Eight years ago. Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Truth,” the book and documentary film that laid out the scientific consensus connecting the burning of fossil fuels to climate change. At the time, the former vice-president challenged the fossil-fuel industry and all of us who depend upon its dirty output to face up to what may be the most difficult economic, scientific, and moral challenge the global community will ever face.

Gore’s articulation of the long-term, developing climate catastrophe was a shocking prediction that’s proved to be all too true. But there’s some good news, too.

The bad news

Since throwing out those first frightening and potentially life-altering salvos, Gore has been an easy target for climate-change deniers. Their response to Gore’s brilliant cataloguing of the case for human activity and climate change was swift and ugly. Some clever right-wing wordsmith coined the word “schlockumentary” to mock and vilify the movie and the man. The book was dismissed as science fiction by congressional conservatives and lobbyists for the oil, gas, and coal industries. The immediate, vociferous response to Gore’s science lesson demonstrated the truth of the old maxim that blaming the bearer of bad news is always easier than confronting the bad news itself.

Unfortunately, the bad news has only gotten worse. Since 1988, when the world passed the upper safety limit for atmospheric CO2—350 ppm (parts per million)—the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been steadily rising. This past June, CO2 measured by the Mauna Loa Observatory reached 401.30 ppm, a level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is the highest CO2 concentration in human history.

And if you want to lose some sleep at night, cogitate on this: The present measurements of CO2 levels are higher than they’ve been for any time during the past 800,000 years. (And that number is a conservative estimate. Some scientists put the number of years in the millions.)

The effects of those increased levels of CO2 in our fragile atmosphere are becoming ever more dramatic, more visible, and more difficult to dismiss. May 2014 was the warmest May in more than 130 years of recorded global temperatures. Rising global temperatures are speeding the melting of glaciers and ice caps. The polar ice cap is melting at a rate of 9% per decade. The thickness of Arctic ice has decreased 40% since the 1960s, and it’s estimated that, if the current rate of global warming continues, the Arctic could be ice-free by 2040. Over the last three decades more than one million square miles of perennial sea ice have disappeared, and the pace of sea level rise is accelerating. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with all that ice melt sea levels could rise 10 to 23 inches by 2100.

And then there’s the weather itself. There’s growing evidence that global warming is causing hurricanes that are more intense; dangerous heat waves; heavier rainfall and more frequent flooding; and increased conditions, such as more severe and longer-lasting droughts, that threaten our food supply and make wildfires more frequent and severe.

While the data continue to confirm the reality of the climate threat, Gore has been traveling the globe trying to educate and convince a reluctant, disbelieving world of the necessity to wean away from carbon fuels and to switch to clean, renewable energy sources. Gore and climate scientists across the globe desperately want us to understand that only a large-scale switch to renewables will give the world a fighting change to stabilize the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The good news

Recently, Gore took a step back from being the perennial messenger of bad news and took some time to compose an article published in the June 18,  2014 issue of Rolling Stone that throws some much-needed good news our way. Here’s a sample of some of the developments that Gore himself calls “surprising, shocking good news.”

•  Converting sunshine into usable electricity has become cheaper more rapidly than anyone expected.
•  In 79 countries, the cost of electricity from photovoltaic solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources.
• In 2000, the projection was that the world would be installing one gigawatt of new solar electricity per year by 2010. In 2010 the number was 17 gigawatts per year. In 2013 the number was 39 gigawatts per year, and in 2014 projections are for 55 gigawatts.
• As costs continue to decline, by 2020 more than 80% of the world will live in places where solar-generated power is competitive with other energy sources.
• In 2012 49% of new generating capacity in the U.S. came from renewables.
• Since 2009 the cost of wind energy in the U.S. has dropped by 43%.
• In the past four years 166 coal-fired electricity generating plants have closed or announced their closing.
• 183 proposed new coal plants in the U.S. have been canceled since 2005.
•  Currently, there’s an ongoing shift from the central-station utility grid that had its origins in the 1880s to a widely distributed model characterized by rooftop solar cells and on-site grid-battery storage and microgrids.
• Photovoltaic electricity is displacing carbon-based energy in two of the world’s most densely populated countries—India and Bangladesh.

And Gore even finds a glimmer of hope in the behind-the-scenes discussions of the financial fat cats and the recommendations of market analysts.

