Articles by Joseph Romm

Where is the media coverage of February’s incredible warming and extreme weather?

Well, that record cooling trend in January, which was solid evidence (to some) that human-caused global warming was at an end, melted away as fast as the summer ice in the Arctic. Not only did February begin a frighteningly unsustainable warming trend for this year, it saw a record number of tornadoes.

Climate change is making a comeback! In your face, delayer-1000s! And as Jon Stewart -- or the Pope -- might say, damn you, polluters! But where is the news coverage? This is just more proof (as if we needed it) that the media is fundamentally conservative.

Let's start with the temperature. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has their monthly global temperature dataset out through Feb. 2008 (it starts in Jan. 1880). January was only 0.12 degrees C above the 1951-1980 mean (for that month) and a full 0.74 degrees C colder than Jan. 2007 (the warmest January record).

But Feb. 2007 was 0.26 degrees C above the monthly mean, and a mere 0.37 degrees C colder than Feb. 2008. The "legitimate science writer" David Appell explains the staggering implications (if we used the same reasoning as typical delayers):

... the world is warming up at 0.14 degrees C/month, or 3 degrees F per year, or a dramatic 30 degrees F per decade! By 2018, Fairbanks Alaska will be like Atlanta was this year. Atlanta will be ... well, like Hell ...

More seriously, this February ripped the tornado record books to shreds as if they had been caught in a giant whirlwind whose intensity had been amplifed by global warming. The country suffered through a stunning 232 tornadoes -- almost triple the previous record, a mere 83 tornadoes in 1971. (Reliable records go back to 1950.)

There is some recent research by NASA that "the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms." More interestingly, the famed blogging nonalarmist meteorologist Jeff Masters explains:

Is CARB up to its old tricks?

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

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If you've seen the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? (which is ranked No. 8 on Netflix in documentary rentals), then you know the EV story up to 2003. What you might not know is that it looks like one of the players in the movie, the California Air Resources Board, is up to no good again.

In killing Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) the first time, they put off progress on this front for a decade. Now they are preparing, at their March 27 meeting, to kill BEVs a second time and probably waste another decade. We don't have another decade. In Part 2 you will find information on what you can do to let CARB know what you think.

This post provides background on the CARB's sorry zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) legacy. For background on BEVs, PHEVs (plug-in hybrid EVs), and FCVs (fuel cell vehicles) see Joe's January post on plug-in hybrids and electric cars. The major automakers are likely to produce plug-in hybrids on their own, but not ZEVs, and yet eventually we want ZEVs to be a part of the fleet to get the greenhouse gas reduction necessary in 2050.

Back in 1990, to help fix chronically unhealthy air in California cities, CARB required that 2 percent of California new vehicle sales have zero emissions by 1998. Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) were then supposed to reach 3 percent by 2001, and 10 percent by 2003, and it was presumed that ZEV meant BEV. In 1996, under automaker pressure, CARB removed the 2 percent and 3 percent requirements but left the 10 percent goal in place. It also allowed low emission vehicles (misleadingly called Partial ZEVs or PZEVs) to substitute for some ZEVs.

In 2001 they tinkered again and added a new category, Advanced Technology (AT) PZEVs, which are essentially hybrids. They also changed the 10 percent goal to 2 percent ZEVs, 2 percent AT PZEVs, and 6 percent PZEVs. The program began to resemble a Rube Goldberg contraption at this point, with gold, silver, and bronze categories. The program's complexity has continued to grow since.

Everything you could possibly want to know about batteries

The Economist has published a very readable history and explanation of batteries, especially ones suitable for all electric cars, called "In search of the perfect battery." In particular, it has a very extensive discussion of lithium-ion batteries, which will almost certainly be the core battery for most electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. I highly recommend the piece, since electricity is the transportation fuel of the near- and far-future.

(h/t to my brother Dave for sending this to me.)

The history of the ‘safety valve’ debate

The new publication from E&E News, ClimateWire, ($ub. req'd), has a long article on the "safety valve" debate and its history. I will reprint it in its entirety below because

1. The issue is important and not going away.
2. It is the most thorough piece I've seen.
3. I was interviewed at length for it.
4. One of my quotes they used is not something I would have said in a short interview.

First, some background: I have blogged repeatedly on why a safety valve is a bad idea. However, the reporter called me because he said that a number of people in the Clinton administration said I was a key player in the discussions leading up to Kyoto, in which the administration ultimately rejected a safety valve (or price ceiling on carbon emissions permits).

The No. 1 highlight of my time in the administration was at the October 6, 1997, "White House Conference on Climate Change," during my brief tenure as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy. At 12:40 p.m. [I kept the ticket and wrote the time and the quote on the back], the president said, "I'm convinced the people in my Energy Department labs are absolutely right." He was talking about the 5-Lab study that I oversaw, which found that the United States could return to 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 without raising the nation's overall energy bill -- if we had an aggressive technology deployment effort.

Rather than me giving a solipsistic explanation of what happened, you can read an account by Art Rosenfeld (the first article, his autobiography), now California energy commissioner, then science adviser to the assistant secretary. Or not.

I was certainly proud of my role in the administration. Economic agencies like the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisers rarely lose policy debates. But they did this time. That said, I was hardly the main reason they lost.

In fact, as I recall, President Clinton explained at the Georgetown conference that the main reason he didn't believe his economic agencies' gloomy predictions for the economic impact of Kyoto was this: They had made similarly gloomy predictions about the impact of his balanced budget bill, which, instead of causing an economic slowdown as predicted, created millions of jobs.

That said, the subsequent incident described in the ClimateWire article is the No. 2 highlight of my time in the administration, although I foolishly didn't keep the piece of paper. Anyway, here is the article (for ease of reading, I won't bother indenting it):