With climate denial running rampant in the GOP field, Mitt Romney claimed just today that scientists may figure out if humans are causing warming “10, 20, 50 years from now.” Except scientists have already figured that out, and a majority of Americans want action, including religious Americans. A new University of Maryland poll finds that 76 percent of Catholics and evangelicals support a global pact reducing the pollution that causes global warming, much like the one on the table in Durban, South Africa.

If such an agreement is ever reached, religious Americans say they would stand by it with conviction. Of the 1,500 people surveyed, 57 percent said that violating a treaty would be morally wrong. About 17 percent see it as a sin, requiring atonement to avoid everlasting consequences…

In [the University of Maryland] poll, 76 percent of respondents said preventing climate change is an important goal. Among them, 32 percent said it falls within their obligation to protect God’s creation. A bigger group, at 44 percent, didn’t think of it as an obligation. But it was important to defend against rising temperatures nonetheless.

The outright religious support for a global agreement contrasts with the political posturing we have seen heading into 2012. But what’s clear is a majority of Americans, religious or not, understand climate change is a threat and view it as a moral or religious problem.

by Andrew Light

DURBAN — The expected end game of the international climate talks in Durban is shaping up to be a fierce stand off.

A showdown has emerged between the EU and other parties over their conditions for agreeing to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. The first commitment period will expire in 2012.  If it is not renewed the fate of the instruments that support the world’s fragile carbon market is uncertain.

Japan, Russia and Canada have all signaled that they are unwilling to continue with a second commitment of binding emission cuts for the treaty leaving only the EU ready to move forward.

But the conditions the EU has asked for at this meeting to preserve the Kyoto Protocol are steep.  In exchange for their commitment they expect everyone else – in particular the other large greenhouse gas emitters like the U.S., China, and India – to begin a roadmap for a process that will create a binding agreement on reducing emissions later in the decade.  What we now know as the “mandate” debate has pulled everyone into a discussion over the fate of the Kyoto Protocol — including the U.S., which is not a party to it.

While the fate of U.S. emissions is not bound to the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, the fate of many of the most important achievements of the Obama administration in this forum are now tied to Kyoto through the mandate debate.  Included in this list are the institutions that were created out of last year’s meeting in Cancun – such as the Green Climate Fund (tasked with mobilizing a large chunk of the promised $100 billion a year in climate financing by 2020) and the Clean Technology Center and Network – as well as progress they have made on pushing for a more rigorous system of transparency for measuring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) promises for emission reductions.

The dominoes could fall like this:  If the U.S. and other parties say no to the EU demand for a mandate on a process of a new binding agreement, then the EU could in turn say no to a re-commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.

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by Melanie Hart

For the past two weeks, speculation has grown about China’s apparent public willingness to consider binding targets.

Up until the meeting in Durban, China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, refused to make a binding international commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Many in the international community view a binding international emissions commitment from the Chinese as a critical barrier to slowing the pace of climate change.

Then, to the surprise of many at the meeting, the Chinese delegation last weekend kicked off a flurry of speculation with a series of statements that appeared to signal a willingness to open the door to reconsidering its previous refusals. Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua suggested that the country may be willing to consider binding emissions reductions after 2020, and he outlined five conditions that the international community would have to meet for a post-2020 binding China climate deal.

Xie’s comments attracted significant global attention, and reporters began calling China the “success story,” the “unlikely darling,” and the “rock star” of the Durban climate conference. But soon, confusion reigned. Other parties—particularly the United States and Europe—began to express skepticism that China was actually offering anything new. The media, in turn, began backing away from the China story, and the flurry slowly died down, leaving many confused about what exactly the Chinese had said and what exactly happened in South Africa.

So what do we know as this 17th meeting of the UNFCCC meeting draws to a close about the direction of Chinese climate-change policy? Here are some tea-leaf readings from the conference in Durban.

China’s Durban messaging may reflect a change in tone while the substance is unclear

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Anthony Swift, in a NRDC Switchboard repost

The Speaker of the House John Boehner has just announced that he plans to hold payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits hostage to a bill that would rubber stamp approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. This legislation, proposed by Rep. Lee Terry (Neb.), is nothing like the bill the House voted on in the summer.

Rather than requiring an expedited decision by the Administration, Terry’s new bill would require automatic approval of Keystone XL in thirty days, giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authority to permit (but not decline) a Presidential permit. In the process, it also exempts TransCanada from having to abide by the same laws that domestic pipelines do – laws intended to protect the nation’s land and water.

Speaker Boehner’s reason for pushing such a bad bill is his belief that the American people will mistake Keystone XL for a national jobs package. It isn’t. The House leadership is echoing discredited and widely exaggerated job numbers for the project. The State Department found that the pipeline would only create between 5,000 to 6,000 temporary construction jobs and only 20 permanent jobs (pg. 3.10-79, 80). Even the pipeline’s sponsor TransCanada has admitted that the pipeline would create no more than a few hundred permanent jobs. The 13.3 million Americans who are out of work will not thank Speaker Boehner when they realize that rather than seriously working on their behalf to advance national job creation, he used their distress to try to get a pipeline that is for the benefit of Big Oil.

During the two weeks of the international climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, millions of people have been affected by extreme weather disasters. Our poisoned climate is fueling more extreme and dangerous weather, as the super-heated atmosphere brings heavier rains, harder droughts, and fiercer storms. These eight climate disasters that took place while the world’s governments debate whether to address climate pollution have killed dozens of people, displaced tens of thousands of people, and disrupted the lives of millions, and yet are far from the most damaging of 2011:

8. Canada Weather Bomb

On December 8: Hurricane-force winds in a fast-moving “weather bomb” system, including 92 mph gusts, knocked out power for 68,000 people in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Heavy snowfall blanketed north New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, forcing schools to close.

