Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 114

Series Of Earthquakes Strikes Oklahoma Near Wastewater Disposal Wells

Two relatively large earthquakes struck northwest of Oklahoma City midday on Monday within a span of about 20 minutes. The 4.0 magnitude and 4.5 magnitude quakes were accompanied by another 4.1 quake about seven hours later around 8:20 p.m. Two more smaller earthquakes also rattled the region throughout the day. The largest ever earthquake in Oklahoma was a 5.6-magnitude jolt in 2011.

While there were no reports of damage due to Monday’s quakes, they could be felt as far across five states — Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas — according to the Weather Channel.

The high level of seismic activity, especially in these closely linked swarms, follows a recent trend in fossil fuel-rich Oklahoma in which a dramatic spike in quakes has been tied to wastewater injection wells accompanying proliferating oil and gas drilling operations. In April, the New Yorker published an article on the recent surge in Oklahoma quakes that found that nearly two-dozen peer-reviewed papers have concluded disposal wells and quakes are likely connected.

In recent months, Oklahoma’s government has embraced the research showing such links and has begun to try to address the problem. Earlier in July, state oil and gas officials put more than 200 new wastewater disposal wells under extra review as “Areas of Interest” for the possibility that they are contributing to the recent earthquake swarms. This was in addition to 300 wells originally placed under the directive in March. According to E&E News, the 4.5 magnitude quake on Monday centered less than three miles away from an oil and gas wastewater disposal well recently added to the list.

As of mid-July, of the 300 wells originally on the Area of Interest list, 124 had reduced their depth, 54 were limiting the volume of wastewater injected into wells to less than 1,000 barrels a day, 25 had cut their injection rate in half, and 37 had stopped injecting.

As of April 2015, there were about 3,200 active disposal wells in Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) is in charge of permits for these wastewater disposal wells, otherwise known as Class II disposal wells, in which produced water associated with the production of oil and natural gas is injected deep beneath the surface of the earth.

According to the OCC, Oklahoma experienced 585 magnitude 3-plus earthquakes in 2014 compared to 109 in 2013. A recent report from the U.S. Geological Survey found that prior to 2012 there were virtually no earthquakes in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma. In the last two years, several hundred have been recorded. Oklahoma was the most seismically active state in the Lower 48 in 2014, recording three times as many earthquakes as California.

[image error]

CREDIT: USGS

The OCC recently wrote that there is “broad agreement among seismologists” that disposal of wastewater in wells that go below an Oklahoma geologic formation called the Arbuckle pose “a potential risk of causing earthquakes,” as this puts the wells in contact with so-called “basement” rock. The top of the Arbuckle formation sits around 4,000 feet to 10,000 feet below the surface and can be more than 6,000 feet thick. It is made up primarily of dolomites and limestones, but also contains sands, silts, and shales.

According to a 2012 article by Amerex Resources Corp., a private oil and gas company, the Arbuckle formation makes a “very attractive disposal zone” for wastewater in many places due to its “porosity and permeability” and its separation from “underground sources of drinking water” which makes permits easily obtainable.

Earlier in July, Michael Teague, Oklahoma Secretary of Energy and Environment, said expanding the Area of Interest for wastewater wells is the right thing to do.

“Though it’s too soon to know the results of the first directive, seismologists agree that injection into or in communication with the basement poses a high risk for seismicity, so this expansion makes sense,” he said.

While the OCC is attempting to confront the problematic proliferation of quakes, the Oklahoma legislature is not on quite the same page. In June, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill that prohibits localities from choosing whether or not to have oil and gas operations within their jurisdictions — a law that amounts to a ban on local fracking bans.

Oklahoma was the second state to pass a law banning local fracking bans. Texas became the first when Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that prohibits cites and towns from banning the process.

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EarthquakeFrackingOklahomaWastewater Disposal Well

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New Report Reveals The Severe Economic Impacts Climate Change Will Have In The South

Climate change is set to hit the Southeast United States and Texas hard.

That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Risky Business Project, a nonprofit that focuses on the economic impacts of climate change. The report, which focused on 12 states — 11 states in the Southeastern United States plus Texas — found that the increased heat and humidity that these states are expected to experience as the climate changes will put the region’s recent manufacturing boom at risk.

“While the Southeast and Texas are generally accustomed to heat and humidity, the scale of increased heat — along with other impacts such as sea level rise and storm surge — will likely cause significant and widespread economic harm, especially to a region so heavily invested in physical manufacturing, agriculture and energy infrastructure,” the report reads. “If we continue on our current greenhouse gas emissions pathway, the southeastern United States and Texas will likely experience significant drops in agricultural yield and labor productivity, along with increased sea level rise, higher energy demand, and rising mortality rates.”

According to the report, by the end of this century, the Southeast and Texas could see 14 times as many days over 95°F each year. Some regions, the report states, could see as many as 124 of these extremely hot days a year. And changes could come sooner than the end of the century for some states: by around 2050, Mississippi is expected to see 33 to 85 extremely hot days each year. These temperatures will drive up electricity demand, and that increased demand could see an increase in energy costs of 4 to 12 percent by mid-century.

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CREDIT: the Risky Business Project

Rising temperatures will also likely put the Southeast’s agriculture industry in danger. Without “significant adaptation from farmers,” corn yields are likely to decline by as much as 21 percent and soybean yields by as much as 14 percent over the next five to 25 years. By the end of the century, corn yields could decline by as much as 86 percent and soybeans by as much as 76 percent.

States could also see a rise in heat-related deaths. Florida could see as many as 1,840 more deaths a year and Texas could see as many as 2,580 deaths per year due to heat over the next five to 25 years. And by around 2050, these two states could see as many as 10,000 more deaths a year, all due to extreme heat. This increase in deaths due to climate change has been predicted by other studies as well: one study last year found that the number of heat-related deaths in the United Kingdom would rise by 257 percent by 2050.

Sea level rise puts coastal states in the Southeast at risk of major property loss — the report predicts that, without action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, between $48.2 billion and $68.7 billion in coastal property in the region will be below sea level by mid-century. South Florida is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and the economic losses that come along with it, the report warns. State officials in Florida, however, have been slow to act on both climate mitigation and adaptation.

