Month: September 2012

This is a post I did not expect to write. I saw no reason to, until I read this morning’s piece by Kurt Eichenwald in the NYTimes.

Why is a post about the 9/11 attack relevant to the story of climate change? Because its the clearest, most hideous, and most instructive example of how groupthink among a cadre of key policy makers is much more serious than merely a political game of  point/counterpoint.

In the months leading up to the 9/11 attack, according to new documents that have come to light in recent years, as well as long-documented and agreed upon historical fact, cold warriors in the Bush administration chose to ignore a powerful body of ominous warnings about terrorist activity in the United States, because it conflicted with their preconceptions about what reality was and how the world works.

An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.

this, in spite of vehement protests by the very intelligence professionals most closely in touch with the facts.

 Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

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Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

We already knew, as of 2006,  about CIA director George Tenet’s desperate attempt to get Condoleeza Rice’s attention in July of 2001.

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away. There was no practical way she could refuse such a request from the CIA director.

For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called “findings” that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Perhaps a dramatic appearance — Black called it an “out of cycle” session, beyond Tenet’s regular weekly meeting with Rice — would get her attention.

Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence he’d seen. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer’s instinct strongly suggested that something was coming. He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

The rest is history. In the face of alarm bells and warning lights blinking, Mr Bush decided to take a month off.

Continue reading “9/11, Climate Change, and Why Facts Matter”

The largest wind facility in Michigan is just a few miles from my home in the state’s mid-section.  The man behind it is Rich Vanderveen.

Vanderveen is legendary among midwestern wind power developers, in that he has been a leader in bringing communities, citizens, manufacturers, and utilities into a “21st century way to think about how we make and use energy”.  Skip to the 2 minute mark of the video if you are pressed for time.

Michigan Land Use Institute:

BRECKENRIDGE, Mich.—Two months after Michigan’s largest wind farm kicked into high gear, local support remains strong for the 133-turbine, 212-megawatt Gratiot County Wind Project, which literally surrounds this small, mid-Michigan farming town.

The project spreads across four townships and 30,000 acres of tabletop-flat farmland in Gratiot’s windy northeast corner. A drive along the area’s main highway, M-46, reveals that the turbines have dramatically changed this farming community’s landscape: The big machines seem to be everywhere.

But local business people say that while they hear some complaints from their customers about the nearly 500-foot-tall machines, most seem glad to see them in place. They like the local wealth and clean energy it generates on breezy days. Local officials say they largely hear the same thing.

This November, if Michigan voters approve the popular “25 x 25” clean energy ballot initiative,  which requires 25 percent renewable energy by 2025, other windy farm communities could be vying for their own utility-scale windpower development.

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According to Mr. Vander Veen, getting Gratiot’s residents to trust his company, Wind Resource LLC, required a slow, yet simple process: talking to lots of people. He often jokes that it took “about 50 cups of coffee per megawatt” as he chatted in kitchens and local restaurants with people who wanted to know more about his proposal.

“We worked with some of the largest families in the community who then put us in touch with their own, personal networks, and those people then did the same thing,” he explained. “So, you end up respecting everybody.”

The developer then attended community meetings where people were encouraged to ask questions, raise objections, and learn as much as possible. They included sessions with Future Farmers of America members; educators; local, state and federal officials; MSU Cooperative Extension staff; and Michigan Farm Bureau members and officials.

“We did a listening tour, finding out what peoples’ values are,” he said. “It’s important to remember that we are invited guests, and we can’t impose anything.

“That is why we chose the co-operative, community participation model,” he added, referring to both the open-ended way he communicated and the leasing arrangement he offered. Everyone who signed up received payment, whether or not a turbine landed on their property.

“As I said in my TEDx talk in Marquette, we were trying to contrast our approach with that of a utility trying to impose, say, a Texas approach,” he explained, “where it’s just a few very large landowners, instead of a lot of small ones, like in Michigan. If you start by deciding what you’re going to do and then just defending it, it doesn’t get you very far.”

Or, as he told Midwest Energy News recently, “We know that you don’t just get consensus; you have to earn it.”

Vanderveen’s approach compares well with the model pioneered by the world’s most successful wind powered nation, Denmark.

Continue reading ““Communities will Change this World” – Rich Vanderveen on Developing Wind, Collaboration, and Cooperation”

Pittsburgh Business Times:

A conservative politician who believes free enterprise is the ubiquitous answer isn’t all that special. But what about a conservative politician who’s dedicated his efforts to combating the risk from climate change? That’s special enough to have earned Bob Inglis an invitation to speak at PennFuture’s “Creating America’s Clean Energy Hub” conference later this month.

