The deniers have been trumpeting an atrocious study that made it into the July 23 edition of Journal of Geophysical Research, “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature.”  The top anti-scientific blog, WattsUpWithThat crowed, “Surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean”:

A new peer-reviewed climate study is presenting a head on challenge to man-made global warming claims.

But let’s not waste time quoting that “atrocious paper,” as RealClimate puts it, with a couple of debunking links here.  The occasional atrocious denier paper sometimes makes it through the peer-reviewed process.  What’s truly remarkable here is that some of the top climate scientists in the country already have a response submitted for publication in JGR — see full article here.

Last year saw “A new Olympic record for retraction of a denier talking point,” but this would seem to be some sort of a world record for scientific rebuttal.

The 9 (!) rebuttal authors span the globe from Japan to the UK to New Zealand to Colorado and New York, reading like a who’s who of global climate science:  G. Foster, J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, B. Mullan, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, and K. E. Trenberth.  Here’s the abstract:

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This guest post is by Julian L. Wong and Austin Davis at the Center for American Progress.

Multiple news outlets have been reporting that yesterday’s news conference with China’s top climate change ambassador, Yu Qingtai, marked a significant departure from China’s established attitudes toward climate change. He also expressed a degree flexibility regarding China’s previous demands that developed nations pledge to reduce their carbon emissions 40% by 2020 from 1990 levels at Copenhagen this December.

It’s true: Wednesday’s conference provided a more explicit explanation of China’s position on climate change than had been offered previously. Yu reaffirmed China’s commitment to eventually reducing its carbon emissions while giving more specific details as to China’s position on the Copenhagen talks.

Great quotes like “there is no one in the world who is more keen than us to see China reach its emissions peak as early as possible” may have caused a stir among the western media, but this is not really news.

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Closing Utah state offices on Fridays has resulted in a 13 percent reduction in energy use according to an internal analysis of the nation’s most expansive four-day workweek program.

Since last August, about 17,000 of the state’s 24,000 executive branch employees have been working 10 hours a day, four days a week in an effort to reduce energy consumption and cut utility costs….

The state estimates that, collectively, employees will save between $5 million and $6 million annually by not commuting on Fridays and the initiative will cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 12,000 metric tons.

Even before we get desperate about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, even before the global Ponzi scheme collapses, gasoline prices are going to blow past $4 a gallon (see World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery: “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”).  So it seems inevitable that much of the nation will adopt the 4-day work week sometime over the next two decades — especially if the results of Utah’s program are replicated by others.

“I can’t even name all the places that have called us,” said John Harrington, state energy manager.

Aaron Newton in an Oil Drum post, estimates that a national 4-day work week would save 5% to 10% of the more than 8 million barrels a day he calculates that U.S. commuters use.  And he notes there would be other environmental and health benefits

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Tony Blair and the Climate Group have written an excellent report, “Breaking the Climate Deadlock: Technology for a Low Carbon Future (PDF).”

While they endorse strong investment in technology development — as the Center for American Progress (CAP) and virtually everyone else does — it is squarely focused on the crucial role that strong government regulations and standards play in achieving the rapid technology deployment needed to meet key 2020 greenhouse gas targets.  And it endorses a strong carbon price — as CAP and virtually all serious independent groups do (with a few strange exceptions) — as a necessary means of achieving emissions reductions sufficient to preserve a livable climate.

Let’s start with Blair’s detailed strategy for achieving significant global emissions reductions in 2020 — which is the cornerstone of any real plan to avert catastrophic global warming.  Here is the first conclusion from the executive summary:

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The coal industry lobbying outfit now mired in a forgery scandal is planning to plant questioners at “town hall meetings” and “lawmakers’ offices,” Politico reports. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), despite the revelation it was responsible for forged “grassroots” letters to members of the House of Representatives attacking the American Clean Energy and Security Act, is pressing forward with an aggressive Astroturfing campaign going after U.S. Senators, who are now considering the legislation:

The coalition also plans to deploy teams to question senators at town hall meetings, advertise at state fairs and other summer events and visit lawmakers’ offices back home.

ACCCE’s campaign, representing coal interests from General Electric to Peabody Energy, requires the efforts of multiple Astroturfing companies, including primary contractor Hawthorn Group, as well as known fraud shop Bonner & Associates, and marketing firm R & R Partners.

The “ACCCE Army” will be joining right-wing Astroturf efforts funded by the oil and gas industry to disrupt Congressional town hall meetings across the nation. Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, both bankrolled by oil and gas giant Koch Industries, are orchestrating the “tea party protests” and have hired dozens of field staff to spread misinformation about clean energy and health care reform. Yesterday, FreedomWorks released its “August Action Recess Packet” for disrupting town hall meetings:

It is essential that we don’t let the pressure up. While Senators and Representatives are home for their August recess they need to hear from you, regardless of party. Many hold town hall meetings that are open to the public, check our map to see if there is one nearby and take our questions to ask them on the record whether they can risk losing even more jobs under Cap and Trade or if they plan on raising taxes for government run health care. In addition to attending town hall meetings, please call and visit district offices asking the same questions.

