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<p><font size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>February 19, 2023</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ Housing bubble ignores flood risks ]<br>
</i></font><font face="Calibri"><b>The climate change real estate
bubble risks billions</b><br>
Andrew Freedman, author of Axios Generate<i><br>
</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/02/17/climate-change-real-estate-bubble">https://www.axios.com/2023/02/17/climate-change-real-estate-bubble</a><br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">A climate housing bubble threatens to erode
real estate prices in much of the U.S. in the coming years, posing
particular challenges for low-income residents, a new study finds.<br>
<br>
<b>Why it matters: </b>With more severe and frequent extreme
weather events, the resilience of homeowners and communities is on
the line.<br>
</font>
<blockquote><font face="Calibri">-- How lenders, insurance companies
and others incorporate escalating flood risks into property
prices is a key question facing at-risk communities.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<font face="Calibri"><b>Zoom in: </b>The study, published Thursday
in Nature Climate Change, finds that nationally, property prices
are currently overvalued by between $121 billion and $237 billion,
when compared to their actual flood risk.<br>
</font>
<blockquote><font face="Calibri">-- The current prices mask the true
danger that these properties are exposed to, because of factors
such as outdated FEMA flood maps, incentives in the National
Flood Insurance Program and home buyers who lack climate change
information.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">--The paper is the result of a collaboration
between experts at the Environmental Defense Fund, First Street
Foundation, Resources for the Future, the Federal Reserve and
two universities.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">-- Scientists relied on First Street’s
updated modeling that simulates rainfall-induced, or pluvial
flooding, as well as coastal flood events.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<font face="Calibri"><b>Between the lines:</b> The authors found
that right now, 14.6 million properties face at least a 1% annual
probability of flooding, putting them in the so-called 100-year
flood zone.<br>
</font>
<blockquote><font face="Calibri">-- However, this is expected to
increase by 11% in a mid-range emissions scenario, with average
annual losses spiking by at least 26% by 2050.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">-- In dollar terms, the areas with the
greatest property overvaluations are along the coasts, where
there is overlap between rising seas, fewer flood disclosure
laws, and a high number of residents who may not view climate
change as a near-term threat.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">-- Much of the overvaluation comes from
vulnerable properties located outside of FEMA's 100-year flood
zone.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">-- Once the higher flood risks become
evident, homeowners will lose equity in their property, which is
a particular threat to lower-income homeowners.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<font face="Calibri"><b>The big picture:</b> The pattern of the
total overvaluation of at-risk properties in the Lower 48 states
reveals hot spots of risk.<br>
</font>
<blockquote><font face="Calibri">- - Specifically, coastal areas
show high amounts of overvaluation.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- - Spikes also show up in West Virginia and
other parts of Appalachia.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- - In Texas, it is clear that the biggest
cities, including Houston and Dallas, have a significant amount
of overvaluation.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- - Florida tops the list, accounting for
about $50.2 billion based on the actual threat, the study found.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<font face="Calibri"><b>What they're saying: </b>"There is a
significant amount of 'unknown' flood risk across the country
based solely on the differences in the publicly available federal
flood maps and the reality of actual flood risk," Jeremy Porter,
head of climate implications at First Street Foundation, said in a
statement.<i><br>
</i></font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/02/17/climate-change-real-estate-bubble">https://www.axios.com/2023/02/17/climate-change-real-estate-bubble</a><i><br>
</i></font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><i>- -</i></font></p>
<i><font face="Calibri">[ The study in Nature Climate Change ]<br>
</font></i><font face="Calibri"><b>Unpriced climate risk and the
potential consequences of overvaluation in US housing markets</b><br>
Nature Climate Change (2023)<br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><b>Abstract</b><br>
</font>
<blockquote><font face="Calibri">Climate change impacts threaten the
stability of the US housing market. In response to growing
concerns that increasing costs of flooding are not fully
captured in property values, we quantify the magnitude of
unpriced flood risk in the housing market by comparing the
empirical and economically efficient prices for properties at
risk. We find that residential properties exposed to flood risk
are overvalued by US$121–US$237 billion, depending on the
discount rate. In general, highly overvalued properties are
concentrated in counties along the coast with no flood risk
disclosure laws and where there is less concern about climate
change. Low-income households are at greater risk of losing home
equity from price deflation, and municipalities that are heavily
reliant on property taxes for revenue are vulnerable to
budgetary shortfalls. The consequences of these financial risks
will depend on policy choices that influence who bears the costs
of climate change.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01594-8">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01594-8</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ check on the feedback loops -- Inside
Climate News ]</i><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><b>Scientists Examine Dangerous Global
Warming ‘Accelerators’</b><br>
A new study categorizes climate feedback loops and the possibility
they could push the climate past planetary tipping points.<br>
By Bob Berwyn<br>
February 17, 2023<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">In its landmark climate science reports, IPCC
estimates the possibility of specific climate impacts
occurring—for instance, it assigns high likelihood to sea level
rise—but the feedbacks and tipping points are still in the realm
of “deep uncertainty,” said Frank Pattyn, an Antarctic
glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussels who was not involved
with the paper. <br>
<br>
“In my domain, one known deep uncertainty is Antarctic ice sheet
loss, which is related to feedbacks that we know from marine ice
sheet instability and marine ice cliff instability,” he said.
