tagged w/ Climate
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On January 19th, LiveOAK Media will join forces with clean energy firm Masdar to host the Masdar Digital Dialogue, a unique opportunity for Twitter users to "Debate the issues and engage the world," at the 2011 World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi from 5:30-8pm (GMT +4 hours).
Click for more info about how you can participate! http://ow.ly/3C6rKOn January 19th, LiveOAK Media will join forces with clean energy firm Masdar to host... more
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This may seem just initially intriguing and not much more, but there's a serious climate change implication: According to researchers from Cornell University, the amount of naturally-occurring dust in the atmosphere today--as opposed to all the human-produced aerosols that we put up into the air--is twice that of the 19th century.
link:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/01/earth-twice-as-dusty-as-century-ago.phpThis may seem just initially intriguing and not much more, but there's a serious... more
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One of the biggest obstacles to reducing carbon emissions is the simple fact that political time and climatological time are very, very different. Politicians in elected democracies think on two- or four-year cycles—if that—while even the leaders of an autocratic state like China, without the pressures of an election, are still limited in just how far ahead they can plan. That's not just politics—that's human psychology. We tend not to be very good at planning for the future—just look at the long-term decline in the American savings rate—and that's just thinking over the scale of a human lifetime. Climatological time is closer to "deep time," the writer John McPhee's term for how the planet's geology changes over millions to even billions of years, a span of time simply unfathomable to human beings. Climate can change a lot faster than that—thanks largely to the billions of tons of greenhouse gases we've been pumping into the atmosphere over the past 150 years—but it still moves a lot slower than political time, so it's easy to put off until tomorrow.
But two papers published over the weekend in Nature Geoscience show that the very length of climatological time can frustrate our efforts to slow global warming—assuming we can begin to do that. In one paper, a group of Canadian researchers decided to see how the climate system might react over the next hundreds of years if greenhouse gas emissions kept rising to a high level until 2100, and then were zeroed out. (Download a PDF here.) As of 2100, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere reach some 1,000 ppm—two and a half times the current level, and well above the 450 or 350 ppm that many scientists believe would be a safe limit. At that point, emissions magically stop—impossible in the real world, but this is a model. Carbon dioxide, however, can stay in the atmosphere for centuries or even longer, so warming doesn't end when the emissions do. The damage is already done—and continues for the next 900 years.
According to the study, by the year 3000 half the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere before 2100 would still be there, and global average temperatures that rose by some 3.5 C would as we kept emitting greenhouse gases would stay roughly at that level, even after the emissions ended. But that's just the global average—Antarctica would become much hotter, adding an additional 9 C after 2100. The West Antarctica ice sheet would eventually collapse, raising sea levels by some 13 feet (4 meters), and ocean warming would cause thermal expansion that would lead to additional sea level rise. North Africa would experience desertification, though the Northern Hemisphere and tropics would cool down—though they'd still feel much hotter compared to our current times. While it's an imperfect study, to say the least—it uses a single climate model, and anything that tries to predict climate effects 1,000 years in the future is not much more than an educated guess—the results do show what kind of scary long-term effects all that carbon might have, even if we do eventually succeed in cutting emissions sharply.
On a shorter time scale, two researchers from Canada and Sweden surveyed the impact that a century's worth of warming would have on the world's glaciers, which are already melting. Using temperatures derived from different climate models—and taking future carbon emissions from a mid-level projection by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the scientists found that total glacier volume would be reduced by an average of 21% by 2100, though some areas could see as much as 75% melt away. (Download a PDF of the study here.) That would raise sea level by about a dozen centimeters, though that's almost definitely an underestimate, as it excludes losses from Greenland and Antarctica. And of course, as the first study showed us, climate change won't stop in the year 2100—even if we succeed in rapidly reducing carbon emissions. Once we change the climate, it will keep on changing.
