The US National Climate Assessment, just released

Rick Piltz at Climate Science Watch has compiled a list of resources related to the recently released US National Climate Assessment.  This landmark document summarizes the climate impacts the US has felt so far and those expected in the future if we don’t change our direction.  I hope and expect that it will be influential in changing the debate on this topic.  The Administration seems to be discussion the report with unexpected vigor, which is a welcome development.

Here are some key paragraphs from the overview, which describes the scope of the report:

This National Climate Assessment collects, integrates, and assesses observations and research from around the country, helping us to see what is actually happening and understand what it means for our lives, our livelihoods, and our future. The report includes analyses of impacts on seven sectors – human health, water, energy, transportation, agriculture, forests, and ecosystems – and the interactions among sectors at the national level. The report also assesses key impacts on all U.S. regions: Northeast, Southeast and Caribbean, Midwest, Great Plains, Southwest, Northwest, Alaska, Hawai'i and Pacific Islands, as well as the country’s coastal areas, oceans, and marine resources.

Over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly. Increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change. With each passing year, the accumulating evidence further expands our understanding and extends the record of observed trends in temperature, precipitation, sea level, ice mass, and many other variables recorded by a variety of measuring systems and analyzed by independent research groups from around the world. It is notable that as these data records have grown longer and climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed. The only real surprises have been that some changes, such as sea level rise and Arctic sea ice decline, have outpaced earlier projections.

What is new over the last decade is that we know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now. While scientists continue to refine projections of the future, observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from burning coal, oil, and gas, with additional contributions from forest clearing and some agricultural practices.

©iStockPhoto.com/shotbydave

Global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond, but there is still time to act to limit the amount of change and the extent of damaging impacts.

This report documents the changes already observed and those projected for the future.

Read more…

Big news: Stanford to divest from coal mining companies

Stanford is the first major University of which I’m aware to divest from  coal, but I’m convinced they won’t be the last.  Coal is the low hanging fruit and the natural first target for those seeking to reduce emissions and increase pressure on the fossil fuel industry.  Stopping coal export terminals and shutting down existing coal plants are two more natural steps in this process.

As a landmark article in the American Economic Review concluded in 2011, coal and oil fired electricity deliver negative net value added to the economy once you incorporate their societal costs.  So the US will be better off once we shut down this industry.  It will of course take decades, but it’s time to get started.

(Muller, Nicholas Z., Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus. 2011. “Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy."  American Economic Review vol. 101, no. 5. August. pp. 1649–1675. [https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.5.1649])

This year is the the beginning of the end for the fossil fuel companies, though exactly how long this transition will take is an open question.   Exxon accepted the framing related to stranded assets in late March, which is another major domino to fall.  Assuming other major universities and investment funds follow in Stanford’s footsteps,  pressure on the coal industry will increase.  When markets shift, they do so with terrifying speed, as we found out during the financial crisis 6 years ago.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the statement from the trustees:

Acting on a recommendation of Stanford’s Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing, the Board of Trustees announced that Stanford will not make direct investments in coal mining companies. The move reflects the availability of alternate energy sources with lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

The Stanford University Board of Trustees has decided to not make direct investments of endowment funds in coal-mining companies. (David J. Phillip / AP)

Stanford University will not make direct investments of endowment funds in publicly traded companies whose principal business is the mining of coal for use in energy generation, the Stanford Board of Trustees decided today.

In taking the action, the trustees endorsed the recommendation of the university’s Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing (APIRL). This panel, which includes representatives of students, faculty, staff and alumni, conducted an extensive review over the last several months of the social and environmental implications of investment in fossil fuel companies.

Stanford's Statement on Investment Responsibility, originally adopted in 1971, states that the trustees’ primary obligation in investing endowment assets is to maximize the financial return of those assets to support the university. In addition, it states that when the trustees judge that "corporate policies or practices create substantial social injury,” they may include this factor in their investment decisions.

Read more…

What has become of business journalism?

This excellent New Yorker article explores the failure of business journalists to serve as objective observers in recent years.  It echoes some of the discussion I laid out in my recent piece “Separating Fact from Fiction:  A Challenge for the Media.”

