capitol Hill Friday, January 8, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Geophysical Union, The American Meteorological Society, The Ecological Society of America, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Mike MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs at the Climate Institute in Washington, DC, gave an overview of Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, the 2009 U.S. Global Change Research Program assessment report summarizing current and projected social and environmental impacts. MacCracken’s talk presented the scientific basis for why adaptation is needed; the subsequent presentations discussed how to make it a reality. Climate Science Watch posted an overview of the report here.

Kristie L. Ebi, Executive Director of the Technical Support Unit for IPCC Working Group II on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, said that the level of climate change impacts experienced will depend on how well we prepare. Without proper adaptation, populations with underlying vulnerabilities are likely to bear the brunt of impacts like extreme weather events.

She drew attention to the need to reframe our thinking on adaptation, noting that there is a widespread perception that if federal agencies gather enough scientific information, somehow adaptation will happen. Instead, adaptation must be seen as a process of iterative risk management operating under uncertainty. Incomplete information need not be a roadblock to taking adaptive actions that will reduce vulnerability.

Ebi offered recommendations for US action on adaptation: development of a national adaptation strategy; establishment of national and regional programs to identify vulnerabilities, build capacity for adaptation, fund research to inform adaptation, and monitor and evaluate the process; and engagement as a major player in adaptation internationally. Climate Science Watch raised questions about the U.S. commitment to international funding in our January 8 post (“After Copenhagen, questions about U.S. commitment to climate change aid to developing countries”). 

Kathy Jacobs, Professor at the University of Arizona Soil, Water and Environmental Science Department, spoke about the challenges climate change presents to water management. She addressed the problem of uncertainty head-on, noting that managers in other areas frequently make decisions with imperfect information—why should climate change be any different?  Adaptive management in the face of uncertainty will mean learning by doing, a proces that can begin now and develop in tandem with the advance of scientific understanding.

By mainstreaming adaptation concerns into everyday decisions, planning scenarios can be expanded to encompass a wider range of outcomes and engineering decisions made accordingly. Water managers must develop a longer-term perspective on variability and trends within the water cycle, understanding temperature as a hydrologic variable affecting both supply and demand.

In that vein, Jacobs said that climate change and the adaptation challenge presents a broad integrating concept for looking at the future and how we manage human and environmental systems in a more holistic way. She sees potential for partnership and economic opportunity, and for institutional and legal changes that could ease the path towards a national adaptation strategy.

As noted in our January 10 post, Jacobs is moving to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to focus on climate change adaptation and play a lead role in reactivating the National Assessment of Climate Change process, with an assessment report to the President and Congress due by 2013. 

Finally, Susanne Moser, Director and Principal Researcher of Susanne Moser Research & Consulting, and Research Associate at the University of California-Santa Cruz Institute for Marine Sciences, discussed adaptation efforts in California. The 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy put forth recommendations for managing and adapting to climate change impacts throughout the state. The report contains sector-specific strategies and cross-sector strategies for the short and long term.

Moser said that the case of California provided insight into what states need from the federal government to prepare for climate change impacts: strong leadership, capacity-building in federal agencies, elimination of federal impediments to state adaptation, improved interaction at different levels of government, and financial mechanisms to support states.

Climate Science Watch discussed the California strategy in a December 11, 2009, post (“California’s Adaptation Strategy shows leadership that Senate climate bill should follow”). 

The briefing, beginning with the scientific foundation for understanding climate change impacts moving to how adaptation should occur on the ground, was a snapshot of a shift in focus taking place on a number of levels. As awareness has grown that scientific research and assessment per se do not necessarily lead to effective preparedness to enhance resilience to climate change impacts, some state and local governments, with California and New York City serving as important models, have begun translating the available scientific information into adaptive management strategies.

Their experiences can be a guide to other entities, but there are major institutional gaps that must be filled by the federal government. Climate Science Watch has called for a a comprehensive, proactive national planning and preparedness strategy for limiting and adapting to the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of climate change.  See for example, our recommendations for the Senate climate bill on preparedness, research, and climate services.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program is in serious need of an overhaul if it is to meet today’s data and information needs associated with preparing for, mitigating, and building resilience to a troubling set of climate change consequences. Climate Science Watch will be commenting further on needed reforms in a new investigative series on the future of the USGCRP. 

CSW November 1, 2009, post: US Global Change Research Program:  Budget reporting impedes meaningful oversight

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White House Science Office reactivating U.S. National Assessment of Climate Change

Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010

Katharine Jacobs, who chairs the forthcoming National Academy of Sciences report on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change, is moving to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to play a lead role on climate change assessment and adaptation. OSTP is taking the first steps to reactivate the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts, nine years after the first National Assessment was issued, then later essentially suppressed by the Bush Administration.

We heard Jacobs give a very good presentation on Capitol Hill January 8 as part of a first-rate panel on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, co-sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the Ecological Society of America (ESA), and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

We learned at this event that Jacobs, currently a professor at the University of Arizona, will be the Office of Science and Technology Policy Assistant Director for Climate Change and Assessment (or something close to this; this is a new position that does not require Senate confirmation), with a focus on climate change adaptation issues.  We understand her office will be located nearby within the U.S. Global Change Research Program Office, and that she will play an essential role in planning for a new National Assessment to be completed in 2013, pursuant to a requirement of the Global Change Research Act.

We strongly support the appointment of Jacobs to this new position, and what it suggests about a stepped-up White House focus on impacts and adaptive preparedness. She brings to the table long experience and expertise on both water research and water resources management, and with the issues of climate change impacts on water.  Her talk on January 8 exemplified a solid ability to communicate and frame scientifically based issues in a policy-relevant context. 

As for the National Assessment, those familiar with the Climate Science Watch project and this web site will know that we have been among the most outspoken critics of the suppression of the first National Assessment by the Bush-Cheney Administration, and have continually called for the reactivating and updating of the National Assessment process as an ongoing activity of the U.S. Government in the 21st century. 

Bio information:

For the last 6 years Katharine L. Jacobs has been a professor in the University of Arizona, Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science and Deputy Director and Associate Director of the NSF Center for Sustainability of Arid Region Hydrology and Riparian Areas at the University of Arizona.  From 2006 through 2009, Jacobs was the Executive Director of the Arizona Water Institute, a consortium of the three state universities focused on water-related research, education and technology transfer in support of water supply sustainability. She has more than twenty years of experience as a water manager for the state of Arizona Department of Water Resources, including 14 years as director of the Tucson Active Management Area.  Her research interests include water policy, connecting science and decision-making, stakeholder engagement, use of climate information for water management applications, climate change adaptation and drought planning.  Ms. Jacobs earned her M.L.A. in environmental planning from the University of California, Berkeley.  She has served on eight National Research Council panels, most recently chairing the Americas Climate Choices panel on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change.

In written testimony submitted to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming for the committee’s December 2, 2009, hearing on the state of climate science, John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said:

The next national assessment mandated by Section 106 of the 1990 Global Change Research Act is due in 2013. The vision for this climate change assessment is in a formative stage, but will include sustained, extensive stakeholder involvement to ensure full regional and sectoral coverage. It may also include targeted, scientifically rigorous reports that assess mitigation and adaptation strategies and their interactions. The best decisions about these strategies will emerge when there is widespread understanding of the complex issue of climate change—especially the science and its many implications for our nation.

The lessons learned from the previous assessment activities provide the main ingredients and structure for this next assessment. Understanding climate change impacts and adaptation requires a bottom-up approach—identifying impacts in a specific place or within an economic or industrial sector and aggregating information to larger scales. Therefore, the assessment, implemented through interagency efforts, will include workshops and studies that focus on regions and sectors, as well as a national synthesis component. OSTP is working with agencies and the USGCRP team to develop the scope and plan for the assessment due in early January.

The Conference Report on H.R.3288, the omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, signed by bthe President on December 16, 2009, included this language on the appropriation for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: 

Climate research.—The conference agreement provides $221,040,000 for climate research. Within the recommendation, the conferees provide $9,000,000 for climate assessment services to synthesize, evaluate and report on climate change research findings; evaluate the effects of climate variability and change for different regions and sectors; and identify climate vulnerabilities and uncertainties as part of an ongoing effort to understand what climate change means for the United States.

