I’ve resisted writing the obligatory “what Scott Brown’s victory means for the climate bill” post, mainly because the real answer is Nobody Knows and Everyone’s Full of Sh*t. What pundit wants to say that?

Certainly everyone in the DC Village agrees that the Mass. special election was the Biggest Thing Evar (unlike, say, the Oregon special election wherein voters chose to raise taxes on rich people and businesses—only conservative news is big news). Congressional Democrats’ first reactions to Brown’s win were predictably and pathetically hysterical, with one after another racing to the microphone to assure voters that they’d gotten the message and wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to ever again try to pass any of the items on the agenda that got them elected.

The dust has settled a little, but this is still an extraordinarily volatile political climate. Conventional wisdom has been that with polarization so high and tempers so raw, the climate/energy bill is doomed. I’ve been holding out slivers of hope, though. The Obama administration and Harry Reid have both recently reiterated that they want a comprehensive bill this session.

Now, however, it looks like Sen. Lindsey Graham—the token Republican working on the Kerry/Graham/Lieberman “tripartisan” bill—has officially bailed on an economy-wide cap-and-trade system:

“Realistically, the cap-and-trade bills in the House and the Senate are going nowhere,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who is trying to fashion a bipartisan package of climate and energy measures. “They’re not business-friendly enough, and they don’t lead to meaningful energy independence.”

Mr. Graham said the public was demanding that any energy legislation from Washington focus on creating jobs, whether by drilling for offshore oil or building wind turbines.

“What is dead is some massive cap-and-trade system that regulates carbon in a fashion that drives up energy costs,” he said.

To me, regardless of what Obama or Reid may want, this signals the death knell for a comprehensive cap-and-trade program, this year and probably for the duration of Obama’s term in office. If Graham won’t go for it, no Republican will, certainly not the 6-8 Republicans needed. Indeed, opposition to cap-and-trade has become part of the Republican purity pledge. As long as the rabid teabag base has total control over the party, there will be no flexibility on this. And 41 senators is all they need to block it.

Graham’s comments seem to point to an alternative that’s been much-discussed recently: a scaled-back cap-and-trade program that would cover only the electricity sector. That would be coupled with some version of the (pitifully weak) American Clean Energy Leadership Act passed by Bingaman’s Energy Committee last year, with additional subsidies for offshore drilling and nuclear power.

Would the resulting bill be worth a damn? Put it this way: it would be possible to craft a good package of climate and energy legislation with a cap-and-trade system covering utilities, ambitious renewable energy mandates, stringent energy efficiency regulations, and a massive round of investments in clean energy.

That’s not what will pass. My prediction is that whatever K/G/L come up with will look more or less like energy policy over the last 20 years: a hodgepodge of subsidies and tax breaks for favored industries. At this point there seems little hope left of anything better.

There’s much to discuss about the bill, the political fight that will take shape around it, and the best way forward for clean energy advocates in coming years. For now I just wanted to mark what looks to me like the final passing of the dream of an economy-wide price on carbon.

Related Links:

A gust of energy

The facts of cap-and-trade [VIDEO]

When it comes to energy, Mark Jacobson thinks big

Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE,  has taken off like wildfire since the concept was first introduced in Berkeley, California in October ‘07. PACE allows private property owners to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects through an addition to their property tax bill, overcoming the high upfront costs that prevent most property owners from investing in such retrofits.

PACE financing has the capacity to be transformative: property owners realize immediate savings on their utility bills with minimal money down; local green jobs are created through   increased demand for retrofitting goods and services; and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are dramatically reduced. With America’s building stock responsible for approximately 40% of its demand for energy, these kinds of improvements have the potential to get us significantly closer to our GHG reduction targets.  Recognizing the potential of this model, Scientific American magazine recently named PACE one of the top 20 ideas that can change the world.

States around the country are recognizing the potential of PACE. Over the past 18 months,  sixteen states have adopted legislative changes to allow municipalities to use property taxes as a vehicle for private property improvements of this kind. In California, PACE financing can even be used for water conservation improvements. While many states and municipalities are just beginning the process of designing   their programs, several cities and counties around the country   already offer PACE financing to their residents, or are well on their way.

The majority of municipalities participating in PACE are in California, which has laws in place to require GHG reductions. In addition to Berkeley,  the City of Palm Desert and the County of Sonoma have launched programs. San Francisco will launch in early March.  Those will be followed by over 200 more jurisdictions by this summer, including Los Angeles County, the City of San Diego, and 14 counties working together as part of the California Statewide Communities Development Authority program. Areas that have launched PACE financing have seen a high level of interest among property owners.  In Sonoma County, over 1,000 applications have already been received.

The beauty of PACE is that it supports individuals who want to reduce their personal carbon footprint but might otherwise not have the resources to do so. By making reasonably-priced financing available to homeowners around the country, PACE is tapping into a pent-up demand for these services and quickly sparking increased demand for everything from tankless water heaters to insulation to solar panels and technicians who can install them.

President Obama’s proposed “Cash for Caulkers” (PDF) program further encourages local governments to adopt the PACE model. This initiative aspires to retrofit 100 million homes and generate a million new jobs while reducing U.S. GHG emissions by 5% over the next 20 years.  These incentives are expected to greatly increase the demand for energy retrofits and PACE financing.

