"MANKIND IS HEADED TOWARD A CRISIS OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS"
STEP IT UP LEADERS! SAYS EVERYBODY

Climate quick quiz: Which attendee at the LSU Presidents' Forum on Meeting Coastal Challenges stated the above quote regarding climate change?
A) Micah Walker Parkin - Program Director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy & Energy Issues Chair for the Louisiana Sierra Club
B) J. Wayne Leonard - CEO, Entergy Corporation
C) Barry Keim - Louisiana State Climatologist (no, I didn't know we had one either)
D) Governor Kathleen Blanco

Read on to discern the answer.

The GRN executive director, Cyn and I hit the road to Baton Rouge early Tuesday to fight the traffic in time to attend the forum. That's right, we dusted off that relic of the 70's oil embargo and carpooled! Of course, once I signed in and sat down at the forum, I was within spittin' distance of two colleagues who ALSO live in my neighborhood and fired up their own carbon sources up to BR - curse this liberal guilt!

The inception of the Presidents' Forum on Coastal Challenges was to get the big brains, doing important work on coastal issues at Louisiana's universities to present to lawmakers, other scientists, staff of goverment and non-governmental agencies and the general public to share information and to facilitate the collaboration necessary to effectively tackle the challenges facing our eroding coast. A great idea (and one that a number of speakers throughout the day took credit for), and though Global Warming is the issue de jour in the land of Oscar and even Washington DC, and it was great to see it FINALLY getting some attention in Baton Rouge in the context of coastal restoration efforts.

The fuds (ph.d's) to duds (politicians) conversation is critical, but the duds turnout was just that. Besides State Senator Reggie Dupre, no state level politician took the day off to learn anything (yup, 'D' was the wrong answer)

The day kicked off with a presentation on the most recent report (pdf) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the international team of big brains who have been instructing the world on the scientific consensus on our climate crisis. Given by Dave Easterling from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the talk was clear that climate change is happening and it's our fault (anthropogenic).

The message delivered throughout the forum was that global warming-fueled changes in precipitation, storm frequency and intensity, as well as sea-levels will all throw curveballs at our coastal plans and projects. BUT that nature has some practice at hitting junk out of the park if we're quick enough in letting her swing away.

Louisiana State Climatologist Barry Keim (a Chalmatian who laid out a darn fine recitation of big tropical storms and hurricanes which have nailed Louisiana since the 20's FROM MEMORY!), described what climate models have to say about future precipitation. Barry was fairly insistant that it's pretty challenging to figure out exactly what will be going on as to rain and drought into the future, and tended to underscore the uncertainty in all the models he worked with. (That's right, no such bombast from him - if you answered 'C' you were wrong) While Barry's work on rain and drought is important information to the funder of his work (the Department of Transportation - which knows well the impacts of swelling and descication due to rain and drought on our roads), it's even more critical for the sustainability of our coast - because with Barry's prediction of a warmer, dryer future for the central Gulf Coast comes less runoff into our coastal marshes, leading to vegetation die-offs and increased subsidence. Yuck. Next?

A scientist from the Georgia Institute for Technology then dropped the bombshells that the area of the ocean that spawns hurricanes is growing due to increases in sea surface temperature, and that every 1 degree F increase in sea surface temp leads to an increase of 5 named storms per year. This year, the European storm prediction model tells us we'll see 14 Atlantic hurricanes this year. Ouch. Next?

Yet another sobering presentation came from Dr. Waleed Abdalati from NASA who touched on sealevel rise. The current IPCC report is quite conservative in estimating potential sea level rise, and is primarily looking at thermal expansion (similar to how the level of water in your heated pot increases prior to reaching the boiling point), and models weren't sufficiently developed to narrow down the rate of melting of land ice. But it's the land ice that's the elephant in the room.

Here's some staggering news - Potential sea level rise by source:
Terrestrial water storage -- <.5 meters
Mountain glaciers -- .5 meters
Greenland -- 7 meters
Antarctica -- 65 meters

Oh, and for a refrence on those numbers, 1 meter of sea level rise puts South Louisiana under water. Check out this animation for a chilling experience.

BUT we don't know how quickly Greenland and Antarctica are melting, we just know that they are, and that signs are fairly clear that their melt-rate will speed up as the climate warms. Yikes. Next?

The star of the show came at the lunch keynote. J. Wayne Leonard, the CEO of Entergy Corp, NOLA's lone fortune 500 company and one of the largest power providers in the nation (and in some hot water on his bonuses) grabbed everyone's attention by leading off with a flatulence joke. His talk then headed into even less expected territory - in a headline grabbing screed (here as well as the above - that's right, the correct answer is 'b' did you get it right? shoot me an e-mail and we'll send you a 'save our wetlands, save ourselves' t-shirt), Mr. Leonard focused some significant emissions of his own on the failure of government and politicians to address the gathering storm. "Climate change has brought out the worst in spin politics," he stated as he pointed out Entergy's work in bringing down their CO2 emissions 23% below 2000 levels, which puts them below 1990 levels.

While only one of Entergy's top three projects to address global warming passes muster with the most thoughtful and sustainably minded advocates for a smart energy future (a public benefits fund to weatherize the homes of the poor vs. fanciful plans for petroleum coke power generation coupled with CO2 injection to pump more oil and gas out of retired Louisiana fields, and of course, more nukes), in the face of questioning by the most thoughful advocate in the room, the Alliance for Affordable Energy's Micah Walker-Parkin, Mr. Leonard allowed that green power purchasing, renewable energy production standards with solar carve outs, and increased fuel efficiency could and should play a role in mitigating global warming. He then pointed out that if his actions as CEO mimicked those of the current administration in the White House, whether by editing scientific reports to highlight uncertainty and hide risk of a looming threat, he could be thrown into jail under Sarbanes-Oxley reforms passed to stop another Enron.

These statements underscored one more time how outrageous it is that our leaders in Baton Rouge, as well as the folks Louisianans, Mississippians and Gulf Coast citizens send to DC, can't be bothered to get serious about this most serious of issues. In fact, here's Senate Minority Whip, Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott's response to Al Gore's testimony in the House and Senate this week: "Those who believe all his garbage are going to be excited to death,and the rest of us are going to ignore it."

This sad fact is why the GRN is co-sponsoring STEP IT UP 2007! with the Alliance, the Sierra Club, & a ton of other groups planning rallies to Urge lawmakers to get to work to limit greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 - the amount that many scientists say is necessary to avert absolute climate chaos.

So come out to our NOLA event on April 13th, or Baton Rouge on the 13th, or any of over a thousand events around the country on Saturday the 14th. The Fuds have spoken, it's time for the Duds to act!


Aaron Viles is the GRN's Campaign Director