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?

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Climate denial is now in a decadent phase of absurdity.

“Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again),” the Daily Mail says. “Global warming trend ended in 1997, new data shows,” the Washington Times promotes.

This is strange, since temperature data and NASA scientists show the 2000s to be the warmest decade in recorded history, significantly hotter than the 1990s.

As it turns out, the Daily Mail’s David Rose concocted the “entirely misleading” story by cherry-picking from two different press releases from the UK Met Office. The first press release said that low solar activity would not counteract global warming from greenhouse gases — the second that 2012 will be much warmer than the 20th century average because of global warming.

Rose deliberately ignored the science, cherrypicked data, and quoted scientists on the fringe of reality. By excluding as many actual facts as possible, Rose came to the conclusion that global warming stopped years before the warmest decade in recorded history.

The Daily Mail is controlled by right-wing British billionaire Jonathan Harmsworth, Viscount Rothermere.

With billion-dollar deals becoming the norm in clean energy, investors have “confidence” in the sector. But after rebounding from the 2008 financial crisis, companies are facing a new range of diverse challenges.

If the 2008 financial crisis was a swift punch to the face for the clean energy industry — and for the whole energy sector — the global uncertainty of 2011/2012 is more like a rolling series of blows to the body. In both cases, the sector continues to stand back on its feet. But it’s still going to be a hard fight to the top.

In the aftermath of the financial implosion in 2009, mergers and acquisitions in the sector fell by one third, venture capital capital investments fell 50%, and total global investment grew by only 4%. Today, as markets have recovered and deal flow has increased, we’ve seen a massive surge increase in investment — with global investment up by two thirds since then.

However, even while leading investors continue to say that companies not investing in clean technologies “risk becoming irrelevant to the marketplace,” there are still plenty of risks involved for companies doing deals. Those risks, which range from Europe’s debt crisis to the political freeze in the U.S., are creating what experts call “rolling uncertainty.”

As the global advisory firm PricewaterhouseCoopers explains in a new report on 2011 mergers and acquisitions in clean energy, decisions are being made with a far more difficult range of options to consider:

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Appearing on Fox News, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) equivocated on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which Republican senators are pushing with new legislation to grant immediate approval to the foreign oil company TransCanada. Lieberman, who co-sponsored climate legislation with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2003, 2005, and 2007, recognized that tar sands crude is a “higher pollution kind of fuel.” He then said the Keystone XL pipeline is “probably one way” to get fuel “in a way that doesn’t destroy our environment”:

Though this is a higher pollution kind of fuel that comes from this area of Canada, the question is, are we going to get to use it in America or is it going to be sold to China? I want it to come to America but I want it to come in way where the pipeline is built so it doesn’t have bad environmental consequences throughout this country. I support what the president did because there is a little more time necessary for the environmental reviews to be done. But I hope it doesn’t take long, because we need fuel from wherever we can get it here in the United States in a way that doesn’t destroy our environment, and this is probably one way.

Watch it:

Expansion of tar sands development in Canada in line with the 50-year lifespan of the Keystone XL pipeline would guarantee environment-destroying global warming. The purpose of the pipeline is to ship Canadian tar sands crude to Gulf Coast refineries for tax-free export to foreign markets. The Keystone XL pipeline means higher pollution for America and higher profits for foreign oil companies.

by Araceli Ruano and Rebecca Friendly

Last Friday, California regulators unanimously approved a robust package of progressive automobile standards known as the California clean car rules.

After three years in the making, this emissions-control program will increase the number of low-pollution vehicles available to consumers starting in 2017, with a goal to have 1.4 million zero-emission cars on the road by 2025. These vehicles, which include plug-in hybrids, electric battery-powered cars, and hydrogen fuel cell cars, currently make up a tiny portion of all the fleet in California and around the country.

The clean car rules will begin a new chapter for the automobile industry in California. By 2025 one in seven new cars sold in the state must emit little or no pollution. Half a million of these cars are expected to be fuel cell or electric powered.  The clean car rules also set the goal that by 2050 87% of vehicles must be fueled by clean technologies.

The California clean car rules also address emission standards for gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by extending limits on greenhouse gas emissions and smog forming pollutants. Again, by 2025 all new vehicles must emit 34% fewer global warming gases and 75% fewer smog forming emissions. These provisions should be welcomed in a state with over 26 million cars and the top five smoggiest metropolitan areas in the country.

Automakers have been given sufficient lead-time to adjust to these new demands and have largely been receptive. Although they have expressed concerns that new technologies needed to meet the standards may drive up the price of a vehicle by $1,900 and potentially lower consumer demand. However, the California Air Resources board estimates that the initial increase in cost will be offset by an average of $6,000 worth of fuel savings over a vehicle’s lifetime.

Automakers also initially expressed fears that consumers would steer clear of new clean car technologies without alternative fueling stations in place. This problem has been addressed by a private-public partnership designed to build new infrastructure for vehicle charging and fueling.

