Greenland surface melt area nearly 50%, July 26, 2013

Kerry Emanuel research indicates increase in frequency, intensity of hurricanes

Global warming and the future of storms: New research by Kerry Emanuel suggests that hurricanes will become more frequent and more intense


Hurricane Sandy battered towns along the United States east coast. Photograph: Scott Eisen/REUTERS

by John Abraham, Climate Consensus – The 97%, The Guardian, July 26, 2013

We know that changes we are making to the Earth's climate will (and currently are) affecting weather. Some of the impacts are clear to see and easy to quantify. For instance, in some regions, droughts are becoming more severe and longer lasting, while in other locations, the opposite is occurring – more precipitation is falling in heavier downbursts. Two competing issues have to be considered. First, increased temperatures are increasing evaporation rates i.e., drying is occurring. Second, increased temperatures lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere, which results in heavier rain/snow events. In regions that are currently dry, the first issue dominates, whereas in wet regions, the second is more important.

Despite these competing effects, scientists can detect changes in the drying/wetting patterns around the globe, and these are linked to human emissions.

For other weather patterns, the evidence is not as clear. For instance for tornadoes, our observations just aren't good enough to make categorical conclusions. Reliable records in the U.S. started in the early 1950s, but since then, there have been improvements in our sensing instruments, which makes it difficult to assess long-term trends.

A similar situation exists for hurricanes and cyclones. We are more able to observe and quantify these storms now, so we have to ask whether increases in these storms is caused by global warming, by improved measurements, or by both. Similarly, we have had very destructive storms in the U.S. recently, but is the damage due to more powerful storms or increased infrastructure in storm areas?

Image of infrared emission from Typhoon Sanba, 2012.

One useful tool that can help answer these questions are climate models. Climate models are like virtual reality computer programs. You can input today's conditions (wind speed, temperatures, pressures, etc.) and predict what will happen in the future. Today's weather forecasts use similar prediction tools. In some respects, "climate" computer programs and "weather" computer programs are different, but there are some clear similarities. "Weather" prediction programs try to give short-term prognostications of local weather a few days into the future. "Climate" predictions attempt to describe long-term trends in large-scale climate patterns years and decades into the future.

So, how can computer programs help us answer the hurricane/cyclone question? With the help of the program, a scientist can play "what if" scenarios and see how future storms will change. What if greenhouse gases increase? What if ocean temperatures increase? What if wind speeds change? How will these things affect the number and strength of hurricanes?

Very recently, a publication appeared by perhaps the world's best-known hurricane scientist, Dr. Kerry Emanuel of MIT. Dr. Emanuel combined global computer simulations with more regional simulations to look into the future at the evolution of storms. What he found was surprising. Because the storms will become stronger and more numerous, within the next century, the power dissipated by future storms will increase by about 50%. What was particularly interesting was that his findings show increases in both strong and weaker cyclones.

Dr. Kerry Emanuel, MIT

I asked Dr. Emanuel to summarize the present understanding of hurricanes, and he responded with the following insights:

• The incidence of high-intensity tropical cyclones (Safir-Simpson categories 3–5) should increase, and the amount of rainfall in these storms should increase, upping the potential for freshwater flooding. These changes will not necessarily occur where tropical cyclones develop and thrive today. "Indeed," wrote Emanuel, "it is likely that there will be decreasing activity in some places, and increasing activity in others; models do not agree on such regional changes."

• Though experts disagree on this point, Emanuel's work suggests that weak events (tropical storms and Cat 1–2 storms) will become more frequent.

• "Very little work has been done on the problem of storm size," wrote Emanuel, "what little research has been done suggests that storm diameters may increase with global temperature. This can have a profound influence on storm surges, which are the biggest killers in tropical cyclone disasters."