Research suggests that, in past times of global warming, big
chunks of Antarctica’s ice have crumbled fast enough to melt ice
sheets and raise sea levels faster than the IPCC projections.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">The first papers identifying marine ice cliff
disintegration as a potential contributor to rapid sea level rise
appeared in about 2016, he said. “And now, after six, seven years,
we have not profoundly advanced to where we can take that into
account in a more physically understandable way, that would give
more precise projections of sea level rise.”<br>
<br>
Research on the identified tipping points is still “in its
infancy,” he said, and the new paper points to the need for a
“massive international mobilization … to quickly assess the
impacts and interactions of feedbacks.”<br>
<br>
“If you sum up the funding associated with sea level rise
research, it’s peanuts compared to what is at stake with sea level
rise,” he said. A 2022 study in EOS clearly showed this critical
funding gap.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">This graph from the article is the shocker: as
sea level goes up, funding for sea level research goes down. The
average amount the US spends on Halloween $10B per year; ice
researchers get 0.04% of that to help plan and predict biblical
migration. How can we turn this around? 9/9</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/helenafricker/status/1626016074931269633/photo/1">https://twitter.com/helenafricker/status/1626016074931269633/photo/1</a></font><br>
<font face="Calibri">“There’s a deeper picture here,” said co-author
Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the
University of Exeter. Lenton was deeply influenced by scientist
James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that life
interacts with its inorganic surroundings on the planet to form a
self-regulating system that perpetuates the conditions required
for it to persist. “That’s part of what some climate models may be
missing,” he said.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">“Lovelock was a visionary in thinking about how
humans and our actions are intertwined in that system, and of
course, that’s also what the paper is about,” he said, “how to see
ourselves as integral parts and actors in the system.”</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">There has been an effort to bring a more
faithful representation of the nuanced influences of life on the
Earth into climate modeling, he said, but they aren’t yet fully
integrated. Even if global climate models can’t be rebuilt from
the ground up, they should “bring those qualities of life into
some model frameworks, at least just to explore how that would
affect the feedback dynamics,” he said.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">“You want to bring together evolution, ecology,
biogeochemistry and the physical climate and you don’t want to go
crazy,” Lenton said. </font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Climate models began as weather forecast models
focused on the atmosphere and short-term atmospheric processes, he
said. </font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">“Gradually, they’ve had more and more stuff
bolted on, and when we spot something that might be missing, that
might be an important feedback, we kind of go to work bolting that
into the model as well,” Lenton said. “You’re always playing catch
up.” </font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Lenton said the new paper shows how important
it is to keep striving to limit global warming, even if the 1.5
degree Celsius limit is breached in coming years.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">“I think many of us would say the evidence
shows that the damage from global warming is going up in a
nonlinear way, so every tenth of a degree more warming will cause
more damage than the previous tenth,” he said.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.floodlightnews.org/post/an-activist-group-is-spreading-misinformation-to-stop-solar-projects-in-rural-america">https://www.floodlightnews.org/post/an-activist-group-is-spreading-misinformation-to-stop-solar-projects-in-rural-america</a><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17022023/climate-feedback-loop-accelerators">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17022023/climate-feedback-loop-accelerators</a></font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font> </p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ Underground heat - a basic physics lessons
video - ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>Geothermal Energy: How Big is the Potential?</b><br>
Sabine Hossenfelder<br>
1,498 views Feb 18, 2023 #science<br>
Check out Brian Keating's Channel:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBrianKeating">https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBrianKeating</a> <br>
Sign up for Brian's Newsletter here: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://briankeating.com/list">http://briankeating.com/list</a><br>
<br>
There is a lot of energy right under our feet, a relic from
Earth's hot past as a ball of plasma. But how much can geothermal
energy realistically do for us? What technologies are currently
being pursued, what are the risks, and is it even carbon neutral?
In this video we have collected all the relevant facts and numbers
for you.<br>
<br>
The footage of Staufen at the beginning of the video comes from
Tom Scott's video that you can watch in full here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOgle">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOgle</a>...<br>
👉 Transcript and References on Patreon ➜
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.patreon.com/Sabine">https://www.patreon.com/Sabine</a><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6UGpaKnkS0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6UGpaKnkS0</a></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font> </p>
<br>
<font face="Calibri"> [ Juan Cole - opinion ]</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>Do we Have Until 2050 to become Carbon
Neutral? What if 27 Climate Feedback Loops are Working together
to Shorten our Deadline?</b><br>
JUAN COLE<br>
2/18/2023<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Feedback
loops are central notions in science. There are two kinds,
negative and positive. Negative feedback loops, despite their
name, are actually good if you are looking for stability. So for
instance say you are too hot, so you sweat. The sweat evaporates,
cooling you off. In fact, it could work too well, causing you cool
off so much that you shiver. Shivering, spasms of your muscles,
heat you back up. So you end up at a normal temperature after all
that.<br>
<br>
Positive feedback loops are the ones you have to watch out for.
William J. Ripple et al. explain, “For example, warming in the
Arctic leads to melting sea ice, which leads to further warming
because water has lower albedo (reflectance) than ice.” Here is
what they mean: Say the extra carbon dioxide we put into the
atmosphere causes the oceans to warm up a bit. The warmer water
melts some of the ice at the North Pole. Ice reflects sunlight
back out into space, so it cools the earth and its oceans off.
