The lede of the day was written by Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times, who grabbed my attention with this first sentence:

A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations.

Interstingly, the report (pdf), put together by the United Nations Environment Program, says that the "atmospheric brown clouds" (ABCs) could be mitigating the impact of climate change on a global basis by as much as 80 percent, though they are in some places amplifying the impacts of greenhouse gases and on the whole are a Very Bad Thing.

Below is a graphic showing different "plumes" where the brown clouds peaked at different times of the year from 2001 to 2003:

The report names 13 "mega-city ABC hotspots": Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi (sorry, guys), Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Tehran.

Having lived in Cairo for about a year and a half, I can testify that the air there is simply awful. I used to start coughing as my plane was landing at the airport outside of town, if only out of habit.

(Hat tip: Matt Yglesias)

Cue the "hot air" jokes.

The United Nations plans to go casual for the month of August in a bid to cut back on electricity use. The idea, inspired by a similar initiative in Japan called "Cool Biz," is that you can turn down the air conditioning when everybody isn't wearing wool and stuffy ties:

The campaign calls for raising the thermostats in most parts of the U.N. Secretariat building from 22.2 C to 25 C [77] and from 21.1 C to 23.9 C [75 F] in the world body's conference rooms.

The initiative would save some 2 million tons of steam during the month of August, or the equivalent of 300 tons of carbon dioxide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, [a U.N. spokesman] said.

I love this quip from David Malone, a former Canadian ambassador:

If the rise in the temperature could cut back on the interminable negotiations running late into the evening for often disappointing results, then the outcome of the initiative would be a very good one."

If it works, the U.N. plans to ask its employees to bundle up in the winter. Now if they can just take care of that smoking problem...

This week's Tuesday Map comes compliments of a new atlas, released today by the United Nations Environment Program. "Africa: Atlas of our Changing Environment," paints a grim picture of the African landscape, as climate change, deforestation, urban pollution, and refugee flows are all taking their toll.

Vegetation and forests in the Jebel Marra foothills in Western Sudan (below) have declined significantly from 1972 (left) to 2006 (right). The authors of the study attribute this change in part to an "influx of refugees from drought and conflict in Northern Darfur." Reuters reports that deforestation is occurring in Africa at twice the world rate.

While many people are familiar with the snows of Kilimanjaro, or lack thereof, climate change appears to be having an impact on smaller peaks as well. The second map illustrates a noticeable shrinking of the Rwenzori Glaciers, which border Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, over just an 18-year period.

Explore more climate change maps -- both in Africa and worldwide -- at UNEP's Web site.

LLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Images

I can't imagine how La Scala intends to stage An Inconvenient Truth:

La Scala officials say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera on the international multiformat hit for the 2011 season at the Milan opera house. The composer is currently artistic director of the Arena in Verona.

After all, the movie was basically an extended PowerPoint presentation. Are they going to put Al Gore's slides up where the libretto usually goes? And what's the plot?

Of course, this only proves that global warming is fake:

For an hour or so Greenland had its own mighty waterfall, flowing secretly at three times the volume of Niagara. A meltwater lake on the surface of a glacier suddenly emptied in July 2006, sending millions of gallons of water through cracks in the ice sheet to the ground where it could affect the movement of the ice.

The lake covered 2.2 square miles near the western edge of the ice sheet and took about 24 hours to drain.

During the most rapid 90 minutes, water was flowing out of the lake at a rate of 2.3 million gallons per second, according to researchers led by Sarah Das of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass.

Under international convention, the minimum flow of Niagara Falls in summer is about 750,000 gallons per second.

Germany's environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, issued a statement today with some strong criticism for George W. Bush's big climate change speech. But the harshest words were actually in the title of his press release:

Gabriel criticises Bush's Neanderthal speech. Losership, not Leadership".

With a title like that, why even bother with a statement?

(Hat tip: The Lede)

President Bush's call today to stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 shouldn't be seen as any kind of White House policy shift.