Is Dr. Emanuel right? We will have to wait and see. What we do know is he has been right many times in the past, and I am not willing to bet against him. All of this may be academic but it has real human impact. Just ask the people affect by recent storms Katrina, Sandy, Irene, Isaac, Ike, Rita, Wilma, Charley, Ivan, Andrew...you get the point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/jul/26/global-warming-future-of-

Methane gas likely spewing into the oceans through vents in sea floor

Could speed up global warming more efficiently than carbon dioxide

by Denise Brehm, Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT News, September 2, 2009

Scientists worry that rising global temperatures accompanied by melting permafrost in arctic regions will initiate the release of underground methane into the atmosphere. Once released, that methane gas would speed up global warming by trapping the Earth's heat radiation about 20 times more efficiently than does the better-known greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

An MIT paper that appeared online August 29, 2009, in the Journal of Geophysical Research elucidates how this underground methane in frozen regions would escape and also concludes that methane trapped under the ocean may already be escaping through vents in the sea floor at a much faster rate than previously believed. Some scientists have associated the release, both gradual and fast, of subsurface ocean methane with climate change of the past and future.

The image above depicts underground methane gas as it begins to invade fine-grain sediment (shown in yellow) by creating a fracture. In the image at right, the blue circles represent pore spaces where the gas has invaded. RUBEN JUANES

"The sediment conditions under which this mechanism for gas migration dominates, such as when you have a very fine-grained mud, are pervasive in much of the ocean as well as in some permafrost regions," said lead author Ruben Juanes, ARCO Assistant Professor in Energy Studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Ruben Juanes, the ARCO Assistant Professor in Energy Studies. CHRIS CHURCHILL

"This indicates that we may be greatly underestimating the methane fluxes presently occurring in the ocean and from underground into Earth's atmosphere," said Juanes. "This could have implications for our understanding of the Earth's carbon cycle and global warming."

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is more abundant in the Earth's atmosphere now than at any time during the past 400,000 years, according to a recent analysis of air bubbles trapped in ice sheets. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled. It is estimated that about 60 percent of global methane emissions are tied to human activities like raising livestock and coal-mining, with the rest tied to natural sources such as wetlands, decomposing forests and underground deposits known as methane hydrates.

In the hydrate phase, a methane gas molecule is locked inside a crystalline cage of frozen water molecules. These hydrates exist in a layer of underground rock or oceanic sediments called the hydrate stability zone or HSZ. Methane hydrates will remain stable as long as the external pressure remains high and the temperature low. Beneath the hydrate stability zone, where the temperatures are higher, methane is found primarily in the gas phase mixed with water and sediment.

But the stability of the hydrate stability zone is climate-dependent.

If atmospheric temperatures rise, the hydrate stability zone will shift upward, leaving in its stead a layer of methane gas that has been freed from the hydrate cages. Pressure in that new layer of free gas would build, forcing the gas to shoot up through the HSZ to the surface through existing veins and new fractures in the sediment. A grain-scale computational model developed by Juanes and recent MIT graduate Antone Jain indicates that the gas would tend to open up cornflake-shaped fractures in the sediment, and would flow quickly enough that it could not be trapped into icy hydrate cages en route.

"Previous studies did not take into account the strong interaction between the gas-water surface tension and the sediment mechanics. Our model explains recent experiments of sediment fracturing during gas flow, and predicts that large amounts of free methane gas can bypass the HSZ," said Juanes.

Using their model, as well as seismic data and core samples from a hydrate-bearing area of ocean floor (Hydrate Ridge, off the coast of Oregon), Juanes and Jain found that methane gas is very likely spewing out of vents in the sea floor at flow rates up to 1 million times faster than if it were migrating as a dissolved substance in water making its way through the oceanic sediment - a process previously thought to dominate methane transport.

"Our model provides a physical explanation for the recent striking discovery by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of a plume 1,400 meters high at the seafloor off the Northern California Margin," said Juanes. This plume, which was recorded for five minutes before disappearing, is believed not to be hydrothermal vent, but a plume of methane gas bubbles coated with methane hydrate.