It's tough to get our head around a century—after all, back in 1900 we were just beginning to flood the atmosphere with carbon emissions, and look at what's happened already. An entire millennium is unimaginable, yet the decisions we make as a society now will impact the sort of planet we have in the year 3000—assuming human beings are still around. Skeptics will argue that in hundred years, let alone a thousand years, we'll be much richer and technologically more advanced, far better prepared to cut carbon emissions and deal with whatever warming will bring. Perhaps—but as these studies show, if we can reduce carbon emissions pretty soon, we'll be dealing with the effects for hundreds and hundreds of years. Politics may not operate on climatological time, but the Earth does—and so does the species.
(click on the link to access all the in-text links)One of the biggest obstacles to reducing carbon emissions is the simple fact that... more
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Near-freezing temperatures have killed more than two dozen people in northern India in recent days despite government efforts to distribute blankets and medicine to the poor, an official and a news report said.
In worst-hit Uttar Pradesh state, at least 22 people - many of them homeless - died over the past three days, pushing the death toll from two weeks of cold weather to 63, Ram Mohan Srivastav, a top government official, said Saturday.
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/International/78324Near-freezing temperatures have killed more than two dozen people in northern India in... more
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Recently published emails written by Canadian Embassy and government employees show that the Embassy directly lobbied the Bush Administration and Congress over a law that could have restricted exports of tar sands-derived crude oil. The emails also show that the Bush Administration asked Canada to convince oil companies to lobby Congress on the Bush Administration's behalf.Recently published emails written by Canadian Embassy and government employees show... more
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Scientists employed by the rule of Abu Dhabi claim they have successfully managed to create rain in the desert through the use of giant ionisers.
The possibility of creating rain in the dry region could turn the desert into land fit for growing crops. Is this a step forward? Or should we be leaving natural climates as they are?Scientists employed by the rule of Abu Dhabi claim they have successfully managed to... more
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In response to growing frustration that the U.N. climate negotiations are not producing real-world results, individual nations, states and business are cobbling together patchwork solutions to preserve forests, produce clean energy and scrub pollution from the air.
:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/09/AR2010120906727.html?hpid=topnewsIn response to growing frustration that the U.N. climate negotiations are not... more
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suzane
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Ships could be charged different fees to dock depending on how much carbon they emit, according to ideas being discussed at the UN climate summit.
:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11931883Ships could be charged different fees to dock depending on how much carbon they emit,... more
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Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.
Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries' negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental "treaty circumvention" and deals between nations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-us-manipulated-climate-accordHidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations... more
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Developing countries accused Japan on Wednesday of reneging on promises to extend the fight against global warming beyond 2012 and said the talks in Mexico would fail unless Tokyo backed down.
:http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/12/2/worldupdates/2010-12-02T010542Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-532834-1&sec=WorldupdatesDeveloping countries accused Japan on Wednesday of reneging on promises to extend the... more
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suzane
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The failure of US climate legislation, following last year's disappointing negotiations at Copenhagen, casts a pall over the round of climate talks in Cancún this week. And the global recession and budget-cutting crisis makes this seem like the worst time for new climate initiatives. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of delaying action: the laws of physics don't need 60 votes in the US Senate to continue making the world's climate less and less liveable.The failure of US climate legislation, following last year's disappointing... more
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"Keeping the show on the road" may be all governments can hope for at next week's UN climate talks, the UK admits.Energy and Climate Secretary Chris Huhne said there was no chance of getting a legally binding deal at the summit in Cancun, Mexico.
link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11834518"Keeping the show on the road" may be all governments can hope for at next... more
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The world is now firmly on the path for dangerous climate change in the coming century, a major new assessment reveals today on the eve of the forthcoming UN climate conference which opens next week in Mexico.
:http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/dire-warning-on-eve-of-climate-change-summit-2142094.htmlThe world is now firmly on the path for dangerous climate change in the coming... more
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suzane
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“It could be a record-breaking November”
Iqalummiut were better off wearing rain slickers rather than parkas for most of the past month as unusually warm temperatures continue to flood the eastern Arctic.
Above zero temperatures have dominated weather forecasts in Iqaluit this November, where on some days temperatures have risen almost 20 degrees above the average.
Normal temperatures for this time of year in Iqaluit fall between -11 C and -19 C, but the coldest day this month only dipped to about - 9 C.
