Collide-a-scape

At some point, ClimateGate will run its course in the coming weeks and people will start paying attention to James Hansen’s first book, Storms of My Grandchildren, due out in December. The odd thing is that mainstream climate advocates might get a change of topic with Hansen, but it won’t necessarily be to their liking.

That will be obvious to anyone who reads his book, which I preview here for Nature. Regardless, no can dispute Hansen’s heart-felt conviction. There’s one passage in Storms of my Grandchildren that I found quite poignant, but which I couldn’t fit into my piece. I tend to think the incident he recounts marks a symbolic turning point in his life, in which all his gathering emotions and increasing frustrations are brought to the surface. It comes a little over 100 pages into the book, when Hansen is describing election day 2004. Late that night, after it becomes evident to him that Bush would be re-elected, Hansen and his wife decide to return from their Pennsylvania home to New York City, where he works:

It is a half-hour drive over two-way roads between our house and the interstate highway. As we came around a curve, suddenly there was a deer in front of us. I hit the brakes, losing steering control, unable to react fast enough. We slammed into the deer, whose body was hurtled down the road. We sat stunned for several seconds. The deer lay motionless, apparently dead. Then, at age sixty-three, for the first time since childhood, I burst into tears. I am not sure if I was crying for the deer, the nation, or the planet.

That’s the title of a profile I wrote of James Hansen, which is published today in Nature Reports: Climate Change. (Publishing cycles can be cruel, sometimes.)  Hansen’s first book, Storms of my Grandchildren, is due out in December. When I met with him a few weeks ago to talk about the book’s themes, as well as other matters, climategate hadn’t yet hit.

Still, there should be enough interesting nuggets in my piece to satisfy climate news junkies. Also, Newsweek is running an excerpt of the book next week, along with a Q & A. They recently updated their interview with him and posted it online, to include Hansen’s take on the CRU hacked email scandal.

I enjoyed Hansen’s book, which I read in advance of my interview with him. There’s plenty to discuss there, including what he feels were missed opportunities (by him) to sway the Bushies on climate change early in the Administration’s first term.  Some great insider anecdotes on his dueling with Richard Lindzen too.

I’ll talk more about the contents of the book over the weekend.

If you thought the debate over cap and trade legislation (as embodied in the Waxman-Markey bill) was already  overheated, ridiculous, and divisive, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The real fun begins today, with amendment madness unleashed by the Republicans. That will amount to little more than a sideshow, but as the markup process plays out this week, even (cautiously) supportive green groups, such as the Sierra Club, are waiting to see which way the bill bounces. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, however, announced on Friday that they had seen enough (compromises) to sour on the existing House bill.

This split among green groups seems to mirror the tortured reader comments of recent weeks posted on Grist and Climate Progress, a good many which expressed doubts about the merits of cap and trade (versus a carbon tax)–and that was before the full details of the Waxman-Markey bill were known.

For those still undecided and open to varying interpretations of the bill’s efficacy, the following two assessments frame the polar ends of the spectrum:

Joe Romm’s take, after getting a look at the text:

The bill remains a stunning legislative achievement that (if enacted) would require the United States to eliminate virtually all greenhouse gas emissions in four decades — no mean feat, even for those of us who know that is eminently doable (and climatically crucial)!

Roger Pielke Jr. reads the same text but comes to a notably different conclusion:

It is bizarre, even farcical, that the U.S. Congress says that it is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but at the same time it is spending a huge effort and political capital creating a Byzantine system of rules that will allow, even encourage, exactly the opposite to happen.

There are those who also contend that any congressional action on global warming is better than none, an argument that Paul Krugman makes today in his column:

The legislation now on the table isn’t the bill we’d ideally want, but it’s the bill we can get — and it’s vastly better than no bill at all.

In recent weeks, particularly after James Hansen raised the rhetorical stakes, I’ve wondered if the see-saw debate Michael Tobis has had with himself reflects the confusion felt by the typical climate advocate. Tobis, though, has just made up his mind based on a seductive rationale that I think will end up being the default choice for people still wavering on whether to support the Waxman-Markey bill. To Tobis,

The dominant factor in the present circumstances is the upcoming Copenhagen negotiation. It makes a great deal of difference to all the other countries whether the US shows up having made real substantive cuts, by which the participants will mean, exactly, large symbolic actions that might eventually lead to real substantive cuts.

Here’s the problem I have with this logic: Joe Romm’s grade for the current bill is a B to B-. (And I think that’s inflated.) What happens if the House legislation gets further watered down in the coming weeks? Romm will be forced to acknowledge this and assuming he still supports it, will then have to adjust his grade. Let’s say he gives it a C or C-. If the bill ends up being that sucky, and there’s a good chance that could happen, what “symbolic” message does this send to the rest of the world? Seriously, if this so-called landmark legislation ends up being perceived as widely flawed and ineffectual, then how can it be legitimately viewed as a jump-starter for world action in Copenhagen?

Will there come a point for Romm and other Waxman-Markey supporters when the negatives of the bill override the positives? That’ll be something to watch for as this whole process plays out.

And in the unlikely event that Romm and perhaps Gore do jump ship? What then?

Here’s an excellent, alternative road-map offered by one Grist reader on Friday:

If the American public is not ready for an effective climate bill, we should not substitute an ineffective climate bill. We should ask the Administration to provide town hall meetings that improve public understanding of the threat and the potential solutions, staffed by the National Academy of Sciences, our National Security Advisor, and other experts.

Actually, why hasn’t that happened in the first place?

Imagine that: an actual debate on the merits of cap and trade versus a carbon tax breaks out in the blogosphere, courtesy of James Hansen.

That doesn’t hurt so bad, does it Joe?