Category: global warming

(Last Update: Dec 2025)

For several years I blogged a lot about climate change. Eventually I made “climate change cheatsheets” containing choice links that were more organized which I could use as a reference. It’s time to update that cheatsheet because frankly research is being published so quickly. I am no longer on top of climate change news as I used to be – and frankly it’s somewhat harder for laypeople to make sense of it all.

Previous writings by me: 2021 Cheatsheet, 2014 Cheatsheet and my 2019 slides.

Indicators of Global Climate Change Dashboard.

NYT Deep Dives: (all links are gift links): 10 Years after a Breakthrough Climate Pact, here’s where we are.

YouTube: I really like PBS Terra channel which has in-depth coverage of controversies and research into climate change and extreme weather. You probably have to watch the vids more than once to digest the information.

• Dec 2025 of Sea Level Rise Predictions. FYI, Houston is between 10-15 meters above sea level. Galveston is about 2 meters above sea level. Both Corpus Christi and Port Aransas is at 0 meters. Miami is at about 1.8 meters, and New Orleans is at 2 meters and Manhattan is at 2 meters.
• Tipping Points and Climate Change (Nov 2025). FYI, that AMOC Collapse is a recent discovery and very scary.

Here are some primary sources I check regularly: This is Not Cool, Texas Climate News, Deceleration News (Texas), Inside Climate News

2025 State of the Climate Report: A Planet on the Brink. A joint article written by several scientists (including Michael Mann). Originally published in BioScience, Dec 2025.

Substack/Newsletter: Heated, Bill McKibben, Genevieve Guenther, David Roberts (all are indispensable, but especially Bill McKibben)

Podcasts: Climate Pod ;

AI Queries: What percent of 2024 CO2 emissions are from petroleum? Here’s one asking it to estimate the increased mortality from fossil fuels. If 100% of fossil fuels were replaced by renewable energy, here’s the estimate of how it affect global mortality?

Zero emissions and how quickly it brings benefits

Mark Hertsgaard et al on how we know that reaching Netzero emissions can produce benefits quickly:

For many years, the scientific rule of thumb was that a sizable amount of temperature rise was locked into the Earth’s climate system. Scientists believed — and told policymakers and journalists, who in turn told the public — that even if humanity hypothetically halted all heat-trapping emissions overnight, carbon dioxide’s long lifetime in the atmosphere, combined with the sluggish thermal properties of the oceans, would nevertheless keep global temperatures rising for 30 to 40 more years. Since shifting to a zero-carbon global economy would take at least a decade or two, temperatures were bound to keep rising for at least another half-century.

But guided by subsequent research, scientists dramatically revised that lag time estimate down to as little as three to five years. That is an enormous difference that carries paradigm-shifting and broadly hopeful implications for how people, especially young people, think and feel about the climate emergency and how societies can respond to it.

This revised science means that if humanity slashes emissions to zero, global temperatures will stop rising almost immediately. To be clear, this is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Global temperatures also will not fall if emissions go to zero, so the planet’s ice will keep melting and sea levels will keep rising. But global temperatures will stop their relentless climb, buying humanity time to devise ways to deal with such unavoidable impacts. In short, we are not irrevocably doomed — or at least we don’t have to be, if we take bold, rapid action.

Michael Mann on Zero Emissions Commitment and how it can bring immediate benefits:

So our best estimates today are that surface warming stops when carbon emissions stop, i.e.that there is no additional surface warming in the pipeline when emissions reach zero. The notion that there are decades of committed surface warming after emissions reach zero is based on outdated simulations that did not take into account the interactive role of the ocean carbon cycle. While the science on this is more than a decade old, this significant paradigm shift in our understanding of committed warming has still failed to be widely understood or recognized in much of the public discourse over climate science (see this op-ed I co-authored in the Washington Post about that last year). The point is that whether or not the 1.5C target is reachable is a matter of policy, not climate physics, at this point. It’s fine for Jim and his colleagues to explore scenarios where we do not act soon enough, and carbon emissions are not lowered adequately to avert specific warming targets such as 1.5C or 2C, but it should be clear that the differences in their conclusions are a result of those policy and behavioral assumptions, not climate physics.

Follies of Exporting Natural Gas

Mike Ludwig on how exporting US fracked gas is far worse than coal.

Texas and Climate Change

hello

Natural Gas and Fracking

Nice Charts about Progress

Climate Change Rhetoric

Here’s my introduction to my essay LET’S NOT HAVE A PITY PARTY FOR FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES:

If an industry’s business model is dedicated to PERMANENTLY degrading the livable world for EVERY SINGLE baby born today, tomorrow, next year, next decade — even the next century, then it’s a no-brainer that we ought to act sooner rather than later to stop it, especially because we ALREADY HAVE the technology to solve the problem and already have a good idea about how to do it right.

Should we have a PITY PARTY for those who have been profiting from the permanent harm being done to the human habitat? No. Instead we should provide a humane way for EVERYONE to transition to a cleaner and less destructive economic model. This can be done by changing the incentive structure, so that each person can be rewarded for decarbonizing their lifestyle in a way he or she finds to be the most suitable. But now the financial incentive structures in the US are designed precisely to do the opposite — to reward bad behavior. Perversely, last year fossil fuel companies in the US received $500 billion in subsidies so they could extract and sell even more polluting energy. Eliminating tax breaks for fossil fuel companies would go a long way to improve this perverse incentive structure.

Many people who have become rich from this destructive business model will claim — FALSELY by the way — that “carbon pricing” will translate to higher taxes for everybody. Sure, carbon prices does increase the price on bad behavior — that indeed is the point. But most carbon pricing plans actually refund 100% of carbon taxes to consumers — indeed, taxpayers who decarbonize faster than everyone else can end up making a nice profit.

Sometimes people who understand the dangers of climate change worry about the costs of making the transition. Actually though, it is relatively easy for individuals and organizations to transition to clean solutions if they have enough lead time. If carbon reductions were gradually phased in over 10 years, that would minimize the economic disruptions. If you knew you had 10 years to transition to a carbon-free lifestyle, you would have adequate time to replace your vehicles, appliances and energy provider without needing to spend a lot of money. On the other hand, if Americans keep putting off agreeing to an emission target, that will only reduce the time they have to prepare for the transition — and end up forcing them to incur additional costs associated with a rapid transition.

….