“Florida faces more risk than any other state that private, insurable property could be inundated by high tide, storm surge and sea level rise,” the report reads. “By 2030, up to $69 billion in coastal property will likely be at risk of inundation at high tide that is not at risk today. By 2050, the value of property below local high tide levels will increase to up to about $152 billion.”

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CREDIT: the Risky Business Project

The report’s warnings on the economic impacts of climate change echo those of other studies. A study last year found that agricultural production will experience losses as early as the 2030s, even if the world limits warming to 2°C. Other studies have also warned of hits to productivity as temperatures rise, and of spiking energy costs in many parts of the United States. Extreme weather also brings with it a hefty price tag: the worst extreme weather events in the United States in 2014 caused $19 billion in damage, according to a Center for American Progress analysis.

But, the report says, the Southeast and Texas can make changes now that could help mitigate some of these losses. The manufacturing and agricultural sectors must find ways to adapt to rising temperatures — though these adaptations, such as shifting to different crops for farmers and moving operations to cooler regions for businesses, could be economically challenging. The report also recommends that the Southeast as a whole start investing more heavily in renewable energy, efficiency, and cleaner vehicles. Already, states in the region have taken some of these steps: earlier this month, for instance, the first major wind project in the South broke ground in North Carolina. But still, recent decisions in some southern states show that leadership has a ways to go in adapting to and mitigating climate change: Georgia, for instance, got rid of its electric vehicle tax credit in April, and Kentucky and South Carolina were among the states that challenged the Obama administration’s proposed rule on power plant emissions in court last year.

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Climate ChangeClimate Risk

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Hillary Clinton’s Climate Denier Horror Movie

Hillary Clinton released a video on Monday mimicking a trailer for an old horror film — except instead of Frankenstein, the monsters were the Republican presidential candidates who deny that human-caused climate change is real.

Specifically, the video mocked candidates who have said “I’m not a scientist” when asked whether they accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that current global warming is primarily caused by carbon emissions. Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, and Marco Rubio have all used the response, the video asserts.

The video then goes on to show clips of Republican candidates expressing doubt about climate science. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes,” Rubio says in the video. “There hasn’t been a noticeable change in recent times,” Walker says.

Using the phrase “I’m not a scientist” to respond to questions about climate change has been popular among many Republican politicians, not just those running for president. Climate scientists themselves have derided the tactic, noting that politicians are frequently presented with information curated by scientists to explain what’s going on with the climate. The National Climate Assessment, for example, was written by scientists and other experts specifically so that members of Congress could understand climate change and how it affects the country.

Of the climate scientists who actively publish research, 97 percent agree that humans are causing current global warming. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which draws on the knowledge of almost 800 climate experts across the globe — says it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities are the main cause of atmospheric and ocean warming since the 1950s.

This is not the first time that Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, has spoken out against candidates who use the phrase. “I’m not a scientist either,” she said at a campaign event in Iowa on Sunday. “I’m just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain.”

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Climate ChangeClimate Change DeniersHillary Clinton

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One Simple Chart Explains The Climate Plans Of Hillary Clinton And Bernie Sanders

When Hillary Clinton released a fact sheet detailing her plan to fight climate change on Sunday night, her presidential campaign characterized it as “bold.” Indeed, the goals outlined in the plan are significant — a 700 percent increase in solar installations by the end of her first term, and enough renewable energy to power every home in the country within 10 years.

But not everyone thought Clinton’s plan was as bold as her campaign made it out to be. That seemingly included the campaign of her Democratic rival, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, which sent an email to reporters titled “What Real Climate Leadership Looks Like” about an hour before Clinton’s plan was scheduled to be released.

What does real climate leadership look like? According to the O’Malley campaign’s email, it looks like having a definitive position on every controversial policy in the environmental space. Arctic drilling, fracking, the Keystone XL pipeline — O’Malley’s climate plan details strong stances on all of those topics. The plan Clinton released on Sunday does not.

Clinton’s plan does include ways to achieve her stated goals in solar energy production, including awarding competitive grants to states that reduce emissions, extending tax breaks to renewable industries like solar and wind, and investing in transmission lines that can take renewable power from where it’s produced to where it’s needed for electricity. She also proposed cutting some tax breaks to fossil fuel companies to pay for her plan, though she hasn’t proposed eliminating them completely like Sanders and O’Malley have. Vox’s Brad Plumer called Clinton’s goals “certainly feasible in principle, but the gritty details will matter a lot.”

Of course, many presidential candidates haven’t fully fleshed out their policy strategies yet — Clinton, for her part, has acknowledged that Sunday’s release represented only the “first pillar” of announcements about climate and energy. By contrast, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — her main contender for the Democratic nomination — hasn’t formally released a climate policy plan yet. But he has publicly stated his positions on many of the most hot-button environmental issues, including some that Clinton has not yet addressed.

With all that in mind, here’s a look at what voters can expect from each of those three Democratic presidential candidates when it comes to tackling climate change, based on their public statements and official plans so far.

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CREDIT: Graphic by Dylan Petrohilos

It’s worth noting that this checklist isn’t definitive. Just because Sanders has said he supports many of these policies doesn’t necessarily mean he will include them in his official climate plan when and if he releases one. And just because Clinton hasn’t included some of these issues in her current plan doesn’t mean she won’t (or will) in the future.

It’s also worth mentioning that just because O’Malley has included all of these things in his climate plan doesn’t mean he’ll be able to achieve them. His plan leans steeply to the left of even the Obama administration’s climate strategy, which the Republican-led Congress is fighting tooth-and-nail to dismantle.

That a Democratic presidential nominee might have a difficult time achieving their climate goals, however, can be said about any of the candidates — especially considering the fact that more than 56 percent of current congressional Republicans don’t believe climate change exists at all. For environmentalists and climate hawks, that may mean that the candidate with the most aggressive goals represents the safest option.

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Hillary ClintonMartin O'Malley

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Obama Proposes Sweeping Ban On U.S. Ivory Sales

During a visit to Kenya on Saturday, President Obama announced sweeping bans to the United States’ ivory trade in the hopes of protecting the increasingly endangered African elephant.

