Skeptical Science reviews the scientific literature, which shows humans are the dominant cause of global warming.

by Dana Nuccitelli

At Skeptical Science, we have several recent studies which have used a number of diverse approaches to tease out the contributions of various natural and human effects to global warming.  Here we will review the results of these various studies, and a few others which we have not previously examined, to see what the scientific literature and data have to say about exactly what is causing global warming.

All of these studies, using a wide range of independent methods, provide multiple lines of evidence that humans are the dominant cause of global warming over the past century, and especially over the past 50 to 65 years (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Net human and natural percent contributions to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), and Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange).  This has been added to the SkS Climate Graphics Page.

Note that the numbers provided in this summary post are best estimates from each paper.  For the sake of simplicity we have not included error bars, but we have provided links to the original research for those who would like to see the uncertainty ranges in each estimate.

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Like the governors of Texas and Oklahoma who responded last year to global-warming-fueled drought by praying for rain, ski resorts in the West are now praying for snow. At Vail, a Ute tribal leader was “asked by executives at the country’s skiing mecca to perform a snow dance”:

Mountain resorts across the U.S. are desperate for fresh powder. For the first time since the 1800s, Lake Tahoe received no December snow. Peaks in the Northeast saw rain. Vail Resorts recently reported a 15% decrease in total skier visits at its six properties, and not for 30 years have Vail Mountain’s back bowls, perhaps the most prized terrain in the country, been roped off so late in the season for lack of snow.

The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen describes the freak conditions only as “peculiar La Niña weather,” ignoring the existence of global warming, which has been predicted for by climate scientists to bring warmer winters with fewer and more intense storms. This year’s weather patterns are being driven primarily by unusual distributions of hot and cold surface water in the warming Pacific, as well strange circulation patterns in the rapidly warming and melting Arctic.

While it’s cute to give credit for recent snowfall to a tribal snow dance, the unfortunate reality is that our actual influence on the weather is from the hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse pollution we have spewed into the atmosphere.

America’s television meteorologists are the primary source of climate information for most Americans, and are second only to scientists — who have much less access to the general public — in the level of trust they are given. Yet more than half of TV weather reporters don’t believe in human-induced climate change, even as our poisoned weather grows more extreme.

Forecast the Facts, a new campaign of 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters, and the new Citizen Engagement Lab, aims to turn the tide. The first call to action challenges the American Meteorological Society to vote next week for a strong climate change statement that rejects science denial:

It’s a big problem: weather reporters reach millions of people every night, and right now they’re not telling their viewers the full story. We can change that. Meteorologists are meeting this month at the annual conference of the American Meteorological Society, where the AMS Council will vote on a new official statement on climate change. Denier meteorologists don’t want the statement to pass, and are doing everything they can to derail the process. We can’t let that happen.

In 2009, ThinkProgress Green exposed weathermen James Spann and Joe D’Aleo as Marc Morano’s go-to climate deniers. Forecast the Facts has identified dozens more zombie weathermen (yes, they’re all male) from around the country. These climate denier meteorologists are betraying the public’s trust and distorting America’s airwaves with ideological science denial:
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by David Roberts, reposted from Grist

In October 2011, National Journal surveyed energy experts about whether Obama was likely to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry Canadian tar-sands oil through the U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico. Ninety-one percent of the “energy and environment insiders” believed he would.

On Wednesday, Obama proved them wrong.

How could the experts have gotten it so wrong? The answer is twofold: Grassroots environmentalists were stronger, and congressional Republicans dumber, than anyone predicted.

Back in August of 2011, when author and activist Bill McKibben staged the first anti-Keystone rallies around the White House, political observers scoffed. These were, after all, the same environmentalists who had been rendered irrelevant by their cap-and-trade defeat and the stress of economic recession. No way they could stop a fossil fuel infrastructure project with big money behind it.

But McKibben kept at it. The movement he seeded grew, forging strategic partnerships with Nebraska farmers, social-justice groups, and unions. Activists staged more rallies, hounded the president everywhere he went and uncovered serious questions about the relationship between the tar-sands industry and the State Department. As the crowds grew, big-money Democratic donors started weighing in on the issue. In November, under intense pressure, Obama announced that the final determination would be delayed until after the election. It was an unexpected display of muscle from the green grass roots.

Still, most observers assumed that Obama was just buying time (and the support of his environmental base) and would approve the pipeline in the spring. That’s where the dumb Republicans came in.

The GOP thought it had Obama in a trap — approve the pipeline and anger environmentalists, deny it and anger construction unions — and that the president had seemingly slipped out of that trap by delaying the decision. Infuriated, Republicans threatened to attach a rider to December’s payroll tax bill forcing Obama to make a decision within six months.