We already know that fossil fuels are causing PERMANENT HARM to the livable world of all future humans.  The sad thing is that the people who will suffer the most from global warming also happen to be the people least responsible for causing it in the first place. A  12 year old girl living today in Bangladesh did almost nothing to cause climate change. Most likely she does not own an iPhone or has ever ridden in a Hummer.   Neither did her family or friends or previous generations of Bengalis. Compared to the typical American, the typical Bengali  has an almost trivial carbon footprint.  Yet according to several  environmental reports,  Bangladesh is the country most likely to experience the most devastating effects of climate change. Food supplies will be disrupted; flooding and sea level rise will render large portions of its coastal regions to be uninhabitable. Most likely the effects of climate change will trigger several waves of climate refugees from Bangladesh into nearby countries, aggravating the region’s economic and political tensions  as well.

Imagine that this 12 year old Bengali girl spoke perfect English and could skype you directly. Imagine her question: “Your  scientists had been telling you for over 20 years that fossil fuels had been causing permanent  harm to the planet and especially  countries like my own; why on earth haven’t you done anything yet ?  Do you really think my life and my country are so unimportant? Do you  really believe that I have less of a right to grow up and make a living in my own country than you did when you were born?  Why have your people been so unwilling to take even modest steps to reduce the harms of climate change being done on countries which never caused it in the first place? Is this what human civilization boils down to — allowing entire states  to collapse in order to preserve one nation’s  precious right to drive gas guzzlers  and blow up mountains to sell coal?”

…

(Although I think the rhetorical points are still valid, the only things I would change is the word “permanently” in the first line. Michael Mann’s points about the timeframe for reversing global warming from Zero Emissions is both a reason to have hope and reject doomsayer rhetoric).

In 2014, I prepared a cheatsheet of climate data. I still refer to it semi often. Since that time a lot has been published, so this post needs a substantial revision. Actually the day after I posted this, Washington Post published an analysis of estimated carbon emissions and estimated that the true amount is 23% higher than what is currently reported.

Here’s the letter I wrote to the Houston Chronicle about climate change. Like the previous ones, it will probably not be published. Oh well.

Uncertainty Cuts Both Ways

I thought Sunday’s front page story about climate change skepticism presented the issues in a muddled way. Indeed, why, did the article keep citing Steven Koonin and his book which is already under fire from climate scientists? Climate scientist Ben Santer wrote, “It is simply untrue that Prof. Koonin is confronting climate scientists with unpleasant facts they ignored or failed to understand. The climate science community treats uncertainties in an open and transparent way. It has done so for decades.” Merely stating that uncertainty exists about climate predictions ignores the fact that predicted harms could turn out to be even worse than predicted. Says Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt (two leading climate scientists), “there is a great asymmetry in risk between the high and low end estimates. Uncertainty cuts both ways and is not our friend.”

Practically speaking, policymakers and citizens can and should still make decisions based on available scientific information and assessment of risk. That is why the IPCC Summary for Policymakers uses clearly defined phrases like “virtually certain,” “high confidence” and “medium confidence” to help nonscientists weigh the cost and benefits of various actions. Unfortunately, delaying action on climate change imposes additional risks and costs on both our natural system and global economy.

A carbon fee and dividend is a fast and effective way to reduce the production and consumption of fossil fuels. It also brings substantial benefits: cash dividends to consumers, reduced deaths from air pollution (estimated at 100,000 annually in the US alone) and more jobs created (renewable energy historically has created many more jobs per dollar invested than fossil fuels do).

Robert Nagle (not a climate scientist!)

…..

(Read more of my unpublished climate change letters to the Chronicle here).

A few years ago I wrote a rhetorical piece saying we should not have a pity party for fossil fuel companies. Since that time, I have noted how often business reporters will write articles (and sometimes clumsy headlines) that suggest that the decline of fossil fuel consumption is somehow a terrible thing. In Houston, where I live, we have a great newspaper HOUSTON CHRONICLE which can publish great pieces about the environment and energy. At the same time, its business section gives excessive and unduly sympathetic coverage to an industry which basically engages in odious (albeit legal) behavior. Houston grew rich from the oil and gas sector in an age where climate change wasn’t as clear cut. But now it is clear cut, and there is no special reason to give these industries the benefit of the doubt. I’ve long said that the tragedy of Houston is that its most talented and creative (and law-abiding) people were persuaded to work for an industry that produced harmful and odious results (more).

This page will list and criticize news stories (from the Chronicle and elsewhere) which I feel framed the subject wrongly — in a way to portray the fossil fuel industry more sympathetically than was necessary. There are many victims from climate change — and workers in these industries are victimized in a way. I grew up in a city where articles about fossil fuels were dressed up in language stressing hard-work and enterpreneurship — distracting from long environmental consequences. Even today, press releases and media stress the benefit of partial solutions and the fact that the industry obeys the law (not hard in a state with lax regulations). Apparently the welfare of a rapidly diminishing population of O&G workers is supposed to trump all other things. I often used to joke that the easiest way to tell the extent of a company’s ecological destructiveness is the amount of greenery (and flowing water) which appears in their ads and promotional material.

Here’s a list of the most egregious examples of fossil fuel reality distortion:

Uncertainty Cuts Both Ways

I thought Sunday’s front page story about climate change skepticism presented the issues in a muddled way. Indeed, why, did the article keep citing Steven Koonin and his book which is already under fire from climate scientists? Climate scientist Ben Santer wrote, “It is simply untrue that Prof. Koonin is confronting climate scientists with unpleasant facts they ignored or failed to understand. The climate science community treats uncertainties in an open and transparent way. It has done so for decades.” Merely stating that uncertainty exists about climate predictions ignores the fact that predicted harms could turn out to be even worse than predicted. Says Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt (two leading climate scientists), “there is a great asymmetry in risk between the high and low end estimates. Uncertainty cuts both ways and is not our friend.”

Practically speaking, policymakers and citizens can and should still make decisions based on available scientific information and assessment of risk. That is why the IPCC Summary for Policymakers uses clearly defined phrases like “virtually certain,” “high confidence” and “medium confidence” to help nonscientists weigh the cost and benefits of various actions. Unfortunately, delaying action on climate change imposes additional risks and costs on both our natural system and global economy.

A carbon fee and dividend is a fast and effective way to reduce the production and consumption of fossil fuels. It also brings substantial benefits: cash dividends to consumers, reduced deaths from air pollution (estimated at 100,000 annually in the US alone) and more jobs created (renewable energy historically has created many more jobs per dollar invested than fossil fuels do).

