Daily Score Blog

I'm not going to pull punches:  The Oregonian ran an opinion piece on climate science, penned by columnist David Reinhard, that simply isn't up to the standards of responsible journalism.  Not only does it get basic facts wrong, it displays a disturbing arrogance, coming from someone who's arguing that others should display a little humility.

The Oregonian's readers deserve better. 

Just wanted to let folks know that we have an updated and corrected version of our grizzly bear range-map. The former version of the map incorrectly showed that grizzly bears no longer live on the southeast Alaskan Islands of Chichagof, Baranof, or Admiralty. In fact, grizzlies are still present -- and in extremely high numbers. Still, the major lesson of the map -- that grizzly range is drastically reduced -- is probably the more important point that the map makes.

An animated version can be downloaded here; static versions in several sizes can be found here.

A big hat tip is in order to sharp-eyed reader Bill Walker of Billings, Montana who caught the mistake.

Draft is here.

Just the major points. First off, the proposal is basically pretty good. We should keep in mind that what WCI is doing represents a big -- gigantic -- step in the right direction for the climate. So I'll raise a glass to everyone who's worked so hard on the WCI proposal so far.

But there's room for improvement. Below, I highlight the core areas of the proposal. These are bedrock issues that make me concerned.

Transportation is in. Sort of.
It appears that transportation fuels – the region’s largest source of carbon pollution – will be delayed until 2015, the second “compliance period.” The document is not crystal clear, but in Section 6, “Setting the Regional Cap,” it says that the regional cap will be adjusted in 2015 to add both transportation and the natural gas that is used in homes and businesses. (See 6.3). It's critical that we included transportation fuels ASAP.

Auctioning is in limbo.
WCI appears to be punting on this hugely important question. In past communications they’ve said that states and provinces will be required to auction a minimum percentage of between 25 and 75 percent of their allowances. In today’s draft (see 8.7) they say this:

The issue of establishing a minimum percentage of allowances subject to auction by each Partner is still under discussion by the Partners. The Partners expect to make a recommendation on this issue by Fall, 2008.

That's not wildly helpful. But in defense of WCI, they do include quite a bit of language about how the value of allowances are to be used (Sections 8.2 and 8.3) most of which are clearly good public interest goals.

Offsets are on the table.
WCI is apparently considering allowing offsets in the amount of 10 percent of any regulated firm’s allowances. They say, “not greater than 10 percent of an individual entity’s or facility’s compliance obligation” (section 9.2). (A firm's compliance obligation is its total amount of carbon emissions.) Since WCI is shooting for a 15 percent reduction, allowing a firm to submit offsets to cover 10 percent of its total emissions is tantamount to allowing offsets to cover more than half of all the WCI reductions. In my judgment, 10 percent is probably much too high a figure. We shouldn’t have so much confidence in offsets. (For more on the trouble with offsets, see this excellent 2-page summary from economist Chris Busch with the Union of Concerned Scientists. It's California-centric, but completely relevant to WCI.)

A strange loophole, maybe.
Finally, there’s some odd language sprinkled throughout the document that appears to nudge open the door for some states or provinces to avoid capping transportation fuels. In Section 1.4, for example, the document says:

WCI Partners acknowledge that individual jurisdictions may instead utilize comparable fiscal measures, such as British Columbia’s carbon tax, to address transportation fuels and fuel use by residential and commercial sources.

That would be a mistake. Consistency and comprehensiveness are key to the program's success. To use this particular example, BC's carbon tax can easily integrate with a cap and trade program (the taxes would basically become a "reserve price" in the auction system). But a legal cap on carbon is important because it makes certain we meet our climate targets.

I thought this was interesting.  The Texas highway department – Texas, no less! -- says that roads simply don’t pay for themselves.

… no road pays for itself in gas taxes and fees. For example, in Houston, the 15 miles of SH 99 from I-10 to US 290 will cost $1 billion to build and maintain over its lifetime, while only generating $162 million in gas taxes. That gives a tax gap ratio of .16, which means that the real gas tax rate people would need to pay on this segment of road to completely pay for it would be $2.22 per gallon. This is just one example, but there is not one road in Texas that pays for itself based on the tax system of today. Some roads pay for about half their true cost, but most roads we have analyzed pay for considerably less. To conclude, in the SH 99 example, since the traffic volume for that road doesn't generate enough fuel tax revenue to pay for it, revenues from other parts of the state must be used to build and maintain this corridor segment. The same is true across the state, meaning that, as revealed by the tax gap analysis, overall revenues are not sufficient to meet the state’s transportation needs.

