Should We See Sea Level Rise to be Accelerating? (No)

One of the questions you sometimes hear is that, if more of the GHG-trapped heat is lately going into the ocean, why isn't sea level rise itself rising -- accelerating?

Here I'll show that, no, we should not be seeing more sea level rise, not now, via a back-of-the-envelope physics calculation. Really basic physics, like freshman year physics.

Alas, I don't expect anyone to follow this, or work through it and look for errors, or comment on it. Because Willie Soon. Because sexual harassment. Because climate McCarthyism. But I don't know how else to think about these questions. I find these kind of little calculations fun, and even sometimes wise. I wish they were done more often.

Sorry to get technical. But there's no other way to answer this question.

Everything starts, of course, with the definition of specific heat

dQ = mc dT = ρVc dT =ρAhc dT

where ρ is the density of sea water, V its volume, c its specific heat, and T its temperature, A is the area of the ocean, and h the ocean's height. (This is a simple model -- same temperature throughout, and I'll ignore any sea level rise from melting land ice, the so-called "eustatic" change. I'm doing a calculation of the "steric" changes.) (For some reason I have a mental block and can never remember which of these is which.) Then

dQ/Adt = ρch dT/dt

The left-hand side is how much heat is going into the ocean per unit area. That's f_OF(t) where F(t) is the energy imbalance for the planet (which I'll take as the forcing due to GHGs, ignoring cooling forcings like aerosols from fossil fuel pollution, etc. Note that this is a significantly larger number than reality, which is more like the energy imbalance of 0.5 W/m2 of Loeb et al Nature Geo 2012), and f_O is the fraction of that energy that goes into the ocean. f_O is about 93E%.

For the right-hand side, use the thermal expansion relation for water to give, assuming the area of the ocean stays the same (viz. the ocean is only expanding upward)

dT/dt = (1/αh) dh/dt

where h is the height of the ocean and α the thermal expansion coefficient of water. Then

F(t) = β dh/dt

where β = ρc/α = 1.6 x 10^-11 m³/J, or 1/β = 6.1 x 10¹⁰ J/m³, an energy density.

The global radiative forcing is increasing linearly. In 2013 it was 2.916 W/m2, according to NOAA, and its slope is, if you calculate it, ε = 0.034 W/m²/yr. (The Loeb et al 2012 result noted above would likely a signifcantly lower epsilion. That will increase the numers below correspondingly.) Earth's actual energy balance is less than this, because of manmade pollutants -- chemicals like sulphuric acid that reflect away sunlight. But I'll go this for now, as an upper bound.

Put this all together, taking F=F₀ = 2.916 W/m2 at t = t₀ = now, and you get simply

d²h/dt² = βεf_O ≡ a = 0.017 mm/yr2

This is the acceleration of sea level rise, due to thermal expansion. It's not so very big, but it's happening year-after-year.

Here βε sets the scale for this problem -- a quantity that, by units alone, is the acceleration, up to a constant that is a pure number, with no units.

It's an amazing aspect of physics, which no one has ever really explained, not even Dirac, that physical systems never deviate much from their fundamental constants. That is, in this case, d²h/dt² = βε*f_O, but it doesn't equal 100 times βε or a billion times it, or 10^^-21 times it. It's right in the sweet spot of the algebra -- a few times it, or the inverse.

Why? I don't know, and I don't know if anyone knows. But it does mean you can often make a good guess for the answer to a physics problem simply by doing dimensional analysis -- by deciding what constants are a necessary part of the answer, and seeing what combination of them works out to the units of the thing you're trying to calculate. It's trivial once you understand it, but powerful.

John Wheeler, who taught Richard Feynman, said you should never start a physics calculation before you know the answer. By this he means, do dimensional analysis first. That's how the system is going to respond to any external force.

Here beta is the fundamental unit of the system, and ε the cale of the input. It's not surprising the beta*epsilon shows up for the acceleration.