• Companies selling carbon-based fuels (particularly coal) are quietly discussing their fears of a “utility death spiral.”
•  Barclays recently downgraded the U.S. electric sector as a result of increased distributed electric generation.
• Citigroup is warning investors that the assumption that fracked shale gas will be the primary alternative to coal may be a false assumption. Other financial analysts are warning that fracked gas will fall victim to the decline in the cost of solar- and wind-powered generation.
• Large investors are divesting from carbon-intensive assets and diversifying their portfolios to include significant investments in renewables.
• Large banks and assets managers are advising clients of the danger that carbon assets will become “stranded.”

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If you were listening closely at 8:16 p.m. (EST) on election night, you might have heard a subtle but persistent sound blowing across the country. That was the sound of liberals and progressives exhaling in a collective sigh of relief. We’ve been here before. After all, will we ever forget 2008? Looking back, it seems beyond imagining that Americans might have elected Republican John McCain. McCain was a candidate with such disregard for the seriousness of the office he was running for that he gambled on a vice-presidential nominee so unqualified and devoid of intellectual heft as to be a national joke. Then, as now, the wisdom of the American electorate prevailed, averting a diminishment of our highest offices.

This time around the stakes were even higher. Romney and Ryan offered economic and social policies so focused on destruction of the social contract that even Catholic bishops descended from their tower to denounce them. Thankfully, those policy prescriptions were resoundingly rejected. We prevailed in the end against undemocratic headwinds so narrowly focused on benefiting a sliver of the electorate that, had the election results turned out differently, we’d be looking at an almost unrecognizable future.

Of course, pre-election angst makes post-election victory even sweeter. Our majority wasn’t snowed by big money and their deceptive advertising blitz. Together we obliterated the blabbering of political punditry. Acting on an innate sense of fairness and integrity, the majority voted decisively to bar the doors of the White House to a Faustian character so flawed and ethically compromised that no one, not even his own campaign surrogates, knew what the candidate believed nor the shape of his next deceit.

As for the winner: In his victory speech we saw an invigorated President Obama opening the door more than a crack, allowing us a glimpse of what we might expect for his second term. Republicans and right-wing media may be in denial mode but Obama’s clearly earned his political capital—his mandate. No matter what it’s called Obama’s got a bag of it right now. And he’s acting like a winner who knows what he’s got and how he’d like to use it.

Moderates and progressives take heart. One of the looming taboos of the campaign (as well as of the last two, dysfunctional years) slipped through that crack. What blew through were words the victor finally dared speak. What a relief to hear the president acknowledge the reality of climate change and remind us that the destructive force of Sandy should no longer allow us to pretend away the inconvenient truth. As Obama instructed, we ignore “the destructive power of a warming planet” at our own peril.

How tragic that the president’s acknowledgment of climate change should be judged as an act of political courage. That in itself demonstrates how timid our politics have become and how deeply compromised by corporate interests are the halls of government. For those of us who believe policy should be directed by facts, figures, math, expert collaboration, scientific inquiry (nay, even rational thought!), we find ourselves poised on the edge of our chairs waiting to see if Obama’s second term will see the president use his mandate and take on the climate deniers. We can only hope at this point that real policy initiatives will follow.

The task will not be easy. Failure to swing the majority in the House means that at least for the next two years the party of dumb will hold the reigns and continue to skew the agenda. Continued Republican dominance means that the keys to the House Science Committee will remain in the hands of science deniers backed by anti-science, pro-corporate think tanks like the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Vying for chairmanship of the House Science Committee are three climate-denying buffoons, Representatives Lamar Smith, Jim Sensenbrenner, and Dana Rohrabacher. Together, they have debased any shred of intelligence they share by dismissing “scientific fascism,” labeling climate-change research “an international conspiracy,” and attacking the three major television networks for their “biased” coverage of global warming.

Even with such challenges looming in the House, one science-oriented organization sees Obama’s win as a source of hope. The Union of Concerned Scientists has never given up on providing peer-reviewed data to elected officials to help them defend science-based policy making (even throughout the science-challenged Bush administration). The president’s nod to the reality of climate change sent the concerned scientists into activist mode. They’re challenging the rest of us to join them by signing a letter to the president outlining a rational course on climate change for the next four years. Here is an excerpt:

Dear President Obama,

I am counting on you to lead our country forward using science and facts and to make climate change a priority for your administration by taking the following steps:

1. Order all relevant agencies to assess which areas of the country are most vulnerable to climate disruption–including extreme weather, flooding, drought, heat waves, and wildfires—and then, working with state and local authorities, address those vulnerabilities.

2. Follow up on your strong leadership that sharply increased the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks by launching a comprehensive plan to cut projected U.S. oil use in half within 20 years.

3. Finish the job you started to reduce power plant pollution by requiring both new and existing power plants to cut their carbon emissions.

