Serreze: “I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It’s not going to recover.”

“We are proud of being the first sailing vessel, together with “Peter 1st”, that ever has sailed through both the Northeast and Northwest Passage in one short Arctic summer.”

This amazing Arctic melt season is finally coming to an end.  We just about equaled 2008 for the second lowest sea ice extent and area.  But volume matters more — and here it looks like we’re setting the record.

We’ve seen that National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) scientists have tracked a sharp drop in oldest, thickest Arctic sea ice.  So it’s no surprise that the Polar Science Center‘s PIOMAS model for mid-September shows a record low volume for the month and hence the year and hence “any time in recent geologic history”:

Daily Sea Ice volume anomalies for each day are computed relative to the 1979 to 2009 average for that day. The trend for the 1979- present period is shown in blue. Shaded areas show one and two standard deviations from the trend.

This graph shows more than a 1000 km^3 drop in ice volume over the record low last year of 5,800 km^3 (67% below its 1979 maximum).  I did check with PSC about their confidence level in this relative decline.

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Last week, the Wonk Room published an exclusive analysis of the Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate, finding that only Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) supported action to fight global warming pollution. That Tuesday, Castle was defeated in his primary by Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell, who believes evolution is a myth and opposes stem-cell research. Yesterday, Bill Maher cited that report in a discussion with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, bemoaning the dominance of anti-science Republicans. After Matthews played a clip of O’Donnell warning in 2007 of “mice with fully functioning human brains” — evidently a mangled reference to a mouse with surgically constructed ear from cow cells grafted onto its back — Maher noted that the “real issue” is the Republican opposition to science:

MAHER: I don’t know, when I saw all this coverage of the witch stuff, I was laughing yesterday. Because that is not really important to the election. It is just a side show, as you would say. It was funny. I don’t think it should hurt her. It was something she was doing in high school. But when you think this about scientific issues facing this nation, people could be really helped by stem cell research. That’s a real issue. There are 37 Republican candidates for the Senate. Not one believes global warming is real and man made. Except the one, Mike Castle, the guy she defeated in Delaware.

MATTHEWS: That is serious.

MAHER: That’s a real issue.

MATTHEWS: They don’t believe in evolution, they don’t believe in science, all the evidence of science they all hold up as somehow elitist thinking.

Watch it:

The threat in November to science-based policy is very real, as a Republican surge of conspiracy theorists, polluter apologists, and anti-medicine activists plan to take back the House and the Senate.

Transcript: Read more

Shocker: For 2011, BBC has “explicitly parked climate change in the category ‘Done That Already, Nothing New to Say’.”

This past Monday night, discussing climate change at a very poorly-attended (as usual, when the subject is global warming or peak oil) screening at the Frontline Journalists’ Club in London of the movie Collapse with Michael Ruppert — yes, flawed, but with much sound analysis about oil and energy — I heard from a former BBC producer colleague that internal editorial discussions now under way at the BBC on planning next year’s news agenda have in fact explicitly parked climate change in the category “Done That Already, Nothing New to Say.”

Deep in the comments for “Exclusive: Journalism professor Jay Rosen on why climate science reporting is so bad” was an amazing perspective by former BBC correspondent and editor Mark Brayne.  It seeks to explain where the BBC is coming from on climate, though it applies more broadly to Western journalists.

Having been raised by journalists, I held the BBC in the highest esteem for most of my life.  I suspect most CP readers have, too.  Recently, though, the quality of their coverage of climate change has declined catastrophically, as I and others have noted (see “Dreadful climate story by BBC’s Richard Black” and links below).  So I asked Brayne if he would revise and extend his remarks, and the result is below.

UPDATE:  He adds more thoughts in the comments here.

His three decades as a journalist make this sobering analysis a must-read for anyone wondering why British — and American — reporting on climate change has declined in quality recently:

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A trade-in market for the Volt battery?

When the Chevy Volt hits dealerships next month, it will have a 16-kilowatt-hour battery that will power the car for 40 miles, General Motors says. Like most rechargeable batteries, the one in the Volt will slowly lose its abiltiy to store energy, though; G.M. will give the battery a warranty for eight years and 100,000 miles, although it says it should last 10 years.

At that point, its storage capacity will be down to roughly 10 kilowatt-hours, according to the company. What happens then?

On Tuesday, G.M. and the ABB Group, the electrical equipment manufacturer, said they were exploring whether worn-out batteries could have an afterlife on the power grid.

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X-axis is the range of potential resource in billions of barrels. Y-axis is grams of Carbon per MegaJoule of final fuel.

On Sunday, I wrote about how Lindsey Graham had drunk the tar sands Kool-Aid: “It is less carbon intensive than oil we find in California,” extraction “really blends in with the natural habitat.”

David Sands of the Government of Alberta pointed out in the comments that CERA had done a study supporting the view that that the tar sands were not overly carbon intensive.  Unsurprisingly, that analysis turns out to have multiple flaws, as NRDC scientist and former EPA analyst Simon Mui explains in “Tar Sands: Why Alberta Has A Credibility Problem” (reposted below).

In fact, EPA’s unusually blunt July letter to the State Department sharply criticizing their draft Environmental Impact Statement on the 1,700 mile pipeline to bring dirty tar sands oil from Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast states:

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The Center for American Progress put out a fascinating report on what reducing the federal budget deficit through large spending cuts could really look like.  These are not recommendations from CAP, but an effort to challenge to conservatives who always say we need to cut spending, but never get specific. They can either own the cuts the report has outlined, or propose their own, but they need to offer some details or else they’re just “deficit peacocks,” who pretend to be hawkish on budgets but refuse any real solutions.

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