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Here’s what we know so far: CRU’s emails were hacked, the 2000s will easily be the hottest decade on record, and the planet keeps warming thanks to us!

Friday, November 20th, 2009

As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution).

So begins the RealClimate post on this hack-heard-round-the-blogosphere. At the end, I’ll excerpt that post, which makes clear this is much ado about not bloody much.

UPDATE: The predictable FoxNews take is here (screen capture of their front page is above). At the end, I’ll post some truly amazing quotes from the anti-scientific side of the blogosphere, from Brad Johnson’s post, “ClimateGate: Hacked Emails Reveal Global Warming Deniers Are Crazed Conspiracy Theorists.”

Whatever smoke the anti-scientific disinformers are able to blow into people’s faces over this bunch of emails dating back over a decade, it doesn’t change the basic facts about human-caused warming:

Figure: Time series of global mean heat storage (0–2000 m), measured in 10⁸ Jm^-2.

Here’s most of the rest of the post from the scientists at RealClimate :

Post by Joe in Science | 23 Responses

On Thinner Ice: New photography project provides stark proof of melting glaciers on the roof of the world.

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Global warming is melting 18,000 Himalayan glaciers — the largest concentration of glaciers outside the great polar ice sheets. If the present melt rate continues, many of these glaciers will be gone by the middle of this century, disrupting the perennial water supply to hundreds of millions of people.

To explore this growing collection of glacier images from the “roof of the world” — including a must-see video made by mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears, Founder and Project Leader of Glacier Research Imaging Project (GRIP) — go to the Asia Society’s “On Thinner Ice” website.

For some of the underlying science, see my November 2008 post, Another climate impact comes faster than predicted: Himalayan glaciers “decapitated.” It discussed an important paper by leading international cryosphere scientists, including American’s own Lonnie Thompson, “Mass loss on Himalayan glacier endangers water resources,” which concluded ominously:

Post by Joe in Science | 4 Responses

Carol Browner strongly backs economywide, bipartisan cap-and-trade bill: “Slicing and dicing isn’t going to work. It’s time to finally have comprehensive energy legislation in this country.”

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

A top White House adviser yesterday pushed back against the idea of paring down Senate legislation on energy and global warming and frowned upon emerging talk among some moderates to limit legislative efforts to capping greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

“Our position is, let’s do it all,” said Carol Browner, President Obama’s senior aide on climate and energy issues. “Slicing and dicing isn’t going to work. It’s time to finally have comprehensive energy legislation in this country.”

That’s Greenwire (subs. req’d) reporting today on a panel discussion that included Browner. She still has her (globally) warm sense of humor:

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) earlier this week confirmed he plans to bring up the energy and climate bill on the floor next spring after work is done on both health care and financial regulatory reform. Asked about that timing, Browner said she expects to see Senate action in March or April. “The good news is spring comes early in Washington, earlier and earlier with climate change,” she joked.

I’ve been traveling, so I haven’t had time to dive into the idea floated by some, including Sen. Lugar’s office, of “combining power plant-only cap-and-trade legislation with building efficiency standards and stronger fuel efficiency requirements for the transportation sector.” I doubt that will be the endgame, since the more one looks into the idea, the less sense it makes.

After all, Obama already announced he will raise new car fuel efficiency standards to 35.5 mpg by 2015, and I find it hard to believe Lugar or any of those who oppose an economy-wide cap are prepared to go significantly farther than that. Strong building efficiency standards are great — that’s why Waxman and Markey put them in the House’s bipartisan climate and clean energy bill (see “Better buildings soon? Energy and climate bill would set national energy codes“). They belong in any comprehensive legislation. Funny how they aren’t in the Senate Energy Committee’s bill, though….

Post by Joe in Clean energy jobs bill | 3 Responses

Uber-ironic 1962 ad touts oil’s ability to melt glaciers!

