During the Trump administration, API aggressively supported the rollback of regulations on emissions of methane, a highly potent heat-trapping gas. They rewarded members of Congress who supported Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement with campaign contributions and fought state-level climate-friendly energy policies across the country.  Meanwhile, API launched a multi-million dollar “Energy for Progress” public relations campaign that, with astonishing hubris, profiled its member companies as climate heroes “leading the world in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.”

I pause here while you pick yourself up off the floor.

True to form, API came out swinging early against the Biden administration’s commitment to bold climate action. In a speech given the week before inauguration, API President Mike Sommers vowed to fight Biden administration plans to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure, halt new oil and gas drilling on federal lands and limit industry tax breaks for building more fossil fuel infrastructure. It is no surprise that the leading advocate for the oil and gas industry is doubling down on our long-term addiction to oil and gas.

But API’s days of influential climate policy obstruction may finally be numbered.  In a striking January statement, French oil giant Total announced it was leaving API, citing its strong disagreement with its lobbying against methane regulations, electric vehicle subsidies and other climate policies. Total also took issue with API’s “support during the recent elections to candidates who argued against the United States participation in the Paris Agreement.”

Will Total’s decision to exit API motivate others to follow their lead? Eyes are on BP and Shell. Like Total, both have touted their support for the Paris Agreement, increased their investments in renewable energy and taken other initial steps toward aligning their business models with net-zero emissions. Pressured by a growing number of climate-conscious investors, BP and Shell have also left other smaller industry trade associations in recent years, citing similar disagreements over climate policy stances.

But unlike Total, both remain members of API, giving millions of dollars annually to its lobbying campaigns – support that will be put to work opposing critical climate legislation in a closely divided Congress.

BP says it monitors trade association relationships, “especially those we view as only ‘partially aligned’ with us on climate-related issues” and claims to be trying to influence API “from within.” The company also says it will soon publish an update on its trade association relationships. Similarly, Shell recently announced it is “updating and assessing its membership in…trade associations (API among them).”

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

As Shell and BP review their positions, they should consider this:

API is unequivocally a clear and present danger to public health and the environment.  The time to seek change “from within” passed long ago. No company can credibly claim to be taking climate change seriously while continuing to be an API member and financing its lobbying muscle.

A decision to leave API is a decision aligned with the reality of climate science and of our carbon-constrained world.  It would also come at a pivotal time – when the US has rejoined the community of nations committed to achieving the Paris climate goals.

Last month, in his final “Time to Wake Up” climate change speech on the floor of the US Senate, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D- Rhode Island) called out the importance of the climate policy revolts taking place within trade associations, such as Total’s decision to leave API.

“Businesses,” he said, “need to align their political effort with their own stated polices. How hard is that?”

BP and Shell: There is no more time to waste. Leave API, set aggressive targets for real emissions reductions and make good on your claims of support for science-based climate action.

My colleague Nicole Pinko sat through BP’s marathon eleven-hour infomercial to its shareholders this week to learn whether the company would–as promised–provide more specifics about its pledge to bring its carbon emissions down on a trajectory to net-zero by 2050.

Bottom line: On each of five key metrics UCS was tracking, BP failed to live up to the hype.

The company provided no plans to reduce absolute methane emissions, or to establish accountability, for example by linking executive remuneration to near-term emissions reductions on a path toward net-zero emissions. BP gave no further specifics on what climate policies it would support or on its willingness to stand apart from the American Petroleum Institute or other industry lobbying groups when they oppose limits on emissions.

BP did acknowledge that the company will not use offsets to meet its 2025 or 2030 emissions reductions goals. This appears to be an empty commitment, however, because BP also acknowledged that its total emissions will increase over the next 10 years.

Guilia Chierchia, BP’s Executive Vice President for Strategy and Sustainability, admitted that “[w]e do expect the absolute level of emissions associated with our marketed products to grow out to 2030…” Apparently any emissions reductions associated with the company’s plan to reduce its oil and gas production 40% by 2030  will be more than offset by increased emissions from the oil and gas that BP plans to purchase from other producers and bring to market.  Absent any limits on what other companies produce, they will simply expand production to sell to BP.  Thus, BP’s plan to reduce production by 2030 appears to provide absolutely no reduction in the company’s contribution to climate change.

Fool me once, BP, shame on you. Investors, the media and civil society should not get fooled again.

Original post from Sept. 11:

As big oil and gas companies feel the intensifying heat from shareholders, lawsuits and divestment campaigns to take responsibility for their outsized contributions to climate change, several European oil and gas giants including BP and Shell are making high-profile announcements of their intent to begin aligning their business models with core implications of climate science—that swift and deep reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are needed to keep global temperature rise in check.

BP plans to unveil further details of the company’s climate strategy at a virtual investor meeting next Monday September 14^th.  The company’s history of false-starts on climate action and misleading clean energy advertising provides plenty of fodder for justified skepticism. So, how shall we assess their climate claims this time around?

Attention-grabbing pledges

Bernard Looney, BP’s CEO

In February, BP CEO Bernard Looney announced to great fanfare the company’s aims to bring carbon emissions from the oil and gas it produces and brings to market to net-zero by 2050 (with lesser ambitions for the oil and gas BP buys from other producers and then markets). In early August, Looney further pledged that by 2030, BP would cut its oil and gas production by 40% below 2019 (pre-pandemic) levels, increase its renewable electricity generation from ~2.5 gigawatts (GW) today to a whopping 50 GW and stop exploring for fossil fuels in new countries.

He also promised to provide more details in September.

“Today is about a vision, a direction of travel,” Looney said at the February roll-out “I appreciate you want to see more than a vision. We don’t have that for you today, but we will in September. The direction is set. We are heading to net zero. There is no turning back.”

[Read how UCS assessed BP’s initial announcements—and the questions they left outstanding—here, here, and here.]

Déjà vu

BP’s ambitious pledge might sound…familiar. And well it should, because we’ve heard ambitious climate pledges from BP before. Back in 1997, when BP was known as British Petroleum, then CEO John Browne famously broke ranks with the climate-denying statements and actions by ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies, announcing in a speech at Stanford University that the company accepted climate science and its responsibility to address the problem:

“[W]e are all citizens of one world, and we must take shared responsibility for its future…[T]here is now an effective consensus among the world’s leading scientists and serious and well-informed people outside the scientific community that there is a discernible human influence on the climate and a link between the concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in temperature .[I]t would be unwise and potentially dangerous to ignore the mounting concern.

Former BP CEO John Browne

We in BP… alone could not resolve the problem. But that does not mean we should do nothing. …We have a responsibility to act [and] BP accepts that responsibility…”

Under Browne’s leadership, the company rebranded as “Beyond Petroleum” and made a short-lived effort to expand its investments in renewable energy before returning to its roots as single-minded fossil energy giant paying lip-service to addressing climate change while pushing back on climate policy.

And—as this year’s 10th anniversary of the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform and ensuing massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico reminds us—also enabling a culture and practice of serious negligence on environmental health and safety.

Reading the fine print

Make no mistake, BP’s ambitious new climate claims justly deserve our attention. Slashing oil and gas production 40% by 2030 would be a big deal.

But too often, fossil fuel companies’ pledges of future climate action are met with unquestioning acceptance and unwarranted fulsome praise.

A recent piece in the Washington Post, for example, simply takes Bernard Looney at his February press-statement word that the “..oil giant BP Plc is planning to become a net-zero emissions company by 2050.”  Bloomberg Green’s headline on BP’s February announcement breathlessly reads: “BP Sets Bold Agenda for Big Oil With Plan to Eliminate CO2”. (With more well-deserved skepticism, a Fortune article in August asked, “Is oil giant BP finally ready to ‘think outside the barrel’?)

Indeed, we need to see and read the fine print and work to hold companies accountable to live up to their claims.

Five Key Metrics

So how should investors, the media and civil society evaluate BP’s climate pledges this time around? Here are five things UCS will be looking for in BP’s promised specifics at next week’s investor meetings:

1. Near-term Emissions Reductions: How do BP’s 2030 pledges translate into emissions reductions across its full supply chain? What actions, if any, is BP taking to reduce emissions from the Russian oil giant Rosneft, in which it owns a 20% stake? How does BP’s total emissions reductions compare with the ~45% below 2010 levels by 2030 that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is needed to keep on a path consistent with the net-zero by 2050 target and keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 C?
2. Limits on Offsets: Will BP acknowledge the need to set tight limits on and high quality independently verified standards for the use of any offsets to achieve its 2030 and 2050 emissions reductions goals? Will the company avoid unrealistic assumptions about the availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and prospective carbon dioxide removal technologies toward achieving net-zero goals?
3. Accountability: What forms of accountability does BP propose it be held to for achieving its 2030 emissions reductions goals? Will, for example, executive remuneration be tied to specific and ambitious metrics of success? What would be the consequences for corporate leaders of failure to achieve these metrics?
4. Beyond Carbon: Does BP acknowledge the need to make reductions for emissions from methane across its supply chain (not merely reductions in the intensity of methane emissions) and set specific and ambitious targets and timelines for methane emissions reductions?
5. Climate Policy: Will BP consistently lobby for climate and energy policies to bring about deep emissions reductions across the industry and forcefully distance itself from actions to undermine strong policy by the American Petroleum Institute and other trade associations and lobbying groups?

I and my UCS colleagues will be closely watching BP’s presentations next week, asking questions, and evaluating what we learn so that we can separate rhetoric from reality.

The climate cannot afford further corporate PR, deception, and delay.

Who is going to pay these costs?

A striking new survey by Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communications and supported by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) finds that most Americans (57 percent) think fossil fuel companies should pay for the damages caused by global warming.

These survey results come as fifteen U.S. jurisdictions—cities and counties in California, Colorado, Maryland, New York, and Washington as well as the state of Rhode Island—have filed lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, seeking compensation for climate damages.

U.S. Public Nuisance Lawsuits Against Fossil Fuel Companies

Not surprisingly, nearly two-thirds of Californians believe that fossil fuel companies should pay for climate damages. But so too do majorities in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and New Mexico.

And strikingly, so do majorities in Texas and Louisiana, both dominant centers of US oil and gas extraction, processing, and refining. Texas is also home to the headquarters for ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and the US arms of BP and Royal Dutch Shell.

These results show widespread public support for the principle of “polluter pays” – that these companies should be held responsible to pay for the climate they have helped to create.

As well-documented by UCS researchers, investigative journalists and scholars, ExxonMobil and other leading fossil fuel companies have, for decades, knowingly misled the public about the climate risks of their products. Perhaps growing public awareness of fossil fuel company climate deception has contributed to the Yale survey finding that nearly 70 percent of Americans distrust fossil fuel companies.

Dig into the full survey in Yale’s interactive map, which allows you to search results by state, county and congressional district.

As a climate scientist and former IPCC lead author, this is by far the most sobering and urgent IPCC report I have read.

Why this report, now?

In the 2015 Paris Agreement, 195 nations set the goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.

They made initial, modest, “nationally determined contributions” to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases that, if achieved, would limit global temperature increase to about 3°C by the end of this century.

They established formal mechanisms to take stock of the level of ambition pursued and that needed to meet the Agreement’s temperature goals.

And they called on the IPCC to report on “the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways” in advance of their first review of the adequacy of countries’ collective actions this December at the UN climate conference in Katowice, Poland.