With more than 26 million cars on California’s roads, this ground-breaking clean car standard will help combat  smog, reduce carbon emissions and spur a new era of innovation in the automobile sector.

Araceli Ruano is a Senior Vice President and the Director for California at the Center for American Progress. Rebecca Friendly is a special assistant in the Center for American Progress California office.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, sixteen prominent global warming deniers with scientific backgrounds — such as tobacco apologist Richard Lindzen of MIT and ExxonMobil executive Roger Cohen — concede that manmade carbon dioxide emissions have a warming effect on the planet, but argue that the effect is “small” and nothing to “panic” about. All the other scientists in the world who believe the science are part of a conspiracy to intimidate people like themselves, they write, just as Soviet biologists who believed in genes were “sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.”

As climate scientist Peter Gleick reports at his Forbes.com blog, those other scientists include 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences who wrote a letter about the scientific threat of climate change for the Wall Street Journal — but were turned down:

The most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal with respect to manmade climate change is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a scientifically accurate essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because 16 so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.

The NAS letter was eventually published by Science magazine.

Even though the first decade of the 2000s was warmer than the 1990s, and 2005 and 2010 were the warmest years on record, the denier op-ed asserts “the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.”

This op-ed was promoted on Fox News, Real Clear Politics, Alex Jones’ Infowars, and other right-wing political and conspiracy sites.

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Today the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project released a new poll demonstrating that westerners of political affiliations ranging from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street support strengthening protections for clean air, clean water, and the public lands that belong to all of us.

Pollsters Dave Metz and Lori Weigel, representatives of Democratic and Republican polling firms, spoke to ThinkProgress about the results of their “Conservation in the West” poll, which was conducted amongst registered voters in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.  Metz told us that the surprising results show how conservation is “a pretty unique issue in the current political environment”:

And one of the things that were most interesting about this survey is the degree to which Democrats, Republicans and Independents in the West really share some common values when it comes to public lands and their importance, both to their quality of life and to the economy. What we found was that roughly 9 out of 10 westerners, regardless of party affiliation, believe that public lands in their state play an important role, not just in their quality of life, but as a driver of their economy. And to see that kind of agreement and unanimity across party lines reflects a pretty unique issue in the current political environment.

Watch it:

Western voters want more protections for public lands due to both quality of life and their economic impacts.  Here are some examples of questions and voter response in the poll:

-  96 percent agreed with the statement “our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife area are an essential part of [your state’s] quality of life.”

-  91 percent agreed that “our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of [your state’s] economy.”

-  86 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “even with state budget problems, we should still find money to protect [your state’s] land, water and wildlife.”

The poll also delves into the question of public access to public lands, asking respondents to agree or disagree with the statement that “we should NOT allow private companies to profit from using our public lands when their doing so would liming the public’s enjoyment of — or access to — these lands.”  More than two-thirds of all voters surveyed — 68 percent — agreed with that statement, including 71 percent or Arizonans and 70 percent of Wyomingites.

The results of this bi-partisan poll stand in stark contrast to the dozens of attacks on our air, water, and lands perpetrated by our recently-dubbed “most anti-environmental House [of Representatives] in the history of Congress.”

 

Human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases have risen so rapidly that they now overwhelm any plausible decrease in solar activity.  Indeed, a paper from last June found that even if the Sun goes into “Hibernation” it won’t stop catastrophic global warming.

But that doesn’t stop serial disinformer David Rose of the UK’s Daily Mail from misleading the public — even after being slammed by top scientists in 2010 for falsely asserting “no global warming since 1995″ — see “Error-riddled articles and false statements destroy Daily Mail’s credibility.“  Rose has another willfully misleading piece, “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again): Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years.”

I saw “willfully misleading” because the UK’s Met[eorological] Office, part of its Defence Ministry, has taken the unusual step of releasing a statement utterly debunking Rose’s assertions as “entirely misleading” — and pointing out that they spoke to Rose before the piece came out but he chose to ignore what they had to say.

Climate Progress has debunked the “we’re not warming” myth umpteen times, most recently yesterday when 16 know-nothings with scientific degrees pushed a particularly laughable version of it in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal of Lies.

Even so, I’m reposting the Met Office debunking because they do a good job, have a great new chart people might like (above), and they repeat a low-ball estimate of warming this century that merits a response:

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by Zachary Rybarczyk

With concerns mounting that injection wells from natural gas fracking are causing earthquakes and contaminating groundwater, Vermonters appear ready to stop the practice in the state before it starts.

On the heels of a 4.0 magnitude earthquake in Youngstown, Ohio this past New Year’s Eve, and a growing number of reports from around the U.S. that fracking operations have fouled water supplies, the Vermont legislature is considering either a moratorium or complete ban of fracking within its borders.

Last week, the House Water Resources committee approved a bill that would put a three-year moratorium on fracking in Vermont.

Although no one is sure if it’s worth drilling in the area, a number of politicians in Vermont say they support a moratorium or a ban in order to preserve the environmental integrity of the state.