Created in response to what the Fish and Wildlife Service called “the alarming rise in poaching of the [African elephant] to fuel the growing illegal trade in ivory,” the new proposed measures ban the sale of ivory across state lines — with specific, limited exceptions for certain pre-existing items like musical instruments or furniture — and further restrict commercial exports. Prior to Saturday’s announcement, ivory regulations in the United States have mostly targeted commercial import and export of the material. Legal ivory — found in various antique items or imported to the United States before 1990 and obtained before 1978 — has been allowed to be sold across state lines.

“By tightening domestic controls on trade in elephant ivory and allowing only very narrow exceptions, we will close existing avenues that are exploited by traffickers and address ivory trade that poses a threat to elephants in the wild,” FWS Director Dan Ashe said in a press statement. “Federal law enforcement agents will have clearer lines by which to demarcate legal from illegal trade.”

Poaching for ivory is one of the main threats that African elephants face. According to a 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100,000 elephants were killed by poachers between 2010 and 2012. In 2011 — the peak year for elephant deaths, according to the study — one out of every 12 African elephants was killed by a poacher, amounting to nearly three deaths every hour. No one knows how many African elephants remain on the continent — the most recent comprehensive estimate places the number at somewhere between 472,000 and 690,000 — but Center for American Progress Visiting Senior Fellow and vice chair of the President’s Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking David J. Hayes told ThinkProgress in March that “at a rate of death of about 35,000 per year, we’re looking at potential extinction.”

Following Saturday’s announcement, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell praised the restrictions as an important step toward shrinking the market for ivory and preserving the world’s remaining African elephants.

“If our children – and their grandchildren – are to grow up in a world where they appreciate their natural heritage and can see elephants in the wild and not just in the history books, then we owe it to them to shut down avenues that motivate poachers to go after these iconic animals,” Jewell said in a press statement. “As we work to put the brakes on poaching and prevent elephants from going extinct in the wild, we need to take the lead in a global effort to shut down domestic markets for illegal ivory. Today, we are making it harder for criminals by further shutting the door to the American market.”

The administration’s proposed ban will be put into place after a 60-day public commenting period. New York, New Jersey, and California all have passed laws banning the sale of ivory, with fifteen other states expected to introduce similar legislation in the coming years, according to the Seattle Times.

The United States represents the second-largest market for ivory in the world, behind Asia. In 2012, the most recent year for which the FWS has complete data, some 1,000 items containing elephant ivory were seized at U.S. ports. Other retailers attempt to use legal ivory trade as a means for concealing illegal activity — in 2012, a Philadelphia art dealer was arrested after authorities discovered that the ivory he claimed was antique was instead new ivory dyed to appear old. Worldwide, the ivory market has expanded rapidly in the past decade, tripling in size since 1998.

“The United States is among the world’s largest consumers of wildlife, both legal and illegal,” Ashe said. “We want to ensure our nation is not contributing to the scourge of poaching that is decimating elephant populations across Africa.”

But poaching isn’t the only threat that African elephants are having to contend with — globally, both African and Asian elephants are threatened by a loss of habitat. Human developments can cut off an elephant’s migratory route or fragment its habitat, forcing the animals to travel longer distances for food and water and bringing them into closer contact with humans. Local populations often view encroaching elephants as threats to their villages or crops, and are likely to kill the animals.

In the long-term, elephant populations also will have to contend with climate change. A 2013 study found that Asian elephant populations in Myanmar are incredibly sensitive to temperature shifts — any deviation from their ideal temperature of around 75 degrees Fahrenheit increased mortality rates in the studied populations, mostly through heat stroke or increased susceptibility to infectious disease. An assessment released by the World Wildlife Fund concluded that African elephants are also highly susceptible to climate change, as temperature changes make them vulnerable to disease and heat stress. Due to the low amount of genetic variability and their relatively long gestation periods, scientists worry that dwindling elephant populations — pushed to the brink by poaching and habitat loss — won’t be able to adapt quickly enough to survive in a changing climate.

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ElephantPoachingU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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14 States Are Trying To Get The Court To Rehear Their Case Against Obama’s Climate Change Rule

A group of states just won’t take no for an answer when it comes to suing the Environmental Protection Agency.

With the Obama administration’s final Clean Power Plan rule due out in a matter of weeks, a contingent of 14 states vehemently opposed to it are set on suing against the implementation of the proposed regulation. Just over a month after the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out a previous lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is leading the charge for another hearing; this time by the full, 17-judge D.C. Court of Appeals, rather than the three-judge panel that heard it in June.

The three-judge panel dismissed the lawsuit because the rule, which aims to reduce emissions from U.S. power plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, isn’t finalized yet. So, the judge concluded, the states’ challenge was premature.

“They want us to do something that they candidly acknowledge we have never done before: review the legality of a proposed rule,” Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion. “But a proposed rule is just a proposal. In justiciable cases, this Court has authority to review the legality of final agency rules. We do not have authority to review proposed agency rules.”

In their renewed petition to the court, submitted on Friday, the states write that a rehearing by the full court of appeals is “warranted because the panel majority’s decision will have far-reaching consequences for the conduct of agencies in rulemaking.”

If the case does not get reheard, the states argue that the EPA will use this “powerful tool” to “make their policy goals a practical reality before the courts can review their legality.”

The states suing the EPA over the proposed Clean Power Plan are mostly Republican-led states, with many of them, including West Virginia and Kentucky, relying on fossil fuels to power their economies. The three judges that threw out the lawsuit in June were themselves staunchly conservative.

By rejecting the court’s prior decision that it was too early to rule against the EPA’s proposed rule, the states argue that preparing for the eventual rule is already causing them harm because it takes years to plan for power generation.

“The EPA is unlawfully coercing Oklahoma and other states into complying with the Clean Power Plan before the rule is even finalized,” said Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt in a statement Friday. “Waiting until the rule is finalized before a court can rule on its lawfulness will force states like Oklahoma into making policy decisions on power generation and distribution that will be irreversible.”