The mercury crept to 3.5 C in Iqaluit on Nov. 19, a couple degrees shy of the 5.5 C record high registered on the same day in 1977.
And that trend is likely to continue across most of the Arctic this week, said Environment Canada meteorologist Rene Heroux, with more above zero temperatures in store for the Eastern Arctic, including Nunavik.
“Let’s just say it’s not as cold as it’s supposed to be,” Heroux said. “It could be a record-breaking November the way it’s going now.”
Southwesterly winds pushed warm air north this month, meaning higher than usual temperatures everywhere in the Arctic region, Heroux said.
Temperatures have registered 10 C above normal in northern Foxe Basin, 6 C to 8 C above normal in Hudson Strait and 7 C to 9 C above normal in western Hudson Bay.
As a result, Heroux said the development of ice is about four weeks late in Foxe Basin, which remains largely open water.
The freeze-up is about two weeks late in western Hudson Bay with only a very narrow fringe of new ice evident along the western and southern shores.
“It’s a bit like last year,” Heroux said. “Temperatures are behind and the ice is late.”
The open water in the Arctic has an impact on southern temperatures too, Heroux added.
When Arctic air passes over the open Hudson Bay, the water warms the air before it travels south. That accounts for above average temperatures experienced in southern Quebec and Ontario this fall.
“We don’t always see how the Arctic impacts our weather down south,” Heroux said. “The Arctic is a thermostat for the rest of the country.”
On the other hand, the Western Arctic sent a chilly air mass to southwestern Canada last week, plunging cities like Edmonton and Calgary into the minus 20s.
But mild temperatures are forecast all across the Arctic this week.
Three factors can usually explain abnormal weather patterns, Heroux said, including normal variability from one winter to the next, climate change and El Nino, a warming of the Pacific Ocean every few years that causes unusual global weather patterns.
Last winter, Environment Canada logged Nunavik’s mildest winter on record, with an average temperature of only -14.5 C.“It could be a record-breaking November”
Iqalummiut were better off... more
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TRANSCRIPT: This week marks the one year anniversary of the release of emails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that we now know as Climategate.
Sitting here now, one year later, it’s becoming difficult to remember the importance of that release of information, or even what information was actually released. Many were only introduced to the scandal through commentary in the blogosphere and many more came to know about it only weeks later, after the establishment media had a chance to assess the damage and fine tune the spin that would help allay their audience’s concern that something important had just happened. Very few have actually bothered to read the emails and documents for themselves.
Few have browsed the “Harry Read Me” file, the electronic notes of a harried programmer trying to make sense of the CRU’s databases. They have never read for themselves how temperatures in the database were “artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures” or the “hundreds if not thousands of dummy stations” which somehow ended up in the database, or how the exasperated programmer resorts to expletives before admitting he made up key data on weather stations because it was impossible to tell what data was coming from what sources.
Few have read the 2005 email from Climategate ringleader and CRU head Phil Jones to John Christy where he states “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.” Or where he concludes: “As you know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.”
Or the email where he broke the law by asking Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame to delete a series of emails related to a Freedom of Information request he had just received.
Or the email where he wrote: “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.”
Or the other emails where these men of science say they will re-define the peer review process itself in order to keep differing view points out of the scientific literature, or where they discussousting a suspected skeptic out of his editorial position in a key scientific journal, or where theyfret about how to hide the divergence in temperature proxy records from observed temperatures, or where they openly discuss the complete lack of warming over the last decade or any of the thousands of other emails and documents exposing a laundry list of gross scientific and academic abuses.
Of course, the alarmists continue to argue–as they have ever since they first began to acknowledge the scandalÑthat climategate is insignificant. Without addressing any of the issues or specific emails, they simply point to the “independent investigations” that they say have vindicated the climategate scientists.
Like the UK parliamentary committee, which issued a report claiming that Phil Jones and the CRU’s scientific credibility remained intact after a rigorous one day hearing which featured no testimony from any skeptic or dissenting voice. After the release of the report, the committee stressed that the report did not address all of the issues raised by climategate and Phil Willis, the committee chairman admitted that the committee had rushed to put out a report before the British election.
