Climate Progress

If you have yet to decide on a New Years resolution, try going carbon neutral or energy efficient. Giving the gift of carbon neutrality was a popular holiday item, but you can do more.

A recent article in Mother Jones featured the work of John Schellnhuber, a UK scientist who has declared twelve tipping points that may reveal the fate of climate change’s impact. Mother Jones, however, added a thirteenth: a shift from denial to responsibility.

In that spirit, both the Climate Future Group and the Carbon Footprint website have information for individuals looking for pragmatic, simple ways to reduce their imprint. From changing your light bulbs, to resetting your water heater, your home, workplace and commute are crawling with ways to improve your energy efficiency.

Check them out and under the mistletoe, as you welcome 2007, tip toward responsibility, and encourage policymakers to do the same.

“Global warming denier” was ranked as the second most politically incorrect phrase in 2006 by Global Language Monitor, a non-profit that studies word usage. According to the announcement of the rankings, some people even compare global warming deniers to Holocaust deniers.

Yet Climate Progress doesn’t view the term as “politically incorrect” — not when we have an administration that tries to stop its scientists from using the words “Kyoto” and “climate change.” So we will keep using the term as long as the Deniers keep up their despicable disinformation campaign.

The polar bear is in danger of going extinct — and it is our fault.

It’s all well and good that the Bush administration has admitted that climate change is real and threatening polar bears with extinction. But the President has not yet acknowledged that this dangerous warming is due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Until then, he can continue doing nothing — and that will mean a future of Hell and High Water.

We can only hope that this is a sign of things to come. If the President makes one New Year’s resolution, it should be to admit in his State of the Union address that we are the cause of the world’s warming AND that we need to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Then we can get past mourning the polar bear, and start doing something to save it.

UPDATE: For a recent post on the “stunning” loss of Arctic sea ice, go here.

Here are two posts that answer the question Will polar bears go extinct by 2030? — Part I and Part II.

Keep up-to-date on all things related to climate change here, and think about subscribing to the ClimateProgress RSS feed.

Global warming is responsible for massive changes in the Arctic landscape.

The Arctic may be ice free in the summer by 2040, according to one new study. That would mean Santa Claus would be without a home, and Superman would have to move his Fortress of Solitude.

Seriously, though, this would be the first time in a million years the Arctic sea was ice-free. The ramifications are huge, including possible extinction of the polar bear and accelerated warming of the Greenland ice sheet.

New climatology data, taken from 1972 through 2004, reveals a sharp decline in the total amount of Arctic Sea ice. Chief scientist Pablo Clemente-Colón has summed up recent analyses:

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I can think of many words you should not say in the workplace, but ‘Kyoto’ and ‘climate change’ are not among them. But they were verboten in one NOAA lab.

That’s right, according to a Rocky Mountain News article, investigation into the censorship of climate change has found a senior scientist, Pieter Tans, who has spoken up to say that he wasn’t allowed to use ‘Kyoto’ or ‘climate change’, particularly when making presentations.

Even when hosting a conference on carbon dioxide measurements, Tans’ focus at NOAA, no mention of global warming was allowed, regardless of the scientific consensus that increasing carbon dioxide levels is trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere.

Tans raises the painfully valid point that muzzling the scientific voice undermines its overall credibility. Then again, perhaps that is the point.

Carbon neutrality gifts are one of this year’s hip, eco-political holiday items. But if you were hoping to off-set your greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees, ecologists will tell you it is probably “pointless.”

The idea has been to plant trees since forests absorb carbon dioxide and help cool the air. However, forests at certain latitudes (typically in the northern hemisphere) have a warming effect because they retain heat in their canopies. Conversely, natural terrain (especially snow) reflects most sunlight back into space.

Confusion can be traced to the difference between reforestation and afforestation, both policies that are encouraged in the Kyoto Protocol. Second to fossil-fuel combustion, deforestation is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, pulling back on deforestation slows emissions while reforestation compensates for them by sequestering carbon and restoring natural habitat.

Ideally, afforestation (or just forestation) would do the same, but, as the ecologists conclude, it can cause unintended consequences. Over and over again, the environment teaches us just how carefully we must tread on this planet.

After temperatures climbed as high as 76 in Washington, D.C. this week, an article in the Washington Post, talked about the weather patterns that have caused the heat wave without a word on how global warming is making these weather patterns more likely.

The article, conveniently titled “Dreams of a White Christmas Melting,” gives unusual attention to the meterological explanations for the heat. What it misses is that the warm weather is not a phenomenon limited to this weather pattern or this year–it is a microcosm of the climatic changes that are poised to become annual regularities.

The irony never ends.

While outgoing Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK) is the Congress’s lead climate change Denier, climate change has fueled record wildfires and drought in Sen. Inhofe’s homestate of Oklahoma.

For a visual, check out the U.S. Drought Monitor, which shows the northern part of Oklahoma currently experiencing the most severe levels of drought in the U.S. (with the darker the colors the more severe the drought). Also note that nearly all of Oklahoma is at least experiencing “abnormally dry”(yellow) conditions. [You can click on any region and then any state to see more detail.]

Note also the widespread drought affecting the backyard of the President, the country’s leading global warming Denier.

At the last EPW hearing on climate change and media coverage, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) questioned the U.S. policy on climate change by asking if a fire sparked, who would wait to see the damage before moving to put it out. Well, apparently Sen. Inhofe would.

The irony continues as those who shun action on climate change are suffering the most from climate change.

Along with the United States, Australia has suffered a major drought this year, “the worst for 1000 years.” Australia and the U.S. are the only two industrialized countries that have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Australia already has an arid climate, but the recent drought is having a devastating effect on water resources. It has also taken its toll on the economy, significantly slowing Australia’s growth since so much of the country’s GDP relies on agriculture.

Hopefully Australia will see the value and urgency in taking climate action before the last puddle dries up, since unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions are projected to accelerate drought and desertification.

We’ve been setting a lot of extreme weather records lately:

• 2006 was the sixth hottest year on record, the third warmest for the United States.
• We had a record-breaking wildfire season, as 9.5 million acres have gone up in flames so far this year.
• During the summer, temperatures soared to record levels in cities across the U.S.
• There were unusually high instances of extreme drought and rainfall, including a November in Washington State that set new records for a state already accustomed to being wet.
• We had the 2^nd lowest Arctic sea ice coverage on record, behind 2005.

The catch is, while you will find all these stories conveniently located in one Associated Press article, that article never mentions global warming or climate change. The AP provides no context whatsoever, leaving the impression that it is simply happenstance, a randomly extreme year, as opposed to evidence that human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are making hotter and more extreme weather more and more likely.

The AP actually has some of the clearest media coverage on global warming, but here is one case where they didn’t clear away the smoke.