The impacts of warming at 1°5 versus 2°C

Extreme weather events across the globe have been intensifying after just 1°C increase in the global average temperature. The Special Report finds that limiting further global temperature increase to 1.5°C rather than 2°C, would:

• Limit the further increase in the number of extremely hot days across most regions, with lower risks for heat-related morbidity and mortality;
• Limit the extent of increased flooding from extreme precipitation, including  rainfall associated with hurricanes;
• Lower the rate of sea level rise, exposing an estimated 10 million fewer people to associated risks by 2100;
• Limit the reduction in yields and nutritional quality of rice, wheat and other major crops;
• Pose far lower risks of species extinction and impacts on terrestrial and wetland ecosystems and the services they provide to humanity;
• Substantially reduce risks to marine biodiversity, ecosystems and their services, especially in Arctic sea ice and warm water coral reef ecosystems – avoiding the virtually complete loss of warm water coral reefs that is projected to result from 2°C warming; and
• Prevent the thawing of some 2 million square kilometers of permafrost over centuries.

It is important to bear in mind that that the IPCC wasn’t charged with looking at devastating impacts associated with the ~3°C world we are now hurtling toward.  The 2°C “upper bound” of this report is far below the path we are on today. Time is of the essence to bring about the rapid and far reaching transitions that we need to protect our communities and the natural world upon which we all depend from massively disruptive climate change.

The fierce urgency of now

Keeping global temperatures from rising above 1.5°C is an essential and daunting task.

It would require, most critically, bringing global emissions of carbon dioxide to ‘net-zero’ by mid-century. That is, on average, no more carbon dioxide could be released to the atmosphere than is withdrawn.

We are far from that goal today.

The burning of coal, oil and natural gas and the clearing of forests together release more than forty billion metric tons of carbon dioxide now released each year, driving a steady increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

All pathways to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5° C would require “rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings) and industrial systems.” Such transitions would be “unprecedented in scale” and require “deep emissions reductions in all sectors, a wide portfolio of mitigation options and a significant upscaling of investments in those options.”

For the energy sector, modeled pathways considered by the IPCC rely heavily on a massive transition to renewable energy, some nuclear energy and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage, and a virtually complete phase-out of coal.

The 1.5°C pathways considered by the IPCC also assume that we will have a robust portfolio of technologies and approaches available by mid-century to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at scale. From planting trees to capturing and storing the carbon dioxide produced when biomass is burned for electricity, to technologies that might one day directly capture and store carbon dioxide from air, these carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies today vary widely in their “maturity, potentials, costs, risks co-benefits and trade-offs”.

Rather than banking on any one approach, the IPCC suggests that the “feasibility of CDR could be enhanced by a portfolio of options deployed at smaller scales, rather than a single option at a large scale.”

Perhaps the most sobering conclusion I take-away from this report is that the 1.5°C target, however daunting the challenge it is to limit temperatures to this level, is hardly the floor we should be seeking to stand indefinitely upon. Throughout the Special Report, the IPCC reminds us of how severe and, potentially, catastrophic, even temperature rise at this apparently modest level may be.

In considering long-term sea-level rise, for example, the Special Report finds that “instabilities…triggered by 1.5°C to 2°C of warming” could drive “irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet” leading to “multi-metre sea level rise over hundreds to thousands of years”.

Translation:  If we care about Earth’s future on a time scale of our grandchildren’s grandchildren, we should be looking into ways to keep global temperature rise even lower than the lower bound of the Paris temperature targets.

I believe that this requires us to take a serious look at the potential and profound risks of  “solar radiation management” technologies to reflect sunlight to cool the Earth, as a supplement to driving carbon emissions to net-zero;  technologies that this Special Report rightly notes may be “theoretically effective” but face “large uncertainties and knowledge gaps and risks, institutional and social constraints to deployment.”

Climate change is bringing upon us a world of hurt and hard choices. And, as all major challenges do, it also brings us a world of opportunity for leadership, innovation, risk-taking and the potential for transformational change.

It is time to step it up.

Back in March, for example, he expressed doubt that carbon dioxide (CO₂) from burning fossil fuels is a primary driver of climate change, stating “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

Apparently, he hadn’t yet taken the time to read the EPA’s own website, which very clearly stated that “carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change.” (Well, perhaps he had:  EPA political officials subsequently removed this and other climate science content from  the EPA website).

He also seems to have not read the multiple assessments of the US National Academy of Sciences and other scientific organizations that have come to the same conclusion. Or asked for advice from the scientific community to help him understand the rigorous, painstakingly documented, peer-reviewed basis for this robust conclusion.

Reading scientific assessments takes time. They can be a real slog. Scott Pruitt is a busy man. And asking for advice can be hard.

I get it.

But it is important that the EPA Administrator have access to the best available scientific advice, including on climate change, to help inform and guide his leadership of the agency.

In June, Administrator Pruitt called for a review of the findings of climate science, “a true legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO₂.” He intends to set up a “red-team, blue-team” exercise, in which a team of climate “skeptics” would be the ‘red team’ seeking to poke holes in the current body of climate research defended by a ‘blue team’ group of climate scientists. Administrator Pruitt has expressed interest in having this be televised. Reportedly, political appointees at the EPA are consulting with the Heartland Institute (yep – they are the ones that likened people who accept climate science to the Unabomber) to assemble names of red-team candidates.

Few details have emerged for how this might be structured and into the current void, leading scientists and scientific societies have stepped in: to point out that rigorous peer-review at the core of the scientific enterprise is built on healthy skepticism—that, as scientists, we are always seeking to poke holes in one another’s work and that our current understanding of climate change is based on decades of rigorous challenges to and questioning of core assumptions and findings; to ask Administrator Pruitt to clarify, specifically, what policy-relevant testable hypothesis about climate science he has that he believes peer-reviewed science and scientific assessments have not yet addressed; and to call into question his motives for such an exercise: political theater, intended to sow doubt and perhaps, motivated to undermine the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions.

If Administrator Pruitt, or any other federal official, has questions about climate science – or, for that matter, any other area of policy-relevant science – they already at their disposal have a body to whom they can and should turn for legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective scientific advice.  In 1863, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was established by President Abraham Lincoln. The Academy’s charter commits it to provide scientific advice to the federal government “whenever called upon” by any government agency. Time and again, our nation’s leaders have turned to the NAS for timely, policy-relevant scientific advice.

On climate change, the National Academy of Sciences has produced multiple, rigorous independent assessments of the state of the science, and on the implications of scientific understanding for our nation’s climate and energy choices. And it has produced excellent accessible web-content to address “frequently-asked” questions about climate science.

Administrator Pruitt’s call for a review of the findings of climate science echoes in many respects the climate science review that President George W. Bush sought sixteen years ago. In May 2001, shortly after President Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol, he asked the NAS for “assistance in identifying the areas in the science of climate change where there are the greatest certainties and uncertainties” and to do so on a rapid timeline.

In consultation with the Bush Administration, the NAS identified fourteen specific policy-relevant questions about climate science to address. It convened through the National Research Council (NRC, the research arm of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine) a panel of eleven scientists with legitimate and diverse expertise and perspective. Notably, the panel included prominent climate skeptic Richard Lindzen of MIT.

Their report, produced in one month, affirmed that that the Earth was warming due to human activities and that further warming posed significant risks:

“Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century.”

“Global warming could well have serious adverse societal and ecological impacts by the end of this century, especially if globally-averaged temperature increases approach the upper end of the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC projections.”

The NRC’s panel’s findings succinctly reflected the state of scientific understanding in 2001. Of course, the science of climate change has advanced considerably in the past sixteen years.

It can be hard to keep up.

Administrator Pruitt, and other federal officials, certainly have a right to have any questions they may have about the science answered. But if they are serious about doing so through legitimate, objective, peer-reviewed process, they must turn to the US National Academy of Sciences.

Anything less will be rightly seen as an illegitimate, politicized effort to undermine the process by which scientific knowledge informs decision-making.

By announcing his plan to withdraw the United States from participation in the Paris climate accord, shamefully reneging on our nation’s commitment to join with the world community of nations in fighting climate change, President Trump accomplished the striking feat of making appear virtuous and responsible almost every other major entity whose actions have contributed mightily to the problem.

Even ExxonMobil.

That’s right. The world’s largest investor-owned oil and gas company. The company whose long, well-documented track-record of climate deception and disinformation to avoid regulation of its products has earned it comparisons with the tobacco industry and brought it under investigation by state attorneys general for possible shareholder fraud.

Media coverage in the lead-up to today’s announcement has regularly contrasted Trump’s rejection of the Paris Agreement with the many calls from leading businesses for the US to stay in. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods has in particular gotten a lot of attention for his advocacy. Last month, Woods sent a letter to President Trump, calling the Paris Agreement “an effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change” within which the US is “well positioned to compete”  thanks to its “abundant low-carbon resources such as natural gas” and “innovative private industries, including the oil, gas and petroleum sectors.”

As former Clinton Administration Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers put it, he “never imagined” an administration that’s “way to the right of Exxon on a fossil fuel issue.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists has been urging ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies to support sensible climate policies. Clearly the company deserves some praise for this.

But the disconnect between Darren Wood’s words and continued ExxonMobil actions to thwart climate progress indicates that any praise should be decidedly faint, and combined with continued pressure to do better.

You might think, for example, that ExxonMobil’s call for the US to stay in the Paris Agreement implies that the company actually supports the climate accord’s core goals.

The Paris Agreement’s long-term objective is to limit the rise in global average temperatures  to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. That is a temperature target above which the risks of severe and potentially irreversible impacts from rising seas and more extreme weather increase dramatically.

But ExxonMobil, like other major fossil fuel companies, maintains a business model that aggressively invests in developing future reserves and assumes a heavy long-term reliance on fossil fuels. By its own projections, this will lead to continued high carbon emissions, driving increases in global average temperatures on a trajectory to increase 3-4 degrees Celsius this century,  posing major risks of catastrophic climate change.

Figure from Forecasting Failure (March 2017)

The company also continues to support climate disinformation and oppose sensible climate and energy policies through its leadership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), other lobbying groups, and trade associations like the American Petroleum Institute. ExxonMobil’s failure to break from these groups’ denial of climate science and its implications for constraining carbon emissions belies CEO Woods’s assertion that “We have a commitment to fundamental science.”

Fortunately, shareholders are also now calling on ExxonMobil to take climate risks seriously. Despite strenuous objections from the ExxonMobil board, shareholders at this week’s annual meeting in Dallas passed by a nearly two-thirds majority vote a resolution calling on Exxon to report on the climate-related business risks the company faces—from changing technologies and policies that could limit fossil emissions consistent with the Paris Agreement goal of keeping temperatures from rising above 2 degrees.

The company may get some credit for appearing more progressive on climate than President Trump. But it is critical that shareholders, civil society, the attorneys general and other policymakers  hold the company accountable for exceeding that low bar by far more than they currently do.

It’s high time for ExxonMobil to walk the talk.

There is reason for both hope and concern.

Earlier this month, Congress passed an omnibus FY17 spending bill that rejected the administration’s proposed draconian cuts and protected funding for key programs across federal agencies, including the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The final budget was a real—albeit short-term—win for science and evidence-based policy making.

An unrelated policy rider, premised on incorrect science

But Congress also included in the bill a completely unrelated bioenergy policy rider, premised on incorrect science, with potentially damaging impacts on both US forests and on carbon emissions for years to come.

This hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, so let’s unpack it a bit.

Buried on page 902 in the appropriations bill, the bioenergy policy rider instructs the Departments of Agriculture and Energy to work with the Environmental Protection Agency to establish policies that “reflect the carbon neutrality of forest bioenergy.”

The biomass industry has been lobbying Congress to incorporate such language in legislation for years. Today, the US industry is fairly small, with wood energy-fueled power plants struggling to compete with lower-cost power from natural gas, wind, and solar.

But once comprehensive federal policies designed to reduce carbon pollution are enacted, the assumption of wood energy as “carbon neutral” would help make these power plants more cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

A false assertion of carbon neutrality

The problem is, burning forest biomass to make electricity is not inherently carbon-neutral. In fact, under some conditions burning woody biomass releases as much or more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity as does burning coal.