Now the equations are no different from basic kinematics of an accelerating car. With a = 0.017 mm/yr2, we find the present rate of sea level rise to be

S0 = S(t₀) = (dh/dt)|t=t₀ = βf_Oε = 1.4 mm/yr

where S(t) is the rate of sea level rise (= dh/dt), which is about what you'd expect, since SLR is now 3.2 mm/yr and about half of this is steric. As is expected, we get

S(t) - S0 = a*(t-t0)

How long will it take sea level rise to double, from today's S0 to 2*S0? Call that time D. Then

D - t₀ = S₀/a = F₀/ε = 85 years

How much sea level acceleration should we expect to see, for the thermal expansion of seawater, 20 years in the future?

S(20 years in the future) - S0 = 0.3 mm/yr

But note that CU's uncertainty on the rate of sea level rise is +/- 0/4 mm/yr. So what we'd expect is within the error bars.

--

Suppose though that what caused the hiatus is more heat going into the ocean. Should sea level rise be noticeably jumping up in that case?

No. We have

S0 = β*F₀*f_O

So if f_O goes from, say, 93% to 95%, current sea level should rise only by a factor of only 0.95/0.93 = 1.02 so S₀ -> (1.4 mm/yr)*1.02 = 1.43 mm/yr, which just isn't going to be noticeable with today's error bars.

Rick Perry and Texas CO2: He Brags About Being Average

#CPACQ

At today's CPAP conference in DC -- where the only real question is how far Republican candidates can suck up to the rabid conservative base -- Rick Perry, Republican governor of Texas, tried to establish some environmental creds, according to the partisan blog Daily Caller:

He made the argument that though Texas added 5.6 million people to its population and 1.4 million jobs in the last seven years, they have also managed to be environmentally friendly.

“During that same period of time, using thoughtful and incentive-based regulations, we reduced our carbon monoxide levels, which by the way, is a real pollutant,” he said. “Nitrous Oxide levels were down by 16.2 percent, ozone levels down by 15 percent, and our CO2 levels were down–whether you believe in this whole concept of climate change or not–CO2 levels were down by 9 percent in that state.”

Not so fast.

The EIA has state-by-state CO2 emissions, up to 2011. Over the seven year period 2004-2011, Texas CO2 emissions went from 718.8 Mt CO2 to 655.5 Gt CO2, a decrease of 8.8%. That rounds to 9%, as Perry said

But during that time, the US as a whole went from 5.97 CO2/yr (2004) to 5.44 CO2/yr (2011), a decrease of ... 8.8%.

So Perry's grand accomplishment was (drum roll....)  to remain average.

Lord help us if this man ever gets elected President.

Prediction of February's GISTEMP

What will NASA GISS give for February's global average surface temperature anomaly?

Despite all the frigid temperatures in the northeastern part of the U.S., it's going to be high. Because that region is only on order a percent of the globe or less, and elsewhere it's been average to quite warm.

How warm?

I've been following the University of Maine climate reanalyzer for several months, noting its daily temperaure anomaly for the globe, and comparing that to the GISS monthly anomaly numbers. There's a decent correlation (see graph).

As they say, click to expand

Based on this correlation, and the Reanalzer's daily numbers for February, my guess is that GISTEMP's anomaly for February will be +0.82°C.

We'll see.

If true, that would be the second-warmest February in GISS's records, after only 1998's +0.86°C. That was the peak of the warmth caused by 1997-98's El Nino, and temperatures declined from there, so the year was 0.07°C below 2014 {± uncertainties, error bars, statistics, probability, and all that.}

It really has been remarkable how quickly temperatures that once seemed extreme (1998) now seem routine.

Answer not a fool....

"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him."

- Proverbs 26:4

The Sharp Increase in the Cost of Fighting US Wildfires

I'm posting this only because it took a lot of work to produce, for something else I'm working on about U.S. wildfires

It's an increase of about 5% per year, in real (inflation-adjusted) money.

Is this worrying? I don't know. It probably is if your job is to fight wildfires. Or if you ever have to hope they put out the fire that's heading your way.

Data from National Interagency Fire Center and the FRED economic database.

An Example of Willie Soon's (Bad) Science

Regardless of any issues of Willie Soon's funding and what he should have disclosed, there is also this: his science is bad. Quite bad. It would be bad even for a first-year graduate student. Or an advanced undergraduate. And it's easy to understand why it's bad.

If you assume Soon was doing honest research, and that the oil money found him instead of the other way around (which I can accept), you have to wonder what they thought they were paying for. As Gavin Schmidt said, "The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless.”