The Jain and Juanes paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research also explains the short-term consequences of injecting carbon dioxide into the ocean's subsurface, a method proposed by some researchers for reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas. Juanes found that while some of the CO2 would remain trapped as a hydrate, much would likely spew up through fractures just as methane does.

"It is important to keep both methane and carbon dioxide either in the pipeline or underground, because the consequences of escape can be quite dangerous over time," said Juanes.

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/methane-0902.html

Ruben Juanes

ARCO Associate Professor in Energy Studies

I am a geoscientist with a strong interest in the physics of multiphase flow in porous media.

My research focuses on advancing our fundamental understanding and predictive capabilities of the simultaneous flow of two or more fluids through rocks, soils and other porous materials.

Research in my group combines theory, simulation and experiments that elucidate fundamental aspects of multi-fluid flow, which we then apply for prediction of large-scale Earth science problems in the areas of energy and the environment, including geological carbon sequestration, methane hydrates, and ecohydrology of arid environments.

Loosely speaking, our research areas are:

• Methane: methane hydrates in nature; methane venting from freshwater sediments
• CO2: Geological carbon sequestration; capillary and solubility trapping; geomechanics
• Oil: Enhanced oil recovery; flow instabilities; mixing; flow through fractured media
• Water: Water infiltration; gravity fingering; ecohydrology of arid environments

I teach courses in soil mechanics (undergraduate), groundwater hydrology (graduate) and computational methods for flow in porous media (advanced graduate). My current teaching schedule is:

• Spring 2013:
  • 1.723: Computational Methods for Flow in Porous Media (stellar website)
• Previous semesters:
  • 1.035: Structural and Soil Mechanics (stellar website)
  • 1.72: Groundwater Hydrology (stellar website)
• Courses at other institutions
  • PGE383: Computational Geomechanics (UT Austin)
  • PE120: Fundamentals of Petroleum Engineering (Stanford)
  • PE224: Advanced Topics in Reservoir Simulation (Stanford)
  • PE260: Environmental Aspects of Petroleum Engineering (Stanford)
  • PE281: Applied Mathematics in Reservoir Engineering (Stanford)
  • E77: Introduction to Computer Programming for Scientists and Engineers (UC Berkeley)
  • CE100: Elementary Fluid Mechanics (UC Berkeley)

For other academic activities and a complete list of publications, see my complete CV.

http://juanesgroup.mit.edu/juanes

"Preferential mode of gas invasion in sediments: Grain-scale mechanistic model of couple multiphase fluid flow and sediment mechanics," by A. K. Jain & R. Juanes, JGR 114 (2009); doi: 10.1029/2008JB006002

Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, Vol. 114, No. B8, 29 August 2009; doi: 10.1029/2008JB006002

Preferential mode of gas invasion in sediments: Grain-scale mechanistic model of couple multiphase fluid flow and sediment mechanics

A. K. Jain and R. Juanes

Abstract

[1] We present a discrete element model for simulating, at the grain scale, gas migration in brine-saturated deformable media. We rigorously account for the presence of two fluids in the pore space by incorporating forces on grains due to pore fluid pressures and surface tension between fluids. This model, which couples multiphase fluid flow with sediment mechanics, permits investigation of the upward migration of gas through a brine-filled sediment column. We elucidate the ways in which gas migration may take place: (1) by capillary invasion in a rigid-like medium and (2) by initiation and propagation of a fracture. We find that grain size is the main factor controlling the mode of gas transport in the sediment, and we show that coarse-grain sediments favor capillary invasion, whereas fracturing dominates in fine-grain media. The results have important implications for understanding vent sites and pockmarks in the ocean floor, deep subseabed storage of carbon dioxide, and gas hydrate accumulations in ocean sediments and permafrost regions. Our results predict that in fine sediments, hydrate will likely form in veins following a fracture network pattern, and the hydrate concentration will likely be quite low. In coarse sediments, the buoyant methane gas is likely to invade the pore space more uniformly, in a process akin to invasion percolation, and the overall pore occupancy is likely to be much higher than for a fracture-dominated regime. These implications are consistent with laboratory experiments and field observations of methane hydrates in natural systems.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008JB006002/abstract

Alaska's forest fires burn more fiercely than they have in 10,000 years

by Tim Radford, Climate News Network, July 21, 2013

Some recent fires in the forests of Alaska have been the worst for 10,000 years, researchers say -- and they could happen elsewhere in this warming world.