Last year, when the Senate was considering similar language in a piece of energy legislation, I joined more than 60 other forest and climate experts on a letter reminding Senators that “[r]emoving the carbon dioxide released from burning wood through new tree growth requires many decades to a century, and not all trees reach maturity because of drought, fire, insects or land use conversion. All the while the added carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere trapping heat.”

Establishing forest bioenergy polices based on the false assertion of carbon neutrality, we wrote, “puts forest carbon in the atmosphere contributing to climate change instead of keeping it in living, productive forests that provide multiple benefits of water and wetland protection, flood control, soils protection, wildlife habitat, improved air quality and recreational benefits for hunters and all who enjoy being in the great out-of-doors.”

Bioenergy policies must be based on an accurate assessment of potential net carbon emissions from forest biomass. Mandating that there are no net carbon emissions from burning forest biomass to produce energy does not make it so in fact.

A cautionary tale for the next budget fight

President Trump and the Republican-led Congress may have temporarily slowed federal policies to limit carbon emissions. But such limits will come. And while the FY17 omnibus spending bill only funds the federal government for five months, there is a serious risk is that this rider could pose harmful impacts on forests and climate policy that could persist until undone by future legislation.

As my colleague Rob Cowin writes, this is also “a cautionary tale for the FY18 budget fight. Special interest amendments…..have the ability to make a reasonable budget an unsavory bill. The biomass rider got in because it had bipartisan support. Constituents will…need to hold their members of congress accountable if they don’t want government funding bills to become delivery devices for bad, long-lived policy.”

Such a hearing could, for example, examine the impacts of the Trump administration’s proposed deep cuts in federal climate research budgets on our nation’s ability to monitor and forecast the trajectory of our changing climate and protect public health and safety from increasing extreme weather and rising seas.

It could assess federal research priorities to inform and motivate public and private sector investments in clean energy innovation essential to support US competitiveness in the emerging global low-carbon economy.

Or perhaps the committee could provide our nation’s top scientists with a valuable platform to give the American public a clear-eyed briefing on the causes, consequences, and solutions to climate change, and the urgency of action, as informed by assessments by the US National Academy of Sciences and virtually every leading scientific society.

But…no.

The science hearing equivalent of a World Wrestling Entertainment match

Under the misguided chairmanship of serial climate science denier Lamar Smith (R-TX), the House Science Committee we have is, sadly, not the House Science Committee we need.

On the heels of President Trump’s Executive Order aimed at gutting federal climate policies, the committee held a hearing today—mistitled as “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method”—that presented a tired sideshow of familiar actors on the climate denial stage going through their well-rehearsed paces—the science hearing equivalent of a World Wrestling Entertainment match.

Invited to testify by the Republican majority were John Christy (University of Alabama, Huntsville), Judith Curry (emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology), and Roger Pielke Jr (University of Colorado), who  played their familiar contrarian roles, predictably.

Only Michael Mann (Penn State University), invited to testify by the Democratic minority, accurately characterized the state of climate science as reflected by the true (and vast) majority of climate scientists.

If you really have nothing better to do, you can watch the hearing here.

Just another shameful production

We’ve seen many versions of this sideshow before. From hearings and subpoenas promoting false accusations of climate data tampering by NOAA scientists to aggressive campaigns to chill work that the Union of Concerned Scientists and others have done to brief state attorneys general on ExxonMobil’s extensive history of climate science disinformation, the House Science Committee under Chairman Smith’s leadership has long engaged in political theater to sow doubt about the reality and risks of climate change.

Today’s hearing was just another shameful production.

The strategy is clear. Writing in the Washington Post, climate scientist and retired rear admiral for the Navy David W. Titley notes that “these hearings have been designed not to provide new information or different perspectives to members of Congress but, rather, to perpetuate the myth that there is a substantive and serious debate within the science community regarding the fundamental causes or existence of human-caused climate change.”

Widely respected climate change experts share their views on the hearing

To provide some additional mainstream perspective, I asked several widely respected climate change experts to share their views.

Weighing in just before the hearing, prominent climate scientist and MIT professor Kerry Emanuel wrote that “the composition of this group is designed to reinforce the existing misapprehension among US citizens that climate scientists are divided on the question of climate change risk. This misapprehension is the largest obstacle to concrete actions to reduce the risk to our descendants and to ensure US economic leadership in the transformation of the $6 trillion global energy market to clean power sources. Lamar Smith and other radical Republicans evidently wish to prolong this misapprehension as long as possible, presumably to appease fossil fuel interests.”

Upon watching the hearing, environmental sociologist Robert Brulle of Drexel University, wrote:

“The House hearing on climate change today took its expected trajectory….Following the long-term strategy developed by the tobacco interests with their motto that “Doubt is our Product,” the witnesses, with the exception of Michael Mann, attempted to create the mistaken impression that climate science is uncertain. This is a well-known political strategy to attempt to defer taking action on climate change.”

Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs at the Climate Institute, highlighted misleading testimony:

“[John] Christy complains about how atmospheric models are representing …the effects of changing atmospheric composition on climate. But the computer algorithms used to estimate tropospheric temperature from the atmospheric radiation reaching his satellite instrument are exactly the same that are used in the global climate models. The inconsistencies he has found….have been the result of his failure to properly correct for changes in the orbital height of the satellite, its time of passage, and so on.”

And as my UCS senior climate scientist colleague Juliet Christian-Smith points out, legitimate scientific uncertainty about climate risks is no excuse for inaction:

“In California, we build every building to withstand violent seismic forces despite the fact that we don’t know where or how strong the next earthquake will be. That’s because we understand the serious risks of doing nothing. Climate science is much better at modeling how the climate is changing than seismology is at predicting when and where the next earthquake will take place. And yet, climate science is under attack.”

These efforts to misconstrue science and evidence for partisan purposes must be called out and rejected

Hearings designed to promote faux climate science debate get picked up and amplified in the partisan media echo chamber. And, as recent research shows, partisan media profiling of climate doubt-mongering plays a powerful role in reinforcing and strengthening opposition to climate action among some Republicans. It’s hardly surprising, then, that a hearing designed to fire up distrust of climate science is timed to align with President Trump’s Executive Order to roll back climate regulations.

Climate science, like all science that informs policy, is inherently political. But the scientific consensus on climate change is not partisan and these egregious efforts to misconstrue science and evidence for partisan purposes must be called out and rejected by the mainstream media and by Americans across the political spectrum for the distracting and dangerous sideshow that they are.

The time-tested climate denial strategy of attacking the reputations of prominent climate scientists in order to sow doubt about the evidence and risks of climate change is being trotted out again.

Exhibit A: The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, has published a screed by David Rose alleging serious scientific misconduct by Dr. Tom Karl, a leading climate scientist recently retired from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

A writer with a history of inaccurate reporting on climate science, Rose claims that Karl and coauthors deliberately used misleading global temperature data, side-stepped NOAA scientific integrity policies, and “rushed to publish” a 2015 paper in the prestigious journal Science in order to influence the climate negotiations held that year in Paris. His piece draws in part on a blog post by former NOAA scientist John Bates.

The Science paper is one of several recent studies refuting the notion that the rate of global warming had slowed down, or “paused”, in recent decades, an idea that opponents of climate policies have often used to justify inaction on reducing emissions. Karl and coauthors showed the apparent “pause” in warming was simply an artifact of how earlier studies had over time incorporated data on ocean surface temperatures from different sources (satellites, ships, buoys and so on); when temperature data sources and quality were properly taken into account, no slowdown was detectable.

Repeated and amplified through the climate denial echo-chamber, Rose’s allegations of misconduct have now been taken up by Rep Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Science Space and Technology Committee. Smith, who has long used his perch to harass NOAA scientists, issued a press release reiterating these unsubstantiated claims and accusing Karl and colleagues of manipulating data for political purposes.

Along with other recent high profile attacks on prominent climate scientists and science agencies, this may well be part of larger political strategy to intimidate federal scientists, justify cuts in agency budgets, staffing and missions, weaken support for US and international climate policies and, most fundamentally, erode public trust in science and evidence so central to a functioning democracy.

At its core, it is a very old strategy.

As the Irish essayist Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”

But today, scientists are fighting back.

Rose’s claims have been quickly and forcefully rebutted:

• Top experts on temperature record research have called attention to several errors in Rose’s piece and his failure to mention that multiple independent published analyses support and corroborate the corrected temperature data in the NOAA scientists’ findings.
• To claims that Karl and colleagues violated NOAA guidelines on scientific integrity, Rear Admiral David Titley (Ret.), former chief operating officer at NOAA, points out that “[t]here is both a NOAA internal process on scientific integrity….and the opportunity to submit allegations of wrongdoing to the Department of Commerce Inspector General who if there is reasonable evidence to substantiate the allegation, would undertake an independent investigation.” Yet, no allegations of violations of the NOAA scientific integrity policy were brought to the agency’s scientific integrity office regarding this research.
• Jeremy Berg, editor of Science, firmly rejects the notion of a “rush to publish”: “The article by Karl et al. underwent handling and review for almost six months [longer than average for this journal]. Any suggestion that the review of this paper was ‘rushed’ is baseless and without merit. Science stands behind its handling of this paper, which underwent particularly rigorous peer review.”

Global land/ocean temperature records from NOAA, NASA, Berkeley Earth, Hadley/UAE, and Cowtan and Way. Old (pre Karl et al 2015) NOAA temperature record is only available through the end of 2014. Source: Hausfather et al (2017) Assessing recent warming using instrumentally homogeneous sea surface temperature records, Science Advances. Figure obtained here.

Attacks on the reputations and research findings of federal climate scientists are a deplorable attempt to distract attention from the overwhelming evidence of climate change and the urgent need to deeply reduce carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and other sources.

We can’t keep tabloids from publishing misinformation. But we can and must hold elected officials accountable for doing their jobs to protect science and evidence-based decision-making.

As former Congressman and Chair of the House Science Committee Sherry Boehlert (R-NY) puts it: “The current attacks should be received with extreme skepticism, given the enormous body of evidence supporting the conclusion that the climate is changing and poses a danger that needs to be addressed. And public officials have an obligation to follow the scientific consensus…”

Chairman Smith, it’s high time for you to follow suit.

We’re concerned as well that an emboldened Congress may attempt to pass legislation that cuts science out of existing public health and environmental laws, and cut funding for research critical to understand our changing planet – putting at risk the health and well-being of Americans and people around the world.

Across the major issues that confront us—from disease outbreaks to climate change to food safety to cybersecurity—people benefit when our nation’s policies are informed by scientific knowledge unfettered by inappropriate political or corporate interference.

That is why, in this moment, it is essential for scientists across our nation and across disciplines and institutions to lay out our community’s expectations for how President-elect Trump and Congress should use science to govern.

And that is why I am proud to join with more than 2300 other scientists across all fifty states in signing onto an open letter to President-elect Trump and the 115th Congress, urging them to set a high and sturdy bar for integrity, transparency and independence in using science to inform our nation’s policies.

Among our signers are 22 Nobel Laureates as well as leading scientists who have provided high quality, independent scientific counsel to both Republican and Democratic Presidents for decades. We are scientists in government agencies, universities, private industry and non-governmental organizations. We are physicists, social scientists, chemists, earth scientists, biologists, health scientists and more.

Together, we are calling on the incoming Administration and Congress to:

• Appoint officials to lead federal agencies who have a unvarnished track record of respecting science as a key input into policy-making;
• Ensure that federal agencies encourage and welcome scientists regardless of religious background, race, gender or sexual orientation.
• Ensure that federal scientists are able to conduct their work without political or private-sector interference, freely communicate their findings to Congress, the public and scientific colleagues and be able to disclose any censorship of or other abuses of science without fear of retaliation; and
• Provide resources sufficient for scientists to conduct policy-relevant research in the public interest

We make clear what is at stake. Without investments in science in the public interest and policies that draw upon scientific evidence, the letter states, “children will be more vulnerable to lead poisoning, more people will be exposed to unsafe drugs and medical devices, and we will be less prepared to limit the impacts of increasing extreme weather and rising seas.”

