Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models”

The disinformers claim that projections of dangerous future warming from greenhouse gas emissions are based on computer models.  In fact, ClimateProgress readers know that the paleoclimate data is considerably more worrisome than the models (see Hansen: ‘Long-term’ climate sensitivity of 6°C for doubled CO2).  That’s mainly because the vast majority of the models largely ignore key amplifying carbon-cycle feedbacks, such as the methane emissions from melting tundra (see Are Scientists Underestimating Climate Change).

Science has just published an important review and analysis of “real world” paleoclimate data in “Lessons from Earth’s Past” (subs. req’d) by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl.  The NCAR release is here: “Earth’s hot past could be prologue to future climate.”  The study begins by noting:

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Our guest blogger is Andy Rowell, with Oil Change International.

We know that BP was to blame for the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe. So too were Transocean and Halliburton. So too was the failed regulatory regime, which was tasked with maximizing revenues for drilling at the same time it was responsible for oversight of the operations. You can’t do both, and that is the reason that former regulator, the Minerals Management Service, has been changed into the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — which has no responsibility for revenue collection.

But the industry lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), is as “compromised” as the MMS was, according to the official Oil Spill Commission, whose report was published yesterday. As well as being a lobby group pushing to promote offshore drilling, API also runs technical committees that write safety standards for the offshore industry:

Based on this Commission’s multiple meetings and discussions with leading members of the oil and gas industry, however, it is clear that API’s ability to serve as a reliable standard-setter for drilling safety is compromised by its role as the industry’s principal lobbyist and public policy advocate. Because they would make oil and gas industry operations potentially more costly, API regularly resists agency rulemakings that government regulators believe would make those operations safer, and API favors rulemaking that promotes industry autonomy from government oversight.

While drafting industry standards and safety rules, API also spends tens of millions of dollars a year on political lobbying, advertisements, and Astroturf campaigns on behalf of the oil industry. Due to this compromised role, the API’s safety standards were flawed and therefore regulatory standards were flawed too:

According to statements made by industry officials to the Commission, API’s proffered safety and technical standards were a major casualty of this conflicted role. As described by one representative, API-proposed safety standards have increasingly failed to reflect “best industry practices” and have instead expressed the “lowest common denominator”—in other words, a standard that almost all operators could readily achieve. Because the Interior Department has in turn relied on API in developing its own regulatory safety standards, API’s shortfalls have undermined the entire federal regulatory system. As described in Chapter 4, the inadequacies of the resulting federal standards are evident in the decisions that led to the Macondo well blowout.

For years, the API led industry efforts into preventing further regulatory reform, asking the regulators to instead to rely on self-regulation by the API. The Oil Spill Commission’s report argues that, historically, the oil industry served as “an initial impediment” to the reforms being proposed by the MMS in the early nineties “and has largely remained so.”
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Yesterday, Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) said that the rapid warming of the Arctic because of oil pollution means that more Arctic drilling should commence.  Brad Johnson has the story on yet another amplifying carbon-cycle feedback — burning of fossil fuels melting ice that allows more access to fossil fuels we can burn.

Begich was responding to the presidential oil spill commission’s report, which recommended new drilling around Alaska, subject to stronger standards. The Democratic senator from the state most changed by global warming pollution used the commission’s report to emphasize his desire for more “Arctic development“:

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Volt’s Battery Capacity Could Double

GM has tipped its hand about the type of battery materials it aims to use in the next generation of the Chevrolet Volt and other battery-powered cars. It has licensed battery-electrode materials developed at Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy Lab. These materials, called mixed-metal oxides, could improve the safety and durability of car batteries and help double their energy-storage capacity, potentially leading to substantial costs savings by allowing GM to use a smaller battery pack.

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An across-the-board Pentagon efficiency mandate would have many benefits. First, it would save many lives: there are casualties in one out of every 24 fuel supply convoys in Afghanistan; 47 drivers were killed there last year. It would save money; it costs taxpayers about $66 million a day for air-conditioning in the war zones.

It would also reduce opportunities for the enemy. Some soldiers jokingly call the fuel trucks “Taliban targets,” and for good reason “” they are a high-payoff quarry for insurgents using nothing but homemade bombs. In addition, having fewer fuel shipments would allow NATO to take highly trained troops off convoy duty and use them in combat or, even better, send them home.

That’s retired Army brigadier general Steven M. Anderson, writing in the NY Times today.

Two years ago, I sat on the Defense Science Board Task Force on DoD Energy Strategy, which took testimony and wrote a report, More Fight “” Less Fuel, on how energy efficiency and renewables makes sense “” and can save lives “” for the military. The findings are here.

Anderson, a senior mentor with the Army’s Battle Command Training Program, explains why:

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A great cartoon apropos of this post, “An amazing, though clearly little-known, scientific fact: We get more snow storms in warm years”:

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Why you should join them

How tweet it is.  To follow Climate Progress on Twitter, click here.

But why should you follow this blog on twitter?  Two reasons:

1. It’s a modern, portable version of a news teletype.
2. Your (online) neighbors are doing it!

Let me elaborate:

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Court signs off on EPA takeover of Texas permitting

A federal court has denied Texas’ request to stop U.S. EPA from issuing greenhouse gas permits in the Lone Star State, where Gov. Rick Perry (R) and other state officials have refused to follow the Obama administration’s orders on climate change.

The ruling today by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will allow EPA to impose its rules in the state, clearing a legal obstacle for the regulations that kicked in on Jan. 2.

So E&E News (subs. req’d) reported last night.  Below, The National Wildlife Federations’s Joe Mendelson debunks some myths about the state’s extremist’ approach to the Clean Air Act.

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