The governors of Washington, Oregon, Arizona, California and New Mexico announced yesterday that they are going to keep the Villiage People’s idyllic view of the West alive by forming a five-state regional alliance to curb greenhouse gas emissions. This new program is called the “Western Regional Climate Action Initiative.”

The five states will basically do what the federal government refuses to do by establishing targets for greenhouse gas reductions and then coming up with a plan, which may include a cap-and-trade system, to reach those goals.

If this sounds familiar, it should. It is exactly how the Regional Green House Gas Initiative started in the Northeast. (I have to say that our acronym of RGGI is far more pronouncable — “Reggie” — than their WRCAI. Or, maybe they will pronounce it “Rocky” and use the ever-inspirational “Gonna Fly Now” as their theme song!)

So, if you put this plan together with RGGI, and if you assume that Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island will all join per their previous plans, we could easily get to the point where 16 of the states in the country are members of either RGGI or WRCAI. On top of this the Eastern Canadian Provinces have already expressed interest in also joining RGGI. I wonder if the Western Canadian Provinces will start to look at WRCAI.

If we get enough of these states all pooling together, then it really helps offset the fact that the U.S. refuses to do anything significant at the federal level. Of course, we still look like nincompoops to the rest of the world.

More importantly, this could start to create more pressure for companies to ask for federal regulation. As we’ve talked about in previous threads, as you start to get more and more states enacting their own regulations, it becomes harder and harder for national (or even regional) companies to manage their businesses; the unpredictability of constantly changing rules is terrible for them and the “certainty” offered by a single, uniform set of federal regulations is in their interests.

Anyway, this is exciting to see.  This should be a good program to watch.

I was so happy to see that An Inconvenient Truth got a sweep at the Academy Awards tonight.

Not only did the movie win the Best Documentary Award, but Melissa Ethridge’s song “I Need to Wake Up” won for Best Original Song.

On top of this, Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio had a portion of the show to announce that the Academy Awards worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council to ensure that every aspect of the show was done an environmentally conscious manner. They also pointed the shows 1 billion viewers to the Oscar.com website where viewers could find tips on how to reduce their energy usage and emissions.

I thought the most touching moment was when David Guggenheim, the director of the movie, pointed to Gore and told the audience the movie was made “because we were moved to act by this man”.

It made me think back to the line in An Inconvenient Truth when Gore said, “I’ve been trying to tell this story for a long time and I feel as I’ve failed to get the message across.”

Gore was noticeably moved by Guggenheim’s comment. It was as if after 30 years of trying to get people to wake up, he finally saw the first signs of success.

Next up for Gore: In May, he will be releasing a new book called The Assault on Reason. On top of that, he will be releasing a new edition of the book version of An Inconvenient Truth, targeted at younger people.

And of course, then on 7/7/07 is the big Live Earth concert.

Should be a busy few months for Al.

In a previous entry, I mentioned that the Sudbury Earth Decade Committee would be starting a column in the local town paper.

Well, article number one has been published today. Wahoo.

It is available online here:

http://www.townonline.com/sudbury/opinion/8998918253170393087

Now we just have to churn out more articles! I’m most excited to see what sorts of crackpots write Letters to the Editor trying to re-engage in the debate over whether global warming is real or not. I am sure that this column won’t go without some response from the nut jobs out there.

When the Democrats took office in this Congressional session, there was a lot of attention paid to the “first 100 hour” campaign.

It turns out that the final bill taken up by the House during that period was House Resolution 6, also known as the CLEAN Energy Act of 2007. (In case you were wondering, “CLEAN” stands for “Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation”. What I want to know is whose job is it to come up with these names that spell cute acronyms?!?)

The act passed the House 264 - 163 and has now moved onto the Senate for its consideration. Until the Senate takes it up, it is just a bill on Capitol Hill. (You knew I couldn’t get through this post without referencing that song.)

I decided to take a look at the bill to see what it was all about.