Here are a few key intro paragraphs:

In January of 2008, Jim Cramer, in a video at TheStreet.com, recommended that readers buy shares of Bear Stearns. Two months later, he bellowed on his CNBC show, “Mad Money,” that “Bear Stearns is fine!” and “Bear Stearns is not in trouble.” Within days, the bank was nearly insolvent and had been acquired by JPMorgan Chase.

Cramer is well known for his hysterical boosterism of the stocks he likes, but enthusiasm for well-performing companies isn’t unique in business journalism. In 2003, Kimberly Allers, writing in Fortune, described Washington Mutual as “a banking powerhouse” with an “unorthodox retail approach.” In 2006, Fortune headlined an article about Lehman Brothers’s C.E.O., Dick Fuld, “The Improbable Power Broker,” with the subtitle “How Dick Fuld transformed Lehman from Wall Street also-ran to Super-Hot Machine.” In 2007, Neil Weinberg, of Forbes, observed that “Goldman [Sachs] has to stay out ahead of its rivals in trying daring and innovative approaches that push the outer edge of the boundary between what is okay and what may not be.”

Business reporters are supposed to make the complex worlds of finance and commerce intelligible to non-experts. But business journalism generally failed to predict the looming credit collapse, although a few reporters warned of its arrival. Critical stories by Michael Hudson, of the Roanoke Times and the Wall Street Journal, and Gillian Tett, of theFinancial Times, drowned in a vat of glimmering C.E.O. profiles and analyst chatter. Business reporters missed opportunities to investigate abusive lending, negligent rating agencies, and dodgy derivatives trading. To critics, they were complicit in the financial crisis and the recession that followed.

Read more…

An excellent discussion of externalities associated with rail transport of oil

Meridith Fowlie, writing for the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, lays out the economic case for better data collection and policy changes to internalize the externalities of rail transport.  Here are a few key intro paragraphs:

Railways and the problem of social cost

Almost a century ago, trains throwing sparks into neighboring fields and forests helped ignite a canonical debate in economics. These railroad sparks sometimes set fire to farms and woodlands.  Writing in 1920, Alfred Pigou observed that if the railroads fail to account for these damages, profit maximizing operating decisions would not be socially optimal. He proposed taxation as a means of aligning private and social interests.

In 1960, Ronald Coase revisited this example in a famous paper titled The Problem of Social Cost. He observed that if property rights are well defined and costless to enforce, private bargaining between railroads and landowners should result in a socially efficient outcome. (Interested readers should see Severin’s post celebrating Coase’s influential insights).

Current debates about transporting oil by rail bring us back to the question of how to internalize this canonical social cost.

Read more…

Is it really all about framing?

Lakoff assumes that people who believe irrational things can actually be convinced, and I’m not sure framing or facts will ultimately matter that much. Many people who can’t accept climate change are surrounded by others who can’t accept it, so that changing their views would involve rejecting their community (or being rejected by it). Ultimately it will come down to political power, where enough people realize that we have to act that we move ahead without the people who can’t accept the reality of climate change.

Framing and language are important, but at a certain point people need to take responsibility for their inability to deal with facts and evidence. You can’t blame it all on framing, as some of the post modernist people seem to do. I don’t think Lakoff does, but many do. This is why I think it will ultimately come down to political power–we will decide as a society that we’re going to ignore the flat earthers and deal with the real risks that climate change poses to the continued orderly development of human civilization. Wilber would say that we need to transcend and include the legitimate concerns that some have about the means to solve the problem, and then figure out solutions that address those concerns in some way. For the 20-30% of the population that will never be convinced, there’s nothing to be done, and it’s a waste of time to try at this point. We’re out of time and need to get moving.

