Head of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center: Climate change to intensify winter weather

Following fast on the heels of NASA reporting the hottest January to November on record — despite the deepest solar minimum in a century — NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center has released its State of the Climate: Global Analysis for November.  It finds this was the second warmest November on record (after 2004) and

• For the 2010 year-to-date (January-November), the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20^th century average””the warmest such period since records began in 1880.
• The November 2010 Northern Hemisphere land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest November on record….
• The November 2010 global land surface temperature was the warmest on record, at 1.52°C (2.74°F) above the 20^th century average…

It may have been cold in Great Britain, but NOAA’s November chart shows that over most of the NH land it was hot, hot, hot:

Read more

The staid editors of Merriam-Webster named ‘austerity’ the 2010 Word of the Year.  Meanwhile, the trendier New Oxford American Dictionary‘s 2010 Word of the Year is Sarah Palin’s ‘refudiate’.

And while climate activists may see 2010 as a year of austerity in which our efforts were refudiated by the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd, at least we got a name that beats ‘activist’.

Climate Progress names ‘climate hawk’ the phrase of the year!

Read more

“When you warm up the planet, you experience that through changes in weather that makes up the climate,” says Dr. Benjamin Santer at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. In a video interview with Climate Science Watch, Santer answers the questions: What is the most appropriate way for reporters and scientists to make a distinction between climate and weather when discussing the attribution of specific weather events, such as heat waves, droughts, and intense precipitation to climate change? What do you think is the most important message for the public to take away from witnessing these events?

Reinsurer Munich Re, whose natural catastrophe database is “the most comprehensive of its kind in the world,” has said “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change.”  A recent Journal of Climate Study found global warming is driving increased frequency of extreme wet or dry summer weather in southeast, so droughts and deluges are likely to get worse.  And it remains an amazing, though clearly little-known, scientific fact:  We get more snow storms in warm years!

What follows is re-post from Climate Science Watch, starting with the video interview of Santer:
Read more

This is a 12/1/10 re-post from the World Affairs Blog Network by Bill Hewitt.

I went to a debate on nuclear energy on Monday evening sponsored by the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia.  The Center is headed by Mike Gerrard, a force of nature in environmental law for over thirty years.

“Should nuclear power be an important component of U.S. strategy to combat climate change?” The pros, as ’twere, for nuclear were Susan Eisenhower, an old hand in power and proliferation circles, and Barton Cowan, a lawyer who’s been representing the industry for decades.  The skeptics — it’s not an inherently bad word, it’s just been tarred by those who would make you believe the earth is flat — were represented by Peter Bradford, a long-time utility industry regulator and a member of the Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies at the Institute for Policy Studies.

The proponents, I’m sorry, but not surprised, to tell you, had nothing in the least convincing to say.

Read more

I’ve added a new graphic to the list of Hi-rez Climate Graphics: a composite of all the major global temperature records, going back to 1890 (obviously the satellite records [RSS and UAH] only begin in the late 20th century). Many thanks to Benjamin Franz who sent me the spreadsheet of all the data

I’m reposting some pieces by physicist John Cook, who runs Skeptical Science.

Read more

Year-End Reflections on the Fuel Cell Industry in 2010:  GreenTechMedia’s never-changing ‘short’ list of profitable fuel cell firms….

First, here’s an updated list of the top three profitable publicly-held fuel cell firms:

Read more