Further comment below.
Some nuggets:
"Efforts to adapt to climate change "will ultimately be overwhelmed," however,
unless the government moves to curb, or mitigate, carbon emissions, PCAST
notes."
G - So adaptation is useless, and the government efforts to "curb, or mitigate,
carbon emissions" doesn't look too promising either. No mention of the
possibility of other options(!)
"It is "one thing to be realistic about what legislation you can pass this
year," adds geochemist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in
Stanford, California. "It is another thing entirely not to be realistic about
the scale of energy transition our nation must undertake if we are to make a
substantial dent in climate risk.""
Still no mention of the existence and need to research alternative strategies.
-G
Science 22 March 2013:
Vol. 339 no. 6126 p. 1372
DOI: 10.1126/science.339.6126.1372
* News & Analysis
Climate Policy
A More Modest Climate Agenda for Obama's Second Term?
1. Eli Kintisch
View larger version:
Prepared?
The White House science council says the nation needs to do more to prepare for
disasters, such as last year's drought and Superstorm Sandy (left), that could
come in a warmer world.
CREDITS (LEFT TO RIGHT): STAN HONDA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES/NEWSCOM; JEFF
TUTTLE/REUTERS/NEWSCOM
When it comes to tackling climate change, President Barack Obama once had grand
ambitions, including forging a global deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions
and persuading Congress to enact legislation that would impose fees on U.S.
carbon pollution. With those hopes dashed by political realities, however, the
president's science advisers last week proposed some potentially more doable
climate actions that Obama could take during his second term. But some climate
scientists say that the proposals, while laudable, fall short of what's needed.
The 10-page report approved on 15 March by the President's Council of Advisors
on Science and Technology (PCAST) outlines a range of steps that Obama could
take, most without requiring new legislation, to address the causes and
consequences of global warming. To curb U.S. emissions, for instance, PCAST
says
Obama should extend recently developed regulations that cover emissions from
new
power plants that burn fossil fuels to the much larger number of existing
plants. It also suggests that the administration consider negotiating a
regional
pact on greenhouse gas emissions with the country's North American neighbors,
Canada and Mexico. And it urges Obama to appoint a new national commission on
"climate preparedness" that would recommend ways to improve the government's
planning for droughts, floods, and other natural disasters that could be
spurred
by climate change.
The president has read a draft of the report, says PCAST member Daniel Schrag,
a
geochemist and an energy specialist at Harvard University, and "was broadly
supportive, mostly, of what we were doing."
Conspicuously absent from PCAST's list, however, are the big climate agenda
items from Obama's first term, including setting a price on carbon and
negotiating a global pact. In large part, the omissions reflect PCAST's
interest
in focusing on things that Obama "could push for and achieve," Schrag says. "A
price on carbon would be great, but we don't expect it to happen politically"
because of opposition in Congress.
That approach isn't sitting well with some researchers. "It is not PCAST's job
to do Obama's political strategizing for him," says climate modeler Raymond
Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago in Illinois. "I believe that PCAST
should have emphasized the importance of implementing a price on carbon." It is
"one thing to be realistic about what legislation you can pass this year," adds
geochemist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford,
California. "It is another thing entirely not to be realistic about the scale
of
energy transition our nation must undertake if we are to make a substantial
dent
in climate risk."
Other critics note that the report is silent on whether the White House should
approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, which opponents
say would promote unwise energy development. Eighteen scientists, led by NASA
climatologist James Hansen, urged the president earlier this year to stop the
project, saying it runs counter to "national and planetary interests."
Instead of wading into such "largely political" issues, PCAST emphasized a
topic
that often gets short shrift in policy discussions, Schrag says: the need "to
prepare the country for the impacts of climate change." The proposed
preparedness commission, he says, could help lay the ground work for changing
"federal policies on disaster relief and insurance … [so] that financial
capital, when invested following a disaster, is used not just to rebuild, but
to
rebuild better." Homes could be moved out of coastal areas that are likely to
be
flooded again by rising seas, for example, and farming areas could be better
prepared for droughts. The United States has "too many programs that
essentially
provide economic incentives for people to live in harm's way," Schrag told
PCAST
at a briefing.