Although the text does not specifically use the term, it is close enough to suggest that the $9 million appropriation is intended to fund work on a new National Assessment.

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Copenhagen post-mortem: Interview on Al Jazeera

Posted on Saturday, January 09, 2010

Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz talked with Al Jazeera English TV about the conclusion of the Copenhagen climate conference and where it leaves us.

Al Jazeera English TV news anchor Rob Reynolds interviewed Piltz, along with Daphne Wysham of the Institute for Policy Studies, in Washington D.C. on December 19, right after the conclusion of the climate treaty Conference of the Parties held in Copenhagen.  Piltz Q&A included the following: 

Q: Given all the interests at stake here, from China, from the developing world, do you think a better agreement could realistically have been hammered out?

RP: Well, if they’d started farther upstream getting down to the serious business of hammering out an agreement, yes, but I think it’s been clear for months now that we were very unlikely to get anything more than a political statement at the end of this conference.  There’s not the level of trust, there’s not the willingness to make the commitments, particularly on the developed country side.  Clearly what they’ve come up with is a kind of face-saving final statement.  They decided it was essential not to walk away from this thing and say ‘we failed totally,’ but we are now very far from where we need to be.

Q:  What does it say about the ability of all the nations of the world, esentially, along with many other groups, to get together with a process to come up with a coherent policy?  Because they did so, and in the end it was more or less the United States and China and a few others sitting down and calling the shots.  It’s a real loss of face for many of these leaders, isn’t it?

RP:  That’s the way they seem to see it. How often, though, in international affairs do the deals get done by a subset of the major players?

Q: But Obama’s been talking about a multipolar world – that we now have the G-20, for instance, instead of the G-8 – and there had been all this lip service to more multilateralism.

RP:  I don’t think Obama has fully taken ownership of the climate change problem in all of its implications.  Has he given even one serious speeech to the American people to lay out the full impact of climate change if we let in run unchecked?  Maybe he’s moving toward more ownership of that issue now. But you know, even if they had hammered out the ideal agreement at Copenhagen, we would probably be fighting for the implementation of every inch of it, probably for the rest of our lives. 

Q:  Let’s look at the political dynamics of this. President Obama knows that, if he commits to some target and the U.S. Congress disagrees with that, he’s in a lot of political trouble, isn’t he?

RP:  He’s not Don Quixote – he’s not going to get out there and tilt at windmills if he can’t back it up.  But we have a huge political problem here.  We have elected officials, Congressmen, who are beholden to corporate power.  We have a very influential global warming denial, disinformation campaign, a lot of that is corporate-funded, ideologues, a very toxic influence in our society, misrepresenting the science, trying to disconnect it from the policymaking. We have all of this to deal with, and we would have it to deal with regardless of what was agreed in Copenhagen. 

Q:  Given the sort of chaotic situation that developed in Copenhagen, do you think the world is ever going to try to do this again, in this same way? 

RP:  The problem of global climatic disruption is not going to go away. It has to be dealt with.  One thing that Obama is walking away from this with, that may help him on the domestic political scene, is that he’s going to be able to say he’s delivered major developing countries to the table.  You can run the numbers and you can see that both the developed countries and the developing countries have to be involved in the solution.  You could take out all the emissions from China and the other developing countries and the developed countries alone would run the temperature up above any danger level—or vice versa, you could take out the West, and the developing countries would.  So you have to have some new kind of agreement, which they’re clearly not ready to…

Q:  But this process didn’t seem to work.  In the end, Obama flew to Copenhagen, he sat down with the leaders of a few other countries…

RP: And ‘rescued’ the situation.

Q: Depending on your interpretation.  But he said we have an agreement, then he flew home again.  It seemed like the previous two weeks had not really mattered very much.

RP: I think the world is dealing with a problem here that is different. It’s a remarkably complicated problem to deal with.  It implicates the entire global economy, the entire global energy system, our entire way of life.  The cold reality is, we’re not at a point where we have enough public pressure, enough government leadership, to get the type of agrement you need.

Related posts:
After Copenhagen, questions about U.S. commitment to climate change aid to developing countries

Text of the Copenhagen Accord

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After Copenhagen, questions about U.S. commitment to climate change aid to developing countries

Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010

After building up expectations with the Copenhagen Accord of substantial new aid to developing countries, is the Obama administration already lowering them now that the action has shifted to the U.S. domestic scene?  Under the Copenhagen Accord, “developed countries commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly” $100 billion a year by 2020 in “new and additional, predictable and adequate funding” to aid developing countries in mitigating and adapting to climate change. But on January 7, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “sidestepped the commitment when asked directly if the US portion would be additional,” ClimateWire reported.

In the wake of the Copenhagen climate conference held in December 2009, many questions remain about adaptation funding for developing countries and about the US commitment.

In November 2009 Climate Science Watch attended a briefing on the World Bank study Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change, commissioned to project costs to developing countries of adapting to a 2 degree C warmer world. A consultation draft of the study was released in September 2009. 

The study concludes that adaptation costs for developing countries will be on the order of $75-100 billion per year for the period 2010 to 2050. Current international development funding for all purposes totals about $120 billion per year. 

Both the science and economics of climate change adaptation are emerging bodies of knowledge. According to the World Bank, this study is the most in-depth analysis of the economics of adaptation to climate change to date.

As noted at the briefing, adaptation and development activities are often one and the same.  Thus, the question of how to distinguish adaptation to climate change impacts from existing development efforts is at issue.

The report stresses that “development strategies must maximize flexibility and incorporate knowledge about climate change as it is gained.” Yet many uncertainties remain over how the relationship between development and adaptation will be negotiated in terms of international funding.

At the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, Secretary of State Clinton announced the US would participate in mobilizing $100 billion in annual global climate change aid for developing countries by 2020. This commitment, and the US pledge to take a lead role in mobilizing funding, was a key element in obtaining developing country support for the Copenhagen Accord agreed to on the last day of the conference.

But ClimateWire (subscription required) reported on January 7 (“Global Climate Funding Remains Undefined – Clinton):

America’s contribution to $100 billion in annual global climate change funding by 2020 may not be over and above existing foreign aid, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton indicated yesterday. …

[W]hile the Copenhagen Accord, as it is known, calls for ‘scaled up, new and additional’ money to help poor nations cope with climate change-provoked disasters, Clinton sidestepped the commitment when asked directly if the US portion would be additional.

Clinton said: “We don’t know yet, because we don’t know what the Congress is going to do.” …

Clinton’s comments came after a speech in which she outlined the State Department’s development agenda for the coming year. … She listed energy as one of six sectors in which the State Department plans to focus extra attention, but mentioned climate change policy only glancingly until asked about it specifically in a question-and-answer session.

The question of where the money will come from is very much up in the air.  It will depend in part on whether Congress can be pushed to enact meaningful climate change legislation. HR 2454, the Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill passed by the House in 2009, would set aside a certain percentage of revenue from emissions allowances to fund domestic and international adaptation. Adaptation funding would ramp up over time, but no specific dollar amount can be determined at present; revenue levels would be contingent on the value of emissions allowances over time. The Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, as voted out by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has similar provisions.  No further Senate action has been taken on the bill at this time.

Will President Obama demonstrate a forceful commitment to carrying out his promise to the developing world in Copenhagen, or will the Administration retreat into “we don’t know, it’s up to Congress” excuse-making? Will Obama lead public opinion on this and be willing to get into a domestic political fight in order to honor his commitment, or will he walk it back when the going gets tough, as it no doubt will on this issue? 

The relevant paragraph of the Copenhagen Accord reads:

8. Scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate funding as well as improved access shall be provided to developing countries, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, to enable and support enhanced action on mitigation, including substantial finance to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD-plus), adaptation, technology development and transfer and capacity-building, for enhanced implementation of the Convention. The collective commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching USD 30 billion for the period 2010 – 2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation. Funding for adaptation will be prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries, small island developing States and Africa. In the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, developed countries commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance. New multilateral funding for adaptation will be delivered through effective and efficient fund arrangements, with a governance structure providing for equal representation of developed and developing countries. A significant portion of such funding should flow through the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.