Surprisingly, the bill was relatively short and understandable. I’m not sure what that was all about.

While the bill’s title is about “clean energy”, the reality is that this is mostly just about changing tax law and revoking breaks given to energy companies.

There is some other minutia in here about renegotiating leases that had an error in them, but the primary focus of the bill is to eliminate several tax breaks previously given to the oil and gas companies.

All of the money raised by repealing these tax breaks would then be put into a separate fund called the “Strategic Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve” that would be used for one of the following purposes:

1. to accelerate the use of clean domestic renewable energy resources and alternative fuels;
2. to promote the utilization of energy-efficient products and practices and conservation; and
3. to increase research, development, and deployment of clean renewable energy and efficiency technologies.

Interestingly, the bill does not specify exactly how this money would be used; instead, the bill basically sets aside this money for allocation in future bills.

Because of that, this is a somewhat boring bill from an environmental perspective; it really just lays the foundation for more interesting things to come.

According to SourceWatch, the bill faces “uncertain prospects” in the Senate.

Of course, even if it passes the Senate, it also has to get past President Bush since it does not look like it has the support to overturn a veto.

I guess the end summary here is that this is definitely something to watch, but it will only become interesting if it can pass and get signed by the president, and then we can actually move on to the really interesting topic of where to invest that money.

Other Resources:

• CBS News Article

A few weeks ago, I read a story about a California lawmaker who wanted to ban the sales of incandescent lightbulbs through all of California by 2012. His bill even had a cute name:the “How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act”.

When I first read about this I thought that this was a nice idea, but left it at that. It was just a bill. Probably one of hundreds or thousands that various legislators were offering. So, I didn’t really think too much about it.

Then, all of a sudden, yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources announced that Australia was banning all incandescent light bulbs by 2010.

There aren’t many details available on this plan, but, from what I can tell, this is not a theoretical bill being proposed by a legislator — this is a done deal. It is as if the EPA decided tommorow to regulate the energy industry and forced them to eliminate the bulbs.

What is even more amazing is that this is coming from a country that rivals the U.S. in terms of its “head in the sand” mentality about global warming. Australia is one of the only other major nations who hasn’t signed on to the Kyoto pact and Australia Prime Minister John Howard has not been a big supporter of change.

So what happened? Why the big change now?

Elections.

You see Australia has elections coming up this year and Prime Minister Howard faces a very tough fight against the liberal Labor party.

And one of the key issues in the election is water.

The Australian government is being forced to contend with the fact that Australia could be facing devastating effects from global warming and is now having to come up with solutions to try to avert the crisis.

According to an article in an Australian paper:

Polls have shown that many voters blame the drought that is racking Australia, by some measures the worst in more than a century, on global warming. It has focused critical attention on the Howard government’s environmental record, including his refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which was designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

One of Howard’s moves to placate the left was to shake up his cabinet and install Turnbull as a minister less than a month ago.

It will be interesting to see if this starts to have a ripple effect elsewhere. Will the California bill get a sudden boost? Will other countries start to look to ban incandescent light bulbs as well?

I think the most important message out of all of this is that change happens when the populace wakes up and demands change. There is no way that Howard would be paying attention to this if he wasn’t at risk of losing his job. He’d just continue to bury his head in the sand. But, now that his job is on the line, he’s suddenly acting.  A lesson for us all.
Cool Note of the Day

As I was researching this article, I found that Australia’s “Shadow Minister for Climate Change” is Peter Garrett. Who is Peter Garrett you ask? He’s none other than the lead singer from Midnight Oil. You remember him? The kinda freaky looking bald guy with the funky voice.

Sir Richard Branson is the eccentric founder of the Virgin Group that includes companies like Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Virgin Music.

Two years ago, Branson was a “climate change skeptic” who didn’t really believe that global warming was happening or was as severe an issue as others made it out to be.

All of that changed when he had a two hour breakfast with Al Gore.

Since then, Branson has become one of the most high profile faces spending, putting significant amounts of money toward solving global warming.