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

David Roberts at Grist has the winner of the irony-can-be-so-ironic award:

From a sharp-eyed reader comes this ad for Humble Oil (which later merged with Standard to become, yes, Exxon). It may win the All Time Millenial Award for Maximal Irony. It’s from a 1962 edition of Life Magazine, available on Google Books (click for larger version):

Post by Joe in Greenwashing | 2 Responses

Not resting comfortably about “GREEN compliant” cups

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Cup versus mug The NY city hotel I stayed in last night, which I’ll call NYHOTEL, has paper cups where most hotels have glass. Next to the cups on the sink was a tiny piece of cardboard with this printed note:

Rest comfortably knowing that NYHOTEL drinking cups are 100% sanitary and are completely GREEN compliant.

Hmm.

First, I had thought glass was a clear winner life-cycle-wise last night, but the jury appears to be out and you have to reuse the glass cups a lot to break even — all things being equal.

Post by Joe in Climate Progress | 8 Responses

USA Today on climate change

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Our view on climate change: Imperfect ‘cap-and-trade’ is best option to fight warming

It’s complex, costly — and as good as the political system can produce.

Reasonable people can disagree about how bad global warming will eventually be if nothing is done, and some of the doomsday scenarios might well be overblown. But virtually all climate scientists concur that it’s a dire enough threat that the wise course of action is to sharply curb use of carbon-based fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.

Since CP has a daily news roundup, I thought I’d add an editorial feature, too, maybe not every day, but occasionally, especially when I’m on travel, as today.

This is from USA Today editorial board, which is I think is fairly mainstream. Here’s the rest:

Post by Joe in Media | 10 Responses

Obama takes on the anti-scientific delayers, while Australia’s Rudd slams the “deniers” and the “gaggle” of “conspiracy theorists” opposing climate action

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

What is the best way to talk about those who are devoting their efforts to spread disinformation on climate science and/or climate legislation? Recent speeches by President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Rudd, who represent the two biggest industrialized countries that have so far refused to take action, offer some suggestions.

Certainly, if you want to hear the best progressive messaging on energy and climate — if you want to know the best phrases and framing — listen to the President. In two recent speeches Obama has gone out of his way to criticize the disinformers and delayers.

In Florida late last month, Obama said “The closer we get to this new energy future, the harder the opposition is going to fight, the more we’re going to hear from special interests and lobbyists in Washington whose interests are contrary to the interests of the American people. Now, there are those who are also going to suggest that moving towards a clean energy future is going to somehow harm the economy or lead to fewer jobs. And they’re going to argue that we should do nothing, stand pat, do less, or delay action yet again.”

A few days earlier, at M.I.T. he said:

The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized. But I think it’s important to understand that the closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action that we’re engaged in. There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim — make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary.

Obama understands that our current economic system is dangerously unsustainable, and that the opposition is driven to a large extent by those who act out of narrow self-interest or ideology. He doesn’t use the term “denier,” instead accusing those who spread anti-scientific disinformation of cynicism. He does use the word “delay” in both speeches, focusing on the primary goal of the opposition.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what words the President uses — those who oppose his policies will misquote and misrepresent them. One of the leading disinformers, Pat Michaels, made this absurd assertion on National Review Online:

Post by Joe in Rhetoric | 22 Responses

Contest: Respond to this uber-lame NY Times op-ed

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I could easily spend all my time just responding to every single piece of silliness that appears in the mainstream media on global warming. But not only would that be unproductive and unhelpful for my readers (i.e. you), but heck I have great readers capable of doing such responses themselves.

The NY Times has just given some of its precious real estate to one of the lamest and most irrelevant op-eds ever published on climate change: ”Ben Franklin on Global Warming.” The gist of it seems to be that since weather changes over small parts of the Earth’s land were noticed by people in the 18th century and that Franklin himself apparently noticed part of what is now well understood and modeled by scientists as the heat island effect — “cleared land absorbs more heat and melts snow quicker” — that we should somehow think … well, actually, I can’t even figure out what the author is trying to say.