Here's the example I know best, from the Soon and Baliumas 2003 paper in Climate Research, "Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years." They concluded (from the abstract)

Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.

The first thing to note about their methodology is that it's not quantitative. Forget all the research of paleoclimate scientists who had worked diligently to understand temperaure proxies and tree rings and how to incorporate these findings into quantative, mathematical models. Soon told me they weren't even trying to be quantaitative:

"I was stating outright that I'm not able to give too many quantitative details, especially in terms of aggregating all the results," Soon says.

So what were S&B doing, if it wasn't quantitative? They settled for categorizing -- grouping the research done by others into supporting or not supporting a Medievel Warm Period (MWP), and the same for the Little Ice Age, and seeing if they were "anomalous."

So how did they define "anomalous?" Very loosely. I'll focus on their Medievel Warm Period:

But look at this. Anomalous wetness or dryness has no a priori connection to temperature. So a 50-year period would be counted as evidence for the MWP even if the temperature was perfectly constant.

In fact, the temperature could have been decreasing all that time, and they'd  have still count it as "anomalous" if it was unusually wet or dry.

Worse, the "stipulated interval" for the MWP was 800 to 1300 A.D. So if the years 800-850 AD were unusually dry, that interval would count as evidence for a global MWP, regardless of what the temperature did over those 50 years, or the full 500 years.

So you can see how this classification was either (a) nonsense, or (b) trickery.

In either case, it's impossible to take seriously. It's so bad I don't see how S&B could have taken it seriously.

What do they mean by "unusually?" Or "objectively discernible," which they use in the table that lists their categorizations? They never really say, especially quantitatively.

They also wrote:

Past researchers implied that unusual 20th century warming means a global human impact. However, the proxies show that the 20th century is not unusually warm or extreme.

First of all, we don't need proxies for the 20th century -- we have thermometers. Second of all, the warming since 1975 started 28 years before their paper -- so it can't be included, by their definition. And the warming in the early 20th century happened from about 1910 to about 1945 -- only 35 years. Again, not long enough for them to include.

So, by definition, Soon and Baliunas do not find any "unusual" warming in the 20th century. Slick, huh?

These are some pretty glaring issues with paper. Anyone smart reader can understand them, which makes me suspect S&B thought they would publish this paper in an obscure place that no one would notice, and then have (just) a citation to be used by those who don't really care about the science. But I don't know their motivations.

Stoat has another good example of Soon's poor science: talking about land temperatures on an "aquaplanet" -- a planet that, by definition, has water across its entire surface.

And the fact that Soon's work jumped around -- from the MWP & LIA to solar reconstructions to polar bears to mercury -- doesn't speak well of him as a scientist, in this day and age. Instead it showed a lack of expertise.... It looks like he was casting about for material that could get funded, being sure to hit all the hot spots. Like he was writing term papers.

Added: By the way, Soon's correspondence (not about this paper) with Southern Company Services (SCS) called his work a “deliverable.” That's one of those corporate term that, along with "milestone" and "world class" and "value added," etc., that gets hijacked into your brain when you work in corporate America. (You're usually too tired and stressed to resist.) I'm not surprised SCS would use it. I don't see what's so bad about it. Don't all grant winners, from the government or otherwise, have to give some accounting for their grant money?

1958 Film Mentions Manmade Global Warming

This 1958 film, The Unchained Goddess, mentions AGW:


It was one of four educational films made by Bell Laboratories, and was directed by, of all people, the legendary director Frank Capra. The scientist in the film is an actor, Frank Baxter,

Wikipedia says the its television broadcast had "a disappointing audience share and many critical press reviews." Would be fun to put a copy of this in a time capsule.

I Get Mail....

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	Posts
Date:	Sun, 22 Feb 2015 23:21:48 -0600
From:	Peter Kostyniuk <peter.kostyniuk@shaw.ca>
To:	david.appell@gmail.com

Hi David!

I keep coming across some of your posts that you make on certain blogs.  I have to admit that your comments make me laugh and you definitely keep me in good humour for the balance of the day after I read some of your posts.  Sometimes I get involved in doing other things and then I recall something you wrote that I had read earlier, and then I chuckle to myself.  I don't think I've had a bad day for months now because of the stupidity that you write.  Keep up the good work.

