U.S. Heat Records Demolish Cold Records 13th Month in a Row; January Ending With Incredible Ratio of 27.5 to 1 in Lower 48

For reasons that no major U.S. news outlet can apparently explain, it has been really, really warm in the middle of winter over much of the country.  How warm is it?  It is so damn warm:

• “Dick Cheney waterboarded himself.”
• “Charlie Sheen was snorting actual snow.”
• “I saw Rupert Murdoch trying to hack his way into a Cold Stone Creamery.”.
• “Congress had to install a fan on the debt ceiling.”

It was so damn warm that the New York Times ran this amazing story:

Now this is just the paper’s City Room blog, so it is almost understandable that the article never mentions global warming.  But the L.A. Times actually wrote an entire story the same day trying to explain why most of the country missed out on winter:

That story was filed under “news/science” — so climatologist Michael Mann rightly tweeted that it was “simply journalistic malpractice” to omit any mention of global warming in the story.  Indeed, as we’ll see, that omission was beyond absurd in this case.

But first, it is important to point out that this isn’t the case of just a few warm days over part of the country.  January has, statistically, seen an extremely off the charts heat wave for the whole month for most of the country.

Steve Scolnik at Capital Climate analyzed the data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center and found U.S. heat records have been outnumbering cold records by a stunning amount, as this chart shows:

Read more

Cleveland television meteorologist Mark Johnson, one of the anti-science weathermen exposed by the Forecast the Facts campaign, is now claiming that the “earth hasn’t warmed in 15 years.” Johnson, the chief meteorologist for ABC affiliate WEWS-TV in Cleveland, OH, is an American Meteorological Society Certified Broadcast Meteorologist.

Cribbing from a mendacious Daily Mail article, Johnson deliberately misrepresents the findings of the UK Meteorological Office that show the 2000s are the hottest decade on record:

Last week, the UK Met released its latest global temperature data to the world. It shows that the Earth has not warmed in 15 years. The warming ceased after the great super El Nino of 1998. The numbers are based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations around the planet. The data was quietly released last week without fanfare and it confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

In line with projections by climate scientists, the 2000s were significantly hotter than the 1990s, which were hotter than the 1980s, reflecting the steady rise in carbon dioxide emissions. This consistent increase in average temperature is partially masked by natural variability on short time spans. Johnson’s nonsensical claim rests on that deliberate misinterpretation of temperature data, as this infographic from Skeptical Science shows:

According to the American Meteorological Society, the Certified Broadcast Meteorologist program certifies that the “holder meets specific educational and experience criteria and has passed rigorous testing in their knowledge and communication of meteorology and related sciences needed to be an effective broadcast meteorologist.”

The AMS statement on climate change, last updated in 2007, concludes that “there is adequate evidence from observations and interpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies, on economies, on ecosystems, and on wildlife through the 21st century and beyond.”

by Al Gore, reposted from the Climate Reality Project

After crossing the legendary Drake Passage, we came in sight of the Antarctic continent. It is a majestic, otherworldly place. The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts northward toward South America, is lined with ice-covered mountains and surrounded by abundant wildlife in the sea. But even on this continent that looks and feels pristine, a troubling process is underway because of global warming.

The ice on land is melting at a faster rate and large ice sheets are moving toward the ocean more rapidly. As a result, sea levels are rising worldwide. Most of the world’s ice is contained in Antarctica – more than 90 percent. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which lies south of the Peninsula, contains enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by more than 20 feet. Part of the ice sheet, the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, is among the many in Antarctica that are shrinking at an accelerating rate. This has direct consequences for low-lying coastal and island communities all over the world – and for their inland neighbors.

In analyzing the relationship between melting ice and sea level rise, it is important to distinguish between two kinds of ice: the ice on land and the ice floating on top of the sea. When floating ice melts, sea level is not affected, because its weight has already pushed the sea level upward. But the melting of glaciers and ice sheets resting on land does increase sea level rise. So far, the melting of small mountain glaciers and portions of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland has been the main contributor to sea level rise from the loss of ice. (As the oceans warm up, their volume naturally expands, and this too has been a contributor to a small portion of the sea level rise that has occurred in the age of global warming).

Read more

Our guest blogger is Josh Nelson, Campaign Manager for CREDO Action.

After a poorly publicized hearing last week, the Port of St. Helens on the Oregon coast approved a secretive deal to lease space to two dirty coal companies, paving the way for the port to become the largest coal terminal on the U.S. West Coast.