As Media Matters Action explains, the FreedomWorks energy talking points are just as fraudulent as ACCCE’s “clean coal” campaign.

Arctic sea ice extent for the month of July was the third lowest for that month in the satellite record, after 2007 and 2006. The average rate of melt in July 2009 was nearly identical to that of July 2007. A strong high-pressure system, similar to the atmospheric pattern that dominated the summer of 2007, brought warm winds and clear skies to the western Arctic, promoting ice melt.

You can read more of the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s update here.  Breaking the 2007 sea ice area record seems unlikely, as NSIDC explains in the update.  But breaking the 2008 sea ice volume record is still a serious possibility (see “Will we see record low Arctic ice VOLUME this year?“).

NOAA’s National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center released its monthly El Ni±o/Southern oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion:

Synopsis: El Ni±o is expected to strengthen and last through the Northern Hemisphere Winter 2009-2010.

A weak El Ni±o was present during July 2009, as monthly sea surface temperatures (SST) departures ranged from +0.5°C to +1.5°C across the equatorial Pacific Ocean, with the largest anomalies in the eastern half of the basin. Consistent with this warmth, all of the Ni±o-region SST indices were between +0.6°C to +1.0°C throughout the month. Subsurface oceanic heat content (average temperatures in the upper 300m of the ocean) anomalies continued to reflect a deep layer of anomalous warmth between the ocean surface and thermocline.

A majority of the model forecasts for the Ni±o-3.4 SST index [Fig. 6, at the bottom] suggest El Ni±o will continue to strengthen. While there is disagreement on the eventual strength of El Ni±o, nearly all of the dynamical models predict a moderate-to-strong El Ni±o during the Northern Hemisphere Winter 2009-10.

This announcement is not surprising news — it mainly means the ENSO models are on track (see NOAA says “El Ni±o arrives; Expected to Persist through Winter 2009-10″³ “” and that means record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record).

But this evolving story remains a big deal from the perspective of heating up global temperatures and cooling off denier talking points.  After all, the La Ni±a conditions over the past 18 months helped temporarily mute the strong human-caused warming signal, allowing the global warming deniers to push their nonsensical global cooling meme with the help of the status quo media (see “Media enable denier spin 1: A (sort of) cold January [2008] doesn’t mean climate stopped warming“).

Remember, back in January, NASA had predicted:  “Given our expectation of the next El Ni±o beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.“

So I will continue posting at least monthly updates.  Regular readers can skip the rest of this post (though it does have some new figues).

It is the warming in the Nino 3.4 region of the Pacific that is typically used to define an El Ni±o.  The region can be seen in this figure:

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Arctic Ocean may be polluted soup by 2070

Within 60 years the Arctic Ocean could be a stagnant, polluted soup. Without drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, the Transpolar Drift, one of the Arctic’s most powerful currents and a key disperser of pollutants, is likely to disappear because of global warming.

The Transpolar Drift is a cold surface current that travels right across the Arctic Ocean from central Siberia to Greenland, and eventually out into the Atlantic. It was first discovered in 1893 by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who tried unsuccessfully to use the current to sail to the North Pole. Together with the Beaufort Gyre, the Transpolar Drift keeps Arctic waters well mixed and ensures that pollution never lingers there for long.

To better understand the dispersal of pollution in the Arctic Ocean, Ola Johannessen, director of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Bergen, Norway, and his colleagues studied the spread of radioactive substances such as strontium-90 and caesium-137 from nuclear testing, bomb factories and nuclear power-plant accidents. Measurements taken between 1948 and 1999 were plugged into a high-resolution ocean circulation model and combined with a climate model to predict Arctic Ocean circulation until 2080.

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You can’t make this stuff up — and you can’t keep up with the staggering amount of fraud and falsehood coming out of industry.  Brad Johnson reports on one of the most outrageous coal-industry statements made in recent years.  ACCCE’s Joe Lucas has just jumped to the front of the race for “Greenwasher of the Year.”

The coal industry front group embroiled in an Astroturf scandal is now arguing that mountaintop removal coal mining helps communities “hampered because of a lack of flat space.” Joe Lucas, vice president of communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), told the Guardian that dynamiting the tops off of mountains “” far from being the “rape of Appalachia” “” is actually a boon to rural communities:

I can take you to places in eastern Kentucky where community services were hampered because of a lack of flat space “” to build factories, to build hospitals, even to build schools. In many places, mountain-top mining, if done responsibly, allows for land to be developed for community space.

The concept of “responsible” mountain-top mining is laughable, as Mountain Justice explains:

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