See here for the full text of the Copenhagen Accord.

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Ross Gelbspan: “In Conclusion…”

Posted on Saturday, January 02, 2010

“The truth is that, even assuming the wildest possible success of these initiatives—that humanity decided tomorrow to replace its coal and oil burning energy sources with non-carbon sources—it would still be too late to avert major climate disruptions,” says journalist-author Ross Gelbspan. “Despite this reality, the activists are still focusing on the causes—and not on the consequences—of the crisis. All these initiatives address only one part of the coming reality.” We share Gelbspan’s view, outlined in a recently posted video, that an essential part of the solution is “a coordinated global public-works program to rewire the world with clean energy.” We would add—in light of the potential future Gelbspan describes and scientific assessments project—that a coordinated strategy of adaptive preparedness that seeks to limit, if possible, the damage from global climatic disruption must be a major component of a comprehensive climate policy. See Details for the video and links to sources.

Climate Science Watch posts on Climate Change Preparedness

Ross Gelbspan presents his view of global climatic disruption and steps to deal with it in a video (re-posted here) posted on his website The Heat Is Online:

Gelbspan is the author of two significant books about climate change:

Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis—And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster (Basic Books, 2004; paperback edition 2005)
and
The Heat is On: The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription (Basic Books, 1997; paperback edition 1998)

Along with Bill McKibben, Dr. Heidi Cullen, Rick Piltz, Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, and others, he appears in the award-nominated feature-length documentary Everything’s Cool (2007), a film about ‘global warming messengers’ and the chasm between scientific understanding and public action on climate change.  (Also see here and here.)

He is a contributor to the excellent DeSmogBlog, a site devoted to exposing and combatting the global warming disinformation campaign.

Excerpts from Gelbspan’s article “Beyond the Point of No Return:”       

Beyond the Point of No Return              

It’s too late to stop climate change—so what do we do now? 
As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, are preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.
The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem.

We can’t.

We have failed to meet nature’s deadline. In the next few years, this world will experience progressively more ominous and destabilizing changes.  These will happen either incrementally—or in sudden, abrupt jumps.

Under either scenario, it seems inevitable that we will soon be confronted by water shortages, crop failures, increasing damages from extreme weather events, collapsing infrastructures, and, potentially, breakdowns in the democratic process itself.

Start with the climate activists, who are telling us only a partial truth.
 
Virtually all of the national and grassroots climate groups are pushing hard to reduce carbon emissions.  The most aggressive are working to change America’s entire energy structure from one based on coal and oil to a new energy future based on non-carbon technologies—as they should.

A coalition of groups, including 350.org and 1Sky, have lobbied the new Administration to re-engage the US with the international climate negotiations. The Campus Climate Challenge is planning a new and more energetic clean energy campaign. Focus The Nation continues to exhort colleges and universities around the country to green their campuses. The large Washington-based environmental groups are pressing to improve climate and energy bills that are moving through Congress—even though the bills are clearly inadequate to the challenge before us.
 
The truth is that, even assuming the wildest possible success of these initiatives—that humanity decided tomorrow to replace its coal and oil burning energy sources with non-carbon sources—it would still be too late to avert major climate disruptions. Despite this reality, the activists are still focusing on the causes—and not on the consequences—of the crisis.

All these initiatives address only one part of the coming reality. ...

In fact, we may already be witnessing the early stages of runaway climate change in the melting of the Arctic, the increase in storm intensity, the accelerating extinctions of species, the ominous, large-scale releases of methane and the prolonged nature of recurring droughts. ...

A rise of 2 degree C. over pre-industrial temperatures is now virtually inevitable, according to the IPCC, as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is approaching the destabilizing level of 450 parts per million. That rise will bring drought, hunger, disease and flooding to millions of people around the world. ...

One frequently overlooked potential casualty of accelerating climate change may be our tradition of democracy (corrupted as it already is).  When governments have been confronted by breakdowns, they have frequently resorted to totalitarian measures to keep order in the face of chaos. It is not hard to imagine a state of emergency morphing into a much longer state of siege, especially since heat-trapping carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for about 100 years.

Add the escalating squeeze on our oil supplies, which could intensify our meanest instincts, and you have the ingredients for a long period of repression and conflict.

Ominously, this plays into the scenario, thoughtfully explored by Naomi Klein [in her book Shock Doctrine], that the community of multi-national corporations will seize on the coming catastrophes to elbow aside governments as agents of rescue and reconstruction—-but only for communities that can afford to pay. This dark vision implies the increasing insulation of the world’s wealthy minority from the rest of humanity—buying protection for their fortressed communities from the Halliburtons, Bechtels and Blackwaters of the world while the majority of the poor are left to scramble for survival among the ruins.

The only antidote to that kind of future is a revitalization of government—an elevation of public mission above private interest and an end to the free-market fundamentalism that has blinded much of the American public with its mindless belief in the divine power of markets. In short, it requires a revival of a system of participatory democracy that reflects our collective values far more accurately than the corporate state into which we have slid. ...

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New Years Eve

Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009

Climate Science Watch wishes our tens of thousands of “unique visitors” from all over the world a Happy New Year and best wishes for a better 2010.

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A New Year’s resolution for Obama: Figure out how to talk to the public about climate change

In the U.S., public understanding of and support for climate science and its findings about the likely consequences of global climatic disruption is seriously underdeveloped, and even appears to have slipped during 2009.  This may be due in part to the decision by President Obama and some of his strongest supporters to focus their message narrowly on the mantras of clean energy and green jobs, and their tactics narrowly on cap and trade legislation….

Post by Rick Piltz

The problem of global climatic disruption is much more than a problem of energy policy per se, and it calls for a continuous emphasis on climate science communication and on discussing the link between science and policymaking.  Without a better public appreciation for climate science and the likely consequences of inaction, it will be more difficult to maintain support over time for the rigors of a radical transformation of the energy system, and for the steps needed to support adaptive preparedness for damaging impacts in the U.S. and abroad. 

Obama’s way of talking to the U.S. public about climate disruption — to the extent that he talks about climate change at all, as opposed to “win-win” talk about clean energy — has been in the right direction, but it has been minimalist, sketchy, and lacking the depth and texture called for by the complexity and seriousness of the problem.  To develop his thinking and discourse, he could, for example, use material like that in the report released in June by his leading climate science officials – Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. 

Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, an assessment report of the U.S. Global Change Research Program prepared by a team of leading experts, can be viewed on-line and downloaded here.

The book, published by Cambridge University Press, is available here and here.

All three of the above links include video of the report’s release by John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Jane Lubchenco, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and report co-editors Thomas Karl and Jerry Melillo.  Also see our post: Video link and key quotes from White House briefing on Global Climate Change Impacts report.

From the publisher’s web site (and Amazon):

Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States

Edited by:

Thomas R. Karl
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Asheville, North Carolina

Jerry M. Melillo
Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole

Thomas C. Peterson
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Asheville, North Carolina

Susan J. Hassol
Climate Communication, Basalt, Colorado

This book is the most comprehensive report to date on the wide range of impacts of climate change in the United States. It is written in plain language to better inform members of the public and policymakers. The report finds that global warming is unequivocal, primarily human-induced, and its impacts are already apparent in transportation, agriculture, health, and water and energy supplies. These impacts are expected to grow with continued climate change – the higher the levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the greater the impacts. The report illustrates how these impacts can be kept to a minimum if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. The choices we make now will determine the severity of climate change impacts in the future. This book will help citizens, business leaders, and policymakers at all levels to make informed decisions about responding to climate change and its impacts.

Media Coverage:

New York Times/Climate Wire: U.S. Study Projects How ‘Unequivocal Warming’ Will Change Americans’ Lives - click here

Washington Post:  Report: Climate Change Already Affecting U.S.

Contents

About this report
Executive summary
1. National climate change
2. Climate change impacts by sector
3. Regional climate impacts
4. An agenda for climate impacts science
5. Concluding thoughts
Author team biographies; Primary sources of information; Acronyms; References; Photography credits.