Actually, maybe you should consider a career in comedy.  You're the type who can say something with a straight face that makes others say, "Are you serious", then shake their heads and then laugh.

Don't stop posting.  I need my daily fix of laughter to keep me in good spirits.  So rather than looking for comedy, I just look for your name on some of the blogs that I read.

Cheers

Peter

Did Willie Soon Lie to Congress?

Part of the background for today's NY Times article on the corporate money received by Willie Soon is this case study by Greenpeace. It shows Soon received $58,380 in 2001-2002 from the American Petroleum Institute for a study on the sun's influence on climate over the last 1000 years, and $60,053 in 2003 to study "1000 years of solar variability," which apparently was the funding for his and Baliunas's infamous Climate Research article that led to several journal editors resigning.

In the CR article they acknowledge the American Petroleum Institute as one of their funders:

That paper was published January 31, 2003, and I reported on it for Scientific American in June 2003. I asked them how much money they had received from the various funders, including the API, but they wouldn't tell me. (In fact, they would only answer questions in a list I emailed to them, with no followups.) Soon was receiving grants from the API as early as 1994.

But on July 29, 2003 Soon testified before the Environment and Public Works committee of the U.S. Senate. Here's his initial testimony, which doesn't seem to include any questions he was asked:

Hmm.... A 1998 memo by Joe Walker, a PR representative for the American Petroleum Institute, lays out the Action Plan for Walker's Global Climate Science Team. It includes, among several other points

That sure sounds like an "advocacy position." Was Soon, who had been dealing with the American Petroleum Institute since at least 1994, really not have been aware of the API's position on the Kyoto treaty? (Was anyone?) Maybe, but it seems a very big stretch.

Maybe something is finally going to come from all this. The New York Times article quotes both the director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center and the secretary for science at the Smithsonian Instute (I couldn't get a comment from the Center's director back in 2003), who finally seem concerned about Soon's failure to disclose funding sources when journals he published in required it.

That, rather than the accuracy of his testimony to Congress, could be Soon's undoing. I've never understood why the  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which does a lot of good work, would keep Soon on their staff. Could it have been the grants he was bringing it?

Stoat finds Soon's statement that "I would never be motivated by money for anything" "astonishing." Gavin Schmidt told the NY TImes, “The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless." But maybe not pointless to everyone -- the US never did sign the Kyoto treaty.

GISS Temperature Numerology

I say numerology, because three decades or more are needed to see changes in climate (and the 30-yr trend for GISS's global temperature anomalies is still 0.16°C/decade).

But if there was going an end to the (equally un-climactic) "hiatus," you'd expect it to first show up in short-term trends. Like this:

Or like this:

Also, have you noticed the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscaillation) is apparently starting to flip? Last year it was positive for the first time in eight years:

while the AMO is remaining steady:

This is just numerology. But kind of interesting, if you're trying to read the tea leaves.

Current Very Weak El Nino Now Equivalent to Huge '97-98 El Nino

Here's an update to the world's temperature compared to the 1997-8 massive El Nino:

Even though the Nino3.4 anomaly hasn't reached an El Nino phase yet (5 consecutive months of an anomaly above 0.5 C are rquired to be an "official" El Nino), last years's index has been much below that of the big 1997-98 El Nino.

But temperatures have been running higher. Significantly higher.

So in less than 20 years, the warming that resulted from a huge El Nino is now seen from a weak-to-nonexistent El Nino.

Why We Need to Keep Funding Climate Scientists

<sarc>
Here's a nice bit of sarcarsm, from a comment on an article in The Hill:

</sarc>

Most of the World is Seeing Average Temperatures or Higher

Because it's so cold in the northeastern U.S. at the moment, it's worth pointing that the vast majority of the globe's surface is currently seeing average temperatures or higher. (It's 64°F in Salem, Oregon right now, just before 5 pm. The normal high for this date is 51°F. We're just 35 miles south of Montreal's latitude.) This will be useful when February's anomaly come in to be quite high, and we'll hear "but Boston" or "but New York City." (GISS just found January to be the second-warmest January in their records, and the 13th-highest anomaly of any month since 1880.) From the University of Maine Climate Reanalyzer, here are land temperature anomalies:

and sea surface temperature anomalies:

