“The Web's most influential climate-change blogger” — Time Magazine A Project of Center for American Progress Action Fund

Is human-caused climate change killing the great forests of the American West?

Montana entomologist on bark beetles: “A couple of degrees warmer could create multiple generations a year. If that happens, I expect it would be a disaster for all of our pine populations.”

March 16, 2010

beetle.jpgClimate change inherently favors invasive pests.  On the one hand, milder winters since 1994 have reduced the winter death rate of beetle larvae in places like Wyoming from 80% per year to under 10%.  On the other hand, hot-weather uber-droughts — aka  “global-change-type droughts” — have made trees weaker, less able to fight off beetles.

Forest Ecology and Management just published a major new study by 19 researchers around the word, “A global overview of drought and heat-induced tree mortality reveals emerging climate change risks for forests.”  Its key conclusion — that human-caused climate change is already killing forests, releasing carbon, and amplifying warming — will be a shock only to the anti-science crowd:

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Climate Crock video on Flogging the Scientists

March 16, 2010

The anti-science crowd isn’t satisfied with merely spreading disinformation about climate scientists (see “Error-riddled articles and false statements destroy Daily Mail’s credibilty“).  Now many, like Marc Morano, are unrepentantly calling for violence against them (see The rise of anti-science cyber bullying:  Morano says climate scientists “deserve to be publicly flogged“).

Peter Sinclair, our favorite climate de-crocker, has a new video on the subject:

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Energy and Global Warming News for March 16: Chinese to build NV wind factory, create 1,000 jobs; UAW tells Congress not to block EPA climate rules; Americans can cut emissions 15% with simple actions

March 16, 2010

PhotoNevada Wind Turbine Factory to Create 1,000 Jobs, Backers Say

A consortium of Chinese and American renewable energy firms said last week that they had chosen Nevada as the location of a 320,000-square-foot wind turbine manufacturing and assembly plant.

The turbine plant, whose precise site has yet to be announced, will create an estimated 1,000 long-term manufacturing jobs in the state and is expected to be up and running by 2011.

Two companies leading the development of the Nevada facility, A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese renewable energy technology manufacturer, and the U.S. Renewable Energy Group, a private equity firm, are also key players in a controversial $1.5 billion, 600-megawatt wind farm project under way in West Texas.

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EIA FAQ on CO2 emissions

March 16, 2010

I came across these answers to frequently asked questions from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  There’s some good information on emissions and conversion factors:

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Flashback: Carly Fiorina said cap-and-trade “will both create jobs and lower the cost of energy”

Campaign ad created by Inhofe's nephew (!) mocks notion that climate change is a national security threat

March 16, 2010

In pursuing the California GOP’s nomination for the 2010 Senate, Carly Fiorina has become a world-class flip-flopper.  Following the endorsement of Senator Jim “the last flat-earther” Inhofe (R-OIL) in November, she challenged climate science — unlike the company she once ran. Now she’s abandoned her support for cap-and-trade legislation, as Brad Johnson discusses in this repost.

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How to be as persuasive as Abe Lincoln and Marc Antony, Part 2: Use irony, the twist we can’t resist

March 16, 2010

I almost let the Ides of March slip by without reexamining Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech.  It is a model of rhetorical brilliance — and a model for “The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President.”  Both speeches were built around one of the most important figures of speech:  irony

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Sole “Strategic Partner” of landmark geo-engineering conference is Australia’s “dirty coal” state of Victoria

Sponsorship of "Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies" is as controversial as its subject matter

March 15, 2010

Climate Progress is beginning a multipart series on what has been called the “Woodstock” of geo-engineering.   This historic but controversial event will take place March 22 – 26 in Asilomar, CA. Details can be found here on the website of the conference “developer,” Dr. Margaret Leinen of the Climate Response Fund.

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/assets/product/9780618990610.gifI have been interviewing leading experts on geo-engineering about this conference, including journalist Jeff Goodell, author of the forthcoming book, How to Cool the Planet.

This conference proclaims its lofty goal “to develop norms and guidelines for controlled experimentation on climate engineering or intervention techniques.”  That’s one reason why, as Goodell put it to me, it “needs to be purer than pure.”  It appears to fail that test in a number of respects, as we will see.

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Severance: Nuclear Power Makes No Business Sense

March 15, 2010

At a quiet lakeside retreat house in Potsdam, Germany, 35 people met this month to discuss the future of nuclear power.

Guest blogger and nuclear economics expert Craig Severance was one of the attendees.   He discusses his presentation in this repost.

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Howell Raines: “Why has our profession … helped Fox legitimize a style of journalism that is dishonest in its intellectual process, untrustworthy in its conclusions and biased in its gestalt?”

Former NYT Exec Ed: "Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?"