Or the Oxburgh inquiry, chaired by Lord Ron Oxburgh, the UK Vice Chair of Globe International, an NGO-funded climate change legislation lobby group. The Oxburgh inquiry released a five page report after having reviewed 11 scientific papers unrelated to the climategate scandal that had been hand-picked by Phil Jones himself. It heard no testimony or evidence from anyone critical of the CRU. Unsurprisingly, it found the climategaters not guilty of academic misconduct.
Regardless of what one thinks of the veracity or independence of these so-called investigations into the climategate scandal itself, what has followed has been a catastrophic meltdown of the supposedly united front of scientific opinion that manmade CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming.
In late November of 2009, just days after the initial release of the climategate emails, the University of East Anglia was in the hotseat again. The CRU was forced to admit they hadthrown away most of the raw data that their global temperature calculations were based upon, meaning their work was not reproducible by any outside scientists.
In December of that year, the UN’s Copenhagen climate talks broke down when a negotiating document was leaked showing that–contrary to all prÑit would be the third world nations bearing the brunt of a new international climate treaty, with punishing restrictions on carbon emissions that would prevent them from ever industrializing. The document, written by industrialized nations, allowed the first world to emit twice as much carbon per person as the third world, and was widely seen as an implementation of a eugenical austerity program under a “green” cover. This agenda was further exposed by the influential Optimum Population Trust in the UK, which began arguing that same month that rich westerners offset their carbon footprints by funding programs to stop black people from breeding.
In January 2010, the United Nations’ much-lauded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change began to fall apart as error after error began to emerge in this supposedly unassailable peer-reviewed, scientific document asserting human causation of catastrophic climate change. That month it was revealed that a passing comment to a journalist from an Indian climatologist that the Himalayan glaciers could melt within 40 years found its way into the much-touted Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth report on climate change via a World Wildlife Fund fundraising pamphlet. When IPCC defenders tried to pass the universally derided prediction off as a legitimate mistake, the coordinating lead author of that section of the report admitted that the IPCC knew that the report was based on baseless speculation in a non-peer reviewed work, but included it because “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
Later that month, doubt was cast on another claim in the IPCC report, this one that 40% of the Amazon rainforest was in danger of disappearing due to manmade global warming. These doubts were confirmed in July when the claim was sourced back to pure, unverified speculation on the now-defunct website of a Brazilian environmental advocacy group. Just this month, the exact opposite of the original claim was shown to be the case when a new study appeared in Science demonstrating that forests in past warming periods were not decimated but in fact blooming with life, experiencing a “rapid and distinct increase in plant diversity and origination rates.”
Also in January, the UK Information Commissioner ruled that researchers at the CRU had broken the law by refusing to comply with Freedom of Information requests, but that no criminal prosecution would follow because of a statute of limitations on prosecuting the illegal activity.
READ MORE: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2010/11/climategate-is-still-issue.htmlTRANSCRIPT: This week marks the one year anniversary of the release of emails and... more
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Tom Donohue: Obama's Tormentor (article from Bloomberg's BusinessWeek)
If the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has his way, the President's change agenda is finished
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_46/b4203070002219_page_2.htm
Two days before Halloween, a squadron of protesters from the radical feminist group CodePink showed up in front of the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. The agitators, who were dressed as vampires, produced masks bearing the craggy visage of Thomas J. Donohue, the chamber's white-haired chief executive. Through the wonders of Photoshop, they had given him a wicked set of eyebrows, sharp fangs, and a red-stained mouth.
The protesters unfurled a black "Chamber of Horrors" banner and chanted, castigating the chamber for spending upwards of $50 million to help flip the leadership of the House of Representatives from Democratic to Republican. "Help! Help! Dracula Donohue is sucking the blood from me and you!" they wailed. "Help! Help! The Chamber of Commerce is making this election even worse. Help! Help! We're under attack. We want our democracy back!"