The piece appears to be a novel take on the “teach the controversy” strategy. The author, Ben Gelber, meteorologist at WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, sort of acknowledges anthropogenic global warming science but mostly makes irrelevant connections between the past and today to imply that what’s happening now is nothing really new. If Gelber thinks we should do anything about global warming, he keeps it to himself.

Well, anthropogenic global warming is new, and it would be catastrophic or worse to do nothing about it — see, for instance, “Humans boosting CO2 14,000 times faster than nature, overwhelming slow negative feedbacks” and “Imagine a World without Fish” and “Intro to global warming impacts” and UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”

But hey, I’ve written too much already. You respond, and I’ll lift the best comments up into the main post.

Post by Joe in Extreme Weather, Media | 30 Responses

Tom Friedman on “What They Really Believe”

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax.

But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying….

That is the opening of “What They Really Believe,” Tom Friedman’s NYT op-ed today. Here are some more excerpts:

Post by Joe in Clean energy jobs bill | 12 Responses

Video: Californian firefighter warns of increased wildfires due to climate change

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Thom Porter, staff chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) talks about the changes he has witnessed in the Californian climate and how it is increasing the risk of forest fires:

A bit strange this comes via a story from the UK’s Telegraph, but an important, science-based message from someone in the front lines nonetheless:

Post by Joe in Extreme Weather | 4 Responses

Reid: “I think if we do it right, the energy bill, the climate bill can be very, very job productive” — plans floor debate on bipartisan bill “sometime in the spring”

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today confirmed that floor debate on a sweeping energy and global warming bill that will be sold to the American public in part as an economic stimulus measure will be held early next year.

“We’re going to try to do that sometime in the spring,” Reid told reporters when asked about the window for moving a climate bill onto the Senate floor.

So E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reports. Ideally the debate would start by the end of February, so the Senate vote could be finished by early spring, as I recently wrote. The bipartisan team of Senators crafting a bill with the White House plan on a blueprint by Copenhagen:

Kerry and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are taking the lead in writing the climate and energy bill with a goal of releasing a blueprint before U.N. global warming negotiations start Dec. 7 in Copenhagen.

The good news is that Reid sees this bill as part of the economic stimulus and jobs package the administration is putting together, which should increase the motivation to pass it:

Post by Joe in Clean energy jobs bill | 6 Responses

Time magazine: “The science of climate change grows more dire.”

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

“World leaders say Copenhagen to be a steppingstone to final climate deal,” as I wrote on Sunday. Here is an excerpt from Time magazine’s take on the matter, “World Leaders Put Off a Climate Change Treaty,” by Bryan Walsh:

If there is a bright side, however, the deliberate downshift in expectations for Copenhagen could make it easier for world leaders, including Obama, to attend the summit and draft a stronger political agreement. In addition, diplomats could build out the framework of a future agreement, with the hope that, should the Senate pass carbon legislation early next year, a deal with real numbers could be finalized relatively quickly.

But there’s no getting around the fact that as the science of climate change grows more dire, the global political system seems increasingly unable to deal with that reality. “We don’t want a global suicide pact,” said Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, a low-lying Indian Ocean nation that could be swamped by global warming – caused flooding. “We want a global survival pact.” But the world’s most influential leaders still aren’t ready for that.

There is no getting around the fact that the science of climate change is growing more dire, and the world’s most influential leaders are not yet ready to do what is necessary. But my only small difference with Walsh is that I don’t think the global political system is “increasingly unable to deal with that reality.” I think it has never been able to fully deal with that reality, but that in fact most of the nations of the world — including ours — are increasingly ready to take serious action.

Post by Joe in International | 7 Responses

Rogue Palin: “I always remind people from outside our state that there is plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals — right next to the mashed potatoes.”

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

It is not really news that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is not an animal lover — or, I should say, is not a live-animal lover. That’s especially true for animals that happen to stand in the way of producing more fossil fuels:

But if the Washington Post, which has four stories on Palin and her new book, Going Rogue, today, can take the headline quote above and put it on their front page in big type, well, then it must be news:

Post by Joe in Media | 6 Responses

General Motors to start repaying government loans

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Question of the day: Will GM ultimately pay back all of the taxpayers’ loans?