Reviews

’ ... the most up-to-date, comprehensive, and authoritative assessment of climate change impacts on the United States. ... [The report] is part of a larger process of public and policy-maker education about what the science is telling us, that one has to hope will contribute to how people think about specific legislative proposals, and the need to move ahead, after many years of dithering and delay.’
- John Holdren, assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

’ ... human-induced climate change is a reality, not only in remote polar regions and in small tropical islands, but everyplace around the country, in our own back yards. It’s happening. It’s happening now. It’s not just a problem for the future. We are beginning to see its impacts in our daily lives. More than that, humans are responsible for the changes that we are seeing, and our actions now will determine the extent of future change and the severity of the impacts. ... it is not too late to act. Decisions made now will determine whether we get big changes or small changes.

... If we take immediate and sustained action to reduce heat-trapping pollution, we can in fact avoid the most severe impacts ... Much of the foot-dragging in addressing climate change is a reflection of the perception that climate change is way down the road, it’s in the future, and it only affects remote parts of the planet. ... The report does exactly what is needed at this time, which is to emphasize the reality of climate change, the fact that it is urgent, that we [need to] reduce heat-trapping pollution, and the fact that it is happening everyplace. That is the most important information for decision-makers to hear right now, ... The sooner we focus on getting our house in order, the better we will be prepared to be players on the international scene.’
- Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

‘By comparing impacts that are projected to result from higher versus lower emissions of heat-trapping gases, our report underscores the importance and real economic value of reducing those emissions. It shows that the choices made now will have far-reaching consequences.’
- Tom Karl, director of the NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, N. C., and cochair of the committee that pulled together the report

‘One of the messages that we are trying to make sure people understand is that stakes are high. This really is not an issue that you can think about in terms of, ‘oh, these things might happen in 50 years.’ Things are happening now.’
- Anthony Janetos, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD., a report coauthor

‘Elected officials and their constituents ought to be influenced by the kind of material in this report. I hope this whole [issue] of the climate change consequences gets into the bloodstream of the public discourse of the country.’
- Rick Piltz, director of the Government Accountability Project’s Climate Science Watch, Washington, D. C.

‘If the United States and the rest of the world don’t act together to address this global issue, we will be leaving generations with a much hotter and much poorer planet. ... [lowering U.S. emissions] is a Herculean task. We can do it, but we have to greatly invest in energy [research and development], use all the tools we have today, and develop the new tools for tomorrow.’
- Rosina Bierbaum, codirector of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2010, and dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment

For more on the report and related issues see our earlier posts:  Assessment of Climate Impacts and Adaptation

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Stephen Schneider: Climate Denier Gate a case of Science as a Contact Sport

Posted on Wednesday, December 30, 2009

In Climate Denier Gate (Stephen Schneider’s term for what the deniers call “Climategate”), “the private frustrations of a few climate scientists was turned into an ostensible plot by the entire climate science community in dozens of countries, hundreds of institutions, and hammered out over 40 years of peer reviewed assessment studies—as some kind of fraud.”  Schneider says, “The big untold story here is how broken the 2009 media is for investigating the wrong folks and giving credibility to a non-event that changes nothing in climate science.” One more episode in the decades-long tension between climate science and public debate, the subject of Schneider’s memoir, Science as a Contact Sport.

Post by Rick Piltz

My holiday season reading includes the recently published Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate (see here and here), Steve Schneider’s fascinating and illuminating memoir.  Schneider’s narrative weaves together inside stories of the development of climate science in advancing understanding of the influence of human activity on the climate system, the collision between the arena of science and the arenas of media coverage and policymaking, and the impediments thrown up by “skeptics” and contrarians. More below, and more on the book later.

Stephen H. Schneider is professor of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Biology at Stanford University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the collective 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with his colleagues on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

At the Copenhagen climate conference, Schneider wrote about the uproar over the climate scientists’ e-mails hacked/stolen/leaked from the Climatic Research Unit at the UK University of East Anglia (reposted from Huffington Post):

On “Climate Denier Gate”

[B]y far the question I get most right now has created a media and political firestorm: the theft of private emails in the UK’s University of East Anglia about a month ago in which the hackers illegally obtained private emails among exasperated climate data scientists decrying their besieged status by some politicians and fossil fuel interest groups trying to deny global warming and attacking their work and character. …

The climate “skeptics” community immediately labeled it “climate-gate” as if the climatologists whose private thoughts, doubts and frustrations were now widely disseminated without context and sent to media and political venues, were the perpetrators, rather than the victims. My favorite label on this sad debacle is simply: “Climate Denier Gate” to refocus on the “gate” part—illegally obtained private and privileged materials being used as evidence of climatologists’ malfeasance, rather than hackers and blogsters use of purloined privacy. … The email blogs asserted, and the media dutifully covered it as a scandal of climate scientists’ cover-ups. Thus, the private frustrations of a few climate scientists was turned into an ostensible plot by the entire climate science community in dozens of countries, hundreds of institutions, and hammered out over 40 years of peer reviewed assessment studies (as I detail in “[Science as a] Contact Sport”) as some kind of fraud.

On “Hockey Stick vs. Fingerprinting”

The past 40 years, when attached at the end of a reconstruction of the temperatures of the past 1000 years, look like a bit like a “hockey stick” with a wavy handle but a “blade” that rises above the climatic history of the millennium and exhibits the warmest decades in the record in the past 30 or so years. This reconstruction has been the object of intense arguments between the climatologists who constructed the hockey stick and some skeptical attackers who claimed it was erroneous. The US National Academy of Sciences conducted an extensive study on this and agreed that individual scientist’s assumption were occasionally questionable—the normal process of scientific progress—but that a dozen replicate studies added more waviness to the handle but the blade still stood out. Hockey stick denial was a favorite item of the climate skeptics, despite the NAS study. …

The amazing scientific thing that nobody seems to be covering is that the “hockey stick” was never used as proof of anthropogenic global warming by IPCC—it was the “fingerprinting” studies of many scientists dating back to 1995—three years before the first hockey stick was even published. A fingerprint is an attempt to combine models of climate change with observed data. The models are driven by natural forces like solar variations or volcanic eruptions, and their retrodictions of what should have happened between 1900 and 2000 are compared to what actually happened. Then the models are driven by anthropogenic forces such as increasing greenhouse gases as has been observed and again compared to what actually happened to the 20th century climate. And finally models are driven by combined natural and anthropogenic forces—and as expected, the latter has the highest correlation with observations, the former the least and the middle one in between correlations. That is a smoking gun—but for AGW [anthropogenic global warming] —and the number of such studies appearing in the peer reviewed scientific literature since 1995 has multiplied. Ergo, IPCC has increased its confidence in AGW over successive studies, with the “very likely” the most recent 2007 assessment.

That fingerprint history the denier set will almost certainly not mention, just claim that the hockey stick guys are “exposed” and therefore AGW is a fraud. The fraud however is on the deniers, I’m afraid, since the hockey stick has (a) never been disproved, and (b) nor was it ever the basis for AGW likelihood assessment. Rather, the fingerprint analyses by many groups over the years were the scientific evidence used for AGW. Would somebody in the mainstream media please cover this!

Schneider says, “The big untold story here is how broken the 2009 media is for investigating the wrong folks and giving credibility to a non-event that changes nothing in climate science regardless of how it turns out the first hockey stick guys acted—a tiny number of climate scientists involved in IPCC.  The blade of the hockey stick has been replicated by 10 independent studies, and [anthropogenic global warming] was never based on how wavy the handle of the hockey stick is, but rather on fingerprints. I have said this 200 times now—half of that recently at Copenhagen—and the derelict media has covered it ZERO times—they are broken beyond repair.”

See:
Setting the record straight on stolen e-mail: Associated Press, FactCheck.org, and other sources

Setting the record straight on stolen e-mail:  Nature, AAAS, AMS, Union of Concerned Scientists

Sensenbrenner IPCC witch hunt: Attempt to blacklist climate scientists must be rejected

Ben Santer: Open letter to the climate science community

Stephen Schneider comments on the CEI and Pat Michaels petition on the global warming data record

Also at Copenhagen, Schneider had to confront an attempt by a global warming denialist documentary filmmaker to hijack his presentation.  The following description of the event is from the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions.  Their post includes a video record of the denier’s intellectual thuggishness and self-promotional misrepresentation of the event. 

