All major emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases need to rapidly and cost-effectively transition to a low-carbon economy, in both the production and use of energy and the management of forests and agricultural lands. In order to ensure food, water, and human security, and to protect the world’s biodiversity, the goal should be to limit the global average temperature rise to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels…. Without concerted action now, the world will be faced with temperature increases far in excess of 2 degrees C, with unthinkable impacts.

Dr. Robert Watson was chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1997 to 2002.  He was opposed by fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and the Bush administration waged a successful campaign to have him replaced with Rajendra Pachauri.  Now Watson is Strategic Director for the Tyndall Center at the University of East Anglia and Chief Scientific Advisor for the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.  Yale’s Environment 360 online magazine has a piece by him they have given me permission to repost.

Until last December, a very large majority of the scientific community and most politicians would have agreed that the scientific evidence of human-induced climate change was unequivocal and that the sole question was whether the world’s political leaders could agree in Copenhagen to meaningful, legally binding greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. But, as we now know, the negotiations only produced an aspirational target of limiting the global mean surface temperature to no more than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and an accord that does not bind any country to reduce its emissions.

Since then, there have been reported errors and imprecise wording in the Fourth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued in 2007. These include the hyped statement that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 or earlier (the IPCC admitted that this was an outright error and not evidence-based); that agricultural production in some North African countries would decrease by up to 50 percent by 2020 (the synthesis report failed to include the nuances and more detailed discussion in the underlying chapter); and that over half of the Netherlands was below sea level, rather than a quarter. (This was largely a definitional issue — the Dutch Ministry of Transport uses the figure 60 percent below high water level during storms.)

These errors or imprecise wording in the IPCC’s 2007 Working Group II report, coupled with the issues surrounding the hacked e-mails and temperature data from the University of East Anglia, have provided the climate skeptics and some in the media with ammunition to undermine public confidence in the conclusions of the IPCC and climate science in general.

Clearly, the language in the leaked e-mails could suggest that the scientists may have inappropriately manipulated the data to support the theory of human-induced climate change and attempted to suppress other data that contradicts this theory. That is why I applaud the University of East Anglia — affiliated with the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, where I work as strategic director — for rapidly establishing an independent review of the whole issue. But to suggest that the hacked e-mails or the identified inaccuracies in the IPCC’s Working Group II report undermine the broad evidence that the Earth’s climate is changing due to human activities — or that any talk of carbon emissions cuts should be suspended — is simply untenable.

Recently, the UK Royal Society, the National Environment Research Council and the UK Meteorological Office issued a joint statement not only supporting the findings of the 2007 IPCC report, but showing that recent scientific information further strengthens those conclusions. The statement concluded that these agencies could not emphasize enough the body of scientific evidence that underpins the call for action now. Also, a statement from 11 science academies in developed and developing countries concluded that climate change is real, and that we need to prepare for the consequences, and urged all nations to take prompt action to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

So let me return to the issue of the IPCC, which is one of the most rigorous scientific review bodies in existence. Many thousands of scientists have dedicated their time to preparing and reviewing the most comprehensive and authoritative assessments of climate science available. In addition, governments from around the world have reviewed and approved the IPCC’s key findings. The reports undergo two rounds of peer review, and the policymakers’ summaries of the working groups are then subjected to a word-by-word approval of all governments in the presence of the chapter lead authors.

In many cases, the IPCC is very conservative in its statements, e.g., the projections of sea level rise reported in Working Group I were based on contributions from thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of mountain glaciers, but did not contain a contribution from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, due to an inadequate understanding of the current rate of melting.

Some would say that only four mistakes or imprecise wording have been found in the 1,000-page Working Group II report, and none in working groups I and III, and so would ask: Is there really a problem? But given that each of the mistakes overstated the implications of climate change, it is critical to regain any lost trust from the media, public, governments, and private sector. The IPCC could start by posting all errors — accompanied by explanations of how they were made — on its Web site.

I see no evidence that the authors purposely overstated the potential impacts from climate change in an effort to convince the public of the seriousness of the threat. The threat is serious enough without the need to hype the issue. But the expert and government peer-review process should have caught these inaccuracies and careless wordings. The vast amount of attention in the print and TV media, especially in the UK, has clearly left some of the public confused, if not skeptical.

The challenge now is to regain any lost trust through a continuing re-examination and restatement of the evidence, clearly identifying what we know and what is still uncertain. It is critical that the public understand the issue of climate change, given the need to both mitigate and adapt in a cost-effective and socially responsible manner.

So does the IPCC process need to be significantly revised? I would argue no, that the IPCC is more than capable of conducting rigorous and reliable assessments in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner. But the IPCC needs to regain its full and deserved credibility. The procedures for the selection of authors and review editors and the peer-review process and approval of reports are all sound. What is needed is to tighten up the implementation of these procedures, coupled with training of authors and review editors. The selected authors need to represent the full range of credible views, including those of the skeptics, and must ensure that all statements are based on sound science and that the citations used contain convincing evidence.

The IPCC should consider shorter reports focused on the key issues, rather than the all-encompassing reports that have become the norm. Authors, peer reviewers, and the working group secretariats need to be absolutely rigorous in ensuring that all conclusions are backed up by evidence, with an accurate assessment of how good the evidence is, and that all of the citations are valid. Gray literature — i.e., the use of non-peer-reviewed literature — can and should be used as long as it is evidence-based and available to the peer reviewers for evaluation.

One criticism often aimed at the IPCC is that it is inflexible and unable to conduct rapid response assessments of new evidence due to the requirements of two rounds of peer review involving experts and governments. One solution to this weakness is to complement, not replace, the IPCC by developing a “peer-reviewed” Wikipedia that can continually update the evidence and synthesize the findings and note where the new evidence strengthens, modifies, or undermines previous conclusions.

In my opinion, there is no doubt that the evidence for human-induced climate change is irrefutable. The world’s leading scientists, many of whom have participated in the IPCC, overwhelmingly agree that what we’re experiencing cannot be attributed to natural variation in the climate over time, but is due to human activities. And they also agree that if we do not act, climate change will continue apace with increasing droughts, floods, and rising seas, leading to major damaging impacts to the natural world (loss of species and critical ecosystem services) and society (displaced human populations).