Cash for Caulkers would allow eligible homeowners to reduce the cost of energy efficiency retrofits by up to 50%; used in concert with PACE financing (where available),  that means a homeowner could make energy efficiency improvements with virtually no out-of-pocket costs, pay half-price for those improvements, and pay off the remainder through a 20-year assessment on their property tax bill—while saving money on their utility bills.

PACE is one example of how well-designed public-private partnerships can stimulate economic growth by supporting individual efforts to change energy consumption patterns. As America races to address climate change, all signs point to its tremendous expansion.

Related Links:

Supreme Court ruling increases importance of local energy

Low expectations for Obama’s State of the Union speech

Let the era of solar wholesale distributed generation begin

In 2006, President Bush famously said in his State of the Union:

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology ...

By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.

On the solution side, Bush was mainly following the advice of GOP spinmeister Frank Luntz on how to pretend you are interested in solving our energy problems without actually doing anything (see  Bush follows Luntz playbook: “Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah”).

But the news that night was how the former Texas oilman bluntly stated both the problem, our addiction to oil, and the ultimate goal, to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy.”

Now along comes FoxNews contributor Sarah Palin, who has devised the perfect way to put forward for her backward energy policy—Facebook.  That way she can avoid any substance, avoid those pesky questions from reporters, and not bother to spend even two seconds editing her posts so she doesn’t utter blather like this:

Well, what do you know? The Obama administration, whose entire energy posture going back into the presidential campaign has been both ideologically and practically stridently anti-oil, both as an industry and as a form of energy, has suddenly become “concerned” about China’s oil grab.

This is, to say the least, disingenuous.

The U.S. government under Barack Obama has yet to acknowledge once, in spite of widely held estimates, that oil will continue to account for 40% of world energy demand 25 years from now—this while total world energy demand will increase by 50%, at least.

Read the rest here. I look forward to hopefully hearing President Obama acknowledge America’s need to ramp up domestic energy production, including oil and natural gas developments, during Wednesday’s State of the Union address. Let’s hope his advisers advise him accordingly.

- Sarah Palin

This is unmitigated nonsense.

The piece Palin quotes, from uber-right-wing Investors Business Daily is outraged that Energy Secretary Chu said, “We must move beyond oil.” Yet that is precisely what President Bush said, “move beyond a petroleum-based economy.” This is, to say the least, disingenuous.

As for what Obama actually supports, let’s just go back to December (see “Graham says Obama has his back on climate bill”):

Sen. Lindsey Graham may be under fire from conservatives back home in South Carolina. But the Republican got a personal assurance from President Obama yesterday that the White House is supporting his efforts to craft a sweeping Senate energy and global warming bill.

“The president told me personally he was very open, that nuclear power would be part of the mix, that clean coal would be part of the mix, that he’s for offshore drilling in a responsible way,” Graham said today in describing his Oval Office meeting with Obama. “But we have to have a price on carbon, an emissions standard that’s real, that’s good for the environment and good for business. And I was very pleased.”

Palin seems to have no advisers advising her, else her advising advisors would have hopefully and accordingly told her that President Obama campaigned on a strategy of expanding domestic resources while aggressively pushing clean energy and greenhouse gas reductions.

I reported back in August 2008 on the Obama-Biden energy plan (”Breaking news—A real energy plan for America: Efficiency now, 10 percent renewables by 2012, and one million plug-in hybrids by 2015”).  Here’s what it says about domestic energy:

Promote the Supply of Domestic Energy

With 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves, the U.S. cannot drill its way to energy security. But U.S. oil and gas production plays an important role in our domestic economy and remains critical to prevent global energy prices from climbing even higher. There are several key opportunities to support increased U.S. production of oil and gas that do not require opening up currently protected areas.

• A “Use it or Lose It” Approach to Existing Leases. Oil companies have access to 68 million acres of land, over 40 million offshore, which they are not drilling on. Drilling in open areas could significantly increase domestic oil and gas production. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will require oil companies to diligently develop these leases or turn them over so that another company can develop them.

• Promote the Responsible Domestic Production of Oil and Natural Gas. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will set up a process for early identification of any infrastructure obstacles/shortages or possible federal permitting process delays to drilling in:

o Bakken Shale in Montana and North Dakota which could have as much as 4 billion recoverable barrels of oil according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

o Unconventional natural gas supplies in the Barnett Shale formation in Texas and the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas.

o National Petroleum Reserve‐Alaska (NPR‐A) which comprises 23.5 million acres of federal land set aside by President Harding to secure the nation’s petroleum reserves for nationalsecurity purposes.

• Prioritize the Construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline.

• Getting More from our Existing Oil Fields. [from enhanced oil recovery (EOR)]

Of course, Palin is so practiced at repeating falsehoods—even in her supposed area of expertise (energy)—that during last year’s presidential campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.”

I’m not sure what is scarier—Palin trying to participate in the discussion over energy policy with nonsensical posts like this one or conservative thought leader Newt Gingrich calling her a conservative leader on energy issues.

Related Posts:

In an exclusive interview —“exclusive” in the sense that many of the people smearing Dr. Murari Lal haven’t bothered to ask him whether the original story was accurate—Dr. Lal asserts that the “most vilest allegations” in the Daily Mail story are utterly false.