We intend this statement to give members of the incoming administration and Congress a clear understanding of the standards we will hold them to; to give journalists and citizens across the nation our take on what to look out for; and build upon and extend related calls for the Trump administration to name a nationally respected science advisor.

The policy reads, in part:

“AGU‘s organization partnership program helps develop relationships with organizations that align with AGU’s values of unselfish cooperation in research and the highest standards of scientific integrity, that do not harm AGU’s brand and reputation, and that share a vested interest in and commitment to advancing and communicating science and its power to ensure a sustainable future. The public statement(s) of our organizational partners shall not directly oppose those of AGU. AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.”

The continued acceptance of corporate sponsorship from ExxonMobil appears deeply inconsistent with AGU’s own organizational support policy.

To many AGU member scientists, and others, AGU’s continued acceptance of corporate sponsorship from ExxonMobil, a company with a long and well-documented track record of climate science misinformation, appears deeply inconsistent with this policy. Over the past year, the AGU board reviewed and rejected multiple requests to sever funding ties with ExxonMobil in light of its new policy. But they have also announced that they intend to revisit this question at the AGU board meeting later this month.

My colleagues and I at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) don’t typically weigh in publicly on the internal policies of sister organizations. But because the question the AGU Board is wrestling with is both of large societal importance and at the heart of UCS work on fossil fuel company climate deception and  accountability, we are making an exception in this case.

Earlier this week UCS President Ken Kimmell and I sent a letter to AGU President Margaret Leinen, President-Elect Eric Davidson, and Executive Director Chris McEntee to share our perspective.

Our bottom line:

“Simply put: We do not see how accepting sponsorship funding from ExxonMobil at this time is consistent with your organizational support policy, and, more fundamentally, with AGU’s mission…

The evidence that ExxonMobil has long sought to deny and disparage the scientific evidence of climate change, both directly and through trade associations and lobbying groups it supports, is extensive and exceptionally well-documented in the peer-reviewed literature, in a major statement by the Royal Society, and in multiple independent investigative reports…Company leaders continue to downplay and disparage climate science, even as they claim to accept it…

ExxonMobil has long behaved shamefully in response to the scientific consensus of climate change and the urgent need for emissions reductions that AGU has forcefully communicated.

Their actions, including very recent actions, put future generations at grave risk.

Continued acceptance of corporate sponsorship from ExxonMobil poses significant reputational risks to AGU and bestows undeserved reputational benefits to the company, and the climate deniers it has long supported, to the detriment of our common future.

We encourage you to reconsider your decision at your September Board meeting and reject further funding from ExxonMobil until such time as their actions are clearly and unequivocally consistent with AGU’s policy and mission.”

The full text of the letter is included below.

September 7, 2016

Dr. Margaret Leinen, President

Dr. Eric Davidson, President-Elect

Christine McEntee, Executive Director

American Geophysical Union

Dear Margaret, Eric and Chris,

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) are sister organizations with a shared commitment to advancing and communicating science to ensure a sustainable future, and a shared understanding that unchecked climate change poses severe risks to our nation and the world. We play important, complementary leadership roles in communicating the scientific consensus on climate change to policymakers and the public.

Many UCS members and scientists on our staff are also proud members of AGU. At AGU meetings, UCS staff are frequent conveners of and presenters in symposia, organizers of trainings and workshops, and representatives at our exhibitor booth.

UCS strongly agrees with your organizational support policy, adopted in 2015, which states that AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners who promote and/or disseminate misinformation on science, or that fund other organizations who do so.

Over the past year, the AGU Board has reviewed and rejected multiple requests to revoke its long-standing acceptance of funding from ExxonMobil in light of this new policy. We understand that you first began this review after receiving a September 2, 2015 email inquiry from Peter Frumhoff, in which he shared with you findings from recently published studies by UCS and other researchers documenting that ExxonMobil and other leading fossil fuel companies have engaged in decades of direct and indirect efforts to deceive the public on the science of climate change.

Recently, you reached out to UCS, inviting us to clarify our organizational perspective on this issue [i] in advance of your plan to further review your decision at your 14-15 September Board Meeting.

We write now to share our views with you.

Simply put: We do not see how accepting sponsorship funding from ExxonMobil at this time is consistent with your organizational support policy, and, more fundamentally, with AGU’s mission.

The evidence that ExxonMobil has long sought to deny and disparage the scientific evidence of climate change, both directly and through trade associations and lobbying groups it supports, is extensive and exceptionally well-documented in the peer-reviewed literature, in a major statement by the Royal Society, and in multiple independent investigative reports.[ii]

Company leaders continue to downplay and disparage climate science, even as they claim to accept it.  At ExxonMobil’s 2016 Annual Shareholder Meeting, for example, CEO Rex Tillerson asserted that “there is no space between us and the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], we see the science the same way.” Yet, Tillerson dismisses IPCC findings that climate risks increase dramatically with rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases[iii] and can be greatly reduced by substantial near-term emissions reductions, claiming that “we don’t really know what the climate effects of 600 ppm [carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere] versus 450 ppm will be because the models simply are not that good.” [iv]  Accordingly, he says, the world needs to wait for the science to improve: “ … solutions will present themselves as the realities become clear either through improved modeling and hard confidence in the predictive models or as they are evidenced to us.”[v]

Tillerson’s misleading representation of IPCC findings, used to justify inaction, is deeply disturbing. While it is true, in a very narrow sense, that climate model projections cannot predict with certainty the precise increases in sea level rise and extreme events that would accompany an increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 450 to 600 ppm, the IPCC leaves no doubt that climate impacts will be substantially greater with such higher concentrations, a point which Tillerson fails to acknowledge. The argument that uncertainties over specific model projections should serve as a rationale for inaction in reducing emissions is entirely inconsistent with the thrust of the IPCC reports, with the AGU climate position statement that “human-induced climate change requires urgent action” and with Paris Agreement objective to  limit the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Apart from Tillerson’s words, there are ExxonMobil’s actions. ExxonMobil continues to fund lobbying groups that engage in egregious climate science disinformation and oppose any limit on carbon emissions. This includes, notably, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which hosts forums that provide climate misinformation to state legislators as the basis for encouraging them to obstruct state-level policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions, and promotes state requirements for false-balance in climate science curricula in public schools.

Leaders of other major companies, from Google to Royal Dutch Shell, stopped funding ALEC because of they found such climate misinformation unacceptable.

But ExxonMobil has not.

Instead, the company maintains a business model and political strategy that assumes and seeks to ensure that the temperature goals in the Paris Agreement will not be met—that carbon emissions from the continued combustion of fossil fuels will drive global temperature increases well in excess of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The standard that the AGU Board appears to have adopted in your evaluation of ExxonMobil’s compliance with your organizational support policy is whether or not the company is currently supporting climate science misinformation, i.e. whether it is doing so today.

You find that the data are lacking to draw a firm conclusion. As described above, we firmly disagree.

We also suggest that such a narrow interpretation of your policy misses the point of it. ExxonMobil has long behaved shamefully in response to the scientific consensus of climate change and the urgent need for emissions reductions that AGU has forcefully communicated.

Their actions, including very recent actions, put future generations at grave risk.

We teach our children not to prevaricate; we should expect no less from corporate leaders who seek to align themselves with the scientific community and whose actions, inconsistent with the science they claim to accept, so profoundly threatens to disrupt natural ecosystems and human well-being across this planet.

Continued acceptance of corporate sponsorship from ExxonMobil poses significant reputational risks to AGU and bestows undeserved reputational benefits to the company, and the climate deniers it has long supported, to the detriment of our common future.

We encourage you to reconsider your decision at your September Board meeting and reject further funding from ExxonMobil until such time as their actions are clearly and unequivocally consistent with AGU’s policy and mission.

Financial independence from ExxonMobil does not mean dis-engagement from constructive dialogue with the energy industry. To the contrary, it enhances the opportunity for AGU to engage without strings attached or compromise to your commitment to scientific integrity. We strongly encourage AGU to act upon the Board’s goal to “stimulate a more transparent and meaningful dialogue about climate and energy” between scientists and the energy industry.

UCS stands ready to support you in this. Towards that end, our UCS colleague Gretchen Goldman is co-organizing a session at the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting on “Independent Science and the Role of Private Sector Funding in the Geosciences.” She and her session co-organizers have received abstracts from a strong and diverse cross-section of participants, and we are very pleased that you (Margaret and Eric) are among them. We look forward to a robust discussion with you and other participants there.

We appreciate your invitation to share our perspective and look forward to your response.

With best regards,

Ken Kimmell                                                                                       Peter C Frumhoff, Ph.D.

President                                                                                            Director of Science and Policy

[i] 12 May 2015 email from Chris McEntee to Ken Kimmell

[ii]  See, for example: “Climate Deception Dossiers.” Union of Concerned Scientists, 2015 Online at http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.V4UePfkrKUl;  Banerjee, N., J.H. Cushman Jr., D. Hasemyer, and L. Song. “Exxon: The Road Not Taken.” InsideClimate News, September 16 – December 22, 2015. Online at https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken, accessed July 12, 2016;   Jerving, S., K. Jennings, M. M. Hirsch, and S. Rust. “What Exxon Knew about the Earth’s melting Arctic,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2015. Online at http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/ accessed July 12, 2016; Jennings, K., D. Grandoni, and S. Rust. “How Exxon Went from Leader to Skeptic on Climate Change Research,” Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2015. Online at http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-research/, accessed July 12, 2016; and Lieberman, A. and S. Rust. “Big Oil Braced for Global Warming while It Fought Regulations,” Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2015. Online http://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/, accessed July 12, 2016. Ward R (2006) Letter from the Royal Society to ExxonMobil, https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2006/8257.pdf, accesed July 13 2016; Frumhoff, P.C., Heede, R. & Oreskes, N. The climate responsibilities of industrial carbon producers Climatic Change (2015) 132: 157. doi:10.1007/s10584-015-1472-5; Achakulwisit, P, B. Scandella, G.Supran, and B. Voss, 2016 Ending ExxonMobil sponsorship of the American Geophysical Union Online at https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2803702/AGU-Report-Final-20160325.pdf accessed July 13 2016

[iii] Figure SPM10 in  IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp. Available online at https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf

[iv] ExxonMobil Corporation. 2015a. ExxonMobil corp annual shareholders meeting—Final. Fair Disclosure Wire, May 27. Comments by Rex Tillerson, President, CEO and Chairman of ExxonMobil Corporation.

[v] Ibid.

A more detailed timeline of our work is available on our website.

We and our collaborators have just published sobering new evidence of the damages that climate change is already causing, and are advancing our campaign to hold these companies accountable for their contributions to the problem.

Global warming is a cause of premature heat-related deaths

The death tolls from recent heat-waves in the U.S. Southwest and South Asia grimly remind us that extreme heat can kill.

And it is well-established that climate change from the burning of fossil fuels is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme heat waves.

Last week, the journal Environmental Research Letters published the first paper to characterize  the number of premature deaths during an extreme heat-wave that can be robustly attributed to human-caused climate change.

I’m a co-author on the study, which was led by Dann Mitchell at the University of Oxford.

Specifically, we looked at the massive European heat-wave of 2003 and found that hundreds of heat-related deaths in Paris and London that summer were due to the exacerbating  impacts of climate change on extreme heat, including more than two-thirds of the ~735 deaths in Paris alone.

The findings were generated by putting the results of high-resolution regional climate model simulations of the 2003 heatwave into a health impact assessment model of local heat-related mortality.

I invite you to read our paper, as well as an excellent discussion of it by Kendra Pierre-Louis published in InsideClimateNews.