4. Start a national conversation on climate change with all Americans, beginning by convening leaders of the science, business, security, faith, and environmental communities at a White House Summit on Climate Resilience to discuss ways to keep our citizens healthy and safe.

As you set our nation’s course for the next four years, I urge you to stand up for science, address the realities of global warming, and further expand efforts to move a clean energy economy forward in the United States.

;

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Climate change is real and presents a huge threat to life on Earth. It’s not a “theory;” it’s a reality, and it’s happening before our eyes. Long-term global warming, caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions, is a stark and terrible reality that world governments are barely addressing.

One consequence of global warming is the alarming disappearance of Arctic sea ice documented in a new video produced by independent videographer Peter Sinclair for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media. It shows in graphic detail what expert scientists now find to be the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice in recorded history.

From the Yale Forum on Climate Change website:

The shrinking of the Polar ice cap — providing protection much like a “giant parasol” — presents us “a big problem, a real problem, and it’s happening now, it’s not happening generations from now,” Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis cautions.

“There’s really nothing like what we’ve seen happen this year,” according to Francis. She calls the loss of sea ice in 2012 “just such a stunning example of how the climate system is changing right before our very eyes … something anybody can see, you don’t have to be a scientist.”

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If you want to know where we stand with global warming, read Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking new piece in Rolling Stone, “Global Warming’s Terryifying New Math.” He opens by reminding us that this spring set a record for the warmest ever recorded for our nation, crushing previous records. The same week we set records, Saudi authorities “reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.”

The bad news is this: Even though meteorologists are reporting record-breaking high temperatures across the world, governments—most function as minions to the carbon fuel industries—aren’t really doing anything to address global warming. McKibben says that in order for us to grasp the serious predicament we are in, we need math. To that end, he provides us with three figures:

The First Number: 2˚ Celsius

The Second Number: 565 Gigatons

The Third Number: 2,795 Gigatons

Following is a brief summary of what these figures mean to McKibben, but to gain the full impact of his argument, please read the whole article. It’s one that will change the dialogue on global warming going forward.

The First Number: 2˚ Celsius

This number—2˚ Celsius, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit—is the maximum temperature increase the Earth can withstand without catastrophic consequences. The number gained prominence in 1995 at the climate conference chaired by Angela Merkel, then German minister of the environment.

The same number was agreed upon at the failed 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference, where neither China nor the United States offered the concessions needed to make a difference. Even though the Copenhagen Accord declared that deep cuts in global emissions are required to hold the increase in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius, it ended up with voluntary agreements with no enforcement mechanism. McKibben writes:

So far, we’ve raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.) Given those impacts, in fact, many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target. ”

Any number much above one degree involves a gamble,” writes Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes, “and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up.” Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank’s chief biodiversity adviser, puts it like this: “If we’re seeing what we’re seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much.” NASA scientist James Hansen, the planet’s most prominent climatologist, is even blunter: “The target that has been talked about in international negotiations for two degrees of warming is actually a prescription for long-term disaster.”

The Second Number: 565 Gigatons

McKibben writes that a decade ago, scientists estimated that we could dump roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by midcentury and still stay below the max two degrees Celsius temperature increase. So far we’ve increased the Earth’s temperature by 0.8.  More recent computer models show that even if we stopped increasing CO2 emissions now, the temperature would likely rise another 0.8 degrees, because previously released carbon will continue to overheat the atmosphere. Every year, with the exception of 2009, we have continued to pour record amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Mckibben reports:

“There have been efforts to use more renewable energy and improve energy efficiency,” said Corinne Le Quéré, who runs England’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. “But what this shows is that so far the effects have been marginal.” In fact, study after study predicts that carbon emissions will keep growing by roughly three percent a year – and at that rate, we’ll blow through our 565-gigaton allowance in 16 years, around the time today’s preschoolers will be graduating from high school. “The new data provide further evidence that the door to a two-degree trajectory is about to close,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist. In fact, he continued, “When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of about six degrees.” That’s almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which would create a planet straight out of science fiction.

The Third Number: 2,795 Gigatons

Of the three numbers, McKibben says the new number—2,795 gigatons—is the scariest of all. It represents the amount of carbon in the proven coal, oil and gas reserves of the fossil-fuel companies, and in countries like Venezuela or Kuwait who function like fossil fuel companies. It’s the fossil fuel we plan to burn in the future. And this new number – 2,795 – is way higher than 565. It’s five times higher.