7. Scotland Weather Bomb

December 8: Severe winds of up to 165 mph from another weather bomb battered Scotland and northern England, forcing hundreds of schools to close, destroying a giant wind turbine, and leaving more than 56,000 people without power. “The storm’s winds were so strong as its pressure dropped by 44mb, almost double the qualifying amount for a weather bomb, in the 24 hours to 6am this morning. The winds today were stronger than the 80mph gusts seen when Hurricane Katia hit in September.”

6. Los Angeles Santa Ana Windstorm

November 30: A powerful, late-season Santa Ana windstorm with gale-force gusts “left much of the Los Angeles area strewn with toppled trees and downed power lines on Thursday, slowing rush-hour traffic,” canceling hundreds of flights, and knocking out electricity to over 430,000 residents. “Public schools in Pasadena and 11 other districts in San Gabriel Valley, northeast of Los Angeles, were closed for the day.” Thousands are still without power.

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Oceans make up 70% of the earth’s surface and hold 90% of natural carbon. So why do they only make up a small portion of the research on the global impact of carbon emissions?

The role of “blue carbon” in climate change is getting more interest from the international community. With a growing body of research exploring how an increase in atmospheric carbon is impacting the chemistry and biology of ocean ecosystems — and thus influencing climate change — people are starting to pay more attention.

However, it’s still not a well-explored concept outside the scientific community. At the COP climate talks in Durban, for example, there is endless talk about atmospheric carbon and about how to control terrestrial carbon emissions through deforestation programs like REDD+. But there are still very few mentions of oceanic carbon.

“Hopefully, by exposing the science to higher level decision makers, we will bridge a gap of communication for that necessary understanding” of the role that oceans play in climate change, said Alberto Piola, an oceanographer with the Naval Hydrographic Service in Argentina, speaking at a side event on Blue Carbon at COP 17 this week.

We can look at Blue Carbon in two ways. The first is the climate change impact of releasing natural carbon from the oceans through the destruction of ecosystems. Most research in this area is focused on near-shore ecosystems like mangroves and sea grasses. The second is the impact of burning fossil fuels on ocean ecosystems by adding geologically-trapped CO2 to the carbon cycle.

Considering the immense shift already underway in the oceans, it’s amazing that the concept hasn’t gotten more attention in the international negotiations on addressing climate change.

In pre-industrial times, the ocean was a source of CO2, and the atmosphere was a sink. But the release of staggering amounts of geologic carbon has made the oceans a net sink.

We’ve reversed the natural carbon cycle in about 200 years.

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Yale released the above chart in November (which I posted at the time).  Now they have released “the second and third reports from our latest national survey on Americans’ climate change and energy beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior.”  Key findings:

• Public understanding that global warming is happening stayed at 63 percent, while belief that it is caused mostly by human activities increased three points since May 2011, to 50 percent.
• A majority of Americans (57%) now disagree with the statement, “With the economy in such bad shape, the US can’t afford to reduce global warming” – an 8 point increase in disagreement since May 2011.
• 65 percent said that global warming is affecting weather in the United States.
• 58 percent of Americans said that the record heat waves last summer strengthened their belief that global warming is occurring, up 4 points since May 2011.
• 38 percent of Americans said they have personally experienced the effects of global warming, up 4 points since May of 2011.
• Americans trust “climate scientists” (74%) as a source of information about global warming more than any other group, including “other kinds of scientists” (65%) and the mainstream media (38%)

This matches September polling by ecoAmerica, which found:

• 69% of Americans Know “Weather Conditions (Such as Heat Waves and Droughts) Are Made Worse by Climate Change”
  
• 57% of Americans understand “If we don’t do something about climate change now, we can end up having our farmland turned to desert.”

That public understanding certainly matches the science:

• “Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming”
• “NOAA Study Finds Human-Caused Climate Change Already a Major Factor in More Frequent Mediterranean Droughts”
• Study: Global warming is driving increased frequency of extreme wet or dry summer weather in southeast, so droughts and deluges are likely to get worse
• Leading experts explain how human-caused warming exacerbates Texas drought

We know from a major 2011 study that “human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.”

As predicted, the warming has put more water vapor in the air, making deluges more intense.  Climatologist Kevin Trenberth explains:

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by Tom Kenworthy

Western states that rely on snowpack for their water supplies are going to face a challenging future because of climate change, a senior Department of Interior official warned a Senate subcommittee Thursday.

“Warming and associated loss of snowpack will persist over much of the western United States,” Assistant DOI secretary Anne Castle said in her written testimony to the water and power subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A recent Bureau of Reclamation report, Castle said, has concluded that “this loss of snowpack storage is expected to result in a decrease in the amount of reliable water supply in areas where snow has been a major component of the hydrologic system.”

The Senate subcommittee hearing comes a week after the Global Climate Project reported that worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels had risen by 5.9 percent in 2010, the biggest annual increase in history.

Climate change is already producing dramatic changes in the water cycle in the U.S., and more changes are coming, according to the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program’s 2009 report on climate change impacts.

“Evidence is mounting that human-induced climate change is already altering many many of the exsiting patterns of precipitation in the United States, including when, where, how much, and what kind of precipitation falls,” the report says. And it predicts that “dry areas will become drier and and wet areas wetter,” with particularly severe effects in the Southwest which is expected to have more severe and more prolonged droughts.

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