Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

Hasn't James Lovelock come out in praise of nuclear power? And btw Thomas, oil forcast to go above $100 if we put sanctions on Iran. Some times I wish I was just eating krill below the arctic.

Speaking of the oil price: Do you remember in which thread we bet on the oil price? I stand by my bet that it will fall in inflation-adjusted terms, but I'd like to post a link to it in my "reality check" thread so I can keep track of it.

Ex - EPA Chiefs Blame Bush in Global Warming

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 19, 2006
Filed at 3:28 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. is failing to take the lead in confronting global warming, a ''dishonest'' and ''self-destructive'' approach that only worsens the problem, say former federal environmental chiefs.

''We need leadership, and I don't think we're getting it,'' Russell Train said Wednesday at an Environmental Protection Agency symposium commemorating the agency's 35th anniversary.

Added Bill Ruckelshaus: ''I don't think there's a commitment in this administration.''

They were among six former EPA heads -- six Republicans and one Democrat -- who accused the Bush administrations of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems.

I am reading that Stephen Harper is doing very well in the polls in Canada. I also understand that he opposes the Kyoto Accord. It will be interesting to see if pro-Kyoto Canadians continue to criticize the U.S. on the issue of global warming if Harper wins considering that the U.S. is doing some better than is Canada on reducing green house gas emissions et al.

Thomas wrote:

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

Hasn't James Lovelock come out in praise of nuclear power? And btw Thomas, oil forcast to go above $100 if we put sanctions on Iran. Some times I wish I was just eating krill below the arctic.

Speaking of the oil price: Do you remember in which thread we bet on the oil price? I stand by my bet that it will fall in inflation-adjusted terms, but I'd like to post a link to it in my "reality check" thread so I can keep track of it.

. Oh dear ! I have no idea where we made it. But we can always make it again and keep track of it properly if you wish.

$25 against that.

San Francisco, California
On Thursday, California regulators approved the California Solar Initiative (CSI), the largest solar energy policy ever enacted in the U.S. and second only to Germany in terms of global solar policy.

Californian Sun Shines on German Solar Firms

California plans to pump a whopping $2.9 billion (2.4 billion euros) in a landmark solar energy program over the next decade. German firms, already leaders in the field, are hoping to get a slice of the lucrative pie.

When America's most-populous state and the world's fifth-largest economy decides to invest billions in an industry, chances are that the ramifications are felt far beyond US borders.


That's exactly what happened when state energy regulators in California last week approved the "California Solar Initiative," the biggest incentive program for solar energy in the US so far. It foresees providing $2.9 billion in consumer rebates for solar panels and installing 3,000 megawatts of solar electricity on the rooftops of one million homes, businesses and public buildings by 2017.

Within days of the announcement, the shares of German solar companies such as Q-Cells, Conergy, Ersol and SolarWorld shot up by an average 1.5 percent. They also bagged the first four spots in the Tec-Dax technology share index in which almost half of all businesses are focused on the solar energy sector.

A little bit of California sunshine

And, that isn't the end of the story. German companies, who have already established themselves as leaders in the solar energy industry, are hopeful that the new developments in California will have a positive ripple effect.

"The program in California will secure the growth of the industry," Hartmuth Schüning, head of the supervisory board at Q-Cells told Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel last week. "For Q-Cells, the US will, in the long term, be the most important market after Germany."

The view is echoed by Frank Asbeck, head of Bonn-based Solarworld, who said that his company had already received plum contracts from California totalling two-digit million figures.

Germany is already one of the largest European markets for solar power, with state financing helping to support the sector by making roof-top solar panels affordable for households via subsidies.

Investor interest in solar energy has also been soaring after oil prices rose to record highs, increasing the attractiveness of renewable energy.

Foreign potential and challenges

But most experts see foreign markets providing the most crucial potential for growth.

The Federal Association of Solar Economy (BSW) estimates that German solar companies will register a 3-billion euro turnover abroad by 2010. Solarworld reckons that by the end of 2007, its share of revenue in foreign markets will rise to 60 percent from the current 40.

In addition to the United States, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, South Korea and a few provinces in China are also investing in solar energy.

Spain, whose solar energy sector has increased threefold in the past year, and Italy, where experts expect tenfold growth in the industry in 2006, remain crucial markets for German solar companies.

But German firms face challenges when it comes to sustaining their edge in the industry.