In an interview with The Oregonian last summer, Gov. John Kitzhaber (D-OR) said the approval of coal export facilities “should not happen in the dead of night” and that “we must have an open, vigorous public debate before any projects move forward.”

But that’s not what happened last week.

At Wednesday’s hearing, a large majority of those who testified were strongly opposed to the lease options moving forward. But that apparently didn’t matter to the Port of St. Helens Commissioners, who voted 4-1 and 5-0 to approve the two deals.

Vance Fraser, a Clatskanie resident who testified last week, wasn’t pleased with the outcome. “It’s clear that the commissioners were just going through the motions and had their minds made up,” he said. “The worst of it is that people who are impacted didn’t even know that a decision was going to be made.”

If the big coal companies get their way, up to 38 million tons of coal per year could soon be shipped through Oregon on uncovered trains and exported through the Port of St. Helens, leaving a cloud of dangerous coal dust and diesel fumes throughout the state. It would also rapidly escalate climate pollution by supplying coal to overseas markets.

As an elected official concerned about public health — and as a doctor who understands the health risks massive coal export projects pose — Governor Kitzhaber needs to take a strong stand by doing everything in his power to stop these projects before they start.

On Monday, the USA Today’s Gregory Korte promoted Republican attacks on President Obama’s green jobs training initiative, citing anti-clean-energy leader Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and a flawed report by the Department of Labor Inspector General. The report was debunked when it was released months ago for questionable methodology and improper metrics. Despite relentless attacks fueled by the fossil fuel industry, the clean energy economy employs 2.7 million Americans and is one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the economy.

Kate Gordon, the vice president of energy policy at the Center for American Progress, responded to the IG report and its promotion in the Wall Street Journal last October. Her response is just as valid today.

The President promised that if America would take strong actions to move the economy from a volatile, fossil fuel-driven path to a low-carbon energy path – actions including passing an economy-wide cap and trade program, implementing a national renewable energy standard, and investing $15 billion/year over ten years – we could create five million jobs in the clean energy sector. The problem? We haven’t passed any of those critical policies, meaning that carbon still doesn’t have a price, and so low-carbon technologies are competing on a playing field heavily skewed toward “cheap” and dirty resources.

Oh, and by the way, ten years hasn’t passed yet.

The Inspector General report identifies only those workers that have already been fully trained, not those who are currently going through training programs or who are about to enter into programs funded by the DOL grants. The proper question to ask is how much of the funding for this program has been obligated, not how much has already been spent, and then how many workers will be trained through all the programs receiving funds.

It is also important to remember that nearly 40 percent of those trained through these programs were incumbent workers, meaning workers who already had jobs but who were receiving additional training to become more skilled, and therefore more valuable in the labor market. Looking at placements alone ignores those critical workers.

Finally and most important, the report ignores a central fact that must be mentioned whenever we talk about any job training program: We are in a severe economic slowdown and 14 million people are still out of work! If there were jobs to be had, perhaps these trained individuals could be hired to fill them.

Let’s not forget that 8,000 people did find jobs as a result of the green job training programs. That’s 8,000 people who did not have a job before they were trained. As the Chief Economist of the American Petroleum Institute said in the Washington Post, “Anybody dismissing any kind of a job is silly.”

The bottom line is that we haven’t done the work, as a country, to pass the policies and programs that will put us on a focused path toward cleaner electricity and fuels. Until we commit to that path, clean energy businesses will continue to face major market uncertainty; workers will continue to try and fail to find good jobs in the green economy; and our country will continue to fall behind in the global clean energy race.

JR:  Listening to conservative opponents of climate action will lead to untold misery and far bigger government than this country has seen in the post-WWII era.  See “Don’t believe in global warming? That’s not very conservative.”

Inaction means government will inevitably get into the business of telling people where they can and can’t live (can’t let people keep rebuilding in the ever-spreading flood plains or the ever-enlarging areas threatened by sea level rise and DustBowlification) and how they can live (sharp water curtailment in the SW DustBowl, for instance) and possibly what they can eat.