Robert Nagle (not a climate scientist!)

PERSONIFICATION OF SHALE

Dear Houston Chronicle:

In the Sept 27 HOUSTON CHRONICLE business section (page 1), we see the headline, “NEW MEXICO SHALE IS BRACING FOR POSSIBLE BIDEN REGULATIONS.” Please note that shale is an inanimate object incapable of having any mental processes or emotion. Solecism aside, it’s disturbing to lament the proposed reduction of a business practice which threatens both the planet’s climate and the local ecosystem (and potentially the water supply). The shale mining industry may provide short-term economic gain to a small number, but it also threatens the health and stability of our climate and the people and creatures that live on it.

The “Threat” of Solar Energy

Dear Houston Chronicle:

I need to quibble with some of the wording in the otherwise excellent report on the emerging solar industry by L.M. Sixel on Monday Dec 2.

According to the article, “Solar, however, may pose an even greater threat because unlike wind, it produces the most power when demand is highest — hot, sunny summer afternoons.”

“Threat”? I find nothing threatening about using solar power. But when air pollution from fossil fuels annually causes 4-7 million premature deaths globally (WHO Report, 2014 & Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, 2017) and 75,000-100,000 domestically, I certainly feel threatened by the continued use of fossil fuels in Texas. Far from being a threat, solar is an encouraging sign, a reason to hope for the future. According to one economic analysis (U. of Mass, 2009– PDF), “clean energy investments create 16.7 jobs for every $1 million in spending. Spending on fossil fuels, by contrast, generates 5.3 jobs per $1 million in spending.”

Sometimes the overly effusive coverage by the Chronicle about the fossil fuel industry can be offputting. If an industry’s business model is dedicated to PERMANENTLY degrading the livable world for EVERY SINGLE baby born today, tomorrow, next year, next decade — even the next century, then it’s a no-brainer that we ought to act sooner rather than later to stop it, especially because we ALREADY HAVE the technology to solve the problem and already have a good idea about how to do it right.

Other fun Stuff

It may not be as evident on my blog, but people who follow me on Facebook and Google Plus already know that I post lots of climate change links. I keep up with the latest policy debates and to a lesser extent, the science. But it is hard to reference a G+ post and harder still to find it. Therefore, I am keeping this page of G+ posts as a reference. Note: I put all the argument-winning graphs and charts at the bottom of this page!  I’ll try to include dates for everything and put the most important quotes/articles on the top of each section. You will note that I often link to the partisan Climateprogress site. The reason I feel comfortable doing that is that climateprogress usually reports the research accurately and often it puts the study in the appropriate context. Climate change studies have been coming out frequently, so sometimes being as much as 6 months behind  on the scholarship can prevent you from using persuasive evidence. Note: Because I’m using this page mainly as a reference, I won’t accept comments on this page unless they pertain to the sources mentioned here or contain better/more-to-date research. PS, I tend to include a lot of articles by Joe Romm. He’s very partisan and advocacy-oriented, but he also has a deep understanding of current science and policy research. Most of the listed articles by Joe Romm are simply Romm citing/summarizing the latest research. You can disagree with his analysis or the policy implications, but at least he can report  scientific research accurately and put it in the proper context.

My old posts about climate change (may be out of date)

• Let’s Not Have a Pity Party for Oil Companies (April 2014). Less of a science piece than a discussion of climate change and social justice.
• Natural Gas is Not Lobster (April 2012, plus updates).  I stopped updating this a year ago, but its basic conclusions on natural gas are basically sound — only we now have better data.
• Books on Climate Change, Energy and Economics (2012).  I haven’t updated it in a while (mainly because I hadn’t read any books about the subject in 2013 or 2014), but the books I mentioned are still excellent and generally relevant. Now that I have remembered it, I will start keeping it up-to-date again.
• How to Choose a Texas  Electric Provider the Wrong Way. (Feb 2012)  Here’s an amazing stat from 2011 data: Electric plants in Texas (population 25 million) emit as much CO2  as electric plants in the COMBINED states of   New York, California, Florida, Massachusetts and Oregon (population: 86 million)