This work establishes an approach that can be applied to quantify the climate change-exacerbated damages from other extreme events and inform “loss and damage” initiatives to hold governments and polluting industry accountable for their contributions to the problem.

At the same time, new evidence showing the inner workings of the fossil industry-funded climate denial machine deepens our understanding of the extent of recent investments in disinformation and sharpens our focus on companies’ climate responsibilities.

Last month, the Peabody Energy bankruptcy filings released a treasure trove of documents that reveal the company’s extensive financial support for climate-denying lobbying groups. Among them are groups, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, that ExxonMobil has also backed for many years.

Growing scrutiny of leading fossil fuel companies

Evidence that we, and many others, have uncovered has prompted increasing public, political, investor and legal scrutiny into the fossil fuel industry’s conduct.

In May, UCS staff attended ExxonMobil and Chevron shareholder meetings, accompanied by climate scientists Michael MacCracken and Ben Santer to challenge the companies to align their business models with a climate constrained world and stop funding climate disinformation. In June, my colleague Kathy Mulvey spoke at a panel held by the Congressional Progressive Caucus to examine fossil fuel industry deception on climate change.

Today, members of Congress introduced in both chambers resolutions (House resolution; Senate resolution) that call out industry-sponsored  denial activities that have obscured the truth on tobacco, lead, and climate.

Not surprisingly, fossil fuel interests and their political allies are hitting back. Rep. Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Committee on Science,  Space and  Technology continues to abuse his power and use intimidation tactics to slow down investigations led by state attorneys general into whether ExxonMobil violated any laws by misleading investors and the public about climate risks.

How far we have come

We’ve come a long way since UCS began this work – even further since investigative journalist Ross Gelbspan first brought attention to the climate deception campaign by fossil fuel companies in his 1997 book The Heat is On.

We  are getting essential traction – and will continue to keep the heat on the fossil fuel companies who for so long have sought to deny, disparage  and downplay the scientific evidence of the risks of their products in order to thwart sensible climate policies.

I first came to know Ed in the late 1990s, when we were both developing early regional assessments of climate change impacts in the western United States. Drawn to tackling big environmental problems, Ed was fearless about working across disciplines—a marine and climate scientist with a Ph.D. in international relations; a professor who sparked a passion for ocean conservation and climate resilience in countless students over a long career; and a tireless contributor to science-based environmental policy, from the Law of the Sea Convention to fisheries governance to climate change.

Ed joined the Union of Concerned Scientists’ board in the summer of 2008. Throughout his tenure, he was a gentle and supportive presence at board meetings. Consistently humble, he rarely spoke of his accomplishments: one of the first four African-Americans to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, in 2003; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; international leader in marine and climate science policy.

Edward L. Miles (1939-2016). Photo: University of Washington

His many contributions to climate science and policy included lead authorship of a seminal paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006. There, he laid out a compelling vision for a federally supported National Climate Service, akin to the National Weather Service, to ensure that climate science serves local and national information needs to anticipate, plan for, and adapt to climate variability and change.

Former NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco ran with the idea, all the way to Congress in 2011, where it passed the Senate and was denied by the House. While some elements of Ed’s vision are now slowly taking shape, the political atmosphere is still fraught for meaningful Congressional action on sensible policies to protect our nation from climate change.

A great and fitting tribute to Ed would be to muster the political courage to stand for a true national climate service under a future administration and Congress.

My colleagues at UCS are also feeling Ed’s loss. From former board chair (and Harvard professor of biological oceanography) Jim McCarthy:

He was a very gentle and humble person with strong convictions—and a fierce advocate for wise use of our oceans. He played a major role in international negotiations around sustainable ocean use and fisheries. I was thrilled when he agreed to join the board.

From Director of the Center for Science and Democracy Andy Rosenberg:

He mentored so many people at the University of Washington, bringing them into ocean science and policy. That was a tribute to his gentle nature—he had a way of talking to students and drawing them out. He was a force in the fisheries world.

Ed founded the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, where he was Bloedel Professor Emeritus of Marine and Public Affairs. In his absence, the group will carry out Ed’s mission to build science-based climate resilience for communities.

Ed, we’ll greatly miss you.

If you are moved to honor Ed’s legacy, his family requests making a donation to the funds set up at the University of Washington: the Ed Miles Memorial Scholarship Fund, in support of students researching the effects of climate on environment and society, and/or the aforementioned Climate Impacts Group.

At the Union of Concerned Scientists, my colleagues and I are committed to ensuring that such investigations are grounded in the best available science and scholarship.

Back in 2007, we published a report called Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science, which documented that the company had spent nearly $16 million to sow doubt about the climate risks of their products.

In 2012, we partnered with the Climate Accountability Institute (CAI) to hold a workshop in La Jolla, California that brought together a cross-disciplinary group of nearly two dozen leading scholars and practitioners to explore how lessons from tobacco control might inform public and policy maker understanding of fossil fuel company responsibilities for climate change.

In 2015, CAI’s Richard Heede, Harvard University historian of science Naomi Oreskes, and I argued in a 2015 Climatic Change paper that leading fossil fuel companies have significant responsibilities for climate change, both because of their large contribution to the problem and because, knowing the serious risks of their products, they engaged in a campaign of climate disinformation to avoid policies and investments that might have stabilized or reduced emissions.

Led by Kathy Mulvey and Seth Shulman, UCS published our 2015 Deception Dossiers report, detailing the decades of climate disinformation promulgated by leading fossil fuel companies, trade associations, and industry-funded lobbying groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

More than half of all industrial carbon emissions have been released since 1988–since fossil fuel companies knew of the climate risks of their products. Adapted from Frumhoff et al 2015

We are speaking out on the evidence and argument for fossil industry climate accountability in public forums across the US. And we are briefing a wide range of policymakers—from members of the California State Senate considering climate accountability legislation (the Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act, SB1161) to members of the Philippines Commission on Human Rights  investigating whether the largest investor-owned fossil fuel companies have violated the human rights of Philippine citizens affected by worsening extreme weather.

In late March, I was invited to brief several US state attorneys general and their staff on my research at a climate meeting of state attorneys general hosted by New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman.

More recently, UCS President Ken Kimmell and I participated in an April 25 workshop on “Potential State Causes of Action Against Major Carbon Producers: Scientific, Legal and Historical Perspectives”  which UCS co-convened with Shaun Goho and colleagues at Harvard Law School’s Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic.

Held at the law school, the meeting provided senior staff from state attorneys general offices in nearly a dozen states with an opportunity to hear from leading climate scientists, legal scholars, historians, and other experts on topics including climate attribution research, lessons from tobacco litigation, and the potential role of state consumer protection laws.

We were joined by a superb set of panelists, including Naomi Oreskes; attorney Sharon Eubanks (Bordas and Bordas, PLLC), who served as lead counsel for the US Department of Justice in federal tobacco litigation; climate scientist Phil Mote (Oregon State University), coauthor of the recent National Academy of Sciences report on climate attribution of extreme weather events;  Carroll Muffett, President and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law; and Cara Horowitz, co-director of the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law School. I spoke on current climate science and attribution research; Shaun Goho and Harvard Law students presented synopses of their legal research.

Harvard Law School routinely hosts meetings that provide policy makers with opportunities to confer with scholars and practitioners. State attorneys general and their staff routinely confer privately with experts in the course of their deliberations on matters before them.

This is as it should be. I look forward to further opportunities to brief policymakers about climate science and the climate accountability of major fossil fuel companies and,  in so doing,  support timely, valuable initiatives to uphold the law and accelerate our essential transition to a clean, vibrant, low-carbon energy economy.

Building on our successful efforts earlier this year to motivate BP and Royal Dutch Shell to leave the climate-science-denying American Legislative Exchange Council, here are a few recent outcomes from our climate accountability campaign:

1) Pressure from Congress

Drawing on UCS investigative reporting, members of Congress are pressing fossil fuel companies to fully disclose funding of climate science disinformation and to describe their business plans for reducing emissions consistent with global temperature limits.

On December 7th, 45 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, Conoco Phillips, Peabody Energy and BP, calling on them to clarify what they knew about the climate risks of their products, when they knew it, and what plans they are putting in place to limit future risks. Initiated by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Rep. Peter Welch (D- VT), the letter draws heavily on the UCS Deception Dossiers investigative report released last summer, noting that:

“UCS uncovered many internal company documents which appear to confirm a coordinated campaign of deception conducted by the industry to deceive the public of climate science that even their own scientists confirmed.  These actions included ‘forged letters to Congress, secret funding of a supposedly independent scientist, the creation of fake grassroots organizations, [and] multiple efforts to deliberately manufacture uncertainty about climate science.’”

2) Climate damages investigation

UCS is supporting a precedent-setting international investigation into the responsibility of fossil fuel companies for climate damages.

On December 4 in Paris, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHR) announced that it will launch a public inquiry into whether the 50 largest industrial producers of coal, oil and natural gas have violated the human rights of Philippine citizens facing damages from typhoons and other extreme weather worsened by global warming. This is the first time any national human rights commission has taken up such an inquiry; it came about in response to complaint initiated in September by Greenpeace Southeast Asia and supported by more than 125,000 citizen petitioners. While the CHR lacks authority to establish penalties or award damages, they have significant standing to draw attention to any human rights violations they find and help “establish clear mechanisms and processes for redressing Human Rights victims arising from climate change”.

We are providing scientific advice and counsel to our Philippines-based NGO colleagues and to the Commission on Human Rights. In Paris, I had the privilege of briefing commissioners on the state of the science of climate attribution and the potential for further research to link emissions traced to these companies to specific climate impacts and damages in the Philippines.

3) ExxonMobil investigation

UCS helped set the stage for the New York State Attorney General’s ongoing investigation into whether ExxonMobil concealed climate risks from shareholders and the public, and is pressing to expand such inquiries.

In early November, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a subpoena calling on ExxonMobil to release documents dating back almost four decades that could shed light on what Exxon knew about the climate risks of its products and how these risks could affect company operations relative to what it had disclosed to its shareholders and the public. This investigation builds directly on the strong evidence put forth by UCS and subsequent reports by published by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times of the company’s early understanding of climate science and climate risks and subsequent investment in climate science doubt-mongering. In light of this evidence, we are now calling on U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and other state attorneys general to use the tools at their disposal to launch similar inquiries.

4) Groundbreaking research

New UCS-supported research focuses attention on the need for investors to limit industry exploration and development of new fossil fuel reserves.

Much has been made of the notion that the current reserves of investor-owned fossil fuel companies are at risk of becoming “stranded assets” in a carbon-constrained world. A study published in late November by Richard Heede and Naomi Oreskes in Global Environmental Change, and partly funded by UCS, suggests that, while existing reserves are important, far greater attention needs to be paid to the ability of companies to develop new reserves. They find that the 42 largest investor-owned fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Shell, maintain proven reserves of coal, oil and natural gas totaling an estimated 44 gigatons of carbon. These reserves contain, on average, about 12 years of further production at current rates for oil and gas companies, and contain a significant portion of the remaining carbon budget that cannot be exceeded if global average temperature increases are to stay well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as called for in the Paris Agreement;

Fossil fuel companies spend an estimated $700 billion per year to identify and develop new fossil reserves; Heede and Oreskes argue that it is this continued development that poses the greatest risk of driving emissions traced to these companies to “exceed the carbon budget and push global climate well past” global temperature limits. Far greater investor and consumer pressure, therefore, should focus on “dissuading these corporations from further investment in fossil fuel exploration and development,” particularly from tar sands and other high carbon sources.