LONDON, 26 July -- There have always been fires in the cold forests of Alaska. Periods of burning are part of the ecological regime, and fires return to black spruce stands of the Yukon Flats at intervals of tens to hundreds of years.

But recent evidence suggests that fire is about to come back with a vengeance -- or, in the language of science, “a transition to a unique regime of unprecedented fire activity.”

Ryan Kelly and Feng Sheng Hu, two biologists at the University of Illinois, Urbana, have examined charcoal records from 14 lakes in Yukon Flats to reconstruct the history of burning for the last 10,000 years.

They and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that during the Medieval Climate Anomaly -- the warm period that brought monastery vineyards to Britain a thousand years ago -- the dry conditions favoured what they call “peak biomass burning.”

But this apparent limit has, they report, been surpassed during recent decades, characterised by “exceptionally high fire frequency and biomass burning.”

Their warning came during a week in which, on just one day, the US space agency NASA published satellite images of burning scrub and forest in the states of California and Idaho, in the Irkutsk region of southeastern Siberia, and of illegal slash-and-burn fires to clear land in Indonesia.

This last led to unprecedented levels of air pollution in Malaysia and Singapore: schools were closed and aircraft grounded, and the Government of Malaysia issued gas masks.

Potential for 'dramatic impacts'

The fires in the northern forests matter, because the boreal forests cover about a tenth of the planet’s land surface, and they store about 30% of the planet’s terrestrial carbon.

So they are vulnerable to global warming, climate change and wildfire: wetlands, too, are likely to dry up, and permafrost continues to melt, all of which makes the forests more vulnerable. When they burn, the stands of timber release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

The slow return to normal has its own knock-on effects, say the authors: it has an impact on biogeochemical cycles, on the energy balance and the hydrology of the region, all of which can in turn feed back into climate change.

So to understand the possible global consequences for the northern forests, the authors reasoned, it would pay dividends to make a case study of one sustained natural experiment in one easily accessible landscape.

The researchers found that, after bouts of burning in centuries past, the area was colonised by more fire-resistant species, and the same has begun to happen after the most recent fires. They report that Yukon Flats is now a fragmented mosaic of “lower flammability vegetation” which ought to keep the place safe for a while.

But the fires of recent years have been the worst for 10,000 years and, they warn, things are likely to get worse: what happened to the conifers of Alaska could happen in other places as the world warms and the sub-Arctic begins to dry, with a change to deciduous trees. “Such dynamics,” they say, “have potentially dramatic ecological impacts.”

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/07/alaskas-forest-fires-burn-more-fiercely/  

In U.K., hundreds of protestors halt fracking in Balcombe, Sussex

by Nicolò Wojewoda, EcoWatch, July 26, 2013

I often ask myself: how much longer can the rogue forces of the fossil fuel industry continue wrecking our planet with impunity? Yesterday, I was reminded of our movement’s recurring answer to that question: not for long, if we can help it.

In the early hours of the morning, anti-fracking activists and community members in Balcombe, Sussex, UK, successfully halted the first day of explorations for a new shale gas development by famed (infamous, rather) fracking company Cuadrilla. Over 250 people united in a powerful, peaceful, joyful blockade—that eventually convinced the trucks containing the initial fracking equipment to abandon the site.

This is community power at its best. Campaigners in Balcombe, just like those in frontline communities around the world (in the U.S., Indonesia, Argentina and elsewhere) had been calling attention to the dangers of fracking for over a year. This week, when Cuadrilla’s license for exploration and development was approved, activists quickly mobilized to organize a Great Gas Gala, inviting people in Sussex and neighboring areas to converge on Balcombe and oppose Cuadrilla’s efforts.