There is no doubt that the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has increased significantly over the past 150 years primarily due to human activities. These gases are radiatively active and absorb and trap outgoing infrared radiation from the Earth’s surface and hence, based on simple physics, the Earth’s atmosphere must respond by warming. The only issue is by how much and when.

The IPCC concluded that the global temperature data and analyses are robust, with evidence of increasingly variable and extreme temperatures, coupled with increasingly severe weather events, heat waves, floods, and droughts. While a number of scientists argue that some of the land temperature data is contaminated and unreliable because of the urban heat-island effect and movement of observational sites, ocean data — as well balloon and satellite data — also show an increasingly warmer world. These data sets are clearly free from any potential contamination from any urban heat island effect.

In addition, the evidence for a changing climate over the past 100 years also comes from observed changes in retreating mountain glaciers throughout most of the world, a decline in the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice, melting of the Greenland ice sheet, changes in precipitation patterns, and changes in vegetation and the behavior of wildlife. Yet despite this accumulating evidence, the challenges of the skeptics must be fully addressed.

The key question is the cause of the observed changes in temperature. The IPCC concluded that it is more than 90 percent certain that most of the observed changes over the past 50 to 60 years are due to human activities and that the changes cannot be explained by known natural phenomena.

Future increases in greenhouse gas concentrations are projected to be accompanied by increased climate variability and more extreme climatic events, leading in general to adverse impacts on agriculture, water quantity and quality, coastal erosion, loss of biodiversity, and degradation of ecosystem services. Developing countries will be the most vulnerable. Therefore, it is clear that climate change is not only an environmental issue, but a development and security issue.

Even as the climate science becomes more definitive, polls show that public concern in the United States about global warming has been declining. What will it take to rally Americans behind the need to take strong action on cutting carbon emissions?

All major emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases need to rapidly and cost-effectively transition to a low-carbon economy, in both the production and use of energy and the management of forests and agricultural lands. In order to ensure food, water, and human security, and to protect the world’s biodiversity, the goal should be to limit the global average temperature rise to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels. This will require a peak of global emissions of all greenhouse gases by around 2015, and at least a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050, relative to 1990. Without concerted action now, the world will be faced with temperature increases far in excess of 2 degrees C, with unthinkable impacts.

An equitable and substantive post-Kyoto agreement is essential if the target of 2 degrees C is to be realized. Industrialized countries must demonstrate leadership, and provide developing countries with technical and financial assistance to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions while they address the critical issues of poverty and hunger.

Given the limited success at Copenhagen, 2010 is a critical year for the world’s political leaders to unite in the fight against climate change. Strong and visionary political leadership will be essential. We must not allow the skeptics to use the incident at the University of East Anglia or the mistakes in the IPCC report to distract us or derail the political will to safeguard the planet.

– Dr. Robert Watson

[JR:  I agree with much of what Watson says, including the need for the IPCC to do "shorter reports focused on the key issues" (see "The IPCC lowballs likely impacts with its instantly out-of-date reports and is clearly clueless on messaging — should it be booted or just rebooted?")]

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

The statement calls for increased transparency, and expresses concerns about the public confidence in science if the transparency is absent. The IoP statement, however, fails to note that the issue of transparency is far more general applicable than just to mainstream climate science. It should also involve the critics of climate change, as noted by New Scientist.

The statement also fails to clarify what level of transparency they expect the climate scientists to reach. Which scientific discipline should we use as a role model? I know of none that is more transparent than climate science, and in large part that s due to the IPCC. Ironically, without this transparency, the climate-change deniers would not get as much ammunition. For instance, note how the attacks on the NASA GISTEMP product have become more vehement in recent months even though the code base and data have been available for years and clearly demonstrate that the criticisms are bogus.

Another question arises is whether the IoP follows its own recommendations in its own publications?

The statement of the IoP was made on the behalf of its 36000 members, but as a member of IoP myself, this came as a surprise. According to the Guardian, there was only a small group of people behind this, and other IoP members was obviously not very impressed. The IoP did, however, make a second statement after their initial one was misrepresented by the climate-change deniers (there is some confusion about versions).

The irony of this affair is that the IoP will not disclose who were responsible for the original statement, thus not living up to the standards they set for others.

Furthermore, it’s a paradox that the IoP based the statement on stolen private e-mail exchanges, while putting disclaimers about confidentiality, especially as it asks people to delete any e-mail before they go astray:

This email (and attachments) are confidential and intended for the addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient please notify the sender, delete any copies and do not take action in reliance on it…

Transparency is essential for trust and confidence in science – as in all matters – but claims about lack of transparency are easy to make. It’s another question whether the alleged lack of transparency in climate science has had any impact on anyone’s ability to verify the science.

This article was originally posted on Real Climate

[Note: Edited Toyota velocities to reflect relative radiative forcings of anthropogenic CO₂ and methane. David]

For some background on methane hydrates we can refer you here. This weeks’ Science paper is by Shakhova et al, a follow on to a 2005 GRL paper. The observation in 2005 was elevated concentrations of methane in ocean waters on the Siberian shelf, presumably driven by outgassing from the sediments and driving excess methane to the atmosphere. The new paper adds observations of methane spikes in the air over the water, confirming the methane’s escape from the water column, instead of it being oxidized to CO₂ in the water, for example. The new data enable the methane flux from this region to the atmosphere to be quantified, and they find that this region rivals the methane flux from the whole rest of the ocean.

What’s missing from these studies themselves is evidence that the Siberian shelf degassing is new, a climate feedback, rather than simply nature-as-usual, driven by the retreat of submerged permafrost left over from the last ice age. However, other recent papers speak to this question.