If you think about it, he's really saying that it's fine for emissions to grow until then. Bush's speech today was a fairly vague and empty statement of intent, lacking in any plan to actually set specific emissions targets or reduce the United States' output. And when it does come time to halt growth, what Bush hails are the tired fallbacks: fuel-economy standards (not very helpful) and those frequently hyped and rarely identified "new technologies" that will surely do something. And since something's on the way, there's surely no need to reduce or cap today. Or so goes the thinking.

Bush devoted the majority of his remarks to what he still finds wrong with the emissions debate, making it clear how truly opposed he is to any type of regulation. He threw in a jab at the Supreme Court and its "unelected judges" for good measure:

The Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act were never meant to regulate global climate change. For example, under a Supreme Court decision last year, the Clean Air Act could be applied to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

If these laws are stretched beyond their original intent, they could override the programs Congress just adopted, and force the government to regulate more than just power plant emissions. They could also force the government to regulate smaller users and producers of energy from schools and stores to hospitals and apartment buildings. [...]

Decisions with such far-reaching impact should not be left to unelected regulators and judges. (my emphasis)

In short, the climate speech doesn't really alter the political landscape on the issue. Not a surprise, really, though I'd expected something a little more ground-shifting this morning when I read the WSJ's advance on the speech and noticed the hilariously sad Bush hedcut included therein. That Bush looks like he's had to make concessions. Apparently, though, 3-D George didn't agree.

(On a side note about hilarious hedcuts, who at the WSJ hates Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai? Because this is not a flattering rendering.)

RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

J. Scott Armstrong, a forecasting expert and climate-change skeptic from the Wharton School of Business, thinks he is smarter than former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore. Armstrong believes he can "make more accurate forecasts of annual mean temperatures than those that can be produced by current climate models," and has repeatedly challenged Gore to put money on the proposition. Today is Gore's deadline to take him up on the wager.

If Gore accepted the bet, both men would deposit $10,000 into an escrow account that would be distributed by the winner to the charity of his choice in 2018, when the contest would end. The prize goes to whomever has the closest-to-accurate predictions of average temperature, over one to 10-year horizons, at 10 independently chosen weather stations around the globe over the course of the next decade.

Armstrong's Global Warming Challenge came in June of last year, as Gore revelled in the success of his film An Inconvenient Truth and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was preparing its most grim predictions on climate change to date. Armstrong and a colleague published a paper (pdf) entitled "Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts" blasting the IPCC models as unscientific.

Armstrong initially challenged the former veep to answer the wager by December 1, 2007, but was rebuffed by Gore's representatives. Armstrong, in a letter to Gore, then granted an extention of the wager deadline until today, March 26th, 2008. Gore has again declined (click here for the Armstrong's account of the exchange between the two camps), but he still has a few hours in which to change his mind.

I hope he doesn't. Gore is right to dismiss this antagonistic offer. Subjecting complex scientific issues to a game of gotcha only heightens the conflict surrounding the issue, and doesn't bring us any closer to bridging political divides or solving problems that most scientists agree will plague us for generations to come.

But if Armstrong wants people to put their money where their mouths are, perhaps he would agree to this wager: Both he and Gore can purchase vacation homes of equal value, Gore's house on high ground, and Armstrong's on the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu. Then we'll see who's really full of hot air.

Increasing global demand for food along with biofuels production has meant that rising food prices have been hitting our paychecks hard. But the news will likely only get worse.

In a recently released National Bureau of Economic Research paper, Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University and Michael J. Roberts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal the effects of climate change on crop yields in the United States. The results are alarming: According to Schlenker and Roberts's model, which employs data on crop yields in the United States between 1950 and 2004 along with a matching weather/temperature data set, yields are likely to diminish significantly by the end of the century.