The first real push came last year when Branson committed to donate “all profits from his transportation businesses over 10 years to combat global warming“.

Since then, Branson has founded Virgin Fuel to invest in clean energy sources.

Branson’s most recent initiative was launched last week when he announced the Virgin Earth Challenge. The basic idea here is very simple. Branson will give out a prize of $25M to anyone who can come up with a solution to remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

If anyone would understand these sorts of prizes, it would be Branson; Branson funded the creation of SpaceShipOne — the winner of the Ansari X Prize, a $10M prize for the first person to create a commercially viable space ship. Branson has since gone on to found Virgin Galactic to sell commercial space trips. So, Branson clearly understands the motivational impact that these sorts of prizes can have, the publicity that they can bring,
and most importantly, the economic rewards of developing a commercial solution.

Hats off to Branson for putting his money behind this initiative. It will be very interesting to see if the Virgin Earth Challenge creates the same type and level of competition as the X Prize did with several different teams competing for the prize.

I am a child of the 80’s. When I look back on the defining moments of my childhood, it was events like the Challenger disaster, Iran-Contra, Uncle Ronnie, and Tianamen.

During this time, there was a series of benefit concerts to focus on different initiatives. There were events like Live Aid and Farm Aid, and, who can forget “We Are the World?“. (In fact, I think that my elementary school talent show performed We Are the World!)

So, with that background it was very interesting to see the announcement this week that on July 7, 2007, there will be a 24-hour benefit concert called “Live Earth” with concerts on every continent (yes, even Antarctica) featuring over 100 artists.

The event was announced earlier this week and is a collaboration between Al Gore, MSN, and Kevin Wall — who was one of the producers of Live 8.

The group is working with media companies from around the world to help get as many viewers and listeners as possible. They have already received commitments from Sirius and XM Radio to broadcast the concerts on multiple channels. They are working with NBC (and its sister channels) to broadcast the concerts in the U.S. and the BBC to broadcast the concerts in England. They have signed up over 2,500 radio stations in the U.S. to broadcast parts of the concert.

They have announced some of the line up already and it includes artists like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg, Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, and the Black Eyed Peas. As if that wasn’t enough, the man, the myth, the legend — Simon Lebon — and his band of friends known as Duran Duran will grace us with their talent. (We love you Simon!)

They also mentioned that they are having mayors from around the country contact them to ask if they can host “regional” versions of the concert with local artists performing.

The goal of the concert will be to raise awareness about climate change on a broader level than ever done before. They are hoping to be able to reach over 2 billion people through all of the different mediums over which the concert will be broadcast.

I think it will be very interesting to see how this develops. It could be a great way to really help create a movement related to climate change that hasn’t been seen to date.

So, mark your calendars on 7/7/07 and let’s all start rehearsing the lines to We Are the World! (I’ll be Kenny Rogers, who do you want to be?)

If New Jersey ever chose a spokesperson to represent their state, it would likely be Rodney Dangerfield. New Jersey is generally viewed more as a punchline, a suburb of New York, or as one big highway, than it is a state.

This is a state that considered naming Born to Run, a song that tells Jersey residents that they “gotta get out while we’re young”, as the “unofficial rock theme” of its youth; a state whose most famous residents include the Sopranos; and a state that recently unveiled the enigmatic motto: “New Jersey, Come See For Yourself”.

But, for all of the jokes about New Jersey, there is something interesting going on here that we all ought to pay attention to.

Back in April of 2006, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signed Executive Order 11 that enacted the following policies:

• It established the position of Director of Energy Savings within the Department of Treasury
• It mandating that all State departments purchase ENERGY STAR products
• It forced all State departments to purchase recycled materials when possible
• It forced all State departments to print all publications and documents on recycled paper.

Almost as importantly, if you look at how this executive order was justified, it talked about the negative economic impact that sea level rises would have on New Jersey. It also explained that an “increased use of renewable energy will improve the State’s economy by exerting downward pressure on natural gas prices and otherwise lowering the cost of energy, creating local jobs, and stemming the flow of energy dollars to out-of-state entities.”