Conservative action against climate action now will force big government in coming decades to triage our major coastal cities — Key West and Galveston and probably New Orleans would be unsavable, but what about Miami and Houston?  Who else can possibly fund massive sea walls and levees but government?  Who else can respond to the mega-disasters that will be a yearly occurrence?  This repost from TomDispatch explores that last question.

by Christian Parenti

Look back on 2011 and you’ll notice a destructive trail of extreme weather slashing through the year. In Texas, it was the driest year ever recorded.  An epic drought there killed half a billion trees, touched off wildfires that burned four million acres, and destroyed or damaged thousands of homes and buildings.  The costs to agriculture, particularly the cotton and cattle businesses, are estimated at $5.2 billion — and keep in mind that, in a winter breaking all sorts of records for warmth, the Texas drought is not yet over.

In August, the East Coast had a close brush with calamity in the form of Hurricane Irene. Luckily, that storm had spent most of its energy by the time it hit land near New York City. Nonetheless, its rains did at least $7 billion worth of damage, putting it just below the $7.2 billion worth of chaos caused by Katrina back in 2005.

Across the planet the story was similar. Wildfires consumed large swaths of Chile. Colombia suffered its second year of endless rain, causing an estimated $2 billion in damage. In Brazil, the life-giving Amazon River was running low due to drought. Northern Mexico is still suffering from its worst drought in 70 years. Flooding in the Thai capital, Bangkok, killed over 500 and displaced or damaged the property of 12 million others, while ruining some of the world’s largest industrial parks. The World Bank estimates the damage in Thailand at a mind-boggling $45 billion, making it one of the most expensive disasters ever.  And that’s just to start a 2011 extreme-weather list, not to end it.

Such calamities, devastating for those affected, have important implications for how we think about the role of government in our future. During natural disasters, society regularly turns to the state for help, which means such immediate crises are a much-needed reminder of just how important a functional big government turns out to be to our survival.

These days, big government gets big press attention — none of it anything but terrible.  In the United States, especially in an election year, it’s become fashionable to beat up on the public sector and all things governmental (except the military).  The Right does it nonstop.  All their talking points disparage the role of an oversized federal government. Anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist famously set the tone for this assault.  ”I’m not in favor of abolishing the government,” he said. “I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” He has managed to get 235 members of the House of Representatives and 41 members of the Senate to sign his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” and thereby swear never, under any circumstances, to raise taxes.

By now, this viewpoint has taken on the aura of folk wisdom, as if the essence of democracy were to hate government. Even many on the Left now regularly dismiss government as nothing but oversized, wasteful, bureaucratic, corrupt, and oppressive, without giving serious consideration to how essential it may be to our lives.

But don’t expect the present “consensus” to last.  Global warming and the freaky, increasingly extreme weather that will accompany it is going to change all that. After all, there is only one institution that actually has the capacity to deal with multibillion-dollar natural disasters on an increasingly routine basis.  Private security firms won’t help your flooded or tornado-struck town. Private insurance companies are systematically withdrawing coverage from vulnerable coastal areas. Voluntary community groups, churches, anarchist affinity groups — each may prove helpful in limited ways, but for better or worse, only government has the capital and capacity to deal with the catastrophic implications of climate change.

Read more

Americans use the term “Saudi Arabia of” to describe an abundance of something — usually energy. We are the “Saudi Arabia of wind,” the “Saudi Arabia of coal,” the “Saudi Arabia of efficiency,” and so on and on and on.

I’ve come to jokingly use this term for anything really huge.  (We are, after all, the Saudi Arabia of climate denial.) So in true American spirit, I am dubbing yesterday’s speech by Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi the Saudi Arabia of bold statements.

In a speech at the Middle East and North Africa energy conference in London yesterday, Al-Naimi — who once called renewable energy a “nightmare” — hailed energy efficiency and solar as important investments, global warming “real” and “pressing,” and explained that drilling for oil “does not create many jobs.”

“We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties.”

In the U.S., which is definitely not the Saudi Arabia of oil (that would be Saudi Arabia), there is a major industry campaign underway to convince Americans that drilling for fossil fuels will create over a million jobs in the country. However, assuming we drill virtually everywhere possible in America, credible analysis puts the real figure at a small fraction of that claim.

Even the Saudis, who pump out 12% of the world’s oil, understand that simply drilling for more oil isn’t a long-term economic strategy.

A business-as-usual path also puts us deeper into environmental debt, a point that the Saudi oil minister seems to understand as well. While Al-Naimi said he believes that oil production “will continue to play a major role in the overall energy mix for many decades,” he also made some very explicit statements about carbon emissions:

“Greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are among humanity’s most pressing concerns. Societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a leadership role.”

