White House hits back on climate critics

That’s the banner headline at the Politico, which reports:

“It would be a mistake to conclude that the international community’s failure to reach a final treaty in Copenhagen is due to a lack of domestic legislation in the United States,” said a senior White House official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

The United States, said officials, plans to propose a near-term emissions reduction target as part of a “meaningful submission” the country will present at the talks.

The BBC’s story is even more specific on the proposed target (though I think a little off):

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The East Antarctic ice sheet has been losing mass for the last three years, according to an analysis of data from a gravity-measuring satellite mission.

That’s from the BBC story.  Nature Geoscience just published the study online, “Accelerated Antarctic ice loss from satellite gravity measurements.”  It begins, “Accurate quantification of Antarctic ice-sheet mass balance and its contribution to global sea-level rise remains challenging, because in situ measurements over both space and time are sparse,” and it concludes:

Our results suggest that over the WAIS [West Antarctic ice sheet] (especially the ASE [Amundsen Sea Embayment]) there is accelerated ice loss since around 2005 and/or 2006, with the EAIS showing correlated changes of the same sign in this period, attributed to increased ice loss over EAIS coastal regions in recent years. Using a simple linear projection for the period 2006-2009, Antarctic ice loss rate can be as large as -22089 Gt yr^-1. These new GRACE estimates, on average, are consistent with recent InSAR fluxes⁴ but, in contrast to previous estimates, they indicate that as a whole, Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise.

The accelerated ice loss in WAIS is not a surprise to CP readers — see Nature: “Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized.” Nor is the rapid loss at the ASE — the big blue blot in the figure [click to enlarge] — see Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: “Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier.”

But ice loss in the East Antarctic ice sheet is definitely unexpected — the study leader Jianli Chen from the Centre for Space Research at the University of Texas in Austin told the BBC, “We felt surprised to see this change in East Antarctica.”

And it’s especially worrisome because EAIS contains vastly more ice than Greenland or WAIS:

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Embracing the fevered speculations of right-wing bloggers, a top Republican Senate staffer has accused climate scientists of orchestrating a planetwide conspiracy to convince the public that global warming is real. In an error-ridden email acquired by the Wonk Room, Bryan Zumwalt, legislative counsel for Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), claims hacked emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) are evidence for what “could well be the greatest act of scientific fraud in history.” Zumwalt’s attacks are part of a global right-wing effort — from Rush Limbaugh to right-wing members of the British House of Lords — to Swiftboat climate scientists on the eve of international climate treaty negotiations. He argues that the “theory of global warming” is now tainted with “data corruption and fraud“:

Much of what is being said is speculation at this juncture, as a great many folk are working to mine through the emails. However, the CRU has made public that they were indeed hacked and much of the information appears to already be confirmed as legitimate. If so, this could well be the greatest act of scientific fraud in history (it will take a while to calculate the total amount of grant money achieved by fraud and the cost of climate change legislation “Cap-and-Trade” could have been in the $ trillions). Accordingly, nearly all of the international data and models supporting the theory of global warming would have been influenced by data corruption and fraud…with the blatant attempt to perpetuate the political agenda of global warming supporters and the UN IPCC.

It is, of course, the likes of Zumwalt and other right-wing defenders of a pollution-based economy that are the actual “global warming supporters.” Sen. Vitter, whose career was tarnished by the revelation he used prostitutes, is one of several Republican senators who deny the reality of manmade climate change, despite the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Coincidentally, Vitter is a strong ally of Lousiana’s oil and gas industry, which faces regulation under climate legislation.

Zumwalt’s conspiracy theory, sent this morning and addressed to “friends,” includes the Fourth Estate. He writes that the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin — who wrote a front page story sympathetic to the rabid claims of conspiracy — “was mentioned in some of these emails as one of the people in the press they use, so his motives are questionable.”

Zumwalt even offers a top-ten list of the climate scientists’ supposed crimes:

1. Suppression of Data

2. Destruction of data subject to FOIA requests

3. Organized subversion of the peer-review process

4. Coordinated efforts with media outlets

5. Blacklisting of scientific journals for political reasons

6. Blatant scientific fraud and misrepresentation of data

7. Manipulation of data for the UN/WTO’s political agenda

8. Strategies for tax evasion

9. Deceit of International and U.S. agencies for funding and grants

10. And much more…

Zumwalt recommends recipients learn more about the “coordinated effort to achieve the IPCC agenda” by searching for blogs using the keywords “Hadley, hacked, global warming, email, fraud.”

As a side note, Zumwalt’s email contains several basic errors of fact, evidently copied from right-wing blogs. He incorrectly calls the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit the “UN IPCC’s Climate Research Unit,” “also known as Hadley.” Similarly, he incorrectly says the “I” in IPCC stands for “International,” not “Intergovernmental.” These errors, while minor, are consistent with the disdain the Climategate conspiracy theorists have for reality.

Download the Vitter staffer’s “ClimateGate” email here.

I’m updating this post from April since so many in the media and elsewhere still seem to be pushing the myth that climate scientists have been overhyping the threat posed by climate, when the reverse is true.

Far from over-playing their hand to swell their research coffers, scientists have been toning down their message in an attempt to avoid public despair and inaction.