This seems like a shining example of exactly how the power of the executive office should be used. It shows leadership from the top. It recognizes that the State spends large amounts of money and can use that money to effect change. It also does this in a way that doesn’t cost billions of dollars — in fact, it could wind up costing the State less as they realize the savings from some of these actions.

I believe that large chunks of this Executive Order could be picked up, as is, and taken to other states and even to the municipal level. Why shouldn’t our mayors or selectmen adopt virtually identical measures controlling town and city operations?

But, New Jersey didn’t stop there. Yesterday, Governor Corzine signed Executive Order 54 which:

• Established greenhouse gas targets that would result in “stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020″ and “reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 2006 levels by 2050″
• Directed the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to monitor the states emissions and report on progress toward these goals

It is still too early to see what will really happen here, but this is exactly the sort of bold leadership that we need. There is no tap dancing around the issue or setting weak targets that make us feel good, but don’t really accomplish anything.

This confronts the issue head on.

Huge kudos to Governor Corzine for taking the leadership here. We should all wish that our states would take this sort of action.

We’ll be watching New Jersey to see what happens next, but for the time being, New Jersey has pulled into the pole position on this issue.

Last week, I was on vacation at Sunday River in Maine, and happened to notice a sign saying that 100% of Sunday River’s energy was now coming from wind power.

Both Sunday River and its sister resort, Sugarloaf, switched to wind power this winter. According to this press release, “Together the resorts are now the largest purchaser and consumer of wind power in New England.”

I hadn’t realized this before, but this is apparently part of a larger national trend of ski resorts purchasing energy from clean sources.

Currently, both Sunday River and Sugarloaf are just purchasing clean energy from existing sources; they do not have their own wind turbines. I wonder whether they would eventually move in that direction. If there is one thing that they don’t have any lack of, it is wind!

On top of this, Sunday River had regular commercials on TV with famous athletes like Picabo Street promoting the “Keep Winter Cool” campaign. This is a really interesting campaign by the National Resources Defense Council to focus in on a specific target market and explain how global warming impacts them directly. I thought this was a particularly nice approach.

Anyway, it was nice to see the ski resort folks coming to the conclusion that it makes business sense for them to be green.

Note: This blog is not a political blog. There are lots of other places where you can look for information on politics. With that said, as we move into the 2008 campaign, there is going to be a lot said about energy independence. To that end, this blog will try to provides a non-partisan analysis of what different candidates are saying about energy and environment related issues. This blog cannot and will not endorse any particular candidate and will attempt to judge the ideas, not the people.

Last week, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president. In his announcement speech, Obama talked about “a dependence on oil that threatens our future” as one of his concerns for the country.

Later in his speech, Obama had the following to say:

Let’s be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil. We can harness homegrown, alternative fuels like ethanol and spur the production of more fuel-efficient cars. We can set up a system for capping greenhouse gases. We can turn this crisis of global warming into a moment of opportunity for innovation, and job creation, and an incentive for businesses that will serve as a model for the world. Let’s be the generation that makes future generations proud of what we did here.

You probably can’t expect too much detail from a high level speech like this, so just looking at the tone here, this seems like it is heading in the right direction, though I wonder if it is really enough.

Also, as we’ve talked about in previous entries, I have a lot of skepticism about putting too much faith in ethanol as a primary piece of a solution; now, if there was a focus on figuring out how to convert sources other than corn into ethanol, that might be a real step in the right direction.

Obama’s website provides more specifics on how to address the energy issue. He outlines four specific proposals:

• Increase the CAFE standards

  Any reader of this blog will know that reforming the CAFE standards is an absolutely critical part of any solution. But, as we have seen in the past, the real devil is in the details on any CAFE proposal.