If states don’t come up with their own plans to comply with the greenhouse gas emissions reductions outlined in the rule, the EPA will be forced to step in and create plans for them. The EPA has put a large emphasis on the flexibility of the rule — each state can come up with its own strategy to cut carbon, one that aligns best with the local energy landscape as well as economic agendas. This could range from closing down more coal plants and adding natural gas, to expanding renewables like solar or wind and to scaling back energy demand.

A recent analysis by the Washington Post found that outrage in states opposed to the Clean Power Plan is fading, and that “despite dire warnings and harsh political rhetoric, many states are already on track to meet their targets, even before the EPA formally announces them, interviews and independent studies show.”

As the Washington Examiner reports, the states are also requesting that the court stay the ruling as an option for rehearing the case.

“If the court agrees to stay the case, they would wait until the Clean Power Plan is made final, and then issue a new decision, according to Morrissey,” reports the Examiner.

Once the final Clean Power Plan rule is issued, more lawsuits are expected — not only from states, but also possibly from the fossil fuel industry. Coal company Murray Energy Corp. also sued the EPA over the proposed carbon emissions rule, saying it would be “disastrous.” That suit was dismissed last month, along with the states’ suit.

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Clean Power PlanEnvironmental Protection AgencyGreenhouse Gas Emissions

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13 Giant Companies Just Made Big Climate Pledges

Thirteen giant companies joined the Obama administration’s Act on Climate initiative Monday, announcing at least $140 billion in new low-carbon investment and more than 1,600 megawatts (MW) of new renewable energy, the White House said.

The pledge from Coca-Cola, Walmart, Apple, Google, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and other big-name companies comes in advance of the United Nations climate talks in Paris at the end of the year, and is meant to demonstrate industry support for strong carbon reduction goals.

“We recognize that delaying action on climate change will be costly in economic and human terms, while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy will produce multiple benefits with regard to sustainable economic growth, public health, resilience to natural disasters, and the health of the global environment,” states the pledge, set to be announced at the White House with Secretary of State John Kerry.

Monday’s announcement is the first of two planned industry pledges, the White House said in a statement. A second round of companies is expected to make pledges in the fall.

The commitments come from a range of industries, including tech, banking, food services, energy, and transportation. Among the pledges, Apple said it will build 140 MW of renewable energy worldwide; PepsiCo will expand its sustainable farming practices to half a million North American acres by 2017 and “strive for” zero forestation by 2020; Google will continue on its path to 100 percent renewable energy and is aiming to decrease its potable water consumption at its California location by 30 percent over 2013 levels.

Bank of America said it will increase green investment from $50 billion to $125 billion by 2025. Goldman Sachs, which has invested $33 billion in clean energy, will also increase its investment goals as well as move to 100 percent renewable energy consumption by 2020. Financing for clean technology is seen as one of the most important components of achieving a low-carbon future.

Addressing climate change has been a key priority for the Obama administration. The United States which has made agreements with China, Brazil, and others to reduce emissions in an effort to keep warming below 2°C and avoid some of the most catastrophic effects of climate change, including drought, flooding, and rising seas.

The businesses’ announcement comes days before the administration is expected to release the finalized Clean Power Plan, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that will limit the allowable levels of carbon emissions from state electricity sectors. The electricity sector is responsible for more than a third of carbon emissions in the United States, and coal provides nearly 70 percent of that portion.

Notably, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, the electricity arm of Warren Buffett’s investment empire, pledged Monday to shutter more than 75 percent of its coal-fired power plants in Nevada by 2019.

All the companies involved in the pledge have a record of acting on climate and environmental issues. Apple, for instance, already gets 100 percent of the electricity for its United States facilities from renewable sources. However, in most cases, these new goals reflect significant additional carbon savings.

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James Hansen Spells Out Climate Danger Of The ‘Hyper-Anthropocene’ Age

James Hansen and 16 leading climate experts have written a must-read discussion paper on what humanity risks if it can’t keep total global warming below 2°C (3.6°F). The greatest risk they identify is “that multi-meter sea level rise would become practically unavoidable.”

This is warning everyone should heed — not just because Hansen’s co-authors include some of the world’s top sea-level rise experts, such as Eric Rignot and Isabella Velicogna, but also given Hansen’s prescience on climate change dating back more than three decades.

In 1981, Hansen led a team of NASA scientists in a seminal article in Science, “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.”

They warned: “Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.”

Wow. A 35-year-old peer-reviewed climate warning that is 100 percent dead on. Is there anyone else on the planet who can has been right for so long about climate change?

Hansen and co-authors deftly dismiss those ill-informed Pollyannas who use Orwellian terms like “good Anthropocene.” They explain that we are far past “the era in which humans have contributed to global climate change,” which probably began a thousand years ago, and are now in “a fundamentally different phase, a Hyper-Anthropocene … initiated by explosive 20th century growth of fossil fuel use.”

The “Hyper-Anthropocene” is a very good term to describe the unprecedented acceleration in global warming that humanity has set in motion with the explosive growth of fossil fuels and carbon pollution, as the recent science makes clear:

Temperature change over past 11,300 years (in blue, via Science, 2013) plus projected warming this century on humanity’s current emissions path (in red, via recent literature).

The fact that warming as high as 2°C should be avoided at all costs is not news to people who pay attention to climate science, though it may be news to people who only follow the popular media. Indeed, 70 leading climate experts made that point crystal clear in a May report to the world’s leading governments that received embarrassingly little coverage from the mainstream media.

As an important aside, Hansen and his 16 co-authors continue to be criticized for publicizing this paper prior to peer review. While I probably would have framed the paper’s launch somewhat differently — as an expert opinion and discussion piece coming from one or more major scientific institutions — I think this particular criticism is overblown.

The mainstream media has generally failed to explain to the public the dire nature of our climate situation, repeatedly hitting the snooze alarm even as the world’s scientists shout “Wake Up” louder and louder in every peer-reviewed forum you can imagine. Hansen himself has tried every traditional way possible to inform the media and alert the public for 35 years. If this new piece is what it takes to get any non-Trump, non-Kardashian, coverage in our current media environment, I’m not certain how much criticism scientists deserve for playing by a set of rules they did not make, rules made by the very people nit-picking at them.

