Climate Progress

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports:

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for October and ninth warmest on record for the January-October year-to-date period.

Given that this report is just out, I’m assuming they have sorted out the data entry issues that briefly caused problems for NASA (see here and here). Also worth noting from the NCDC report:

• According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the October 2008 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, which is measured from passive microwave instruments onboard NOAA satellites, was the third least October sea ice extent on record, behind 2007 and 2006. Average ice extent during October 2008 was 8.4 million square kilometers, which is 9.5 percent below the 1979-2000 average. Sea ice extent for October has decreased at a rate of 5.4 percent per decade, since satellite records began in 1979.
• El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions remained in a neutral phase during October.

Since interest in the monthly temperature reports is so keen these days, let me repeat the key points from my an earlier post on the monthly data. While the monthly data doesn’t tell us much about the climate, the peer-reviewed scientific literature has a couple of interesting forecasts for the next decade:

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Assuming this story is real — I’ll let those who can translate Chinese check out the original source, which, of course, could also be wrong — the US government isn’t going to let this happen.

But I’m gonna print this because the non-primary source, The Truth About Cars, is pretty credible, and because I can put this under the category (gallow) humor:

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The first rule of journalism: Do NOT talk about journalism.

No, that isn’t it. The first rule of journalism is “If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” which is to say never rely on any non-primary sources, especially other journalists. So this recent post — Schwarzenegger mandates 33% renewables by 2030 — isn’t right because this story isn’t.

Schwarzenegger’s Executive Order is here, and it clearly states:

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Turns out you can only fool most Alaskans most of the time. As the AP reported [expalined?] at 9:41 pm EST:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has lost his bid for a seventh term. The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by 3,724 votes after Tuesday’s count.

That’s an insurmountable lead with only about 2,500 overseas ballots left to be counted.

Stevens, who turned 85 Tuesday, also revealed that he will not ask President George W. Bush to give him a pardon for his seven felony convictions.

AP’s earlier story on Stevens is below.

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It is judgment day, deniers and delayers. There is a new sheriff coming to town, and he isn’t an anti-scientific stooge like the current one or his boss VP.

President-elect Barack Obama gave ringing remarks to the governors climate summit:

“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process. That will start with a federal cap and trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050. Further, we will invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future. We will invest in solar power, wind power, and next generation biofuels. We will tap nuclear power, while making sure it’s safe. And we will develop clean coal technologies.

I have already heard some enviros attack Obama for “only” going back to 1990 levels by 2020 — even though that is the same goal that Arnold Schwarzenegger has in California, which has had years to develop and employ more serious and aggressive strategies. In fact, getting back to 1990 levels will require all of the talent, eloquence, and magic PEBO has — and he’ll need the support and hard work of every last one of us.

Some enviros are also attacking Obama for spending any money to try to develop clean coal. Certainly clean coal has no prospect whatsoever of helping achieve 2020 goals, and probably not even 2030 goals, but gasifed coal and biomass with carbon capture and storage may be a critical element of a long-term effort to get back to 350 ppm.

Anyway, enough with what the snipers and kibitzers have to say. Here are Obama’s full remarks:

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RealClimate has a great post, “Mind the Gap!” that explains some of the confusion about recent temperature trends.

Two key datasets, from the UK’s Hadley Centre and NASA show warming, as I’ve noted before. But “there are no permanent weather stations in the Arctic Ocean, the place on Earth that has been warming fastest. The Hadley record simply excludes this area, whereas the NASA version assumes its surface temperature is the same as that of the nearest land-based stations.” Even so, the Hadley data clearly show the planet is warming, see “Hadley Center to deniers: We are STILL warming.”

It is possible to reconstruct the recent warming in the Arctic and use that to fill in the gaps. The National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) has done just such a reanalysis:

As RealClimate explains: “The animated figure shows the temperature difference between the two 5-year periods 1999-2003 and 2004-2008. Such results do not show the long-term trends, but it’s a fact that there have been high temperatures in the Arctic during the recent years.”

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GreenTechMedia reports:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday signed an executive order that would speed up renewable energy development and require 33 percent of utilities’ electrical power to come from renewable sources by 2030.

The governor is aiming to use Executive Order S-14-08 to compel two state agencies, the California Energy Commission and the Department of Fish and Game, to work more closely on dealing with conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmentalists over building power plants and transmission lines (see California Lukewarm to Sunrise Powerlink).

This executive order will maintain California’s dual leadership in the renewable power and energy efficiency.

As California goes, so goes the nation. Under Obama, you can expect a much stronger federal renewable portfolio standard and expedited transmission line siting and permitting.

If the Obama administration can successfully translate the best policies from California and other states, then we need never build another traditional coal plant again (see “Is 450 ppm possible? Part 5: Old coal’s out, can’t wait for new nukes, so what do we do NOW?“)

Kudos to Arnold. He would indeed make a very capable secretary of energy.

Related Posts:

• California makes efficiency “business as usual”
• California tightens building standards yet again
• Energy efficiency, Part 4: How does California do it so consistently and cost-effectively?

Obama named more than a dozen people to craft policy positions and monitor the Bush administration’s efforts at U.S. EPA and the Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Transportation departments, with former Clinton Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes in the overall lead of the transition’s energy and natural resources team.

Greenwire (subs. req’d) has the names:

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OK, this is mostly off-topic, but the Washington Post has an excellent feature on The Onion. Did you know The Onion has “160 full-time employees nationwide.” I didn’t think so!

Be warned — the article is relatively serious journalism and not that funny. So, if you want Onion humor you’ll have to go to “Wildfire Somehow Rages Back Into Control” or “Ford Reintroduces Model T Line That Made It Great,” which has the following great figure:

Yes, I understand that Shellenberger and Nordhaus are desperate for any media attention they can get, which is why they go after Democrats and not Republicans, see “S&N go after Obama by recycling GOP talking points.”

And everybody understands S&N don’t get global warming at all ever since Nordhaus made his amazing admission on this blog, “We have argued for five years now that efforts to build the clean energy economy needed to be centrally defined around energy independence not global warming.”

So of course it really isn’t a surprise that they have attacked Al Gore for the umpteenth time (see below). It is a bit of a surprise that they write “cap and trade regulations, which would cap greenhouse gas emissions and allow companies to trade reductions, cannot work in the U.S.” It’s not a surprise they believe that, only that they have admitted it in print (see “What exactly is the difference between Lomborg and Shellenberger & Nordhaus?“)

Yes, I know that everyone thinks too much ink is wasted on these publicity hounds. Me, too. That’s why I respond to them only when some mainstream outlet publishes their nonsense, in this case the once respectable New Republic, which decided to print S&N’s purely fictional reimagining, “A New Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore just updated his prescription for fighting climate change. Now other environmentalists have to follow his lead.”

Huh? Updated his prescription? Did you miss something? No. S&N made up something. Gore, you may recall, recently wrote an excellent op-ed laying out his specific vision for an “emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis” (see Gore lays out his energy and climate plan, disses “clean coal”).

Gore repeated his long-standing argument for aggressive investment in clean technology. And he repeated his long-standing plea for a carbon price and cap & trade system:

Fifth, the United States should lead the way by putting a price on carbon here at home, and by leading the world’s efforts to replace the Kyoto treaty next year in Copenhagen with a more effective treaty that caps global carbon dioxide emissions and encourages nations to invest together in efficient ways to reduce global warming pollution quickly, including by sharply reducing deforestation.

Dog bites man, really. But not to S&N, who spin Gore’s gold into straw:

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