by Judith Curry
Climate change is back on President Obama’s agenda.
Several months ago, an article appeared in the Huffington Post entitled State of the Union Speech Promises Climate Change Executive Action. Excerpts:
Obama used a portion of his speech to argue the science behind climate change, an indication of just how far Washington is from acting. “Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend,” Obama said. “But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods –- all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science -– and act before it’s too late.”
But what he’d do beyond conservation remained unsaid, noted Forecast the Facts campaign director Daniel Souweine.
“While we are excited to hear the president connect the dots between climate change and increasingly severe weather, accurately explaining the problem is not nearly enough,” Souweine said in a statement. “Tonight, President Obama set the lowest possible bar for action — he did not pledge to stop the carbon-spewing Keystone XL Pipeline nor promise carbon regulations on existing power plants. In fact, he pledged no specific actions at all.”
So, how is all this playing out?
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) have released a letter to the President describing six key components the advisory group believes should be central to the Administration’s strategy for addressing climate change. Excerpts:
The 9-page “letter report” responds to a November request from the President for advice as the Administration prepares new initiatives to tackle the challenges posed by Earth’s changing climate. The letter calls for a dual focus on mitigation—reducing the pace and magnitude of climate-related changes—and adaptation—minimizing the unavoidable damage that can be expected to result from climate change.
The six key components are:
- Focus on national preparedness for climate change, which can help decrease damage from extreme weather events now and speed recovery from future damage;
- Continue efforts to decarbonize the economy, with emphasis on the electricity sector;
- Level the playing field for clean-energy and energy-efficiency technologies by removing regulatory obstacles, addressing market failures, adjusting tax policies, and providing time-limited subsidies for clean energy when appropriate;
- Sustain research on next-generation clean-energy technologies and remove obstacles for their eventual deployment;
- Take additional steps to establish U.S. leadership on climate change internationally; and
- Conduct an initial Quadrennial Energy Review.
Science and EOS interview some of the scientists involved in writing the letter, and also reactions from other scientists. Excerpts from EOS:
Noting that disaster relief is in many ways an insurance of last resort, Shrag said, “We have to ensure that the economic incentives are aligned with long‐term safety and security and moving the country toward reducing its vulnerabilities. Right now, we have too many programs that essentially provide financial incentives for people to live in harm’s way, and we have to ultimately reform those over time.” He added that when there is an oppor- tunity to rebuild following a disaster, such as Hurricane Sandy, “we shouldn’t just rebuild; we need to rebuild better.”
The report includes specific recommendations, although Shrag said the intent of the report is to offer “some options for the president in the start of his second term going forward.” He said the report “provides the president a menu of choices that he can choose from.” Among the recommendations Shrag noted are to create a National Commission on Climate Preparedness that would be charged with proposing an overall framework and blueprint for ongoing data collection, planning, and action; to develop an infrastructure renewal plan that integrates climate preparedness “and other benefits to the Nation’s economy”; and to improve the coordination and support for research efforts on climate change preparedness.
In addition, Shrag noted that the report calls for supporting the continued expansion of shale gas production, “ensuring that environmental impacts of production and transport do not curtail the potential of this approach”; continuing the implementation of Clean Air Act requirements on pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury and creating new performance standards for carbon dioxide emissions from existing stationary sources; accelerating efforts to reduce regulatory obstacles for carbon capture and storage; and leveling the playing field for clean energy and energy efficiency technologies by removing regulatory obstacles, adjusting tax policies, and other measures.
Excerpts from Nature article A more modest climate agenda for Obama’s second term:
When it comes to tackling climate change, President Barack Obama once had grand ambitions, including forging a global deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and persuading Congress to enact legislation that would impose fees on U.S. carbon pollution. With those hopes dashed by political realities, however, the president’s science advisers last week proposed some potentially more doable climate actions that Obama could take during his second term. But some climate scientists say that the proposals, while laudable, fall short of what’s needed.
Conspicuously absent from PCAST’s list, however, are the big climate agenda items from Obama’s first term, including setting a price on carbon and negotiating a global pact. In large part, the omissions reflect PCAST’s interest in focusing on things that Obama “could push for and achieve,” Schrag says. “A price on carbon would be great, but we don’t expect it to happen politically” because of opposition in Congress.
That approach isn’t sitting well with some researchers. “It is not PCAST’s job to do Obama’s political strategizing for him,” says climate modeler Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago in Illinois. “I believe that PCAST should have emphasized the importance of implementing a price on carbon.” It is “one thing to be realistic about what legislation you can pass this year,” adds geochemist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. “It is another thing entirely not to be realistic about the scale of energy transition our nation must undertake if we are to make a substantial dent in climate risk.”
Other critics note that the report is silent on whether the White House should approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, which opponents say would promote unwise energy development. Eighteen scientists, led by NASA climatologist James Hansen, urged the president earlier this year to stop the project, saying it runs counter to “national and planetary interests.”
Instead of wading into such “largely political” issues, PCAST emphasized a topic that often gets short shrift in policy discussions, Schrag says: the need “to prepare the country for the impacts of climate change.” The proposed preparedness commission, he says, could help lay the ground work for changing “federal policies on disaster relief and insurance … [so] that financial capital, when invested following a disaster, is used not just to rebuild, but to rebuild better.” Homes could be moved out of coastal areas that are likely to be flooded again by rising seas, for example, and farming areas could be better prepared for droughts. The United States has “too many programs that essentially provide economic incentives for people to live in harm’s way,” Schrag told PCAST at a briefing.
Efforts to adapt to climate change “will ultimately be overwhelmed,” however, unless the government moves to curb, or mitigate, carbon emissions, PCAST notes. That’s why the report also encourages Obama to support more drilling for natural gas, which produces fewer carbon emissions than oil or coal. And it urges the expansion of tax credits for developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power.
But energy expert Robert Socolow of Princeton University says PCAST’s emphasis on “adaptation first and mitigation second” could help reframe public discussion about such policies. There is a large “overlap of climate threats and threats we already deal with,” such as floods and droughts, he notes. Linking the two could “reduce resistance” to discussing climate policy, Socolow says, and reopen a “completely muffled” national conversation.
Roger Pielke Jr likes it:
In a refreshing break from the polarizing debates of recent years, President Obama’s science and technology advisors have released a new set of recommendations on climate policy that are indicative of a growing consensus around pragmatic, commonsense actions that may offer great prospects for implementing effective policies.
The recommendations mark a sharp departure from many of the divisive and politically toxic proposals that often characterize climate policy discussions and a repudiation of the most divisive approaches, such as found in the misguided campaign against Keystone XL.