Think of two degrees Celsius as the legal drinking limit – equivalent to the 0.08 blood-alcohol level, below which you might get away with driving home. The 565 gigatons is how many drinks you could have and still stay below that limit – the six beers, say, you might consume in an evening. And the 2,795 gigatons? That’s the three 12-packs the fossil-fuel industry has on the table, already opened and ready to pour.

We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We’d have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate. Before we knew those numbers, our fate had been likely. Now, barring some massive intervention, it seems certain.

McKibben points out the real problem: Even though the coal, gas and oil are in the soil, it’s already figured into the share prices of companies like Exxon Mobil. The reserves are the primary asset upon which their value is based. If you told Exxon that, in order to stop global warming they couldn’t use those reserves, the value of their companies would plummet.

The value of 2,795 gigatons of carbon emissions is about $27 trillion. If the companies were responsible, paid attention to climate change scientists and kept 80 percent of the reserves in the ground, they would be writing off $20 trillion in assets. That figure tells us why they have spent millions trying to undermine and deny the reality of global warming.

The numbers aren’t exact, of course, but that carbon bubble makes the housing bubble look small by comparison. It won’t necessarily burst – we might well burn all that carbon, in which case investors will do fine. But if we do, the planet will crater. You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet – but now that we know the numbers, it looks like you can’t have both. Do the math: 2,795 is five times 565. That’s how the story ends.

McKibben has given us the numbers, but more importantly, he has given us the enemy. The enemy is the carbon fuel industry and, more specifically, oligarchs like the Koch brothers who run it.  It’s investors who are destroying the Earth in exchange for short-term financial rewards. The enemy is the government that facilitates the extraction and burning of carbon fuels—through waging wars on behalf of oil barons, providing unneeded tax subsidies, and rubber-stamping environmentally dangerous practices such as fracking and offshore drilling.

McKibben’s math provides us with a stark wake-up call. The question is: What are we going to do about it?

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Corporations have debunked it, media has ignored it, and conservative politicians have fought it, but in spite of these self-serving efforts at denial, Americans get that global warming is real.

People used to view climate change as questionable, far away from them, or something to worry about in the future. It was a hoax, or it was about polar bears drowning in the Arctic, or flooding of coastal areas in Bangladesh. Certainly, it wasn’t an immediate threat to their community, or the United States. But the past year changed all that.

In 2011, there were 14 weather and climate disasters, each causing $1 billion or more in damages, in total costing approximately $53 billion, along with the tragic loss of 626 lives. The disasters included severe drought in Texas and the Great Plains, Hurricane Irene along the eastern seaboard, hundreds of violent storms and tornadoes in the Midwest, and massive floods in the Mississippi River Valley. From January through March 2012, Americans experienced record warm temperatures, with temperatures 6.0 degrees F above the long-term average. In March alone, 15,292 warm temperature records were broken across the United States. Americans began to connect the dots. It was easy to understand, from these violent weather patterns, that global warming is real and getting dangerous.

Recent polling reflects acceptance of climate change

In March of this year, the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication conducted a national survey and found that a large majority had personally experienced an extreme weather event or natural disaster in the past year. Respondents said that the weather in the United States is getting worse and extreme weather in their own area has become more frequent and damaging. Most significantly, a large majority attributed recent extreme weather events to global warming.

Another recent poll was conducted by the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change (NSAPOCC), which is jointly produced by the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. The December 2011 survey found 62% of Americans think there is solid evidence that average temperatures on earth have been getting warmer over the past four decades, with only 26% of U.S. residents disagreeing.

What we can do about climate change

If all goes well in November, President Obama will be elected to his second term. That’s when we can pressure for the following policies to be embraced by  his administration and Congress. Now that a majority of Americans understand that global warming is real and a growing threat, it’s time to push to end destructive federal policies that are exacerbating rather than addressing climate change. This is not a comprehensive list, but it’s a start. Some of the following information is compliments of Friends of the Earth:

• End subsidies for the fossil fuels industry in the United States

This would save taxpayers over $10 billion a year and more than $110 billion over ten years. We need to stop giving out billions of dollars each year to some of the world’s largest and most profitable corporations and the biggest contributors to global warming. Ending these subsidies and using the money to promote clean energy is just common sense

• Ban Tar sands oil from entering the United States

Tar sands oil extraction and production emits three times more carbon dioxide than from production of conventional oil. To extract oil from tar sands, companies must destroy fragile forest ecosystems and then use a very energy-intensive refining process to turn that oil into gasoline. Tar sands mining and production harm the boreal forest’s fragile ecosystem, waste enormous amounts of water, produces toxic byproducts, and disrupt the lives of indigenous people in the area. Fuel from tar sands represents an increasingly significant portion of the fuel used in cars in the United States. Currently, the U.S. is the only market for tar sands oil.