It’s a Tough Game

Last week at this time, Nobel Laureate and Stanford scientist Dr. Stephen Schneider held a press event at COP15 to launch his new book Science as a Contact Sport.  What started as typical presentation of academic material, quickly spiraled into a hostile game of accusations, online attacks and outright lies.  Not of great coincidence, this also happens to be the topic of Dr. Schneider’s new book.  The book outlines the politics, debates and ideological warfare that has become part of everyday life for researchers whose scientific findings have obligated them to speak out on the daunting probable impacts of climate change. …

In the case of this particular book launch, the contact sport came into play when documentary filmmaker and climate change denier, Phelim McAleer, took center stage, essentially commandeering the event away from Schneider and the other journalists present.  Having had a negative history with this individual, Schneider responded directly and forcefully, escalating the exchange into a heated debate.  In response to McAleer’s provocations, UN security showed up on the scene and, following the press event, escorted him away from the premises and demanded his camera be turned off.

A lively moment at the Bella Center, but now it’s over, right?  Wrong.  The following day, McAleer released a highly altered YouTube version of the incident, edited to appear that he was a victim to a global conspiracy of UN domination fueled by a climate change myth.  He asserted that Schneider had refused to answer questions in regards to “Climategate” (which had nothing to do with the book event, but he did in fact answer), and that Schneider himself had called “his” UN thugs on McAleer to suppress his journalism.  The YouTube video quickly spread through extreme right wing and conspiracy theory-based blogs, all lambasting Schneider for his role in “UN global domination”.  In the end, the incident is a comic footnote on the pages of this historical meeting.  Schneider launched a great book that you should read.  But as the book suggests, science indeed can be a contact sport…

Posted here are:

1. The complete, unedited, version of the question and answer period – including the Schneider-McAleer exchange.
2. Phelim McAleer’s YouTube version of the same press event.
3. The full presentation made by Schneider, inclusive of the question and answer period in #2
4. And, just for fun – a clip of Schneider discussing climate change some 30 years ago.  It’s amazing that most of us have waited so long to hear this message!

Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate (see here and here)

From the book jacket:

The world is changing. Before our very eyes, we can see the effects of climate change and environmental damage taking shape: shrinking glaciers, both water shortages and excesses, high temperature extremes, hazardous air conditions, and erratic weather patterns leading not only to immense property damage but also to untold human suffering and death—with worse to come if we stay on current path. We know there’s a problem, but spurring the world to action has been a decades-long struggle, and Stephen H. Schneider has been in the front lines of the charge to understand the science, explain the warnings, and mitigate the damage we’ve inflicted upon the environment and ourselves for four decades. One of the world’s leading climatologists, founder of the journal Climatic Change, and senior participant in the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), his work has been instrumental in framing both the internal debates within the scientific community and the very public debate on understanding and dealing with climate change.

Science as a Contact Sport is Stephen Schneider’s first-hand account of a scientific odyssey, navigating in both the turbulent waters of the world’s power structures and the arcane theatre of academic debaters. From the initial stages of understanding the science of human-induced climate change to predicting the consequences of our actions 10, 50 and even 250 years out, Dr. Schneider has been there to experience it all. Few people know more about the struggles and knockdown, drag-out fights that have taken place behind the scenes and the people who try to repair the damage as well as those who will stop at nothing to deny that climate change is happening. In this riveting memoir Schneider shares his unique eye witness perspective on an era of scientific discovery and debate that may well be one of the most important periods of time in our planet’s history.

Schneider’s efforts have helped bring about important measures to safeguard our planet, but there’s still more to be done to get them implemented. This is a battle, and no one knows that better than Dr. Schneider—he’s fought with and against presidents, prime ministers, legislators, mayors, CEOs, movie and media stars, lobbyists, journalists, and even his fellow scientists to share good science and workable solutions with the world.

See Steve Schneider’s large and educational web site.

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Shameful treatment of whistleblower who exposed Pentagon failure to protect troops in Iraq

Posted on Thursday, December 24, 2009

Marine Corps whistleblower Franz Gayl says military officials are trying to force him from his job for exposing the Pentagon’s unconscionable delays in delivering lifesaving equipment to troops in Iraq. This shameful treatment suggests that the White House has yet to fulfill Obama’s campaign pledge to see to it that whistleblowers are treated as patriots instead of pariahs.

It exemplifies a pervasive anti-whistleblower culture, both civilian and military, in both government and the private sector:  among those in power with something to hide, among managers who lack the courage or integrity to take risks on behalf of the public interest, and even among the rank and file.  We know them all too well. This culture must be challenged continually. Those who perpetuate it, whether political appointees of either party, military brass, corporate executives, or middle managers who are adept at covering up and keeping their heads down, do a disservice to the public interest.

The Associated Press reported on December 20:

INSIDE WASHINGTON: An Anti-Whistleblower Culture

WASHINGTON (AP)—A Marine Corps whistleblower says military officials are trying to force him from his job for exposing failures to deliver lifesaving equipment to troops in Iraq.

Franz Gayl, a senior civilian employee, alleges a series of punitive actions that underscore the challenges President Barack Obama faces in fulfilling a campaign pledge to treat federal whistleblowers as patriots instead of pariahs.

Public interest groups cheered Obama’s promise. But Gayl’s case points to the difficulty of transforming a culture, particularly within the military, where whistleblowers often are viewed with contempt….

Gayl, 52, is the target of a Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry for allegedly mishandling secret information, according to Tom Devine, his lawyer. Gayl had accused the Marine Corps of ‘‘gross mismanagement’’ for failing to answer the call in 2005 for heavy-duty trucks that could withstand roadside bombs in Iraq.

As a leading Senate Democrat, Biden had used Gayl’s disclosures to hammer the Bush administration for ‘‘unconscionable bureaucratic delays.’’ Biden had called Gayl a hero and urged Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, to make sure Gayl wasn’t punished.

But now that he’s vice president, Biden hasn’t intervened….

Besides the criminal investigation, Devine says Gayl, a retired Marine officer, has been branded a coward in his Pentagon office where he works as a science and technology adviser.

According to Devine, Gayl has received poor performance evaluations that rank him in the bottom 3 percent of employees at his grade. He’s been hit with a letter of reprimand, had his job description rewritten and been pressured to resign. Before his whistleblowing, Devine says Gayl had a sterling record.

‘‘What they are doing to him is shameful,’’ said Devine, legal director at the Government Accountability Project in Washington. ‘‘His supervisors might as well be drill sergeants at boot camp trying to break a recruit’s spirit.’‘...

Also see: Government Accountability Project newsletter, Spring 2008

Climate Science Watch is a sponsored project of the Government Accountability Project.

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Reps. Joe Barton and James Sensenbrenner carried global warming denier message to Copenhagen

Posted on Wednesday, December 23, 2009

“We don’t have an icecap in Texas,” Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said at a December 18 press briefing in Copenhagen. The “theory [of anthropogenic climate change] has never been independently analyzed by any scientific group.” Mr. Barton and some of his colleagues, including Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), showed the media in Copenhagen that the Congressional global warming denial machine may be scientifically clueless, but is still capable of waging a nasty political battle.

See earlier posts:
Sensenbrenner IPCC witch-hunt: Attempt to blacklist climate scientists must be rejected

Rep. Sensenbrenner projects “fascism” and “fraud” onto scientists, is rebutted at hearing

“Texas Congressman Joe Barton, along with most members of a Republican delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives, on Friday (18 December 2009) in Copenhagen dismissed mounting evidence that climate is rapidly changing, that the impacts already are evident, and that it is being driven by rapidly increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases emissions from human activities,” reports the World Wildlife Fund climate blog. The WWF post continues (excerpt):

Texas Congressman in Copenhagen dismisses climate science: “We don’t have an icecap in Texas”

By Nick Sundt, WWF Communications Director for Climate Change, December 23

…“We don’t have an icecap in Texas,” said Barton, apparently suggesting that melting polar ice was not a concern in his state.