When the ice melts, the dark water beneath becomes visible. Dark
surfaces absorb sunshine rather than reflecting it. So now the
water gets even hotter. And more ice melts. And the dark water
absorbs more sunshine and gets even hotter. On and on. A positive
feedback loop ratchets things in a single direction so that they
get increasingly out of kilter.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VojzFPoii6E">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VojzFPoii6E</a> - <b>The science
behind 'feedback loops'</b><br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">So what if the climate emergency is creating
not one but 27 positive feedback loops (which, remember, are bad
if you are interested in maintaining the status quo)? And what if
it is only generating a handful of negative feedback loops, so
that these latter cannot hope to offset all the massive changes
being provoked by the positive feedback loops? The answer to these
“what if?” questions is that we would be well and truly screwed.<br>
<br>
That’s the fear expressed in a new scientific paper in One Earth
by William J. Ripple et al.<br>
<br>
They start out with a graphic showing how several of these
positive feedback loops in climate change might reinforce one
another: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.juancole.com/images/2023/02/feedbacks.jpg">https://www.juancole.com/images/2023/02/feedbacks.jpg</a></font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">As noted above, if we want to keep the earth
cool, ice is our friend because it is blinding white and reflects
the heat of sun rays back out into outer space. So a positive
climate feedback loop typically sets in motion the disappearance
of more and more ice. For instance, rainfall at the poles melts
ice, which causes more global heating because bright surfaces are
replaced by dark absorptive ones, and warmer resulting oceans then
put more water vapor into the air above them, causing more
rainfall, which melts more ice, and so on.<br>
<br>
It is worse. Because when oceans warm and put more water vapor
into the air above them, they are in effect emitting a greenhouse
gas, since water vapor, like carbon dioxide and methane, helps
keep the sun’s heat on earth once it strikes it, rather than
letting it radiate out to space.<br>
<br>
So you have two positive feedback loops going on here, with
reduced reflectivity because of ice loss, which increases heat,
and also increased heat from emission of a greenhouse gas, i.e.
water vapor. Both of these effects reinforce one another and make
the earth even hotter.<br>
<br>
Not only does the ice melting reduce its ability to reflect away
the sun rays, but it causes sea level to rise. Sandy beaches are
bright and reflect sunlight. But if they are submerged by dark
water they can no longer do this. Loss of beaches because of sea
level rise thus can raise the earth’s temperature and melt more
ice which causes more sea level rise and loss of bright coastal
areas. A positive feedback loop, this process can go on at the
same time as the ones mentioned above.<br>
<br>
So here’s the bottom line. The authors suggest that if a lot of
these positive feedback loops operate at the same time and
reinforce one another, as the few examples I chose above do, they
could reduce the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide.
For instance, cold water absorbs more CO2 than warm water, so if
we heat up the oceans very rapidly we will reduce our carbon
budget.<br>
<br>
Our carbon budget is the amount of carbon dioxide that the oceans
will absorb. Almost all of the massive amounts of CO2 we have put
into the atmosphere will go into the oceans. But if we go on
producing billions of tons a year of CO2 after 2050, we will
outrun the oceans’ absorptive capacity, and then the CO2 will just
stay up there, making the earth hot, for thousands or even tens of
thousands of years. Since we as a species evolved in relatively
cool times, and since our civilization is premised on the
stability of a cool climate, we do not know how well we will cope
with a very long-term erratic Hot Earth.<br>
<br>
That carbon budget we have between now and 2050, however, may not
exist. Maybe we only have until 2035 or 2040 to stop producing
CO2, in order to avoid pushing our climate system over into chaos.
Chaos means super-hurricanes and massive heatwaves and unexpected
flooding, etc.<br>
<br>
If a lot of these positive climate feedback loops work together,
they could reduce our carbon budget. So, the scientists say,
governments and companies are unwise to set goals of being carbon
neutral by 2050. That may be too late if we take into account all
the destructive positive feedback loops, and especially if some of
them reinforce one another.<br>
<br>
Their message is, in other words, hurry up!<br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.juancole.com/2023/02/feedback-together-deadline.html">https://www.juancole.com/2023/02/feedback-together-deadline.html</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"></font></p>
<i><font face="Calibri">[ Organized disinformation campaigns target
specific regions .. ] </font></i><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> <font face="Calibri"><b>An activist
group is spreading misinformation to stop solar projects in
rural America</b></font><br>
<font face="Calibri">By Miranda Green </font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Feb. 18, 2023 </font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Roger Houser’s ranching business was getting
squeezed. The calves he raises in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley
were selling for about the same price they had a few years
earlier, while costs for essentials like fuel and fertilizer kept
going up. But Houser found another use for his 500 acres.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">An energy company offered to lease Houser's
property in rural Page County to build a solar plant that could
power about 25,000 homes. It was a good offer, Houser says. More
money than he could make growing hay and selling cattle.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"The idea of being able to keep the land as one
parcel and not have it split up was very attractive," Houser says.