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CO2 Scorecard Also Calls Out Roger Pielke, Jr. for His Inconsistent Stance on Grey Literature

by Shakeb Afsah, Eric Ness and Kendyl Salcito* in a repost

Summary

This follow-up note on the issue of energy efficiency and energy rebound is structured into three parts. We first discuss the shortcomings in the dataset used by Dr. Saunders for analyzing energy efficiency trend and rebound in thirty industrial sectors. Next we discuss that Breakthrough and the New Yorker’s David Owen have offered no convincing analytical evidence to show that the indirect macro level rebound will offset most of the gains from energy efficiency. Then we discuss how Prof. Pielke Jr has overlooked the use of unpublished grey literature by Breakthrough—an issue for which he has shown zero-tolerance in the case of IPCC.  In conclusion we suggest that there should be a proper discussion to evaluate if Breakthrough should retract or revise its rebound report. Specific issues raised by Breakthrough and Prof. Pielke Jr in their blog and emails are addressed in the appendix.

Until the time Breakthrough and David Owen claims can be validated and peer-reviewed, they cannot be used in any meaningful form in policy discussions.

*We have benefitted from our conversations with Danny Cullenward and Jonathan Koomey of Stanford, and Skip Laitner of ACEEE. All errors and opinion expressed in this note should be attributed only to the authors and the CO2 Scorecard Group.

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Domestic oil and gas production on federal lands is at an all-time high, creating roughly 75,000 jobs in the sector under the Obama Administration since 2009. That’s about 69,000 jobs more than would be created by Keystone XL, according to estimates from the State Department, Cornell University and the company building the pipeline, TransCanada.

That is a very inconvenient fact Keystone XL champions ignore when claiming Obama is trying to stop drilling for oil and gas. So what’s the best way to shift attention away from that ugly truth? Posture up, make up some fake jobs numbers, and then continually inflate those lies over time.

Media Matters just released a new compilation of “reporting” showing this predictable pattern of behavior in the television media. The claims from pundits get so absurd, even TransCanada has to weigh in to temper expectations:

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced his administration was denying an application by the TransCanada Corporation to build a tar sands pipeline between Alberta, Canada, and Nederland, Texas.

This decision, a major victory for grassroots activists, comes after lobbying by TransCanada and its big oil allies significantly dwarfed that of environmental groups. TransCanada alone nearly matched the combined lobbying expenditures of all Keystone XL opponents on all issues, over the periods in which they lobbied for and against the pipeline in 2011, a ThinkProgress Green analysis shows.

An analysis of lobbying disclosure records for the first, second, and third quarters of 2011 suggests that the lobbying expenses of the 20 or more business and labor interests who backed the project were much greater than those for the seven organizations that actively opposed the measure:

– Thirty-eight different companies or organizations reported lobbying the federal government on the Keystone XL pipeline in general or on H.R.1938 (the North American-Made Energy Security Act, a bill which aimed to speed up the Obama administration’s consideration of the application). Thirty-one groups supported the pipeline, and seven groups opposed it.

– TransCanada’s lobbying efforts alone over the first three quarters of 2011 totaled at least $920,000.

– The seven groups in opposition to Keystone XL spent just over $1 million on all lobbying efforts. Corporate Ethics International, Defenders of Wildlife, EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund, the League of Conservation Voters, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and the Western Organization of Resource Councils reported spending just over $1 million on lobbying efforts for the periods when they were lobbying on Keystone XL — little more than TransCanada’s spending. Lobbying disclosure forms do not specify how much is spent on individual issues.

– The 31 groups supporting Keystone XL spent $59.8 million on all lobbying. Combined with the massive lobbying prowess of supporters like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil, Exxon Mobil Corporation, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as less expected players like the National Taxpayers Union and Deere & Company, supporters of the pipeline had lobbying operations over the periods in which they lobbied on application totaling at least $59.8 million.

– Oil and energy companies alone spent more than $37 million on total lobbying.

TransCanada has vowed to reapply. If these numbers are any indication, they will likely do so with some well-funded allies.

See the organizations who reported lobbying on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in the first three quarters of 2011:
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The public health benefits from the mercury rule — such as fewer deaths and asthma attacks — result in benefits outweighing project costs by $14 to-$1.

by Jackie Weidman and Kendaleth VanLue

Regulating harmful mercury from power plants will not hurt the reliability of the electricity system, according to analysis from the independent Congressional Research Service.

This adds to the arsenal of research showing that Environmental Protection Agency mercury and toxic rules for power plants are unlikely to hurt the integrity of the grid. This is because most of the power plant phase-outs around the country will occur in places with sufficient reserve electricity margin, the CRS report concludes.