On the same day that President Obama told climate change negotiators in Copenhagen that “this is not fiction, it is science,” Republican members of a delegation from the U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, held a press briefing and most argued quite the opposite.  The panel included James Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin), Joe Barton (Texas), Fred Upton (Michigan), Shelly Moore Capito (West Virginia), John Sullivan (Oklahoma) and Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee).

When asked by a journalist if they “believe in anthropogenic climate change,” none of the representatives clearly said they did.  Referring to arguments that climate change science is conclusive, Congressman Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin) retorted “Prove it to us!” …

“This whole process is based on the premise that mankind through emissions of CO2 is causing the planet to warm at an unsustainable rate. That methodology, that theory, has never been independently analyzed or tested by any scientific group,” Barton incorrectly asserted. “If there is anything that comes out of this conference in my opinion that is worthwhile, it should be the political leadership of the world… begin to question the theory.”

“I do not believe the theory of anthropogenic climate change has been proven and…I think its going to very difficult to prove it,” he said.

Here’s what one of Mr. Barton’s constituents has to say:

“We will never regain control of our environment until every city in America firmly commits to recognizing the health consequences of climate change, and then develops action plans to reverse those changes.”
—Mayor Robert Cluck, Arlington, Texas (in Barton’s district; home of Texas Rangers and future home of Dallas Cowboys) (http://www.icleiusa.org/news-events/press-room/press-releases/texas-mayors-gather-to-chart-path-forward-on-air-quality-public-health-climate-change )

And for Texans and others who aren’t in a state of denial, willfully clueless about science, or on a political jihad against the climate science community, here’s a book that covers some of what Mr. Barton should be thinking about, but won’t:

The Impact of Global Warming on Texas
Edited by Jurgen Schmandt, Judith Clarkson and Gerald R. North
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2nd Edition, 2009

From the press release for the book:

Among the key findings in the book:

•      Climate Science and Climate Change: Climate science has evolved over the last thirty-five years to a point where predictions by climate models can be considered to have significant information content. The greenhouse effect has clearly established itself as a driver of climate change and the main agent is the continuing increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There are several ways of assessing the status of climate change research, the most recent and comprehensive is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Fourth Assessment Report, released in 2007. According to this report greenhouse gases are expected to cause global temperatures to rise 5.4 degrees F (plus or minus 1.8 degrees F) by the end of the century. Temperature changes in Texas are expected to be comparable. A notable feature of the predictions is the expansion of the tropical zone, familiar in summer for Texans, to include more of the spring and fall. This could lead to less rainfall especially in regions that are already dry. Other important effects include possible changes in El Niño (climate variability) and hurricane behaviors; further research will more accurately specify these and other effects.

•      The Changing Climate of Texas: Texas temperatures increase from south to north, whereas precipitation increases dramatically from west to east. The seasonal patterns of precipitation also vary greatly across the state (e.g., dry winters in the west, more even distribution in the east). Texas also experiences a variety of severe weather such as tropical storms, tornadoes, drought and flooding. The wide variations in weather and climate across Texas imply a broad range of vulnerabilities to climate change. Averaging over Texas the temperature over the last few decades has been increasing. Precipitation has also steadily increased over the past century, but with variation among the different regions. In the future, Texas temperatures are likely to continue rising. Precipitation changes are much less clear, with most models projecting a decrease. Even if precipitation were to remain stable, rising temperatures would increase evaporation and dryness. The expected changes in temperature and precipitation will have an impact on other sectors of the state’s resources as discussed below.

•      Water Resources: Taking flows to the coast as a measure of river-basin impact, we calculate how flows will change by mid-century as a result of demographic and climate changes. Considering only population growth and the resulting increased water demand flows will be reduced by about 25 percent under normal conditions and by 42 percent under drought conditions. When also considering climate change (assuming a 3.6 degrees F increase in air temperature and a 5 percent decrease in precipitation) 2050 projected flows to the coast are 70 percent of the 2000 values under normal conditions and 15 percent of 2000 normal under drought conditions.

•      Coastal Zone: There are two direct effects, which are already observable, in the instrumental record: rapid sea-level rise and rising sea temperatures. The sea-level rise rates are especially high in Texas because of the added effect of land subsidence, which is caused by oil and groundwater extraction. The increasing temperatures are already manifesting indirect changes in habitats and water quality.

•      Biodiversity: Climate is a key determinant of species distribution. As the earth warms, species tend to shift to northern latitudes and higher altitudes. But climate change represents just one of a set of stressors. Other changes challenging fauna and flora are due to land development, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, chemical stressors, and direct exploitation. Comprehensive assessments in each of Texas’ ecological regions—coastal marshes, forests, deserts, prairies and western mountains—are needed to develop science-based management practices for wildlife and plant communities.

•      Agriculture: Agriculture in the U.S. and Texas is sensitive in terms of land and water usages, as well as crop and livestock production. However, in terms of agricultural-based economic welfare, the simulated effects of climate change are not large. We find that under the climate change conditions simulated herein that statewide Texas cropped acreage declines by about 20 percent.

•      Cities: Coastal population centers, from Houston to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, are vulnerable to sea level rise, increased storm intensity and accompanying flooding. All major Texas cities face the possibility of impacts on air quality, energy, health and other temperature related effects. All major cities face the prospect of declining water resources within the timeframe examined here.

•      Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Only 12 states had more GHG emissions per unit of gross state product (GSP) than Texas in 2001. Due to its large population and energy-intensive economy, Texas leads the nation in energy consumption, accounting for more than one-tenth of total U.S. energy use. Energy-intensive industries in Texas include aluminum, chemicals, forest products, glass and petroleum refining. Texas’ petroleum refineries can process more than 4.6 million barrels of crude oil per day, and they account for more than a quarter of total U.S. refining capacity. In 2005, Texas was responsible for 11 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions.

•      Economy: Looking to mid-century, it is clear that the cost to Texas of a national cap and trade policy would likely exceed any possible measurable benefit in terms of avoided damages. But over a longer time frame, if the harmful impacts of climate damage continue to increase the cost-benefit balance might shift. But time is not on our side. Texas would benefit economically by taking stronger actions today to address climate change impacts at the State level, and by supporting the adoption of cost-effective, equitable policies at the national level to limit GHG emissions and encourage the use of non-fossil fuel alternatives.

•      Policy: Texas is a leader in the gradual shift to renewable energy. Energy and water conservation are also priorities, mostly at the community level. The driving forces of these policy initiatives are energy efficiency, resource conservation, and the income and jobs associated with industries developing alternative energy sources. These measures help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thirty states have joined regional climate change alliances. Texas has not done so. We recommend that Texas develop a comprehensive climate change policy to serve the goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing energy independence, ensuring regional security, and improving management of water, air, land and wildlife.

Also see:

Great Plains.  Regional Highlights from Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States

Oxfam fact sheet on the societal impacts of global warming in Texas

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Text of the Copenhagen Accord

Posted on Saturday, December 19, 2009

The United Nations climate conference of 193 nations in Copenhagen ended early this morning with particpants agreeing to “take note” of the Copenhagen Accord, an agreement brokered by the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. With the Copenhagen Accord, an initial group of more than 25 nations has agreed to adopt and report on national mitigation actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.  Developed nations have agreed to mobilize resources to support mitigation, adaptation, technology development and transfer, and capacity-building in developing countries.  The document is a 3-page, 12-paragraph political statement and conceptual framework, with Appendices to include listings of mitigation targets and actions of Annex I and Non-Annex I parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  All national actions under the agreement are voluntary.  No date is specified for when, or whether, a more detailed and binding protocol will be negotiated.  See Details for full text.

Text of Copenhagen Accord (PDF here):

UNITED NATIONS

UNFCCC
Framework Convention on Climate Change

Distr. LIMITED

FCCC/CP/2009/L.7
18 December 2009

Original : ENGLISH

CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES
Fifteenth session
Copenhagen, 7–18 December 2009

Agenda item 9
High-level segment
Draft decision -ICP.15

Proposal by the President

Copenhagen Accord

The Heads of State, Heads of Government, Ministers, and other heads of delegation present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen,

In pursuit of the ultimate objective of the Convention as stated in its Article 2,

Being guided by the principles and provisions of the Convention,

Noting the results of work done by the two Ad hoc Working Groups,

Endorsing decision x/CP.15 on the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action and decision x/CMP.5 that requests the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitments of Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol to continue its work,

Have agreed on this Copenhagen Accord which is operational immediately.