March 15, 2010

For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party….  In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation….

[Ailes] and his video ferrets have intimidated center-right and center-left journalists into suppressing conclusions — whether on health-care reform or other issues — they once would have stated as demonstrably proven by their reporting.

As for Fox News, lots of people who know better are keeping quiet about what to call it. Its news operation can, in fact, be called many things, but reporters of my generation, with memories and keyboards, dare not call it journalism.

Sunday, the Washington Post published a must-read piece by Howell Raines, “Why don’t honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?“  Raines, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former NY Times executive editor, focuses on Fox’s disinformation on health care, but it is equally true of their disinformation on climate change (see here), which is why I’m writing about it.

Ironically, WP media critic Howard Kurtz blows the opportunity to call out FoxNews in his story today, “The Beck Factor at Fox: Staffers say comments taint their work“:

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Open letter to U.S. government from over 250 U.S. scientists on climate change and the IPCC reports

"None of the handful of mis-statements (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."

March 15, 2010

[If you are a scientist wishing to sign the letter, please fill out the form on the this page.]

It is our intention in offering this open letter to bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world.  We first discuss some of the key messages from climate science and then elaborate on IPCC procedures, with particular attention to the quality-control mechanisms of the IPCC.  Finally we offer some suggestions about what might be done next to improve IPCC practices and restore full trust in climate science.

That’s from a letter sent to federal agencies on March 13.  It has been signed by over 250 scientist already (full list here), the vast majority of whom are climate change scientists working at top U.S. universities and institutions.  “Additional signers include professionals from related disciplines, including physical, biological and social scientists.”

Here is the full letter:

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Energy and Global Warming News for March 15th: U.K. hopes to lead in wave and tidal power; Renewables can provide 94% of NC’s power

March 15, 2010

http://www.rechargenews.com/multimedia/archive/00030/Pentland_Firth_tidal_30237b.jpg

U.K. tries to catch a wave

The U.K. hopes to stake its claim as a leader in the fledgling wave and tidal power sector—a key green technology—when it awards companies licenses on Tuesday to develop around 700 megawatts of marine energy around Scotland.

The tender, which was oversubscribed, has attracted interest from major European utilities and energy companies as well as marine developers–some of whom have already formed partnerships, and will be keenly watched by countries such as Spain, Portugal, France, Canada, New Zealand and South Korea that are also looking to develop such resources….

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Chu compares climate disinformation campaign to tobacco industry’s efforts

Energy Sec also says "we will not be economically competitive" if we don't price carbon in a comprehensive clean energy bill

March 15, 2010

Here is our Nobel prize-winning physicist Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, in a San Jose Mercury News interview:

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How well have journalists covered climate change?

March 15, 2010

I was on a pretty thoughtful panel discussion, “The Media, the Scientists and the Planet,” broadcast on TV Ontario.

The other guests on The Agenda with Steve Paikin included Curtis Brainard, who critiques science and environment reporting for the Columbia Journalism Review, Walter Russell Mead, who is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, and everybody’s favorite Canadian energy and technology columnist, the Toronto Star’s Tyler Hamilton.

Here is the hour-long video:

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The Lomborg Deception: The Septical Environmentalist (sic) says 16 feet of sea level rise wouldn’t be so bad, absurdly claims it would only “force the relocation of 15 million” people

March 14, 2010

Another op-ed by Bjorn Lomborg, another Gish Gallup of non-stop disinformation.  The good news is that the task of debunking the Septical Environmentalist (sic), has been made easier by the publication of whole book dedicated to that tedious task, The Lomborg Deception.

And yes, “Septical Environmentalist” is not a typo.  Sure, it may seem like a mistake to use the word “environmentalist” to describe Lomborg.  But it’s the very fact that he calls himself an environmentalist while dedicating his life to spreading disinformation and delaying serious action on the seminal environmental issue of our time that makes him septical.  What else would you call the Typhoid Mary of anti-science syndrome (ASS)?

Lomborg’s op-ed,”Cars, bombs and climate change” repeats many of his favorite howlers, and adds some new ones.  Let’s start with one of his favorite targets, one I’ve covered many times (see “Debunking Bjørn Lomborg — Part II, Misrepresenting Sea Level Rise“), but here with a new bizarre twist:

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The Dark Ages return: Texas Board of Education rewrites the Enlightenment

March 14, 2010

Tony Auth

Another vote, another win for the conservative majority on Texas’ State Board of Education.

Science is in a street fight with anti-science, as Nature has argued.  Now the forces of the dark ages are taking on the Enlightenment itself.

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Daylight saving time saves as much energy as daylight, maybe less

March 13, 2010

http://altopower.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/spring_ahead.jpgYou can’t save daylight by moving around the hands on your clock, of course. So daylight saving time remains as absurdly named as it ever was.

