Existential question of the day:  How can Paul Hudson’s byline be “Climate correspondent, BBC News” when his ‘reporting‘ doesn’t correspond to the climate, which continues to warm?

It is tiresome debunking yet another poor researched article by a media outlet that has historically had a great deal of credibility [see "NYT's Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!) and repeats outright misinformation"].  The BBC headline inanely asks “What happened to global warming?”  Answer — it keeps on keepin’ on:

• Very warm 2008 makes this the hottest decade in recorded history by far, according to NASA
• Sorry deniers, Hadley Center and WMO say 2000s are easily the hottest decade in recorded history

And those posts were just projections from December 2008, before factoring in the record warming we’re seeing this year (see “NASA reports hottest June to September on record“).  The figure above is from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  The solid red line is the five-year mean, which is obviously a better view of the climate picture, as opposed to the highly variable annual data.  NASA used the “January-September (9 months) mean” for the 2009 data point.  The hottest year on record is 2005, and 2009 is likely to be close to the second hottest years of 2007 and 1998.

But Hudson is a Brit, so he (sort of) uses the data from the Met Office aka Hadley Center in his lede:

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Those quotes are from a recent op-ed, “The Congress, Not the EPA, Must Take the Lead to Address Climate Challenges,” by the Senator from the state that is the most ravaged by climate change today.  The piece is mainly a defense of her myopic amendment to stall EPA action:

Congress is currently engaged in one of the most complex policy debates of our time – how best to mitigate climate change without harming the economy….

Congressional action is almost unanimously preferred, but right now Congress is a long ways from completing legislation that can deliver meaningful greenhouse gas reductions without damaging the economy.

Understanding this, I recently sought to give Congress additional time to develop sensible legislation. I did this by offering an amendment to call a temporary, one-year “timeout” on the EPA’s imminent regulations….

We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions….

You can be assured that I will continue to work in good faith with all who want to address climate change….

We need an effective policy that will endure, and that’s why Congress, not the EPA, must take the lead.

Huh.  The breakthrough Graham-Kerry op-ed says we aren’t a “long ways” away from a bill:

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Right-wing activists across the nation are enraged by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) decision to work with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to craft comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. In an op-ed published in Sunday’s New York Times, Graham and Kerry discussed their agreement on a framework for mandatory global warming pollution reductions linked to government support for the nuclear, coal, and natural gas industries. The Natural Resource Defense Council’s Dan Lashof embraced the announcement as a “game changer.” Bill Scher noted that Graham has “crossed the climate Rubicon,” abandoning denialist conservative activists by recognizing the threat of global warming and working with Democrats. Graham has even said “it doesn’t bother me one bit” if President Obama gets credit for a policy victory:

I think the planet is heating up. I think CO2 emissions are damaging the environment and this dependence on foreign oil is a natural disaster in the making. Let’s do something about it. I’d like to solve a problem, and if it’s on President Obama’s watch, it doesn’t bother me one bit if it makes the country better off.

Graham’s willingness to drop blind partisanship for the chance to shape corporate-friendly climate legislation is making him the latest target of the extremist right, who drove Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) out of the Republican Party and demonized Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE). Yesterday, Graham held a town hall meeting in Greenville, South Carolina in which local Tea Party activists accused him of “going to bed with John Kerry” and making a “pact with the devil,” accusations which generated tremendous applause by the assembled crowd.

Watch it:

This unhinged response is reflected in the conservative blogosphere, where Graham has been called a “fake Republican,” “RINO” (Republican in name only), a “traitor,” “disgrace,” “asshat,” “democrat in drag,” and a “wussypants, girly-man, half-a-sissy”: Read more

Fast on the heels of the second warmest August on record and warmest June-July-August for the oceans, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that this was the second hottest September on record.

Unlike NOAA, which will announce its September global analysis in a few days, NASA just quietly updates its data set (here).  So you have to do a little math to see that for the June through September period, 2009 now tops both 2005 and 1998.  I put the asterisk in the headline since these four months in 2009 are only slightly warmer than those in 1998.

I’m not cherry-picking these last four months, but rather ENSO-picking them.  The reason 1998 was so anomalously warm even beyond the human-caused trend was the uber-El Ni±o.  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.”

Then, back in early June NOAA put out “El Ni±o Watch,” which I noted meant that “record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record.”  So here we are.

What makes these record temps especially impressive is that we’re at “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” according to NASA.  It’s just hard to stop the march of anthropogenic global warming, well, other than by reducing GHG emissions, that is.

Another thing that makes these record temps impressive is that we’re only in a “weak El Ni±o,” according to the latest monthly “El Ni±o/Southern oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion” of the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA’s National Weather Service:

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California heats up incentives for solar power

California is heating up its push for clean energy, as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger approved a new subsidy for solar power on Monday and joined forces with the federal government to fast-track renewable energy projects.

California has the most aggressive renewable energy goals in the United States, which Schwarzenegger increased last month when he ordered that the state get a third of its electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

FBR Capital Markets analyst Mehdi Hosseini said the new subsidy for solar generation could be “explosive” on top of the existing investment tax credit for installing solar systems.

“This is above and beyond the subsidies that are already in place,” Hosseini said.

Feed-in tariffs set a higher price for renewables, and in Germany, such tariffs have pushed the country to be the world’s market leader in solar power.

China, Japan, SKorea vow to make climate talks success

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Notwithstanding the Superfreaks, a lot of good books on global warming and its solutions are coming out right now (see “The Invention of Lying about Climate Change“).  One of the best is Lester Brown‘s “Plan B 4.0:  Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”  In his book, Brown lays out the too-little-discussed but devastating impacts unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases will have on agriculture, expanding on his Scientific American piece “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?”

He also lays out one of the most comprehensive set of solutions you can find in one place, including important subjects and strategies that don’t get enough attention, with a full chapter on “Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population,” another one on “Restoring the Earth,” which focuses on regenerating forests, soils, and fisheries, and, of course, “Feeding Eight [!] Billion People Well” — the exclamation point is mine.

I had lunch with him recently, an eye-opener even for someone who follows these issues closely.  I asked him to submit some blog posts.  What follows is his first, about his new book, which was just released September 29.

In early 2008, Saudi Arabia announced that, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the non-replenishable aquifer it had been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted.

In response, officials said they would reduce their wheat harvest by one eighth each year until production would cease entirely in 2016. The Saudis would then import virtually all the grain consumed by their Canada-sized population of nearly 30 million people.

The Saudis are unique in being so wholly dependent on irrigation.  But other, far larger, grain producers such as India and China are facing irrigation water losses and could face grain production declines.

Water Shortages Undermining Food Security

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On Sunday, I discussed the breakthrough Senate climate partnership: Graham (R-SC) and John Kerry (D-MA) have joined forces, asserting they are “convinced that we have found both a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution.”

Their bipartisan partnership now makes a comprehensive climate and energy bill likely.  What’s fascinating politically is that while some might try to label him a maverick, like his friend John McCain (R-AZ), Graham has a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 89.79.  Graham is an ACU “Senate Standout,” among the 20 most conservative U.S. Senators in 2008!

So how did a hardcore conservative like Graham come to his game-changing climate and energy views?  E&E News (subs. req’d) has a good profile, which I excerpt below:

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