It’s still not really clear what that “leadership role” is — except to pump out more oil and gas. Although, Al-Naimi did give a plug to efficiency and renewables as increasingly important part of the country’s energy strategy:

Read more

ExxonMobil had the largest profits of the Big Five oil companies in 2011, raking in $41.1 billion for the year. This 35 percent jump from last year is driven in large part by record-high oil prices. Today, the oil giant announced its fourth quarter profits of $9.4 billion, a 2 percent increase since 2010. Here are a few other facts about ExxonMobil:

– Exxon’s $41.1 billion in 2011 profit translates into nearly $5 million in profit every hour, or more than $1,300 every second. The annual profit comes near the record revenues of $46.23 billion in 2008.

– Stock buybacks for Q4 were $5.4 billion, and $21.60 billion for the year, equivalent to 53 percent of total 2011 profit. This enriches executives, the board of directors, and largest shareholders.

– Exxon pays a lower tax rate than the average American. Between 2008-2010, Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate, while the average American paid a higher rate of 20.4 percent.

– The company paid no taxes to the U.S. federal government in 2009, despite 45.2 billion record profits. It paid $15 billion in taxes, but none in federal income tax.

– The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States.

– Exxon is sitting on $11 billion cash on hand as of September 30.

– Exxon spent nearly $13 million on lobbying expenditures in 2011. The company gave nearly another $900,000 in federal campaign contributions. 92 percent of contributions went to Republicans.

– Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson made $29 million in 2010 (according to the latest records): He made $2.2 million in salary, a $3.4 million bonus, and stock awards valued at $15.5 million.

– Exxon is drawing out a legal battle for damages on a spill from 22 years ago. Exxon hasn’t paid $92 million in cleanup for the devastating Valdez Alaskan oil spill. In its Sept. 30 court filing, Exxon argued the damages it agreed to pay only covers “restoration” and not additional “clean-up.”

– Far from a job creator, ExxonMobil — together with Chevron, Shell, and BP — reduced their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees between 2005 and 2010.

ExxonMobil had the largest profits of the Big Five oil companies in 2011, raking in $41.1 billion for the year. This 35 percent jump from last year is driven in large part by record-high oil prices. Today, the oil giant announced its fourth quarter profits of $9.4 billion, a 2 percent increase since 2010. Here are a few other facts about ExxonMobil:

• Exxon’s $41.1 billion in 2011 profit translates into nearly $5 million in profit every hour, or more than $1,300 every second. The annual profit comes near the record revenues of $46.23 billion in 2008.

• Stock buybacks for Q4 were $5.4 billion, and $ 21.60 billion for the year, equivalent to 53 percent of total 2011 profit. This enriches executives, the board of directors, and largest shareholders.

• Exxon pays a lower tax rate than the average American. Between 2008-2010, Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate, while the average American paid a higher rate of 20.4 percent.  [In 2010, Mitt Romney paid an effective tax rate of 13.9%.]

• The company paid no taxes to the U.S. federal government in 2009, despite 45.2 billion record profits. It paid $15 billion in taxes, but none in federal income tax.

• The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States.

• Exxon is sitting on $11 billion cash on hand as of September 30.

• Exxon spent nearly $13 million on lobbying expenditures in 2011. The company gave nearly another $900,000 in federal campaign contributions. 92 percent of contributions went to Republicans.

• Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson made $29 million in 2010 (according to the latest records): He made $2.2 million in salary, a $3.4 million bonus, and stock awards valued at $15.5 million.

• Exxon is drawing out a legal battle for damages on a spill from 22 years ago. Exxon hasn’t paid $92 million in cleanup for the devastating Valdez Alaskan oil spill. In its Sept. 30 court filing, Exxon argued the damages it agreed to pay only covers “restoration” and not additional “clean-up.”

• Far from a job creator, ExxonMobil — together with Chevron, Shell, and BP — reduced their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees between 2005 and 2010.

Yesterday ThinkProgress reported on the new “Conservation in the West” poll released by the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project that assessed voters’ attitudes towards conservation in six western states.  In addition to the overwhelming support for conservation, the poll also revealed how voters view renewable energy. The results were impressive: 68 percent of voters answered in the affirmative to the statement that “increasing the use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power will create jobs in [your state].”