Yesterday’s protests are set in the context of a recent announcement by the UK government proposing a 50 percent tax cut for companies involved in shale gas extraction, the most generous tax regime for fracking in the whole world. The proposal is very much in line with the dreaded “dash for gas” that Chancellor George Osborne announced at last year’s unveiling of the budget.

It is in opposition to these efforts that groups like Frack Off, No Dash for Gas and many of our partners and allies around the country, are mobilizing public awareness and opposition, in a genuine effort to shift the power in our energy systems and put our communities and their people back in charge. The Global Power Shift UK team will be working in the upcoming months on helping build that large, inclusive movement—one that represents community interests, leverages our diversity and builds on our shared vision of a people-powered future that solves the climate crisis once and for all.

The fight in Balcombe is not over yet. Yesterday’s exploratory fracking attempt was the closest to London to date, where a lot of the finance for these operations comes from and where the tangled webs of power and influence are carefully threaded between consenting politicians and short-term profit oriented fossil fuel corporate executives. Impunity for them and their climate-wrecking efforts? No longer. Real resistance is brewing in their backyard.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/hundreds-halt-fracking-uk/

Huge methane belch in Arctic could cost $60 trillion

by Fred Pearce, NewScientist, July 25, 2013

A sudden methane burp in the Arctic could set the world back a colossal $60 trillion.

Billions of tonnes of the greenhouse gas methane are trapped just below the surface of the East Siberian Arctic shelf. Melting means the area is poised to deliver a giant gaseous belch at any moment -- one that could bring global warming forward 35 years and cost the equivalent of almost a year's global GDP.

These are the conclusions of the first systematic analysis of the economic cost of Arctic melting, which delivers a sobering antidote to other, more upbeat assessments that say melting in this area would improve access to minerals on the ocean bed, increase fishing and create ice-free shipping lanes.

Previous work has estimated that more than a trillion tonnes of methane lie under the shelf, trapped inside lattices of ice known as hydrates, at depths as shallow as 20 metres. Concern about a possible eruption has grown since 2010, when research cruises over the shelf by Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov, both now at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, found plumes of methane as much as a kilometre wide bubbling to the surface.

The pair calculated that a release of 50 billion tonnes would be possible within a decade, through known areas of melting and geological faults. Since methane is a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide, such a scenario would trigger a "climate catastrophe", they say, increasing the methane content of the planet's atmosphere twelve-fold, and raising temperatures by 1.3 ˚C.

Now, environmental economist Chris Hope and Arctic Ocean specialist Peter Wadhams, both at the University of Cambridge, together with climate policy analyst Gail Whiteman of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, have analysed the likely consequences of such a release occurring between 2015 and 2025. They did so by adding the extra emissions to an existing model used in the UK government's 2006 Stern Review, designed to assess the economic cost of coping with climate change between now and 2200.

Economic time bomb

"The global impact of a warming Arctic is an economic time bomb," says Whiteman. A release of 50 billion tonnes of methane would bring forward by 15 to 35 years the date at which global temperature rise exceeds 2 ˚C above pre-industrial levels, the model shows, with most of the damage in the poorer parts of Africa, Asia and South America. The largest costs envisaged include loss of crops to heat and drought, coping with sea level rise and worsening tropical storms.

So how likely is a giant belch? An abrupt release of 50 billion tonnes is "highly possible at any time," Shakhova says.

Around 10 million tonnes of methane a year are already leaking from the shelf, according to Shakhova's calculations. However, it is not clear whether this is a new phenomenon, or even whether human activity is to blame. Shakhova says it may have been going on since the frozen shelf was inundated by seawater at the end of the last ice age.