The general pointlessness of DST was the subject of a Rachel Maddow interview Friday (video below) with the author of a whole book (!) on the subject.

What’s germane here is that DST saves about as much energy as light, according to most studies.  In fact, a 2008 study found DST “may actually waste energy“:

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The best argument against global warming

March 12, 2010

Dr. Peter Gleick is co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California.  He wrote a great op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, with that terrific Matt Groening cartoon:

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Energy and Global Warming News for March 12th: China finds itself awash in wind turbine factories; Japan’s cabinet endorses cap-and-trade bill

March 12, 2010

China finds itself awash in wind turbine factories

China’s massive investment in wind turbines, fueled by its government’s renewable energy goals, has caused the value of the turbines to tumble more than 30 percent from 2004 levels, the vice president of Shanghai Electric Group Corp. said yesterday.

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An introduction to the core climate solutions

October 22, 2008

This post will serve as an introduction to climate solutions as well as a gateway to my ongoing series on the core solutions.

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How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution

March 26, 2009

In this post I will lay out “the solution” to global warming.

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An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water

March 22, 2009

In this post, I will summarize what the recent scientific literature says are the key impacts we face in the second half of the century if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path. I will focus primarily on:

  • Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 10°F over much of the United States
  • Sea level rise of 5 feet, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter
  • Dust Bowls over the U.S. SW and many other heavily populated regions around the globe
  • Massive species loss on land and sea — 50% or more of all life
  • Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”
  • More severe hurricanes — especially in the Gulf

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Exclusive: Caldeira calls the vision of Lomborg’s Climate Consensus “a dystopic world out of a science fiction story”

September 5, 2009

dystopia

If you don’t do aggressive greenhouse mitigation starting now, you pretty much take geo-engineering off the table as a very limited (but still dubious) add-on strategy.

The only upside I can see to all of the media coverage Bjorn Lomborg is getting for his do-nothing climate “consensus” is this one sentence by NYT reporter John Broder:

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Post-Apocalypse Now: Though flawed as an eco-pic, Avatar deserves Best Picture award

James Cameron: "We need to mobilize like we did during World War II" to fight global warming. The threat to our country and children is "that severe."

March 7, 2010

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01466/avatar_tank_lo_1466784c.jpg

I’m very interested in your thoughts on Avatar.

Here are mine on the must-see movie — but flawed eco-pic — and the controversies surrounding it:

[Mild spoiler alert, I suppose, but then if you can't figure out how this movie is going to end, well, you have led a very sheltered life.]

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French nuclear giant Areva buys Ausra, says solar thermal power market may increase 30-fold by 2020

February 16, 2010

http://www.techpower.org/images/ausra-screen.jpg

French energy giant Areva has bought U.S.-based Ausra in order “to become a world leader in concentrated solar thermal” power (CSP).  And so the race is on for market share in “The Technology that will Save Humanity.”

CSP is the most scalable and affordable baseload (or, even better, load-following) low-carbon supply technology — when used with low-cost, high-efficiency thermal storage.  CSP can also share its steam turbine with biomass, a strategy the Chinese are pursuing, or with natural gas (see “Hybrid solar/gas plants provide low-cost, low-carbon power when needed“).

The Oil Drum wonders if Areva is “losing faith in the oft-predicted but unrealised ‘nuclear renaissance’.”   Certainly, Areva’s best-known product is pricing itself out of the market (see Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns).

CSP, on the other hand, has just started down the experience curve and is poised to be one of the major winners in the low-carbon economy.  Indeed, Bloomberg/BusinessWeek [another corporate merger?] reports:

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Must re-read statement from UK’s Royal Society and Met Office on the connection between global warming and extreme weather

February 13, 2010

We expect some of the most significant impacts of climate change to occur when natural variability is exacerbated by long-term global warming, so that even small changes in global temperatures can produce damaging local and regional effects. Year on year the evidence is growing that damaging climate and weather events — potentially intensified by global warming — are already happening and beginning to affect society and ecosystems. This includes:

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The Climate Science Project, Part 2: How we know global warming is happening

Skeptical Science explains: It's the oceans!

February 15, 2010

Memo to climate scientists, environmentalists, and others:  If you’re going to give an interview or speak in public, you need to know the FULL scientific literature.  If you just stick to reading up on your area of expertise, you won’t have the sharpest answers for reporters or for a tough questioner in the audience.

Reading the BBC’s interview of Dr. Phil Jones, the climate scientist at the center of the hacked e-mail scandal, makes clear that even an experienced and widely published researcher like Jones doesn’t appear to know the full climate literature or the clearest answers to basic questions.  The interviewer, the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin, also doesn’t, or he probably wouldn’t have asked “Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?”