To be fair, Inglis isn’t a politician anymore. The founder of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University was a six-term Republican Congressman from South Carolina who lost his re-election bid to a Tea Party candidate in 2010. He’s since refocused on getting conservatives to accept climate change as fact and encouraging innovation in energy to combat its risk.

The answer, he says, is a tax swap — instead of an income tax, let’s have a carbon pollution tax. Remove all energy subsidies and make the entire cost of each fuel transparent to consumers.

“I believe that the cost crashes from the innovation would power an energy revolution faster than any government mandate or fickle tax incentives,” he said.

I talked with Inglis last week about his organization’s mission, the presidential race, and his reception in the business world.

The mission statement of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative says you don’t subscribe to an apocalyptic view of climate change. What does that mean?

“That the end is near, that we are done for and that emergency action is necessary. That tends to really drive away conservatives because conservatives dismiss it as fear mongering. What we prefer to do is to say the science is clear ­— there’s a very real risk that we’re running and doesn’t it make sense to reduce that risk? We’re talking reasonable risk avoidance rather than rhetoric that the sky is falling, we need to turn off all the lights right now.

We really want a lot of energy — we want more not less. More, not less, mobility. More, not less, comfort in our homes. We have to figure out a way to have much more energy so that people in the developing work can enjoy (its benefits).”

Do you believe the tax swap alone will fix the problem or is that a flash point to get the conversation going?

“That is the solution. It’s not as serious as clumsy government incentives. Setting the economics right — making it so that there’s a true cost comparison between fuels. Right now, there isn’t.

Two things distort the market place: government subsidies, mostly for wind and solar but also true of fossil fuels. The second is when fuels aren’t accountable for their hidden costs and those hidden costs aren’t made apparent. There’s a real distortion.

We believe that the individual consumer, in enlightened self interest and in an accountable marketplace, is the driver for innovation.

In South Carolina, electricity is so cheap I don’t have a solar water heater on my roof because it doesn’t make any sense to call up a solar water heater installer. But if I knew what coal powered electricity is really costing me —in health cost and climactic cost — I’d be looking for a solar water heater installer. Not because anybody gave me incentives. Rather, just (realizing) that power’s expensive and one third of my electricity bill is hot water.”

Inside Climate News:

A group of young Republicans has set out to achieve what some might say is an impossible goal: Over the next two years they’ll try to persuade their party to craft and support legislation that would reform the nation’s energy system and set a path toward a future free of fossil fuels.

“We want to show conservatives that this truly is an issue that affects us, affects our families and our businesses,” said Michele Combs, a 45-year-old legislative consultant who founded the group.

Continue reading “Climate Science Finds Foothold Among Conservatives”

The US has been slow to implement the most effective policies to encourage renewable energy – which experience around the world now show to be Feed-In Tariffs –
policies that guarantee a specified rate of return for investors who bring renewable energy installations on line. Usually these laws provide that the initially high rates ratchet down over time. Since the high rates apply to only a small portion of the grid, impact on consumers is generally small, and as free-fuel power sources take over more of the generation load, rates are expected to remain low or even decline over time.

Look for more on Feed-ins in an upcoming post.

Paul Gipe’s invaluable WindWorks.org has more:

In a recent report, the German Renewable Energy Agency says that across Europe countries using feed-in tariffs develop more wind energy and pay less for it than countries using quota systems.

In North America, the quota model is known variously as Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) or Renewable Energy Standards.

The agency, the Agentur für Erneuerbare Energien, says that RPS-related tendering programs raise the payments for wind energy in Europe to as much as €0.15/kWh ($0.19/kWh) in Italy. In contrast, Germany, which uses a feed-in tariff, pays only €0.089/kWh ($0.11/kWh). Spain, which also uses a feed-in tariff, pays even less.
Germany operates the most wind energy capacity in Europe, 29,000 MW, Spain follows with nearly 22,000 MW.
Italy and Great Britain have each developed less than 7,000 MW of wind energy.

Continue reading “The German Renewable Explosion – Feed In Tariffs at Work”

Well, hit my head and call me shorty…..Who could’ve seen this coming?

Medical Express:

More than 1000 visitors to blogs dedicated to discussions of climate science completed a questionnaire that queried people’s belief in a number of scientific questions and conspiracy theories, including: Princess Diana’s death was not an accident; the Apollo moon landings never happened; HIV causes AIDS; and smoking causes lung cancer.

