A composite of all the major global temperature records via Skeptical Science.

The last decade was easily the hottest on record.  We’ve known that sulfate aerosols (from volcanoes and/or Chinese coal) and the “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century” masked the rate of warming somewhat.

Even so, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which probably has the best of the long temperature datasets, reported the 12-month running mean global temperature reached a new record in 2010.  As a NASA analysis found: “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.”

But other datasets appeared to show a slight slowing in the rate of warming, though even that may have been due to flawed data, as in the case of the UK’s Hadley Center.

Scientists have long known that the overwhelming majority of human-caused warming was expected to go into the oceans (see figure below).  And many have suspected that deep ocean warming has also been masking surface warming.

Now a new study led by led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) finds that may indeed be the case:

The planet’s deep oceans at times may absorb enough heat to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade even in the midst of longer-term warming….

The study, based on computer simulations of global climate, points to ocean layers deeper than 1,000 feet (300 meters) as the main location of the “missing heat” during periods such as the past decade when global air temperatures showed little trend. The findings also suggest that several more intervals like this can be expected over the next century, even as the trend toward overall warming continues….

“This study suggests the missing energy has indeed been buried in the ocean,” [coauthor Kevin] Trenberth says. “The heat has not disappeared, and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences.”

These potential consequences include accelerated warming in the coming decade and melting of  the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Let’s take these two in order.

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by Kate Gordon

The past few weeks have seen a perfect storm of misinformation on green jobs:  what they are, how many there are, how much they contribute to the economy.  Many of those throwing numbers around have relied on one source, a recent report from the Brookings Institution, which worked with Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice to attempt to define, evaluate, and count green jobs as a part of the economy from 2003-2010.

It is clear to those of us who have been deeply engaged in making the case for green jobs for years that the Brookings report has been almost universally misunderstood.  Hence this post to try and clear up some of the details.  But first, a digression about green jobs.

The phrase “green jobs” does not stand for, and in fact has never stood for, one specific set of occupations that can be set aside and easily counted.  In this, green jobs are not unique.  Think about “high tech jobs,” for instance.  There are jobs in inventing and developing software, to be sure.  But there are also jobs in using software to make existing companies more productive and efficient.  There are manufacturing jobs associated not only with the hardware in our computers, but with the servers we use to store data.  There are construction jobs that would not exist were it not for the need to build server farms.  All the jobs that have come about because of the invention of the computer, and the transformation of our economy from a low-tech to a high-tech one, are arguably “information technology jobs.”

Similarly, “green jobs” go way beyond the obvious jobs, like the wind turbine operators.  They span huge numbers of industries and occupations, and touch nearly every sector of the economy because they can include all those who use cleaner or more efficient energy and fuel, as well as those who invent, manufacture, install, operate, and maintain those things.  Just like the phrase “high tech jobs” has come to stand for an entire economic transformation toward computerization of nearly everything we do, so does “green jobs” stand for a huge transformation in the kinds of energy we use to underpin our long-term economic growth.

So, back to the Brookings report.  In that report, Brookings researchers tried valiantly to pin down at least some of the industries and occupations that are most clearly associated with the green economy transformation.  They did an admirable job, and here’s what they actually found:

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House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) investigation of clean energy loan programs was undercut this week by a revelation, first reported by Bloomberg, that he had also requested money from the same program for companies in his district. A follow-up story by ThinkProgress found that an investor to the firm Issa had asked to subsidize had donated several times to Issa, including a check just shortly before Issa sent his letter to Secretary Chu.

Today on the Senate floor, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) mocked Issa’s hypocrisy. She carried with her copies of the letters signed by Issa, as well as other letters by Republicans asking for money for the clean energy program they had just voted to cut, and read them into the Congressional Record:

LANDRIEU: He’s a member from California, he’s a very powerful member of the House. I’m going to read his whole letter. [...] And maybe the press even writes, ‘Darrell Issa, the Republican leader, is promoting manufacturing in California.’ Because this is what he says in his district. And this is the letter he sends to the Secretary. But when he’s in the floor of the House last night, he voted to gut this program. That’s what this debate is about!