Now the snappiest answer to such a question comes from Ken Caldeira to the AP in October:  “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” You could also quote NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt from that same story, “The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record.  Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.”

I’d also recommend mentioning two major scientific studies from last year, which demonstrate that when you look at where 90% of the human-caused warming was expected to go — the oceans — you find steady warming in recent years.  I’d keep this figure handy [I use it in my talks]:

Time series of global mean heat storage (from 0 to 1.24 miles).

One reason I am launching the Climate Science Project is to connect people to the best scientific explanations and the best answers to commonly asked questions.  Obviously, one of the first places you should start is SkepticalScience.com.  That’s where I saw this figure — and an excellent explanation of what it means.

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Climate policy and jobs: What economists know

February 18, 2010

This repost comes from economists at E3 Network: Eban Goodstein, Kristen Sheeran, Director, Peter Dorman, Jonathan Isham, and John Laitner.

I. Addressing Climate Change Can Lead to Net Job Growth in the United States

Many economists believe that due to the global downturn, the US will experience high rates of unemployment (>6%) for a number of years to come. However, a steady shift toward climate protection will likely boost net job growth in the US:

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More conclusive proof of global warming

February 17, 2010

In honor of the Vancouver Olympics, I am reposting this humorous video from 2008:

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An illustrated guide to the latest climate science

February 17, 2010

Decadal

I’m featured in Tom Friedman’s column today, “Global Weirding is Here.”  I’ll blog on that term and that column shortly.

Right now, though, I need to get up a quick post for those who’ve come here looking for that “listing of the best scientific papers on every aspect of climate change for anyone who wants a quick summary now” that Friedman wrote about   Regular readers know I’ve just started that process, but for now let me update my review of the best papers in the past year.  If you want a broader overview of the literature in the past few years, focusing specifically on how unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gas emissions are projected to impact the United States, try “An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water.”

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Is “Global Weirding” here?

Humans are warming the globe and changing the climate. But what should we call it?

February 17, 2010

Tom Friedman has a new column, “Global Weirding is Here.”  He mentions my new effort to post summaries of “the best scientific papers on every aspect of climate change.”  Readers interested in that project should click here.

If you want to know more about me or this website, start with “An Introduction to Climate Progress.”  You can get daily email updates on climate science, solutions, and politics by clicking here.

Friedman spells out why he suspects “China is quietly laughing at us right now” and why “Iran, Russia, Venezuela and the whole OPEC gang are high-fiving each other”:

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Nobelist Chu on IPCC and emails, “this is a little wart on the overall amount of information”; questions “asymmetric” standard skeptics are held to.

On his optimism for a climate bill: "There are half a dozen to a dozen" GOP Senators in play.

February 18, 2010

First, the main findings of IPCC over the years, have they been seriously cast in doubt? No….

On balance if you look at all the things the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of experts convened by the United Nations to advise governments in responding to global warming] has been doing over the last number of years, they were trying very hard to put in all the peer-reviewed serious stuff. I’ve actually always felt that they were taking a somewhat conservative stand on many issues and for justifiable reasons….

They should be able to say that this is serious science and take a somewhat conservative view. If you look at the climate sceptics, I would have to say honestly, what standard are they being held to? It’s very asymmetric. They get to say anything they want. In the end, the core of science is deeply self checking.

That’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu in his new interview with the Financial Times (regis. req’d).

While the media has gone back to giving equal time to even the most discredited “skeptics,” the Nobel Prize winner in physics understands the difference between real scientists, who sometimes make small, unintentional mistakes but are self checking and self-correcting, and the anti-science disinformers (and their allies in the right-wing media) who just “get to say anything they want,” who intentionally mislead, but keep getting quoted over and over again by the media (see “N.Y. Times and Elisabeth Rosenthal Face Credibility Siege over Unbalanced Climate Coverage“).

Chu pushed back against FT’s repeated efforts to get him to say the IPCC crossed some imaginary line and it’s effort to label cap and trade now “dead”:

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Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred

Unrestricted burning of fossil fuels threatens a new wave of die-offs

February 18, 2010

Marine life face some of the worst impacts.  We now know that global warming is “capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas” (see 2009 Nature Geoscience study concludes ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years”).

The acidification of the ocean in particular is a grave threat  — for links to primary sources and recent studies, see “Imagine a World without Fish: Deadly ocean acidification — hard to deny, harder to geo-engineer, but not hard to stop” (and below).

A new Nature Geoscience study, “Past constraints on the vulnerability of marine calcifiers to massive carbon dioxide release” (subs. req’d) provides a truly ominous warning.  The release from the researchers at the University of Bristol is “Rate of ocean acidification the fastest in 65 million years.”

