The Climate Post: Romney, Obama Make History With Failure to Mention Climate Change in Last Debate

The final foreign-policy-focused presidential debate made history Monday when candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama failed to mention climate change. Despite historic drought and record melting of Arctic sea ice, failure to visit the topic marked the first time since the 1980s climate change hasn't come up in a presidential debate. Some argued the climate should have come up, as almost every major international issue -- food prices, military operations and energy access -- have an embedded climate component. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience in Georgetown recently, energy, climate and foreign policy are all really deeply intertwined.

Energy -- the yin to climate's yang -- did come up Monday, it was not nearly as dominant a topic as it was in the second debate last week. Clean energy was mentioned in a short exchange, with Obama and Romney examining the role basic research funding plays in keeping pace with other nations.

It took getting away from the Republicans and Democrats, but three of the four third-party presidential candidates -- Gary Johnson, Virgil Goode, Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson -- did treat climate change as a serious issue. In a debate televised on C-SPAN Tuesday, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party called climate change "a greater long-term security risk to the United States than terrorism."

Is the U.S. Helping Asian Economies Save on Energy Costs?

So far in 2012, U.S. coal exports are setting a record pace. In fact, they are forecasted to reach near 125 million tons -- surpassing the previous all-time high of 113 million tons set in 1981. Growing demand in Asia may be a factor, raising the question of whether taxpayers are essentially helping Asian economies save on energy costs. ThinkProgress breaks down the issue ultimately concluding "Americans are paying for large companies to dig up coal at bargain prices, sell it to other countries at market prices, and subsidize their global warming pollution."

The world's largest producer of oil, meanwhile, plans to switch to 100 percent renewable energy. Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud said he sees solar playing a large role in the transition -- with the nation's vast oil reserves being used to create other goods such as plastics and polymers, rather than burned in power plants. It turns out that Saudi Arabia's days as world's largest oil producer may be numbered: The U.S. is now on track to take the spot after a recent surge in production that included the largest one-year gain in over 60 years.

In the U.S., more than 200 scientists are protesting the use of two invasive grasses for advanced biofuel feedstock under the nation's Renewable Fuel Standard. In a letter sent to the Obama administration, they write: 

"While we appreciate the steps that federal agencies have made to identify and promote renewable energy sources and to invest in second- and third-generation sources of bioenergy, we strongly encourage you to consider the invasive potential of all novel feedstock species, cultivars, and hybrids before providing incentives leading to their cultivation." 

The New York Times says the authors fear a repeat of what happened when government-financed programs introduced kudzu -- "the vine that ate the South" -- in the 1930s.

Convictions a "Fundamental Misunderstanding of Science"

An Italian court this week sentenced a group of scientists to six years in prison for failing to properly communicate the risk ahead of a deadly 2009 earthquake. Mother Earth called the courts actions a "fundamental misunderstanding of what science can and can't do." The verdict outraged those in the scientific community, who claim predicting the absolute date, time and risk is nearly impossible." The real problem is helping people understand how risk works," Erik Klemetti, a geoscientist at Denison University in Ohio, told LiveScience. "You can't expect that scientists can come in and tell people 'an earthquake will happen here on Oct. 28, 2013.' Instead, they must understand that there is an increased probability of earthquakes or eruptions in certain areas -- and that they must take responsibility for understanding the risks of where they live."

The Guardian reports these claims may be a bit overstated, noting:

"... the prosecutors, and the devastated families they represent, are well aware that scientists cannot predict earthquakes. The accusation they make is not that experts failed to predict the earthquake, but that they failed to properly assess and communicate the risks, telling residents they were safe without any scientific basis for doing so."

Hurricane Sandy: Will Obama and Romney talk about climate change now?

Hurricane Sandy: Will Obama and Romney talk about climate change now?

I am monitoring the progress of Hurricane Sandy as the Category 1 storm spins toward the East Coast, and we all anxiously wait to see whether it’s going to make its predicted hard left in the mid-Atlantic or hold off for a more northern landfall.

Like many reading this, I have friends and family  back East, stretching from the Washington, D.C. area to Boston, and I’m sure some of them are in for some very uncomfortable, powerless days. I talked with my younger sister in Silver Springs, Md., this morning — her neighborhood almost always blacks out in big storms — and while I haven’t talked with my 91-year-old father yet, he volunteers for the D.C. area Red Cross, so it’s likely he’s already busy preparing to set up emergency shelters.