For the few power plants that may have legitimate issues meeting the three year deadline, EPA allows for a one-year extension, along with another one-year extension for plants where installation of pollution reduction technologies on a faster time table would interfere with generation. CRS determined that these are sufficient avenues for power plants to pursue, and “as a result, it is unlikely that electric reliability will be harmed by the rule.”

Study after study affirms similar claims, including analyses from M.J. Bradley & Associates, Charles River Associates, and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Many utilities, including Exelon, have testified that three years is more than enough time to implement pollution control technology.  Exelon – which has one of the industry’s largest electricity generation capacity portfolios – argued that 60 percent of coal-fired power plants are already equipped with pollution controls.  Last September, Exelon’s Senior Vice President Joseph Dominquez called for other power providers to start acting, rather than dragging their feet:

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Other stories below: Obama’s first 2012 ad focuses on energy; Secretary Clinton won’t testify on Keystone XL

Survey: Young drivers prefer electric cars

Lusting for a Lamborghini or Bentley? Not if you grew up listening to the Backstreet Boys and winning trophies for, umm, everything. A new survey finds that most Gen Y consumers (a k a “Millennials”) have a high affinity for green, eco-friendly vehicles versus any other type of car.

Researchers at Deloitte found 59% of Gen Y respondents preferred alternative power. Hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles won over 57% of respondents, and pure battery electric vehicles got 2% of the vote; by contrast, vehicles with a traditional gas-only power train were preferred by only 37%.

Contrary to stereotypes, this young generation seems to know a good value when it sees one: Fuel efficiency is the biggest appeal. In fact, close to half (49%) of Gen Y customers are willing to pay an extra $300 for each mile per gallon of improvement they can get out of a hybrid, according to Deloitte.

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Five senators and 40 congressional representatives received a perfect 100 percent score from the Koch brothers’ astroturf group Americans For Prosperity for the first half of the 112th Congress. AFP judged Congress on their votes to protect the Koch brothers’ right-wing petrochemical empire on such issues as the repeal of President Obama’s new health care law, pre-empting EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget to end Medicare, ending ethanol subsidies, several Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval to overturn new regulations, and the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills.

In a previous post, ThinkProgress Green reviewed the five Koch senators and their massive haul of campaign contributions from the Koch empire. Below is a compilation of the 40 members of the Congressional Koch Caucus, in addition to their contributions received from Koch Industries, according to data compiled from OpenSecrets.org.

The Koch Caucus
Representative Koch Cash Akin, Todd (R-MO) $2000 Amash, Justin (R-MI) $2500 Brooks, Mo (R-AL) $0 Buerkle, Ann Marie (R-NY) $1250 Burton, Dan (R-IN) $0 Chabot, Steve (R-OH) $21000 Chaffetz, Jason (R-UT) $2500 Coffman, Mike (R-CO) $0 Flake, Jeff (R-AZ) $12300 Fleming, John (R-LA) $0 Franks, Trent (R-AZ) $7500 Garrett, Scott (R-NJ) $23000 Gowdy, Trey (R-SC) $7000 Graves, Tom (R-GA) $7500 Harris, Andy (R-MD) $15000 Herger, Wally (R-CA) $6000 Huelskamp, Tim (R-KS) $15900 Huizenga, Bill (R-MI) $2500 Jordan, Jim (R-OH) $5000 Labrador, Raul (R-ID) $3500	Representative Koch Cash Lamborn, Doug (R-CO) $20000 Landry, Jeff (R-LA) $0 Lummis, Cynthia (R-WY) $7500 Manzullo, Donald (R-IL) $0 Marchant, Kenny (R-TX) $19000 McClintock, Tom (R-CA) $1000 McHenry, Patrick (R-NC) $2500 Mulvaney, Mick (R-SC) $7000 Neugebauer, Randy (R-TX) $24000 Pence, Mike (R-IN) $20750 Quayle, Benjamin (R-AZ) $6000 Ribble, Reid (R-WI) $10000 Ross, Dennis (R-FL) $12500 Schmidt, Jean (R-OH) $0 Schweikert, Dave (R-AZ) $10000 Southerland, Steve (R-FL) $5000 Stutzman, Marlin (R-IN) $2500 Walberg, Tim (R-MI) $27000 Walsh, Joe (R-IL) $0 Wilson, Joe (R-SC) $1000
All U.S. Representatives who were given perfect records from Americans For Prosperity for their 2011 votes. Lifetime Koch Industries political contributions, from Center for Responsive Politics data.

Fourteen members of the Koch Caucus are members of the Tea Party caucus. The average contribution to the Koch Caucus was $9,869.