Efforts to adapt to climate change "will ultimately be overwhelmed," however,
unless the government moves to curb, or mitigate, carbon emissions, PCAST
notes.
That's why the report also encourages Obama to support more drilling for
natural
gas, which produces fewer carbon emissions than oil or coal. And it urges the
expansion of tax credits for developing renewable energy sources, such as wind
and solar power.
Although the administration can take action independently on some of PCAST's
ideas—such as regulating power plants or supporting expanded drilling—it will
need cooperation from a sometimes hostile Congress for others, such as
retooling
the tax code. But energy expert Robert Socolow of Princeton University says
PCAST's emphasis on "adaptation first and mitigation second" could help reframe
public discussion about such policies. There is a large "overlap of climate
threats and threats we already deal with," such as floods and droughts, he
notes. Linking the two could "reduce resistance" to discussing climate policy,
Socolow says, and reopen a "completely muffled" national conversation.
Obama could also leverage action at the state level during his second term,
adds
former Obama adviser Joseph Aldy, now at Harvard University. This year, the
nation's first comprehensive emissions trading system began operating in
California, while an existing nine-state pact in the Northeast, the Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative, is mulling stricter limits for existing plants. If
federal officials could link such systems piece by piece, Aldy says, it could
open the door to the broader type of emissions trading system that Obama was
unable to get through Congress during his first term. And that step, he says,
could help Obama meet his first-term goal of cutting U.S. carbon emissions by
17% from 2005 levels by 2020—an aspiration rarely mentioned these days by the
president or his advisers.
________________________________
From: RAU greg <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Fri, March 22, 2013 9:25:15 PM
Subject: [geo] Holdren et al weigh in
Whitehouse science advisers offer their views of (anthro?) climate change
mitigation/management - letter here*. Adaptation ("climate preparedness")
prominently appears as the Plan B (actually item # 1) to failed CO2
policy/technology, ignoring the possibility of post-emissions mitigation or
SRM.
Under the rather dire circumstances the planet now faces and given the
abundance of GE possibilities proposed, the preceding oversight seems
dangerously narrow minded.
-Greg
*http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_energy_and_climate_3-22-13_final.pdf
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/03/22/pcast-releases-new-climate-report
PCAST Releases New Climate ReportToday the President’s Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology (PCAST) released a letter to the Presidentdescribing six
key components the advisory group believes should be central to the
Administration’s strategy for addressing climate change.Posted by Rick Weiss on
March 22, 2013 at 01:53 PM EDT
The 9-page “letter report” responds to a November request from the President
for
advice as the Administration prepares new initiatives to tackle the challenges
posed by Earth’s changing climate. The letter calls for a dual focus on
mitigation—reducing the pace and magnitude of climate-related changes—and
adaptation—minimizing the unavoidable damage that can be expected to result
from
climate change.
“Both approaches are essential parts of an integrated strategy for dealing with
climate change,” the letter states. “Mitigation is needed to avoid a degree of
climate change that would be unmanageable despite efforts to adapt. Adaptation
is needed because the climate is already changing and some further change is
inevitable regardless of what is done to reduce its pace and magnitude.”
The six key components are:
* Focus on national preparedness for climate change, which can help
decrease
damage from extreme weather events now and speed recovery from future damage;
* Continue efforts to decarbonize the economy, with emphasis on the
electricity
sector;
* Level the playing field for clean-energy and energy-efficiency
technologies
by removing regulatory obstacles, addressing market failures, adjusting tax
policies, and providing time-limited subsidies for clean energy when
appropriate;
* Sustain research on next-generation clean-energy technologies and
remove
obstacles for their eventual deployment;
* Take additional steps to establish U.S. leadership on climate change
internationally; and
* Conduct an initial Quadrennial Energy Review.
To see the full letter report, please click here.
To learn about PCAST, please click here.
Rick Weiss is Assistant Director for Strategic Communications and Senior Policy
Analyst at OSTP
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