Westbrook et al 2009, published stunning sonar images of bubble plumes rising from sediments off Spitzbergen, Norway. The bubbles are rising from a line on the sea floor that corresponds to the boundary of methane hydrate stability, a boundary that would retreat in a warming water column. A modeling study by Reagan and Moridis 2009 supports the idea that the observed bubbles could be in response to observed warming of the water column driven by anthropogenic warming.

Another recent paper, from Dlugokencky et al. 2009, describes an uptick in the methane concentration in the air in 2007, and tries to figure out where it’s coming from. The atmospheric methane concentration rose from the preanthropogenic until about the year 1993, at which point it rather abruptly plateaued. Methane is a transient gas in the atmosphere, so it ought to plateau if the emission flux is steady, but the shape of the concentration curve suggested some sudden decrease in the emission rate, stemming from the collapse of economic activity in the former Soviet bloc, or by drying of wetlands, or any of several other proposed and unresolved explanations. (Maybe the legislature in South Dakota should pass a law that methane is driven by astrology!) A previous uptick in the methane concentration in 1998 could be explained in terms of the effect of el Nino on wetlands, but the uptick in 2007 is not so simple to explain. The concentration held steady in 2008, meaning at least that interannual variability is important in the methane cycle, and making it hard to say if the long-term average emission rate is rising in a way that would be consistent with a new carbon feedback.

Anyway, so far it is at most a very small feedback. The Siberian Margin might rival the whole rest of the world ocean as a methane source, but the ocean source overall is much smaller than the land source. Most of the methane in the atmosphere comes from wetlands, natural and artificial associated with rice agriculture. The ocean is small potatoes, and there is enough uncertainty in the methane budget to accommodate adjustments in the sources without too much overturning of apple carts.

Could this be the first modest sprout of what will grow into a huge carbon feedback in the future? It is possible, but two things should be kept in mind. One is that there’s no reason to fixate on methane in particular. Methane is a transient gas in the atmosphere, while CO₂ essentially accumulates in the atmosphere / ocean carbon cycle, so in the end the climate forcing from the accumulating CO₂ that methane oxidizes into may be as important as the transient concentration of methane itself. The other thing to remember is that there’s no reason to fixate on methane hydrates in particular, as opposed to the carbon stored in peats in Arctic permafrosts for example. Peats take time to degrade but hydrate also takes time to melt, limited by heat transport. They don’t generally explode instantaneously.

For methane to be a game-changer in the future of Earth’s climate, it would have to degas to the atmosphere catastrophically, on a time scale that is faster than the decadal lifetime of methane in the air. So far no one has seen or proposed a mechanism to make that happen.

References

Dlugokencky et al., Observational constraints on recent increases in the atmospheric CH₄ burden. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L18803, doi:10.1029/2009GL039780, 2009

Reagan, M. and G. Moridis, Large-scale simulation of methane hydrate dissociation along the West Spitsbergen Margin, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L23612, doi:10.1029/2009GL041332, 2009

Shakhova et al., Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, Science 237: 1246-1250, 2010

Shakhova et al., The distribution of methane on the Siberian Arctic shelves: Implications for the marine methane cycle, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L09601, doi:10.1029/2005GL022751, 2005

Westbrook, G., et al, Escape of methane gas from the seabed along the West Spitsbergen continental margin, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L15608, doi:10.1029/2009GL039191, 2009

This article was originally posted on Real Climate

But thanks to conservative opposition to clean energy from Reagan to the Gingrich Congress to Cheney/Bush, the U.S. share of the PV market has plummeted.  By 2008, America had under 6% (!) of the world market (see AllBusiness’s “United States is a bit player in global solar industry“).

Now the Department of Energy is taking steps to improve the domestic manufacturing base, as guest blogger Jacob Abraham, an intern with CAP’s Energy Opportunity team, reports.

Businesses are stepping up to the plate to harness the economic opportunity that solar photovoltaics (PV) offer.  The Department of Energy reports that four new solar manufacturing plants are making their way to states around the country.  New solar manufacturing facilities will bring both jobs and solar power to Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Oregon.

Dow Chemical Company launched its solar project in Midland, Michigan earlier this month to launch its first full-scale Powerhouse solar shingle facility, which will help homeowners reduce electricity costs and green their homes using innovative solar shingles.  Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) just announced that it will award Dow Chemical $61.3 million in tax credits over 15 years to be used in a variety of projects.  Dow’s expansion into Michigan will create over 6,900 new jobs, and the increased funding will allow Dow to move the project up to full scale plant.  Governor Jennifer Granholm praised the clean-energy explosion:

We have worked hard to make Michigan the clean-energy capital of North America and focused our initiatives to grow these industries here.  Dow’s decisions to locate these facilities here demonstrate that our investments in green, clean-energy manufacturing are creating jobs and helping Michigan transition to a new 21st century economy.

The Arizona project, estimated to create between 30 and 120 MW of solar power per year and employ local residents of Goodyear, Arizona, is actually funded by the Chinese company Suntech Power, the world’s largest manufacturer of crystalline silicon PV modules.  Mayor Jan Brewer applauds the new plant as a crucial step toward making Arizona a leader in the clean energy economy:

I commend the company for choosing Goodyear as the site for its solar manufacturing operation.  I am very serious about establishing Arizona as a leader in the renewable energy sector — we offer a strategic location with a highly skilled workforce, low payroll taxes, and, now, the right incentive program to make business sense.

Other states, too, will gain new capacities as a result of new business incentives.  Heliosphera US plans to build a thin-film solar plant in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard using a $49 million incentive package of loans and grants provided by the State of Pennsylvania.  In Oregon, SolarWorld is bringing a new solar module assembly line to its manufacturing plant in Hillsboro, Oregon increasing the plant size 210,000-square-foot building, with the capacity to produce 350 MW of solar modules per year

These manufacturing plants come just as Obama’s Savannah speech on Tuesday promoting HOMESTAR, a program designed to incentivize home retrofitting, government funding for investment in renewables.  Just as hopes for home energy efficiency are on the upswing after President, Americans will soon be able to use products such as Dow’s Powerhouse solar shingles to retrofit their roofs, increase their energy efficiency, and cut energy costs.