Although yields for corn and soybeans increase until temperatures reach about 29° Celcius and yields for cotton increase until about 33° Celcius, temperatures above these thresholds result in a rapid and steep decline thereafter. Global warming is expected to shift temperatures upward and produce more damaging heatwaves. As a result, Schlenker and Roberts predict that corn yields will decrease by 44 percent, soybean yields will drop by 33-34 percent, and cotton yields will decline by 26 to 31 percent -- and that's just under the "slow warming" scenario of the model. If the model assumes "quick warming," the news is even more dire. Corn, soybean, and cotton yields will plummet by 79-80 percent, 71 to 72 percent, and 60 to 78 percent respectively.

To make matters worse, "hotter southern [U.S.] states exhibit the same threshold as cooler states in the north, suggesting there is limited potential for adaptations." In other words, the prospect of crops evolving quickly to adapt to a warmer environment looks slim. Technology, too, appears unlikely to save the day just yet. The authors conclude, "[W]e find no evidence that technological progress increased heat tolerance over the last 55 years: while average yields have gone up almost threefold, the breakpoint where temperatures become harmful is the same in later periods as it is in earlier periods." As the Earth gets hotter, expect inflation to soar. Time to stock up on corn, soybean, and cotton products.

Ethanol is a product that would not exist if Congress didn't create an artificial market for it. No one would be willing to buy it... Yet thanks to agricultural subsidies and ethanol producer subsidies, it is now a very big business - tens of billions of dollars that have enriched a handful of corporate interests - primarily one big corporation, ADM. Ethanol does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase our energy independence, nothing to improve air quality."

-John McCain, November 2003

I support ethanol and I think it is a vital, a vital alternative energy source not only because of our dependency on foreign oil but its greenhouse gas reduction effects.

-John McCain, August 2006, Grinnell, Iowa

The widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded Thursday. The study challenges the rush to biofuels as a response to global warming.

-Associated Press, February 7, 2008 

McCain has more often than not spoken against subsidies for corn-based ethanol, and he therefore claims he's been consistent on this issue. Sort of. Here's him trying to explain his ethanol flip-floppery to Tim Russert back in 2006, when he was still planning to contest Iowa. Judge for yourself whether you find it convincing.

As for Barack Obama, winning Iowa was the linchpin of his electoral strategy, and pander he did. And Hillary Clinton? She says she opposed ethanol subsidies on behalf of her New York constituents, but supports them as a presidential candidate—big time.

Nobody, in other words, looks good on this issue right now.

President Bush had this to say about climate change tonight:

To build a future of energy security, we must trust in the creative genius of American researchers and entrepreneurs and empower them to pioneer a new generation of clean energy technology. Our security, our prosperity, and our environment all require reducing our dependence on oil. Last year, I asked you to pass legislation to reduce oil consumption over the next decade, and you responded. Together we should take the next steps: Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions. Let us increase the use of renewable power and emissions-free nuclear power. Let us continue investing in advanced battery technology and renewable fuels to power the cars and trucks of the future. Let us create a new international clean technology fund, which will help developing nations like India and China make greater use of clean energy sources. And let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases. This agreement will be effective only if it includes commitments by every major economy and gives none a free ride. The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more efficient technology.

It's not clear what Bush means by an "international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases." But nearly everyone I talk to about climate change says that binding emissions targets are the only way it's going to happen. Not only that, but technological innovation of the size and scope needed simply won't happen without those binding caps.

Don't believe me? Consider this graph of patent applications related to the control of sulfur dioxide emissions:

What happened in 1970 and 1971, I wonder? (Disclosure: My father is a coauthor of the paper from which the above graphic was taken.)

JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images

Last summer I wrote briefly about the "nuclear renaissance," the widely anticipated shift to nuclear power as oil prices skyrocket and concern about global warming increases. Such anticipation has given rise to comments like this one, from the head of the French nuclear giant Areva:

We are facing a nuclear renaissance. Nuclear's not the devil anymore. The devil is coal."