Sunday, the Daily Mail’s David Rose wrote a sensational piece supposedly based on direct quotes from Dr. Lal:

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: “It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”

As you’d expect, this was immediately trumpeted by Morano (a spreader of uber-disinformation since the days he helped launch the shameful Swift Boat smear against John Kerry).  You’d think that science reporters and major media would know enough to treat claims from such sources with a grain of salt (see “FoxNews pushes falsehood-filled Daily Mail article on global cooling that utterly misquotes, misrepresents work of Mojib Latif and NSIDC“). But of course they don’t (see “Exclusive interview with Dr. Latif, the man who confused the NY Times and New Scientist, the man who moved George Will and Morano to extreme disinformation”).

At the very least, anyone who was going to repeat this inflammatory charge—let alone draw any conclusions from it—ought to have made a simple phone call to Dr. Lal, don’t you think?  But not Science News and U.S. News & World Report.

Science News has been viewed with a lot of credibility, and their stuff is widely reprinted (even at CP).  But this piece of theirs is just not right:

Science & the Public:  IPCC’s Himalayan glacier ‘mistake’ not an accident

Newspaper reports that unsubstantiated numbers were used intentionally.

A London newspaper reports today that the unsubstantiated Himalayan-glacier melt figures contained in a supposedly authoritative 2007 report on climate warming were used intentionally, despite the report’s lead author knowing there were no data to back them up.

Until now, the organization that published the report—the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—had argued the exaggerated figures in that report were an accident: due to insufficient fact checking of the source material.

Uh, no. It now appears the incident wasn’t quite that innocent.

The Sunday Mail’s David Rose reached Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the 2007 IPCC report’s chapter on Asia. Lal told Rose that he knew there were no solid data to support the report’s claim that Himalayan glaciers—the source of drinking and irrigation water for downstream areas throughout Asia—could dry up by 2035. Said Lal: “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” In other words, Rose says, Lal “last night admitted [the scary figure] was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”

A noble motive, perhaps, but totally inexcusable.

Yes, this is “only” a blog entry by one Janet Raloff, but it almost immediately was reposted by U.S. News & World Report Science with their logo and that of Science News.

Makes everything look very official and credible, when really the U.S. News piece is just a reposting of an unverified blog post on an erroneous story!  Yes, how ironic that the media is guilty of precisely what it has accused the IPCC of—running an unverified story!

If the piece contains a bombshell charge against an individual scientist, somebody has to confirm the original story. Instead, the piece merely states:

If Lal knowingly perpetuated unsubstantiated speculation in a purportedly authoritative document, that would constitute what we in journalism refer to as a “hanging offense”—the kind of action that gets you fired or at least heavily sanctioned….

The Rose article also charges that Lal’s committee didn’t investigate challenges to glacier data in its chapter—challenges made by climate scientists prior to the IPCC report’s publication.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I don’t know for certain what Lal and his team did or didn’t do. Journalism is not peer review. But our reporting can help policy makers and scientists know where further investigation is warranted. And it’s warranted here.

If further investigation confirms that what Rose reported today is true, then Lal—and, through him, the IPCC—would have abrograted the public trust. And stupidly given ammunition to those who have made a sport of challenging solid climate science.

Totally inexcusable.

“Journalism is not peer review.”  Apparently journalism isn’t much more than the children’s game of telephone these days. Certainly it doesn’t seem to involve the use of a real telephone.

Lal’s phone number is easy to find online, and I called him myself, even though it was after midnight in India (I hoped he was on travel), but he answered it immediately.

He said these were “the most vilest allegations” and denied that he ever made such assertions. He said “I didn’t put it [the 2035 claim] in to impress policymakers….  We reported the facts about science as we knew them and as was available in the literature.”

He told me:

Our role was to bring out the factual science.  The fact is the IPCC has been very conservative.

Note that Science News repeats the charge “that Lal’s committee didn’t investigate challenges to glacier data” but does not bother to repeat Lal’s assertion in the Daily Mail piece—which he made again to me—that he never saw any challenges to the glacier data. Certainly enough charges and counter charges have been made on this specific point that it should be looked into, but simply asserting it doesn’t make it true.

One top climate scientist associated with the IPCC speaking to me off the record today said, “I know Murari Lal to be a straight-shooter. I take him at his word.”

Lal said to me, “I was a lead author for the second assessment, third assessment, and fourth assessment and this is the first time in my life that I’ve been attacked like this.”

Science News asserts:

The IPCC report was supposed to reflect only peer-reviewed science. Not the speculation of scientists, which the initial source of that 2035 figure (Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain) recently acknowledged it was. Nor should magazine articles or gray literature reports—like the World Wildlife Fund document that repeated the speculative 2035 figure—become the foundation for IPCC conclusions.Which is why IPCC specifically prohibits reliance on such documents.

Interestingly, I thought that was true, too, but I decided to check with two top IPCC scientists, and they both confirmed to me that in fact, the IPCC does allow gray literature reports. And the IPCC explains this here (see Annex 2).

Lal told me:

We were allowed to cite gray literature provided that it looked to us to be good science.

