The sunspot cycle is about to come out of its depression, if a newly discovered mechanism for predicting solar cycles — a migrating jet stream deep inside the sun — proves accurate.  And that will add a small amount of warming in the next few years, which were already predicted to be record-setting by two recent studies.

When we last looked at the sun [please, don't try that at home], we were at “a 12-year low in solar ‘irradiance’.”  As NASA explained in April:  “the sun’s brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths” since the solar minimum of 1996, which was “not enough to reverse the course of global warming.”  It’s been “the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” said sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

The deniers have been rooting for a Maunder Minimum to stifle global warming (which it wouldn’t have done anyway, see here).  But human-caused global warming is so strong that not bloody much stifling has been going on given that “this will be the hottest decade in recorded history by far,” nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s.  Heck, even with a La Ni±a and an unusually inactive sun, 2008 was almost 0.1°C warmer than the decade of the 1990s as a whole — and of course the 1990s were, at the time, the hottest decade in recorded history.  Changes in the sun just ain’t the big dog anymore when it comes to driving climate change (see here).

Yesterday, NASA reported remarkable news, “Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?“:

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E&E News reports that Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) will offer an amendment to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appropriations bill on Thursday “that would bar the agency from considering the effects of ‘indirect’ land-use changes when calculating the carbon footprint of biofuels.” Emerson’s plan to outlaw climate science for agribusiness is no surprise — she has received $952,084 from the sector, far more than any other, and has attacked the regulation of greenhouse gases before. However, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), the powerful chair of the Appropriations Interior and Environment subcommittee, is merely “leaning against” the amendment:

We think that they ought to at least be able to evaluate indirect land use, but I’m still thinking about this one,” he said, noting he had just learned about it.

This is the same biofuel-industry loophole for which Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) has been holding up comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. By replacing petroleum, biofuels have the potential to dramatically reduce global warming pollution. But scientists have found biofuels can also worsen global warming by encouraging farmers to cut down the diversity-rich tropical forests that soak up carbon dioxide. It is critical that the federal government’s mandate for billions of gallons of ethanol production be coupled with regulations that take into account the science of indirect land use change.

Dicks, an environmental champion, should know this.

Please email the NYT at nytnews@nytimes.com about this egregious ad and/or email its public editor at public@nytimes.com to explain you are “concerned about the paper’s journalistic integrity.”  Click image for full pic of the NYT’s June 16, 2009 front page.

These are hard times for the newspaper business.  The paper of record has taken to running ads on the front page.  But if they’re going to give up that precious real estate, home to many Pulitzer-Prize-winning stories, they simply can’t do it for this kind of disinformation, which is utterly misleading to the public.

Fuel for thought

Today’s car has 95% fewer emissions than a car from 1970.

Needless to say — or, rather, in this case, needful to say — while today’s car has lower emissions of urban air pollutants thanks to government regulation, today’s car has, if anything, higher emissions of greenhouse gases, which threaten the health and well-being of the next 50 generations.  And needful to say, ExxonMobil has done more than just about any other company to undermine efforts to achieve the greenhouse gas regulations that could lower those emissions.

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African farms becoming too hot to handle

African farmers will soon face growing seasons hotter than any in their experience. To cope with this rapid climate change, they – and the plant breeders who supply their crops – will need to make big changes, and soon.

Agricultural experts have predicted for some time that farmers are likely to face problems as climates become hotter and drier than they are today. Indeed, some farmers in South Africa are already reporting difficulties (pdf).

To see how fast, and how broadly, this will strike, Marshall Burke, an agricultural economist at Stanford University, and colleagues, averaged the results from 18 global climate models to forecast likely temperature and rainfall conditions in 2025, 2050 and 2075 in regions of Africa where maize, millet and sorghum are grown today. Then, assuming that year-to-year variability would remain the same as today – perhaps a conservative assumption – they asked how much these future climates would overlap with existing climates.