I am reprinting below a piece by award-winning science journalist Carl Zimmer published this week by Yale environment360, which explains ocean acidification and what this important study says:

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NREL: US has three times more wind electrictiy potential than previously thought

February 22, 2010

Today’s guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow at American Progress.

Last month, an NREL study showed that America could generate 20% percent of its power just with wind by 2024.  That would require about 300,000 MW or 300 GW.  The ultimate potential is much, much higher — 30 times higher (!) — as Tom Kenworthy, CAP’s Senior Fellow based in Colorado, explains.

Thanks to improvements in wind turbines over the last decade and a half, the United States has the potential to generate more than three times as much electricity from wind as previously thought, according to a new analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The assessment of onshore wind energy potential found that the U.S. could produce almost 37 million gigawatt-hours yearly. According to the American Wind Energy Association, that’s nine times our current annual electricity consumption.

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Why should we believe the earth is round, just because scientists say so?

February 20, 2010

Tom Tomorrow poses the question in this hilarious cartoon for Salon:

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WashPost editorial: “If current trends persist, it’s likely that in coming decades the globe’s climate will change with potentially devastating effects for billions of people.”

IPCC errors are "trivial mistakes"

February 24, 2010

THE EARTH is warming. A chief cause is the increase in greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. Humans are at least in part responsible, because the oil, gas and coal that we burn releases these gases. If current trends persist, it’s likely that in coming decades the globe’s climate will change with potentially devastating effects for billions of people.

Contrary to what you may have read lately, there are few reputable scientists who would disagree with anything in that first paragraph.

That’s the opening of a pretty good editorial on climate from the paper that has all but destroyed the credibility of its opinion pages (see and the 2009 “Citizen Kane” award for non-excellence in climate journalism goes to …).

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USGS reports dramatic retreat of ice shelves in southern Antarctic Peninsula

February 23, 2010

Every month brings more evidence the world’s greatest ice sheet is disintegrating much faster than the “consensus” forecast (see Satellite data stunner: “Our data suggest that EAST Antarctica is losing mass…. Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise”). Guest blogger Nick Sundt has the latest news in a piece first published here.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported Monday that “every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990. “  The finding comes on the heels of the warmest January on record for the Southern Hemisphere.

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Scientists withdraw low-ball estimate of sea level rise — media are confused and anti-science crowd pounces

February 22, 2010

Projected sea level rise

The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) report ignored dynamic ice-sheet disintegration, which was already happening (see Nature: “Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized”).  The IPCC therefore low-balled sea level rise estimates, suggesting seas might rise “only” a foot or two this century, greatly delighting the anti-science crowd (see “Debunking Bjørn Lomborg:  Misrepresenting Sea Level Rise“).

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Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change

February 28, 2010

The need is urgent for climate scientists to communicate more effectively to policymakers and the public. This article details some of the problems with how climate scientists communicate and offers practical suggestions for improvement. For example, scientists can improve their effectiveness by avoiding jargon as well as words that mean different things to scientists than to non-scientists. They can use appropriate metaphors and re-frame poorly framed questions. As policymakers grapple with the climate challenge, scientists should take the opportunity and responsibility of clearly communicating what the wider world needs to know about this issue.

Saying scientists are not doing a terribly good job communicating climate science is like saying the status quo media are not doing a terribly good job communicating climate science.  But then the media doesn’t suffer the consequences of that failure.  At least not more than, say, the American pika….

Our guest blogger is Susan Joy Hassol, an expert in climate communication. She was lead author of “Impacts of A Warming Arctic,” the synthesis report of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and helped author or edit many major climate reports in the past decade.  In 2008, she wrote “Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change,” which is reprinted below with her permission:

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Foreign Policy’s “Guide to Climate Skeptics” includes Roger Pielke, Jr.

February 28, 2010

Warning:  Please put your head in a vise before reading further.

Andy Revkin has just written the most illogical climate post on Earth.  Or maybe he’s written the most logical climate post on the Bizarro World Htrae.

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Sen. Inhofe inquisition seeking ways to criminalize and prosecute 17 leading climate scientists

February 25, 2010

Senator James Inhofe, ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has gone a step beyond promoting his long-notorious global warming denialist propaganda. He is now using the resources of the Senate committee to seek opportunities to criminalize the actions of 17 leading scientists who have been associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports. A report released by Inhofe’s staff on February 23 outlines this classic Joe McCarthyite witch-hunt: page after page of incorrect and misleading statements, a list of federal laws that allegedly may make scientists subject to prosecution by the U.S. Justice Department, and a list of names and affiliations of 17 “key players” in the “CRU Controversy” over stolen e-mails and their connections with IPCC reports.