1. We underline that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. We emphasise our strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. We recognize the critical impacts of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures on countries particularly vulnerable to its adverse effects and stress the need to establish a comprehensive adaptation programme including international support.

2. We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report with a view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, and take action to meet this objective consistent with science and on the basis of equity. We should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries and bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries and that a low-emission development strategy is indispensable to sustainable development.

3. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures is a challenge faced by all countries. Enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation is urgently required to ensure the implementation of the Convention by enabling and supporting the implementation of adaptation actions aimed at reducing vulnerability and building resilience in developing countries, especially in those that are particularly vulnerable, especially least developed countries, small island developing States and Africa. We agree that developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity-building to support the implementation of adaptation action in developing countries.

4. Annex I Parties commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020, to be submitted in the format given in Appendix I by Annex I Parties to the secretariat by 31 January 2010 for compilation in an INF document. Annex I Parties that are Party to the Kyoto Protocol will thereby further strengthen the emissions reductions initiated by the Kyoto Protocol. Delivery of reductions and financing by developed countries will be measured, reported and verified in accordance with existing and any further guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties, and will ensure that accounting of such targets and finance is rigorous, robust and transparent.

5. Non-Annex I Parties to the Convention will implement mitigation actions, including those to be submitted to the secretariat by non-Annex I Parties in the format given in Appendix II by 31 January 2010, for compilation in an INF document, consistent with Article 4.1 and Article 4.7 and in the context of sustainable development. Least developed countries and small island developing States may undertake actions voluntarily and on the basis of support. Mitigation actions subsequently taken and envisaged by Non-Annex I Parties, including national inventory reports, shall be communicated through national communications consistent with Article 12.1(b) every two years on the basis of guidelines to be adopted by the Conference of the Parties. Those mitigation actions in national communications or otherwise communicated to the Secretariat will be added to the list in appendix II. Mitigation actions taken by Non-Annex I Parties will be subject to their domestic measurement, reporting and verification the result of which will be reported through their national communications every two years. Non-Annex I Parties will communicate information on the implementation of their actions through National Communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines that will ensure that national sovereignty is respected. Nationally appropriate mitigation actions seeking international support will be recorded in a registry along with relevant technology, finance and capacity building support. Those actions supported will be added to the list in appendix II. These supported nationally appropriate mitigation actions will be subject to international measurement, reporting and verification in accordance with guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties.

6. We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries.

7. We decide to pursue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets, to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote mitigation actions. Developing countries, especially those with low emitting economies should be provided incentives to continue to develop on a low emission pathway.

8. Scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate funding as well as improved access shall be provided to developing countries, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, to enable and support enhanced action on mitigation, including substantial finance to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD-plus), adaptation, technology development and transfer and capacity-building, for enhanced implementation of the Convention. The collective commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching USD 30 billion for the period 2010 – 2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation. Funding for adaptation will be prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries, small island developing States and Africa. In the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, developed countries commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance. New multilateral funding for adaptation will be delivered through effective and efficient fund arrangements, with a governance structure providing for equal representation of developed and developing countries. A significant portion of such funding should flow through the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.

9. To this end, a High Level Panel will be established under the guidance of and accountable to the Conference of the Parties to study the contribution of the potential sources of revenue, including alternative sources of finance, towards meeting this goal.

10. We decide that the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund shall be established as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programme, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity-building, technology development and transfer.

11. In order to enhance action on development and transfer of technology we decide to establish a Technology Mechanism to accelerate technology development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation that will be guided by a country-driven approach and be based on national circumstances and priorities.

12. We call for an assessment of the implementation of this Accord to be completed by 2015, including in light of the Convention’s ultimate objective. This would include consideration of strengthening the long-term goal referencing various matters presented by the science, including in relation to temperature rises of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

APPENDIX I
Quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020
Annex I Parties

APPENDIX II
Nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing country Parties
Non-Annex I

Related posts:
“Climate Scoreboard” - new widget simulates warming consequences of Copenhagen proposals

Copenhagen Diagnosis

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Two whistleblowers who exposed misconduct further endangering Katrina victims are honored today

Posted on Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Two courageous individuals will each receive meritorious awards today for blowing the whistle on two separate instances of misconduct that put Hurricane Katrina victims in unnecessary jeopardy, reports Government Accountability Project colleague Jess Radack on the Daily Kos today. Maria Garzino, a mechanical/civil engineer and team leader with the US Army Corps of Engineers, will receive the Public Servant of the Year award from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for exposing the intentional installation of faulty pumps in flood-prone areas of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  Dr. Ivor van Heerden will receive an award for civic courage for speaking out against systematic incompetence and negligence in planning and preparing for Gulf coast hurricanes, despite resistance from his former employer, Louisiana State University.  Click on details for the crosspost.