A New Year’s Resolution

There’s much to celebrate – and there’s much more to be done. As nations build on their Paris climate commitments, the fossil fuel industry will need to decide whether they play a constructive  role and begin the process of transitioning to responsible energy companies. They could, for example, build on initial generic calls for a global price on carbon and forcefully advocate for a strong specific economy-wide carbon price policy in the U.S.; join with other leading corporations in committing to adopt science-based targets for reducing emissions across their operations and detail their plans for doing so to investors and the public; substantially increase their investment in clean energy technology research and deployment; and unequivocally denounce and distance themselves from continued climate and clean energy disinformation from industry-supported trade associations and lobbying groups.

We resolve to keep holding them accountable for doing so.

Featured image: A Filipino boy prepares a fishing net as Typhoon Melor threatens the Philippines. Extreme weather will become more severe with climate change. Photo: Francis R. Malasig/EPA

Today, 74 of our nation’s leading clean energy and climate experts have released a letter  urging U.S. presidential candidates to “endorse and build upon the U.S. commitments at the international climate Conference of the Parties (COP21)” and “put our nation on a path to a vibrant economy free of carbon pollution by mid-century.”  Signers of the letter include Nobel Laureate and former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, climate scientists Katharine Hayhoe and Chris Field, environmental justice expert Robert Bullard, and former Assistant Secretary of State and climate and business policy leader Eileen Claussen. The letter was organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists on behalf of the signers.

Why this letter, and why now? COP21 is a major milestone in driving the global transition to a carbon free, safe climate future: some 180 nations, collectively emitting more than 90 percent of the world’s heat-trapping carbon pollution, have come here committed to limit future emissions.  But COP21 is also a stepping stone. The initial emissions limits are still modest; success will ultimately depend on whether future leaders can vigorously meet and exceed them, accelerating our global transition to a clean energy economy.

According to these leading experts, “As the world’s largest economy and largest historical emitter of heat-trapping gases, the United States has a special responsibility to provide leadership and an economic opportunity to be gained by doing so.” It is well within the reach of the next U.S. president “to help set our nation and the world on a clear course toward a robust, clean economy free from carbon pollution. There is no time to waste. “

As the U.S. presidential primary campaign season heats up, signers intend this letter to provide fodder for questions to candidates in debates and town hall meetings in primary states, building demand among voters to expect all candidates to have clear and convincing answers about their commitment to a clean energy future. These answers should be informed by an understanding that, as the letter states, “the global transformation of our energy system away from fossil fuels is both a moral imperative, grounded in science, and one of the greatest economic opportunities of our time.”

The letter calls on the next U.S. president to “vigorously pursue a set of key goals,” including:

• Exceeding the U.S. pledge to reduce emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025
• Putting a price on carbon and phasing out fossil energy subsidies
• Modernizing our antiquated energy transmission, distribution, and transportation systems
• Increasing investment in clean energy research and development
• Expanding international partnerships for clean energy adoption
• Increasing the preparedness of vulnerable communities at home and abroad for now unavoidable impacts of climate change

Read the full text of the letter and list of signers. Now it’s up to the candidates to heed the message and up to all of us to encourage them to do so.

Over the decade before NASA scientist James Hansen’s 1988 testimony before Congress made the evidence of global warming front page news, Exxon invested in understanding the problem and learned that fossil fuel emissions could drive potentially catastrophic climate impacts. Exxon executives heard advice from their own scientists to take a leadership role in addressing it.

They firmly rejected this advice. Instead, Exxon (later, ExxonMobil, which formed in 1998) financed and engaged in a decades-long industry campaign of doubt-mongering about the scientific evidence of climate change in order to avoid regulation of their products.

In an op-ed published in today’s New York Times, Harvard University historian of science Naomi Oreskes reminds us that Exxon chose a “path of disinformation, denial, and delay” taken from the tobacco industry playbook. For decades, tobacco companies argued that responsibility for the ills of smoking rested with the smoker: individuals made a choice to smoke, and any resulting illness was their responsibility. When internal memos came to light showing that these companies knowingly spread disinformation about the health risks of their products, they ultimately led to the rejection of that argument in the courts of public opinion and law. In 1995, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the industry was legally culpable for knowingly spreading disinformation, bringing charges against them under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act.

ExxonMobil’s climate responsibilities

ICN’s reporting focuses a long-overdue spotlight on ExxonMobil’s responsibilities for climate change. It highlights, for example, growing interest in legal action against ExxonMobil – both for failure to disclose climate risks to shareholders and financial regulators, and for manufacturing doubt to deceive the public. Pressure, they say, could “come from the U.S. Department of Justice, state attorneys general, private plaintiffs in the U.S. or abroad”.

Many of us think about responsibility for climate change as something that falls to each of us individually through the choices we make about energy use, and to governments – what the  international climate negotiations refer to as the “common but differentiated responsibilities” among nations.

In a  paper in the journal Climatic Change geographer Richard Heede (Climate Accountability Institute), Naomi Oreskes and I argue that ExxonMobil and other large investor-owned fossil energy companies also have significant and distinctive responsibilities for climate change.

We emphasize that a relatively small number of large companies, including ExxonMobil, have produced the fossil energy responsible for a large proportion of the total historic emissions. These corporations commanded a high level of internal scientific and technical expertise and they were in a position to understand the available scientific data. In Exxon’s case, we now know that they not only understood the science, they contributed to it.

An alternative was available to them: given what they knew, they could have adjusted their business models to speed a  transition to low-carbon energy by investing in low-carbon energy technologies and carbon capture, constructively engaging in policy design, and helping investors and consumers understand the need to dramatically reduce the adverse impact of their products.

But they did not.

As we note:

“Between 1988 and 2005, ExxonMobil invested over $16 million in a network of front groups that spread misleading claims about climate science, leading to strong public condemnation from the British Royal Society. It also exploited its close relationship with the administration of President George W. Bush to pressure the administration to remove top scientists from leadership roles in the IPCC and the US National Climate Assessment and to promote federal policies driving further reliance on fossil energy.”

Even today, ExxonMobil and others continue to explore for new and increasingly more carbon-polluting sources of fossil fuels. They continue to encourage the expanded use of the products that they know – and, in Exxon’s case, have known for almost forty years – are responsible for disruptive climate change. And, perhaps worst of all, ExxonMobil continues actively sow doubt about the scientific evidence, and to discount the reality and significance of climate change as a problem.

While ExxonMobil’s website acknowledges that “rising greenhouse gas emissions pose significant risks to society and ecosystems,” the company continues to fund climate disinformation through politically influential partners, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a lobbying group that organizes faux climate science briefings for US state legislators and then lobbies them to repeal state renewable energy policies. ExxonMobil executives have rejected repeated calls to leave ALEC, a step recently taken by BP and Dutch Royal Shell, which Shell acknowledged was due explicitly to their disagreement with ALEC’s misrepresentation of climate science.  (For several other examples, see the recent UCS Climate Deception Dossiers report).

A world of climate damage

What makes ExxonMobil’s deception so noteworthy is the extent to which its failure to act responsibly has contributed to an increase in climate risks and damages on a global scale.

Since 1978, global annual emissions from burning fossil fuels and cement production have nearly doubled, from 5.1 gigatons of carbon (GtC) to almost 10 GtC today. Since 1988, more than half of all industrial carbon pollution since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution has been emitted.

Given the company’s enormous scientific and technical capacity, financial resources, and influence on US and international climate policies, it is reasonable to conclude that global emissions would have been lower – perhaps, far lower – had Exxon acknowledged and publicized the risks of their products and supported science-based limits on emissions.

Source: Adapted from Frumhoff, Heede & Oreskes 2015

According to ExxonMobil’s estimates, global emissions will stay high for decades to come. By 2040, the company estimates that energy-related carbon emissions will be 10 GtC, keeping emissions on a trajectory that will drive temperature increases well above levels needed limit dangerous climate change that company executive first understood nearly forty years ago.

Their projections of future emissions may well be right, of course – but if so, it will be in no small part the due their decades of disinformation and lobbying to avoid sensible climate policies.

What can be done?

Much time has been lost since Exxon first learned of, and could have acted upon, the climate risks of their products. Through concerted efforts it is still be possible for at least some of the major fossil fuel companies to make a transition to responsible energy companies – companies that profitably produce clean, affordable low–carbon energy.

The revelations reported by ICN should help fuel an intensifying public focus on holding these companies accountable for their contributions to the climate problem and reducing their ability to thwart sensible climate policies. Surely, this  will  require scaling up  a broad range  of  efforts – pressure from sustained shareholder actions, divestment campaigns, consumer boycotts of corporate ‘bad actors’ and litigation may all  be needed to effectively change industry behavior.

Heede, Oreskes and I argue that society should hold companies accountable to:

• Stop disseminating climate disinformation, including through their lobbying groups and trade associations;
• Unequivocally support policies consistent with keeping warming below the 2 °C global temperature target;
• Reduce emissions from their operations consistent with and in anticipation of such policy limits; and
• Pay for a share of the costs of climate damages and of preparing for further, now unavoidable impacts.

UCS is significantly scaling up work to drive these changes, as are many others. The world’s essential transition to low-carbon energy may hinge on the scale and success of our collective efforts.

The oil giant BP has announced that they will no longer fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a lobbying group that routinely misrepresents climate science to U.S. state legislators. It is the latest sign that some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies appear to be warming to the overwhelming evidence that the unabated use of their products poses severe risks of disrupting the climate.

Shouldn’t fossil fuel companies bear some responsibility to pay for the harms resulting from their products?

Last month, BP and Royal Dutch Shell announced their support for shareholder resolutions calling on them to commit to reduce heat-trapping emissions, invest in renewable energy, and show how their current business model would hold up against the strict limits on future emissions needed to limit the risk of major climate disruption.

Shell chief executive Ben van Buerden recently stated that “climate change is real and a threat we want to act upon. We are not aligning with sceptics.”

Even ExxonMobil, which spent $16m (£11m) between 1998 and 2005 to fund groups that spread disinformation about climate science, now prominently acknowledges on their website that “rising greenhouse gas emissions pose significant risks to society and ecosystems.”

But appearances can be deceiving.

For one, BP still channels funds through its political action committee to climate science-denying US policymakers such as senator James Inhofe, chair of the senate’s environment and public works committee. While such direct contributions to politicians are a matter of public record, companies continue to sow climate doubt and influence climate policy in ways that are far more opaque.

For instance, recently released documents show that ExxonMobil gave more than $75,000 between 2008 and 2010 to secretly support the work of Willie Soon, a contrarian climate researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, well after the company announced it would halt such funding. Soon’s research has sought to downplay the human influence on global warming.

This follows revelations that Southern Company, one of the largest utilities in the US, spent $400,000 between 2006 and 2015 to fund Soon, supporting his research, Congressional testimony, and other “deliverables” while specifying that its funding be disclosed only with express company permission.

Robert Gehri, the Southern Company employee who authorised this funding was one of a dozen industry representatives who, on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute, created a $6m campaign in 1998 that misled the public about climate science. Among other strategies, he oversaw the covert funding of “independent” scientists.

Some of the largest fossil fuel companies now publicly accepting mainstream climate science, continue to support climate denial through influential lobbying groups and trade associations. Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil still fund ALEC, which misleadingly describes climate change as “a historical phenomenon for which debate will continue over the significance of natural and [human-caused] contributions.”

With their support, Alec promotes “model legislation” to repeal state renewable energy standards and roll back other climate and energy policies.

Shell, BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil are also members and funders of the API and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA). Late last year, a leaked presentation from WSPA revealed a stealth campaign to block climate policies in California by backing a constellation of astroturf groups with names such as the “California Drivers Alliance” and “Californians Against Higher Taxes”.

Exactly how much fossil fuel companies have spent to support disinformation remains shrouded in secrecy, in part because they are not required to report their political and public relations spending. Robert Brulle, a social scientist at Drexel University, estimates that hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed from corporations, ideological foundations, and groups that oppose climate policy and often sow doubt about mainstream climate science.

