Articles by Joseph Romm

IPCC says debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly

In its definitive scientific synthesis report (PDF), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today issued its strongest call for immediate action to save humanity from the deadly consequences of unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions.

This report -- signed off by 130 nations including the U.S. and China -- slams the door on any argument for delay and makes clear we must under no circumstances listen to those who urge that we wait (who knows how long) to develop as yet non-existent technology [this means you President Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bjorn Lomborg]. As The New York Times put it:

Members of the panel said their review of the data led them to conclude as a group and individually that reductions in greenhouse gasses had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster that could leave island states submerged and abandoned, African crop yields decreased by 50 percent, and cause over a 5 percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

... this summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet from rising temperature [which would raise the oceans 23 feet] could result in sea-level rise over centuries rather than millennia.

Readers of this blog know the IPCC almost certainly underestimates the timing and severity of likely impacts because it ignores or downplays key amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle (see "Are scientists overestimating or underestimating climate change," especially Part II and Part III). Indeed, IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri -- a scientist and economist -- admitted as much:

He said that since the panel began its work five years ago, scientists have recorded "much stronger trends in climate change," like a recent melting of polar ice that had not been predicted. "That means you better start with intervention much earlier."

How much earlier? The normally understated Pachauri warns:

"If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

In short: time's up! America, we better pick the right President in 2008.

To balance the bad news, the IPCC and its member governments agree on the good news -- action is affordable:

NYT’s Andy Revkin and E. O. Wilson get suckered by Newt Gingrich’s phony techno-optimism

Newt Gingrich is an anti-environmentalist who spreads disinformation and has done more than any politician in the last two decades to thwart a sensible climate policy that includes a major clean technology component, as I have explained. Absent serious regulations, no technology-only strategy can possibly avoid catastrophic global warming (as we should have learned in the 1990s).

Some well-meaning people, like The New York Times' first-rate climate reporter Andy Revkin and the great conservation biologist, E.O. Wilson, have gotten taken in by Newt's new-clothes rhetoric. Why? They don't know the history of climate technology policy that I and others have written about -- and they don't understand the explicit Luntz/Bush strategy of trying to get political credit on the climate while blocking the crucial regulatory (and technological!) solutions by talking about "technology, technology, blah, blah, blah," as I put it. I am in 100 percent agreement with David's analysis on this.

Gingrich is most certainly not part of a "move to the pragmatic center on climate and energy," as Revkin writes -- especially not an imaginary center that Revkin claims includes Bjørn Lomborg and Shellenberger & Nordhaus (for a debunking of these folks, click here and follow the various links). Gingrich and Lomborg are not classic global warming deniers -- since they realize denial is now politically and scientifically untenable -- which is why I label them delayers. (I will come back to S&N's ongoing disinformation campaign in a future post.)

Gingrich and his coauthor are not "realists and visionaries" -- the phrase Wilson uses in a foreword to their book, A Contract with the Earth (you can read the foreword -- and, if you're clever and have a huge amount of time, the whole book -- for free if you click here [reg. may be req'd]). I have emailed Wilson -- whom I don't know -- my earlier Gingrich post. I'll focus on Revkin, since I do know him, and he has a blog where he is fighting back against David (and others) who criticize him.

Fox News disses Clinton climate plan

I suppose no one should be shocked that Fox had a five-against-one (Greenpeace's John Passacantando) panel to savage Hillary Clinton's terrific climate and energy plan. The video is worth watching to see just how much some conservatives hate the strategies that are crucial to avoiding catastrophic global warming:

I was surprised to see that Wayne Rogers of M*A*S*H fame has morphed into another Fox wacko. He labels Hillary's plan "idiotic," calls her a "crazy person" and mocks her -- I kid you not -- for putting forward "an aggressive, comprehensive energy efficiency agenda ... by changing the way utilities do business."

Anti-environment, anti-technology Gingrich tries to rewrite history

If you look up the word "Orwellian" on Wikipedia -- "An attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past" -- there should be a picture of Newt Gingrich's new book, A Contract with the Earth.

Instead of wasting time reading a whole book of disinformation, you can just read this interview in Salon, "Give Newt a chance" -- it is definitely all the Newt that is fit to print.

To cut to the chase, readers of this blog will not be surprised that a conservative pretending to care about the environment adopts the anti-regulation, pro-technology approach suggested by GOP strategist, Frank Luntz, and popularized by his protege, George Bush.

You may be surprised that Newt calls himself an environmentalist, given that he co-authored and then worked to enact the anti-environmental Contract with America. Oh, but Newt now claims:

I don't think that the environment was a central focus of the Contract With America. I don't think that it was bad for the environment. I don't know of a single thing in the Contract that was bad for the environment.

I think Salon had to pause in the interview at that point to allow Newt to douse the flames that began engulfing his trousers.