Reuters: Setback for the ‘stalled’ global warming view advanced by ‘skeptics’

The UK Met Office said two years ago it had underestimated recent warming. The key reason is their Hadley/CRU (Climatic Research Unit) Temperature dataset (HadCRUT) undersampled the Arctic — the place on earth warming up the fastest.

Now the Met[eorological] Office (part of the Defence Ministry) has corrected their errors and update their temperature record (release here, video below). No longer is 1998 the hottest year on record. It has been (slightly) edged out by 2010 and 2005. As the UK Telegraph reports:

Between 1998 and 2010, temperatures rose by 0.11C, 0.04C more than previously estimated.

The new data set also shifts around the hottest years on record, so that the new temperature series, known as HadCRUT4, is more in line with other global records held by NASA and NOAA in the US. The American series had already added Arctic temperatures from extrapolated information.

Before it was thought the hottest years were 1998 followed by 2010, 2005, 2003 and 2002. The updated series puts 2010 as the hottest year on record followed by 2005, 1998, 2003 and 2006.

The main conclusions of the new temperature series remains the same – that overall warming since 1850 has been around 0.75C and the 10 warmest years on record all occurred in the last 14 years.

The deniers haven’t gone so ballistic over a new study since we saw the Koch-Funded Berkeley temperature study “confirm the reality of global warming” last year and conclude recent warming was “on the high end” and speeding up. Indeed, that study made clear that the HadCRUT dataset was the outlier, as the figure on the right shows.

That’s why the deniers always had a love-hate relationship with the HadCRUT data. They kept accusing the CRU scientists at the University of East Anglia, whose emails were stolen, of fudging the data. But at the same time, they kept citing the HadCRU data since it showed less warming in recent years.

Everyone but the anti-science disinformers have known for a long time that the Met Office dataset UNDERestimates — not OVERestimates — the recent global temperature rise.  Their data excludes “the place on Earth that has been warming fastest” (see “What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?“ and here).   NASA’s James Hansen has made this point for years. The Met Office itself concluded a December 2009 analysis that “The global temperature rise calculated by the Met Office’s HadCRUT record is at the lower end of likely warming.”

Now, as CRU Director Phil Jones explains, ”For the latest version we have included observations from more than 400 stations across the Arctic, Russia and Canada. This has led to better representation of what’s going on in the large geographical region.”

The Met Office has corrected a second mistake, an error the global sea-surface temperature dataset.  Here is Peter Stott, the Met Office’s head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution, in a video explaining all the corrections:

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Speaking at the Center for American Progress Action Fund today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said he believes a price on carbon pollution can provide a unique solution to both the country’s fiscal challenges and its looming climate crisis, uniting climate and deficit hawks. His presentation put the challenge to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the House Republican budget chief, who has claimed that Congress has a “moral obligation” to reduce the country’s debt. With former Republican congressman Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), Waxman explained how tackling climate pollution can address fiscal, energy, environmental, and economic challenges simultaneously:

A price on carbon can give you a substantial amount of money to help deal with our fiscal problems. A price on carbon can move us away from our reliance on fossil fuels which add to the greenhouse gas emissions in our climate, and by doing that we can become less dependent on oil. We would be able to be a challenger in the economic future of clean energy.

Watch it:

“Do people want to cut Medicare and Medicaid?” Waxman asked. A rising price on carbon pollution, Waxman said, could raise over $1 trillion over several decades.

Gilchrest rebuked Ryan for ignoring the climate crisis in his depiction of the “defining moment“:

Paul Ryan said this is a defining moment for future generations as far as a fiscal sense for reducing the deficit. This is a defining moment on the planet of seven billion people extracting resources faster than they can be replaced, becoming a geologic force by pumping more carbon dioxide in decades than nature is able to store in the earth over millions of years. The defining moment is realizing that the market, capitalism, our civilization is actually a subset of the earth’s ecosystem. We’re not independent of the living machine that gives us life on earth. We’re dependent on it.

“The U.S. is facing a range of unprecedented fiscal and environmental challenges,” said Waxman. “We’ve got a confluence of events happening all at once.”

Waxman and Gilchrest recently co-authored a Washington Post op-ed with Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Sherry Boehlert (R-MD) calling for climate-change policies to be considered for deficit reduction.

California GOP assemblywoman Shannon Grove has invited discredited anti-science disinformer and hate-speech promoter Lord Monckton to address the state legislature.