Earlier this month, predictions of a nuclear renaissance were seemingly borne out in Britain, when the government announced its support for the construction of new nuclear power plants in the country to replace the current, aging fleet of reactors. All but one of Britain's nuclear power plants, which together supply 20 percent of the country's electricity, are slated to close by 2023. Because the lead time for constructing new reactors is so long (due to regulatory and construction requirements), a decision to replace the current fleet must be made soon.

The fine print of the British government's decision, though, highlights just how uncertain the nuclear renaissance still is. Energy companies will almost certainly pay the full costs of building and operating the new plants in the UK, but it remains unclear whether this will be economically feasible for them—especially since the government hasn't determined how nuclear waste will be disposed and who will pay for it. But the British public is warming to the idea of nuclear power, so there may be increasing pressure on policymakers to find solutions to these issues.

Not so in Germany, where opposition to nukes remains deeply entrenched. A program to completely phase out the country's nuclear power generation has been in place for seven years. Politicians and the public remain supportive of eliminating nuclear power, but polls show most Germans have no sense of how much their country currently relies on nuclear energy. This may have something to do with Germany's near-fanatical fondness for solar power. Polls also show that 63 percent of Germans believe solar power can provide most of their energy needs over the next three decades. (In fact, only 0.4 percent of cloudy Germany's electricity is solar-generated.)

With prospects for a global nuclear renaissance still murky, it should not be surprising that the big nuclear energy companies like Areva in France or RWE and E.ON in Germany are casting their sights on Britain for new business opportunities. Within Germany, though, we may soon find out whether other types of low-carbon energy sources are ultimately feasible for large-scale electricity production. If not, technologies like nuclear energy or carbon capture for coal power will need a second look.

The evidence from Bangladesh:

One unexpected consequence of the rising water levels in Bangladesh is that river erosion has reduced the number of operable ferry berths, so men wait longer to cross, which in turn increases the demand for prostitution.

Ever since I heard a fascinating This American Life episode about the travails of Nauru, I've developed an unhealthy obsession with the tiny Pacific island nation, home to just over 13,000 people.

The plight of Nauru is as comical as it is sad. Ninety percent of the population is unemployed, and Nauru was recently named the world's fattest country. Now that it's no longer considered a laundromat for Russian mafia cash, the country's only real industry is phosphate mining. But that's dying, too. It's a nasty business that has left a giant crater in the center of the amoeba-like island. One of the government's major sources of income since the phosphate began running out has been hosting Australia's unwanted refugees. And now, that's running out, too. Throw a lack of freshwater and climate change into the mix, and tiny Nauru could be the first nation-state of the modern era to disappear. Nauru's upcoming 40th independence celebration, to be held Jan. 31, is going to be a bittersweet affair.

So, it's especially sad that Taiwan's President Chen Shui-Bian is assiduously wooing Nauru's new president, who just came to power in December after the 18-member Nauruan parliament ousted his predecessor. Nauru is one of only 24 countries that still recognize Taiwan as an independent state. But it's not much of an ally, I'm afraid.

Digerati and creative minds of all stripes and backgrounds are gathered in Maine this week for Pop!Tech, one of the coolest conferences around. (You might call it TED before it got too focused on established celebrities at the expense of bold new ideas.)

This isn't just some talkfest in which smart, important people meet other smart, important people, exchange business cards, and pat each other on the back. Today, Pop!Tech launched a carbon offset initiative with eBay. At a special eBay online store, you can calculate the rough amount of carbon you put into the Earth's atmosphere and then choose between three projects that will not only compensate for your pollution, but also do some good in their own right. Learn more about the initiative here or just head straight to the checkout counter.

James Fallows protests the omnipresent frog-boiling metaphor, often used to describe climate change:

Summary of the undisputed science on this point: If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will either die or else be so badly hurt it will wish that it were dead. If you put it in a pot of tepid water and turn on the heat, the frog will climb out -- if it can -- as soon as it gets uncomfortably warm.