Journal reference: Nature, Vol. 499, p. 401.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Vast methane belch possible at any time"

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23923-huge-methane-belch-in-arctic-could-cost-60-trillion.html

Reuters Climate Change Coverage Declined Significantly (-48%) After "Skeptic" Editor Paul Ingrassia Joined

New Analysis Backs Whistleblower's Claims

by MAX GREENBERG, Media Matters for America, July 23, 2013

A Media Matters study finds that Reuters' coverage of climate change declined by nearly 50% under the regime of the current managing editor, lending credence to a former reporter's claim that a "climate of fear" has gripped the agency.

David Fogarty, a former Reuters climate change correspondent, wrote that Managing Editor Paul Ingrassia, then serving as deputy editor-in-chief, identified himself as "a climate change sceptic" in 2012. As time went on, Fogarty alleged, "getting any climate change-themed story published got harder," as some desk editors "agonised" over decisions and allowed articles to become mired in bureaucracy. Eventually, amid a "climate of fear," Fogarty's role was "abolished."

An earlier report published by The Baron, an independent site that caters to current and former Reuters employees, similarly noted that in recent years the news service has been steered in a "new direction" in its climate change coverage, as evidenced by decreased attention, in-print "skepticism" and the reassignment of regional environment correspondents to other beats.

Reuters' Climate Coverage Declined 48% After "Skeptic" Editor Took Over

In line with claims from Fogarty and The Baron, a survey of coverage in the six months immediately prior to Ingrassia's appointment compared to an analogous period in 2012 found that Reuters filed 48% fewer articles on climate change under the new regime, despite the fact that the latter period featured the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, a continuing fight over the European Union's proposal to impose a carbon tax on international flights, record heat in the U.S. and other noteworthy developments.

In the 6 months before Ingrassia joined Reuters, Fogarty wrote 51 of 675 total articles on climate change (about 8%). During a comparable period under Ingrassia, Fogarty wrote only 10 articles on climate change (3% of 353 total stories).

The vast majority of coverage in both time periods was focused on policy (59% and 63%, respectively), as opposed to science (11% and 12%) and primarily quoted politicians, political officials or government officials (43% and 41%) on climate change.

Several Reuters Reports Have Adopted A Misleading Frame On Climate This Year

This year, Reuters' shift has apparently continued apace. An April 2013 article titled "Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown," later promoted by Drudge Report, claimed that short-term temperature variability "has exposed gaps" in scientists' understanding of climate change, but neglected to quote any scientists on the issue -- or refer to an article filed by the same reporter one week prior, which explained some of the alleged "gaps."

On July 15, a Reuters story covering new research on sea level rise included disclaimers that one scientist called "unrelated climate skeptics nonsense."

Earlier that month, Ingrassia announced that Editor Michael Stott, with whom he had reportedly partaken in "open disagreement," would be leaving after some 25 years with the company. Ingrassia and Stott previously quarreled over a report on Hurricane Sandy that quoted scientists on the link between climate change and more intense hurricanes.

METHODOLOGY: We searched the Factiva database for Reuters News articles on "climate change or global warming" between October 19, 2010, and April 11, 2011, and between April 19, 2012, and October 19, 2012. We included full articles or substantial mentions (more than one paragraph) of climate change or climate policies.

Shauna Theel, Charlie Rafkin, and Connor Land contributed to this report.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/07/23/reuters-climate-change-coverage-declined-signif/195015

The New Google! Don't Be F--king Stupid! Stop supporting climate change denial!

David Roberts: Why coal has a hit on “America’s Got Talent”

by David Roberts, Grist, July 22, 2013

America’s Got Talent is watched by around 10 million people a week. On Tuesday, Jimmy Rose, a former coal miner and Iraq War vet, appeared on the show to sing an original song, “Coal Keeps the Lights On”:

This is an extraordinary cultural artifact, for all sorts of reasons. There are lessons in here for social change agents in general and climate hawks in particular.

First off: It is genuinely affecting! Not least because Jimmy Rose has the kind of deep Appalachian accent and adenoidal, high-lonesome voice you don’t hear much in country music these days. It brings to mind lots of other amazing music out of that tradition. And of course lyrics about a hard-working man watching over his family can hardly fail to tug the heartstrings, even if “clothes on their back and shoes on their feet” might not be the most original turn of phrase. He sells it.