That’s from Rick Piltz, the guy who blew the whistle on the Bush Administration’s censorship of federal climate science. This is a repost from his website, Climatesciencewatch.org:

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Boykoff on “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change”

Freudenburg: "Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss 'both sides' of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate "other side" is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date."

February 25, 2010

Mass media have been a key vehicle by which climate change contrarianism has traveled, according to Maxwell Boykoff, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.

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South Dakota legislators tell schools to teach ‘astrological’ explanation for global warming

February 25, 2010

Last week, the South Dakota House of Representatives passed a resolution to “urge” public schools to teach astrology.  Brad Johnson has the amazing story in this Think Progress repost.

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Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi admits, “Earth continues warmest winter since satellite measurements started” and “Feb should be warmest on record!!!”

Then he invents a new, self-contradictory theory of warming

March 1, 2010

UPDATE:  Joe Bastardi replies to this post in the comments here.

UAH winter 2010

Ah, the anti-science crowd.  Their much-vaunted satellite data shows record smashing temperatures (make your own chart here).  So what’s a disinformer to do?  You either have to tie yourself in knots to explain how a rather moderate El Niño could be to blame — or go after the satellite data.  And the latter is coming, I’m sure.

But Accuweather’s meteorologist Joe Bastardi is a satellite-data-ophile, so he chooses the knot-twisting approach in his must-read stream of consciousness “European Blog,” which certainly wins the gold medal for self-contradiction.  What is so incredible about this blog is that it resides on one long page, so you’d think Bastardi might occasionally go back and look and see if what he just wrote doesn’t contradict something he wrote a little earlier.

Look at Saturday’s post:

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Must-see video lays out the empirical evidence for human-caused global warming

March 1, 2010

Our favorite climate de-crocker, Peter Sinclair has a terrific new video on the basic facts of climate science (with links to the literature):

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The rise of anti-science cyber bullying

Morano says climate scientists "deserve to be publicly flogged."

March 2, 2010

Researchers must purge e-mail in-boxes daily of threatening correspondence, simply part of the job of being a climate scientist

That’s the subhed for a new Scientific American piece on cyber bullying.  It comes fast on the heels of “Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial,” the first part of the terrific series by Clive Hamilton, reprinted below (followed by an excerpt of the SciAm piece):

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The ‘climate change debate’ is Science vs. Snake Oil

March 2, 2010

http://www.sjsu.edu/wsq/pics/science_not_snakeoil.jpg

This is a Wonkroom repost.

According to the mainstream media, there is a controversy over the validity of climate science, in particular the conclusion that the warming of the planet by greenhouse gas emissions poses a risk to the public:

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Graham says GOP should stop demonizing climate change: You’re risking “your party’s future with younger people” by calling it a “hoax.”

"Are we the party of carbon pollution forever in unlimited amounts?"

March 2, 2010

You can get daily email updates on climate science, solutions, and politics by clicking here. If you want to know more about this website, start with “An Introduction to Climate Progress.” This is a Think Progress repost.

Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spoke with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to discuss clean energy legislation. During the interview, Graham warned his party that it will fall into irrelevancy if it continues to embrace climate change disinformers:

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“Just the facts” on climate science

March 3, 2010

The Chicago Tribune Online has a helpful Q&A that summarizes where climate science stands today.  It also addresses the IPCC, emails, and temperature stations issues.

Its “just the facts” approach is superior to more than 90% of what has been written by the media these days (see Boykoff on “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change” and here):

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Vote Vets tough new ad: Everytime oil goes up $1, Iran gets another $1.5 billion to use against us.

March 4, 2010

Vote Vets launches its toughest ad to date on behalf of bipartisan action on climate and clean energy:

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Robert Watson: “There is no doubt that the evidence for human-induced climate change is irrefutable.”

Former chair says IPCC must acknowledge mistakes and "consider shorter reports focused on the key issues," but "In many cases, the IPCC is very conservative in its statements, e.g., the projections of sea level rise."

March 6, 2010

All major emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases need to rapidly and cost-effectively transition to a low-carbon economy, in both the production and use of energy and the management of forests and agricultural lands. In order to ensure food, water, and human security, and to protect the world’s biodiversity, the goal should be to limit the global average temperature rise to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels…. Without concerted action now, the world will be faced with temperature increases far in excess of 2 degrees C, with unthinkable impacts.

robert t. watsonDr. Robert Watson was chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1997 to 2002.  He was opposed by fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and the Bush administration waged a successful campaign to have him replaced with Rajendra Pachauri.  Now Watson is Strategic Director for the Tyndall Center at the University of East Anglia and Chief Scientific Advisor for the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.  Yale’s Environment 360 online magazine has a piece by him they have given me permission to repost.

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Science stunner: Vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores destabilizing and venting

NSF issues world a wake-up call: "Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.”