Calculations about natural gas and methane emissions

• Stanford/UC Irvine Study finds that in the real world, reliance on natural gas without carbon pricing reduces investment and deployment of renewable fuels and produce an outcome with more overall emissions. ARTICLE QUOTE: Increased use of natural gas has been promoted as a means of decarbonizing the U.S. power sector, because of superior generator efficiency and lower CO2 emissions per unit of electricity than coal,” said the study. “We model the effect of different gas supplies on the U.S. power sector and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Across a range of climate policies, we find that abundant natural gas decreases use of both coal and renewable energy technologies in the future.” The study found that, without a climate policy, electricity use would increase as the natural gas supply increased and cost dropped, canceling out the benefits of lower carbon emissions, even if methane leakage from natural gas exploration—itself a potent greenhouse gas—were near zero. It also found that the low cost of natural gas would discourage and delay development and deployment of clean energy technologies. The research team looked at outcomes with no climate policy, a moderate carbon tax of $25 per ton and a strict carbon cap that reduces carbon dioxide emissions 83 percent over 2005 levels by 2050, as well as with renewable energy standards. “Our results suggest that without strong limits on GHG emissions or policies that explicitly encourage renewable electricity, abundant natural gas may actually slow the process of decarbonization, primarily by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies,” the researchers said. According to the study, coal provides 41 percent of power in the U.S. Natural gas-fired plants emit 57 percent less Co2 per kilowatt hour than coal-fired plants.“The potential for natural gas to reduce U.S. emissions has become increasingly salient as innovations in hydraulic fracturing technology have dramatically increased domestic supplies of gas, and as proposed federal regulations on CO2 emissions from stationary sources are projected to increase the substitution of natural gas for coal,” said the study. “Although the finding that natural gas alone will not significantly reduce CO2 emissions is consistent with previous reports, we believe the important implications for climate-energy policy are nonetheless not widely appreciated.” Cutting greenhouse gas emissions by burning natural gas is like dieting by eating reduced-fat cookies,” said Steven Davis, one of the researchers.”It may be better than eating full-fat cookies, but if you really want to lose weight, you probably need to avoid cookies altogether. “(sept 25 2014).
• Naomi Oreskes writes a long piece about how natural gas affects climate change. “Historians call this the “infrastructure trap.” The aggressive development of natural gas, not to mention tar sands, and oil in the melting Arctic, threaten to trap us into a commitment to fossil fuels that may be impossible to escape before it is too late. Animals are lured into traps by the promise of food. Is the idea of short-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions luring us into the trap of long-term failure? The institution of rules or incentives in the U.S. and around the globe to ensure that gas actually replaces coal and that efficiency and renewables become our primary focus for energy development is at this point extremely unlikely. Yet without them, increased natural gas development will simply increase the total amount of fossil fuel available in the world to burn, accelerating what is already beginning to look like a rush towards disaster.” (August 2014)
• NOAA Study (June 2014) estimates that globally methane leaks  are in the range of 2-4%.. That is enough to negate the climate benefits of gas over coal in the next two decades, the studies find.
• Latest estimates (April 2014) on methane leaks in Pennsylvania suggests that leaks are 100-1000 higher than what EPA estimates. “Drilling operations at several natural gas wells in southwestern Pennsylvania released methane into the atmosphere at rates that were 100 to 1,000 times greater than federal regulators had estimated, new research shows. Using a plane that was specially equipped to measure greenhouse gas emissions in the air, scientists found that drilling activities at seven well pads in the booming Marcellus shale formation emitted 34 grams of methane per second, on average. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that such drilling releases between 0.04 grams and 0.30 grams of methane per second…. The researchers determined that the wells leaking the most methane were in the drilling phase, a period that has not been known for high emissions. Experts had thought that methane was more likely to be released during subsequent phases of production, including hydraulic fracturing, well completion or transport through pipelines.”
• JOE ROMM SUMMARIZES THE STANFORD STUDY (below) AND OTHERS (Feb 2014)  “Replacing coal plants with gas plants would be worse for the climate for more than 6 decades. And again, in the real world, NG doesn’t just displace coal, it also displaces nuclear power, renewable energy, and energy efficiency. So it appears quite safe to say that natural gas simply has no net climate benefit whatsoever in any timescale that matters to humanity. Perhaps it is time to stop squandering tens of billions of dollars — and rendering billions of gallons of water unfit for human consumption — on a fossil fuel source that probably has no meaningful net climate benefit in the real world and may well do considerable harm.”
• In a June 2014 post, Romm does the math: After discussing the matter with the lead author, Stanford’s Adam Brandt, I wrote that given the risks to humanity from climate change, it seems conservative to take the middle of the range, 5.4%. That’s particularly conservative given that 3 separate studies by NOAA found leakage rates just from NG production of 4%, 17%, and 6-12%!…If one were to use 3 percent as the leakage rate, LNG-fueled power plants would be worse than coal from a climate perspective for decades. If you use 5.4 percent, then Figure 6.8 makes clear LNG-fueled power plants are worse than coal for a century!… Contrary to the implication of NETL’s analysis, natural gas doesn’t just displace coal — it also displaces carbon-free sources of power such as renewable energy, nuclear power, and energy efficiency. A recent analysis finds that effect has been large enough recently to wipe out almost the entire climate benefit from increasing natural gas use in the U.S. utility sector if the leakage rate is only 1.2 percent.
• This milestone Stanford  study (Feb 2014) summarizes current research that tries to estimate methane leakage from extraction and distribution of natural gas. So far there have been widely divergent estimates about methane leakage. QUOTE: “Reducing easily avoidable methane leaks from the natural gas system is important for domestic energy security,” said Robert Harriss, a methane researcher at the Environmental Defense Fund and a co-author of the analysis. “As Americans, none of us should be content to stand idly by and let this important resource be wasted through fugitive emissions and unnecessary venting.” One possible reason leaks in the gas industry have been underestimated is that emission rates for wells and processing plants were based on operators participating voluntarily. One EPA study asked 30 gas companies to cooperate, but only six allowed the EPA on site. “It’s impossible to take direct measurements of emissions from sources without site access,” said Garvin Heath, a senior scientist with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a co-author of the new analysis. “But self-selection bias may be contributing to why inventories suggest emission levels that are systematically lower than what we sense in the atmosphere.”
  MY OPINION: This is important research because it forces the natural gas industries to scrutinize their own methane leaks and adopt better leak reduction solutions. Personally, I’m guessing that the natural gas industry will never be able to reduce leakage to 3% or below (the magical threshhold needed for natural gas extraction provide a GHG advantage over coal), but developing better tools to identify and fix these leaks could bring dramatic reductions in GHG. Just arriving at useful metrics and methodologies for measuring these things could bring dramatic improvements.
• IEA REPORT: (Jan 2014) “An increased share of natural gas in the global energy mix alone will not put the world on a carbon emissions path consistent with an average global temperature rise of no more than 2 [degrees Celsius] ….  Natural gas displaces coal and to a lesser extent oil, driving down emissions, but it also displaces some nuclear power, pushing up emissions. This puts emissions on a long-term trajectory consistent with stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at around 650 parts per million CO2 equivalent, suggesting a long-term temperature rise of over 3.5 [degrees Celsius].”
•  

Climate Sensitivity

• Quote: “Greenhouse gases contributed a global mean surface warming likely to be in the range of 0.5°C to 1.3°C over the period 1951 to 2010, with the contributions from other anthropogenic forcings, including the cooling effect of aerosols, likely to be in the range of −0.6°C to 0.1°C. The contribution from natural forcings is likely to be in the range of −0.1°C to 0.1°C, and from natural internal variability is likely to be in the range of −0.1°C to 0.1°C. Together these assessed contributions are consistent with the observed warming of approximately 0.6°C to 0.7°C over this period.” (IPCC 5, SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS, 2013, p15 — PDF)
  Noteworthy here is the magnitude of the difference between manmade forcings (fossil fuels, land use, etc) and natural forcings and internal variability. Also: the range of uncertainty in the cooling effect of aerosols (loosely defined as dust/pollution/soot/volcanic ash)
• Computer  models have had lots of difficulty modeling clouds when estimating climate sensitivity. A new paper tries to address this. (Jan 2014)”When water evaporates from the oceans, the vapour can rise over nine miles to form rain clouds that reflect sunlight; or it may rise just a few miles and drift back down without forming clouds. In reality, both processes occur, and climate models encompassing this complexity predicted significantly higher future temperatures than those only including the nine-mile-high clouds. ‘Climate sceptics like to criticise climate models for getting things wrong, and we are the first to admit they are not perfect,’ said (the study’s author) Sherwood. ‘But what we are finding is that the mistakes are being made by the models which predict less warming, not those that predict more.’”Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt comment dryly: “there is a great asymmetry in risk between the high and low end estimates. Uncertainty cuts both ways and is not our friend.”
• IPCC 5 summary of climate sensitivity (2013): Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5 °C to 4.5 °C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1 °C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6 °C (medium confidence).