Please! It's mean to the frogs to keep talking about them this way. Plus, it drives me crazy! ("You see, Bobby, here's the real cause of global warming: The earth is attached to the sun by a giant rubber band, and first the band was stretched so now it is snapping back and pulling the sun closer, making us hot.") I will give a reward -- maybe some nice Chinese wine? -- to the person who comes up with the best simple metaphor for the underlying idea: that people get habituated to worsening circumstances that they'd reject if they considered them afresh. Only catch: the metaphor, unlike the frog story, can't violate the known facts. I bet that the whole topic of bad marriages would yield some possibilities.

I spoke today with Jim Rogers, chairman, president, and CEO of Duke Energy, and Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), which represents shareholder-owned electrical utilities. Along with leaders of seven other utilities, Rogers announced an initiative "seeking regulatory reform and approvals to increase [the utilities'] investment in energy efficiency by $500 million annually to about $1.5 billion annually." His group's commitment will mean the equivalent of taking nearly 6 million cars off the road, Rogers says, and "avoid the need for 50 500-megawatt peaking power plants."

FP: What is motivating Duke Energy, and why aren't more utilities getting on board?

Jim Rogers: Well, I think the seven utilities who are here today are all very progressive with respect to energy efficiency and addressing the climate issue. And in fact, our entire industry—and Tom Kuhn's here, president of the EEI—as you know, early this year our industry changed our policy position on this and really said, "We support regulation of CO2 consistent with a set of principles." So we are going to work, because we realize our industry has about 35 to 40 percent of all the emissions of CO2, and our assignment is to find a solution. And so we turned our attention to finding the right regulatory framework and finding the right technical solutions so that we can solve the problem.

FP: Does that mean lobbying on Capitol Hill for mandatory emissions caps?

JR: We are now—There's a rich debate going on on the Hill today, and we are very involved.

Tom Kuhn: We're very much in favor of establishing a price for carbon. And I think that we are very strongly behind the whole idea that the only way you're really going to accomplish it ... is also to move these technologies together aggressively. And that means all the technologies, starting with energy efficiency, which is the fifth fuel (but maybe we call it the first fuel, too), but then renewables, moving the transmission that it takes to get the renewables to market; moving nuclear energy forward, which is a zero-emission technology ... We now generate 50 percent of our electricity with coal. If we want to maintain coal as an important option for the future, we've got to move forward aggressively with carbon capture and storage. So, it is the full basket of things that we need to do, the full toolset that we need to make our global climate goals, but we fully agree with the need to get a price for carbon.  

JR: President Clinton really said it pretty well today with respect to this whole energy efficiency issue. While we call it the fifth fuel, it's really the number one option right now. And while people and politicians are debating how to move forward with climate regulation and how to develop an international framework, we can go today to work in implementing these energy efficiency regulatory changes and investing in energy efficiency as a way to reduce our carbon footprint right now. And what we need is action right now.

Make no mistake: Self-interest is motivating these guys, who are uneasy about patchwork, state-level regulation and fear the uncertainty that could come from not having a seat at the table. EEI opposes, for instance, a federal renewable portfolio standard that would require a certain percentage of electricity to come from renewable sources. Moreover, it's far from clear what, exactly, the proposed regulatory reforms entail. They certainly deserve scrutiny going forward. Still, the fact that they're seeing the light on energy efficiency is a good thing.

MARK WILSON/Getty Images News

It's not easy defending the Bush administration's delaying tactics on climate change, but U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson made a go of it this morning.

Asked by an aggressive Tom Brokaw about whether Republicans in the U.S. Congress are doing anything on climate change, U.S. Treasury Secretary paused for a second, and conceded dryly that there is a "wide variety of knowledge" on the Hill about the issue.

Asked about a global deal based around binding emissions targets, proposed by Tony Blair, Paulson said, "it just depends on what your expectations are."