• Stop the Keystone XL pipeline from being built

The Keystone XL pipeline would transport tar sands sludge to refineries in the Gulf Coast. It would pass over aquifers and native lands. The potential for an accidental spill and environmental degradation is significant. President Obama put off his decision on the pipeline until 2013, but he needs to hear from us that we don’t want it. It’s time to end our dependence on fossil fuels and move toward clean alternative energies such as solar and wind.

• Stop Fracking

Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” is the practice of extracting natural gas from shale using tremendous amounts of water mixed with toxic chemicals. This relatively new technology is proving to be harmful to people and the environment. Due to the threat of global climate change, natural gas is often promoted as a “bridge fuel” in the transition away from coal and oil towards renewable energy. But, the Council of Scientific Society Presidents—representing 1.4 million scientists from more than 150 scientific disciplines—reported to the Obama administration in May 2010, that fracking has received inadequate scientific analysis and may have greater environmental costs than anticipated. In May of this year, Vermont, acting wisely on behalf of its residents, banned fracking.

• Close existing nuclear reactors and stop building new ones

As the Fukushima disaster continues to unfold, its times to call for an end to nuclear energy and federal loan bailout guarantees that subsidize the nuclear industry. The building of nuclear reactors is so risky even Wall Street won’t fund them. Therefore, we the taxpayers are getting stuck with the risk—the cost overruns, defaults on loans, and potential nuclear meltdowns comes out of our pockets.

President Obama’s fiscal year 2011 budget proposed $55 billion in nuclear loan guarantees to build two reactors in Georgia, which would be the first built in the U.S. in 30 years. We need to say no to the president, congress and the nuclear energy industry and demand that we move beyond this dangerous and dirty technology to the clean renewable and efficiency technologies of the 21st century.

• End federal policies that promote biofuels

Large-scale agrofuels are not sustainable and destabilize our climate. Biofuels produced from corn, sugar, soy and palm oil are especially dirty, increasing soil erosion and air and water pollution. In some cases these fuels produce more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional gasoline.

Many biofuels rely on industrial agricultural systems, which involve the massive use of fertilizer, large quantities of water, and huge amounts of oil. When land is cleared for the cultivation of biofuel crops, the destruction of forests and other natural ecosystems speeds global warming. Biofuels compete with food crops for land, increasing food prices and hunger.

We need to tell our elected officials to end biofuels tax subsidies, trade barriers, government grants and loans, and a guaranteed market due to a federal consumption mandate called the Renewable Fuel Standard. By ending policies that support the production of environmentally harmful biofuels, we will make room for truly sustainable energy alternatives and more environmentally friendly and socially responsible biofuels.

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When Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski becomes your poster child, you’ve reached a new low. And that’s exactly what happened recently in Chicago, when the Heartland Institute launched an anti-“global warming” ad campaign with a billboard on I-290 [Eisenhower Expressway]. The billboard featured a huge picture of the disheveled letter-bomber Kaczynski. The caption, in large maroon letters, said “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”

The implication, of course, is that only maniacs, murderers and madmen think global warming is real. And the Kaczynski billboard was intended to be just the first in a series that would underscore that point. According to Heartland Institute’s website, subsequent billboards were to have featured Charles Manson, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and Osama bin Laden—all of whom, claims Heartland, have stated their support for the notion of global warming.

The Heartland Institute is a Chicago-based, libertarian organization that describes itself as seeking “free- market solutions to economic and social problems.” [Wait…hasn’t the free market created a lot of our economic and social problems? But that’s a different post.]

Heartland’s website also says that the organization chose to feature some of the world’s most notorious killers on the billboards “because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the mainstream media and liberal politicians say about global warming.”

But don’t jump in the car to get a first-hand look at the billboard. It’s already gone.  Twenty-four hours after it launched the campaign, the Heartland Institute cancelled it. Apparently, the billboard was so extreme that it offended even some global warming skeptics, as well as, of course, people who embrace climate-change science. According to the New York Times, one of its critics was Ross McKitrick, a Canadian global-warming skeptic who was scheduled to speak at a Heartland conference in May. McKitrick said he would not participate in the conference unless the campaign was cancelled.

Apparently, almost nobody warmed up to this particular anti-global-warming campaign. Heartland says it doesn’t apologize for the idea, and that it was all just an experiment designed to get people’s attention, and that it worked. Bottom line, though, it seems that the murderers-and-maniacs approach tells us more about the Heartland Institute than it does about global climate change.

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