But the segment also draws a great deal of power from the larger narratives and tropes it evokes. It’s pure Americana: Rose served in the military, which makes him an object of instant, bipartisan adoration in the post-9/11 world. He’s got the twang. He’s got Pineville, Ky., which to these hyper-groomed L.A. judges might as well be another planet. He’s got the anti-style haircut and the fish-out-of-water family. He’s got a dream. And he’s got a history as a coal miner. It’s all of a piece.

What’s fascinating to me, and significant for climate hawks, is how the coal mining piece fits into that larger tapestry.

On the show, before he starts singing, Rose emphasizes twice how dangerous coal mining is — even says he joined the Marines and deployed to Iraq to escape it. Yet the implicit message is not that coal mining is a crappy job or that coal companies are neglectful, inconsiderate employers. Instead the job is presented as a kind of heroism: Rose went underground, put himself in danger, so that he could feed his family and keep the lights on for the rest of us. It’s a kind of national service, an analogue to his stint in the military: These are the guys who work and suffer so that the rest of us can live in luxury. Heroes. It’s powerful stuff, clearly enough to get the crowd rooting for him.

Why does coal mining evoke these kinds of feelings? One obvious explanation is that working-class guys are taking a battering all over the country, not just in Appalachia. Coal mining is hard, dangerous work, but it’s honest work, available to anyone willing to do it, and it can — or could — support a family. Those kinds of jobs have been steadily disappearing for decades. Now America is a land of knowledge workers and service workers, ever-increasing inequality and ever-decreasing social mobility. That kind of economy can work, at least for a while, for large urban areas with lots of knowledge workers to service, but it’s hell on places like Pineville (or Detroit) that relied entirely on decent-paying working-class jobs. Lots of people around the country understand the anger and loss in places like eastern Kentucky even if they don’t share all the cultural signifiers.

But still … with all sorts of workers in all sorts of industries being displaced by automation and economic shifts, why do coal miners elicit such a unique emotional response? We make furniture faster and safer by replacing builders with robots, but few would argue that we should make furniture more slowly or less safely by preserving those jobs. Those builder jobs “put food on the table” also, but it’s not viewed de facto cause to prevent factory automation. We don’t necessarily like it, but we accept in practice that progress means creative destruction and that some people inevitably get screwed. (Indeed, that’s why liberals support a social safety net.)

When it comes to cleaning up and modernizing the power sector — a sector that has resisted substantial innovation for over half a century — we collectively abandon that frame and adopt another one. Coal mining jobs, unlike furniture factory jobs, are seen as intrinsically ennobling, not just a job but a way of life. This quote in National Journal is telling:

“When you attack guns and coal, you’re attacking what they in the mountains consider their birthright,” said Jim Cauley, a Democratic strategist and Kentucky native who managed President Obama’s campaign for U.S. Senate in 2004. “They’ll feel like you’re attacking their culture.”

Coal has been woven into the fabric of Appalachian life for more than a century. It’s not a job, it’s a cultural identity. That’s the nut of it.

Such is the difficulty for progressives. It’s not just that the status quo has more money, it has more stories, deeper-rooted and more broadly resonant. Novel narratives about, say, “green jobs” do not have the same emotional depth. There is no history, there are no archetypes on which to draw. Coal evokes a rich oral, musical, and cultural legacy.

That’s why the Republican Party has people like Jimmy Rose locked up, despite its relentless support for the very policies that hurt his socioeconomic cohort and make the rich richer. Democrats promise the working class policies that will help them adapt to change — education and job training and a safety net. Republicans promise to stand athwart history and prevent further losses. It’s not about the policies, it’s about the stories, stories of a nobler past and the interlopers degrading or destroying it. Such stories have always had great power.