Climate Models and Prediction of Physical Consequences under Various Scenarios

•  (Feb 2014). Using current trends (and a climate sensitivity of 3 degrees C), climate scientist Michael Mann predicts that global mean temperature will increase 2 degrees C  over preindustrial temps by 2036.  2 degrees was the threshold IPCC 4 used for differentiating between “manageable” and “unmanageable” global warming.

How Agriculture/Land Use contributes to Warming

•  UMBRA (1/2014) : “Livestock, on the other hand, are four-legged methane factories. That includes buffalo, sheep, goats, and camels, but cattle are the primary offenders. A cow’s natural digestive processes produce lots of methane through burps and, yes, flatulence, to the tune of 200 to 400 pounds per year for the average bovine. And cow manure kicks in its fair share, too, when stored in lagoons or holding tanks. How bad is it?  Here in the U.S., cow burps (a.k.a. enteric fermentation) and manure management account for 30 percent of the country’s methane tab. Globally, livestock emissions make up a full 14.5 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas production.””

US Production of Fossil Fuels ( and  Subsidies)

• BILL MCKIBBEN: “By the time Obama leaves office, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia as the planet’s biggest oil producer and Russia as the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas combined. In the same years, even as we’ve begun to burn less coal at home, our coal exports have climbed to record highs. We are, despite slight declines in our domestic emissions, a global-warming machine: At the moment when physics tell us we should be jamming on the carbon brakes, America is revving the engine.”  McKibben is right to shift the focus from the “American lifestyle” to the “American way of doing business.” Selling fossil fuels used to be something  which only developing countries did; now it seems that the US is embracing this economic model. This seems to conflict with what Americans think of themselves as forward-thinking innovators.
• Elizabeth Kolbert: (March 2014)  “According to the IMF, the U.S. is the world’s largest single source of fossil-fuel subsidies; the I.M.F. has estimated that eliminating such subsidies worldwide could cut carbon emissions by thirteen per cent. Meanwhile, the tax credit responsible for much of the recent growth in wind generation in the U.S. has been allowed to lapse.”

Climate Change and Texas

• Texas Climate Scientists (Oct 2013): Of the dozens of atmospheric scientists in Texas, approximately ZERO of them are skeptical of this mainstream view of climate science. Every single  UT & A&M climate science prof signed off on these 4 statements:  1. It is virtually certain that the climate is warming, and that it has warmed by about 0.7 deg. C over the last 100 years. 2. It is very likely that humans are responsible for most of the recent warming. 3. If we do nothing to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, future warming will likely be at least two degrees Celsius over the next century. 4. Such a climate change brings with it a risk of serious adverse impacts on our environment and society.
• Here’s a long profile of Port Arthur, probably the most polluted place in the US. (Sept 2013). “Cancer rates among African Americans in Jefferson County are roughly 15 percent higher than they are for the average Texan. Shockingly, the mortality rate from cancer is more than 40 percent higher. And cancer is only part of the story. A study by the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found that residents of Port Arthur were four times more likely than people just 100 miles upwind to report suffering from heart and respiratory conditions; nervous system and skin disorders; headaches and muscle aches; and ear, nose, and throat ailments.”
  QUOTE 2: “When you’re used to presenting versions of the classic David-versus-Goliath tale, what do you do when the Davids have become so dispirited that they’ve all but given up the fight? Today, Carver Terrace specifically—and Port Arthur more generally—are so far gone, so forsaken, that there’s almost no need for industry officials to deceive, or to issue craftily worded denials, or to vow halfheartedly to reduce their refineries’ environmental impact. The industry abides by the letter of the law, dutifully documenting thousands of emissions events, knowing that, in the end, practically no one cares.”
• 2012 DOE REPORT: (May 2014)Texas has one of the highest potentials for solar capacity — including rooftop arrays, utility-scale arrays, and concentrated solar power — of any state in the country. But with just 201 megawatts of solar as of 2013, Texas ranks 13th among the states for total installed capacity — and it’s using a minuscule 0.7 percent of its potential. Compare that to California, which boasts 5,660 megawatts of installed capacity, which takes up over six percent of its reported potential, and ranks the state first in the nation.
• TEXAS A&M PROFESSOR LARRY MCKINNEY:    (May 2014) “The recent reports of an accelerated disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet have implications for the Gulf of Mexico and especially Texas where sea level rise is a significant issue, especially along the Upper Coast.Regardless of the cause, we may have reached a tipping point where we will see a rise in sea level more quickly than anticipated. It adds urgency to the need for the long-range planning to adapt to a changing world-scape and in our case, Gulf-scape.”

Green Stuff and Houston

• Zero Energy Homes in Houston (Nov 2013) (more)

China

• AIR POLLUTION MORTALITY (Oct 2013). “Currently, China consumes almost twice as much coal as the rest of the world combined….Earlier this year, a study found air pollution has reduced life expectancy in northern China by five and a half years.
•  CHINESE SCIENCE STUDY: (Jan 2014)  “coal burning, industrial pollution and secondary inorganic aerosols — the result of the reactions between different pollutants in the air–– are responsible for 18 percent, 25 percent and 26 percent of Beijing’s  air pollution respectively.” Interestingly, trash burning and car pollution are responsible for a combined total of only 4%.  That suggests that China’s temporary measures of reducing car usage on high pollution days is unlikely to make much of a difference and that more systematic changes are needed.

International Treaties

Which places are affected the most?

 Economic Projections/ Cost of Taking Action

• Cost of Delay. IEA: “Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.” Also: “The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming.”
• The most recent estimates say that emission targets — if agreed to today, would reduce the world’s economic growth rate by 0.6% per year.  But waiting as little as 10 years will end up tripling  the annual costs in order to reach  the exact same emission target.
• IEA Report:  (May 2014): “The $44 trillion additional investment needed to decarbonise the energy system in line with the 2 degree scenario (2DS)  by 2050 is more than offset by over $115 trillion in fuel savings – resulting in net savings of $71 trillion….” The 44 trillion number is a revision from the 36 trillion estimate given in 2012. “Some of the increase is due to accounting changes, but the calculations show that the cost of decarbonising the energy system – in real terms – is about 10% higher than it was two years ago. In part, this illustrates something the IEA has been saying for some time: the longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes to transform our energy system.”
• Lower carbon alternatives to Bitcoin (Dec 2013)

Economic Effects of Climate Change

• SKI JOURNALIST:  (Feb 2014) “Europe has lost half of its Alpine glacial ice since the 1850s, and if climate change is not reined in, two-thirds of European ski resorts will be likely to close by 2100. The same could happen in the United States, where in the Northeast, more than half of the 103 ski resorts may no longer be viable in 30 years because of warmer winters. As far for the Western part of the country, it will lose an estimated 25 to 100 percent of its snowpack by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed — reducing the snowpack in Park City, Utah, to zero and relegating skiing to the top quarter of Ajax Mountain in Aspen.”