March 4, 2010

NSF

Methane release from the not-so-perma-frost is the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle.  Research published in Friday’s journal Science finds a key “lid” on “the large sub-sea permafrost carbon reservoir” near Eastern Siberia “is clearly perforated, and sedimentary CH4 [methane] is escaping to the atmosphere.”

Scientists learned last year that the permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere,” much of which would be released as methane.  Methane is  is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years!

The carbon is locked in a freezer in the part of the planet warming up the fastest (see “Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss“).  Half the land-based permafrost would vanish by mid-century on our current emissions path (see “Tundra, Part 2: The point of no return” and below).  No climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra.

The new Science study, led by University of Alaska’s International Arctic Research Centre and the Russian Academy of Sciences, is “Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf” (subs. req’d).  The must-read National Science Foundation press release (click here), warns “Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.”  The NSF is normally a very staid organization.  If they are worried, everybody should be.

It is increasingly clear that if the world strays significantly above 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide for any length of time, we will find it unimaginably difficult to stop short of 800 to 1000 ppm.

Note:  As part of the Climate Science Project, I’m making this post as definitive as I can by including other recent scientific findings on the tundra.  Please add other relevant links in the comments.

The lead author, Natalia Shakhova, explains the new findings in this video:

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The Heritage Foundation loses its grip on reality, calls science ‘magic’

March 5, 2010

The Heritage Foundation, a once-influential conservative think tank, has long had extreme views (see “Heritage even opposes energy efficiency“).  Now it has completely lost its grip on reality, comparing the IPCC’s scientific work to what a magician at a children’s party does (!), as explained in this Wonk Room repost.

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Can we restore U.S. leadership in solar manufacturing?

March 6, 2010

The United States created the solar cell industry and literally launched it into space 50 years ago.   Solar PV is going to be one of the largest job-creating industries of the century, projected to grow “from a $20 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017” (see “Invented here, sold there”).

Graph illustrating the relative portion the United States has contributed to annual world productionBut thanks to conservative opposition to clean energy from Reagan to the Gingrich Congress to Cheney/Bush, the U.S. share of the PV market has plummeted.  By 2008, America had under 6% (!) of the world market (see AllBusiness’s “United States is a bit player in global solar industry“).

Now the Department of Energy is taking steps to improve the domestic manufacturing base, as guest blogger Jacob Abraham, an intern with CAP’s Energy Opportunity team, reports.

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Debate the controversy!

March 8, 2010

The serial misinformers and misrepresenters demand equal time for their misinformation and misrepresentations.  What should climate science defenders and the media do?

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Wattergate: Tamino debunks “just plain wrong” Anthony Watts

March 11, 2010

The leading anti-science blogger in the country, Anthony Watts, owes NOAA scientists an apology.  So far, he’s passing the buck.

The former TV weatherman coauthored a “report” with Joe D’Aleo, “Surface Temperature Record:  Policy Driven Deception?” accusing top U.S. scientists of various kinds of misfeasance and malfeasance in the global temperature record.  I’m not linking to it because most of the report’s claims had already been long debunked (see Must-read NOAA paper smacks down Anthony Watts — Q: “Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?” A: “None at all.”)

The blogger Tamino of “Open Mind,” has been dismantling one of Watts’ few new claims and wrote last week:

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Colorado goes all-in on renewable energy

March 9, 2010

Colorado isn’t waiting for Washington to move aggressively on clean energy, as CAP Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy explains here.

On March 5, the state Senate approved a measure to increase Colorado’s renewable energy standard (RES) to 30% by 2020, and on March 8th, the House finalized the bill, sending it to Gov. Bill Ritter for his signature.

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Exclusive: Dr. George Woodwell sets the record straight

March 9, 2010

The response to the [email] vandals is to bury them with the data and experience of a century of scholarly research and analysis. The information that is important in making the decisions as to how to manage our world is unequivocal and must be advanced, not as questions at the edge of scientific knowledge where scientist like to dwell, but as the facts that they are, facts as immutable as the law of gravity. The climatic disruption is not a theory open to a belief system any more than the solar system is a theory, or gravity, or the oceanic tides, or evolution.  This approach is uncompromising, partisan in the sense of selected for the purpose. It is not a lecture to undergraduates; nor is it ecology 101. It is a clear statement of what is required for government to do its job in protecting the public welfare. The scientific community has a firm responsibility in this realm now. This is not the time to wring our hands over the challenges to hyper-scientific objectivity, the purity of scholars, and to tie ourselves in knots with apologies for alleged errors of trifling import.

That’s the opening paragraph of a statement Dr. George M. Woodwell emailed me yesterday.  Woodwell, founder, Director Emeritus and Senior Scientist at the The Woods Hole Research Center, was responding to some “private e-mails obtained by [the uber conservative newspaper] The Washington Times,” including one of his that has been misrepresented.