Certainly utilities across the country are all on high alert — check out the Edison Electric Institute’s Twitter feed, where East Coast power companies are posting links to their emergency plans and utilities from Alabama, Mississippi and Texas have said they are  putting together crews to send east.  People have been warned to prepare for power outages of 7 to 10 days.

The danger is that Sandy is going to hook up with a monster nor’easter blowing in from the north, becoming one big mess — rain, snow, high winds and coastal surges — that will park itself over the East Coast.  If you want to see something really scary, take a look at the computer models on the National Hurricane Center website of the rainfall potential if the two storms collide.

While the mainstream news coverage thus far is focusing mostly on the storm itself and the emergency preparations underway, questions are surfacing on weather and climate savvy websites about whether and to what extent climate change is contributing to this unprecedented confluence of extreme weather events.

Jordan Nichols writing on Climate Science Watch, nails the irony of the storm arriving just as President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have been criticized for not addressing climate change in any of their three televised debates.

Indeed climate change does not wait for any mortal — or election cycle for that matter.  But you have to see the irony in this unfortunate series of events.  As media and well-known activists call out the candidates for ducking climate change, it seems Mother Nature is sending us a message . . . “you can ignore climate change all you want, but its not going away.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I am sure these climatic events would have occurred whether or not the current administration was talking about climate change, but it does seem odd.  The trend of climate silence has coincided with unprecedented extreme weather in the United States during the last few years.  As politicians and environmental groups strayed away from even speaking the words climate change, it has only gotten worse.

Exactly how climate change may be contributing to the intensity and unprecedented nature of this storm is complex, as Andrew Freedman points out in his post on Sandy on Climate Central. Part of the convergence of different weather patterns all coming together on the East Coast includes a high pressure area, called a blocking high, near Greenland, he writes.

Recent studies have shown that blocking patterns have appeared with greater frequency and intensity in recent years, which some scientists think may be related to the loss of Arctic sea ice as a result of global warming. The 2012 sea ice melt season, which just ended one month ago, was extreme, with sea ice extent, volume, and other measures all hitting record lows.  The loss of sea ice opens up large expanses of open water, which absorbs more of the incoming solar radiation and adds heat and moisture to the atmosphere, thereby helping to alter weather patterns. Exactly how weather patterns are changing as a result, however, is a subject of active resesarch.

Dr. Jeff Masters, writing on the Weather Underground website, also spoke about the impact of the warming of the Atlantic Ocean, particularly off New England:

If Sandy makes landfall farther to the north near Maine and Nova Scotia, heavy rains will be the main threat, since the cold waters will weaken the storm significantly before landfall. The trees have fewer leaves farther to the north, which will reduce the amount of tree damage and power failures compared to a more southerly track. However, given that ocean temperatures along the Northeast U.S. coast are about 5°F above average, there will be an unusually large amount of water vapor available to make heavy rain. If the trough of low pressure approaching the East Coast taps into the large reservoir of cold air over Canada and pulls down a significant amount of Arctic air, the potential exists for the unusually moist air from Sandy to collide with this cold air from Canada and unleash the heaviest October rains ever recorded in the Northeast U.S., Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. This Northeast U.S. scenario would probably cause damages near $100 million.

Another point Nichols makes is key — the computer models being used to predict how Sandy may or may not interact with the nor’easter come with a big caveat. They are trying to make sense of weather patterns that are, as repeatedly noted, unprecedented. We are increasingly moving into weather we can’t control, can’t predict and for which we are increasingly unprepared.

Some climate scientists have predicted that the really extreme impacts of climate change, which could occur fast and furiously, will be preceded by a period of increasingly erratic weather. What we don’t know is where the tipping point is; we have no precedents, no computer models.

And that makes the political silence and lack of strong leadership even more dangerous.

Certainly in the coming days, Obama and Romney will make statements on the storm — sympathy and promises of help for the victims, rallying cries for the country to come together.

What we really need to hear is how they are going to meet the mounting challenges of climate change and prepare the nation for the perfect storm of environmental, economic and social upheavals that may lie ahead.