[1:01 p.m. | Updated At the end of the post I've added a very useful reaction from Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University.]

Last week I posted a “Your Dot” contribution from Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a University of Chicago climate scientist concerned that policy makers and the public keep in mind the primacy of carbon dioxide emissions if they are serious about limiting the chances of propelling disruptive human-driven global warming.

A reply has come in from Drew T. Shindell, the NASA atmospheric scientist who was a leader of the team that wrote a new World Meteorological Organization/United Nations Environment Program report on the merits of cting to curb black carbon and ozone. (Ozone, besides being a powerful greenhouse gas, is a beneficial shield against radiation high in the atmosphere but a harmful pollutant near the ground). That report prompted quite a bit of coverage, including in The Times.

Here’s Shindell’s argument, which notes, among other things, that action on “easier” targets like ozone and soot can build confidence and institutional capacity that could be applied to carbon dioxide down the line: Read more…

ProPublica has published a good update on concerns that existing practices for extracting and piping natural gas, through leakage, substantially cut into the fuel’s substantial greenhouse-gas advantage over coal.

A prime source for the story, Robert W. Howarth of Cornell University, is right in his draft paper on such emissions that complete life-cycle analysis is sorely needed to clarify the overall costs and benefits of gas drilling — particularly the fast-spreading extraction method known as hydro-fracking.

But none of this, in my view, undercuts the importance of natural gas as a bridge fuel on the path to a lower-carbon, and more secure, energy menu as humanity sprints toward 9 billion people seeking decent lives.

It does reinforce the need to extract gas without environmental harms, and to thoroughly explore complaints in gas country. An E.P.A. analysis, due in 2012, should help.

It also means it’s way past time for industry to get far more serious about stanching gas leaks that some companies (led by BP, irony noted) have shown can routinely be plugged at a profit (as I reported in 2009).

The ProPublica piece expands on findings I reported in the print paper and on Dot Earth in 2009 showing that the amount of gas leakage from wells, pipelines and storage facilities for gas and oil was vastly greater than longstanding Environmental Protection Agency estimates.

.
Have a look at this amazing video above, compiled by the E.P.A., revealing with infrared photography how plumes of gas rise from otherwise innocuous structures and facilities.

The climate issue? Natural gas, when extracted and burned without leakage, produces about half the carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced compared to coal. But when the gas escapes to the atmosphere, it exerts a potent heat-trapping influence because the main constituent in natural gas is methane, which is the second most important human-generated greenhouse gas, not far behind carbon dioxide. Read more…

It’s hard to find projections for both global energy demand and emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning that don’t have a sustained upward trajectory for decades to come. The latest such forecasts were issued on Wednesday by Exxon Mobil, at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, and by BP. I’ll focus more on the BP report because it’s posted online, while Exxon’s is still awaiting publication.

Here’s a core graph from the BP analysis, which the company says is not the result of a scenario, but of its judgment based on history, trends in energy and environmental policies (or the lack thereof), markets and supplies:

The moral of the story, in essence, is that “future energy” — at least through the next couple of decades — is largely the same as current energy, with gains in efficiency and growth in adoption of renewable sources and nuclear power still not substantially blunting growth in the combustion of fossil fuels. Read more…

Efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions through an international agreement still appear mired in an array of disputes on display in Cancún climate talks.

But in the United States, a decision issued Friday evening by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit means that, come January, for the first time, many new or upgraded factories, power plants or other facilities will have to get a permit under the Clean Air Act to emit carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases. You can read the decision below. The most important line concludes that the industry groups and others seeking to fend off the gas restrictions “have not shown that the harms they allege are ‘certain,’ rather than speculative, or that the ‘alleged harm[s] will directly result from the action[s] which the movant[s] seeks to enjoin.’”
Read more…

Much of the debate about limiting climate risks and fostering a smooth path for humanity as its growth spurt crests revolves around metrics like gigatons of carbon dioxide and billions of dollars. But such discussions hide a much more profound issue that doesn’t involve numbers, and gets a lot less ink (or electrons).

This issue is only describable using words like obligation, ethics and responsibility. At the core is how much an individual or community or country is obliged to consider the situation of the other — whether that other is the world’s still-poor billions, the other species that share the planet with H. sapiens or generations yet unborn.

Any reasonable climate policy has two components: adaptation and resilience to limit climate risk and mitigation of emissions to limit the odds of human activities jolting the system in ways we’d long regret.