Such spending is big money in politics, but it pales in comparison to the staggering costs of climate change. New York City alone estimates it will cost nearly $20 billion over a decade to protect its citizens against rising seas and more extreme weather. The bipartisan Risky Business Project estimates that over the next 15 years, sea level rise and storm surge are expected to increase damage from East and Gulf Coast storms by $2 billion to $3.5 billion. They also conclude that more extreme heat could cause corn, wheat, soy, and cotton yields to decline 10% or more in some southern and midwestern counties.

Who will pay these and other costs of preparing for now inevitable changes? Right now, by default, this responsibility falls largely to taxpayers.

But shouldn’t fossil fuel companies bear some responsibility to pay for the harms resulting from their products?

Tobacco companies were found liable for damage from cigarettes. Those companies also deceived the public about the realities of scientific research on smoking. In fact, they funded some of the same scientists and groups fossil fuel companies have relied on to spread misinformation. The tobacco companies were held accountable, in part, because they colluded to deceive the public and policymakers about the risks their products caused.

Similarly, after scientific evidence on the cancer-causing risks of asbestos was established, producers of asbestos and manufacturers of products containing it were also held liable for damages.

The magnitude of the fossil energy industry’s contribution to the climate problem is enormous. Researchers have found that just 90 entities–including the world’s largest investor-owned fossil fuel companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell–are responsible for extracting the coal, oil, and gas that have produced about two-thirds of all industrial carbon pollution. For decades, these same companies have sought to obscure the risks of using their products, and sought to deny and delay regulation–increasing the risks society faces from a changing climate.

It is not too late for fossil fuel companies to take responsible action. Shell and BP’s support for shareholder resolutions calling on them to invest in low-carbon energy is a first step. But investors–and society at large–should expect far more.

We should expect fossil fuel companies to stop supporting climate disinformation and distance themselves publicly from trade associations and lobbying groups that do. We should expect them to make their political spending transparent. And we should expect them to pay a fair share of the costs of limiting the damages from climate change, which a more expedited transition to low carbon economy could have–and should have–avoided.

Peter C Frumhoff is the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author. Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University and the author with Erik M Conway of Merchants of Doubt, which is the subject of a new documentary, and The Collapse of Western Civilisation.

Suppose, however, that we falter and temperatures continue to rise to dangerous levels. In a climate emergency, facing high risks of major and otherwise unavoidable impacts, should the U.S. or other governments consider forced cooling of Earth by injecting reflecting aerosol particles into the stratosphere?

Today, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) weighs in with a pair of major reports examining the scientific basis for considering this and other possible “climate interventions” — deliberate, potentially large-scale actions to reflect sunlight away from Earth or remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere should mitigation and adaptation prove insufficient to limit the risks of dangerous climate warming.

Kudos to the National Research Council (NRC) panel, chaired by Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of the journal Science and former director of the U.S. Geological Survey, for tackling this set of challenging and controversial issues. It is one of a growing number of scientific and related policy assessments on a suite of potential and problematic climate responses most commonly referred to as “geoengineering.”

Reflecting sunlight to cool Earth

Here’s a synopsis of key findings from the NRC report on Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth. (In a related post, my colleague Brenda Ekwurzel looks at their report on Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration):

“Technologies that prevent sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface could reduce average global temperatures within a few years, similar to the effects of large volcanic eruptions. While many albedo-modification [i.e. solar energy reflecting] techniques have been proposed… two strategies that could potentially have a significant impact are injection of aerosols into the stratosphere and marine cloud brightening. [T]hese methods would not require major technological innovation to be implemented and are relatively inexpensive…

However, albedo modification would only temporarily mask the warming effect of greenhouse gases and would not address atmospheric concentrations of CO2 or related impacts such as ocean acidification. In the absence of CO2 reductions, albedo-modification activities would need to be sustained indefinitely and at increasingly large scales to offset warming, with severe negative consequences if they were to be terminated. In addition, albedo modification introduces secondary effects on the ozone layer, precipitation patterns, terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and human health, with unknown social, political, and economic outcomes.

Many of the processes most relevant to albedo modification — such as those that control the formation of clouds and aerosols — are among the most difficult components of the climate system to model and monitor. Present-day observational capabilities lack sufficient capacity to monitor the environmental effects of an albedo-modification deployment. Improvements in the capacity to monitor direct and indirect changes on weather, climate, or larger Earth systems and to detect unilateral or uncoordinated deployment could help further understanding of albedo modification and climate science generally.

 [I]t would be “irrational and irresponsible” to implement sustained albedo modification without also pursuing emissions mitigation, carbon dioxide removal, or both. [The Committee] oppose[s] deployment of albedo-modification techniques, but recommend[s] further research, particularly “multiple-benefit” research that simultaneously advances basic understanding of the climate system and quantifies the technologies’ potential costs, intended and unintended consequences, and risks.

 Albedo-modification research will have legal, ethical, social, political, and economic ramifications. The committee recommend[s] the initiation of a serious deliberative process to examine what international research governance structures may be needed beyond those that already exist, and what types of research would require such governance. The degree and nature of governance should vary by activity and the associated risks, and should involve civil society in decision-making through a transparent and open process.”

No substitute for dramatic reductions in heat-trapping emissions

In other words: Proposed strategies to alter the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth’s surface by (for example) deliberately injecting millions of tons of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere pose enormous risks and uncertainties and don ‘t address the underlying causes of global warming or other major risks from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, such as ocean acidification. They should not be deployed today and we should do everything possible to avoid their being deployed in the future. As the NRC report emphasizes, there is no substitute for dramatic reductions in heat-trapping emissions. Preventative medicine is far more attractive than getting treated in the emergency room.

But the Committee also recommends the U.S. government invest in an “albedo-modification research program” focused on improving understanding of the intended and unintended impacts of these technologies on climate, people, and ecosystems. They consider — and firmly reject — the “moral hazard” argument that such research would somehow distract from efforts to reduce emissions, concluding that “as a society we have reached a point where the severity of the potential risks from climate change…outweigh[s] the potential [moral hazard] risks associated with a suitably designed and governed research program.”

I strongly agree. We need to better understand these technologies and their risks, even if we are determined to never deploy them. They are relatively low-cost, and if deployed unilaterally by others, would have global consequences. In the U.S. and internationally, societal debate over their use would be well served by better understanding their risks and consequences. A fuller understanding of their risks, informed by science, might well reinforce our collective determination to never use them and motivate greater commitment to mitigation and adaptation. And, should we falter in that effort, we would be well-served to better understand the impacts of such emergency-room measures.

Needed: a transparent, participatory process to guide research on impacts and risks

That said, the question of who decides what research is appropriate is tricky. To date, studies have largely been confined to computer modeling. The NRC notes that “small-scale field experiments with controlled emissions [e.g. releasing reflecting aerosols into the atmosphere] may….be helpful.” Some scientists are eager to initiate field research. In my view, the NRC Committee has it exactly right when they call for any planning of such research to be subject to a “serious deliberative process” to weigh options for its governance. Such a process, they argue, should be fully transparent and informed by the active participation of civil society.

That process should begin now and subsequent guidance on the governance of albedo-modification research established before the U.S. supports any scale-up of albedo-modification research.

I recently learned this startling fact from my colleague Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute. Heede drew upon historic estimates of annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement manufacturing by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) and the 2014 annual update on the global carbon budget and trends published by the Global Carbon Project (GCP), an international scientific research consortium studying the global carbon cycle.

The GCP estimates that in 2014, we will release a record 37 gigatons (GT) of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from burning coal, oil, and natural gas, and manufacturing cement. That’s a 2.5 percent increase over emissions in 2013, itself a record year. This brings the total industrial carbon dioxide emissions since 1751 to an estimated 1480 Gt by the end of this year. And, remarkably, more than half of these emissions, 743 Gt, or 50.2 percent, have released just since 1988.

More than half of all industrial carbon dioxide emissions have been released since 1988. Image: Union of Concerned Scientists

1988: When the evidence and risks of human-caused warming first became widely known.

By the 1950s, leading scientists had become concerned about the potential impacts of rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. By the 1960s and 1970s, they were communicating these concerns to U.S. policymakers.

But 1988 is the year in which the scientific evidence for and risks of human-caused climate change became widely known, and when initial steps were taken to address the problem. It is the year when NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate that human-caused warming was underway, testimony that was reported on the front page of the New York Times. It is also the year that then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, campaigning for president, pledged that as president he would “fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.”

Members of Congress introduced The National Energy Policy Act of 1988, intended to “address the issue of global warming and develop strategies to respond to environmental problems caused by increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases produced in burning fossil fuels…” And it is the year when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established to provide international policymakers with ongoing scientific information on the issue.

In short, 1988 is a milestone year because by then policymakers and the fossil energy industry surely knew enough about the climate risks from the continued reliance on fossil fuels to begin to invest in the process of making the necessary transition to low-carbon energy. Instead, far too many chose to invest instead in casting doubt about the scientific evidence of climate change and to avoid limits on heat-trapping emissions — and continue to do so today.

Much time has been lost since 1988. Today the task of reducing carbon emissions is far greater and more urgent.

I spent the past week at the international climate negotiations (COP 20) in Lima, Peru, where delegates from industrialized and developing nations debated the scope and ambition of the agreement to be reached a year from now in Paris. It is an achingly slow and challenging process, necessary but wildly insufficient to respond to the science that as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put it in his speech in Lima “is screaming at us, warning us, compelling us – hopefully – to act.”

We can’t afford to lose any more time.

Climate responsibilities don’t fall to governments alone. Divestment campaigns and shareholder actions are now shining a bright spotlight on the responsibilities of fossil energy companies. What have these companies done since 1988 in light of the scientific evidence of climate change resulting from the use of their products — and what should they be expected to do? Heede, Harvard University historian of science Naomi Oreskes and I are providing our views this Wednesday in a poster at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meetings in San Francisco. Here’s the abstract:

“The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change established the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” among nations, signaling the recognition that industrialized nations who had produced the greatest share of historic emissions bore particular responsibility for avoiding dangerous interference with the climate system. But climate responsibilities can also be distributed in other ways as well.

Recently published data show that just 90 entities have produced the fossil energy responsible for 63 percent of the world’s industrial emissions of CO₂ and methane; of these, 50 are investor owned companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP and Peabody Energy. As the scientific evidence became clear, many of these investor-owned companies sought sow doubt about the science linking their products to global warming, and today are seeking new and increasingly carbon-polluting sources of fossil fuels.

It is still possible for these companies to contribute productively towards a solution. Significant progress in reducing emissions and limiting climate change could be achieved if companies 1) unequivocally communicate to the public, shareholders and policymakers the climate risks resulting from continued use of their products, and therefore the need for restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions; 2) firmly reject contrary claims by industry trade associations and lobbying groups; and 3) accelerate their transition to the production of low-carbon energy. Evidence from history strongly suggests that a heightened societal focus on their climate responsibilities may hasten such a transition.”

The full poster is viewable here. If you’re coming to AGU, come by and share your views.

If you are a confused policymaker, perhaps fearful of answering the question incorrectly, fear no longer. The world’s leading climate scientists have just created a handy guide for you. Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report’s Summary for Policymakers, distilling thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers characterizing the latest information on climate science, impacts, and solutions into just forty pages of text and graphics. The IPCC further distilled these findings into some headlines – barebone facts that any policymaker should know.

Here are ten top-line findings:

Human influence on the climate system is clear and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal and since the 1950’s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era…and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. 

Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.

Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks.

It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer, and that extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent in many regions. The ocean will continue to warm and acidify, and global mean sea level to rise.

Climate change… risks…are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development.

Substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades can reduce climate risks in the 21st century and beyond, increase prospects for effective adaptation, reduce the costs and challenges of mitigation in the longer term, and contribute to climate-resilient pathways for sustainable development.