Some great discussion of framing with references is in this article:  Harjanne, Atte, and Janne M. Korhonen. 2019. “Abandoning the concept of renewable energy.” Energy Policy. vol. 127, 2019/04/01/. pp. 330-340. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518308280]

OPEN ACCESS

Framing is a process where meanings are constructed (Benford and Snow, 2000). Originally introduced by Goffman (1974), frames can be considered models of interpretation which enable the organization of experiences and occurrences into communicable sets of shared beliefs and meanings that also guide action (Benford and Snow, 2000). Frames are thus essential for the formation and maintenance of institutional logic as well. Frames and framing have mostly been applied in research on social movements, where the interest typically is the role of frames in inspiring and legitimating actions and for mobilizing resources (Benford and Snow, 2000, Granqvist and Laurila, 2011). Among science and technology studies, Rosenberg’s (1976) idea of “focusing devices” that direct research and policy efforts towards a specific subset of technologies, sometimes at the expense of other subsets, resonates with this idea of a framing process. The nature of framing also includes drawing boundaries between what is included in a shared meaning and what is not, and can result in umbrella constructs (Hirsch and Levin, 1999) that organize various theoretical elements of a field into a meaningfully combined concept.

In this paper, we approach the concept of renewable energy as a socially constructed result of framing in the field of energy policy. Since frames are fundamentally constructed in discursive processes (Benford and Snow, 2000) we focus our attention mainly on language and written documents, although we briefly discuss visual discourse (see, e.g. O’Neill and Smith, 2014) as well. Discourse analysis has been widely used in studying the formation of environmental and energy policies (see, e.g. Hajer and Versteeg, 2005; Jessup, 2010; Cotton et al., 2014), and the role of linguistic framing and discourse in energy policy has been discussed in detail by Scrase and Ockwell (2010), who described how framing may serve to sustain the continuation of existing policy positions. It should be noted that while we rely on theory of framing, we refer to renewable energy also as a “concept”, since we believe that this term is more familiar to most audiences.

Carbon is a wondrous thing, especially in the form of graphene

The NY Times has an article today describing recent developments in graphene, which is a carbon based material with amazing properties.  Carbon is of course the basis for life on earth and when emitted into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide it warms the earth (as do other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and methane).   Graphene is strong, conductive, flexible, and transparent, which gives it many advantages over conventional materials.

Here are a few key paragraphs from the NY Times article:

While the material was discovered a decade ago, it started to gain attention in 2010 when two physicists at the University of Manchester were awarded the Nobel Prize for their experiments with it. More recently, researchers have zeroed in on how to commercially produce graphene.

The American Chemical Society said in 2012 that graphene was discovered to be 200 times stronger than steel and so thin that a single ounce of it could cover 28 football fields. Chinese scientists have created a graphene aerogel, an ultralight material derived from a gel, that is one-seventh the weight of air. A cubic inch of the material could balance on one blade of grass.

“Graphene is one of the few materials in the world that is transparent, conductive and flexible — all at the same time,” saidDr. Aravind Vijayaraghavan, a lecturer at the University of Manchester. “All of these properties together are extremely rare to find in one material.”

We’re still far from widespread commercial appellation of graphene, but I wanted to point readers to the three best scientific articles of which I’m aware that demonstrate the use of graphene for sensors and super capacitors (energy storage).

Bogue, Robert. 2012. “Environmental sensing and recent developments in graphene."  Sensor Review.  vol. 32, no. 1.

Liu, Chenguang, Zhenning Yu, David Neff, Aruna Zhamu, and Bor Z. Jang. 2010. "Graphene-Based Supercapacitor with an Ultrahigh Energy Density."  Nano Letters.  vol. 10, no. 12. 2010/12/08. pp. 4863-4868. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl102661q]

Liu, Chang-Hua, You-Chia Chang, Theodore B. Norris, and Zhaohui Zhong. 2014. "Graphene photodetectors with ultra-broadband and high responsivity at room temperature."  Nat Nano.  vol. advance online publication, 03/16/online. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.31]

One of my colleagues at Stanford was skeptical of using graphene and carbon nanotubes in microprocessors, but he thought the other applications were quite exciting.  This material, when combined with recent developments in energy harvesting, will likely accelerate the advent of "Smart Everything”, as we discussed in our recent article in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

Chris Calwell's experience driving from Colorado to California in his Model S electric vehicle

For those interested in a real world account of using Tesla’s supercharging network to drive long distances, check out my friend Chris Calwell’s blog posts here, here, and here. The superchargers worked well, and as they become more common, it will get even easier.  I suspect strongly (though have no inside information about this) that once the network is fully built out Tesla will consider licensing the use of it to other automakers, but this will probably have to wait until Tesla makes its electric car “for the rest of us” in a few years.