Amazingly, Grove is so proud of this move she is advertising it on her website below the string of wind turbines that form the backbone of California’s leadership response to global warming, a response that hard-core deniers like Monckton are working overtime to kill.

The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) is not merely the most discredited purveyor of long debunked anti-science disinformation — see MN professor eviscerates Monckton in must-see video: “The number of errors Chris Monckton makes is so enormous it would take a thesis to go through every single one of them.”

And Monckton is not merely a shameless purveyor of hate speech — see Lord Monckton repeats and expands on his charge that those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists.

He actually lives in an alternative universe where he is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a member of Parliament — who has cured HIV.  None of those things is true (see here). Rather than being given a platform by the California GOP, he should be widely condemned for his extremist hate speech and anti-science disinformation:

• Lord Monckton meltdown: “I’m not going to shake the hands of Hitler youth.”
• How to diss-a-peer: Real Climate Scientists take on TVMOB
• Climate Crock debunks Lord Monckton, Part 2

While the nation’s attention has been focused on ending one war (Afghanistan) and avoiding another (Iran), a different idea about national defense has been circulating among some of America’s thought leaders.

The idea is this: National defense isn’t only about containing foreign threats; it’s also about strengthening the fabric of society.  In other words, sustainable development is a critical component of national security.

This isn’t a new thought, but new people are thinking it, including some whose job is to figure out how to prevent the foreign conflicts that end up costing U.S. lives and treasure.

A half-century ago, President Eisenhower, Congress and U.S. automakers defined “strong” as an interstate highway system. Thirty years ago, Amory and Hunter Lovins defined “strong” as moving away from “brittle power” – our dependence on fragile energy systems.

Last spring, two influential military officers published a paper called “A National Strategic Narrative,” which boldly called for sustainable development to become central to America’s global strategy. Marine Corps Col. Mark Mykleby and Navy Capt. Wayne Porter wrote that to thrive in this century’s “strategic ecology” the United States must move from a global posture of containment designed to preserve the status quo to a posture of sustainability designed to build our strength at home and our credible influence abroad. They wrote the paper while serving as senior strategic advisors to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Today, Mykleby, now retired from the military, is collaborating with Patrick Doherty of the nonpartisan New America Foundation and David Orr of Oberlin College on an idea called “The Grand Strategy for Sustainability.” It’s an initiative to reshape economic policies so that market forces produce a more sustainable and secure United States.

As grand as the Grand Strategy is, it is rooted in the work of the nation’s traditional policy laboratories: sub-national regions, states and communities. In this regard, there was good news last week from the Pacific Northwest.  Three governors and the Premier of British Columbia announced that they will collaborate on an action plan to make the region’s homes more energy efficient, its vehicles less dependent on oil, and its communities less vulnerable to the threat of global climate change.

In making the announcement, California Gov. Jerry Brown, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, Washington State Gov. Christine Gregiore and B.C. Premier Christy Clark could have talked about the contribution they will make to North American security. Instead, they pointed to another set of important benefits – economic activity and jobs.

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Spurred by an upswell of local action, Tennessee is deliberating whether to stop blowing up its mountains for coal. Tennessee State Senator Eric Stewart (D-TN) recently spoke on behalf of the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act, which would ban mountaintop removal on Tennessee peaks over 2,000 feet in Tennessee:

When a man blows up a mountain, he exceeds his authority. When a man tries to rebuild a mountain, he exceeds his ability. We have a duty to protect these mountains.

Watch it:

Stewart is retiring at the end of this session in order to run for Congress in Tennessee’s fourth Congressional District.

Full text below: Read more

Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan is set to unveil his draft budget this week. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan has said that Congressional leaders have a “moral obligation” to reduce the country’s debt.

Some political leaders are taking that challenge to heart, calling for action not just on fiscal issues, but on the most pressing moral issue of our time: climate change.

California Congressman Henry Waxman — known as one of the architects of a comprehensive climate bill in 2009 — continues to sound the drumbeat in support of pricing carbon in order to reduce the country’s debt. Speaking at an event held by the Center for American Progress Action Fund today, Waxman said he believes addressing the country’s fiscal challenges is a unique opportunity to act on climate, and offers the chance to build support from deficit hawks in Congress.

Watch it:

“The U.S. is facing a range of unprecedented fiscal and environmental challenges,” said Waxman. “We’ve got a confluence of events happening all at once.”