Here’s the rub. Only one of those components, adaptation, is a good fit for deep-rooted human traits focusing, when faced with risk, on protecting the self, the family, the community and country, in that order. We will adapt, for sure. It’s a primal reflex. As The Times reported in 2007, rich countries are already using wealth and technology to insulate themselves from extreme climate conditions.

Will we help others adapt? Rich countries, recognizing that their many decades of emissions have created the biggest nudge to the climate system (so far), have pledged the first batch of money under the Copenhagen Accord. But having it pledged is a long way from having it flow.

(There are other questions, for another day, related to determining who would deserve such funds, given that the terms of the underlying climate treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, only apply to impacts from shifts driven by greenhouse gases, when many poor countries are already deeply exposed to climate-related risks, with or without the greenhouse push.)

Even with the tangles, adaptation is still a pretty basic aspect of reducing climate risk. Mitigation of emissions is where the ethical issues really mount. How much do the emissions of carbon dioxide from a century of industrialization count toward an obligation by today’s industrial powers to take the lead in climate action? With temperate-zone countries seeing possible agricultural benefits through 2050 under the 2007 assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even as conditions grow tougher near the Equator, how much does self-interest trump broader responsibilities?

There are excellent discussions of the ethical binds related to climate at the Climate Ethics blog and the Web site of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.

There is a deep divide in society over such questions, reflecting what Dan Siegel, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has found are variations in the relative size of what he calls internal “me-maps” and “we-maps” — essentially portraits of how much of a person’s consciousness is focused on self or a broader network.

.
You can hear him discuss this in a set of videos of a lecture he gave earlier this year at the Climate, Mind and Behavior conference at the Garrison Institute. (Part one is above.) Siegel essentially proposes that certain reflective practices, or meditation, can broaden one’s mental maps and build empathy — moving from me to we.

In a Scientific American column, my friend John Horgan strongly criticized such efforts, likening them to marketing research.

At the very least, I think it’s vital to understand the cognitive traits that impede humans’ ability to regard and address certain kinds of problems, both geophysical and ethical.

Only then do we have a chance of recognizing the edge of the petri dish and perhaps softening the jolt as populations and appetites crest in the next few decades.

The Garrison Institute, just down the hill from my home in the Hudson River valley, has organized an exploration of the role of the human mind, with all of its strengths and weaknesses, in both creating the climate challenge and potentially overcoming it. The next effort is a session for a variety of specialists in studies of buildings and behavior.

Given that humans are spending ever more time indoors, with all the heating, cooling and lighting potentially attending such a lifestyle, finding big cuts in energy use in structures can make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions and energy appetites. (I took the photo above while touring Toronto’s vast underground city beneath the city.) The challenge and opportunity in fast-growing developing countries is particularly acute. According to some analysts, more square footage of structures will be built in the next few decades than has been built by human societies in all previous history. As I wrote recently, one steamy Asian city, Mumbai, is estimated to have potential demand for air conditioning equalling a fourth of all the air conditioning used in the United States today.

A first step in charting a low-energy path for buildings is to clarify how people use them and what can stimulate shifts in behavior that cut energy demand. The organizers of the session have distributed a very helpful reading list on energy, behavior and buildings, assembled by Chris Hammer of Sustainable Design Resources: Read more…

Earlier this week, the International Energy Agency released a batch of new findings and reports as its contribution to the Obama administration’s “Clean Energy Ministerial” meeting in Washington. One report concluded that China’s total energy use now tops that of the United States, just a couple of years behind its rise to the top position on lists of emitters of carbon dioxide. (China almost immediately disputed the agency’s conclusion.)

In any case, a more important analysis was the agency’s fresh look at trends in government support for research, development and demonstration of low-carbon energy technologies and ways for countries to collaborate to accelerate energy innovation. Here’s one of the centerpiece graphs, showing how the long slide in government support for energy research appeared over, for the moment at least (click on the image to enlarge):

According to the report, “Global Gaps in Clean Energy RD&D,” the recent burst of spending on research as part of various countries’ efforts to stimulate their fragile economies has helped provide a substantial boost after decades of diminishing investment on the frontiers of energy inquiry. But the report’s author, Thomas Kerr, warned that this was a transitory pulse when sustained growth was needed, particularly given signs that no global price on carbon dioxide emissions was likely any time soon. In essence, the report says, the $24 billion in such spending in 2009 needs to be the new floor for such investments, not a temporary peak. Read more…

Keith Bradsher has filed an important story showing how the energy demands of China’s emerging consumer class are overwhelming the central government’s efforts to cut industrial energy waste and blunt growth in carbon dioxide emissions.