Watch it:

Earlier this week, Republicans tried to make hay out of the Solyndra controversy by taking an axe to clean energy programs. Landrieu made short work out of the GOP’s shameful gimmick.

Landrieu continued tearing into Republican hypocrisy. She noted that the cuts were purely political because the supposed offsets for FEMA only required $175 million, not $1 billion. She then continued to read Republican letters asking for clean energy loan cash, including yet another one signed by Issa (asking for money for battery-maker Quallion LLC):

LANDRIEU: I’m going to do this all week, so I hope the press gets ready to ask these Republican leaders how could you possibly have the gall to hold press opportunities in your district promising people that you’re helping them to create jobs and then come back to Washington and cut the rug out from under their feet with a bogus excuse that you have to come up with a billion dollars [...] when the real need for FEMA in 2011 is $175 million. But under the guise of having to provide a billion dollars, they want to gut this program that’s creating jobs and they themselves have asked for these loans to be made in their district. [...]

Several members, and I am going to submit their names to the record [...] In addition — this is the killer, this is the killer — in addition Quallion think that this funding will create more than two thousand three hundred new and long-term jobs nationwide. And this is the program that Representative Cantor decided to use as an offset so he could fool the American people.

Wall Street Journal readers were asked to name the “Top Corruption-Related Story of the Year.”  So far, the easy winner is the US Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber is one of the major forces behind the destruction of a livable climate and a sustainable US economy (see “The Chamber is so extreme they oppose R&D into renewable energy” and “U.S. Chamber Fights Regulations On Chemicals Linked to Penis Deformations, Birth Defects“).  In spite of the staggering economic advantage they get from their pollutocrat members, they still use the most despicable tactics (see “Chamber lobbyists solicited hackers to sabotage unions and smear its political opponents“).

Now Climate Progress has urged major publications not to use online polls.  But they don’t listen, much to their regret.

So if you want to spend a few seconds of your weekend casting your vote against the Chamber, click here.  Do it for the children.

by Jorge Madrid

While leaders in Washington, D.C., search for ways to create jobs and kick-start our struggling economy, urban centers are experiencing steady growth in the green economy, which is creating well-paid jobs in communities that have felt the worst of the recession, particularly those with large numbers of African Americans and Latinos. These urban centers are ideal for growing a strong and equitable driver of new business and jobs.

The Great Recession has not impacted all Americans equally. While countless families across all communities are suffering, data indicate that black and Latino households—concentrated in America’s urban centers—have felt the worst of the economic malaise. In many cases, these communities lack the wealth and educational assets to hedge against economic decline.

Green jobs are no magic bullet for solving economic disparity and job loss in urban communities but they do offer real opportunity to rebuild our struggling economy with a strong growth segment. Green job growth has outpaced traditional job growth at a rate of nearly 2-to-1 in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan centers, all during the peak of the recession (2008 through 2010), according to a new report by the Brookings Institute. These urban centers are the vanguard of green jobs growth, accounting for 64 percent of all jobs in that sector.

Individuals without a college degree hold a large portion of these jobs, which also pay a higher median wage than average. This is critical because these workers currently make up nearly 70 percent of the American work- force and have traditionally been the anchor of our middle class.

Similar data are drawn from a 2010 study from Apollo Alliance, the Initiative for a Competitive City, and Green for All, which finds that inner-city green jobs have grown by 11 percent, more than 10 times the rate of inner-city job growth in the last decade. Likewise, the Blue Green Alliance finds that $93 billion in green investments from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has produced nearly 1 million jobs, with the vast majority (80 percent) held by workers without a college degree, and 26 percent in the construction industry.

Political leaders and media pundits love to debate the merits and nuances of this emerging economic sector, and the debate has become quite polarized. Conservative commentators and policymakers have begun to reject any and all investments that will help the green economy continue to grow.

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Typically a reliable voice in support of corporate greed, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) suggested this week that petrochemical polluters like David and Charles Koch should go to jail.