One leading climate scientist said he had thought that in the Fourth Assessment, the IPCC was going to clamp down more on this.

To me, the peer-reviewed science contains more than enough to write reports on—see my summary of the literature in 2009, “The year climate science caught up with what top scientists have been saying privately for years.”  I think the IPCC needs to stop this practice of using gray literature, especially for quantitative matters.

In any case, the 2035 figure was wrong—you can find the origin of the mistake here. And you can find the IPCC’s retraction here. And here’s what I think the IPCC should have done—“Memo to IPCC: Please reanalyze ALL of your conclusions about melting ice and sea level rise.”  The IPCC messed this up big time, and I’ll have more to say on that Tuesday.

The bottom line here:  Reporters and major media outlets must stop parroting everything they read. If that’s all you’re going to do, you deserve to continue losing readers.

Related Links:

The Climate Post: Asian ice granted temporary stay of execution

U.N. climate panel admits Himalayan glacier data ‘poorly substantiated’

U.N. climate panel will probe disputed Himalayan glacier forecast

Climate change is a fact, and it is almost entirely made by man. It is jointly responsible for the rise in severe weather-related natural disasters, since the weather machine is “running in top gear”. The figures speak for themselves: according to data gathered by Munich Re, weather-related natural catastrophes have produced US$ 1,600bn in total losses since 1980, and climate change is definitely a significant contributing factor. We assume that the annual loss amount attributable to climate change is already in the low double-digit billion euro range. And the figure is bound to rise dramatically in future.

Those are the words of the CEO of Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, in December.  The anti-science crowd tries to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather but even the loudest shouter told the journal Nature back in 2006, “Clearly since 1970 climate change (i.e., defined as by the IPCC to include all sources of change) has shaped the disaster loss record.”  Indeed, that Nature article reported four years ago:

At a recent meeting of climate and insurance experts, delegates reached a cautious consensus: climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes.

The evidence has only gotten stronger in recent years.  A major study published in 2009, “Tropical cyclone losses in the USA and the impact of climate change — A trend analysis based on data from a new approach to adjusting storm losses” concluded:

In the period 1971–2005, since the beginning of a trend towards increased intense cyclone activity, losses excluding socio-economic effects show an annual increase of 4% per annum. This increase must therefore be at least due to the impact of natural climate variability but,more likely than not, also due to anthropogenic forcings.

A 2009 NOAA-led report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, identified a number of climate-related impacts that are occurring now and expected to increase in the future that could shape the disaster loss record:

Many phony charges are now being leveled at the IPCC because the anti-science crowd smells blood in the water, and many “journalists” are ready to repeat their nonsense (see “EXCLUSIVE: UN scientist refutes Daily Mail claim he said Himalayan glacier error was politically motivated.”

The newest phony charge came Sunday from another dubious source in the British press, “UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters.”   But on Monday, the IPCC slammed the story as “misleading and baseless.”  As the “IPCC statement on trends in disaster losses” explains:

The Sunday Times article gets the story wrong on two key points. The first is that it incorrectly assumes that a brief section on trends in economic losses from climate-related disasters is everything the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) has to say about changes in extremes and disasters. In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report reaches many important conclusions, at many locations in the report, about the role of climate change in extreme events. The assessment addresses both observations of past changes and projections of future changes in sectors ranging from heat waves and precipitation to wildfires. Each of these is a careful assessment of the available evidence, with a thorough consideration of the confidence with which each conclusion can be drawn.

The second problem with the article in the Sunday Times is its baseless attack on the section of the report on trends in economic losses from disasters. This section of the IPCC report is a balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue. It clearly makes the point that one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend. The tone is balanced, and the section contains many important qualifiers. In writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate.

Kudos to the IPCC for responding to a trumped up charged quickly for once!

Coincidentally, I already had a guest post in the works from one of the country’s leading experts on the connection between climate change and extreme weather and the impact on the insurance  industry, Evan Mills.  So, the rest of this post is Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whom I have known for almost two decades.  He is a true polymath (see “Building Commissioning: The Stealth Energy Efficiency Strategy“).

Chart: Climate-risk disclosure trends among U.S.- and non-U.S.-based insurance companies (Source: CDP data per Mills 2009)

I had the pleasure of keynoting a meeting on climate change convened last month in San Francisco by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the American Insurance Association (AIA), the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA), and Ceres. The speaker line-up included Fireman’s Fund, Prudential Capital Group, Deutsche Asset Management, CalPERS, Willis Re, Zurich Financial Services,Wells Fargo, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, NRDC, the California Department of Insurance, and several catastrophe modeling and environmental consultants.  All spoke in unison about the risks and opportunities of climate change and the role that insurers and their regulators are increasingly playing in responding to it.

I argued in my presentation that climate change is the single greatest risk facing the insurance industry.  Ernst & Young’s survey of 70 industry analysts seems to agree with me. As I’ve explained in Science, climate change is a systemicrisk not unlike the banking crisis that blindsided almost everyone thanks in no small part to a nasty coctail of undisclosed risks and wishful thinking. Astute insurers recognize a panoply of potential correlated losses triggered by climate change spanning the core business of underwriting (in almost every line of business, from property to life/health to liability), coupled with exposures through the assets in which they invest, topped off with with formidable collatoral reputational, regulatory, and competitive risks. A vanguard of insurers are responding with new products, services, and constructive engagement in public policy.