Gordon Fulks' Frenzied Spin on the Kitzhaber Resignation

Oregon's chief climate denier opines wildly on the resignation of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber{

from: Gordon Fulks <gordonfulks@hotmail.com>
to: XXX
date: Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 2:20 PM
subject: GOVERNOR KITZHABER RESIGNS!
mailed-by: hotmail.com

Hello Everyone,

The Oregonian reported this morning that Emergency Room Physician Dr. John Kitzhaber resigned his position as Governor of Oregon this morning after his major Democratic supporters called on him to do so.  He is not the first Governor to resign but the first to resign in disgrace.  This follows a couple of days of what his successor Secretary of State Kate Brown called "bizarre behavior."  Kitzhaber's resignation takes effect next Wednesday.

Although this scandal is being correctly billed as "influence peddling," it revolved around the vast corruption of the climate scam.  The Governor's mistress (Cylvia Hayes) was involved in promoting "green energy" in both her business and her "official" roles.  Kitzhaber was not smart enough to keep them completely separate.  When The Oregonian uncovered the fact that she had received $118,000 to promote "green energy" and promptly did so through the governor's office, the fate of both the Governor and his mistress were sealed.  There are even reports that the $118,000 went unreported for income tax purposes.  Cylvia Hayes has apparently left the country.

Whether or not Kitzhaber's resignation today comes with a promise not to prosecute the governor and his mistress from his pals in the Democratic Party remains to be seen.  He and she could face the same fate as the Virginia governor and his wife, namely jail.

Here is the latest from the Oregonian:

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/02/gov_john_kitzhaber_resigns_ami.html#incart_maj-story-1

And here is my Op-Ed from a few weeks ago that talked about the climate of corruption in Oregon and specifically Kitzhaber's climate malpractice with Hayes:

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/01/kitzhaber_is_allowing_climate.html

It all comes down to an old fool who fell for an attractive younger woman with a questionable past.  Unfortunately for Kitzhaber, her questionable past morphed into a questionable present involving (guess what?) Global Warming and all the money to be made supporting it.

As I said in my Op-Ed, Oregon is beginning to look more and more like Chicago without the snow.  I wonder if we will build a 'Governor's Suite' at the State Penitentiary, just to keep up with Illinois?  In Oregon, we may require an entire wing of the penitentiary for all those involved in climate fraud.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)

Corbett, Oregon USA

The Anti-Green Kitzhaber Spin

Just as I suspected, one leader of the conservative media quickly takes advantage of the Oregon governor's announcement he will resign:

Fair enough -- I mean, that's the game anymore -- climate change activists would have done exactly the same if the hot fiancée of a Republican governor did what Cylvia Hayes did. Or, like this:

Would this be a good time to again point out that one of the leading climate activist groups won't reveal their funders? Or that Bill McKibben says he doesn't know who funds his group 350.org??? Ok, I will.

Kitzhaber's Interesting Resignation Letter

#oregon

Here's the text of Oregon Governor Kitzhaber's resignation statement, as reported by Williamette Week and the Oregonian. He admits no wrongdoing. Note the third and fourth paragraphs in particular.

Update 12:52 pm: Here's the audio of the governor reading his resignation statement, which was sent to reporters by email. Kitzhaber chocks up just a little near the end.

I am announcing today that I will resign as Governor of the State of Oregon.

It is not in my nature to walk away from a job I have undertaken – it is to stand and fight for the cause. For that reason I apologize to all those people who gave of their faith, time, energy and resources to elect me to a fourth term last year and who have supported me over the past three decades. I promise you that I will continue to pursue our shared goals and our common cause in another venue.

I must also say that it is deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the history of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved. But even more troubling – and on a very personal level as someone who has given 35 years of public service to Oregon – is that so many of my former allies in common cause have been willing to simply accept this judgment at its face value.

It is something that is hard for me to comprehend – something we might expect in Washington, D.C. but surely not in Oregon. I do not know what it means for our shared future but I do know that it is seriously undermining civic engagement in this state and the quality of the public discourse that once made Oregon stand out from the pack.