The article provides a closeup view of the demographic and economic forces that are destined to make Asia the dominant influence on the planetary greenhouse for decades to come, by almost every analysis.

Here’s the core of Bradsher’s piece:

Already, in the last three years, China has shut down more than a thousand older coal-fired power plants that used technology of the sort still common in the United States. China has also surpassed the rest of the world as the biggest investor in wind turbines and other clean energy technology. And it has dictated tough new energy standards for lighting and gas mileage for cars.

But even as Beijing imposes the world’s most rigorous national energy campaign, the effort is being overwhelmed by the billionfold demands of Chinese consumers.

Chinese and Western energy experts worry that China’s energy challenge could become the world’s problem — possibly dooming any international efforts to place meaningful limits on global warming.

If China cannot meet its own energy-efficiency targets, the chances of avoiding widespread environmental damage from rising temperatures “are very close to zero,” said Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency in Paris.

Aspiring to a more Western standard of living, in many cases with the government’s encouragement, China’s population, 1.3 billion strong, is clamoring for more and bigger cars, for electricity-dependent home appliances and for more creature comforts like air-conditioned shopping malls. Read on….

Consider that India, while far down the list of greenhouse giants — with a fifth of China’s emissions, measured per-capita or gross — is poised for greatly expanded energy demand. If you dare, please track down and read the 2009 paper by Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan on projected air conditioning demand in big cities in hot places. A single finding is sufficient to make the point: “For example, the potential cooling demand in metropolitan Mumbai is about 24 percent of the demand for the entire United States.”

There is a tough road ahead for anyone seeking to cut emissions of greenhouse gases in a world of cresting populations and surging appetites.

The Department of Energy yesterday reported a sharp drop last year in emissions of carbon dioxide, and a steeper decline than what was anticipated through the impacts of the recession alone. The graph above shows one particularly notable disconnect — a drop in emissions far steeper than the drop in gross domestic product. The report uses well-designed graphics to break down the trend sector by sector and every page is worth exploring.

Another notable finding is the influence of a big switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation, as gas prices fell nearly 50 percent while coal prices rose 6.8 percent relative to 2008. For anyone who cares about the climate, the bottom line there — because natural gas emits nearly half the carbon dioxide as coal for the same amount of produced heat — is finding a way to manage risks from harvesting vast deposits of gas without rejecting that resource altogether.

The findings have cheered environmentalists and climate campaigners, who see signs that the country could hit proposed targets for emissions in 2020 without too much cost or disruption. It’s conceivable, some seasoned experts on energy and the economy say, but way too soon to celebrate. One reason simply is that the underlying data tracked by the government are notoriously “foggy,” according to Lee Schipper, a specialist in energy use with appointments at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Schipper, who has spent many years sifting data on home size, heating bills, appliance purchases, driving habits, freight shipments and other activities that indirectly gauge the use of different fuels, sent me a note about the challenge of gauging trends during turbulent economic times. One big issue, he said, is that the Department of Energy has stopped tracking many lines of data that matter. Here’s his note:

If there is one lesson, it is that in times of rapid growth or recession, different parts of the economy change at different rates, and that differential alone can cause significant changes in the ratio of energy to G.D.P. Since a big recession might hit coal-burning utilities’ customers more than other utility customers (to name one example) or hit coal-using industries like cement and steel more than others, one has to look carefully not only at CO2 emissions changes but at underlying economic activity or personal activity changes and how those are tied to emissions in a disaggregated way.

Some countries can do this roughly 18 months to two years after the end of each year. We can’t. We don’t even maintain regular energy accounts by major manufacturing branches. We last surveyed household vehicle fuel use in 1985, and our trucking inventory and use survey died in 2002. We stopped trying to estimate household appliance electricity use in the late 1990s….

I call this the blind leading the blind. Like “Cash for Clunkers Is a Lemon,” as I wrote in the Washington Post, we seem to like to make policies (or pronouncements) whose outcomes cannot be measured for years. I remember when high-level clowns in the Bush administration were pointing to the decline in carbon emissions in the mid-2000s, but of course not taking credit (or blame) for the higher oil and gas prices that most agreed lay behind those declines.

It’s hard to imagine how the U.S. will enact any sensible policies in this foggy atmosphere.