With solar giants like eSolar making deals with Google, China, and the German company Ferrostaal, the industry’s capacity is growing rapidly.  Additional U.S. companies need to step up and invest, or risk being left behind. Many states and individual Americans have found ways to integrate solar power into their energy systems, and now it’s time for businesses to do the same.

JR: Ultimately, of course, The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill.  As Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said earlier this year, “Every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy.”

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• “MidEast Oil Forever?” — Part I: Drifting Toward Disaster

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

Mike Gonzalez, Vice President of Communications for Heritage, believes that the scientific consensus on global warming is a massive hoax, perpetrated because of “politicians putting pressure on scientists to come up with theories that would vastly add to their regulatory and taxing powers.” Gonzalez — who abandoned print journalism to become a mid-level speechwriter for the Bush administration — argues that the “whole edifice of global warming is now falling apart” because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is like a birthday-party magician:

The whole edifice of global warming is now falling apart. It is collapsing with such rapidity that it is worth pausing from time to time to take stock. The foundations of such edifice rest on a single assumption. This hypothesis—one that drove many people, even some reasonable ones, to contemplate upending the world as we know it — is that that traditional fuels will have cataclysmic consequences on the environment because they emit gases that make the world too hot.

The authority to turn this assumption into fact rested largely on a U.N. document – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report – which declared climate change “unequivocal” and its man-made origin “very likely.” The purpose of the IPCC report was to turn hypothesis into fact.

The reason Sens. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman had to turn away from cap-and-trade, and target industries individually, is that the idea of an iron-clad scientific consensus is now being revealed to be a bit, shall we say, exaggerated. The IPCC’s turning of hypothesis into fact now looks less like the scientific process and more like the magician you paid $50 an hour to pull flowers out of hats at your daughter’s birthday.

The IPCC report was a summary of existing scientific literature — its conclusions are those of the world’s scientists. The threat of manmade global warming is, quite simply, a fact. As democracy derives much of its strength from the rational debate of ideas, it’s sad to see that the Heritage Foundation has fallen into the swamp of conspiracy theories.

The “edifice of global warming” is the edifice of modern civilization, the edifice of free enterprise, the edifice of Western thought. The great scientific endeavor to understand the world around us — not through superstition and demagoguery but through tedious observation and critical examination — has granted us the modern world, with the promise of previously unimaginable wealth and prosperity for billions. Much of the success of the scientific edifice is its ability to clarify inconvenient truths — to allow society to face difficult decisions and recognize unintended consequences. Treating science like a buffet, picking only the facts that fit his reality and ascribing the rest to an inchoate conspiracy, is a threat to the edifice upon which modern man depends.

JR:  Let me end by quoting the Summary of the November statement by the Met Office (the UK’s National Weather Service [i.e. meteorological office], within the Ministry of Defence), the Natural Environment Research Council, and the UK’s Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of science, “the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence,” founded in 1660):

The 2007 IPCC Assessment, the most comprehensive and respected analysis of climate change to date, states clearly that without substantial global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions we can likely expect a world of increasing droughts, floods and species loss, of rising seas and displaced human populations. However even since the 2007 IPCC Assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened. The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong. Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe.

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

A clean-energy call to arms

As the United States debates comprehensive clean-energy legislation, it is confronted with a simple choice: come to the table and feast on the enormous economic opportunity that comes with reducing global warming pollution or be an item on the menu as our economic competitors forge ahead to build prosperity.

By 2020, clean energy will be one of the world’s biggest industries, totaling as much as $2.3 trillion. Over the past year, other countries made huge investments to seize the economic opportunity provided by the historic shift from fossil-based energy to renewable, low-waste electricity and fuel. These investments weren’t made out of thin air, but were a result of intentional public policies, which in turn provided a strong stimulus for new public and private investment in new clean-energy markets, infrastructure, and human resources.

China, a country that in some ways is only now experiencing an industrial revolution, has made a serious commitment to building that revolution with low-carbon, low-waste technologies and infrastructure. Several European Union countries—notably Germany and Spain—have also turned from old energy policies to embrace the new. These three countries understand that the transformation to a low-carbon economy brings a range of strategic benefits, from climate stability to energy security to economic prosperity.

With that understanding, these countries are moving forward decisively. The United States came in second just behind Germany in absolute sales in a recent global country ranking of 2008 clean-energy technology product sales. But when product sales were expressed as a proportion of respective gross domestic product, the United States was far down the list at 19th, compared to Germany at third, Spain at fourth, and China at sixth. The United States also lags on installed renewable energy per capita as well as per unit of gross domestic product (see Figure 1).

These countries invested in clean energy for short-term benefits and laid a solid foundation for future sustainable economic growth by either setting a price on carbon or implementing strong national energy performance standards or both, thus spurring innovation in new technologies that lower carbon emissions. A 2009 study by the CERNA Research Program on Technology Transfer and Climate Change found clear evidence that developed countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol—each of which set a legally binding target to reduce its carbon emissions—saw a rise in green-tech innovation patents of more than 33 percent (see Figure 2). Developed nations that didn’t initially ratify Kyoto—the United States and Australia—saw no noticeable change in their share of total green tech patents over the same time period.

China, as a developing country, was not obligated to adopt mandatory carbon emission reductions targets under the Kyoto Protocol, but the country did embrace the treaty’s clean development mechanism, or CDM. The CDM allows developed countries to offset their emissions at home by investing in clean-energy projects in developing countries, and China greatly benefitted from the resulting technology transfer, particularly in its wind industry.

Today’s clean-tech innovations represent tomorrow’s jobs and GDP growth. China, Germany, and Spain are well on their way to global competitiveness in the clean energy economy. Besides the clear advantage of having signed onto or directly benefitted from the Kyoto Protocol, these three countries have also benefitted from their early adoption of a truly comprehensive approach to energy and climate policy.