The 72-year-old Donohue could hear it all from his fourth-floor office, where he was trying not to gloat on the eve of a midterm election that was about to come out almost exactly as he hoped. "It sounds like our friends are here," he said.
The head of the Chamber of Commerce—the nation's largest business trade association, with an annual budget of $258 million—doesn't mind being called a bloodsucker or inspiring howls of protest. To the contrary, the opposition lets his members know he's doing his job—which makes them more likely to give money to his organization.
During the last two years, empowered by $350 million in donations from corporations such as Dow Chemical (DOW), Goldman Sachs (GS), Chevron Texaco (CVX), and many other anonymous sources, Donohue has emerged as President Obama's most effective antagonist. Almost every time the President introduced a major initiative, the chamber and its leader were primed to attack: New health-care laws imposed a "burdensome mandate on employers," and the Administration's Wall Street reforms would "choke off" business' access to capital. And don't get Donohue started on the White House's climate change proposals. It didn't matter that Obama helped resuscitate the banking system, bailed out auto manufacturers, and meddled far less with Wall Street than many of his supporters would have wished. Donohue tapped into a powerful vein of discontent within the business community and rode it like a rocket.
Perhaps not surprisingly, his enemies were enormously gratified when the chamber stumbled early in its anti-Obama campaign. In August 2009, William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice-president for environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, called for public hearings on the validity of the climate science that had triggered the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. He predicted a spectacular debate much like that surrounding the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which proponents of evolution and creationism battled in court, a remark that suggested the chamber was as skeptical about the dangerous effects of global warming as some of its Republican allies. The response was swift: Five major companies, including Apple (AAPL) and Nike (NKE), resigned from the board or from chamber membership in the face of the public outcry, and some local chambers distanced themselves from Kovacs' comments. "I think the chamber's approach is somewhat old school," Valerie Jarrett, one of the President's senior advisers, complained to the Huffington Post.
ELECTION SPENDING
As the criticism reached a boil, Donohue reminded everybody of why he's a Washington institution who has been around since 1997. He repudiated his senior vice-president's inflammatory statement and moderated the chamber's tone on global warming just enough to calm some of its critics ("So let me state without equivocation: We, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, support strong action on climate change"). Donohue also ramped up his organization's fundraising. Its opaque 501(c) operation, which is not legally required to identify its funding sources, poured $32 million into television "issue" advertising often critiquing Obama's allies in Congress during this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The vast majority goes to Republican candidates. (Obama and his allies shot back, accusing the chamber of accepting undisclosed funds from foreign corporations, a charge Donohue vehemently denies.) The chamber's partner in the campaign was Karl Rove's American Crossroads, a conservative fundraising group whose president, Steven Law, is a former U.S. Chamber of Commerce general counsel. "The chamber and the Crossroads groups meet periodically and share information about where they will be engaged in the U.S. Senate and House races in order to make sure that efforts aren't doubled," said Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Rove's organization, on the eve of the election.
On Nov. 2, the Republican Party won control of the House of Representatives and increased its presence in the Senate by six seats, making Obama's chief tormentor even more powerful than he was before. The chamber supported the winner in 38 of 59 contests. "How do I feel? Tired," Donohue said the next day. "But that's fine. I think our guys did a great job."
He intends to spend his new political capital by reconfiguring the country's economic policies the same way that large corporations have always wanted to: by cutting taxes, slashing regulation, forging trade deals with foreign countries, and reducing the deficit.
He'd like to start by chipping away at the President's legislative achievements such as health-care and financial reform, which must still be implemented at the regulatory level. In short, the battles between the chamber and the White House are far from over. "Oh, hell no," Donohue laughs. "They are in the second inning."
Donohue's critics have taken notice. "The chamber can walk into any office on Capitol Hill and the first thing the member of Congress will think about is the $50 million that the chamber spent in this election for them or against them," says David Donnelly, director of Public Campaign Action Fund's Campaign Money Watch. "That's an incredible amount of clout to throw around."
ARTICLE CONTINUES AT LINK:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_46/b4203070002219_page_2.htmTom Donohue: Obama's Tormentor (article from Bloomberg's BusinessWeek)... more
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