"To have some passive income for retirement was good. And then the
main thing was the electricity it would generate and the good it
would do made it feel good all the way around."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">But soon after he got the offer, organized
opposition began a four-year battle against solar development in
the county. A group of locals eventually joined forces with a
nonprofit called Citizens for Responsible Solar to stop the
project on Houser's land and pass restrictions effectively banning
big solar plants from being built in the area...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Citizens for Responsible Solar is part of a
growing backlash against renewable energy in rural communities
across the United States. The group, which was started in 2019 and
appears to use strategies honed by other activists in campaigns
against the wind industry, has helped local groups fighting solar
projects in at least 10 states including Ohio, Kentucky and
Pennsylvania, according to its website.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"I think for years, there has been this sense
that this is not all coincidence. That local groups are popping up
in different places, saying the same things, using the same online
campaign materials," says Michael Burger, executive director of
the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Citizens for Responsible Solar seems to be a
well-mobilized "national effort to foment local opposition to
renewable energy," Burger adds. "What that reflects is the
unfortunate politicization of climate change, the politicization
of energy, and, unfortunately, the political nature of the energy
transition, which is really just a necessary response to an
environmental reality."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Citizens for Responsible Solar was founded in
an exurb of Washington, D.C., by a longtime political operative
named Susan Ralston who worked in the White House under President
George W. Bush and still has deep ties to power players in
conservative politics.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston tapped conservative insiders to help
set up and run Citizens for Responsible Solar. She also consulted
with a longtime activist against renewable energy who once
defended former President Donald Trump's unfounded claim that
noise from wind turbines can cause cancer. And when Ralston was
launching the group, a consulting firm she owns got hundreds of
thousands of dollars from the foundation of a leading GOP donor
who is also a major investor in fossil fuel companies. It's
unclear what the money to Ralston's firm was used for. Ralston has
previously denied that Citizens for Responsible Solar received
money from fossil fuel interests.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston said in an email to NPR and Floodlight
that Citizens for Responsible Solar is a grassroots organization
that helps other activists on a volunteer basis. The group isn't
opposed to solar, Ralston said, just projects built on farmland
and timberland. Solar panels belong on "industrial-zoned land,
marginal or contaminated land, along highways, and on commercial
and residential rooftops," she said.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">But her group's rhetoric points to a broader
agenda of undermining public support for solar. Analysts who
follow the industry say Citizens for Responsible Solar stokes
opposition to solar projects by spreading misinformation online
about health and environmental risks. The group's website says
solar requires too much land for "unreliable energy," ignoring
data showing power grids can run dependably on lots of renewables.
And it claims large solar projects in rural areas wreck the land
and contribute to climate change, despite evidence to the
contrary...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">People often have valid concerns about solar
development. Like any infrastructure project, solar plants that
are poorly planned and constructed can potentially harm
communities. But misinformation spread by groups like Citizens for
Responsible Solar is turning rural landowners unfairly against
renewables, says Skyler Zunk, an Interior Department official
under President Donald Trump and chief executive of Energy Right,
a conservative-leaning nonprofit that supports solar projects that
preserve ecosystems.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Analysts and industry participants say the
prevalence of bad information is also increasing pressure on local
officials who are often charged with approving renewable energy
projects. Many are wary of proposed development because of the
political blowback it can bring. "This type of misinformation is
very difficult to dispel. And politicians are just afraid of
getting engaged with it," says Ronald Meyers, director of the
Renewable Energy Facility Siting project at Virginia Tech.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Getting projects built in the face of local
opposition is among the biggest challenges wind and solar
companies face. A 2022 report by the Sabin Center at Columbia
University found 121 local policies around the country that are
aimed at blocking or restricting renewable energy development, a
nearly 18% increase from the year before.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Solar restrictions are gaining traction as the
stakes for addressing climate change keep rising. Construction of
more renewable energy is key to the country's plans to cut
greenhouse gas pollution and avoid the worst damage from extreme
weather in the years ahead.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"It's an enormous concern," says Alan Anderson,
a lawyer in Kansas who represents renewable energy companies. "If
we can't get projects permitted at counties or townships or
whatever local level makes a decision, we can't do any of the
goals we think we need to do for climate change."...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>From White House insider to local organizer</b></font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Susan Ralston launched Citizens for Responsible
Solar to stop a project near her home in Culpeper, Va., about 70
miles southwest of Washington, D.C. She brought years of
experience in the upper echelons of national conservative politics
to her new role as a county-level organizer against rural solar.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston served as special assistant to former
President George W. Bush and as a top aide to Karl Rove in the
White House. She resigned in 2006 when a congressional
investigation found that she passed messages to Rove from her
former boss, the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The
investigation did not accuse her of any wrongdoing.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">After leaving the White House, Ralston started
her own consulting firm, SBR Enterprises LLC. In 2012, she
organized a fundraiser for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign
that was hosted by GOP luminaries. She's currently listed as a
senior adviser at a nonprofit that works to elect conservative
women.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">As she was setting up Citizens for Responsible
Solar, Ralston got help from operatives who have worked behind the
scenes with some of the most powerful people in conservative
politics.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">The treasurer of Citizens for Responsible Solar
is Lisa Lisker. Lisker was treasurer for a campaign committee for
J.D. Vance, who was elected last year as a Republican senator from
Ohio. Her firm does financial consulting for Republican candidates
and political committees to ensure that they comply with campaign
finance laws...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">When there's official paperwork that has to get
to Citizens for Responsible Solar, it goes through a firm created
by a lawyer named Jason Torchinsky. The same firm has been the
registered agent for at least two dozen conservative organizations
based in Virginia. One of them was a voter-focused group headed by
Leonard Leo, who helped remake the federal judiciary through the
Federalist Society. NPR and Floodlight haven't verified whether
any of the conservative groups that use Torchinsky's firm as a
registered agent have ties to Citizens for Responsible Solar.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Torchinsky is also a partner at a law firm that
Bloomberg News once described as "a boutique outfit that
specializes in advising organizations that want to participate in
the electoral process without disclosing who's paying their
bills."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Torchinsky has worked as a lawyer for Americans
for Prosperity, an influential activist group that promotes
conservative causes. And he's represented the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC), an association of companies and
Republican state legislators that has engineered and spread
anti-climate messaging and draft legislation.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">And Ralston's consulting firm, SBR Enterprises,
got almost $300,000 from The Paul E. Singer Foundation between
2018 and late 2020 — the period when she was setting up Citizens
for Responsible Solar. Paul Singer, the foundation's president, is
chairman of the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that has
criticized government support of renewable energy. His investment
firm, Elliott Management, is the largest shareholder in the coal
producer Peabody Energy Corp...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston and the Singer Foundation declined to
tell NPR and Floodlight what the money to SBR Enterprises was for.