There may be some political shenanigans at play here that, not being a Texan, I know nothing about. (Haven't I heard that Texas is trying to build a massive toll-road corridor?) Still, the idea that roads don't pay for themselves -- and instead, must sap money from other funding sources -- seems like quite an admission from a highway department. Perhaps there are lessons here for road construction projects all across North America, not just in Texas.

Hot on the heels of the news that Washington is once again home to wolves, the Oregonian today reports that biologists have confirmed wolf packs in Oregon.

...Oregon's first reproducing pack of wild wolves since the predators were exterminated from the state decades ago.

State biologist Russ Morgan and another biologist heard the howls of at least two adult wolves and two pups in the predawn hours Friday in northern Union County, north of La Grande, Morgan said Monday. The biologists themselves were howling under a bright moon, trying to produce an audible response from wolves. That's a common method of surveying for the animals.

For a while we've known that individual wolves have made their way back into Oregon, but now this is sign of an actual resident population. There's every reason to believe that wolves will flourish here:

The biologists heard the Oregon wolf pack on the edge of the 177,000-acre Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, part of the Umatilla National Forest. It is rugged, remote and thickly forested, with plenty of potential prey for the wolves, Morgan said.

This is great news for Washington too because the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness overlaps state boundaries in the sparsely populated corners of southeast Washington and northeast Oregon (in fact, about two-thirds of that protected wilderness is in Washington). If you haven't spent any time in northeast Oregon, it's difficult to convey how rugged and wild it is. There's the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest (with its Eagle Cap Wilderness), the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area (with its Hell's Canyon Wilderness), and many, many miles of scrub and rangeland.

Time to head back into my pillow fort:

Nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃) can be called the missing greenhouse gas: It is a synthetic chemical produced in industrial quantities; it is not included in the Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases or in national reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); and there are no observations documenting its atmospheric abundance...With 2008 production equivalent to 67 million metric tons of CO₂, NF₃ has a potential greenhouse impact larger than that of the industrialized nations' emissions of PFCs or SF₆, or even that of the world's largest coal-fired power plants.

Yoiks.  So there's at least one greenhouse gas that's NOT recognized by international global warming protocols, but IS a significant climate concern.  Great.  Just great.  Of course, the gas is used in tiny quantities -- but molecule-for-molecule, NF₃ is about 17,000 times as potent as CO2 in warming up the atmosphere.

Still, there's a pretty straightforward solution here: just add nitrogen trifluoride to the list of climate-warming pollutants that are covered under any global warming regulatory system or GHG tax.  (Are you listening, WCI? How 'bout you, British Columbia?)

[Hat tip to Brandon.]

The great thing about  this Swiss study on tap water vs. bottled water is that it takes a boring, commonsense intuition, and makes it interesting -- just by providing a few numbers.

In this case, the intuition is that bottled water uses more energy—and thus releases more greenhouse gases—than plain old tap water.  The point is really obvious:  just think about the energy that’s required to manufacture bottles, and you can pretty easily guess that bottled water will be more energy-intensive than water from the tap. In fact, it’s so obvious, it almost seems pointless to do a study

But it turns out that there’s a very interesting point to be made:  the gap between bottled water and tap water is simply enormous.  Based on European data used in the Swiss study, water straight from the tap has about one half of one percent of the climate-warming impact of the most benign bottled water -- and less than a thousandth of the overall environmental impact of the most energy-intensive bottled water.

In the chart to the left, I’m deliberately leaving the numbers vague.  The two bars actually average of a number of different figures – different drinking water systems, bottling options, and water temperatures.  So the numbers are a bit meaningless.  Still, they give a sense of the magnitude of the difference between bottled water and tap water.

In this case, the most important message isn't simply that tap water is better -- it's the raw scale of the gap between tap water and bottled water.  Of course, bottled water doesn't rank particularly high on the list of climate offenders, compared to cars and trucks, coal fired power plants, and the like. Still, if you’re a bottled-water drinker, and you're looking for a quick and easy way to reduce your carbon footprint – and you’re lucky enough to live in a place with clean, tasty tap water – playing taps (ha!) for your bottled water is a pretty good place to start.