  Obama is one of the authors of The Fuel Economy Reform Act of 2006 which would encourage, but not require, an increase of 4% annually in the CAFE standards.The real “gotcha” here is that this bill leaves it up to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the current owner of the CAFE standards, to make these increases. Given their failure to increase the CAFE standards for the past 20 years, this seems a bit like having the fox guard the hen house, leaving me suspicious about the real impact here.

  This proposal also seems to take away one of the most important elements of the CAFE standards. Today’s model sets a single target across the entire fleet for a manufacturer. It basically says, “I don’t care what kind of cars you sell, you just need to make sure that the average across your entire fleet is X.” This means that every auto manufacturer is forced to have balance in their fleet; if they produce a lot of gas guzzlers, they have to figure out how to make that up by selling ultra-efficient cars to compensate.

  This proposal, though, does away with this balance by establishing separate guidelines for different types of cars. At first blush, this seems like a gigantic present to the U.S. auto manufacturers, rewarding them for producing over-sized trucks and eliminating the requirement that they balance their fleet with fuel-efficient compact cars. If I am reading this correctly, this would be a disaster for the CAFE standards.

  In addition, it doesn’t seem like these reforms do anything to address the issue with flex-fuel vehicles described in a previous post.

  On the whole, this seems like a misguided step that doesn’t solve many problems and may create several new problems.

• Providing health care tax breaks to auto manufacturers and require them to invest some of that money into fuel efficient vehicles.

  I can certainly believe that the auto manufacturers (and many other companies) are being hurt by the costs of high health insurance and there is probably a lot to be done to help there.With that said, it seems a bit gimmicky to tie these two issues together; either there is a real problem with health care costs and it needs to be fixed, or there isn’t a problem. Either way, it doesn’t seem like the two issues should be tied together.

• Expand the use of E85 and other alternative fuels

  Much of this plan is around building out the infrastructure for the distribution of E85 fuel.As mentioned above, this is an OK plan, so long as it is accompanied by major research into non-corn-based ethanol. If this is just another rehash of a corn-based solution, it doesn’t seem like it will fly.

• Support clean burning coal

  There aren’t a lot of details here, but my Spidey-sense is tingling here. “Clean coal” is an oxymoron and is a red herring often thrown out by the energy industry that fights real reform.So, this definitely makes me nervous.

While these plans focus a lot on fuel efficiency, what is notable here is the complete lack of any position (other than clean coal) on real solutions for energy production or caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

Putting all of this together, I have to say that I am not terribly impressed. The proposals that are here are tentative at best and flawed at worst and the proposals that aren’t here are almost even more important than the proposals that are here.

Hopefully Obama will stake out much bolder positions on these issues moving forward, but for now, I don’t see how these proposals do anything serious to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2050.

The following is an article that the Earth Decade Committee is submitting to the local paper as the first in a series of articles on climate change and what we can do about it.  Once we get published, I will put a link up.

The debate is over. Global warming is real. It is happening today and it is not just a part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling. The dominant cause of this change is an increase in carbon dioxide that is directly linked to human activity. We are already seeing the effects of these changes and they will last centuries. If we do not take strong action soon, the economic and environmental consequences could be devastating.

These are the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its recent Assessment Report on Climate Change.

Achim Steiner, executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, declared that the report’s issuance “will perhaps one day be remembered as the day that the question mark was removed behind the debate whether climate change has anything to do with human activity on this planet.”

But what is new here? Nearly everything in the report was already known.

We already knew that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at the highest levels in over 650,000 years and are rapidly increasing.

We already knew that this increase in carbon dioxide levels was being produced by power plants, cars, and other human-related sources

We already knew that carbon dioxide acts as a blanket and traps heat from the sun resulting in warmer overall temperatures, hence the name “global warming” to describe this phenomenon. However, we also knew that this overall warming trend has many other effects including more violent storms, longer droughts, more heat waves, and more intense rain and snow fall, resulting in the terms “climate change” and “climate crisis.”

We have already seen the effects of this carbon dioxide blanket on the planet.

