Realclimate.org has a graph that beautifully shows that short-term trends often don’t show the long-term trend.

Gavin Schmidt and Stefan Rahmstorf explain:

The red line is the annual global-mean GISTEMP temperature record (though any other data set would do just as well), while the blue lines are 8-year trend lines — one for each 8-year period of data in the graph. What it shows is exactly what anyone should expect: the trends over such short periods are variable; sometimes small, sometimes large, sometimes negative — depending on which year you start with.

The data clearly shows that short-term comparisons don’t tell us anything. The rest of their article goes on to look at the reaons why this is so.

– Earl K.

Related Posts:

• No warming since 1998? Get real, deniers!
• NASA: 2007 Second Warmest Year Ever, with Record Warmth Likely by 2010

I’m not normally given to shameless name-dropping, but what else are blogs really for (other than making bets with readers)?

For the last three days I attended a small climate solutions summit hosted by the former Vice President and current Nobel Laureate. It was off-the-record, so I can’t report on presentations directly, but they have made me a lot smarter about the latest technologies and strategies for clean energy, which will inform my blogging this year on climate solutions. I will say now as an aside that I have become much more bullish on the potential for large-scale solar photovoltaics as a result of attending these meetings.

The VP asked me to speak for seven minutes on hydrogen at dinner Wednesday. Before dinner, I gave him a copy of the brand-new paperback edition of — warning, shameless product placement — Hell and High Water. He looked it over for a few minutes and said, deadpan,

I have only one problem with this book — this blurb on the back here that says, “If you buy only one book about global warming, make it Hell and High Water.” I just can’t agree with that.

When he introduced me that night, he repeated the line to great laughter.

BTW, in case it wasn’t obvious from his movie, the VP has a terrific sense of humor — and not just in his delivery timing of canned jokes, but in quick, impromptu one liners, like the one above, many of them self-deprecating (one of the speakers from a web-based company thanked him for his work accelerating the Internet, and he said something like, “You heard I had something to do with the internet?”).

And in case this wasn’t obvious from his movie, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things related to climate, energy, science, and technology.

He has only one character flaw that I could see. He emceed all the panels and every single one of them ran late (including my remarks, hard to believe as that may be). Too many questions, too much curiosity. I’m guessing this is one thing George W. has on him, probably runs a really tight meeting with very few questions.

Gore is now working on a sequel to his bestseller, An Inconvenient Truth, which will focus on solutions, apparently not dissuaded from his task by the new subtitle on my paperback, “The Global Warming Solution” (I think I have this product placement thing figured out). Hopefully Gore’s book will come out this year. It could really help move the debate.

Energy efficiency isn’t just a term that should refer to appliances. At just about every point between its generation and end use, electricity is lost, comprising an entirely inefficient process. But never fear, there are a growing number of advocates for what’s been termed the “Smart Grid,” a more efficient, flexible, and modern electricity system:

(From Greenwire, subs. req’d)
Smartgrid group touts enlistment of industry backers

The GridWise Alliance, a collection of public and private-sector groups that advocate modernizing the nation’s electric grid, has enlisted major new backers over the past several months as it lobbied for concessions in the recently passed energy bill.

Microsoft Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp., Constellation Energy Group Inc. and Alcatel-Lucent are among the big-ticket backers that have recently joined the group, the alliance announced today.

Other companies that have signed on, according to the Alliance: ABB, Aegis Technologies, Ambient Corp., Arcadian Networks, Autodesk, CMEA Ventures, Consumers Energy, ESRI, Energy-Insights, Serveron Corp., SmartSynch, Tollgrade Communications and the Utilities Telecom Council.

Lee Coogan, GridWise’s acting executive director, said today’s announcement reflects organizations that have joined GridWise to push for consideration in EPAct. The rapidly expanding group is now working to set priorities around major provisions of the bill: a push for new research and development around modernizing the electric grid, setting up an Energy Department-led advisory group on the issue, developing frameworks for interoperability amongst different parts of a new grid system, and encouraging states to implement new technologies.

– Kari M.

[JR: More on the smart grid in the weeks to come!]

From Hell and High Water (paperback now available on Amazon):

Obviously, if you get drought indices like these, there’s no adaptation that’s possible.
– David Rind, NASA climate scientist, 2005

 

We’re showing warming and earlier springs tying in with large forest fire frequencies. Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away. But it’s not 50 to 100 years away–it’s happening now in forest ecosystems through fire.
– Thomas Swetnam, University of Arizona climate scientist, 2006

Imagine if the climate changed and extreme weather became so constant that it was no longer considered extreme. Mammoth heat waves like the one that killed 35,000 Europeans in 2003 would occur every other year. Mega- droughts and widespread wildfires, like those of the record- breaking 2005 wildfire season, which ravaged 8.5 million acres, would be the norm. This new climate would wipe out whole forests, including virtually every pine tree in British Columbia. The Arctic would have little or no summer ice, and the Greenland ice cap would melt, eventually raising sea levels by 20 feet.

If we permit this Planetary Purgatory to occur, the nation and the world would be forced to begin a desperate race against time–a race against the vicious cycles in which an initial warming causes changes to the climate system that lead to more warming, which makes adapting to climate change a never- ending, ever- changing, expensive, exhausting struggle for our children, and their children, and on and on for generations.

This chapter will focus on (1) the impacts of accelerated warming, especially drought and wildfires, and (2) the fatal feedbacks that will probably start to kick into overdrive during this era and complicate any effort to stop the Greenland Ice Sheet from melting….