The foundation's tax filings say the firm was a "consultant for
the foundation mission."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston reportedly said to E&E News in 2019
that no money from fossil fuel interests went to Citizens for
Responsible Solar. Since then, she has declined NPR and
Floodlight's requests to identify the organization's sources of
funding.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Lisa Graves, executive director of the
progressive watchdog group True North Research, says Ralston has
surrounded her group with "a national network of right-wing
political activists who are very powerful, very, very plugged in."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Graves adds: "Having them invested in one way
or the other in her agenda here is a sign that this is a key
tactical component of the way that powerful right-wing donors or
strategists want to attack solar."...</font><br>
- -<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston was soon eyeing bigger fights</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Around the time Ralston founded Citizens for
Responsible Solar in Culpeper, Va., she got involved in debates
over solar projects in other communities. One of the first places
she went was the bedroom community of Spotsylvania, Va., tucked
between Richmond and Washington, D.C. A solar company had
purchased 6,350 acres of land there, and it was asking for
approval to build the largest project east of the Rockies.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Greg Benton, a county supervisor at the time,
was tasked with determining whether it would be a good thing for
Spotsylvania. "I'm not a big energy person, one way or the other.
I think solar will make a difference in helping the electric
companies and helping the planet a little bit," Benton says. "I
wanted to do right by the county with this project."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">A Republican who had worked at the local
sheriff's and fire departments, Benton spent months researching
the project. He looked into concerns over stormwater management
and fears that toxic materials like cadmium could be in the solar
panels and leak out, hurting people or the environment. Benton
found no major risks.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">But he was soon overwhelmed by local activists
who criticized the project's impact on the landscape and pushed
issues that Benton says he'd debunked or addressed.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"I think initially they were concerned about
it, and they had some legitimate concerns," he says. "I think it
was from bad information. Just information that was not true, not
factually based."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston declined to discuss her relationship
with activists in Spotsylvania. But she told E&E News in 2019
that she "worked closely" with residents there who opposed the
project. "Their fight is much, much bigger," Ralston told E&E.
"They don't have as much financial resources that I have."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">After months of angry public hearings,
Spotsylvania County ultimately approved the project in 2019. The
loss in Spotsylvania was an early setback for Ralston. But her
campaign was just getting started. Shortly after she formed
Citizens for Responsible Solar, the solar company she was
organizing against in Culpeper cited "community concerns" and
withdrew its project application. Soon, Citizens for Responsible
Solar grew in size and influence and spread beyond Virginia...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>More local activists pitch “responsible
solar”</b></font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Many grassroots activists today credit their
success in stopping solar projects to Ralston. One of them is
Kathy Webb. Webb says she learned that a company wanted to clear a
forest for a solar plant near her home in Rowan County, N.C., days
before local officials planned to vote. She sent out a flurry of
emails to anyone she thought could help. Somehow, a message came
back from Ralston.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ask the county to delay the vote, Ralston told
her. And get a lawyer. It worked, Webb says. The solar company
scrapped its plan. "Susan guided us in the right direction and
then helped us with information," she says. Ralston's advice
"absolutely was part of us defeating it."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Soon, Webb was spreading Ralston's message
throughout North Carolina. She runs the Facebook page Rowan County
Citizens for Responsible Solar, where she posts material that's
emailed out from Ralston's organization.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">The reach of Citizens for Responsible Solar
appears to extend across the U.S. On Facebook, at least two dozen
groups and pages dedicated to defeating solar projects feature the
same term: responsible solar. There's a Kansans for Responsible
Solar and an Iowa for Responsible Solar. Ralston spoke at a
fundraiser last year for a Kentucky-based group called Hardin
County Citizens for Responsible Solar.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">In her only substantive email to NPR and
Floodlight, Ralston said she offers help to those who ask. While
other groups might adopt the name "Citizens for Responsible
Solar," she says they aren't "affiliated" with her organization.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston's group has nurtured networks of
activists who often work together across state lines. In
testimonials, people from South Carolina to Maine say Citizens for
Responsible Solar connected them with other activists and gave
them resources to sway local officials.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">In one Virginia county, for example, Citizens
for Responsible Solar gave residents information about "the
science and downsides" of solar. It then put one of those
activists in touch with someone in New Jersey who was looking for
information about the solar industry. And it connected people in
Pennsylvania with John Droz, an activist who has spent years
challenging mainstream climate science and trying to limit
renewable energy development.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"Susan was a great resource for information
and, probably more importantly, inspiration," says Jim Thompson,
who runs an Ohio group called Against Birch Solar. "There's times,
you know, you get down in the valleys, and you don't know that
you're making a darned difference. And you reach out to people
like Susan and share your frustration, maybe get some insight as
to what you might be doing wrong."...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston didn't have contacts of her own in
Ohio, Thompson says, so she made him part of her network. When
people in Ohio reached out to Ralston, "then she would start
sending them to me," Thompson says.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston's growing influence has drawn criticism
from renewable energy advocates across the political spectrum. Ray
Gaesser is chair of the Iowa Conservative Energy Forum, which
promotes renewable energy to drive economic growth. In 2021, he
warned that Citizens for Responsible Solar — "a dark-money
organization based in Virginia" — was meddling in local affairs.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Groups like Citizens for Responsible Solar "are
operating from the same playbook featuring shared materials and
draft petitions from national sources that originate thousands of
miles from Iowa," Gaesser wrote in an op-ed in The Gazette
newspaper in Iowa.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"Their mission is to kill new development,"
Gaesser said in the op-ed, "not to help develop common-sense
ordinances."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston's group has grown as the world grapples
with how to swiftly cut greenhouse gas pollution that drives
climate change. Big solar and wind projects on vast tracts of land
are the cheapest and fastest way right now to add lots of energy
without increasing greenhouse gases.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">But Zunk, the former Trump administration
official, says limiting global warming isn't driving development.