Impact on Ecosystem

• Elizabeth Kolbert: “(Feb 2014): There have been moments in the past where the earth has experienced very swift, extreme changes—in a geological sense. And right now, we are in one of those moments. We are causing changes so fast that in the span of a human lifetime or a couple of human lifetimes, you can watch them happening. So part of the question for who will survive and who won’t is how fast generations are produced. If you are a microbe, you might do a lot better than an insect, which may do a lot better than a mammal. Big mammals are in serious trouble.”
• Joe Romm (March 2013)  covers what’s new and interesting about the latest IPCC report. He faults the report for not discussing the impacts of 3-5 degree C temperature increase, which seems to be the path we’re currently headed down. The consequences of 3+ degree temperature increases are harder to project even though it seems more likely to happen.

Green Report Cards

Ice, Glaciers and Sea Level

• 2 Separate Studies suggest that a significant part of the melting West Antartic ice sheet  has already crossed an irreversible threshhold and cannot be prevented from causing 10 feet of sea level rise within a couple of centuries. (The current estimate for this century is 3-6 feet of sea level rise because of global warming). We’ll have to wait for confirmation of these results, but the conclusion has a shocking finality to it. There is evidence that increasing CO2 has contributed to reaching this threshold, but unlike the predicted melting of Greenland or the Arctic (which the link is pretty clear), the Antartic threshold seems to be a result of several factors — including ozone depletion and natural variability… > Even if the warm water now eating away at the ice were to dissipate, it would be “too little, too late to stabilize the ice sheet,” Dr. Joughin said. “There’s no stabilization mechanism.” ….  Richard B. Alley, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the new research but has studied the polar ice sheets for decades, said he found the new papers compelling. Though he had long feared the possibility of ice-sheet collapse, when he learned of the new findings, “it shook me a little bit,” Dr. Alley said. He added that while a large rise of the sea may now be inevitable from West Antarctica, continued release of greenhouse gases will almost certainly make the situation worse. The heat-trapping gases could destabilize other parts of Antarctica as well as the Greenland ice sheet, potentially causing enough sea-level rise that many of the world’s coastal cities would eventually have to be abandoned. “If we have indeed lit the fuse on West Antarctica, it’s very hard to imagine putting the fuse out,” Dr. Alley said. “But there’s a bunch more fuses, and there’s a bunch more matches, and we have a decision now: Do we light those?” (May 2014)
• A comprehensive look at how U.S. cities are responding and not responding to the threat of  sea level rise. (Lots of discussion about Miami and NYC). “The last time that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were as high as they are today, about 3 million years ago, sea level is estimated to have been about 65 feet higher! That means that if we stopped all emissions at this instant, and waited hundreds of years, sea levels would stabilize at about 65 feet higher than today. That is a long way off, but the problem is that nobody really knows exactly what the curve looks like between here and there. Will most of the sea level increase occur earlier or later in this timeframe, or will it be equally spread out? Will there be abrupt “step-changes” along the way?” That is exactly what James White’s team looked at for the National Academy of Sciences in a recent report on what is called “abrupt climate change.” There is evidence that at times in the past when the world changed from ice ages to post-ice ages the sea level increased by a foot or more per decade. These abrupt shifts in sea level would severely challenge our ability to adapt.The problem of sea level rise is indeed a very large problem. Within the U.S., about 5 million people live within 4 feet of high tide. And it is not just houses that are at risk. A large part of our nation’s infrastructure is located very close to the sea. Wastewater treatment plants are normally located at a low point in the city and are often at or close to sea level. Power plants are often located in low-lying areas.
• Joe Romm discusses the Antarctica research in the broader context of glacier research.  ” In 2012, the National Science Foundation reported on paleoclimate research that examined “rock and soil cores taken in Virginia, New Zealand and the Eniwetok Atoll in the north Pacific Ocean.” Lead author Kenneth Miller of Rutgers University said: “The natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 70 feet higher than now.” (Romm adds, “So the “good” news is that it might take 1000 years (or longer) to raise sea levels several tens of feet, and the choices we make now can affect the rate of rise and whether we ultimately blow past 69 feet to beyond 200 feet.”)
• Jason Box: (2013, as reported by Chris Mooney).  “Box also provided a large-scale perspective on how much sea level rise humanity has already probably set in motion from the burning of fossil fuels. The answer is staggering: 69 feet, including water from both Greenland and Antarctica, as well as other glaciers based on land from around the world.”

Green Computing

• 2014 Greenpeace Report on Data Centers: The US uses the most power to run data centers, followed by Japan, the UK and Germany, according to the Greenpeace report. Stefansson noted that less than 20% of the electricity used by most of the cloud computing service providers globally come from renewable sources. (PDF of actual report is here).

Chevron Lawsuit

• Chevron’s Slimeball Legal Tactics: Chevron believes that failure to memorize somebody’s email address constitutes sufficient grounds for Chevron and the government to seize your laptop. (Nov 2013)
• An environmental  advocate argues that Chevron is trying to use RICO to suppress whistleblowing and legitimate lobbying. (Jan 2014) “Put another way, hard-hitting press releases and lobbying before Congress and government agencies by (insert you and your client) against (insert your client’s competitors or opponents) about (insert issue that financially benefits your client) could equal extortion and be a violation of the RICO statute. Plaintiffs who win civil RICO cases are entitled to treble damages, which could bankrupt many companies or trade associations if they were to be so targeted.”

Climate Change and Proposed Laws

Viability of Renewable Energy

• Wind Farms also reduce the impact of hurricanes.  Mark Z. Jacobsen:  Installing offshore wind farms would not only increase energy output, it can partially offset storm surges of hurricanes. QUOTE: “They concluded that the wind turbines could have sapped Katrina of so much energy that wind speeds would have been reduced by up to 50 percent at landfall and the hurricane’s storm surge could have been reduced by about 72 percent.”

