Must-read draft paper: “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.”

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has released a draft paper “Current GISS Global Surface Temperature Analysis.”  It is a must read for warming junkies, but, as James Hansen notes in an e-mail, “it is too long for popular use.”  So Hansen offers “some of the main conclusions,” as well as a description of a rather shocking hack of the GISS website (all of which is reprinted below).  The first conclusion is:

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In the United States, designated bike lanes and a growing bike culture have started to garner mainstream attention. And bicyclists now have a giant ally””Google, as explained in this CAP repost.

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The Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to set standards for plants, cars, and factories that emit greenhouse gas pollution. Because global warming is by definition a global problem, there is support for scrapping individual source standards for a national cap-and-trade system that limits the collective pollution, instead of local emissions. However, new scientific research by Mark Z. Jacobson, finds that carbon dioxide pollution is a two-fold killer — causing not just global warming but also forming “domes” that trap other pollutants in urban areas:

Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone as well as particles in urban air.

Jacobson’s study, “Enhancement of Local Air Pollution by Urban CO2 Domes,” published in Environmental Science & Technology, estimates that “reducing local CO2 may reduce 300-1000 premature air pollution mortalities/yr in the U.S. and 50-100/yr in California, even if CO2 in adjacent regions is not controlled.” The deaths represent a small fraction of the population who are suffering increased respiratory problems from carbon domes.

Right-wing polluters have launched a multi-pronged assault on Clean Air Act regulation of global warming pollution, including petitions by state legislatures, lawsuits from governors and industry trade groups, resolutions in Congress, and propaganda campaigns by Astroturf groups. Despite the growing damage of climate change, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson has weakened and delayed implementation of global warming rules to be phased in from 2011 to 2016, decades after the United States ratified the Rio Treaty in 1992.

Left unclear in the rumors about the proposed Kerry-Graham-Lieberman climate legislation is whether it will preempt existing Clean Air Act rules. Considering that over forty senators, including three Democrats — Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) — support Sen. Lisa Murkowski‘s (R-AK) Dirty Air Act resolution to nullify the EPA’s scientific endangerment finding entirely, and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) wants to suspend Clean Air Act enforcement until 2012, it appears that minds will have to be changed if the Clean Air Act is to be protected in climate legislation. With luck, senators will pay more attention to the health and welfare of their constituents than to the size of their corporate campaign contributions.

Major amplifying carbon-cycle feedback is not a “myth”

Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation.

This statement in the 2007 IPCC is “basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced,” as tropical forest researcher Simon Lewis told the BBC in January.

That didn’t stop the anti-science blogosphere from spinning this into another phony “gate,” as ClimateSafety explained in an excellent post, “AmazonGate: how the denial lobby and a dishonest journalist created a fake scandal.”

Recently, the anti-science crowd, from FoxNews to Anthony Watts, has been crowing about a new study that supposedly shows the IPCC paragraph was wrong.  But a major statement by 19 top U.S., U.K., and Brazilian scientists who “conduct research on Amazon forests, climate, and/or fire,” thoroughly debunks that notion:

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The details of the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill are starting to leak out (see here).

Twenty environmental, climate and progressive groups — including the one I work for — have issued a statement “in reaction to a late Thursday meeting with Senator John Kerry”:

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Aluminum Maker Eyes Solar Industry

Alcoa, the aluminum giant, is testing a new type of solar technology that the company said it believed will lower the cost of renewable energy.

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One of the best climate websites is SkepticalScience.com run by physicist John Cook.

The goal of SkepticalScience is to “explain what peer reviewed science has to say about global warming” and answer the most common questions and objections raised both by the well-meaning doubters and the not-well-meaning disinformers.

Fortunately for us, Cook is blogging more now, which means I’ll be quoting him more (see “How we know global warming is happening — Skeptical Science explains: It’s the oceans!“).  Cook has a good discussion of a recent paper, “Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?” that I excerpt below:

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A new report finds that comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation is needed to protect Americans from oil shock.  Brad Johnson has the details in this repost.

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