The study also considered the interplay of these responses with the acceptance of climate science, free market ideology and the belief that previous environmental problems have been resolved. The results showed that those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from climate science as well as other sciences.

The researchers, led by UWA School of Psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, found that free-market ideology was an overwhelmingly strong determinant of the rejection of climate science. It also predicted the rejection of the link between tobacco and lung cancer and between HIV and AIDS. Conspiratorial thinking was a lesser but still significant determinant of the rejection of all scientific propositions examined, from climate to lung cancer.

LiveScience:

A study suggesting climate change deniers also tend to hold general beliefs in conspiracy theories has sparked accusations of a conspiracy on climate change-denial blogs.

The research, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, surveyed more than 1,000 readers of science blogs regarding their beliefs regarding global warming. The results revealed that people who tend to believe in a wide array of conspiracy theories are more likely to reject the scientific consensus that the Earth is heating up.

University of Western Australia psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky based the findings on responses from an online survey posted on eight science blogs. According to the paper, Lewandowsky approached five climate-skeptic blogs and asked them to post the survey link, but none did.

Now, climate-skeptic bloggers are striking back with a new conspiracy theory: that the researchers deliberately failed to contact “real skeptics” for the study and then lied about it.

“(F)or some reason, Dr. Lewandowsky refuses to divulge which skeptical blogs he contacted,” wrote Anthony Watts, who blogs on the popular climate skepticism website Watts Up With That?

In the audio clip below, Rush Limbaugh explains that he knows climate science is a conspiracy,  precisely because of the widespread agreement among scientists…

Continue reading “Gee…Deniers More Likely to Be Conspiracy Nuts. Go Figger.”

There is some indication that the democratic inner circle, and even the mainstream media, might be getting it that climate is not only a safe issue to bring up, advantageous in attracting independent and suburban voters, but actually might be a stealth secret super weapon – in that politicians who pander to Climate Deniers, mostly in the GOP, have now destroyed their own ability to walk back on the issue, – and if they somehow were to do that, it would eat away at their own shaky base of support among the dittohead teahadists who now dominate the once great party.

The spectacular collapse of the arctic ice, coming on the heels of historic heartland heatwave and drought, may be setting the table for the re-emergence of climate as a critical component in this fall’s race.

A. Siegel in the Huffington Post:

An item of note: those at the convention gave the climate change paragraph among the most positive reaction given to any part of the speech.

And, even more astounding, the “Village” seems to have noticed.

• Politico rated the speech’s “best lines” and this was #5 of 15 — and #2 in terms of policy-related quotations.

• MSNBC rated applause lines — “And, in this election, you can do something it” was #6 with 17.2 seconds of applause.

At the presidential and congressional levels, 2012 is truly an election about science. Science is truly a differentiator between the parties — with climate science being the most extreme example of this.  And on this, the American public (and America’s scientists) are not sympathetic to the Republican Party.

Climate change is an issue that lends itself to coherent discussion.

And climate change is a winning political issue.

The Obama-Biden campaign seems to be waking to the power of climate as an issue.

Christian Science Monitor:

In Tampa, Mitt Romney threw down the gauntlet to Barack Obama, for whom global warming – and the consequent sea level rise – has been a signature issue since he promised in 2008 to do something about it as president.

“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” Mr. Romney told GOP delegates in Tampa, a smile on his face. “My promise [long pause – audience laughter] is to help you and your family.”

But that laugh line appears to have been just too much for Mr. Obama, who is fighting for support in a neck-and-neck campaign where the economy – not climate change – is the front and center issue. So he let fly.

“Yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet – because climate change is not a hoax,” the president shouted to delegates in Charlotte, N.C. “More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election, you can do something about it.”

That high-profile statement, political analysts say, may have marked a major turnabout for the president, who has scarcely mentioned global warming – or the more scientific designation of “climate change” – in recent months.

  Continue reading “Is Climate a New Political Stealth Super Weapon?”

Good interview with a UK farmer who is using wind power on his operation, selling power back to the national grid, and expects a payback in 5 to 6 years on his investment. Yes, some of his neighbors were upset. They have their equivalent of dittoheads in the UK, too.

Discussion includes the advantages of the the UK feed-in tariff that supports renewable energy. More about feed-ins in an upcoming post.

While the fall seems to be slowing, there may yet be another week or more of melt before we hit the minimum.