Since Woodwell has blogged here before, I asked him to clarify his original use of the word “partisan,” since I was pretty sure he was not using it in its Washingon, DC political sense, as some have implied.  He wasn’t.  In addition to his statement, he sent me a remarkable piece of 1988 Senate testimony he gave (reprinted below), which makes clear he has been at the forefront of warning the public about the dangers of human caused global warming.

His statement continues:

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The Do-Nothing Energy Tax: $3 Gasoline Dead Ahead

March 10, 2010

1gas-prices-arm-leg-bothAs long as we keep taking no serious action on climate and clean energy, there’s nothing to stop the energy bills of Americans from rising.  Daniel J. Weiss, CAP’s Director of Climate Strategy, explains what’s in store this summer.

The mounds of snow blackened by auto exhaust have barely melted in Washington, D.C, yet the Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook already predicts that:

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Vote for Climate Progress in TreeHugger’s Best of Green Awards

March 10, 2010

Best of Green logoWhy should you vote for ClimateProgress in TreeHugger’s Best of Green Awards 2010 Readers Choice in the category of Best Political Website (click here to vote)?

Sure, you like the insider’s view of climate science, solution, and politics delivered every day to you for free.   But the other nominees are pretty darn good, too.

Well, set aside all issues of merit, look at the competition, and vote strategically:

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ConocoPhillips chair mocks clean energy advocates as “hydrocarbon deniers”

CEO of Saudi Aramco worries about "a bottleneck" in oil production. Seriously!

March 10, 2010

http://politicallunacy.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/wonderful-potter.jpgOil prices and profits are on the rise again.  The anti-science disinformation campaign funded in large part by Big Oil is having unimaginable success.  And the powerful minority of do-nothing ideologues appear to have the upper hand in the Senate.

And that means a modern day Mr. Potter oil company executive can speak his mind and tell us what he really thinks of clean energy, as Greenwire (subs. req’d) reports:

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Big Oil uses fake “Americans” to attack fake “energy taxes.”

March 11, 2010

The American Petroleum Institute is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies, as WonkRoom’s Brad Johnson explains in this repost.  API is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes” — using stock photos:

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Rep. Inslee: “This is a moment for scientists to channel their inner Rambo.”

Tells Senators to "put away your fear" and unleash clean energy jobs

March 11, 2010

One of the Congress’s true leaders on clean energy and climate, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA), was speaking at the Center for American Progress last week.  Both Brad Johnson and I had a chance to interview him.

The above video was actually the second half of my (F)lip-camera interview.  Here’s where Inslee explains the science and the need for action on clean energy — in a short elevator ride:

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Nature editorial: “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”

Nature News: "Attack sparks memories of McCarthy witch-hunt."

March 10, 2010

Nature, the highly respected British scientific journal, has an excellent editorial and news story tomorrow on the recent assault on climate science (excerpted below).

Taking Nature’s advice, I urge the administration to send science advisor Holdren and NOAA Administrator Lubchenco and Energy Secretary Chu on a media blitz and national tour to explain and emphasize the science.

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The disinformers are winning, but mostly with the GOP

New Gallup poll shows sharp partisan divide in understanding of climate change

March 11, 2010

The partisan divide on climate science has been growing for a while, as I discussed in a 2008 review of the Gallup polling.  No surprise, really, since the anti-science disinformation campaign uses “experts” that are more credible to conservatives, and that disinformation is repeated to death on conservative media outlets.

Now Gallup has updated its polling and just now released its own analysis, “Conservatives’ Doubts About Global Warming Grow,” with this fascinating ideological breakdown that shows how the divide has grown in the past 2 years:

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Reframing the debate on climate science

March 12, 2010

This guest post by communications expert Hunter Cutting is part of an ongoing Climate Progress series on climate messaging.

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Why is good messaging so hard?

A somewhat off-topic post about Tiger Woods hiring Ari Fleischer

March 14, 2010

I have been very critical of the scientist at the center of the email maelstrom (e-mailstrom?) — Phil Jones — “for adopting the Tiger Woods approach to media relations” (see With science journalism “basically going out of existence,” how should climate scientists deal with well-funded, anti-science disinformation campaign?).

Jones is now talking to the media, of course, which gets filed in the be-careful-what-you-wish-for-category because “he is not terribly adept at answering questions, particularly the inane trick-questions from the disinformers” (see BBC asks CRU’s Phil Jones the climate version of “When did you stop beating your wife”).

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Illusory revenues from ANWR strike again

March 13, 2010

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) wants to pay for nuclear loan guarantees and clean energy incentives in exchange for one of our most precious natural treasures, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  Kristen Miller of the Alaska Wilderness League has the story:
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