Mallory Factor of The Street interviewed Paul a few days ago. During the conversation, Paul blasted efforts by environmentalists to rein in unregulated hydrofracking. But at one point, the junior senator from Kentucky pivoted and made a caveat. Paul said people who pollute with benzene, a carcinogenic chemical, should “go to jail”:

PAUL: I don’t want to pollute the water. I don’t want to pollute streams. If you dump benzene in the stream, I want you to go to jail.

Watch it:

As it turns out, Koch Industries, the petrochemical conglomerate owned by David and Charles Koch, has dumped benzene into streams.

In 2000, the Department of Justice served the company with an indictment for allowing “at least 91 metric tons of uncontrolled benzene in its liquid waste streams” during a period in 1995 at its Corpus Christi refinery. Prosecutors alleged that the company was well aware of its pollution, and that Koch’s employees conspired to deceive regulators.

Shortly after President Bush took office in 2001, his Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped 88 counts against Koch for the benzene spill and cover-up. Koch pleaded guilty to falsifying documents, all major charges were dropped and the company settled the lawsuit for $20 million, a small part of the possible $350 million in fines. The Bush administration, the beneficiary of large Koch campaign checks, essentially slapped the company on the wrist for leaking a chemical known to cause leukemia.

Since the indictment, Koch has invested in modifying its Texas refinery. Over the years, however, there were other incidents benzene releases from Koch’s Corpus Christi plant.

Koch’s refineries are located in an area called Refinery Row. According to the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, residents face a high cancer rate and birth defects, while many report chronic sickness.

The billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, worth $25 billion each, never went to jail.

This week, the League of Conservation Voters released polling by the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies demonstrating very strong support for EPA efforts to reduce global warming pollution.  They found:

Fully 71 percent indicate support for requiring reductions in carbon emissions, including a solid majority of Republican voters….

Despite the rhetoric coming from most of the Republican presidential candidates, this poll demonstrates what previous research has consistently shown: Americans across the country – including Republican voters – trust the EPA to limit global warming pollution,” said LCV Senior Vice President of Campaigns Navin Nayak.

These results are consistent with over a dozen polls taken in the last 2 years (see Poll (6/11): Independents — and Even Republicans — are Still Concerned About Global Warming and Overwhelmingly Support Clean Energy Development and links below).  Here’s more detail:

Support for “the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requiring reductions in carbon emissions from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming pollution” is wide-spread and broad-based.  Majorities of a wide range of key voter sub-groups support this, including:

• Among Republicans (55 percent support), Independents (72 percent support), and Democrats (89 percent support); and
• Among viewers of CNN (87 percent support), MSNBC (86 percent support), ABC/CBS/NBC (81 percent support), and Fox News (49 percent support).

Here’s the chart on different levels of support for EPA global warming pollution standards for viewers of different networks:

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Climate change ‘blowing in’ stronger winds, CSIRO finds

WIND speeds in Australia have increased by about 14 per cent over the past two decades, but you may not have noticed because the speed of the air just above the ground has actually slowed down.

CSIRO scientists analysing data collected since 1975 at numerous wind stations around the country found the average speed measured 10m above the ground had increased by about 0.7 per cent per year, whereas that measured 2m above the ground had slowed by about 0.4 per cent per year over the same period.

Moreover, they found that the weakest winds had increased in speed but the fastest and strongest winds increased more slowly by comparison — good news for wind-farm developers but potentially bad news for farmers.

Alberto Troccoli, head of the CSIRO’s Weather and Energy Research Unit, said the difference between the measure at 2m and 10m was due to the lower stations being shielded by obstacles such as trees and buildings, and that the higher station provided the more accurate measure.

“We think the overall increase is caused by the widening of the tropical belt, due to climate change,” he said.

JR:  The widening of the tropical belt (and expansion of the subtropics) is a basic prediction of climate science.  It is occurring faster than expected and is associated with Dust-Bowlification.  I’ll  do a post on it in October.  More details on this research from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency, here.

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