“This is kind of saying, ‘Don’t bother. Close the door on the issue,’” said Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, sponsor of a bill the House Fish & Wildlife Committee is preparing to vote on this week. “It’s about protecting our most precious resource — our groundwater.”

If Vermont goes further and actually bans fracking, it would be the first state to do so. Neighboring New York State, which sits on top of the Marcellus Shale formation, approved a moratorium in 2010 in order to assess the environmental impact of drilling.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, pumps water, sand and a range of chemicals underneath shale formations to force out trapped gas or oil. Last year, France became the first country to ban the practice entirely. Many environmental groups and American citizens with operations in their communities have questioned the safety of the extraction method.

Jake Brown of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, an environmental group in favor of the state bill being voted on next week, explained that a three year ban or moratorium is the best option for protecting public health.  “The industry should be the one to prove this is safe,” he noted.

Measurable seismic activity around fracking injection wells has also added to concerns. From Oklahoma to the United Kingdom, earthquakes ranging from 1.0 to 4.0 on the Richter scale have been recorded near fracking sites. While these small earthquakes have not caused structural damage (only annoyance to people living around the wells), Arthur McGarr, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, has warned that the risk of anthropogenically inducing large, deadly quakes cannot be ruled out.

Related Posts:

• Shale Shocked: “Highly Probable” Fracking Caused U.K. Earthquakes, and It’s Linked to Oklahoma Temblors
• Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere — Absent a Serious Price for Global Warming Pollution
• France Bans Fracking for Shale Gas

by Arpita Bhattacharyya

With two fifths of the world’s population now living within 100 km of the shoreline, keeping our oceans healthy is not just an extraordinarily important environmental issue — it’s also a human development one.

This is the core case of the new UNEP Report, “Green Economy in a Blue World,” which urges protecting the oceans from pollution, overfishing, and climate change, while fueling economic growth through developing new marine industries.

Among other immeasurable benefits, the ocean provides coastal populations food, millions of jobs, a thriving tourism industry, transportation, sites for renewable energy development, and vast carbon sinks.  The implications of mismanaging such a bountiful resource are clear and coastal communities cannot afford to do it.

Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director warns that with the growing population, “pressures and impacts [on the ocean] are likely to intensify unless the world becomes more intelligent about managing these essential resources.”

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by Shuana Theel, cross-posted from Media Matters

Conservative media have misrepresented the results of Chevy Volt crash tests, claiming the batteries “blow up” and are a “fire trap,” and suggesting that fires have occurred spontaneously during use. In fact, fires only occurred after crash tests and regulators concluded an inquiry after finding that Volts are just as safe as conventional cars.

Regulators Concluded Inquiry After Finding Volts Are Just As Safe As Conventional Cars

Battery Fire Happened Weeks After Pole Crash Test And Rollover Test. From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s description of the test:

During an NCAP [New Car Assessment Program] oblique side pole impact test conducted by NHTSA in May 2011, the pole struck and deformed the sill plate under the driver’s door at a location where there is a structural member. The lateral member displaced inward, pierced the HV battery enclosure and battery, and caused a battery coolant leak. Thereafter, the Agency conducted a rollover test (the rollover test consists of four 90-degree rotate-and-hold movements about the vehicle’s longitudinal axis). In that test, the HV battery and electronics were exposed to coolant that leaked as a result of the crash. The vehicle fire that occurred three weeks later and the additional testing NHTSA conducted are discussed in a report titled “2011 Chevrolet Volt Battery Fire Incident Report” a copy of which is available in the public file. The report indicates that intrusion induced coolant leakage, and subsequent rollover that saturates electronic components, were the only test conditions which resulted in a subject vehicle HV battery fire. [NHTSA, 1/26/12]

CNN: “No Fires Were Reported In Cars That People Were Actually Driving.” CNN’s Erin Burnett made clear that fires had only occurred in crash tests, not real-life scenarios:

ERIN BURNETT: Investigators did not find a safety defect. They also supported GM’s fix, which reinforces the structure surrounding the battery. No fires were reported in cars that people were actually driving. This came from crash tests. [CNN, Out Front with Erin Burnett, 1/20/12]

NHTSA Did Not Drain Battery After Crash, As GM Protocols Require. From an Associated Press report:

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Other stories below: Southwest turns an anxious eye toward a shrinking Lake Mead; Renewable energy deals hit record high in 2011

Boehner: House Will Likely Attach Keystone Approval to New Jobs Bill

Speaker John Boehner says that the House will try again to tie approval for the Keystone pipeline project to a new jobs bill being introduced next week.

“All options are on the table. If it’s not enacted before we take up the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, it’ll be part of it,” Boehner said of the Keystone project, which would extend an oil pipeline from Canada through the United States.

Boehner led an unsuccessful effort to attach approval of the Keystone project to the extension of the payroll tax cut in December, but had to back down after not securing Senate support.

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