Companies build solar projects because they make financial sense,
he says. "They're not coming because of the Green New Deal," says
Zunk. "They're not coming because of any government action."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">The U.S. Energy Information Administration
expects the amount of solar capacity added in America this year
from big power plants will be more than double the current annual
record.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">All that growth means local land-use fights
will keep flaring up.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">The strategy Ralston uses has been the basis of
many social movements. "There's often this hub and spoke model,
and there are resources that are planted in different places,"
says Burger of the Sabin Center at Columbia University. What's
noteworthy here, he says, is that "what people are advocating for
is based on misinformation and is antithetical to, not only the
public good, but to probably their own self-interest, in most
instances."...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Strategies to fight the wind industry have been
turned against solar</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Misinformation spreads easily online. It
bounces around in echo chambers where dubious articles, videos and
memes are posted and shared repeatedly. Longtime critics of the
wind industry like John Droz cultivated opposition strategies that
are now being used in the fight against solar, says Anderson, the
renewable energy lawyer in Kansas.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"The geometric growth of misinformation by the
same people posting to 50 different places, that method and that
impact flows through to solar, just as it did to wind. The
gathering of groups and creating a social unit so that people
become emotionally and socially tied to the group is the same for
solar as it was for wind," Anderson says. "Then it is just new
talking points for the different technology."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">When Ralston was setting up Citizens for
Responsible Solar, Droz was one of the people she consulted.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Droz is a member of the CO2 Coalition, a
nonprofit supported by fossil fuel magnate Charles Koch that
promotes "the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our
lives and the economy." As a science adviser for a group of
coastal North Carolina counties that promotes economic
development, Droz helped stall state efforts to consider climate
change in coastal planning.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">A decade ago, Droz shared a memo for a national
public relations campaign against wind power at a meeting of
activists in Washington, D.C. The memo was aimed at undermining
public support for the wind industry "in what should appear as a
'groundswell' among grassroots."...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- - </font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Droz's website provides model ordinances that
activists like Ralston can use in their own communities. It also
features a list of "solar energy concerns," including claims of
environmental harm and the potential loss of farmland. Droz calls
himself an "educator" and says his website is meant only to share
information, adding that he doesn't get involved in debates
outside of his own community.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"All I've tried to do is to provide the other
side of the coin, sort of things here that aren't being told by
state agencies or the federal government," he says.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">A number of the concerns Droz raises are echoed
on the website for Citizens for Responsible Solar. The information
on Ralston's website is "extremely misleading and appears designed
to be misinformation," says Meyers of Virginia Tech.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">That includes claims that solar projects ruin
the land they're built on. With the right practices, companies can
improve local ecosystems, Meyers says, and farming can continue
alongside power plants. He also says the group's warnings about
hazardous waste from solar don't account for the fact that most
solar panels aren't considered toxic and won't leach material.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Ralston didn't respond to subsequent emails
seeking comment.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"I'm just saying that there are credible people
who have expressed these concerns," Droz says of the information
he puts out...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>Farmers are caught in the middle of local
solar battles</b></font><br>
<font face="Calibri">In Page County, Houser says he heard a lot of
positive feedback at first when a solar company proposed building
the project on his land. But then, he says, "local politics got
involved."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">He says: "Anybody can stand up in a public
hearing and say anything, regardless of the facts or science or
whatever."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">At public hearings starting in 2018, some
residents said the solar plant would create problems with
stormwater runoff, ruin their views and harm property values, as
well as the local tourism and agriculture industries. Others
falsely claimed solar panels would poison the groundwater and
cause cancer.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">A year later, Page County rejected the project
and put a moratorium on new development.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Things got more tumultuous from there. Urban
Grid, the company that offered to lease Houser's property,
resubmitted plans for the project in late 2020. And a group
calling itself Page County Citizens for Responsible Solar created
a Facebook page to organize local opposition. Ralston's
organization applied pressure, too, saying it had hired a
"prestigious law firm" to investigate the county's actions.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">The battle finally ended in 2022. After Page
County adopted a solar ordinance, Urban Grid abandoned Houser's
project. The new law doesn't outright ban big solar plants, but it
imposes so many restrictions that there's no place to build, says
Peter Candelaria, chief executive of Urban Grid.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Candelaria says it was a missed opportunity,
and not just for companies and landowners who stood to make money.
The project on Houser's property could have generated millions of
dollars for Page through land and equipment taxes, as well as
payments under a siting agreement, he says. And the soil
underneath the project could have been improved with regenerative
land practices, Candelaria says, like grazing sheep around the
panels.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Keith Weakley, a member of Page County's Board
of Supervisors, says officials worried that big solar projects
could hurt existing businesses without creating any long-term
jobs.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Page County Citizens for Responsible Solar
didn't respond to messages seeking comment.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">With the chance to put up solar panels gone,
Houser has been talking to a poultry company that wants his land.