I also pointed out that insurer shareholders have emerged in force, most notably through the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), with members representing $55 trillion under management. Now, U.S. insurance regulators are asking insurers to proactively disclose their climate-risk assessment for the benefit of shareholders, customers, and, yes, even the insurers themselves.

During the Q&A period, Robert Detlefsen, from the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC), asked to share a “comment” (which he emphasized was not a question) about my presentation. Detlefsen–formerly with Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Competitive Enterprise Institute–was displeased that I had not given more attention to the infamous CRU emails.  I responded that I would be delighted to discuss the subject with him at length after the session. He elected not to take me up on this offer.

Pseudoscience appears to be more compelling to some than fact-based science or the pursuit of genuine understanding. Insurance based on pseudoscience risks deteriorating into pseudoinsurance.

A peculiar article by Evan Lehmann in the New York Times dredges up the stale CRU story (which has otherwise fizzled for lack of substance) and features Detlefsen’s distrust of science and distaste for climate risk disclosure, as summarized in a letter to his members’ regulators reiterating his concerns.

To the uninitiated reader, Lehmann’s piece might suggest that the entire insurance industry is questioning the veracity of climate science or the value of risk disclosure.  What readers are left on their own to discover is that NAMIC–the trade organization featured as skeptical on climate change–“represents” but one branch of the industry (the mutual insurers).  Two other insurance trade associations (AIA and RAA) not only co-hosted the summit but were actually on stage that day advancing a constructive discussion about how to get in front of the problem. Readers would also not have suspected that Detlefsen’s own organization sends a very different message through its excellent web portal on climate and insurance. Ironically, the insurance trade press has thus far given far more balanced treatment to these issues.

While Detlefsen characterizes the motivation of others in seeking climate-risk disclosure to regulators, shareholders, and customers as having “nakedly ideological ends,” over 100 insurance companies (approaching 70% of those asked) have somehow seen their way to replying to a voluntary climate risk disclosure process that has been conducted for years through CDP. They frequently find that the very process of assembling climate-disclosure documentation is constructive (not just a compliance exercise) and helps them think through the issues and better assess their risk and their progress towards managing that risk. Other U.S. insurance trade organizations have worked collaboratively to help craft the U.S. disclosure process. One of them, the American Insurance Association, is noted as being far more at peace with the regulators’ climate disclosure efforts than is NAMIC. Any observer would have to read quite a lot between the lines to support Detelfsen’s stipulation that that the regulators have any pre-determined expectations about the conclusions that insurers’ will reach through the disclosure process.

Climate skepticism among insurance trade associations like NAMIC is a more or less uniquely American phenomenon. Even then, some of NAMICs largest members—including household names like State Farm, Nationwide and Liberty Mutual —have been accepting of the science and very proactive in identifying responses to climate-change risks.  To my knowledge, none have retracted their previous statements based on the stolen emails.

Other U.S. insurance tradegroups do not share Detlefsen’s perspective. The Reinsurance Association of America engaged in the climate discussion 15 years ago, and recently issued a constructive and proactive climate change policy statement.  The American Insurance Association has also been engaged for over a decade, including participation in international fora. The Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers issued a policy statement just before the Copenhagen meeting. These trade associations seem to believe that it is not only appropriate but also beneficial for themselves and the companies they represent to engage.

Although invoked by Detlefsen as a reason to scuttle the disclosure process, the “tempest in a thimble” brought on by the stolen emails has been debunked ad nauseum, including in a systematic third-party review by the Associated Press.  [I cite the AP review only for those readers who don’t want to trust the scientific establishment for policing itself and reviewing the CRU issue formally.] Any substance that may remain does not change our fundamental scientific understanding of climate change. What Detlefsen desribes in his letter as my “intolerance for dissent” in finding no smoking gun in these emails, is more accurately characterized as my desire (and responsibility as a practicing scientist) to keep science fact-based. The factual inaccuracies that underpin the critics’ interpretation of these emails suggest either a very human tendancy to explain away bad news, profound technical incompetence, or sheer desperation in trying to delay addressing the risks. The interests of society (including those of insurers) are poorly served by sensationalized (and often non-fact-checked) reporting on peer-reviewed science. I would only add that questioning the findings of climate science based on non-expert interpretations of these emails is tantamount to discarding the very practice of scientific inquiry, while dismissing the judgment of hundreds of governments, business groups, and religious organizations that have scrutinized and accepted what mainstream science (and the Nobel Prize committee) has concluded about climate change since inquiry began over a century ago.  From the Pentagon to the Supreme Court to the Vatican – human-induced climate change is accepted fact. This leaves precious little for holdouts to hang their hats on.

Chart: Climategate plot from Google/trends (Source: http://www.google.com/trends)

Many insurance companies can’t be bothered with foot-dragging. Through 2008, wedocumented nearly 643 specific activities on the part of 246 insurance entities from 29 countries (as well as 34 non-insurer collaborators). This represented a 50% year-over-year increase in the level of activity compared to that observed through 2007. These entities collectively earned $1.2 trillion in annual premiums that year (more than a quarter of the global total) and had $13 trillion in assets, while employing 2.2 million people.