The professional global warming disinformers and their enablers and some in the media want you to believe that scientists are exaggerating the threat — which is why conservatives and conservative-leaning independents believe just that (see “Gallup poll shows failure of media, conservatives still easily duped by deniers, scientists & progressives still lousy at messaging“).

But that is patently absurd. I don’t meet 1 person in 50 who has any idea whatsoever of the incalculable misery — Hell and High Water — that we are in the process of inflicting on the next 50 generations on our current emissions path.  Fewer still understand the true plausible worst-case scenario, again since the climate science community and the IPCC hardly ever talk about it (see UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon”).

While the U.S. media largely downplays or ignores the threat (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists and Study: “The U.S. media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress” and here) — the European media is often much blunter, which is to say, more accurate.

James Randerson — the Guardian‘s environment website editor and a top UK science journalist — issued a powerful wake-up call back in April based on the results of a poll of climate experts:

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The Washington Post has published an easily fact-checked falsehood about clean energy — for the umpteenth time (see “WashPost op-ed page remains the home of un-fact-checked disinformation about clean energy and global warming“).  Not surprisingly, columnist George Will is the source (see “WashPost lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages).”

I don’t have time to waste dealing with all of the bad analysis in his most recent piece, “Awash in fossil fuels,” but let’s focus on just one key non-factoid:

But surely now America can quickly wean itself from hydrocarbons, adopting alternative energies — wind, solar, nuclear? No….

Today, wind and solar power combined are just one-sixth of 1 percent of American energy consumption.

Uhh, no.  And it would have only taken the WashPost‘s nonexistent fact checker about 60 seconds to find out the correct figure.

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Obama admin touts clean-air health benefits of clean energy, carbon pollution curbs

The Obama administration trotted out its top environmental and health officials today to tout the public health benefits of slashing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told stakeholders at a White House forum that strong federal efforts to curb global warming and achieve energy independence will drastically reduce asthma attacks, heart attacks and other public health problems.

“Energy reform and environmental protection can be an ounce of prevention that makes a huge difference in our public health future,” Jackson said.

EPA has already embarked on a host of new climate policies that will improve public health across the country, Jackson said, including its proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. That proposal — which is being reviewed by the White House — would set the stage for a host of other agency rules aimed at regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Those policies, along with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and pending energy and climate legislation, “are win-win changes for our health and our environment,” Jackson said.

With increasing evidence about the connection between greenhouse gases and public health, Sebelius said her department was increasing its efforts to coordinate environmental and health policies.

“It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the consequences of carbon filling the sky go well beyond harm for our planet,” Sebelius said.

Australia’s extreme weather backs climate experts’ warnings

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Guess who uttered that piece of nonsense.  I’ll put the answer below the jump — note that the wording of the headline statement contains a tiny clue as to who said it.

In any case, you simply can’t top solar for clean power, especially Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload “” a core climate solution.  As for “clean coal” well, even if it were emissions free, it will never be cleaner than solar — do the words mountaintop removal ring any bells?

And you’d still need to capture essentially 100% of the CO2 and bury it somewhere that never leaks, since  “the burning of organic carbon warms the Earth about 100,000 times more from climate effects than it does through the release of chemical energy in combustion” (see “Why solar energy trumps coal power“).  And CCS is a long way off (see “Is coal with carbon capture and storage a core climate solution?“).

So who said it?

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As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.

And it’s not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the dozen years leading up to next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen:

The world’s oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.– Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.

– Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.

– Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997.

Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn’t forecast results quite this bad so fast.

“The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought,” said Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Another excellent article from the AP’s Seth Borenstein (see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira “” “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous”).  Borenstein actually takes the time to talk to real climate scientists, and when you do, the story writes itself:

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HP recognizes that the costs of adapting to unmitigated climate change will likely far outweigh the costs of slowing it down, as noted in the Stern report. HP believes it is in both society’s and business’ interests to limit global temperature increase to 2°C from pre-industrial levels by the end of this century in order to avoid the most severe environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change.  HP supports the IPCC recommendation that global GHG emissions be reduced by well below half of the emission levels in 2000 by the middle of this century

Below is a Wonk Room repost from guest blogger and CAPAF Director of Climate Strategy, Daniel J. Weiss. At the end, I repost some of the statements from the company she once ran — like the one above — which are in stunning contrast to her own.  Some intrepid reporter should ask her whether she agrees with HP’s statements on climate science and the need for strong market-based climate action.

Following the endorsement of Senator Jim “the last flat-earther” Inhofe (R-OK) last Wednesday for her campaign to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina questioned the science of climate change. Boxer, as the chair of the Senate environment committee, is the chamber’s leading advocate for action to create jobs, make America more energy independent, and cut global warming pollution. Ranking environment committee member Inhofe “” “Senator Climate Change Denier” “” led a failed boycott of Boxer’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733). After news of Inhofe’s endorsement of Fiorina came out, a reporter asked whether she believes in global warming. Fiorina admitted she is skeptical about climate science:

I think we should have the courage to examine the science on an ongoing basis.

Fiorina’s refusal to recognize the science of climate change and her belief that cap and trade legislation “will kill jobs” puts her in opposition to California’s business and political leadership — and even the company she once ran!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), the leader of the California Republican Party, recently noted that California is “already experiencing” the devastating impacts of global warming:

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