The picture above shows Chris Calwell (right) with his Model S at the Tesla  Factory in Fremont, CA, on February 6, 2014.  Dave Houghton and Gregg Hardy are at left and center, respectively.

A wonderful quote from Elon Musk about integrated whole systems design

As I wrote in Cold Cash, Cool Climate, one of the most important ways to achieve breakthrough innovation is through integrated whole systems design.  That means not settling for incremental change, but redesigning devices as whole systems to help them accomplish tasks as well as any human or machine could with current technology.

Amory Lovins, who is the most prominent proponent of this design approach, says wisely that “optimizing parts of a system will pessimize the whole system”.  Rocky Mountain Institute has compiled recommendations about integrated design here and here.

I had the pleasure of doing a tour of the Tesla factory in Fremont, CA on February 6, 2014, and I saw this inspirational quotation from Elon Musk about whole systems design and the Tesla Model S.  I wasn’t allowed to take a picture of the wall on which it was printed, but I remembered it so vividly that I had my friend Chris Calwell (who drove to California from Colorado using the supercharger network) get back in touch with the person at Tesla who set up the tour to get the exact quote.  It’s wonderful!

With the Model S, our goal was to create the first ‘true’ electric car. By this, I mean the first electric vehicle where every element was considered anew in light of the fundamental change in technology and then designed and engineered as an integrated system. The result is a car that is beyond what people believe a car can be.”

Elon Musk – CEO and Co-founder

It is this spirit of redesigning from the bottom up that all entrepreneurs should embrace.  We need innovations that are so much better than what they replace that people will be happy to scrap their old technology to capture those benefits, because that’s the only way we’ll achieve the rate and scope of change we need to truly face the climate challenge.  Whole systems integrated design is the way to do just that.

I wrote about integrated design in my GigaOm essay titled “7 ways to unleash game-changing green tech innovation” back in 2012.  There’s also a book on the topic, titled Whole System Design: An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Engineering, which I’ve browsed, although I haven’t reviewed it carefully.

Here’s a picture of me at the wheel of Calwell’s Model S after the tour, thankfully driving at a reasonable speed according to the speedometer.  It’s a terrific car.  Now that innovation needs to trickle down to cars that ordinary folks can afford!

Clean Tech Open events in the East Bay

I had the honor of speaking at a Clean Tech Open event in San Francisco two days ago, which was a terrific event focused on Climate and Clean Tech.   There were more than 60 eager and interested folks in attendance, and there were lots of great questions from the audience.  It was great to reconnect with that group–I was an advisor to the founders of the Clean Tech open in the very beginning, and served as a judge and a mentor for one year.

My friend Ken Lee is arranging a series of interesting Clean Tech Open events in the East Bay.  See list below:

Entrepreneurship and Energy – Assorted Tales from the Entrepreneurs

CITRIS Foundry, Berkeley, April 8, 2014

Cleantech Open Biofuel Briefing at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Emeryville, April 15, 2014

Clean Manufacturing, Maker Communities, Green Buildings and the Rise of the Smart City

Zero Net Energy Center, City of San Leandro, April 16, 2014

2014: The Year of the Battery – Taking Battery Storage from Bottleneck to Breakthrough

WorkSpace Fremont, April 23, 2014

Solidifying Solar’s Place in Distributed Energy

SfunCube, Oakland, April 24, 2014

Three Mile Island 35th Anniversary Symposium: The Past, Present, and Future of Nuclear Energy

Last Friday March 28th, 2014 saw an event commemorating the 35th Anniversary of Three Mile Island at Dartmouth, sponsored by

The Thayer School of Engineering

The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding

The Steyer‐Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at      Stanford

The video for the entire event is now posted (tip of the hat to Dan Reicher at Stanford, who was one of the co-sponsors).  Apparently the back and forth between Amory Lovins and Armond Cohen was quite spirited. Amory’s keynote lecture is at 6 hours 20 minutes in.