The NY Times story has one of the true glass-is-half-full headlines of our times:

G.M., Citing Progress, Reports Loss of $1.15 Billion

But these days, you take good news where you can find it, and the rest of the story is certainly a pleasant surprise:

Post by Joe in Politics | 6 Responses

Palin’s “Going Rogue” spreads falsehoods about bipartisan clean energy legislation

Monday, November 16th, 2009

During the 2008 campaign, the Washington Post itself gave Sarah Palin its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.” That didn’t stop the Post from running a 2009 piece by her filled with bogus information attacking climate action and clean energy action, which Senators Boxer and Kerry later debunked: “The governor’s new refrain against global warming action reminds us of every naysayer who has spoken out against progress in cleaning up pollution.” Still Newt Gingrich said she was a conservative leader on energy issues.

So now Palin’s book Going Rogue is out — hmm, the subtitle of the original Freakonomics is A Rogue Economist explores the Hidden Side of Everything – and Media Matters has two debunkings of it that I’ll repost below. First, MM’s “ongoing list of falsehoods in Palin’s memoir“:

Post by Joe in Clean energy jobs bill | 6 Responses

NASA reports hottest June to October on record*

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Fast on the heels of the hottest June to September on record*, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that last month was tied for the second hottest October on record (after 2005).

Unlike NOAA, which announced its October global analysis with a major “State of the Climate” monthly update, NASA just quietly updates its data set (here). So you have to do a little math to see that for the June through October period, 2009 now tops both 1998 (easily) and 2005 (just barely, hence the asterisk).

For NOAA, it was the sixth warmest October on record, and the fifth-warmest January-through-October period:

Yes, the one place in the world where it warmed the least is, of course, the good old (continental) U.S. of A. — though it was the wettest October on record for the lower-48 (see WWF’s U.S. Sees Wettest October on Record; Arkansas Records are Washed Away).

That’s the continental United States, of course. Once again, the geographical distribution of the warming continues to be bad news for those worried about the permafrost permamelt, since temps even in the summer ran upwards of 5°C (9°F) warmer than the 1961-1990 norm over much of Siberia and parts of Alaska and Canada. Siberia contains probably the world’s largest amount of carbon locked away in the permafrost (see here).

Post by Joe in Science | 26 Responses

Best. Review. Ever.

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Freakonomics got super freaky. And super wrong.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are to blame for the global financial crisis.

See, back in 2005, they wrote “Freakonomics,” a wildly successful book brimming with interesting stories about why incentives matter and how actions have unintended consequences. Indeed, incentives do matter, and actions (or publications) do have unintended consequences: Their book made economists around the world more inclined to come up with cute little analyses of the business of being a drug dealer or the impact of a first name on a child’s success. And that distracted them, so they didn’t notice the giant housing and credit bubbles that in hindsight were plain to see. A global collapse ensued.

That’s all nonsense, of course. The forces that led to the current economic troubles were far too big for any one book, or even one current of economic thought, to have caused them. The argument that the Freakonomics guys are to blame for the crisis is provocative and clever and sounds vaguely plausible. It may even contain a kernel of truth. But it fundamentally defies any clear-headed look at reality.

In other words, it’s just like many of the anecdotes that fill “Superfreakonomics,” the sequel to the original bestseller.

This is the Washington Post book review by Neil Irwin. I think this review just edges out Elizabeth Kolbert’s, but it’s close. In particular, Irwin covers the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve for the paper, not climate, so he hits some other parts of the book, like “Patriotic Prostitutes” and drunk walking:

Post by Joe in Economics | 5 Responses

Status-quo-media stunner: David Broder urges Obama to make a decision on Afghanistan right now, “whether or not it is right.”