Lori Weigel of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm who co-sponsored the poll, spoke to ThinkProgress about the results, conducted with registered voters in in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming:

We asked voters in these western states what types of energy they would encourage the use of in their state, and overwhelmingly they did pick solar and wind as the types of energy they would most want to see more of for their state. And, conversely, when asked to choose among a number of different energy sources they were most likely to say they discourage the use of coal and oil. Part of that support for clean, renewable energy is really grounded in the fact that we saw the overwhelming sense that among these western voters, as we’ve seen nationally, that clean renewable energy is going to create jobs. And voters overwhelmingly in every single state, including states that are more often associated with fossil fuels like Wyoming and Montana are telling us that they think of clean renewable energy as a job creator for their state.

Watch it:

As Weigel told us, voters expressed a strong preference for renewable energy resources over fossil fuels, even in states more traditionally associated with coal, oil, and gas like Wyoming and Utah.  Read more

by Lauren Simenauer and Sean Pool, reposted from Science Progress

Policymakers and energy industry experts often talk about clean energy as though it isn’t reliable. In fact, while an MIT study recently found the existing grid would probably be up to the challenge of absorbing clean energy, intermittency does present a real challenge that renewables must address to get to high levels of penetration.

But BrightSource Energy, a major player in the market for concentrating solar power, or CSP, recently announced the installation of new thermal energy storage technology at three of its planned power plants in California. This thermal energy storage technology will go a long way toward solving the intermittency problem for concentrating solar power. BrightSource’s announcement demonstrates that we can in fact get reliable baseload power from the sun [or, even better, load-following power].

Read more

On Monday, 43 Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) introduced legislation to circumvent the Obama administration and approve the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. A ThinkProgress Green analysis reveals at least 35 of the 44 senators backing the proposal have received special interest political action committee contributions from the biggest backers of the pipeline since the start of the 2010 cycle.

$644,400 went to 35 of those senators who have endorsed this measure. Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Rob Portman (R-OH) received the most, with $43,500 each. Manchin received $2,500 and the rest went to Republicans.

The most active companies and trade associations lobbying for the pipeline over the last three months were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ConocoPhillips, the Business Roundtable, Shell Oil, ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, Deere & Company, TransCanada Pipelines, and Devon Energy.

Of those, the PACs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, Deere & Company, and Devon Energy all made contributions to federal candidates over the past three years.

Here are their totals:
Read more

Other stories below: 7 GW of solar possible for military bases in California and Nevada; UN Panel Outlines Plan for “Low Carbon Prosperity” in Lead-up to Rio Summit

The Republicans Misread of Environmental Politics

As Newt and Mitt continue their ritualistic slugfest before the Republican right-wing base, it’s clear that some of their over-heated rhetoric will be replayed for the independent voters who will eventually decide the race in November. Immigration will hurt these guys with the growing Hispanic vote, and their rabid anti-environmentalism will hurt them with the typical independent suburban voter.

The attack on climate science and regulation seems to be red meat for the Republican primary voters this winter, but that is a pretty soft target for attack. The political problem with climate change is that its cause cannot always be seen or smelled, and its impact is largely in the future. Attacking regulation is also easy, since rules may be respected and even understood, but they are rarely loved.

Still, Newt and Mitt may be forgetting something pretty fundamental: people like to breathe. A Harris poll this fall reported that 75% of Americans support stricter environmental protection. While this broke down as 90% of all Democrats and 54% of all Republicans, even those opposing most government regulation understand the need for effective policing of environmental pollution.

Read more

Next Up: The Droughts, Heat Waves, and Floods from the Last Two Decades’ Surge in CO2 Levels

JR: Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters said in June that, driven by global warming, “It Is Quite Possible That 2010 Was The Most Extreme Weather Year Globally Since 1816.″ In a late December PBS story on the link between 2011′s “mind-boggling” extreme weather and global warming, Masters said it’s like “being on steroids … for the atmosphere.” Now Masters examines “Where is the climate headed?”

by Jeff Masters, cross-posted from the WunderBlog

The year 2011 tied with 1997 as the 11th warmest year since records began in 1880, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center said last week. NASA rated 2011 as the 9th warmest on record. Land temperatures were the 8th warmest on record, and ocean temperatures, the 11th warmest. For the Arctic, which has warmed about twice as much as the rest of the planet, 2011 was the warmest year on record (between 64°N and 90°N latitude.) The year 2011 was also the 2nd wettest year over land on record, as evidenced by some of the unprecedented flooding Earth witnessed. The wettest year over land was the previous year, 2010.

Figure 1. Departure of global temperature from average for 2011. The Arctic was the warmest region, relative to average. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

How much of the warming in recent decades is due to natural causes?

Read more