On the fiscal side, with the Bush-era tax credits set to expire, the defense budget facing a major sequester, and the need for another debt ceiling deal looming, deficit issues are sure to dominate politics. On the environmental side, scientists continue to warn that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are making weather more severe, costing the country billions in damages and lives.

The two issues cannot be kept separate, said Waxman. They are part of the same problem.

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China solar installations jump 470% last year, may hit 2015 target of 15 GW early

Major PV country markets (GigaWatts). Source: NPD Solarbuzz 2012 Marketbuzz

Global deployment of solar photovoltaics increased by 40% in 2011, with 27.5 gigawatts of projects installed in 12 months, according to a new report from NPD Solarbuzz.  Last year’s strong installation figures prove how quickly the technology can be deployed compared to large, centralized forms of generation.

Those installations helped the industry bring in $93 billion in global revenues — a 12% increase over 2010.

America’s solar industry saw 109% growth in 2011, with 1,855 megawatts of projects installed, according to analysis from GTM Research. That crushed the previous record of 887 MW, and finally brought the U.S. into the “gigawatt club.” The country represented about 7% of global PV demand in 2011:

 

Will that domestic and international growth continue this year?

The expiration of the Treasury Grant Program, which provided developers with a cash payment of 30% of a project’s cost, could set the industry back a bit over the coming year. The grant program was created in order to make up for the collapse of the tax equity market (i.e. the players that can monetize tax credits). While the financial markets have bounced back since 2009, some fear that the limited number of tax equity financiers may limit installations.

But there’s still a pipeline of projects that were started in 2011 to take advantage of the grant before it expired. GTM Research expects that pipeline to prop up the U.S. market into 2012:

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America produces 200 times as much oil as Germany, but our gas prices rise and fall in tandem (we pay far lower gas taxes). Source:  Energy Information Administration and NY Times.

The public understands Obama isn’t to blame for high gasoline prices, as recent polls make clear. Even the Wall Street Journal and Cato Institute agree: “It’s not Obama’s fault that crude oil prices have increased.”

But as the NY Times pointed out Sunday, facts don’t stop the GOP:

The issue of gas prices has not only been misunderstood but thoroughly distorted by relentless ideological spin from industry and its political allies, mainly Republican. Hardly a day goes by that some industry cheerleader somewhere — be it Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana or Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma — does not flay President Obama for driving up oil prices by denying the industry access to oil and gas deposits and imposing ruinous environmental rules. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, said last week that Mr. Obama should be held “fully responsible for what the American public is paying for gasoline.”

The Times put together some great charts using EIA data. They make clear 1) oil prices are set on a global market and 2) the strategy of “Drill, Baby, Drill” adopted by the GOP and President Obama has succeeded at increasing production and decreasing dependency on foreign oil — but it has unsurprisingly failed at affecting global markets.

In 2005, oil imports accounted for nearly 60 percent of America’s daily consumption. In 2010, for the first time in recent memory, imports were less than half of consumption, and last year, imports were only 45% — 8.6 million barrels a day of the 19 million consumed. Source: EIA

This is no surprise to anyone who follows oil market analysis. In fact, back in 2009, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s issued a report that examined the difference between full offshore drilling and continued restrictions. In 2020, there is no impact on gasoline prices. In 2030, US gasoline prices would be three cents a gallon lower.  Woohoo!

The bottom line is clear, as the NY Times points out:

With developing countries like China and India demanding more petroleum, prices are likely to stay high. That’s reality — no matter what the Republican spinners say. Only a rounded policy mix of greater fuel efficiency, steady production and the aggressive development of alternative fuels can protect American consumers against what could be even greater price shocks in the years ahead.

Sen. Bingaman (D-NM) made this same point in a major presentation last year: “We become less vulnerable by using less oil.” Grist has a great new chart from Bingaman:

We’re not going to substantially change U.S. gasoline prices through more drilling and more domestic production. We can protect ourselves and our economy from rising prices and oil shocks — and, of course, catastrophic climate change — only by reducing oil consumption.

Speaking at a high-dollar Chicago fundraiser hosted by Oprah Winfrey as the city basked in June-like weather last week, President Barack Obama admitted to being “a little nervous” about global warming:

“We’ve had a good day,” Obama said. “It’s warm every place. It gets you a little nervous about what’s happening to global temperatures. But when it’s 75 degrees in Chicago in the beginning of March it gets you thinking…”

“Something’s wrong,” Oprah interjected.