Last week, we got proof-positive that wild wolves are back in Washington. An animal that was struck and killed on a road in northeast Washington was genetically confirmed to be a wolf, not a wolf-dog hybrid. A good article in the Spokane Spokesman-Review provides some context:

Numerous reports of wolves seen or photographed in remote parts of northeast Washington in recent years suggest the animals are dispersing from Idaho, Montana and Canada. But those unconfirmed sightings, primarily in Pend Oreille and Stevens counties, might have been of wolf-hybrids, which Luers said appear nearly identical to gray wolves.

And:

Last year a rancher near Laurier, Wash., found a calf that had been partially eaten by a predator with large canine tracks. Some officials were convinced that a wolf – not a hybrid – killed the calf. But Luers noted wolf-hybrids have been known to kill livestock as well.

And:

While no physical proof has been found, state wildlife officials believe wolf packs have moved into Okanogan County. In response to reports of sightings, biologists surveyed the west half of the county and heard vocalizations indicating adult and juvenile wolves were in the area. The biologists visited several locations and made wolf-like howls, and they heard multiple adult and juvenile howls in response.

If you're not familiar with Washington's geography, the significance is that these are pretty different areas. Northeast Washington (Pend Oreille and Stevens County) is a fair distance from the places in western Okanogan County where wolves are alleged to be in residence.

A number of news articles have come out in the past few days referencing a new poll that says Californians are shifting their transportation habits because of high gas prices. From the Mercury News:

Seventy-eight percent of those polled report doing less driving, and healthy percentages are driving smaller vehicles [59%], carpooling [28%] and - gasp! - taking transit [25%].

The flip side of this is that they are also rethinking their views on offshore drilling, nuclear energy, and liquefied natural gas:

Fifty-one percent of Californians oppose new oil and gas wells in state tidelands, a drop of 11 percentage points from peak levels and the slimmest majority opposed to offshore drilling in 27 years.

This is quite possibly the most idiotic argument I've ever heard against cap and trade. Why is it bad?

By turning carbon emissions into commodities that can be bought and sold, cap-and-trade policies could remove the stigma from producing such emissions... the purchase of the right to emit greenhouse gases would likely reduce any stigma associated with doing so. Emission levels, consequently, could rise.  

Oh, lordy that's a good one. But that's from an op-ed in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor written by Justin Danhof from The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative DC think-tank.

Could he be right? Could it be that the only thing standing between us and a climate crisis is stigma? We need more guilt!

According to Danhof, just a few more lectures from James Hansen and then Exxon executives will feel so guilty that they will reduce their emissions by 80 percent. Or something. 

Danhof supports his thesis by drawing on a study showing that social stigma was a more effective motivator in Israeli daycare centers than were fines for parents who arrived late. No, seriously, this is his strongest argument -- he leads with it -- it was true in six Israeli daycares. [Cue the drum sting.]

Is this guy a cut-up or what?

The rest of the piece is a mishmash of non-sequiters and misunderstandings. But here's the thing about cap and trade: it has a cap, a legal limit on carbon. With a carbon cap, you get guaranteed carbon reductions on a set schedule. That's sort of the main thing. You don't need Danhof's approach, which would presumably subject drive-alone commuters to weekly viewings of "An Inconvenient Truth" to gin up stigma so that they'll ride the bus.

I don't know, maybe it's true that cap and trade might incidentially remove the stigma from carbon pollution. I mean, under a carbon cap we'd be assured of a climate-sustainble path -- it would guaranteed by the legal reduction schedule -- so folks might not worry so much about individual actions. Maybe. But I think most folks see that as a virtue. Cap and trade: no guilt required.

Ontario officially joins the Western Climate Initiative as a full partner. Sweet.

Some Americans may not fully realize the significance of this. So for my fellow Yankees (and with apologies to readers north of the border)... Ontario is the California of Canada in the sense that it has more people and economic activity than any other province. On the other hand, Ontario is the Michigan of Canada in the sense that it has a huge auto manufacturing base. And yet Ontario is also the New York of Canada in the sense that it is the seat of the country's biggest city, major banks, and cultural headquarters. And finally, Ontario is the Washington DC of Canada in the sense that it is home to the nation's capitol.

So it's a big deal.