Exasperated with the outcome in Copenhagen last month, the CEO of Munich Re (the world’s largest and most science-focused reinsurer) stated that:

“Climate change is a fact, and it is almost entirely made by man. It is jointly responsible for the rise in severe weather-related natural disasters, since the weather machine is “running in top gear”. The figures speak for themselves: according to data gathered by Munich Re, weather-related natural catastrophes have produced US$ 1,600bn in total losses since 1980, and climate change is definitely a significant contributing factor. We assume that the annual loss amount attributable to climate change is already in the low double-digit billion euro range. And the figure is bound to rise dramatically in future.”

To probe the internal consistency of Detlefsen’s hypothesis for a moment, even if climate change may not be happening, isn’t risk a product of uncertainty, and don’t insurers repeatedly tell us that “risk is our business”? And doesn’t selectively feeding on newspaper soundbites instead of thousands of peer-reviewed technical articles for climate intelligence invite myopia and risks of its own?  Regulators—and insurance customers—expect a far higher level of due diligence. This is summed up well in a leading actuarial journal by the former corporate actuary and vice president of risk management for Nationwide Insurance — one of NAMIC’s largest members — and current chair of the Casualty Actuarial Society’s Climate Change Committee:

“For anyone attempting to move through the informational confusion on climate-change issues, the proliferation of counterfactual information makes the task daunting. Though the vast majority of climatologists support the global-warming theory, much of the media coverage gives approximately equal weight to the proponents of each side of the debate. … We need to recognize the likelihood that some climate changes are probable rather than improbable.”

Pretzel logic aside, foreword-looking insurers are adapting to a host of risks and opportunities.  Technology and business practices are changing as fast as fast as the climate itself. This is already reshaping the demand for insurance.  New risks will arise, e.g. those associated with carbon capture and storage, a revival of nuclear power, and geoengineering. Insurers that ignore this transition do so at their peril.

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Growing up in the 1950s, “Made in Japan” was synonymous with “cheap junk.” Responding to the needs of a world that hungered for more labor-saving devices, Japanese manufacturers shifted to higher-value products and quality improved. Today, “Land of the Rising Sun” companies like Honda boast the hydrogen-powered Clarity automobile and Toto makes high-tech toilets that do everything from chemically analyze your urine to heat water that massages your backside. American manufacturing: Can it be Born Again?Photo: scorzonera via FlickrIn those same decades, American manufacturing has gone from the global leader in innovation and quality to a laggard in producing almost anything. Just as Japan reinvented its manufacturing base ahead of massive global economic and technological demand, can “Made in America” once again mean something special—this time ahead of the needs of both the economy and the environment?Many economists argue that manufacturing—and the jobs it creates—is crucial to long-term economic stability. Such reasoning makes sense, because a factory takes time to build and often requires infrastructure investments, like roads, ports, and rail lines, which are also permanent. The beneficial ripple effect includes property taxes pumped into local economies, workers who buy new homes, and utilities that scale up to power the machinery, further enhancing long-term, stable economic growth.But is there anything left for America to manufacture, given that we have clearly lost our manufacturing mojo to places like Japan for innovation (compare Toyota’s Prius to GM’s Hummer) and China for cost (what product in Walmart is not made in China?)? The answer is yes—if we focus on products for the growing low-carbon economy.For example, the Lyman-Morse boatyard in Thomaston, Maine has a multi-generational reputation for excellence in boat building, but has seen orders drop during the current recession. They turned their skills to manufacturing ZeroBase, a solar-powered generator that replaces the need for diesel fuel to get 24/7 energy at homes, factories, or remote locations. Controlled via the Internet and built to withstand the same rigors that would normally assault a New England lobster boat, the ZeroBase solar generator is now in use by the military at forward bases in Afghanistan (where refueling traditional generators costs a breathtaking $800 per gallon and risks lives, according to senior Air Force official, and is about to be shipped to Haiti to power field hospitals. Lyman-Morse kept over 100 highly-skilled workers in manufacturing jobs in the process.In California this month, Cobalt Biofuels cut the ribbon on a factory to make transportation fuels from all kinds of plant materials, including stalks and other biological waste materials. When completed, the factory will employ 1,300 workers and be among the world leaders in producing efficient alternatives to oil. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger credits his manufacturing equipment tax credit for landing the factory in California and according to a study by the University of California (Berkeley), California’s incentives and low-carbon energy policies will create over 400,000 jobs in the next decade and increase household income by $48 billion—most of that in some type of green tech manufacturing.The lesson is that the U.S. can revitalize its essential manufacturing sector by focusing on products that deliver the low carbon economy that consumers around the world now hunger for—new ways to use common solar panels, such as ZeroBase; sustainable alternatives to oil, such as Cobalt; and things like energy efficient controls or lighting, to name a few. In essence, make better versions for the future of the products that other countries are making in business-as-usual ways today.I don’t know what someone in Japan thinks now when they see a product with the label “Made in America,” but I do know what color they would be if we focus on low carbon product manufacturing—green—as in a greener environment, more greenbacks for the U.S. economy, and just plain green with envy.