Asian companies, such as Sharp, Kyocera and Sanyo, which discovered the power of the sun in tapping energy long before German firms, pose tough competition. And even giant US multinationals such as BP, Shell and General Electric are investing massive sums in solar energy.

A further problem hindering the growth of the photovoltaic industry is the lack of silica, a basic raw material needed in generating solar energy. Experts estimate that silica producers would need until 2007 to fulfill growing demand.

Rosy future

In the long run, experts foresee a rosy future for the industry.

"In the short term, the current share rises might seem a bit exaggerated," Patrick Hummel, an analyst at the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg told Der Tagesspiegel.

"But the overall prospects for the sector are fantastic," he said, adding that more countries needed to follow California's example.

January 29, 2006

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Mr. Acosta said other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. "This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming," he said. "It's about coordination."

Dr. Hansen strongly disagreed with this characterization, saying such procedures had already prevented the public from fully grasping recent findings about climate change that point to risks ahead.

"Communicating with the public seems to be essential," he said, "because public concern is probably the only thing capable of overcoming the special interests that have obfuscated the topic."

Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in Morningside Heights in Manhattan.

Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. He has had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration and Vice President Al Gore.

In 2001, Dr. Hansen was invited twice to brief Vice President Dick Cheney and other cabinet members on climate change. White House officials were interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing carbon dioxide.

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.

But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.

In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."

He said he was particularly incensed that the directives had come through telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

Dr. Hansen's supervisor, Franco Einaudi, said there had been no official "order or pressure to say shut Jim up." But Dr. Einaudi added, "That doesn't mean I like this kind of pressure being applied."

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet."

The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

Among the restrictions, according to Dr. Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.

Mr. Acosta said the calls and meetings with Goddard press officers were not to introduce restrictions, but to review existing rules. He said Dr. Hansen had continued to speak frequently with the news media.

But Dr. Hansen and some of his colleagues said interviews were canceled as a result.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

But she added: "I'm a career civil servant and Jim Hansen is a scientist. That's not our job. That's not our mission. The inference was that Hansen was disloyal."

Normally, Ms. McCarthy would not be free to describe such conversations to the news media, but she agreed to an interview after Mr. Acosta, at NASA headquarters, told The Times that she would not face any retribution for doing so.

Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's supervisor, said that when Mr. Deutsch was asked about the conversations, he flatly denied saying anything of the sort. Mr. Deutsch referred all interview requests to Mr. Acosta.

Ms. McCarthy, when told of the response, said: "Why am I going to go out of my way to make this up and back up Jim Hansen? I don't have a dog in this race. And what does Hansen have to gain?"

Mr. Acosta said that for the moment he had no way of judging who was telling the truth. Several colleagues of both Ms. McCarthy and Dr. Hansen said Ms. McCarthy's statements were consistent with what she told them when the conversations occurred.

"He's not trying to create a war over this," said Larry D. Travis, an astronomer who is Dr. Hansen's deputy at Goddard, "but really feels very strongly that this is an obligation we have as federal scientists, to inform the public."

Dr. Travis said he walked into Ms. McCarthy's office in mid-December at the end of one of the calls from Mr. Deutsch demanding that Dr. Hansen be better controlled.

In an interview on Friday, Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist and the president of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's leading independent scientific body, praised Dr. Hansen's scientific contributions and said he had always seemed to describe his public statements clearly as his personal views.

"He really is one of the most productive and creative scientists in the world," Dr. Cicerone said. "I've heard Hansen speak many times and I've read many of his papers, starting in the late 70's. Every single time, in writing or when I've heard him speak, he's always clear that he's speaking for himself, not for NASA or the administration, whichever administration it's been."

The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on extracurricular lectures or writing.

One example is Indur M. Goklany, assistant director of science and technology policy in the policy office of the Interior Department. For years, Dr. Goklany, an electrical engineer by training, has written in papers and books that it may be better not to force cuts in greenhouse gases because the added prosperity from unfettered economic activity would allow countries to exploit benefits of warming and adapt to problems.

In an e-mail exchange on Friday, Dr. Goklany said that in the Clinton administration he was shifted to nonclimate-related work, but added that he had never had to stop his outside writing, as long as he identified the views as his own.

"One reason why I still continue to do the extracurricular stuff," he wrote, "is because one doesn't have to get clearance for what I plan on saying or writing."