Nonetheless, I understand that I have become a liability to the very institutions and policies to which I have dedicated my career and, indeed, my entire adult life. As a former presiding officer I fully understand the reasons for which I have been asked to resign. I wish Speaker Kotek and President Courtney and their colleagues on both sides of the aisle success in this legislative session and beyond. And I hope that they are truly committed to carrying forward the spirit of bipartisanship and collaboration that has marked the last four years in Oregon.

In 1968 I was inspired to commit my life to public service by the last campaign of Robert Kennedy. Forty-one years ago I started work as an emergency room doctor in Roseburg with a goal to make life better for those in my care. Ever since then, I have sought to keep that focus by trying to make things better for the people and the communities of this state that I love. I have had the extraordinary privilege of pursuing that work as a State Representative, State Senator, Senate President and as your Governor.

Over those years, I have had the honor to be a part of some remarkable achievements.

We responded to the worst recession and financial crisis since the Great Depression by rebuilding an Oregon economy that has added jobs and vitality in many regions of our state.  And, unlike many other parts of our nation, we did it together with cooperation and respect for Oregon and for each other.

We successfully defended Oregon’s spectacular natural heritage of clean water, clean air, forests, farmland and special places.  We created the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds and nearly 90 watershed councils.

We have also found ways to support our rural communities and to create jobs in our natural resources industries while enhancing the environment.

When forces of intolerance sought to divide us we stood up for the principal that every Oregonian deserves respect and basic rights – including the right to choose and the right to marry the person we love.

And I am proud that Oregon has not invoked the death penalty during my last four years on the watch.

We have stood by our working men and women steadfastly supporting collective bargaining and the right to form a union.

We have transformed our health care system, improving access and quality while lowering costs through our new Coordinated Care Organizations.  Tonight over 95 percent of Oregonians will go to bed knowing that they have health insurance coverage.  We did that together.

In a three-day special session we reformed our public pension system, provided tax relief to small businesses and raised new revenue for mental health and for public education  -- the foundation of our future.

We have passionately pursued the goal of equity and opportunity – especially for those Oregonians who have been left behind: communities of color, English language learners and those in poverty, those in the rural parts of our state, the very young and the very old.

 We have laid the groundwork for eliminating the achievement gap and ensuring that over 90 percent of our children could be reading at level in 3rd grade within five years.

And we are poised to reach agreements that will resolve the century-old water crisis in the Klamath Basin and expand irrigated agriculture in the Umatilla.

As important as what we have accomplished – how we have accomplished it is perhaps even more important. We have had a great tradition of overcoming partisan differences in this state and doing what is right for Oregon. That tradition had faltered, but over the past four years we have rebuilt a functional political center, reaching across party lines to do difficult, important things by reducing polarization and building community to help right the ship and chart a better course for our future.

I ran for a fourth term as your governor to continue that progress. But the questions that have been raised about my administration – specifically allegations against me concerning the work done by my fiancé Cylvia Hayes and the contracts she obtained during my last term – and the escalating media frenzy that has stemmed from this – has clearly reached the point of no return.

I am confident that I have not broken any laws nor taken any actions that were dishonest or dishonorable in their intent or outcome. That is why I asked both the Ethics Commission and the Attorney General to take a full and comprehensive look at my actions – and I will continue to fully cooperate with those ongoing efforts.  I am equally confident that once they have been concluded Oregonians will see that I have never put anything before my love for and commitment to Oregon and faithfully fulfilling the responsibilities of the public offices I have held.

But it is also clear that this process will take months.

I have always had the deepest respect for the remarkable institution that is the Oregon Legislature; and for the office of the Governor. And I cannot in good conscience continue to be the element that undermines it. I have always tried to do the right thing and now the right thing to do is to step aside.

One thing I hope people know about me is that I love this state and its people, its rivers, its mountains and its landscapes with every fiber of my being. It is because of that love that I tender my resignation as Governor, effective at 10 a.m. on February 18, 2015. Secretary of State Kate Brown will take the oath of office as Oregon’s Governor at that time. Oregon will be in good hands and I wish her well.

Thank you for allowing me to serve you and our state. It has been the honor of my life. And I believe I can say that looking back over those years we have left it better than we found it.

Oregon Governor's Resignation Will Mean a Bruise for Clean Energy

Oregon's governor is probably going to resign today -- and if not today, then surely very soon -- and that's going to be a black mark against clean energy.