Transportation Issue and Electric Cars

• Lit Motor and Total Cost of Ownership (2013)

Fossil Fuel Infrastructure

• A shocking report  about transporting oil by train. From 2008 to 2012, oil transported by trains inside the US  have increased 900% nationally. Last week  the DOT issued an emergency order   about the unsafe design of train cars for transporting oil. (Canada has banned these cars — which are still being used to transport about 70% of oil inside US by train).   Unfortunately, unless Obama issues an emergency order, it will probably take a year or more to implement a new safety standard — which surely will be opposed by the fossil fuel industry. In Houston, I live a few miles away from a train track, so I guess I have a personal interest in ensuring that oil is transported safely.  (May 2014)
• Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said May 4 2014, “We are very clear that this issue needs to be acted on very quickly,””There is a very high risk here that hasn’t been addressed.” … “One of the most fundamental questions that cuts across everything in crude oil by rail is how it is classified,” (Secretary of Transportation Anthony) Foxx said. “If it is not classified correctly at the beginning, then it is not packaged correctly and the emergency response needs aren’t understood by the communities through which this material is moving.” (Source).

Climate Change, Literature, Movies and TV

Basic Science/Reference

• How long does CO2 stay in the air?  (2012) “The lifetime in the air of CO2, the most significant man-made greenhouse gas, is probably the most difficult to determine, because there are several processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.”

Attribution to Humans (IPCC, etc)

• IPCC 5 Summary for Policymakers:  “It is extremely likely (i.e.,more than 95% probability)  that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”

Political Rhetoric/Analyzing Media Coverage

• “Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from public records. Approximately 75% of the income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.”

Climate Change and Historical Analysis

• One paper suggests that the doubling of carbon in the PETM period caused rapid temperature increase of  5 degrees in 13 years. The jury is still out about whether this admittedly worst case scenario applies to the CO2 doubling of the current era.

“Carbon Bubble” (Disinvestment Campaigns)

• AL GORE:  (Oct 2013)“We have a carbon bubble…Bubbles by definition involve a lot of asset owners and investors who don’t see what in retrospect becomes blindingly obvious. And this carbon bubble is going to burst.”
  Specifically, Gore cites the estimated $7 trillion in carbon assets on the books of multinational energy companies. “The valuation of those companies and their assets is now based on the assumption that all of those carbon assets will be sold and burned,” he says. “They are not going to be burned. They cannot be burned and will not be burned. No more than one-third can ever possibly be burned without destroying the future.”

Air Pollution and Harm (Not  Climate Change)

Best Reference Websites for Looking Up Skeptical Arguments

Carbon Neutral Lifestyle

• Carbon Calculator. (Jan 2014).  Much better than previous ones. My total annual footprint is 5.8 tons CO2 per year, with 2.5 coming from diet. Admittedly, my own lifestyle is a bit extreme.

Government Reports/Docs

Stupid US Energy Policy

• Stupid Ethanol Policy. (Oct 2013). This groundbreaking article about ethanol reveals the follies and the environmental destruction caused by ethanol. Started by George W. Bush and continued under Obama, few politicians have the courage to cease this madness

 Worst Case Scenarios

•  Scary  9/2013 video (with quotes from scientists) about how warming of 6 degrees C or higher could trigger another Permian-like extinction. Caveats: it can take as long as 100 years for CO2 to “translate” into global warming, so we’re talking late 2200s or 2300s. Also, this assumes that equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) turns out to be higher than current estimates AND that  the current Business as Usual (BAU) trajectory of carbon emissions will continue much  longer than most people expect.  Both scenarios are certainly within the realm of possibility.

Cool diagrams and graphs

STUDY (PDF Dec 2013).

Some IPCC 5 Graphs. Mitigation Reports/Policymaker  graphics and graphics from the full report.   Below (Figure 8-15)  is a graphic from the full report which  compares natural forcings with manmade forcings and the uncertainty surrounding aerosols. Aerosols is a broad category of forcings — mainly dealing with manmade emissions that change the amount of heat being reflected.  That includes sulfates, etc, but it also includes volcanic dust. A NASA site says, “Models estimate that aerosols have had a cooling effect that has counteracted about half of the warming caused by the build-up of greenhouse gases since the 1880s. However, unlike many greenhouse gases, aerosols are not distributed evenly around the planet, so their impacts are most strongly felt on a regional scale.”

The very important first graph (click to enlarge) is an IPCC graphic which  how small the influence of natural forcings are when compared to manmade forcings. The second one illustrates how different climate change studies weigh in on the manmade vs. natural forcings. (It comes from skepticalscience.com)

This next graph comes from an important peer-reviewed  survey of published papers about climate science by John Cook et al which reaffirms the 97% consensus number. Those who reject the scientific consensus say that there is cherry-picking or incorrect coding of papers, or attribution of a judgement about AGW when the paper didn’t mention it. This graph shows that when scholars were asked to rate their own papers, they were remarkably consistent with how the researchers coded the published paper.

The above chart measures the median carbon emissions based on an individual’s consumption lifestyle. It factors out the industrial usage in that country which is normally included in per capita emissions for each nation.

Here’s a more detailed version of the preceding graphic.

2018 Updates. 

If an industry’s  business model is dedicated to PERMANENTLY degrading the livable world for EVERY SINGLE baby born today, tomorrow, next year, next decade — even the  next century, then it’s a no-brainer that we ought to act sooner rather than later to stop it, especially because we ALREADY HAVE the technology to solve the problem and  already have a good idea about how  to do it right.

Should we have a PITY PARTY for those  who have been profiting  from the permanent harm being done to the human habitat?  No. Instead we should  provide a humane way for EVERYONE   to transition to a cleaner and less destructive economic model. This can be done by changing the incentive structure, so that each person can be rewarded for decarbonizing their lifestyle in a way he or she finds to be the most  suitable. But now the financial incentive structures in the US are designed precisely to do the opposite — to reward bad behavior.    Perversely, last year fossil fuel companies in the US received   $500 billion in subsidies so they could extract and sell even more polluting energy.  Eliminating tax breaks for fossil fuel  companies would go a long way to improve this perverse  incentive structure.