Cross-posted from the Daily Kos

Jesseyln Radack is the Homeland Security Director for the Government Accountability Project.

~~~

Two Whistleblower Awards Illustrate Need for Post-Katrina Fixes

by Jesselyn Radack

Wed Dec 16, 2009 at 08:47:22 AM EST

Today, two completely different entities have decided to honor Katrina whistleblowers.

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is awarding twice-vindicated whistleblower Maria Garzino with its Public Servant of the Year Award (link to GAP’s press release, and link to the OSC’s press release today (.pdf).) Garzino blew the whistle on defective hydraulic pumps installed after hurricane Katrina. 

Meanwhile today, the wholly unrelated Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest is awarding the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage to Dr. Ivor van Heerden. Dr. van Heerden resisted pressure from Louisiana State University keep quiet when he saw public-endangering screw-ups on hurricane protection.

These concurrent awards from completely different entities demonstrate that whistleblowers are the unsung heroes of why hurricane Katrina caused the disasters it did, and how to prevent them in the future.  Whistleblowers bravely bring to light the wide breadth of Katrina misconduct and the ongoing need to correct it.  We must ensure that whistleblowers are not only awarded for their courage, but that the public safety issues they raise are corrected.

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is awarding twice-vindicated whistleblower Maria Garzino with its Public Servant of the Year Award. Garzino blew the whistle on defective hydraulic pumps installed after hurricane Katrina.

[ CSW posted on this case in August 2009:  New Orleans pumps unsafe on Katrina anniversary, report concludes: Army Corps preparedness cover-up? ]

Meanwhile today, the wholly unrelated Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest is awarding the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage to Dr. Ivor van Heerden. Dr. van Heerden resisted pressure from Louisiana State University to keep quiet when he saw public-endangering screw-ups on hurricane protection.

These concurrent awards from completely different entities demonstrate that whistleblowers are the unsung heroes of why hurricane Katrina caused the disasters it did, and how to prevent them in the future.  Whistleblowers bravely bring to light the wide breadth of Katrina misconduct and the ongoing need to correct it.  We must ensure that whistleblowers are not only awarded for their courage, but that the public safety issues they raise are corrected. 

The Public Servant Award is the highest honor bestowed by the OSC. Ms. Garzino is well deserving of this award as she went above and beyond, to huge lengths, through all the proper channels, in order to protect the people of New Orleans and American taxpayers. Ms. Garzino served as the Pump Team Installation Leader for a project that installed new hydraulic pumps designed to move floodwater away from New Orleans in an emergency.  She blew the whistle when she discovered the pumps were completely defective and would not protect the city. After Ms. Garzino provided the OCS with detailed information, the OCS vindicated her, concluding that not only could the Army Corps of Engineers have saved taxpayers some $430 million by using proven equipment, but that the city of New Orleans is still lacking adequate flood protection. More about Ms. Garzino here.

The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest’s Joe A. Callaway Award recognizes “individuals in any area of endeavor who, with integrity and at some personal risk, take a public stand to advance truth and justice, and who challenge unsatisfactory conditions in pursuit of the common good.”  Today that award goes to Dr. Ivor van Heerden, who served as deputy director of Louisiana State University’s (LSU) hurricane center. Dr. van Heerden stood up in the face of enormous pressure from LSU and warned of inadequate flood protection in New Orleans. Dr. van Heerden paid the price: in April 2009, LSU announced Dr. van Heerden’s contract would not be renewed after 2010. His book “The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina — The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist” describes his ordeal.

Congratulations to Ms. Garzino and Dr. van Heerden!  Whistleblowers deserve these awards because, as Katrina shows, their contributions are both unique and invaluable. It is commendable that both OSC and the Shafeek Nader Trust are rewarding whistleblowers for their brave work.  Now it is time to make the whistleblowers’ work matter. These courageous whistleblowers deserve change and accountability. 

We have yet to see that change for Ms. Garzino. Those defective junk pumps Ms. Garzino blew the whistle on are still installed, and the city of New Orleans does not have the hurricane protection it was promised when the Army Corps received the taxpayer dollar funding to build the pumps.  Many of the other follies post-Katrina have very real ongoing consequences.  Just this month the House Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on restoring health care in New Orleans, and this year saw new developments exposing dangerous formaldehyde in FEMA trailers.

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Setting the record straight on stolen e-mail: Associated Press, FactCheck.org, and other sources

Posted on Tuesday, December 15, 2009

A team of reporters at the Associated Press did an “exhaustive review” of the climate scientists’ e-mail stolen from the University of East Anglia in the UK and concluded that “the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked.” FactCheck.org at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center said: “Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded….E-mails being cited as ‘smoking guns’ have been misrepresented.” Two videos by Climate Crock examine e-mails and take down some denier propaganda.

Excerpts: 

Associated Press reporters did an “exhaustive review” of the stolen e-mail raising questions with scientists and with specialists in science ethics and science policy. The article is critical of the scientists who wrote some of the controversial e-mails but concludes that “the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked.”

AP IMPACT: Science Not Faked, But Not Pretty

Climate scientist e-mails show effort to not share data, pettiness, but no fakery

BY SETH BORENSTEIN, RAPHAEL SATTER and MALCOLM RITTER Associated Press Writers

LONDON December 12, 2009 (AP)

E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an “exhaustive review” by The Associated Press…. The AP studied all the e-mails for context, with five reporters reading and rereading them — about 1 million words in total…. As part of the AP review, summaries of the e-mails that raised issues from the potential manipulation of data to intensely personal attacks were sent to seven experts in research ethics, climate science and science policy.

[I]n the end, global warming didn’t go away, according to the vast body of research over the years. None of the e-mails flagged by the AP and sent to three climate scientists viewed as moderates in the field changed their view that global warming is man-made and a threat. Nor did it alter their support of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which some of the scientists helped write….

Gerald North, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, headed a National Academy of Sciences study that looked at — and upheld as valid — Mann’s earlier studies that found the 1990s were the hottest years in centuries.

“In my opinion the meaning is much more innocent than might be perceived by others taken out of context. Much of this is overblown,” North said….

FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania:

“Climategate”

Hacked e-mails show climate scientists in a bad light but don’t change scientific consensus on global warming.

Summary

In late November 2009, more than 1,000 e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.s University of East Anglia were stolen and made public by an as-yet-unnamed hacker. Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded:

•  The messages, which span 13 years, show a few scientists in a bad light, being rude or dismissive. An investigation is underway, but there’s still plenty of evidence that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are largely responsible.

•  Some critics say the e-mails negate the conclusions of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the IPCC report relied on data from a large number of sources, of which CRU was only one.

E-mails being cited as “smoking guns” have been misrepresented….

Two recommended videos from Climate Crock:

Climate Crock Sacks Hack Attack - Part 1

Climate Crock Sacks Hack Attack - Part 2

Invaluable sources of reporting, documentation, analysis, and commentary at:

Climate Progress
 
RealClimate
 
The Intersection
 
Grist
 
DeSmogBlog
 
DotEarth
 
Deep Climate

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Setting the record straight on stolen e-mail:  Nature, AAAS, AMS, Union of Concerned Scientists

A strong editorial in the journal Nature, statements from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Meteorological Society, and an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists set the record straight in countering the effort by the global warming denial machine to spin up a scandal over the climate scientists’ e-mail stolen from the University of East Anglia.

Excerpts:

Nature 462, 545 (3 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/462545a; Published online 2 December 2009 [by subscription]

Editorial

Climatologists under pressure

Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public scrutiny.

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall. To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ‘smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails…

If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden….

The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers’ own papers….It is Nature’s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies….

In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.

American Association for the Advancement of Science:

AAAS Reaffirms Statements on Climate Change and Integrity

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has reaffirmed the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of 18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society.

“The vast preponderance of evidence, based on years of research conducted by a wide array of different investigators at many institutions, clearly indicates that global climate change is real, it is caused largely by human activities, and the need to take action is urgent,” said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of AAAS and executive publisher of the journal Science.

AAAS expressed grave concerns that the illegal release of private emails stolen from the University of East Anglia should not cause policy-makers and the public to become confused about the scientific basis of global climate change.

American Meteorological Society:

Impact of CRU Hacking on the AMS Statement on Climate Change

AMS Headquarters has received several inquiries asking if the material made public following the hacking of e-mails and other files from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has any impact on the AMS Statement on Climate Change, which was approved by the AMS Council in 2007 and represents the official position of the Society.

The AMS Statement on Climate Change continues to represent the position of the AMS.  It was developed following a rigorous procedure that included drafting and review by experts in the field, comments by the membership, and careful review by the AMS Council prior to approval as a statement of the Society.  The statement is based on a robust body of research reported in the peer-reviewed literature…. 

For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited…. 

Union of Concerned Scientists:

Debunking Misinformation About Stolen Climate Emails

The manufactured controversy over emails stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit has generated a lot more heat than light over the past two weeks. Experts at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) have concluded that while the emails “do raise some valid concerns about scientific integrity, they do not indicate that climate data and research have been compromised.” 

UCS’s analysis of the emails and the debate surrounding them aims to correct popular misconceptions about what the emails say, put them in scientific context and explain the importance of scientific integrity….

At this time, there is no evidence that scientists “fudged,” “manipulated” or “manufactured” data. These unsupported claims, based on taking the emails out of context, are being promoted by long-time anti-science opponents of climate change legislation. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the University of East Anglia and Penn State University are separately looking into the contents of the stolen emails to assess these claims.

While the emails do raise some valid concerns about scientific integrity, the email content being quoted does not indicate that climate data and research have been compromised. Most importantly, nothing in the content of these stolen emails has any impact on our overall understanding that human activities are driving dangerous levels of global warming. Media reports and contrarian claims that they do are inaccurate….

The fact that groups opposing action on climate change are crying “conspiracy” shows how desperate they are to discredit scientists.

The thousands of stolen emails span more than a decade. Whoever stole them could only produce a handful of messages that, when taken out of context, might seem suspicious to people who are not familiar with the intimate details of climate science.

Opponents of climate action have been attacking climate science for years. The fact that out-of-context personal attacks on scientists are the most successful argument they can offer speaks volumes about their failure to gain any traction by arguing against the evidence.

Earlier posts:

Open Letter to Congress from U.S. Scientists on Climate Change and Recently Stolen Emails

IPCC Statement on stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia

Some sources on the controversy over the hacked files from the UK Climatic Research Unit

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Andy Revkin’s Last Day at The New York Times: December 21

Posted on Monday, December 14, 2009

“Science writer Andrew C. Revkin, the individual journalist most identified with reporting on climate change, is leaving The New York Times,” the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media reports. “His last day will be December 21.”

The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media reports:

“...He will affilliate with Pace University.

“He is expected to continue working on his popular dotearth blog through The Times, though details are still being arranged.

“Revkin’s move has been in the works for some time, and he says he decided some two years ago—after writing a ‘next 20 years’ personal memorandum about his career plans—that he would leave journalism. He cites frustration with journalism and also personal fatigue after routinely working virtualy 24/7 in recent years.

More details, based on personal interview and analysis of newsroom impacts, to be posted later today at The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media

Our personal all-time favorite Revkin items:

Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming

Former Bush Aide Who Edited Reports Is Hired by Exxon

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