Monday, November 16th, 2009

When we last left David Broder back in April, the dean of the DC press corp and the sultan of the status quo centrists, he was criticizing Obama for “launching highly controversial efforts in health care, energy and education.” What was his argument? “Each of those issues has a history in Washington — a history marked by congressional gridlock and legislative frustration.”

Never mind the fact that inaction on energy would destroy a livable climate for billions. No, Obama was rocking the establishment boat by trying to do too much too fast, taking on problems that were mired in decades of inside-the-beltway inaction because they were too difficult.

But now, in a stunning piece titled, “Enough Afghan debate,” Broder flips his criticism entirely. Obama simply can’t act fast enough on perhaps the most complex issue of his presidency — even if it means getting this vital and dangerous issue completely wrong:

Post by Joe in Media | 3 Responses

World leaders say Copenhagen to be a steppingstone to final climate deal

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Some very good news on the international front, as the UK Guardian reports today:

During a hastily convened breakfast meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from the moribund negotiations by aiming for a broad political agreement and postponing contentious decisions on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer….

The deferral plan was outlined to 19 leaders, including Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao, who were in Singapore for a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

“Given the time factor and the situation of individual countries we must, in the coming weeks, focus on what is possible and not let ourselves be distracted by what is not possible,” the Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, told the leaders after flying in overnight for the unscheduled discussion. “The Copenhagen agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion.”

… This would give breathing space for the US Senate to pass carbon-capping legislation, allowing the Obama administration to bring a 2020 target and financing pledges to the table at a UN climate meeting in Mexico or Germany in mid-2010.

This is no big surprise to CP readers or anyone who follows international negotiations or domestic politics. For 8 years, U.S. negotiations were run by hard-core anti-scientific conservatives, who not only blocked any domestic action and opposed any international deal — but the Cheney-Bush negotiators actually actively worked to undermine the efforts of other countries to develop a follow on to the Kyoto Protocol.

It was never possible that team Obama — in just a few months — could undo that and simultaneously develop a final international deal and pass bipartisan U.S. climate legislation — a very slow process, given the experience with our last major domestic clean air bill, the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.

As the NYT’s Revkin blogs this morning, “Many seasoned participants in nearly two decades of treaty negotiations aimed at blunting global warming had predicted this outcome.”

The new plan for Copenhagen makes the prospects for a successful international deal far more likely — and at the same time increases the chance for Senate passage of the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill that Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen Lieberman (I-CT) are negotiating with the White House. The NYT print story reports:

Post by Joe in International | 55 Responses

The environMENTALIST contest: On what day will Obama sign the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill into law?

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

One of my guilty pleasures is the CBS crime show, The Mentalist. One-time fake psychic Patrick Jane uses his powers of observation and deduction to figure out the answer to the mystery before everyone else.

So here’s the contest for all you would-be environ-Mentalists. Use your amazing powers of observation and deduction to figure out on what day Obama will sign the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill into law. The winner gets to write a blog post for Climate Progress — woo hoo!

Remember, the bill has to pass the Senate, go into conference, pass the House and Senate again, and then a few days after that, Obama has the big signing ceremony.

Yes, you could pick “never” but, of course, you’d never collect! Plus the bill remains a likely prospect since the breakthrough Senate climate partnership between Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kerry (D-MA) — see E&E News: “At least 67 senators are in play” on climate bill.

Indeed, with the addition of Sen Lieberman (I-CT) to the bipartisan (tripartisan?) team and the beginning of talks with White House “to discuss a possible compromise” the chances may be greater than ever. Heck, even the moderate coal-state Democrat Sen. Baucus (D-MT) said last week, “There’s no doubt that this Congress is going to pass climate change legislation.”

That said, it seems increasingly unlikely that the bill will get to Obama’s desk before the summer. Indeed, The Washington Times Washington Insight/Energy (sub. req’d) has these remarkable prognosications from a former Senate majority leader and a leading industrial expert:

Post by Joe in Clean energy jobs bill | 32 Responses