Roger Pielke, Jr. tells us what he’d do if If (He) Were the Climate Czar . . .

The Core Tension of Cap and Trade from Roger Pielke, Jr. on Prometheus blog: “This quote from an anonymous White House official in The Washington Post sums up the core tension of cap and trade. No cap and trade bill can at once send a meaningful price signal while at the same time not have an adverse impact on energy prices (in short or long terms). The following description of cap and trade in the Washington Post story also reflects this core tension:

Roger Pielke Jr. has an outstanding post titled US Mitigation Math where he shows the general sources and sinks of US energy and resulting GHG emissions. He also throws out some reduction scenarios and concludes that they cannot come close to meeting an emissions reductions goal of 14% below 2005 levels by 2020. So he closes with a challenge: “… present a scenario combining decarbonization of the energy supply and efficiency gain that has a realistic chance of succeeding in meeting a 14% emissions reduction (below 2005) by 2020.

It appears that the Obama administration is getting closer and closer to implementing some sort of GHG cap and trade system, since the WSJ and others are reporting that the proposed budget is counting on revenues from the sale of allowances. You may read these articles and see numbers in the 10’s or 100’s of billions of dollars thrown around, and you may wonder “what is this really going to mean for me?

A recent article in Nature continues to gather attention (it costs $32 to read the article, even though the US taxpayers probably paid for most ofthe research). By analyzing temperature data from the across the continent, including readings from the Antarctic peninsula (warming) and the continental interior (cooling), it concludes that result is a continental warming of 0.12 deg C. per decade between 1957 and 2006. So why all of the fuss?

Reading the recent NPR article “Innovation Seen As Key To Curbing Climate Change”, I was intrigued by Dan Sarewitz’s analogy to agricultural innovation. One example is how America transformed agriculture over the past century. The United States government created a highly successful, century-long effort to make food more abundant and affordable. “And it didn’t do so by setting any particular target or timetable. It did so by investing in research and development — and very importantly, in institutions,” Sarewitz says.

Today Sun took an important step forward in transparency and reporting by posting an update to our 2008 CSR Report. We’ve posted this mid-year update for two reasons: We want to make sure we were holding ourselves accountable throughout the (reporting) year - not just during the report process at the end of the year. Over the long term we would like to move toward a reporting model where we publish timely data throughout the year rather than just once a year in a neatly packaged report.

Obama to detail further compensation limits - Yahoo! Finance: this is just the tip of the iceberg on this, and I suspect its why Ford is being so vocal that they don’t want government help.

Just flew from Boston to San Francisco. Heavy snowcover the whole way until we got over the Central Valley in CA. Can’t remember ever seeing it so consistent before.

It’s a historic day for the United States and the world. God bless the new President of the United States.