The fact that 2°C total warming locks us in to sea level rise of 10 feet or more has been obvious for a while now. Heck, the National Science Foundation (NSF) issued a news release back in March 2012 on paleoclimate research with the large-type headline, “Global Sea Level Likely to Rise as Much as 70 Feet in Future Generations.” The lead author of that study explained, “The natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 70 feet higher than now.”

And a 2009 paper in Science showed that the last time CO2 levels were this high, it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher.

What has changed is our understanding of just how fast sea levels could rise. In 2014 and 2015, a number of major studies revealed that large parts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are unstable and headed toward irreversible collapse — and some parts may have already passed the point of no return. Another 2015 study found that global sea level rise since 1990 has been speeding up even faster than we knew.

The key question is how fast sea levels rise this century and beyond. Coastal planners — and governments — need to know what the plausible worst-case is. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) reviewing the scientific literature, threw up their hands. They have no idea how quickly the ice sheets can melt and contribute to sea level rise — so they assume it is very little and plead ignorance: “The basis for higher projections of global mean sea level rise in the 21st century has been considered and it has been concluded that there is currently insufficient evidence to evaluate the probability of specific levels above the assessed likely range.”

And so the IPCC’s sea level rise range for 2100 is instantly obsolete and useless for governments and planners. A study that integrated expert opinion from 2013 on ice sheet melt with the IPCC findings concluded, “seas will likely rise around 80 cm” [31 inches] by 2100, and that “the worst case [only a 5% chance] is an increase of 180 cm [6 feet].” Since that expert opinion predated all of the bombshell findings of the last 18 months, the authors of that study noted, “We acknowledge that this may have changed since its publication. For example, it is quite possible that the recent series of studies of the Amundsen Sea Sector and West Antarctic ice sheet collapse will alter expert opinion.” Precisely.

The main contribution Hansen et al. makes is to warn that “sea level rise of several meters in 50, 100 or 200 years,” which means as early as this century but in any case, sooner than expected. They also warn that even with the less than 1°C of warming we already have, ice sheet melt appears to be putting sea level rise on an exponential growth path that would bring 10 feet of sea level rise sooner, rather than later — even if we stabilize at 2°C total warming.

Why does this matter? The authors explain, “The economic and social cost of losing functionality of all coastal cities is practically incalculable.” Heck, even the New York Times reported last year on the news of the accelerating collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet that “The heat-trapping gases could destabilize other parts of Antarctica as well as the Greenland ice sheet, potentially causing enough sea-level rise that many of the world’s coastal cities would eventually have to be abandoned.”

Team Hansen just carries the analysis to its next logical phase and exposes the dangers of the IPCC’s willful underestimation of the problem: “Our analysis paints a different picture than IPCC (2013) for how this Hyper-Anthropocene phase is likely to proceed if GHG emissions grow at a rate that continues to pump energy at a high rate into the ocean. We conclude that multi-meter sea level rise would become practically unavoidable.”

And what happens in the Hyper-Anthropocene?

Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization.

That is especially true when you throw in the other part of Hansen’s prediction from 1981 that has come true — “the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones.” Indeed, if this comprehensive new paper has one failing, it is in not discussing the myriad studies and evidence that warming-driven Dust-Bowlification threatens one third of the habited and arable landmass of the planet.

I also think Hansen is pushing the speculative possibility of 10 feet of sea level rise this century harder than he needs to. Yes, there are many experts who consider that a real possibility now, so it would be imprudent to ignore the warning. But the fact is, on our current emissions path, we now appear to be headed toward the ballpark of 4-6 feet of sea level rise in 2100 — with seas rising up to one foot per decade after that — which should be more than enough of a “beyond adaptation” catastrophe to warrant strongest of action ASAP.

The world needs to understand the plausible worst-case scenario for climate change this century and beyond — something that the media and the IPCC have utterly failed to deliver. And the world needs to understand the “business as usual” set of multiple catastrophic dangers of 4°C if we don’t reverse course now. And the world needs to understand the dangers of even 2°C warming.

Kudos to James Hansen et al for figuring out a way to draw attention to these crucial issues.

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Climate ChangeJames HansenSea Level Rise

The post James Hansen Spells Out Climate Danger Of The ‘Hyper-Anthropocene’ Age appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Hillary Clinton’s Plan To Combat Climate Change With Half-A-Billion Solar Panels

Hillary Clinton is going all in on renewable energy.

On Sunday evening, the Democratic presidential candidate released a fact sheet detailing her plan to fight climate change, and it focuses heavily on promoting clean energy generation across the country.

Among other things, the plan includes a promise to install half a billion solar panels by 2021, or the end of Clinton’s first term. That would represent a 700 percent increase from current installations, she said. Clinton also promised that, if elected, enough renewable energy would be produced to power every home in the country within 10 years.

“We can make a transition over time from a fossil fuel economy, predominantly, to a clean renewable energy economy, predominantly,” Clinton said in Iowa on Sunday, Yahoo reported.

The aggressive transition to renewables proposed by Clinton would be achieved partially through extending and strengthening tax breaks those industries, Clinton said. Last week, the Senate proposed renewing two tax incentives for the wind industry, which are currently expired.

Clinton is expected to explain more details of the plan during a Monday event in Des Moines, according to Yahoo’s report.

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A chart provided by the Clinton campaign shows how Clinton’s renewable energy goals compare to renewable generation today, and what would be achieved under Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

CREDIT: Hillary For America

Though Clinton has been outspoken about the need to address climate change, many environmentalists have expressed doubt that her policies would be as strong as they may like. They often point to her historic “inclination” to approve the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and her support for domestic fossil fuel production, specifically natural gas.

But tackling climate change has been central to Clinton’s campaign so far. In her campaign kick-off speech, she promised to make America “the clean energy superpower of the 21st century” and condemned Republican politicians for willfully ignoring the science behind human-caused warming. Her campaign chairman John Podesta was the architect of President Obama’s plan to tackle carbon emissions through regulations, and Clinton has promised to keep those regulations in place “at all costs.” As ThinkProgress pointed out in April, Clinton’s is the first major presidential campaign ever to make combating climate change a central issue.

