Jeff Goodell, our roving reporter at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting, filed his second dispatch after the talk by the nation’s leading climate scientist.

Maybe Justin Timberlake or Barry Manilow draws a more adoring crowd, but I doubt it. Hansen is not just a rock start here at AGU, but the one true prophet, the Man Who Saw It All Before Anyone Else. And Hansen, in his own quiet way, did not disappoint.

The themes of his talk were not new to anyone who has heard him speak recently (or to readers of Climate Progress) — the dangers of runaway warming, the need to keep CO2 level in the atmosphere at 350 ppm or lower, the urgency of phasing out coal by 2030. Today, Hansen laid it all out with dry, devestating precision.

Near the end of his talk, he predicted that, because of the earth’s current energy balance and the coming solar cycles:

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Today, PEBO officially named former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to run the Department of Agriculture. I have met him on more than one occasion, and he certainly understands that corn ethanol is not the future of biofuels. He also believes in strong action on greenhouse gas emissions.

He is a biotech guy, as Grist makes clear. And he isn’t the greenest Ag guy in the country (see here). But he is more green than not, as Greenwire reports:

Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said today he was pleased with the Vilsack selection. The coalition’s members in Iowa have had an easy time working with Vilsack, who has consistently shown support for conservation programs, Hoefner said.

“He is not going to be a revolutionary change agent,” Hoefner said. “But relative to other political names that were suggested, he is more on the change end of the continuum than many other names.”

Here is more background from Greenwire:

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“Arctic Ice Volume Lowest Ever as Globe Warms: UN,” is how Reuters reported it today. Sorry I missed that in writing my earlier post on the 2008 report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), but it was buried deep in the press release (see below).

Note that the WMO is making a stronger statement than the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) did in October (see NSIDC stunner: Arctic ice at “Likely Record-Low Volume”).

The NSIDC figure compares ice age in September 2007 (left) and September 2008 (right). It shows the sharp increase in thin first-year ice (red) and the decline in thick multi-year ice — both “second-year ice” (orange) and “third-year and older ice” (yellow). “White indicates areas of ice below ~50 percent, for which ice age cannot be determined.”

The WMO release says of the Arctic:

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Why so many geophysics-related posts this week? First, all of the major groups that track temperature and climate put out their news-making annual reports this week — and I don’t think the media is doing a terribly good job of focusing on the important issues.

Second, this week, the American Geophysical Union has its big fall conference where all the leading geophysicists go to report their latest research. ClimateProgress has glommed on to a roving reporter on site, Jeff Goodell, author of the terrific book, Big Coal.

Goodell reports that Dr. Eric Rignot, Principal Scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “rocked the house tonight (tues) with his talk on polar ice melt”:

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Then this “Interactive Quiz: A Guide to Composting” is for you.

Unfortunately, the greatest warming in 2008 came in the worst possible place for humanity — the Siberian tundra. That’s clear from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies report on the meteorological year, December 2007 through November 2008:

The remarkably widespread warming in the land of the permafrost permamelt should be the big global warming story because:

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Current Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson put out a press release praising President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Lisa Jackson to be Johnson’s successor. Johnson praises Jackson’s “wealth of experience and a solid record of achievement in environmental service,” but then goes on to burnish his own dreadful record:

While environmental responsibility is everyone’s responsibility, I am particularly proud of the role EPA has played in bringing about record results on behalf of the American people and our environment. Our air is cleaner, our water is purer, and our land is better protected than just a generation ago.

The Wonk Room contacted EPA press secretary Jonathan Shradar to ask whether the “air is cleaner” claim applies to greenhouse gas pollution. Shradar pleaded ignorance:

I don’t know the science there. I don’t think there’s a significant change in greenhouse gas pollutants. . . If you look at air quality in the United States, it is better. Climate change may still be affected.

When it was pointed out to him that the U.S. Energy Information Administration has reported that U.S. global warming pollution has increased by 17 percent since 1990 and five percent since 2001, Shradar replied:

I haven’t seen that.

When pressed further, he demurred, “I’m just the press secretary for the EPA.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual climate report tells the warming tale:

• “For November alone, the month is fourth warmest all-time globally.” This comes on the heels of last month’s report of the second warmest October on record. Since the deniers have become overly fond of 60-day trend lines (see here), one can safely conclude they will be reporting that the earth is a over-heating again.

• “The global land surface temperature for 2008 was the fifth warmest, with an average temperature 1.44 degrees F (0.80 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 48.1 degrees F (9.0 degrees C).” Looking at the land data alone is one way to factor out the cooling impact of the La Ni±a that gripped the Pacific in the first half of the year.

And the United States saw another record-breaking year for extreme storms:

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