Without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally (high confidence). Mitigation involves some level of co-benefits and of risks due to adverse side-effects, but these risks do not involve the same possibility of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts as risks from climate change, increasing the benefits from near-term mitigation efforts.

There are multiple mitigation pathways that are likely to limit warming to below 2°C [3.6°F] relative to pre-industrial levels. These pathways would require substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades and near zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived GHGs by the end of the century. Implementing such reductions poses substantial technological, economic, social, and institutional challenges, which increase with delays in additional mitigation and if key technologies are not available.

I encourage you to dig into the full synthesis report for more detail. You may also want some information on how climate change is affecting your local area. For that, look to the solid, accessible findings of latest US National Climate Assessment, released this past spring.

Since the IPCC turned from review of new publications to synthesis last year, scientists at the Global Carbon Project reported that global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning and cement production reached record levels in 2013, rising 2.3% above the previous year and are projected to rise another 2.5% by the end of 2014. Emissions have now risen more than 60% since 1988, the year that the IPCC was formed and the scientific community’s concerns about climate change first received widespread public attention.

I hope this helps. You don’t have to be a scientist. Really. You just have to listen to them. And then draw upon their advice, your commitment to evidence-based decision-making, and your obligation to current constituents and future generations by getting to work ensuring that our nation is a leader in setting strong sensible climate policies.

I know you can do this.

The wind farm at Peetz has 33 wind turbines — the first of their kind for a commercial operation in the U.S. NEG Micon manufactures the turbines and each can generate up to 900 kilowatts. Each unit consists of a 170-foot diameter rotor and a turbine, set on a 237-foot high tower. The total weight of each unit, including rotors, turbine and tower, is 164 tons.Electricity from the wind farm is sold through Xcel Energy’s Windsource

Two colleagues and I have published a new paper in the journal Climatic Change that seeks to reconcile concerns over risks to local wildlife with wind energy’s benefits in reducing the existential risks that climate change poses for much of the world’s biological diversity.

I sit proudly on the board of the American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI), an innovative non-profit dedicated to the “timely and responsible development of wind energy while protecting wildlife and wildlife habitat”. In 2008, The Union of Concerned Scientists cofounded AWWI in partnership with a who’s who list of the nation’s leading conservation organizations and wind energy companies.

Our reason for joining this partnership was simple: climate change is a deal-breaker for the conservation of global biodiversity. Limiting its pace and the severity of impacts to species and ecosystems will require a swift transition away from fossil fuels, including through the accelerated build-out of wind and other low-carbon sources of renewable energy.

In the U.S., keeping carbon emissions to levels consistent with limiting warming to the 2 degrees C policy target requires an expansion of power produced by land-based wind turbines from about 61 gigawatts (GW, or 1000 megawatts) today to an estimated 330-440 GW by 2050. Even under very optimistic assumptions about the potential role of nuclear power and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies – each with their own significant risks and costs – as well as the accelerated deployment of other renewables and energy efficiency measures, we are going to need a lot more wind to meet demands for low-carbon electricity.

What does this have to do with wildlife conservation?

Beyond its climate benefits, generating electricity from wind uses virtually no water, a major conservation benefit in parts of the country projected to become increasingly water-stressed. But concerns over the impacts of wind turbines on the sensitive wildlife populations and habitats could greatly limit the pace and scale of its expansion. Concerns are especially high over risks to raptors and bats that can collide with turbine blades, as well as to sage grouse and prairie chickens whose grassland habitats have some of the best wind resources in the country.

Amid a noisy debate where too often the direct wildlife risks of wind siting and operation are either downplayed or hyped, AWWI works to soberly document what’s known, develop tools and technologies to reduce impacts, and build toward a shared vision among conservationists, wind energy advocates, and policymakers for timely, responsible siting and operations.

What should such a shared vision include?

In our Climatic Change paper, Thinking Globally and Siting Locally: Renewable Energy and Biodiversity in a Rapidly Warming World,” Taber Allison (AWWI’s director of research and evaluation), Terry Root (climate and conservation scientist at Stanford University, and fellow AWWI board member), and I point out that further research and collaboration between industry and conservation partners holds great promise to improve siting and operations to protect wildlife.

And we note that wildlife risks and uncertainties won’t be eliminated — certainly not in advance of the pace and scale of wind development needed to limit climate change.

Specifically, we argue that:

“The predicted and devastating impacts of climate change on biodiversity need to be incorporated into the risk calculus of renewable energy development in ways that they are not today. Even as the conservation community partners with the wind industry to minimize impacts of siting renewable energy, it will be necessary to accept some, and perhaps substantial uncertainty about the [local, direct] risk to wildlife populations if we are to limit the greater risks of global extinctions from unlimited climate change.” 

Incorporating the climate and conservation benefits of renewable energy development into siting decisions won’t be easy, of course, as local and immediate concerns can often trump larger goals. The estimates above suggest we will need to expand wind energy in the US by something like 10 GW per year on average through 2050 if we’re to sufficiently limit our contribution to global warming.

Doing so will require the best available science and innovative technologies to limit wildlife risks together with a willingness to make tough choices in the face of uncertainty about those risks to protect species and ecosystems for the long haul. And it will, we propose, require continued constructive dialogue among industry, wildlife conservation and clean energy advocates and policymakers to drive good choices forward.

Please join in the conversation.

The responsibilities for climate change fall on many shoulders, of course — from individuals through the daily choices we make, to emitting industries, to nations. But some are more responsible than others. Drawing upon several years of painstaking research, Heede shows that nearly two-thirds, 63 percent, of all industrial carbon dioxide and methane released to the atmosphere can be traced to fossil fuel and cement production by just 90 entities — investor-owned companies, such as Chevron and Exxon-Mobil; primarily state-run companies, such as Gazprom and Saudi Aramco; and solely government-run industries, such as in the former Soviet Union and China (for its coal production).

The top 20 entities, shown here, produced 48 percent of all industrial carbon pollution, with 15 percent produced by another 70 entities. Look to the paper and to Heede’s website CarbonMajors.org for more detailed figures, methods, and the underlying data.

Heede, director of the Climate Accountability Institute in Snowmass, Colorado, and formerly at the Rocky Mountain Institute, is a long-standing collaborator. We’ve worked together to explore what lessons for climate accountability  might be drawn from understanding how the science of health risks from smoking informed the history of tobacco control. UCS provided funding to ensure that his Climatic Change paper is open-access, available to all readers without charge. And we’re working together with a team of top-notch climate modelers to measure how much of the rise on global average temperature and specific climate change impacts can be attributed to the emissions traced to the major industrial carbon producers Heede identifies. Our first results will be presented at next month’s annual meeting at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco (click on “Fall Meeting Program” at this link and search for “Heede” in “Search Program”).

Public, policy, legal, and investor decisions over the attribution of responsibility for climate change can be informed but not determined by scientific data alone. What kind of dialogue, informed by these data, do we need? Here’s what Heede concludes:

“Most analyses to date, including the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) structure, consider responsibility in terms of nation-states…. However, responsibilities can also be understood in other ways as well, as done in the present analysis tracing emissions to major carbon producers. Shifting the perspective from nation-states to corporate entities—both investor-owned and state-owned companies—opens new opportunities for those entities to become part of the solution rather than passive (and profitable) bystanders to continued climate disruption…..Regulation, litigation, and shareholder actions targeted at the private entities responsible for tobacco-related diseases played a significant role in the history of tobacco control; one could imagine comparable actions aimed at the private entities involved in the production of fossil fuels, particularly insofar as some of the entities included in this analysis have played a role in efforts to impede legislation that might slow the production and sale of carbon fuels.”

Let the conversation begin. And stay tuned here for more science to inform it.

With today’s release of the Summary for Policymakers of Working Group I:  The Physical Science Basis, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) presents us with a very different opportunity to wrestle with our collective response to the slings and arrows of unabated carbon emissions on our warming planet. To be sure, the formal language of the IPCC is far less eloquent than Shakespeare’s, but the authoritative and cautiously-written climate science synthesis provokes us to confront profoundly important questions – questions that are hugely time-sensitive, not timeless.

Much media attention in the lead-up to the release has focused on questions over the pace of warming during the past decade. But the most fundamental questions that the IPCC can inform and motivate us to address are not about current changes, driven largely by past emissions – they are about how the emissions choices we make today and in the near future will affect the scale of warming and climate disruption that our generation imposes on generations to come.

Most often, the question gets framed as “will we stay below 2°C?”, that is, will we reduce emissions swiftly enough to keep global average surface temperatures from rising to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels? Signing the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, world leaders agreed to keep temperature increases resulting from heat-trapping emissions to less than 2° C, a target aimed at limiting dangerously disruptive climate impacts. A policy target informed by science, “2° C” is the formally codified benchmark, the line in the sand by which nations have agreed to measure our collective success in providing  generations to come with a secure climate future.

The IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) tells us that global average surface temperatures have risen about 0.85° C since 1900. It concludes that “cumulative emissions of CO₂ largely determine global mean surface warming by the late 21^st century and beyond” – in other words, the principal driver of long-term warming is total emissions of CO_2. And it finds that having a greater than 66% probability of keeping warming caused by CO₂ emissions alone to below 2° C requires limiting total further emissions to between 370-540 Gigatons of carbon (GtC).

At current rates of CO₂ emissions (about 9.5 GtC per year), we will hurtle past the 2° C carbon budget in less than 50 years. And this conservatively assumes that emissions rates don’t continue on their current upward trajectory of ~3 percent per year.

Future temperature change is projected comparing results of multiple global climate models using four “Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP’s)” – standardized scenarios of possible future concentrations of heat-trapping gases, aerosols, and other human drivers of climate change.

The SPM draws modest direct attention to some of the IPCC’s findings most relevant to the 2° C policy target. Table SPM2, for example, projects temperature changes to the end of this century (2081-2100) relative to a 1986-2005 baseline, rather than to the pre-industrial baseline upon which the 2° C target rests. But one can draw upon the information within the table’s footnote, which quantifies mean projected warming between 1850-1900 and 1986-2005 as 0.61° C to assess warming relative to pre-industrial levels more directly. More in-depth information will be forthcoming in Chapter 12 of the full report, due out next week.

Global carbon dioxide emissions are currently tracking above the highest concentration pathway (RCP8.5), a pathway that the IPCC projects will bring global average surface temperatures well above 2° C by mid-century and above 4° C by 2100. Only projections following the lowest concentration pathway (RCP2.6) result in a mean increase in global average temperatures below 2° C.

There are uncertainties around these temperature projections, of course. The SPM concludes that “global surface temperature change for the end of the 21^st century is likely to exceed 2 °C for RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 and more likely than not to exceed 2° C for RCP 4.5.” And, importantly “warming will continue beyond 2100 under all RCP scenarios except RCP 2.6”.

Can we transition swiftly to a pathway akin to RCP 2.6?  Doing so would require global carbon dioxide emissions reductions of 50% below 1990 levels by 2050 and may well require sustained globally net negative CO₂ emissions, i.e. net removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere in the second half of this century. Some have proposed that this might be achieved by both dramatically reducing carbon emissions, and coupling large-scale expansion of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Beneath its cautious prose, the IPCC report firmly highlights the urgency of our challenge. The science itself does not prescribe specific actions. And the IPCC steers clear of assessing the relative likelihood that political will and policy choices will lead us to follow more closely along one concentration pathway or another. And yet – the IPCC report’s findings make clear that with each passing year of continued high emissions, the prospect of keeping temperatures from rising less than 2°C through emissions reductions alone will become ever more vanishingly small. They challenge us to both redouble efforts to aggressively reduce emissions and to begin the hard work of preparing now to manage the risks of a world that may warm well in excess of 2°C within this century.

Look for more insights from the IPCC Working Group II report (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) due out next March and the Working Group III report (Mitigation) slated for release in April.