Or, at least, that's how some anti-clean people will no doubt spin it.

John Kitzhaber was just elected to another four-year term in November. He was already a three-term governor who had first served in 1995-2003, and called Oregon "ungovernable" in the tail of his second administration. But then he ran again and was elected in 2010 and reelected last year. (It didn't hurt that Republicans ran a socially conservative troglodyte.) Kitzhaber was a progressive Democrat for a mostly (by population, at least) progressive state.

But his relationship with his current girlfriend (now fiance) Cylvia Hayes has brought them both down.

She brought some baggage with her that only recently came out. When she was younger she married a Ethiopian immingrant for money, just so he could get a green card in the U.S. Then she had a significant role in an plan to grow marijuana in Washington state.

Then came the revelation just two weeks ago that Hayes was paid $118,000 for communications work with the Clean Economy Development Center in Washington D.C., which works to promote clean energy clean projects. Except she was also listed as an adviser to Kitzhaber on renewable energy, an obvious conflict of interest.

Things spiraled quickly down from there. FOIA requests by Williamette Week and the Oregonian showed that Hayes had -- or rather, that Kitzhaber let her have -- a great deal of leeway in his office. She had a part-time desk there. She made personal requests of his staff members. And one staff member was fired after asking whether Hayes was going to be allowed to go "on her merry way" through policy meetings.

And THEN, just a few days ago and a day before an ethics commission was to come into being, it came out that Kitzhaber requested that thousands of emails from his personal Gmail account be deleted.

In an action that should win an award, a computer administrator deep in the state's archiving system who was givn Kitzhaber's request, decided she'd better ask her supervisor first. It was passed up the management chain several more times, until a upper manager decided against the request.

In just the last day or two even Kitzhaber's friends said he needed to go. Democrats abandoned him, the Secretary of State (who will replace him when he resigns) spoke of some weird behavior after, at his request, she returned to the state from a conference in D.C.

It's been very surprising how fast this all happened -- at the beginning of the week it looked like Kitzhaber, through wounded, would surely stay in office. Now he's lost all support and will have to resign, if he hasn't by the time I end this paragraph. They'll be ethics and criminal inquiries -- and there should be -- but with Kitzhaber gone I wonder how much steam they'll have. Oregon isn't a Republican state (except by area), with both houses of the legislature controlled by Democrats -- so this isn't much political hay that can be made.

Personally I liked Kitzhaber a good deal, and voted for him twice. But I recognize he has to go. It makes me angry. Kitzhaber was a strong environmentalist, stopped the death penalty from being used during his term, and also a former emergency room doctor who strove to bring health care to the uninsured and to fully implement the Affordable Care Act here -- even after the state spent several hundred million doctors building a state exchange that was a catastrophe. (It's since been abandoned for the federal exchange.) Kitzhaber was also a strong backer of a new bridge over the Columbia River from Oregon to Washington state, that was also abandoned after a couple hundred million was spent on its design.

But the clean energy effort here, and maybe elsewhere, will take a hit, especially for the usual suspects. Oregon is already a fairly clean state in how it generates its energy, thanks to a lot of hydropower from Columbia River dams. The state's last coal-fired power plant, in Boardman, is slated to be closed by the end of this decade. And a couple of Oregon counties are making out nicely from wind power agreements -- when you drive east out of the Columbia River Gorge, there are miles and miles of hundreds of huge wind turbines on both sides of the river that look pretty impressive (and not too much of a blight).

It's also unfortunate because who doesn't think anymore that these kind of backroom machinations happen in other states all the time. You can't tell me there aren't fossil fuel "consultants" meeting with high-level reps of state governors down in his mansion's kitchen at midnight. (And plenty of other industry representatives too.)

But it's not supposed to involve your girlfriend, and it's not supposed to come out in emails you later decide you'd like to have deleted. Just keep your significant other out of your administration, OK? (You have to admit Republicans seem to do a better job of this than Democrats. Or maybe they're just afraid to marry strong women.)

And now I must leave to go set my cynicism level a few notches higher. Again.

Update 12:10 pm: Here's a timelime of the scandal.
Update 12:15 pm: Several media outlets are reporting Kitzhaber says he will resign.