“the largely conservative doubters of man-made climate change are a small minority”

Bryan Walsh has a long analysis in Time magazine that is well worth reading:  “The Stolen E-Mails: Has ‘Climategate’ Been Overblown?“  He finds no significant impact on our understanding of the science — like most sober looks at the issue:

• Nature editorial: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real “” or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.”
• Washington Times:  “stolen e-mails mean less than they seem”
• Reuters: “ANALYSIS-Hacked climate e-mails awkward, not game changer”
• Hacked climate e-mail rebutted by scientists

Credit also goes to Walsh for putting the Swifthack affair in context, which few journalists have:

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Global support for a new international consensus is key to success at Copenhagen

This repost details all current U.S. climate efforts is by CAP’s Andrew Light, Julian L. Wong, Kari Manlove, and Saya Kitasei.  The photo is of preparations taking place for the UN climate summit at the Bella Convention Centre in Copenhagen.

President Barack Obama and the United States’ leadership in the upcoming U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen will be instrumental to a successful outcome. The United States is the world’s largest historical and per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases. We cannot hope to meet the goal of limiting increases in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius without U.S. participation in a new international convention to limit carbon pollution. Getting to that agreement will require an unprecedented level of international cooperation. Yet the United States’ notable inaction on climate change for eight years under the Bush administration has left a legacy of mistrust.

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The U.S. Geological Survey reported today on a major new study, “Climate Projections Underestimate CO2 Impact“:

The climate may be 30-50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide in the long term than previously thought, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience yesterday.

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“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal…. Most of the global warming of the last 50 years is very likely due to human-induced increases” in GHGs. “Multiple lines of evidence support this.”

After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.

GHGs are the primary driver of climate change, which can lead to hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans.

That’s from the EPA’s news release today.  The finding itself is here:  Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act (284 pp., 377 KB).  Information on the finding is here, which reports the following “Action”:

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CAP roving correspondent Brad Johnson has his first dispatch from Copenhagen.  Brad arrived after a red-eye through Reykjavik, to cover the United Nations Climate Change Conference in person. Follow the Center for American Progress Copenhagen Twitter feed here.

Copenhagen “” the Venice of Scandinavia “” is overrun with attendees of the conference and related activities, and festooned with climate-related advertisements. Oceana’s ads argues that shellfish and coral reefs will be gone by 2050 unless a target of 350 ppm is set for carbon dioxide concentrations “” less than today’s 387 ppm. The global activist campaign Tcktcktck portrays the world’s leaders of today, in 2020, their aged faces next to expressions of regret that they failed to halt catastrophic climate change. Meanwhile, other ads portray various energy companies as green superstars “” a theme familiar to any rider of the Washington D.C. metro. At the Bella Center, southeast of the center city, the conference has begun.

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Click here.

Kind of obvious, but I just checked it.  They are running late.

The AP and Politico are reporting “President Obama will meet with former Vice President Al Gore in the Oval Office late this afternoon, the White House announced.”  Perhaps they’ll talk about the former VP’s must-read solutions book “” “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis” by Al Gore.

“The dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small”

AMS Headquarters has received several inquiries asking if the material made public following the hacking of e-mails and other files from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has any impact on the AMS Statement on Climate Change, which was approved by the AMS Council in 2007 and represents the official position of the Society.

The AMS Statement on Climate Change continues to represent the position of the AMS.  It was developed following a rigorous procedure that included drafting and review by experts in the field, comments by the membership, and careful review by the AMS Council prior to approval as a statement of the Society.  The statement is based on a robust body of research reported in the peer-reviewed literature.  As with any scientific assessment, it is likely to become outdated as the body of scientific knowledge continues to grow, and the current statement is scheduled to expire in February 2012 if it is not replaced by a new statement prior to that.

The beauty of science is that it depends on independent verification and replication as part of the process of confirming research results….

So the American Meteorological Society writes in a web piece, “Impact of CRU Hacking on the AMS Statement on Climate Change.”  The rest of the piece and the full AMS statement follows, since somebody needs to report on the beauty of science if the status quo media continues focusing on the ugliness of anti-scientific idealogues:

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The Wonk Room has arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark, after a red-eye through Reykjavik, to cover the United Nations Climate Change Conference in person. Follow the Center for American Progress Copenhagen Twitter feed here.

Copenhagen — the Venice of Scandinavia — is overrun with attendees of the conference and related activities, and festooned with climate-related advertisements. Oceana’s ads argues that shellfish and coral reefs will be gone by 2050 unless a target of 350 ppm is set for carbon dioxide concentrations — less than today’s 387 ppm. The global activist campaign Tcktcktck portrays the world’s leaders of today, in 2020, their aged faces next to expressions of regret that they failed to halt catastrophic climate change. Meanwhile, other ads portray various energy companies as green superstars — a theme familiar to any rider of the Washington D.C. metro. At the Bella Center, southeast of the center city, the conference has begun.