In a September 2009 report, “The Clean-Energy Investment Agenda,” the Center for American Progress identified the need for a long-term, comprehensive approach to clean-energy policy that includes three core policy pillars:

• Markets: Expanding markets and driving demand for new clean and efficient energy products and services
• Financing: Investing across the full value chain of clean-energy solutions—research, development, commercialization, production, and deployment—needed to meet demand
• Infrastructure: Revitalizing and reinvesting in the physical and human capital infrastructure upon which the clean-energy transformation— like all major industrial transformations in the past—will ultimately be built

When we researched Germany, Spain, and China’s approach to the emerging clean energy economy, we found that all three countries have taken just such an approach. In this report, we will take a close look at the policies and programs that make up each country’s approach to building a clean energy economy. We will examine how these policies are creating jobs, boosting industries, and spurring innovation in these three countries.

In addition we will use CAP’s three-pillar framework to demonstrate the specific ways these countries are pursuing a broad range of smart policies to create new markets for clean-energy solutions, strategically channeling finances across the entire innovation and commercialization cycle, and building the necessary support infrastructure for new technologies and fuels.

Our purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive survey of the clean-energy policies of each of these countries. Rather, it is to show how they have become top competitors in the emerging global marketplace of clean energy by adopting a strategic policy approach—and to demonstrate what is at stake for the United States if we fail to learn from their example.

China, Germany, and Spain are early winners in the next great technological and industrial revolution. Many other countries such as Denmark, Japan, and South Korea that we do not discuss in this report are also forging ahead with ambitious clean energy economic strategies. The United States, which has yet to fully embrace a truly sustainable growth strategy for the low-carbon future, is not.

The United States has a clear moral imperative to join the worldwide effort to reverse climate change. But it also has an urgent economic imperative to become a clean-energy leader. The clean-energy achievements of China, Germany, and Spain represent a significant step in the fight against global warming pollution, but their driving motivation has been their own economic self-interest, through creating vibrant new industries, sustainable jobs, and international markets for clean-energy technologies.

We can do the same and we can do better, but not if we use the excuse—as opponents of passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation frequently do—of temporarily weak economic conditions to delay the transformation to a clean energy economy. It is through a failure to act that the United States will suffer economically.

American workers, business leaders, and policymakers struggling under the weight of a historic economic downturn may question the relevance of policies in European and Asian nations. But they should consider just one concrete result of the United States not having a similar policy focus: Less than two years after building a solar manufacturing plant in Devens, Massachusetts, Evergreen Solar—an early U.S. pioneer in solar photovoltaic technology—announced plans to move part of that operation to Wuhan, China.

The race toward a clean-energy future is underway, and those nations that lead will reap enormous economic benefits. With the right investments and smart policies, the United States can be among them, a top player in the emerging global low-carbon economy.

Kate Gordon is the Vice President for Energy Policy at American Progress, Julian L. Wong is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Energy Opportunity team at American Progress, and JT McLain is a contributing author for the Energy Oportunity team at American Progress.

Related Posts:

• Lindsey Graham: “Every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy.”
• The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

Nuclear Cannon A Descendant of Orion

The new Carnival of Space is now out, from which I’ll focus on Brian Wang’s interesting notions on nuclear propulsion. The power behind the indispensable Next Big Future site, Brian has been writing about an Orion variant for some time now, one that should be able to get around the nuclear testing restrictions that put Orion itself into mothballs. A 1963 treaty effectively ended Orion’s prospects, and in 1974 the Threshold Test Ban Treaty was signed, prohibiting the testing of nuclear devices with a yield exceeding 150 kilotons. What can we do with a 150 kiloton upper limit for underground devices, and how does it relate to pulsed propulsion?

Wang envisions building what he calls a ‘nuclear cannon,’ capable of launching heavy payloads into Earth orbit. A 150 kiloton nuclear device is placed at the bottom of a two-mile shaft, packed with boron and other elements that will be converted to plasma. The 3500 ton launch projectile is placed on top. The explosion of the nuke launches it, with a chemical charge being used to quickly fill in the shaft as soon as the projectile clears it, the idea being to contain contamination. Figuring $10 million for the projectile and the propellant to launch it, plus another $20 million for construction of the shaft, Wang calculates launch costs in the neighborhood of $10 per pound, far cheaper than current launch options including the low-ball Russian Dnepr, a three-stage converted ICBM.

We’re not talking human missions here (not at 5000 G’s!) but heavy lift of the basic supplies for industrialization, with our standard launch systems being reserved for more fragile supplies and astronauts. Here’s Wang’s summation of the project’s cost and potential savings:

…100,000 tons of cargo delivered to the moon would be worth $5 trillion at the best prices today. 200,000 tons delivered to orbit would be worth $1 trillion @$5000/kg. If this could be done at one tenth the cost it is still worth $100 billion to orbit and $500 billion to the moon. Getting to one tenth of current costs is an optimistic ten years away and billions in development. The cost is to find a location like another remote island to sacrifice the underground area for nuclear launch similar to the areas sacrificed for underground nuclear testing. However, with proper preparation and a dome with a door and charges to speed the collapse of the shaft, there would be no radiation into the atmosphere.

It’s an intriguing notion, and not out of line with other industrial activities:

Other industries like oil, gas and coal regularly contaminate salt domes and underground and above ground locations. This would be safer and cleaner than those continuing operations. We would use nuclear bombs that are costing money to be maintained in storage and have a risk non-peaceful use. There is no risk of damaging EMP because damaging EMP occurs when a nuclear device is exploded at high altitude.

Interesting concept! Read more about the details here. And be aware that the regular postings of the Carnival of Space, which Brian handled this past week, are a good place to keep up with insights from space bloggers. This week you’ll find, in addition to the nuclear cannon and related links, a mind-boggling look at a Martian avalanche, a discussion of bad science in the movies (Apollo 13 and Contact stand out as exceptions to the rule that Hollywood invariably botches the science in the service of dubious plot lines), and Russia’s allocation of about $16 million for nuclear space projects this year, with plans to increase to $580 million over the next nine. Is the Russian initiative a keeper, and will it inspire new nuclear technologies from the West?