But the recent outbreak of bird flu put the plan on hold. "We're
as efficient as we can be in our operation here, and we're as
sustainable as we can be, and we take good care of the land. But
we're running out of time," Houser says of the financial pressure
farmers are under. "Everybody's faced with the same thing, every
farm family."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Looking back, Houser doesn't know what he or
Urban Grid could have done to get to a different outcome. "We just
presented the facts," he says. "The anti-solar people took it on
as a cause, and it became a movement of its own. In small-town
politics, you can have a small group of people become very vocal
and seem very influential."</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">This story is a collaboration with Floodlight,
a nonprofit environmental news organization.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Copyright 2023 Floodlight Inc.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.opb.org/article/2023/02/18/activist-group-spreads-misinformation-to-stop-solar-projects-in-rural-america/">https://www.opb.org/article/2023/02/18/activist-group-spreads-misinformation-to-stop-solar-projects-in-rural-america/</a></font><br>
<br>
<p><i><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></i></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ the theory of change ]</i><br>
</font><b>Shoshana Zuboff & Roger Mcnamee on Surveillance
Capitalism</b><br>
Al Franken<br>
167 views Feb 18, 2023 The Al Franken Podcast<br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LKcnBnP_Rk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LKcnBnP_Rk</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font> </p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[The news archive - looking back at a script
on a rarely covered topic -- thermal momentum. ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <font size="+2"><i><b>February 19, 2006</b></i></font>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> February 19, 2006: The CBS program "60
Minutes" reports on the effects of human-caused climate change in
the Arctic.</font><br>
This story originally aired on Feb. 19, 2006.<br>
<blockquote>The North Pole has been frozen for 100,000 years. But
according to scientists, that won't be true by the end of this
century. The top of the world is melting.<br>
<br>
There's been a debate burning for years about the causes of global
warming. But the scientists you're about to meet say the debate is
over. New evidence shows man is contributing to the warming of the
planet, pumping out greenhouse gases that trap solar heat.<br>
<br>
Much of this new evidence was compiled by American scientist Bob
Corell, who led a study called the "Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment." It's an awkward name — but consider the findings: the
seas are rising, hurricanes will be more powerful, like Katrina,
and polar bears may be headed toward extinction.<br>
<br>
What does the melting arctic look like? Correspondent Scott Pelley
went north to see what Bob Corell calls a "global warning."<br>
Towers of ice the height of 10-story buildings rise on the coast
of Greenland. It's the biggest ice sheet in the Northern
Hemisphere, measuring some 700,000 square miles. But temperatures
in the arctic are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world,
so a lot of Greenland's ice is running to the sea.<br>
"Right now the entire planet is out of balance," says Bob Corell,
who is among the world's top authorities on climate change. He led
300 scientists from eight nations in the "Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment."<br>
<br>
Corell believes he has seen the future. "This is a bellwether, a
barometer. Some people call it the canary in the mine. The warning
that things are coming," he says. "In 10 years here in the arctic,
we see what the rest of the planet will see in 25 or 35 years from
now."<br>
<br>
Over the last few decades, the North Pole has been dramatically
reduced in size and Corell says the glaciers there have been
receding for the last 50 years.<br>
<br>
Back in 1987, President Reagan asked Corell to look into climate
change. He's been at it ever since.<br>
In Iceland, he showed 60 Minutes glaciers that were growing until
the 1990s and are now melting. In fact, 98 percent of the world's
mountain glaciers are melting.<br>
<br>
Corell says all that water will push sea levels three feet higher
all around the world in 100 years.<br>
<br>
"You and I sit here, another foot. Your children, another foot.
Your grandchildren, another foot. And it won't take long for sea
level to inundate," says Corell.<br>
<br>
"Sea level will be inundating the low lands of virtually every
country of the world, ours included," Corell predicts.<br>
<br>
To find the sights and sounds of the arctic melting, there are few
places better than a fjord in Greenland, with a glacier just a
short distance away.<br>
<br>
Pelley stood on a huge block of ice that had split off from the
glacier and had dropped into the sea — a big iceberg.<br>
<br>
"This part of Greenland is melting faster than just about any
other. To get a sense of the enormity of what's happening,
consider this: The ice that is melting here is the equivalent of
all the ice in the Alps," Pelley explained, standing atop the
iceberg.<br>
That's more than 105 million acres of melted ice in 15 years. Just
four minutes after Pelley cleared off this berg, part of the ice
caved in.<br>
<br>
60 Minutes got a bird's-eye view of how unstable the ice is
becoming on a flight with glaciologist Carl Boggild.<br>
<br>
Boggild anchored 10 research stations to the ice. But every time
he comes to visit, the ice and his stations have moved.<br>
<br>
Flying over the ice, Pelley noticed lots of fissures and crevices
breaking through the ice.<br>
<br>
Asked what causes this, Boggild explained, "This is actually the
ice flow, where you have so much tension in the ice that it cannot
stick together. And it breaks and opens a crevice which goes about
150, 200 feet down."<br>
<br>
The ice is also melting on the sides, Boggild says.<br>
<br>
High overhead, Pelley remarked that one could hear the water
running.<br>
"It's like a small river," Boggild said.<br>
<br>
A leading theory says those little rivers lubricate the bottom of
the ice sheet, helping it move off the bedrock and out to sea.<br>
<br>
And there may be no stopping it. Arctic warming is accelerating.