Yesterday, I spoke with Reverend Jim Ball, who is president and CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Movement and a senior advisor to the Evagelical Climate Initiative. Rev. Ball was a panelist here at CGI, and he's a major player in the "creation care" movement, an initiative by some evangelical Christians to influence the climate-change debate:

FP: Where does the evangelical community fit into the U.S. political landscape?

Rev. Jim Ball: Depending on how you define "evangelical," we represent about 25 percent of the population. So, a significant amount. And obviously a good number of us vote and so political leaders tend to take what we do a little seriously. We think we can make an important contribution in terms of getting those who may not listen to other voices. They may not listen to environmentalists or they may not listen to former Vice President Al Gore, but maybe they'll listen to us and give this issue a hearing. We've got Republican governors really taking a lead now. We have Governor Crist [of Florida] and Governor Schwarzenegger [of California]; we have Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who is an evangelical Christian himself, taking bold leadership steps. Governor Pawlenty is now the chair of the National Governor’s Association and he has made energy and climate his issue.

FP: What about President Bush? Have you gotten an audience with him?

JB: Well, no, not literally. He is aware of our work and his senior advisors who deal with the religious community are obviously knowledgeable about what we're doing. But if the president is not ready to take significant action, we're not waiting for him. We're going to continue to move forward. I think the president's getting together of leaders of the 16 large emitters is a positive step. But if all that they agree to do is voluntary measures, we've been doing that for 17 years. We've tried voluntary and it hasn't worked. We need a mandatory approach so that all business decisions that have anything to do with global warming, they understand that there is a bit of a cost there. We believe in the markets. We believe that once you get the price right, that the price really reflects the true cost of what you are doing. The free markets are going to solve this problem, I am totally and utterly confident.

FP: So you think it is doable, that climate change can be stopped?

JB: We say we are going to help solve global warming, with the Lord’s help. It is a huge task to solve global warming and there are going to be serious ramifications throughout this century. But there are so many positive benefits to addressing this issue: reducing pollution that harm’s human health; reducing mercury pollution that impacts the unborn; making our industries more energy efficient; creating the technologies that we can sell to others. There is no way that energy is not going to be a growth industry in this century. Why shouldn't we be the ones selling the technologies to everybody to else? As a Christian, I shouldn't be so biased about who sells it. But United States needs to get in this game, because once we really start to lead, then the world is really going to get seriously engaged and involved in this issue.

FP: The Bali conference in December is shaping up to be a huge deal, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has made it a top priority. What is your organization looking for from President Bush in Bali?

JB: Ideally, we would love for him to go there and say, "We are ready to make a commitment on a mandatory approach." I don’t think that is very likely. But if we can't have that, if what they are doing now with the 16 other nations can be a positive compliment to what they are doing in Bali, then that would be helpful.

SPENCER PLATT/Getty Images

It seems that Angelina Jolie and hubby Brad Pitt have taken the advice of FP contributor Rob Long to heart and are deploying their star power in a major way. At a packed press conference at the annual conference of the Clinton Global Initiative this afternoon, Jolie helped launch a "historic education partnership for children of conflict" in partnership with CGI, UNICEF, Save the Children, and a number of other organizations. (Just to give you a sense of the atmosphere in the room, a casual flip of Jolie's hair set off every flash bulb in the room, not to mention a few camera phones.)

As for Brad, introduced earlier today as "the sexiest man alive," he debuted a plan in concert with famed green designer Bill McDonough to build 150 new "affordable and sustainable homes" in New Orleans's devastated Ninth Ward. (For you gossips out there, Angelina and Brad never appeared publicly in the same room today at CGI, as far as I know—though they did show up together last week for the New York premiere of "Darfur Now".) 

But my favorite moment today by far was when famed primatologist Jane Goodall proved that she can still speak chimpanzee. You can download or listen to the mp3 clip of Goodall here.