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The vision of a massive nationwide superhighway of high voltage transmission lines may have died last week in the Supreme Court. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Overshadowed by the (terrible) Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court essentially upheld the right of states to block high voltage transmission wires. At issue was the right of the federal government to override a state’s veto of a new transmission line. Electric utilities had appealed the Piedmont Environmental Council’s victory in a lower court decision, but the high court’s refusal to review means that states will retain the authority to refuse new high voltage transmission lines.   In recent months, there has been significant pressure to create a nationwide transmission “superhighway” for renewable energy, with distinct onramps for new wind and solar in the Midwest and Southwest and offramps delivering that power to the West and East. Rapid construction of this system requires both federal preemption of state review of transmission planning and new formulas for cost-sharing between onramp and offramp states.  The SCOTUS decision means we have to find another way. And this isn’t a bad thing.First, high voltage lines are incredibly unpopular. No one wants them in their community. NIMBY activists—many of them environmentalists—can block (will block) their construction in countless states for decades. What is equally unpopular is seizing land to build them. Finally, the beltway vision of importing energy to every state isn’t all that popular out here in the states. States prefer sharing the benefits renewable energy development to sharing the costs of a transmission superhighway (especially if they’re only paying for “offramps”). In May 2009, the governors of ten East Coast states wrote to senior members of Congress to protest proposals that “could jeopardize our states’ efforts to develop wind resources…”  They added, “it is well accepted that local generation is more responsive and effective in solving reliability issues than long distance energy inputs.”  In November 2009, five Western governors joined the fray, writing an opposition letter to U.S. Senate leaders who were proposing greater federal preemption of state authority. “Region wide cost allocation proposals [for high voltage transmission] may hinder our states’ efforts to develop renewable resources and establish federal jurisdiction in an area traditionally handled by states,” the governors said.  Finally, federal preemption for this transmission superhighway would—ironically—undermine efficient energy planning. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission operators have explicitly said that they will not and do not review alternatives to transmission. States, however, are often required to examine alternatives, from robust energy efficiency to local renewable energy generation on the distribution grid.  Federal preemption of transmission planning—politically unpopular and costly—would have been a serious detour from the popular and effective course toward clean energy being set at the state level.Instead, we need to embrace the vision of local clean energy building local economies.For example, ACEEE has detailed the stunning potential to reduce states’ fossil fuel footprint with energy efficiency. Virginia could get 19 percent of its 2025 electric load from energy efficiency savings; Ohio and Pennsylvania could meet 33 percent of their 2025 load with efficiency; initial results from smart grid pilots by IBM in Fayetteville, N.C., found energy consumption reductions of 15 percent.  States can build up their own renewable energy generation—and their economies—as they reduce their load.  A perfect example: Minnesota’s utilities performed a state-mandated study of the state’s grid and found hundreds of megawatts of capacity for distributed renewables with minimal investments in new transmission. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance recently released a report I co-authored, “Energy Self-Reliant States,” that vividly illustrates how states can tap the energy and economic benefits of their own renewable energy resources. The report finds that two-thirds of states could be totally self-reliant on in-state renewable energy resources with sufficient storage.  Energy advocates share the goal of transitioning quickly to a clean energy future. The Supreme Court has meant that future is driven by local energy. And that is a good thing.

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Barack Obama’s first official State of the Union speech is tomorrow at 6pm Pacific. Pondering what to say about it, I’ve become a bit nostalgic for Bush-era SOTUs. We’d all gather around the screen and wait for him to say the word “energy” or, in a few rare cases, “climate.” When he said the U.S. is “addicted to oil” it was news for weeks. It was all so simple then.

Expectations are higher for Obama; therein lies the rub. All of 2009 was a process of downsizing expectations. Now it seems the big news of the speech is going to be a three-year freeze in non-security discretionary spending. When you dig into the details there’s not much to this—it’s actually a two-year freeze, based on 2011 spending levels, which are unusually jacked up. It’s like using a 2005 baseline to say you’re cutting carbon (ahem). So the spending discipline is notional, which is good: It would, after all, be idiotic to substantially cut federal spending during an economic downturn with 10% unemployment.

But who is supposed to be fooled? It won’t make much impact on the deficit; it won’t reduce unemployment. It might win some token praise from Republicans and conservative Democrats, but in exchange for what? Will they lift a finger to help the rest of Obama’s agenda? Most of all, this could not be more demoralizing for a Democratic base that’s already choked down insufficient stimulus, grinding diminution of the clean energy bill, the implosion of health care reform, total regulatory capture by the financial industry,  and a large increase in already stratospheric military spending.

While it may not be much of a substantive concession, Obama’s spending freeze is a high-profile (and panicky looking) affirmation of basic conservative framing: cutting the deficit is an appropriate response to economic downturn; government spending is bloated; there’s enough “wasteful spending” to trim our way to a balanced budget. As Nate Silver says, this is going to make every subsequent initiative more difficult:

Every time the Democrats propose a jobs bill, or a big investment in alternative energy, you’re going to have Krauthammer and Kristol chomping at the bit to go on Fox News and proclaim Obama to be a hypocrite. Pity Robert Gibbs trying to parse his way out of that.

The freeze sends the message that the increased support for clean energy RD&D in the stimulus bill was temporary; there will be no sustained national campaign to invest in a bright green future.