An Eerie Silence Indeed

Prolific author and physicist Paul Davies (Arizona State) will be offering an online lecture on March 31 covering our current SETI work and the prospects for extending it in new directions. His new book The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe is just out this month from Penguin. Davies offers up an overview of our quest for extraterrestrial intelligence in a thoughtful piece on physicsworld.com, one that encapsulates the history of the discipline and asks whether we shouldn’t be thinking of expanding our horizons. It’s always interesting to note that current SETI research is almost all privately funded, with the 350-dish Allen Telescope Array now under construction growing from the philanthropy of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and numerous activities coordinated by the SETI Institute and other sources working the sky on a regular basis.

Davies has his doubts that a scenario like Carl Sagan’s Contact, in which a civilization elsewhere in the galaxy beams messages to establish dialogue and provide wisdom, is really credible:

A major problem with Sagan’s thesis is that if there are any aliens out there, they almost certainly have no idea that the Earth hosts a radio-savvy civilization. Suppose there is an advanced alien community 500 light-years away – close even by optimistic SETI standards – then however fancy their technology might be, the aliens will see the Earth today as it was in the year 1510, long before the industrial revolution. In principle they could detect signs of agriculture and construction works such as the Great Wall of China, and they might predict that we would go on to develop radio astronomy after a few centuries or millennia, but it would be pointless for them to start signalling us until they obtained positive evidence that we were on the air. This would come when our first radio signals reached them, which will not be for another 400 years. It would then take a further 500 years for their first messages to arrive. So Sagan’s scenario might be conceivable in another millennium or so.

More likely that we pick up a beacon, one designed to sweep the plane of the galaxy, one sending out a civilization’s last wishes, perhaps, or calling attention to anyone who receives it that there are others who have survived their technological infancy. Even so, Davies doubts we would find the brief ping of a beacon amidst the sea of incoming data from our antennae. Better, perhaps, to look for signs of technology like Dyson spheres or other large-scale astroengineering projects which might change the spectral character of a host star.

Even changes confined to a planet’s surface may be detectable in the not-too-distant future in the form of industrial pollutants or other weird molecules in the spectrum of the planet’s atmosphere. The Kepler mission should soon produce a tally of Earth-like extrasolar planets that would be a natural target list for a future space-based optical system with this capability. We must also be alert to the possibility that an alien community might produce very different by-products than humanity – perhaps ultra-energetic neutrinos in the peta-electron-volt (10¹⁵ eV) range or intense bursts of gamma-ray photons from matter–antimatter annihilation that would be too concentrated to come from any plausible natural source.

So many questions arise from all of this and Davies works over them all, from extraterrestrial artifacts (and how to discover them if they exist in our own Solar System) to post-biological intelligence and the dangerous trap of anthropocentrism, in which we use our own civilization as a model for what an extraterrestrial culture must be like. Davies wonders whether biological intelligence won’t give way to new kinds of ‘thinking systems,’ artificial intelligence and genetically modified neural networks merging to create a new kind of sentience. Physicist Frank Wilczek calls such a development ‘quintelligence,’ and Davies thinks it might be found in intergalactic space, exploiting low temperatures and all but impossible to spot via SETI.

And what about right here on Earth?

As a final example of what we might look for, an alien expedition or migration wave may have tampered with terrestrial microbiology, perhaps creating its own shadow biosphere to assist with mineral processing, terraforming or energy production. Also, if the aliens really wanted to leave a message for posterity, implanting it in the genomes of micro-organisms might be a better strategy than sending out radio signals from a beacon. Using viruses or living cells as information repositories has many advantages: biological nanosystems are self-replicating and self-repairing, and have the potential to conserve information for millions of years. Some genes, for example, have remained largely unchanged for more than a billion years.

In any case, it’s hard to disagree with Davies’ notion that we now need to widen the search beyond radio and optical methods in the new hunt for astroengineering and technological footprints beyond our own. We’ve come a long way since the 1959 paper in Nature by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison that first advocated a systematic search for alien radio signals. Frank Drake’s use of the 26-meter dish at Green Bank (West Virginia) was the start of a hunt that may well occupy us for decades more and perhaps centuries. My guess is that it’s the longest of long-shots, but then I think intelligent life is uncommon in the galaxy. My hope, though, is that we do find it — nothing would please me more than being proven wrong by a solid SETI detection.

This article was originally posted on Centauri Dreams

We’ve been talking for the last six years (since Centauri Dreams‘ inception) about finding a terrestrial world in the habitable zone of another star. It’s an exciting prospect, but the reality about space missions like Terrestrial Planet Finder and Darwin, each designed to make such identifications, is that the budget ax has fallen and we don’t know when they might fly. Indeed, we still face a host of technological difficulties that call for much work if the aim is not only to find a terrestrial world but also to study its atmosphere for possible biomarkers.

Alternatives are therefore welcome, and one is to look for terrestrial worlds around nearby red dwarf stars using transit methods. Usefully, an Earth-size planet orbiting such an M dwarf would be easier to spot than the same size planet orbiting a star like the Sun, and we could use ‘eclipse spectroscopy’ with the James Webb Space Telescope to study such a planet’s atmosphere. Right now we’re making Doppler surveys of nearby M dwarfs, and to good effect, with discoveries like the ‘hot Neptunes’ GJ 436b and GJ 581b, and ’super-Earths’ like GJ 876d. We’ve also found two planets near to their star’s habitable zone in GJ 581c and d. We should be finding habitable ’super-Earths’ in the near future with these methods and some of these, let’s hope, will be transiting.

Surveys monitoring thousands of stars can pick up transiting planets (think of Kepler), and Michaël Gillon and colleagues explain in a new paper that most known transiting planets have been detected by such dedicated photometric surveys. The MEarth Project at Mt. Hopkins, AZ monitors nearby M dwarfs with small telescopes and is sensitive to transiting worlds down to a few Earth radii. Gillon’s team is interested in a third approach, one that’s based on a helpful principle. Because planets form within disks, a planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star will be more likely to transit as seen from Earth if that star already harbors a known transiting planet. From the paper:

Depending on the orbital inclination of the known transiting planet, on the assumed distribution of the orbital inclinations of the planetary system, on the size of the star, and on its physical distance to its HZ, significantly enhanced transit probability can be expected for habitable planets. A dedicated high-precision photometric monitoring of M dwarfs known to harbor close-in transiting planets could thus be an efficient way to detect transiting habitable planets in the near future.