That certainly does not mean that Clinton’s is the only presidential campaign that’s put a hard focus on tackling global warming. Indeed, Democratic contender Martin O’Malley arguably has an even more aggressive climate agenda. His plan is to make the country powered completely by renewable energy by 2050 — meaning no fossil fuel use at all. He has condemned President Obama for approving offshore drilling, supporting domestic oil production, and shying away from bold stances on high-carbon tar sands oil from Canada, which would be transported by the Keystone XL pipeline if it were approved.

“We cannot meet the climate challenge with an all-of-the-above energy strategy, or by drilling off our coasts, or by building pipelines that bring oil from tar sands in Canada,” O’Malley wrote in an op-ed published last month.

Clinton’s other Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) hasn’t released an official climate plan yet. But in an interview with the Washington Post in May, he said he would go further than President Obama has in tackling the problem.

Sanders’ plan, he said, “would look like a tax on carbon; a massive investment in solar, wind, geothermal; it would be making sure that every home and building in this country is properly winterized; it would be putting substantial money into rail, both passenger and cargo, so we can move towards breaking our dependency on automobiles. And it would be leading other countries around the world.”

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Climate ChangeElectionElection 2016Hillary ClintonMartin O'MalleyRenewable EnergySolar

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The Most (And Least) Extreme Republican Presidential Candidates On Climate Change

The GOP field is (almost) complete, after Ohio Governor John Kasich became the 17th major candidate to announce his presidential run this week. This means we can draw some conclusions about the opponent the eventual Democratic nominee will be facing in the general election.

It’s an extremely safe bet that the Republican nominee will not take more action to confront climate change than President Obama has. The question is more how much of the president’s climate agenda the nominee would reverse, repeal, or ignore.

The next president will have a lot on his or her plate — implementing or rolling back the Clean Air Act’s provisions to regulate carbon pollution; defying or leading the world in carrying out an expected U.N. climate agreement; committing the United States to low-carbon energy or doubling down on fossil fuels. Pope Francis just told the world through the Vatican’s latest encyclical that climate change is happening, caused by humans, and requires “urgent” policy. The train is slowly accelerating down the tracks, and the person who takes over in 2017 can decide whether to speed it along, slow it down, or throw the engine dramatically into reverse.

If recent public opinion polls have been consistent on one thing, it’s the partisan divide between Democrats who believe climate change is a concern that should be addressed through policy, and Republicans who often doubt the problem exists in the first place. However, a January poll found that 48 percent of Republicans were more likely to vote for a candidate who supports acting on climate change and the same percentage would be less likely to vote for a candidate that thought climate change was a hoax.

So here is the GOP presidential field, ranked by how far they would walk back President Obama’s climate agenda, from least to most:

17. George Pataki
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CREDIT: AP Photo/Frank Franklin II

Pataki was the governor of New York three governors ago. He is running for president almost ten years after he left office. Unfortunately for Pataki, his presidential bid is among the longest of long shots.

In 2007, he joined a blue-ribbon commission with several people who would join the Obama administration that concluded climate change was an urgent threat that required legislative action, most likely a cap-and-trade system.

Since his announcement, however, he has not talked about climate change, and it is unclear how much of a priority he would make it.

16. Lindsey Graham
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. announces his bid for presidency, Monday, June 1, 2015, in Central, S.C.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt

The senior senator from South Carolina became famous in climate circles for first helping to draft, and then kill, the Senate’s cap-and-trade bill after the House passed its own version in 2009.

By way of explanation, Graham sounded a note of denial. “The science about global warming has changed,” he said. “I think they’ve oversold this stuff, quite frankly. I think they’ve been alarmist and the science is in question.”

He agrees carbon pollution should be regulated whether or not it causes climate change. His focus became more on pollution associated with burning fossil fuels. But following the climate bill’s demise, Graham did not push through any legislation that would address pollution.

After he announced his presidential run, however, Graham seemed to take up the banner of climate change again. “If I’m president of the United States, we’re going to address climate change, CO2 emissions in a business-friendly way,” he told CNN.

He said people should ask other candidates, “What is the environmental policy of the Republican party?”

“When I ask that question, I get a blank stare.”

While addressing emissions in a business-friendly way could mean any number of things, a Graham presidency would not start out the gate trying to put President Obama’s climate agenda into reverse.

15. John Kasich
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CREDIT: AP

“I am a believer — my goodness I am a Republican — I happen to believe there is a problem with climate change,” Kasich said at an energy conference in 2012. “I don’t want to overreact to it, I can’t measure it all, but I respect the creation that the Lord has given us and I want to make sure we protect it.”

His refusal to overreact to it has led to a refusal to act on it as well. In 2011, he signed a bill — which was opposed by 70 percent of Ohioans — that opened up state parks and other public lands to drilling and fracking. He supports clean coal and is skeptical about cutting emissions without waiting for China and India to go first. And he spiked the wheel of a successful renewable energy program benefiting the Buckeye State.

In June 2014, he signed a bill passed by the state legislature that would freeze the Renewable Portfolio Standard, despite its popularity among Ohioans and industry. The program had also saved consumers $230 million, created 25,000 jobs, and spurred $1 billion in private investment.

Kasich might be open to some version of climate action should he win, but his actions, which are slowing down progress in his own state, signal caution.

14. Carly Fiorina
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CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

With her private-sector experience, Carly Fiorina engages with climate change from an economic perspective.

“Companies shouldn’t cave in to the demands of climate change scientists,” she has said.

Fiorina blamed “liberal environmentalists” for the historic, climate-related drought in California on Glenn Beck’s radio show this year. But even if she were to accept the idea that climate change played a role in her state’s drought, she is skeptical that anyone should do anything about it.

“What all the scientists also tell us is that a single state, or single nation acting alone can make no difference acting alone,” she told MSNBC. “If we want to accept the science, we have to read the fine print.”

“California can be the most onerous regulatory regime in the world, which they are, and it won’t make a bit of difference in climate change,” she said.

While running for senate in 2010, Fiorina criticized California’s nation-leading cap-and-trade program as “massively destructive,” which has not proved to be accurate. A report earlier this year found that emissions are down and the economy is expanding.

In 2009, she said, “‘I think we should have the courage to examine the science on an ongoing basis.”