We already knew that 2005 was the hottest year on record until 2006 took that distinction, that the ten hottest years ever recorded have occurred in the last 14 years, and nineteen of the hottest 20 years on record have occurred since 1980.

We already knew that the glaciers in North America, Europe, Asia, and South America are disappearing. Within the next twenty years, famous destinations like Glacier National Park will be glacier-free.

We already knew that two of Canada’s six ice shelves have broken up in the past four years – the most recent break-up happening so suddenly that it stunned scientists.

We already knew that, due to the melting ice caps, the government is considering listing polar bears as a threatened species. Scientists are reporting events never witnessed before: polar bears starving to death, resorting to cannibalism to stay alive, and drowning as they try to swim farther distances to get food.

We already knew that by 2100, summer temperatures in New England could increase by 14 degrees. Boston could see as many as 24 days per year with temperatures over 100° F, the length of the winter snow-season could be cut in half, and sea levels could rise by two feet.

We already knew that the melting of ice covering Greenland or Antarctica could produce sea level increases of up to 20 feet. The impact would be catastrophic, causing wholesale flooding of major metropolitan areas like New York, Miami, and San Francisco, and would have dramatic effects on weather patterns.

None of this is new.

So, if we already knew all of these things, why is this report so important?

Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), put it this way: “This report by the IPCC represents the most rigorous and comprehensive assessment possible of the current state of climate science.”

More than 450 lead authors received input from more than 800 contributing authors, and an additional 2,500 experts reviewed the draft documents.

“There is no better scientific consensus on any other issue I know – except perhaps Newton’s second law of dynamics,” said James Baker, head of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

“This report provides the scientific evidence that … even those who have doubts can no longer ignore,” Steiner stated.

Susan Solomon, co-chair of the IPCC and a scientist at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, declared, “The key conclusion [of the report] is that warming of the climate system is now unequivocal….unequivocal.” She continued, “There can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases is dominated by human activities.”

From this point forward, any climate change skeptic claiming that global warming isn’t real, that it is just part of a natural cycle, that the planet will naturally “correct itself,” that there is no link between human activity and increased temperatures, or that there is no agreement among scientists on these points must be forced to confront the fact that over 2,000 experts disagree with their position.

Anyone who believes in the scientific process should hold any counter-claims to the same level of scrutiny and peer-review that this report went through; skeptics should not be allowed to call the reports findings into question without supporting these claims with science-based peer-reviewed evidence.

Based on this, Achim Steiner stated that the report should be seen “as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity … to what on Earth are we going to do about it. … It shifts from doubting to having to act.”

With that in mind, the Sudbury Earth Decade Committee will be publishing a series of columns over the coming months focused on climate change.

But rather than focusing on the facts surrounding climate change, the columns will focus on what we can all do to help avert this impeding crisis.

The columns will look at specific, practical ways that we can make a difference at various levels: as individuals, as businesses, as residents of the town, and citizens of the State.

The Sudbury Earth Decade Committee is a non-profit organization committed to environmental causes. You can find out more about the EDC at our website: www.surburyedc.org.

I will be on vacation this week.  I will still try to get a couple of posts up, but my Internet access is pretty limited.

See you all next week.

The Guardian is reporting that “the US government wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.”

According to the Guardian, the U.S. is suggesting that this be included in the IPCC report as a possible solution to climate change: “Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered.”

So, let me get this straight… We don’t want to fix the CAFE standards because that might hurt the auto manufacturers. We don’t want to join Kyoto because unless everyone joins in then it can’t work and cap-and-trade will hurt business. But, instead, we are willing to block sunlight coming to the planet having god only knows what effects on the planet.

While maybe there is some possibility that this would reduce temperatures, can anyone out there think of any part of the Earth’s ecosystem that might be sensitive to a decrease in the amount of light coming in? Hmmmm… For some reason, the word photosynthesis pops into my head.

Good to see that we’re focused on solving the important problems.