The fact that planets in a system should share similar orbital inclinations is especially useful for M dwarfs because their habitable zones are close to the star. As we discover more transiting planets around M dwarfs (which are currently thought to be the most common class of star in the galaxy), we may be able to use these facts to improve the likelihood of finding habitable worlds. The researchers go on to discuss the potential of this approach for two M dwarfs known to host a transiting planet, GJ 436 and GJ 1214, using a series of simulations.

It turns out that GJ 436 is not a good target compared to GJ 1214. The transit probability of planets in the habitable zone of the latter is much larger. Moreover, GJ 1214 is smaller in radius, meaning that smaller planets could be detected around it. The latter fact also makes for a smaller habitable zone, so that any planet in that zone will be orbiting closer to the star. Ground based monitoring of GJ 1214 could theoretically find a habitable planet as small as the Earth, while space-based observatories like Spitzer could spot a transiting habitable planet down to Mars size.

The planet we already know about here, GJ 1214b, is a super-Earth about 6.6 times the mass of Earth, with a radius somewhat less than three times our planet’s, and it orbits its star every 1.6 days. Roughly 40 light years from the Sun, this system would seem to be ideal for pushing the search for a smaller companion world. The team finds that probing the habitable zone of GJ 1214 would require three weeks of constant monitoring, whereas GJ 436 would require a full two months. That three week run would allow for two transits and could lead to the detection of smaller planets than we’ve hitherto found. The paper confirms the viability of transit surveys like MEarth and offers what may be the shortest course to detecting habitable planets as small, or even smaller, than the Earth. The authors continue:

…we advocate the development of the approach used by MEarth (other facilities spread in longitude, a similar survey observing from the Southern hemisphere, larger telescopes and IR cameras to monitor cooler M dwarfs), but also an intense and high-precision photometric monitoring of GJ 1214 and of the other transiting systems that MEarth (or similar projects) will detect. This two-step approach targeting nearby M dwarfs makes possible the detection in the near-future of transiting habitable planets much smaller than our Earth that would be out of reach for existing Doppler and transit surveys.

The paper is Gillon et al., “Educated search for transiting habitable planets: Targeting M dwarfs with known transiting planets,” submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics (preprint available). The betting here is what it has always been, that our first detection of a terrestrial exoplanet that is unequivocally in the habitable zone of its star will be around an M dwarf. We’re likely to spot a growing number of habitable ’super-Earths’ in coming years, so methods that will allow us to extend our discoveries to Earth-size planets are all to the good. After all, who knows how long it will be until funds become available for the kind of terrestrial planet hunter mission we’ve long wished for?

This article was originally posted on Centauri Dreams

There appears to be a lot more natural gas than previously thought.  And that could have huge implications for low-cost CO2 emissions reductions in the near term, if we pass a climate and clean energy bill with a shrinking emissions cap and rising price, as I discuss here.

But can the gas be developed in an environmentally responsible fashion?  That question is explored by Sarah Collins, an intern with the Energy Opportunity team, and Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at CAP, in this repost.  In the 2008 AP photo above, a natural gas well pad sits in front of the Roan Plateau near Rifle, Colorado.

Hydraulic fracturing, also called “fracking” or “fracing,” is a widely used but somewhat controversial oil and gas drilling technique that is opening up new energy possibilities in the United States. It’s also starting to draw a lot of high-level attention in Washington, and this scrutiny is appropriate and overdue.

Fracking has been used in combination with improved horizontal well-drilling technology to help open vast new natural shale gas reserves from Texas to western New York state that were previously locked in deep underground shale formations. Those discoveries have stirred debate on whether natural gas can serve as a bridge fuel to a lower-carbon future by shifting electricity generation from coal-burning power plants to natural gas plants, which emit half as much carbon pollution and no mercury. These newly available natural gas sources could be global warming game changer if gas production can occur cleanly.

But the widespread use of fracking has also raised concerns about potential contamination of drinking water supplies. The fracking fluid that is pumped into wells at high pressure to fracture rock and release natural gas contains sand and vast amounts of water in addition to chemicals that can be toxic to humans. Preventing underground leaks of fracking fluid requires proper installation of well casings and careful monitoring. Surface water contamination is also a concern because once drilling is completed the used fluids are brought to the surface and often stored in ponds that can leak.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said on February 24 that her agency will soon begin a $1.8 million study of hydraulic fracturing, with several million more dollars to come if the EPA’s new budget request is approved. “The [timing] of the study will depend on us being able to adjust our operating budget for the current fiscal year…What we’ve done is to try to fund the whole thing out of our budget this year and next year, but we would hope to start this year,” Jackson said.

This follows up on a May 2009 comment by Jackson in which she called allegations of fracking-caused drinking water contamination “startling” and called for Congress to review the process. A consulting firm retained by EPA reviewed 12 contamination cases only to declare that they “may have a possible link to hydraulic fracturing, but to date, EPA has insufficient information on which to make a definitive decision.”

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has also launched an investigation into fracking’s environmental and public health effects. Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) sent letters to eight companies in the industry on February 18, requesting more information on the natural gas drilling process.

Reps. Waxman and Markey requested documents in six key areas:

• The number and location of wells using hydraulic fracturing in each state in 2008 and 2009
• The total volume of production and chemicals used in the process
• Health and environmental effects of the fluids
• Allegations that the process harms human health or the environment
• The percentage of fluids recovered
• The volume of flowback and produced water

Reps. Waxman and Markey also argued that “information is needed to assess whether the use of the chemicals [in fracking] posed a threat to drinking water supplies” in a memo to the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment that day.