Desertification threatens security, UN chief warns

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As clean energy and climate legislation moves through Congress, new data show that a $150 billion investment in clean energy — which the bill would achieve in its first 10 years — could create a net increase of 1.7 million American jobs and significantly lower the national unemployment rate. According to the analysis, shifting to a clean-energy economy will help millions of low-income Americans by creating more accessible job opportunities ” with the potential for advancement ” and by lowering utility bills and transportation costs.

Two complementary reports ” prepared by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (PERI), Center for American Progress (CAP), Green For All, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) ” outline how investment in a clean-energy economy will produce significant economic and job creation benefits. These include the generation of roughly three times more jobs than would be generated by the same investment in the existing fossil fuel infrastructure.

“Jobs are the cornerstone of any economic recovery, and these reports show that investing in the clean-energy economy will create 1.7 million new jobs across the country as well as cut America’s contribution to global warming and reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” said John Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress.

“The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy: How the Economic Stimulus Program and New Legislation Can Boost U.S. Economic Growth and Employment” from PERI and CAP explains how the combination of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) could serve as the foundation for bringing total clean-energy investments in the United States to approximately $150 billion per year. This public spending and private investment would produce a net gain of 1.7 million new jobs.

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The National Wildlife Federation has done an in-depth assessment, Climate Action Toolbox, of Waxman-Markey’s American Clean Energy and Security Act.

Unlike other summaries, this analysis breaks ACES down from the perspective of the key federal policy elements needed to solve the climate crisis and build a clean energy future.  It examines the legislation from the perspective of the new tools it gives us (and some tools that are still missing) for the work ahead to tackle climate change.

The “highlights” section is posted below, including this factoid:  “The bill will save more than twice as much oil as we could get by opening up protected areas to offshore drilling.”

Highlights of NWF’s Toolbox Assessment of the American Clean Energy and Security Act

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I am a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which is run by former Clinton chief-of-staff John Podesta.  One of the reasons I came to work at CAP is because of Podesta’s personal knowledge of and commitment to clean energy and climate action.  He gets it.  So I thought I would share this recent speech he gave in Essen, Germany.  At the end, he puts forward an innovative approach to cutting the Gordian knot of international climate negotiations.

When it comes to climate change, moments of optimism have been few and far between. But I believe now is a time for measured optimism. Over the last eight years””as the findings of climate scientists became more precise, more accepted, and more worrying”” the United States refused to recognize our responsibility to future generations of this planet. Our government played politics at home, and deliberately blocked progress abroad. Just about the only moment of fleeting celebration during those long years was when Kevin Conrad, the chief climate change negotiator for Papua New Guinea, famously told U.S. negotiators: “If, for some reason, you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.”

Now, with the historic election of President [Barack] Obama, with strong climate policy advocates in both houses of Congress, and with an American public that is engaged and ready to make progress, the United States can do better than just getting out of the way. I can say with great confidence that the new American president sees climate change as the challenge of our time, and is committed to putting the full weight of America’s leadership towards building a new clean energy future. Without a doubt, change has arrived.

And not a moment too soon.

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We are coming into the home stretch on the climate bill, and the key players are (finally) starting to step up their efforts. Politico reports:

The Obama administration will make an intense push to pass climate and energy legislation next week, according to key lawmakers, aides and lobbyists.

The “energy week” comes as the House faces new obstacles to passing a controversial cap-and-trade bill, causing environmentalists to grumble that the White House has not put enough political capital into passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation this year.

The White House plans to dispatch Cabinet officials to push the administration’s energy agenda and urge Congress to pass climate legislation currently under siege from skeptical Democrats in the House.

Well, I’m not an environmentalist but I certainly have been grumbling that the White House has failed to do adequate messaging or arm-twisting (see “Nancy Sutley: Obama to stake political prestige on passing US climate bill“).  Heck, President Obama didn’t even show up for the launch of the first US climate impact study in a decade, one that his NOAA administrator “a game changer.”

The White House would appear to be among those who think the bill is going to the House floor next week — and the latest buzz is that the vote might be on Friday, but that is contingent on negotiations with Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN).

And how are negotiations going with the aggies — and how will be bill be modified to appease them?  E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reports:

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