Given that its marquee proposal is a pound of flesh for conservatives in the guise of “focusing on the economy,” what can be expected from Obama’s speech with regard to the clean energy bill now in the Senate?

(As an aside: how inane is it that health care and clean energy bills that reduce the deficit will likely be eclipsed by ... small-fry, purely symbolic gestures at reducing the deficit?)

There’s plenty Obama could do if he wanted to galvanize supporters and signal new commitment to his core objectives. He could threaten to veto any bill that doesn’t contain a hard cap on CO2 emissions. He could state clearly that revenue from a price on carbon should be divided between direct dividends to households and investments in a clean energy future. He could stand foursquare behind the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, with or without a bill. He could call for a substantial and permanent increase in the level of public investment in clean energy R&D and infrastructure. He could remind Congress that it stands in the way of international efforts to deal with an oncoming catastrophe.

Will he do any of those things? I doubt it. My guess is the best to hope for is an explicit mention of the need for a carbon cap alongside energy provisions in the Senate. Maybe this will be oblique, a reference to “comprehensive legislation.” Maybe it will even be explicit. But will Obama seriously lean on the Senate to strengthen the bill? Will he set high expectations or issue a moral call to action? Given the deference he’s shown Congress up to now, it seems unlikely.

One long-shot I’ll be watching for: in his upcoming jobs plan Obama will include a program to retrofit homes for energy efficiency. (“Home Star”—see here and here.) I know lots of work has been going on behind the scenes to shape this program and get it ready for rollout. Perhaps it will be highlighted in the speech;  maybe there will even be a big number attached.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in 2009, it’s this: don’t get your hopes up.

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Frank LuntzI finally got around to reading through the latest polling and focus group results from messaging whiz Frank Luntz. Luntz, for those of you who don’t already know, is infamous in green circles as the author of a 1995 memo coaching Republicans on how to win the environmental messaging war. (See Amanda Little’s 2007 interview with Luntz about the memo and more.)

Now he’s been conscripted by the forces of good and light, and his latest results are geared toward helping to find a bipartisan path forward on climate and energy. The full report is here (PDF); a couple of themes pop out.

The first thing to note is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Democrats are incredibly well-positioned to make climate/energy an electoral advantage.

Why? Luntz found—as virtually all polls on the subject have found over the last decade—that substantial majorities believe climate change is happening, human beings are responsible, and something needs to be done about it. That is true across party lines.

It’s worth repeating: the public accepts climate change and wants to address it. That battle is won. All the bloggers and cable TV talkers arguing over the latest scientific pseudo-scandal? They’re only talking to each other. Despite Herculean efforts by greens to educate the public and popularize the issue, most people just aren’t particularly interested in the details of climate change as such. It’s not a top priority.

What the public wants, and what polls well, are forward-looking, no-regrets solutions. The key focus for messaging ought to be on the benefits of action. If the public empowers Democrats to reform energy use via legislation,  performance standards, and public investments,  what will the public receive in exchange?

The benefits the public most prioritizes are energy independence, good health, American jobs, and accountability for businesses and corporations. Any supporter of climate action with access to a microphone, Democrat or sane Republican,  should be hitting those four themes over and over and over and over and over and over again until they have bored the pants off the reporters covering them. And themselves. No one should have any pants.

With those four themes occupying 99% of the messaging,  1% can be divided among: polar bears, ice caps, carbon neutrality,  clean energy tax credits, renewable energy portfolios, and ... God help us all ... “cap-and-trade.”

Health care should have been a warning. Arguably, what’s turned the American public against health care reform is not the substance of the legislation but the endless, contentious, torturous process of creating it. The public hates sausage-making and back-room dealing; they hate vituperative disputes over mechanisms and statistics. They hate politics, really. They just want their leaders to do right by them.

“Cap-and-trade” puts process jargon squarely in the spotlight. Predictably enough, it’s been a disaster. It means nothing to the public,  a blank slate to be filled by competing PR campaigns.  Greenish politicos are stuck explaining policy details many if not most of them don’t understand, while conservatives quickly inscribed the term with well-established narratives— intrusive government,  taxes, socialism, etc.—that resonate with their overall strategy and identity. It was always an unfair fight and it’s only destined to get worse. Allowing cap-and-trade to become the center of the discussion is the greatest green messaging failure of the last decade.

The key for clean energy supporters is to wrest the discussion away from policy mechanisms and IPCC statistics and toward the benefits of climate/energy solutions: energy independence, good health,  American jobs, and accountability for businesses and corporations.

Some have been good about this. Ironically, some of the best messaging came from Waxman and Markey, in the House, way back 400 years ago when this process got underway. But they were never able to enforce any message discipline on their colleagues and the media proved, as usual, utterly resistant to new thoughts. The White House has been good on the jobs and economy messaging but the Senate has been predictably awful, with conservadems from coal and ag states amplifying conservative attacks.

The only thing that can rescue the bill needed to give markets predictable rules of the road,  international partners reassurance that the U.S. is serious, and Dems a victory after the tragicomic implosion of health care reform is a concerted effort to change the narrative. That could begin on Wednesday night, with Obama’s State of the Union speech, but it would only survive if the rest of the Dem caucus and the progressive messaging infrastructure rowed in the same direction.

You know. How that happens.

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