I know this isn’t environment related, but just had to make sure everyone know that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is now available via pre-sale.

Don’t expect many blog postings from me around June 21st since I’ll be busy reading the book.

You may have thought today was just a normal day, but today may go down in the environmental history books.

Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is set to release its 4th Assessment Report on Climate Change.

Achim Steiner, executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme laid the issue out quite clearly:

“The 2nd of February 2007 in Paris will perhaps one day be remembered as the day that the question mark was removed behind the debate whether climate change has anything to do with human activity on this planet. …

This report provides the scientific evidence that … even those who have doubts can no longer ignore. … It is an unequivocal set of pieces of evidence that have been put before the world. …

It is critical that we look at this report not only as a milestone, but truly as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity … to what on Earth are we going to do about it. … It shifts from doubting to having to act. …

Anyone who would continue to risk inaction … will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible. …

We are looking for an unequivocal commit from policy makers, business leaders, civic society leaders to take climate change as truly the challenge of our century.”

This report itself is the product of 600 authors and 600 reviewers from 40 countries who are pooling together all of the information available from peer reviewed and published scientific literature to come up with a “consensus report”. The report is based on the work of over 2,000 scientists around the world. In addition, the report is also the product of 300 delegates from over 100 countries.

At a press conference to announce the results, the head of the IPCC declared, “Whatever is finally accepted and approved has the stamp of acceptance of all of the governments of the world.”

Susan Solomon, co-chair of the IPCC and a scientist at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, declared, “The key conclusion [of the report] is that warming of the climate system is now unequivocal….unequivocal.” She continued saying, “There can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities.”

The report concludes that there is a 90% or greater likelihood that this warming is directly attributable to the rise in greenhouse gases.

“This report by the IPCC represents the most rigorous and comprehensive assessment possible of the current state of climate science and has considerably narrowed the uncertainties of the 2001 report,” said Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

There will be plenty more information coming out here in the next days, but this report should become the definitive report that shows that the debate is over. Anybody who challenges the idea that climate change is happening or that this change is caused by human activities should be challenged to reconcile their data with the data from this report. What do they know that these 2000 scientists don’t.

It almost seems like a fantasy story, but Al Gore could win both an Academy award and a Nobel Peace prize in the same year, for the same work.

In a previous entry I mentioned that Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature for this year’s Academy Awards. Well, just this week, Al Gore was also nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.

Let me indulge in a flight of fancy for a moment and assume he were to win both. How crazy would it be that a single individual could win both awards for the same work in the same year?

Honestly, though, it seems to me that it would be a real stretch to win the Nobel. According to an article on the Nobel Prize site, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the person who “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding of peace congresses.”

For all of the wonderful things there are to say about An Inconvenient Truth, I think it is a stretch to say that it meets this criteria.

Heck, you could make a much stronger argument that Gore could be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature as that is “for the person who, in the literary field, had produced ‘the most outstanding work in an ideal direction’”. Of course, to qualify, you’d have to be talking about the book version of An Inconvenient Truth rather than the movie version.

But, even this seems like a pretty big stretch.

To me, the fact that Gore has even been nominated for a Nobel Prize really says one thing; the movie should absolutely win the Best Documentary Academy Award.

No knock on the other nominees, but to me, An Inconvenient Truth is just on a whole different plane than the other movies in terms of the impact that it has had.

Al Gore started An Inconvenient Truth by saying “I’ve been trying to tell this story for a long time and I feel as I’ve failed to get the message across. …I look around and look for really meaningful signs that we are about to really change. I don’t see it right now.”

I think Al has finally broken through and has found a way to get the message across.  I think he has single handedly opened up a public debate that is just accelerating. The movie has done more to advance the issue of climate change into pop culture and create a discussion in mainstream American society than probably anything else in history.

That alone should make it a lock in for Best Documentary.

Hopefully decades from now, people will look back on An Inconvenient Truth as the Silent Spring of climate change.