PS.  For those who still think that Three Mile Island was the primary reason for nuclear power’s decline in the US, please email me to get a copy of our Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article addressing this widely believed but incorrect idea.

I'm appearing on a panel Thursday evening April 3rd, 2014 on the Commonwealth Club's Climate One program: "Nuclear power: Meltdown or revival?"

I’m appearing on a panel Thursday evening April 3^rd, 2014 on the Commonwealth Club’s Climate One program: “Nuclear power:  Meltdown or revival?”   It’s open to the public, so please join us.

Here’s the program description, which can be found at the event page at http://www.climate-one.org/upcoming-events/nuclear-power-meltdown-or-revival

Program description:

Three years after Fukushima is nuclear power dead in the water? Or is it poised for revival due to the world’s desperate need for carbon-free energy? Two U.S. nuclear plants are being shut down but dozens of others have received a new lease on life from regulators who approved letting them run another decade or two. Nuclear’s biggest challenge comes from the glut of natural gas which is undercutting both clean and dirty sources of electricity.

Nuclear advocates say new technologies can deliver safe atomic power at competitive prices. Detractors say nuclear is propped up by a liability shield subsidized by taxpayers and that Fukushima proves it has unacceptable health and environmental risks.

Jon Koomey, Research Fellow, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford University

Dave Lochbaum, Director, Nuclear Safety Project, Union of Concerned Scientists

Per Peterson, Member, Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future; Professor of Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley

Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014

Location: The Commonwealth Club, SF Club Office, 595 Market Street, Second Floor, San Francisco

Time: 6:00 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. networking reception

Cost: $20 non-member, $12 members, $7 students

Also know: The speakers and audience will be videotaped for future broadcast on the Climate One TV show on KRCB TV 22 on Comcast and DirecTV.

Audience members will receive a free copy of my latest book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs.

Hope to see you there!

An invitation: I'm headlining at a Clean Tech Open event on Clean Energy and Climate in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, April 2nd, 2014

Here are the details on the April 2nd, 2014 event:

Clean Energy and Climate Change, a Cleantech Open business briefing at Impact Hub in SF

Wednesday, April 2, 2014 from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM (PDT)

Location:  Impact Hub San Francisco

925 Mission St

San Francisco, CA 94103

Here’s the short URL to link to the event:

http://tinyurl.com/osdjg6z

There’s also a discount code for my guests, which is “ctokoomey2014”.  Using this code will save you $5 off the $15 admission price.

Attendees will also get a free copy of my latest book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs.

Please spread the word!

My interview today on Bloomberg West about making data centers more efficient

I had a wonderful interview today about data center efficiency on Bloomberg West today, which you can watch here.

The focus was on our case study of eBay’s management practices, which came out last September.  The interviewers were really prepared which is always gratifying.  Let me know what you think!

Here’s one screen grab from the interview.

CO2 Scorecard analyzes coal exports

My friends at CO2 Scorecard just released a short data analysis demonstrating that coal exports from the US have more than offset carbon emissions savings from switching from coal to natural gas in the US electricity sector.  This result is one important piece of evidence that an “all of the above” energy strategy is intellectually incoherent and doomed to fail.  We need to stop coal exports and keep that coal in the ground, and you can’t do that if you continue to promote coal as an energy resource.  In the absence of widespread carbon sequestration and storage, coal cannot be clean.

#coalisnotcheap

Transport constraints and Keystone XL: New Calculations from Max Auffhammer at UC Berkeley

Max Auffhammer at UC Berkeley brings his formidable economic talents to bear on the Keystone XL question, and finds that not approving the Keystone XL Pipeline will keep at least 1 billion barrels of bitumen in the ground.  It is a nice counterpoint to the circular reasoning that still pervades the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement.  The key insight in Max’s piece is that transport to the tar sands is constrained even if every single one of the currently proposed pipelines are built as scheduled and rail shipments are expanded at a furious pace. This means that not building any one of these projects will keep some bitumen in the ground.  Max calculates this amount as 1 billion barrels, but the amount could be higher if canceling Keystone affects whether others are built.