[Please Digg this post by clicking here.]

The news from NOAA, “Greenhouse Gases Continue to Climb Despite Economic Slump,” is that all our dawdling on climate action this decade is having real impact on the atmosphere:

Two of the most important climate change gases increased last year, according to a preliminary analysis for NOAA’s annual greenhouse gas index, which tracks data from 60 sites around the world.

Researchers measured an additional 16.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) “” a byproduct of fossil fuel burning “” and 12.2 million tons of methane in the atmosphere at the end of December 2008. This increase is despite the global economic downturn, with its decrease in a wide range of activities that depend on fossil fuel use.

That meant a 2.1 ppm rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 386 ppm, easily the highest levels homo “sapiens” sapiens have ever seen, which is not news (see “World carbon dioxide levels jump in 2008 to highest in 650,000 “” if not 20 million “” years“), but should still worry everyone since it continues the nearly 40% higher rate of growth of concentrations this decade compared to last.  It also meant a 4.4 part per billion rise in methane concentrations, which definitely is news — and far more worrisome.

Sharply rising methane levels have been implicated in most every major rapid warming spell in Earth’s history, as Nature (subs. req’d, excerpted below) explained in a report last month. The report, on what they called “a ticking time bomb,” warned the “vast stores of methane “” a potent greenhouse gas “” could be released from frozen deposits on land and under the ocean.”

Read more

Top Stories

Democrats May Ease Bill’s Emissions Rules

Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are negotiating among themselves on whether to scale back legislation that would impose a mandatory limit on greenhouse gases, with some conservatives and moderates calling for electric utilities to be given free pollution allowances and for more modest cuts in the targets for reducing emissions….

The talks suggest that utilities that distribute electricity from coal-fired plants are making progress in their efforts to get free access to 40 percent of the emissions permits, underscoring the challenge lawmakers face in seeking strict limits on carbon dioxide and other contributors to warming….

The Waxman-Markey bill calls for cutting U.S. emissions to 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and to 83 percent below by 2050; the Boucher proposal would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent by 2020 while leaving the 2050 goal in place….

Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, said that senior Democrats are unlikely to adopt some of Boucher’s requests — such as lowering emissions targets — because they simply reflect the legislation that he and Dingell pushed unsuccessfully last year, but that they might accept his proposal on free allowances.

“The Boucher list seems to be a very thoughtful distillation of good ideas, old ideas and areas for discussion,” Weiss said, adding that awarding the allowances free could “soften the transition” to a low-carbon economy for consumers. “Boucher’s request means a deal is very possible.”

Read more

UPDATE:  Turns out the OC Register screwed the pooch on this one — Woof!

The editors are the deniers and they misattributed this to Samuelson, who is just the same old anti-climate-action, know-nothing hypocrite he used to be on this subject.  More on that later.

My apologies for … uhh, believing what I read in the OC Register.

Note:  They have changed the attribution — but offer no explanation or correction on that web-page, which makes some of the comments very confused.

A reader alerted me to this stupefying (and stupefied) column editorial on California’s low-carbon fuel standard, “CO2 limits are unneeded, unjust,” by Robert J. Samuelson in the OC Register:

This is government by administrative decree from unelected ARB board members, administrators and staff, who concocted a fanciful “solution” to so-called global warming, an increasingly disputed phenomenon that hasn’t occurred for at least a decade.

Nevertheless, by a 9-1 vote the ARB deemed it urgent enough to demand a 10-percent reduction in carbon dioxide that fuel producers release into the atmosphere on the theory — also unproven — that CO2 increases temperatures. Reality inconveniently contradicts the theory. CO2 has risen over the past decade, but global temperatures have declined, precisely the opposite of what the theory contends.

Wow!

My point here isn’t to debunk what is just a standard denier talking point –  although Samuelson’s this disinformation would surprise NASA, which says 2005 is the hottest year in the temperature record.  And, of course, Samuelson apparently is clueless that Hadley Center and WMO say 2000s are easily the hottest decade in recorded history. And for completeness, here’s “Yes, the planet has kept warming since 1998.”

Read more