Democrats, or at least liberals, and especially climate hawks, are fated to forever be pushing the new, promising the future, projecting what could be. It’s an intrinsically weaker position and highlights the great need for creativity and storytelling. Can you even imagine someone in Jimmy Rose’s position singing a song about solar power that brings an audience to its feet?

BLABBY ADDENDUM:

For those of you with longer attention spans, let me share a few more cynical comments on the show.

First, the aesthetics of spontaneous discovery (from out of nowhere, a Heartland Hero!) are just that, aesthetics, and they are not left to chance. This segment has been planned, polished, and scripted to a fare-thee-well, carefully assembled for maximum audience stimulation. Every one of the tropes on display, from his haircut to his clothes to his family to his song, was chosen and crafted to support the story.

And those tropes are targeted squarely at a particular demographic: conservative Americans, mostly white Southerners. A prime-time show like this wants to appeal to everyone, including Real Americans who love coal, love Appalachia, and hate “Obama and the treehuggers,” as the first commenter on this YouTube video puts it. Their intensity and numbers during the Obama years have convinced the entertainment industry that they are both a target demo and a source of perverse fascination (see: Honey Boo-Boo). Real Americans can take heart in the fact that TV executives are now manipulating them into buying Snapple just like the rest of us.

Second, if Rose had stayed in the coal mine he probably would have gotten black lung, assuming he avoided injury, given Kentucky coal’s abysmal safety record. That man in the song, working two shifts in the mine to feed his family? He’ll likely have trouble breathing by the time he’s 50, and the sons he cared for will be faced with the financial and emotional burden of his long-term health care (ailing coal companies have a way of welshing on their workers’ pensions).

Third, the man in the song may well have lost his job already. Just last year the James River Coal company, headquartered in Pineville, laid off 400 employees. Coal mining jobs are indeed vanishing in eastern Kentucky, where 4,000 jobs were wiped out last year, but Obama’s “war on coal” has very little to do with it. The main culprits, writes the AP, are “declining reserves, higher production costs and competition from other coal basins [mainly the Powder River Basin] and natural gas.”

Fourth, a larger point I and others have made many times, coal mining has stripped Appalachia of hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine, biodiverse forest, defiled its water, air, and land, and left it economically devastated. Jimmy Rose’s tiny hometown of Pineville had a household median income of $12,435 in 2000 (the latest census numbers I can find) and that was before coal’s recent battering.

It is absolutely true that the loss of more coal jobs will hurt Rose’s family and friends. There’s no sense dodging that point. And there’s no point pretending, at the moment, that anyone can promise coal mining families anything better after the mines shut down. Van Jones is fond of saying that every coal miner should be give a million dollars and a parade: “Thank you for your service; you may retire in honor.” I’m not sure I’ve heard anything better offered to the people of Appalachia, certainly not from their fossil-owned-and-operated legislators.

The coal industry has done virtually nothing over the last century to build the local capital and institutions that Appalachia needs for lasting prosperity. It has sucked the area dry, left it filthy, corrupt, and exhausted. Now it’s using the suffering of its workers to scapegoat Obama and delay its own obsolescence. Coal companies are bastards. Always have been. [Same goes for the coal companies like Peabody and Arch in southern Illinois -- nothing but devastated land left behind and very high (20%) unemployment.  And then Arch dumped its pension and healthcare obligations into a company set up to go bankrupt, depriving sick and old miners of all benefits.  Is there anything more criminal?]

All this is beside the point, though. You can’t argue with a song. You can’t argue with a feeling: nostalgia and sorrow for what is slipping away, fear at what the future brings. You can only create other feelings.

By way of conclusion, it’s always worth revisiting Machiavelli’s famous quote:

… it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

UNNECESSARY FURTHER ADDENDUM:

In 2011, country-rock artist Neal Spears put out a song called … “Coal Keeps the Lights On.” Here it is:

Pretty good! Certainly much, much better than “Drill Here, Drill Now” by country artist Aaron Tippin:

Hoo boy.

http://grist.org/living/why-coal-has-a-hit-on-americas-got-talent/