Ontario adds nearly 12.9 million people to the Western Climate Initiative. In combination with British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec -- already members of WCI -- nearly 80 percent of Canada is now under a hard carbon cap. In political terms, this means that prime minister Stephen Harper and the province of Alberta (aka the Texas of Canada) will now have to go off and play by themselves. It's a giant poke in the eye to Canada's lax federal leadership on climate change.

And it's terrific news for the WCI states too. Ontario has a GDP comparable to the combined economies of Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Utah. And it means that the WCI is now home to nearly 85 million North Americans.

Last week I wrote about how T. Boone Pickens was winning me over

As Joseph Romm points out on Grist, T. Boone Pickens' energy plan is "half brilliant, half dumb." 

Half of it is great -- the big push on wind power. Heck, even the Bush administration says wind power could be 20 percent of U.S. electricity. But the notion that we would use the wind power to free up natural gas in order to fuel a transition to natural gas vehicles makes no sense. Why would we go to the trouble of switching our vehicle fleet from running on one expensive fossil fuel to another expensive fossil fuel? Any freed up natural gas should be used to displace coal ...

It's here! The largest 40 cities in America, ranked by their walkability. Plus, every single neighborhood in those cities -- all 2,508 of them -- rank-ordered for your walking pleasure.

** In a surprise upset, San Francisco edges out NYC for top honors in walkability. Who else made it into the Top 10?

** The Northwest's most walkable neighborhood is in Portland. It's the Pearl District, no suprise, ranking as the 15th best neighborhood for walking in the nation. (Seattle's best showing, Pioneer Square, is 18th). See the rest of America's best walking neighborhoods.

** But Seattle is the Northwest's walking leader, earning a higher overall score than Portland. (The Emerald City ranks 4 slots higher than the Rose City.) Still, both Northwest metropolises do well by national standards. Who doesn't do so well?

** Plus, there are all kinds of new goodies at the Walk Score site. You can take a photo tour of a walking oasis in an unwalkable city. Or you can learn the secrets of walkable cities. You read the Walk Score blog. And then you can help improve America's Walk Score.

Today's release from Walk Score is truly path-breaking. It's the first time this stuff has been quantified and compared on such a large scale. And it's a huge step toward creating great urban places. Walkable neigbhorhoods are easier on our pocketbooks; good for our waistlines; great for kids, older folks and others who don't drive; and helpful to the whole planet. All of us here at Sightline extend a big fat "Congratulations!" to our friends at Walk Score. Walk on, you guys!

Readers, you already knew all about Walk Score, right? We've written about it here and here, among other places. And we loved it when they roled out an early release of the Seattle neighborhood rankings last month.

Via Signpost, a terrific new development from Washington State Parks: a hiker shuttle up Snoqualmie Pass. I'm feeling lazy, so I'll just quote liberally from Andrew Engelson:

The new "Bus-Up 90 Shuttle" will run Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and starts at Cedar Falls, which is near Rattlesnake Lake outside North Bend. The shuttle runs to Hyak, east of Snoqualmie Pass. The ride will be air-conditioned and the shuttle has room for backpacking gear, plus a trailer to provide transport for bikes. The shuttle is primarily intended for folks intending to hike or bike down the John Wayne Trail, a 20.5-mile gravel path that follows the old Milwaukee Railroad.

The shuttle will also provide return service and apparently can make stops at trailheads along the western I-90 corridor if you pre-arrange it. There will be three departures daily from Cedar Falls and Hyak.

Schedule and directions are here.

Next week, the Western Climate Initiative will release a proposal outlining the program's cap and trade design.* In the proposal, we should expect to learn what share of carbon permits will be auctioned (and will therefore generate public revenue), and what share will be given away for free to emitters.

Auctioning is important -- extremely important -- because, among other virtues, it is the best way to promote fairness for people with moderate incomes. We've had lots to say about auctioning in the past, and we'll have lots to say about it in the future. In the meantime, for comparison purposes, I thought it might be helpful to share the auctioning percentages from the cap and trade program in the Northeast, called RGGI. Here goes:

Connecticut.................91%

Maine............................100%

Maryland.......................90%

Massachusetts............99%

New Hampshire.........100%**

New Jersey..................100%**

New York......................100%

Rhode Island...............100%

Vermont........................100%

RGGI sets a good standard, one that WCI should strive hard to match or exceed.