It's a chain reaction. As snow and ice melt they reveal dark land
and water that absorb solar heat. That melts more snow and ice,
and around it goes.<br>
<br>
There's long been a debate about how much of this is earth's
naturally changing climate and how much is man's doing. Paul
Mayewski, at the University of Maine, says the answer to that
question is frozen inside an ice core from Greenland.<br>
<br>
With funding from the National Science Foundation, Mayewski has
led 35 expeditions collecting deep ice cores from glaciers. The
ice captures everything in the air, laying down a record covering
half a million years.<br>
<br>
"We can go to any section of the ice core, to tell, basically,
what the greenhouse gas levels were; we can tell whether or not it
was stormy, what the temperatures were like," Mayewski explains.<br>
<br>
60 Minutes brought Mayewski back to Greenland, where he says his
research has proven that the ice and the atmosphere have man's
fingerprints all over them.<br>
Mayewski says we haven't seen a temperature rise to this level
going back at least 2,000 years, and arguably several thousand
years.<br>
<br>
As for carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, Mayewski says, "we haven't
seen CO2 levels like this in hundreds of thousands of years, if
not millions of years."<br>
<br>
What does that tell him?<br>
<br>
"It all points to something that has changed and something that
has impacted the system which wasn't doing it more than 100 years
ago. And we know exactly what it is. It's human activity," he
says.<br>
<br>
It's activity like burning fossil fuels, releasing carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases. The U.S. is by far the largest
polluter. Corell says there's so much greenhouse gas in the air
already that more temperature rise is inevitable.<br>
<br>
Even if we stopped using every car, truck, and power plant —
stopping all greenhouse gas emissions — Mayewski says the planet
would continue to warm anyway. "Would continue to warm for
another, about another degree," he says.<br>
<br>
That's enough to melt the Arctic — and if greenhouse gases
continue to increase, the temperature will rise even more. The ice
that's melting already is changing the weather by disrupting ocean
currents.<br>
Corell points to floods in the U.S., heat waves in Europe; and 60
Minutes wanted to know about the catastrophic 2005 hurricane
season.<br>
<br>
"The one thing I think we can say with a fairly high degree of
confidence is the severity of the storms, how strong the storms,
these cyclonic events like hurricanes and cyclones in the Pacific,
are going to get — they're gonna be more severe. Now one thing
that is in doubt is whether there'll be more of them," Corell
explains.<br>
<br>
"The oceans of the Northern Hemisphere are the warmest they've
been on record. When they get up in that temperature, they spin
off hurricanes. Well, if it goes up another degree, it's gonna
spawn these with more intensity," Corell says.<br>
<br>
The name "arctic" comes from ancient Greek meaning "Land of the
Great Bear."<br>
<br>
But the warming climate is threatening this icon of the arctic,
the polar bear. Flying above the sub-arctic region of Hudson Bay,
Canadian scientist Nick Lunn is hunting polar bears in a 30-year
study that tracks their health. It's the job of his assistant Evan
Richardson to take them down with a tranquilizer dart.<br>
<br>
Once tranquilized, Lunn carefully checks the bear with a pole,
without getting too close.<br>
<br>
The polar bear is the largest predator on land. Native people in
the region say he'll even hunt humans, but not on the day Pelley
joined Lunn: with the tranquilizer, the bear was awake but
immobile.<br>
The scientists knew this bear by his tattoo. His history is
written chapter and verse in the "bear bible."<br>
<br>
"This is the record book of all the bears that have been handled
by us or Manitoba Conservation," Lunn explains.<br>
<br>
The study began at the Wapusk National Park, because the bear
population was thought to be the healthiest in the world.<br>
<br>
Lunn's annual checkup records changes in fat, dimensions and an
inventory of weapons. The polar bear uses its teeth to hunt
primarily one thing — seals. That's where arctic warming comes in.<br>
<br>
<br>
Polar bears can only hunt on the ice. Lunn says the ice is
breaking up three weeks earlier than it did 30 years go. He's now
finding female bears 55 pounds lighter — weaker mothers with fewer
cubs.<br>
<br>
Asked how the bear population has changed since he started his
research, Lunn says, "When we first started doing this research,
we've done inventories in the mid-80s, in the mid-90s. Both times
we came out with an estimate of approximately 1,200 animals for
what is known as the western Hudson Bay population. The numbers
now suggest that the population has declined to below 1,000."<br>
<br>
The bears are unlikely to survive as a species if there's a
complete loss of ice in summer, which the arctic study projects
will happen by the end of this century.<br>
here are skeptics who question climate change projections like
that, saying they're no more reliable than your local weatherman.
But Mayewski says arctic projections done decades ago are proving
accurate.<br>
<br>
"That said, the skeptics have brought up some very, very
interesting issues over the last few years. And they've forced us
to think more and more about the data that we collect. We can owe
the skeptics a vote of thanks for making our science as precise as
it is today," says Mayewski.<br>
<br>
One big supporter of climate science research is the Bush
administration, spending $5 billion a year. But Mr. Bush refuses
to sign a treaty forcing cuts in greenhouse gases.<br>
<br>
The White House also declined 60 Minutes' request for an
interview. Corell, who first studied the issue for President
Reagan, believes the climate change facts are in, even if
President Bush does not.<br>
<br>
"When you look at the American government, which is saying
essentially, 'Wait a minute. We need to study this some more. We
can't flip our energy use overnight. It would hurt the economy.'
When you hear that, what do you think?" Pelley asked.<br>
<br>
"Well, what I do then is, I try to tell them exactly what we know
scientifically. The science is, I believe, unassailable," says
Corell. "I'm not arguing their policy, that's their business, how
they deal with policy. But my job is to say, scientifically,
shorten that time scale so that if you don't push out the effects
of climate change into the long, long distant future. Because even
under the best of circumstances, this natural system of a climate
will continue to warm the planet for literally hundreds of years,
no matter what we do."<br>
By Bill Owens<br>
</blockquote>
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