13. Chris Christie
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CREDIT: AP Photo/Mel Evans, Pool

In 2011, the New Jersey governor acknowledged the effects humans have on climate change.

“I can’t claim to fully understand all of this,” he said. “Certainly not after just a few months of study. But when you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role it’s time to defer to the experts.”

Christie said again this year that he thought climate change was real and that humans contributed to it. But in 2013, he rejected the notion that Hurricane Sandy’s damage was worsened by climate change.

As far as doing something about climate change, Christie is a true skeptic. He has said that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a Northeast cap-and-trade program that aims to collectively reduce carbon pollution from power plants, was a “completely useless plan.” He withdrew New Jersey from the plan in 2011, and said that he would “not think of rejoining it.” He also cut his state’s renewable energy target.

A New Jersey appeals court ruled that the governor illegally withdrew the state from it in 2014.

A President Christie would not deny there was a problem, but given his success at dismantling an effective state solution to cut emissions and grow revenue, it’s unlikely he would allow the Clean Power Plan to proceed.

12. Jeb Bush
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CREDIT: Charlie Neibergall, AP

Bush’s position has been hard to pin down at times, though if he does address climate change it will not be because of either science or religion.

The establishment favorite has said people who accept mainstream climate science are “really arrogant.”

In 2009, he told Esquire he was a skeptic, and “not a scientist.”

“I think the science has been politicized. I would be very wary of hollowing out our industrial base even further,” he said, before saying he doubted whether it was really warming at all. “I think we need to be very cautious before we dramatically alter who we are as a nation because of it,” he concluded.

Then again, Bush can sometimes strike a more moderate tone. “The climate is changing, and I’m concerned about that,” he told a group in New Hampshire in April. “I don’t think it’s the highest priority. I don’t think we should ignore it, either,” he said. “Just generally I think as conservatives we should embrace innovation, embrace technology, embrace science.”

When the pope released his encyclical this year, Bush was skeptical. “I don’t get my economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope.”

He has advocated for more incentives for fracking, with the idea this would increase natural gas production and replace higher-polluting coal. However, he was happy to meet with a group of coal barons with the hope of raising money from them, so a (third) President Bush may very well stick with all fossil fuels.

11. Jim Gilmore
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CREDIT: AP Photo/Jim Cole

The former Virginia governor has said he will announce his candidacy the first week of August. He’s an asterisk in the polls, barely has a political operation, and has not said much about climate and energy. If a long list of competitors stumble and Gilmore has a decent shot at the nomination, there is not much to go on when predicting what he would do on climate change and energy policy.

He’s been uncertain over the role human activity plays in warming the globe in the past.

“We know the climate is changing, but we do not know for sure how much is caused by man and how much is part of a natural cycle change,” Gilmore said in a 2008 voter guide for the Virginia senate race against Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA). “I do believe we must work toward reducing emissions without damaging our fragile economy.”

Gilmore has also espoused fossil fuel production of all kinds, and said he opposed the Kyoto Protocol. It’s unlikely he would support another U.N. agreement or the Clean Power Plan.

10. Ben Carson
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CREDIT: AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)

The famed neurosurgeon has said “we may be warming, we may be cooling.” In an interview with Bloomberg in Iowa, Carson expressed support for building the Keystone XL pipeline. He also said “our Environmental Protection Agency should be told to work in conjunction with business, industry and universities to find the most eco-friendly ways of developing our energy resources.”

It’s unclear what a President Carson would do about climate change, though with what he has said so far, he likely would not see it as a pressing issue.

9. Rand Paul
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CREDIT: AP Photo

The libertarian senator has said he’s “not sure anybody exactly knows why” climate change is happening. He said “the conclusions you make from that are not conclusive;” however “we should minimize pollution,” but not through “onerous regulation.”

As far as addressing climate change through legislation, Paul has said “all I ask for is that the solution has to be a balanced solution and you have to account for jobs and jobs lost by regulation.”

His reaction to actual things people are trying to do to solve this problem tells a different story, however. Last year, he called the EPA’s proposed rule to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act illegal.

“I think if you want to pass legislation, try to get it through Congress,” he said. “Come and talk to us. Convince us it’s a good idea.” The Clean Air Act, passed by Congress, directs the EPA to regulate pollution, including carbon dioxide.

While he has struck a slightly more moderate tone on pollution, he still questions climate science and opposes policies that do anything about the problem. It’s unlikely Paul would address it through government action.

8. Marco Rubio
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CREDIT: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

While still a state legislator, Rubio thought action on climate change, including “emissions caps and energy diversification,” led to economic and technological trends that meant “Florida should become the Silicon Valley of [the energy] industry.” He also voted for a bill that would regulate greenhouse gases.

Once he reached the national level, he changed his tune. Rubio was one of the first politicians to attempt the “I’m not a scientist” tactic to deny the reality of mainstream climate science. He has since moved to more outright denial.

“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he said after telling the world he could be president. “I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.”

He called it “absurd” that laws could “change our weather.”

The senator from Florida risks alienating a key voting bloc that overwhelmingly supports acting on climate change, as well as inundating his home state with rising oceans.

7. Bobby Jindal
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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s lawsuit against the Obama administration continues.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Jindal says the degree of connection between human activity and climate change is unknown.

“Nobody disputes that the climate is always changing,” an energy policy paper released by his America Next advocacy group said. “The question is what is the role of humans in that change — and what, if any, dangers that change presents for Americans.”

Jindal told reporters that humans do affect the climate, but “the real question is how much.”

After all, he can’t be expected to know about climate science because he is “not a scientist.”

His uncertainty about climate change does not seem to impact what a President Jindal would do on energy. His plan calls for more oil and gas drilling, reversing environmental protections, and withdrawing from the U.N. climate talks. He said climate change was “simply a Trojan Horse” for governmental regulation.

Jindal has also demanded the EPA rescind its determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and signed on to a letter to the president in protest of the new EPA Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon pollution.

6. Rick Perry

In this Jan. 15, 2015 photo, Gov. Rick Perry addresses a joint session of the Texas Legislature, in Austin, Texas.