Many people who have become rich from this destructive business model will claim — FALSELY by the way — that “carbon pricing” will translate to higher taxes for everybody. Sure, carbon prices does increase the price on bad behavior — that indeed is the point. But most carbon pricing plans actually refund 100% of carbon taxes to consumers — indeed, taxpayers who decarbonize faster than everyone else can end up making a nice profit.

Sometimes people who understand the dangers of climate change  worry about the costs of making the transition. Actually though, it is relatively easy for individuals and organizations to transition to clean solutions if they have enough lead time. If  carbon reductions were gradually phased in over 10 years, that would minimize the economic disruptions. If you knew you had 10 years to transition to a carbon-free lifestyle, you would have adequate  time to  replace your vehicles, appliances and energy provider without needing to spend a lot of money. On the other hand, if Americans keep putting off agreeing  to an emission target, that will only reduce the time they have to prepare for the transition — and end up forcing them to incur additional costs associated with a rapid transition.  Worldwide, the IEA estimates that every year of delaying a climate policy costs the world $500 billion more in infrastructure costs.  That’s a reason  for enacting an emission target plan sooner rather than later — you have more time to spread out the cost. The most recent estimates say that emission targets — if agreed to today, would reduce the world’s economic growth rate by 0.6% per year.  But waiting as little as 10 years will end up tripling  the annual costs in order to reach  the exact same emission target.

Actually though, this projected 0.6%  reduction in GDP  does NOT take into account the health and economic benefits which will accrue as a result of an emission policy. Decarbonizing brings huge health and economic benefits. Every year air pollution from fossil fuels causes 200,000 premature deaths in the US. Lowering these medical costs would improve the size and efficiency of the workforce  and therefore the country’s economic health. Economists usually say that decarbonizing produces a net increase of jobs. Maybe this surprises you because you constantly hear fossil fuel companies touting the jobs produced by their industry.  In fact, fossil fuel industries are NOTORIOUSLY BAD at generating jobs. One  study found that 1 million dollars invested in clean energy companies produces THREE TIMES  the number of jobs than if you invested that million in a fossil fuel company. Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy  noted that historically when countries have significantly  decarbonized their economy, they  almost  always experience an instant economic boom immediately afterwards.

Some have said that it’s futile to set emission targets in the US because China emits more. It’s true that China’s emissions now exceeds that of the US. But China is already in the process of adopting carbon pricing and transitioning to a cleaner economy  at a faster rate than we are.  The reason we don’t see this decline in the data is that China is still growing  3 to 4 times faster than the US economy — and it’s making up for decades of lost growth — having  started at a baseline so low that modernization itself is causing a rapid increase in  energy consumption. As soon as China’s growth rate becomes comparable to other nations, China’s substantial efforts to transition to a clean economy should be reflected in the data.  Keep in mind also that  a significant percent of China’s emissions come from factories which export products to the west. In fact, the typical Chinese per capita  emissions are still relatively low when compared to Europe and the US.  When the US agrees on an emission target, hopefully that will also cause American consumers to buy greener products — and put pressure on Chinese factories to manufacture greener products as well.

We already know that fossil fuels are causing PERMANENT HARM to the livable world of all future humans.  The sad thing is that the people who will suffer the most from global warming also happen to be the people least responsible for causing it in the first place. A  12 year old girl living today in Bangladesh did almost nothing to cause climate change. Most likely she does not own an iPhone or has ever ridden in a Hummer.   Neither did her family or friends or previous generations of Bengalis. Compared to the typical American, the typical Bengali  has an almost trivial carbon footprint.  Yet according to several  environmental reports,  Bangladesh is the country most likely to experience the most devastating effects of climate change. Food supplies will be disrupted; flooding and sea level rise will render large portions of its coastal regions to be uninhabitable. Most likely the effects of climate change will trigger several waves of climate refugees from Bangladesh into nearby countries, aggravating the region’s economic and political tensions  as well.

Imagine that this 12 year old Bengali girl spoke perfect English and could skype you directly. Imagine her question: “Your  scientists had been telling you for over 20 years that fossil fuels had been causing permanent  harm to the planet and especially  countries like my own; why on earth haven’t you done anything yet ?  Do you really think my life and my country are so unimportant? Do you  really believe that I have less of a right to grow up and make a living in my own country than you did when you were born?  Why have your people been so unwilling to take even modest steps to reduce the harms of climate change being done on countries which never caused it in the first place? Is this what human civilization boils down to — allowing entire states  to collapse in order to preserve one nation’s  precious right to drive gas guzzlers  and blow up mountains to sell coal?”

—————–

See also: My response to the usual complaints by libertarians about climate change.

Update #1. I am not naive about China’s escalating CO2 emissions (or India’s); indeed,  any observer will observe that the dangers from China’s dangerous air pollution is a much more urgent national emergency than climate change. But at least China has a climate policy (albeit a top down one). In a conference about carbon pricing, Bill McKibben acknowledged the China/US problem in pricing carbon at the border, but made the point that setting a domestic climate policy is the necessary  first step to negotiating a viable bilateral or multilateral agreement. Other countries will not take America seriously about climate change unless it first  demonstrates an ability to adopt a domestic climate policy. Thefore, the US  should  try to lead by example. Unfortunately, our leverage in persuading others to enter into a global agreement is diminishing with every passing year. Five or ten years ago, the economic power of the United States still overshadowed China’s; but as the years go by, our leverage decreases just as China has been increasing.

At the same time, China’s energy profile has always been different from ours; Western countries are indirectly responsible for a sizable portion of China’s emissions because American companies are exporting the dirty manufacturing processes to there. It’s conceivable that multinational companies and global consumers can demand better safety and production standards for the products they use. Again, it’s all a matter of having the right financial incentives in place. Given the national emergency in China and the widespread support in China’s leadership for better environmental policies, perhaps domestic pressure will be sufficient to reduce the carbon intensity of manufacturing processes in China.

Update #2 (July 2015).  A new IMF STUDY finds that  Energy Subsidies in 2015 are 5.3 trillion for the world (or 6.5 percent of world GDP). The US fossil fuel industry would like to thank the American taxpayer for being so generous/stupid to give their industry a subsidy totalling $2176 per American. This Excel spreadsheet  breaks down the subsidies more. Out of that $2176 per American taxpayer, $41 go to pre-tax subsidies, $682 go to harms caused by global warming, $643 go to local air pollution, $458 go to congestion (traffic!), $181 go to accidents, $29.50 go to road damage, $141 go to “foregone consumption tax revenue.”

Update #3. At the bottom is a great chart illustrating the consequences of various emission scenarios.