E2 Round-up: Governors want national renewable mandate, U.S. may not be prepared to 'cope' with climate change, scientists defend climate science

State renewable mandates are all well and good, but 29 governors say a national target is what is really needed to boost alternative sources of energy.

From Bloomberg: “A jumble of state laws should be replaced by a federal edict, according to a report from the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition, which includes California, Florida and Massachusetts. The plan would help spur development and efficiency, which would create jobs, curb greenhouse-gas emissions and reduce dependency on oil imports, the coalition said.”

The lack of a national renewable energy standard is costing the United States renewable energy manufacturing opportunities to Europe and other areas, the coalition’s report states. The governors also called for Congress to improve the electric grid to make it easier for renewable energy to get where it’s needed. 

The federal government has another issue on its plate.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a White House report has found “significant gaps” in the nation’s ability to cope with the effects of climate change.

“Adapting to warming temperatures, the report concludes, ‘will require a set of thoughtful, preventative actions, measures and investments to reduce the vulnerability of our natural and human systems to climate change impacts,’” the LA Times reports.

The report will officially be released on Tuesday.

Andrew Revkin examines on his Dot Earth blog in the New York Times the response of more than 200 U.S. scientists and climate specialists to the recent controversy surrounding mistakes in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Critics have used the errors to challenge the scientific consensus around climate change.

Revkin writes the letter, "goes well beyond defending the integrity of the process and echoes  earlier calls, some made by longtime panel contributors, for a series of changes that could reduce the chances that outright errors and errors of omission will creep in when the panel’s fifth set of assessments is written in the next three years."

But the letter also states: “None of the handful of misstatements (out of hundreds and hundreds of unchallenged statements) remotely undermines the conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”