CREDIT: AP/Eric Gay

The former Texas governor doesn’t seem certain which climate denier trope he will settle on. He has accused climate scientists of manipulating data for money,

Though his environmental record in Texas was largely abysmal, he did sign legislation setting a renewable energy target that helped Texas lead the nation in wind power production. He also signed a water infrastructure bill that could help Texas mitigate some impacts of climate-driven drought and flood extremes.

Those positive developments — especially the state’s drop in emissions — had many other causes and drivers unrelated to Perry’s views about energy policy and climate change, however. Perry advocates for wide-ranging fossil fuel extraction and said he would approve the Keystone XL pipeline “on day one” should he be elected.

He would be extremely unlikely to do much about climate change at the federal level.

5. Mike Huckabee
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Mike Huckabee speaks during the Iowa Agriculture Summit.

CREDIT: AP

In 2007, the former governor of Arkansas said “it’s all our responsibility to fix” climate change and advocated for a cap-and-trade system to cut emissions. Three years later, he denied ever saying such a thing.

More recently, he talked with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) about what a hoax climate change is, and this year compared global warming to a “sunburn.”

“Mr. President, I believe that most of us would think that a beheading is a far greater threat to an American than a sunburn,” he told a crowd in Iowa, referring to ISIS’ killing of hostages.

When the EPA proposed regulating carbon pollution from power plants, Huckabee engaged in fearmongering over electricity rates, saying the regulations would “bankrupt families” — a claim that’s not true.

With his newfound climate denial zeal and skepticism of EPA regulation, Huckabee would most likely slow or reverse the president’s Clean Power Plan.

4. Scott Walker
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CREDIT: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Walker has thus far kept quiet on his views about climate science.

Recently, the governor of Wisconsin upped his game opposing action on climate change, however. He called President Obama’s proposed rule to regulate carbon pollution from power plants “unworkable” and pledged to fight it in court. He suggested gutting the EPA, saying he would take “major portions of the funding and responsibilities of the federal government … and send it back to the states.”

Walker signed Grover Norquist’s “No Climate Tax Pledge.” This means he committed to “oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that little has been done to combat climate change under Walker’s administration. “After an intense focus on climate change under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature have devoted little attention to such issues.”

Rather than relying on bombastic climate denial, Walker’s approach to environmental and energy issues has been rooted in a low-key, consistent, and arguably more effective and dangerous implementation of anti-environment tactics in state government.

In 2011, Walker pushed to eliminate state subsidies to cities and towns to operate recycling programs, and more recently proposed an end to funding a renewable bioenergy research center (despite a recent Iowa-inspired reversal on ethanol subsidies). He’s pushed to interfere with wind turbine placement while helping to pave the way for a “frac sand” mining industry that threatens the environment and public health.

Walker’s record concerns environmentalists, but it’s likely his past — and potentially future — electoral success that concerns them more.

3. Donald Trump
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Donald Trump on the course.

CREDIT: AP

The billionaire businessman doubts the reality of climate change as well as policies that attempt to address it, judging by past statements and his twitter feed. He has said “the EPA is an impediment to both growth and jobs.” He supports fracking and has a long-running vendetta against wind farms that are within sight of his properties.

“I’m a huge believer in clean air,” he told Jake Tapper last month. “I’m not a huge believer in the global warming phenomenon.”

When Tapper responded that most scientists say it’s real and man-made, Trump said “there could be some man-made too, I’m not saying there’s zero, but not nearly to the extent — when Obama gets up and said it’s the number one problem for our country, and if it is, why is it that we have to clean up our factories now and China doesn’t have to do it for another 30 to 35 years?”

Trump admitted he was being sarcastic when he tweeted that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Like many other issues, a Trump presidency would not treat addressing climate change in a serious manner.

2. Rick Santorum
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CREDIT: AP

The former Pennsylvania senator doubts the scientific consensus on climate change, saying it is “speculative science, which has proven over time not to have checked out,” and a “beautifully concocted scheme.” In fact, he said he was more qualified to talk about climate change than the pope last month when the Vatican released its historic encyclical on climate change.

“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science,” Santorum told a radio host a week earlier.

“I refer to global warming as not climate science, but political science,” Santorum said during his last presidential run. “A lot of these environmental sciences are just that — political sciences. They have nothing to do with … real understanding of how we have to value both the environment and its impact on man and the world.”

He’s said that anything the U.S. could do on climate change would have “zero impact” unless other countries act — barring, assumedly, agreements with other countries to limit emissions. In April, after Santorum criticized EPA regulation limiting mercury pollution from power plants, FactCheck.org ruled that his criticisms were inaccurate.

If he opposed regulating mercury pollution, it is difficult to see a President Santorum thinking positively about regulating carbon dioxide. In 2012, he joked, “tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is.”

1. Ted Cruz
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CREDIT: AP

Cruz doubts what he calls the “pseudoscientific theory” that tells scientists human activity causes climate change. He also told CNN that in “the last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming.” The junior senator from Texas has compared his climate denial to the intellectual bravery of Galileo.

After 35 trillion gallons of water fell on his home state, Cruz was asked about the role climate change played. He said, “I think it’s wrong to try to politicize a natural disaster.” Scientists, including experts in Texas, disagreed, with one calling Cruz’s denial of scientific reality “shameful.”

Cruz has introduced legislation that would expand oil and gas drilling, approve the Keystone XL pipeline, prevent the federal government from regulating fracking, and curtail EPA regulations. He says he supports an “all of the above” energy policy, which to him means allowing the private sector to decide what energy sources are best.

He relies on his denial of mainstream scientific consensus to inform his policy positions. “The federal government has no business attempting to massively reorder the global economy, resulting in policies that kill jobs and keep people from rising out of poverty, all in the name of a theory that can’t be proven or disproven,” he told National Journal in February.

So barring a change of heart on the science, Cruz is likely to be the candidate who most diligently rolls back policies to cut carbon pollution.

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Ben CarsonBobby JindalCarly FiorinaChris ChristieClean Power PlanClimate ChangeDonald TrumpJeb BushJohn KasichLindsey GrahamMarco RubioMike HuckabeeRand PaulRick PerryRick SantorumScott WalkerTed Cruz

The post The Most (And Least) Extreme Republican Presidential Candidates On Climate Change appeared first on ThinkProgress.