They pointed out in the memo that “EPA has raised particular concerns about diesel fuel, noting that the ‘use of diesel fuel in fracturing fluids poses the greatest threat’ to underground sources of drinking water.” They noted that aside from a 2003 EPA voluntary memorandum of agreement with three top gas and well servicing companies to cease the use of diesel fuel in fracking fluids “there is virtually no federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing.”

As the EPA and Congress began a closer look at fracking, Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences held a February 22 briefing on the potential environmental and community impacts of natural gas development using hydraulic fracturing and whether state regulation is adequate. Congress exempted fracking from federal protection standards in 2005 under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and they also exempted well site activities from the Clean Water Act’s discharge permit requirements.

The exemption leaves states responsible for protecting their residents from groundwater and other sorts of contamination, and state protections vary. Colorado provides reasonable protection, while states that are new to the gas industry have few safeguards. New York has suspended production in the Marcellus Shale until it creates protection rules.

For their part, many in the natural gas production industry believe that leaving it to the states is adequate. “Regulations currently in place adequately and appropriately protect the public and the environment,” argues a briefing paper prepared by the natural gas industry.

But Susan Riha, a Cornell professor who led the university’s inquiry, said that proper disposal and treatment of the water containing fracking fluids after it is withdrawn from completed wells is a major concern. In addition to fracking fluids, the water can contain high levels of salt and naturally occurring radioactive materials.

Reps. Waxman and Markey also mentioned some studies of water contamination linked to fracking in their memo to the subcommittee:

In New York, the State Department of Environmental Conservation analyzed wastewater extracted from wells and found levels of radium-226 as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink. Others have raised concerns about water scarcity, since the drilling and hydraulic fracturing of a horizontal shale gas well may require 2 to 4 million gallons of water.

The Cornell study focuses on the Marcellus Shale, a region stretching from the eastern tip of Tennessee to central New York that contains one of the world’s premier gas deposits—enough to meet 14 years or more of U.S. demand according to experts at Pennsylvania State University. Discoveries in the Marcellus Shale and other shale gas formations led the Potential Gas Committee, a group of industry experts and academics, to up its assessment of proven and potential U.S. natural gas reserves by 35 percent last year.

Cornell began its study because of industry interest in leasing some of the university’s land holdings. Both Cornell and New York have put moratoriums on drilling pending further study.

Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate that would require drilling companies to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing and to remove the ban on regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) are sponsoring the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, H.R. 2766, while Sens. Robert Casey (D-PA) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) are sponsoring S. 1215, of the same name.

Riha said passage of that legislation would help EPA determine whether fracking is causing contamination of drinking water supplies—assessments that are now difficult because companies don’t disclose what chemicals they are using.

I think they should just move ahead [with legislation] to get more information about how many times chemicals show up in drinking water … because it will help with future studies. If it’s not required [to disclose chemicals used in fracturing fluids], then it will be extremely difficult to study their impact on water supplies.

Industry opponents argue that fracking has been safely done for decades and say the legislation would impose unnecessary burdens both on the oil and gas sector and EPA. Hydraulic fracturing, says the Industrial Minerals Association-North America, “already has been extensively studied” and “further study is unnecessary and would be a waste of limited agency resources.”

It should be noted, however, that some companies, such as Chesapeake Energy, have been willing to cooperate with environmental concerns and have disclosed fracking fluid ingredients.

Determining the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing and establishing new safeguards where appropriate is crucial not just for protecting public health and safety, but for the natural gas industry as well. Among the needed steps are:

• A thorough and credible analysis of the impacts that a surge in natural gas production will have on our air, water, and special landscapes
• Expanded industry efforts to reduce methane releases during the production and distribution of natural gas, a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions
• Establishing best practices and encouraging state regulators to enforce them
• Requiring public disclosure of toxic chemicals used in natural gas production

Read also:

• Game changer, Part 8: ExxonMobil’s $41 billion XTO deal — A big bet on unconventional natural gas AND on climate change
• Frack Attack: Drilling Technique Under Scrutiny by Tom Kenworthy

This article was originally posted on Climate Progress

Their figure neatly demonstrates the different issues:

The upper line is often what is referred to as the ‘climate change commitment’ (for instance Wigley, 2005). This is the warming you get if we keep CO₂ (and other GHG and pollutant levels) constant at today’s values. (Technically, the figure shows the case staying at year 2000 values). In such a scenario, the planet still has a radiative imbalance, and the warming will continue until the oceans have warmed sufficiently to equalise the situation – giving an additional 0.3 to 0.8ºC warming over the 21st Century. Thus the conclusion has been that because of climate inertia, further warming is inevitable.

However, constant concentrations of CO₂ imply a change in emissions – specifically an immediate cut of around 60 to 70% globally and continued further cuts over time. Matthews and Weaver make the point that this is a little arbitrary and that the true impact of climate inertia would be seen only with emissions cut to zero. That is, if we define the commitment as the consequence only of past emissions, then you should set future emissions to zero before you calculate it. This is a valid point, and the consequence of that is seen in the lower lines in the figure.

CO₂ concentrations would start to fall immediately since the ocean and terrestrial biosphere would continue to absorb more carbon than they release as long as the CO₂ level in the atmosphere is higher than pre-industrial levels (approximately). And subsequent temperatures (depending slightly on the model you are using) would either be flat or slightly decreasing. With this definition then, there is no climate change commitment because of climate inertia. Instead, the reason for the likely continuation of the warming is that we can’t get to zero emissions any time soon because of societal, economic or technological inertia.

That is an interesting reframing of an issue that comes up all the time in discussions of adaptation and mitigation. This is because it demonstrates that adaptation (over and above what is necessary to reduce vulnerabilities to current climate conditions) is unnecessary if mitigation is dramatic enough.

However, the practical implication of this reframing is small. We are clearly not going to get to zero emissions any time soon, and even the 60-70% cuts required to stabilise concentrations initially seem a long way off. Thus as a practical matter, it doesn’t really matter whether the inertia is climatic or societal or technological or economic because the globe will continue to warm under all realistic scenarios (what we do have a possible control over is the magnitude of that warming). Thus further adaptation measures will still be needed.

This article was originally posted on Real Climate