Mohammad Al-Sabban

Taking an extremist stance even before the plenary opening, petroleum giant Saudi Arabia has latched onto the fake “scandal” of the Climategate swift-hacking to deny the existence of global warming. Mohammad Al-Sabban, Saudi Arabia’s lead climate negotiator, told BBC News that the hacked emails will have a “huge impact” on the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Al-Sabban “said that he expected it to derail the single biggest objective of the summit – to agree to limitations on greenhouse gas emissions”:

It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change.

Saudi Arabia has joined the ranks of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Sarah Palin, and other global warming deniers for transparently political reasons. The nation has a “long history of playing an obstructionist role at climate conferences.” In 2004 their negotiator argued, “By the year 2010, Saudi Arabia will lose at least $19 billion a year as a result of the policies the industrialised nations will adopt to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”

This video is by Peter Sinclair, the guy who proved Anthony Watts knows as much about copyright laws as about climate science.

Coverage of stolen emails debunks (again) myth of “liberal media”

While there is a definitely a lot of excellent reporting on climate science, the dreadful reporting by big media outlets threatens to swamp it — click here for the good and mostly bad in recent years.  The NY Times reporting on the stolen emails is a case study of how not to report on climate science.  And here’s a particularly bad piece by CBS News. This miscoverage has motivated me to reprint the opening statement by CAP’s Eric Alterman at a 2005 Congressional forum on entitled, “From the Newsweek Controversy to the Downing Street Memo: Media Bias and the Future of Freedom of the Press.”

For the past five decades, Republican politicians, writers, television pundits and think tanks have been remarkably successful at convincing the American people of a “liberal bias” in the media. Using the very same media outlets that they complain don’t give their cause a fair shake to lodge their complaints, they know that slamming the other side is little more than a way to get their own ideas across, while drowning out opposing voices. Some have even admitted as much. During the 1992 presidential race, Rich Bond, then chair of the Republican Party, outlined the right’s game plan, saying that “There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one.”

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U.S. climate bill “would probably mean more investment over all.”

Still, should we be starting a project like this when the economy is depressed? Yes, we should “” in fact, this is an especially good time to act, because the prospect of climate-change legislation could spur more investment spending.

Consider, for example, the case of investment in office buildings. Right now, with vacancy rates soaring and rents plunging, there’s not much reason to start new buildings. But suppose that a corporation that already owns buildings learns that over the next few years there will be growing incentives to make those buildings more energy-efficient. Then it might well decide to start the retrofitting now, when construction workers are easy to find and material prices are low.

The same logic would apply to many parts of the economy, so that climate change legislation would probably mean more investment over all. And more investment spending is exactly what the economy needs.

So let’s hope my optimism about Copenhagen is justified. A deal there would save the planet at a price we can easily afford “” and it would actually help us in our current economic predicament.

So Paul Krugman wrote in his NYT column today, “An Affordable Truth.”  He has been at the forefront of those explaining why domestic climate action won’t hurt the economy in the long term and is likely to boost it in the near term (see Krugman offers Climate Economics 101, “claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial” and Krugman : Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities”).

Here’s more from The Nobel laureate in economics, first on the emails:

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“The warming in the climate system is unequivocal” and has been attributed to increased GHGs.

Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) firmly stands behind the conclusions of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the community of researchers and its individuals providing the scientific basis, and the procedures of IPCC Assessments.

So begins a strong statement by the leaders of the IPCC working group focused on “The Physical Science Basis” of climate change and its causes (emphasis in original).  Here’s the rest:

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EPA has sent out a release that “ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson will make a significant climate announcement at a press briefing
TODAY.”  Looks like the WSJ had the story right:  EPA to declare CO2 a public danger this week.

What You Need to Know in Advance of the International Climate Change Summit

Copenhagen, where the United Nations international climate change summit convenes this week.  This piece by CAP’s Rebecca Lefton, Andrew Light, Kari Manlove, and Daniel J. Weiss with first published here.

You can watch live webcasts from Copenhagen here.

The ingredients for a successful outcome at Copenhagen are all there. We are on track to set the architecture for a legally binding agreement in 2010 by following a two-step Danish proposal supported by President Barack Obama and finalizing an interim agreement at the meeting. Here’s how actions by the Obama administration and international community have moved us toward establishing an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and why doing so will help every nation.

The United States has laid the groundwork for negotiations

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