“Yeah,” Obama said. “On other hand we really have enjoyed the nice weather.”

Instead of temperatures in the mid-40s, the historical average, Chicago is in a record-breaking streak of 80-degree weather. This “extreme and unprecedented” heat wave began last Wednesday and may continue through this Wednesday. “Before the heat wave, there had only been 10 March days on record that reached 80 degrees, and on average Chicago would see one 80 degree day in March every 14 years,” the Daily Herald reports. Most of the nation has been gripped by a record heat wave of weather as much as 30 to 40 degrees above normal. Global warming pollution is continuing to accumulate and heat the planet at a rapid pace.

The legacy of Nobelist Sherry Rowland

by Jeff Turrentine, an OnEarth Magazine repost

F. Sherwood Rowland, the chemist whose work on ozone layer depletion won a Nobel Prize, died last Saturday in California. Rowland earned his place in environmental history by being one of the first scientists in the world to discover that chlorofluorocarbons, or “CFCs” for short, were flying right out of our air conditioners and aerosol cans and combining with sunlight to destroy stratospheric ozone. With his colleague Mario Molina, Rowland published the 1974 article in the journal Nature that blew the lid, so to speak, off the ozone-layer issue.

Meanwhile, the actual lid of the ozone layer was quite literally blowing off, evidence of which finally came to light a few years later when scientists detected a massive hole over Antarctica that was allowing previously blocked ultraviolet radiation to enter the earth’s biosphere. Once people learned — thanks in large part to the scientific foundation laid a decade earlier by Rowland and Molina — that this increase in UV radiation could be responsible for a host of ailments ranging from sunburn to cataracts to cancer, individuals and nations banded together to take decisive action. The chain of events that these scientists’ findings set in motion culminated in a national moment of concerted effort, the likes of which we haven’t seen since.

In the current poisoned political climate, one wonders when — or if — we’ll get to see it again.

The direct result of Rowland’s discovery was the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that attempted to reverse the ozone-depleting trend by severely curtailing its root cause: the production, and subsequent release into the atmosphere, of CFCs. The president of the United States signed the protocol in December 1987. In his accompanying letter to the Senate — a body that would, only a few months later, vote 83-0 in support of the protocol — our nation’s chief executive lauded it as a “historic agreement” and proudly noted America’s “leading role” in its negotiation.

Note the year, please. The Montreal Protocol was signed, of course, by none other than Ronald Reagan as he neared the end of his second term, and right as his vice president was launching a campaign to become the next occupant of the White House. The Senate that lent its unanimous support to the protocol was still reeling, at the time of this dramatic display of bipartisanship, from bitterly contested midterm elections the year before, when Democrats had retaken the chamber from Republicans and wrested control of its powerful committees.

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UPDATE: The video of this event and an article on it can be found here.

At 10 am today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Former Rep. Wayne Gilchrest  (R-MD) will speak about their bipartisan plan for having a carbon price be part of a debt deal. The moderator will be Carol Browner, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Evidence is clearer than ever that urgent action is needed to protect our nation and the world from the effects of irreversible climate change. And at the same time, our country faces a very large federal budget deficit.

This event will focus on a new bipartisan proposal to address both of these seemingly intractable challenges together rather than separately. This approach would slash the U.S. debt by making power plants and oil refineries pay for their carbon dioxide pollution that endanger our health and environment. This policy will strengthen our economy, lessen our dependence on foreign oil, make our skies cleaner, and provide hundreds of billions of dollars in debt relief.

Other stories below: As climate changes, Louisiana seeks to lift a highway; With gas prices rising, smog rules may stall

Germany’s $263 Billion Renewables Shift Biggest Since War

Not since the allies leveled Germany in World War II has Europe’s biggest economy undertaken a reconstruction of its energy market on this scale.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning to build offshore wind farms that will cover an area six times the size of New York City and erect power lines that could stretch from London to Baghdad. The program will cost 200 billion euros ($263 billion), about 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2011, according to the DIW economic institute in Berlin.

Germany aims to replace 17 nuclear reactors supplying a fifth of its electricity with renewables such as solar and wind. Merkel to succeed must experiment with untested systems and policies and overcome technical hurdles threatening the project, said Stephan Reimelt, chief executive officer of General Electric Co. (GE)’s energy unit in the country.

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