Conservation Hawks: “We condemn the intellectually bankrupt and morally bereft Heartland Institute.”

It is the fifth day of the Heartland Institute’s online offensive comparing people who accept climate science with serial killers and mass murderers. The billboard is down, but the radical climate deniers of Heartland have explicitly refused to apologize for the ad. Worse, they’ve kept the more offensive hate speech on their website.

Unsurprisingly, corporate sponsors have started to flee, senior staff have left, partnerships have started to crumble, and all but the most extreme anti-science deniers have condemned Heartland. But as we’ll see, the origins of this smear go back many years for both Heartland and its long-time partner, Anthony Watts of the blog WattsUpWithThat.

First, Heartland has been quietly dropped from two significant coalitions with top environmental organizations, Climate Progress has learned. Under pressure from Forecast the Facts and Greenpeace, insurers who funded Heartland’s Washington DC vice president, Eli Lehrer, ceased their support and helped to convince Lehrer to leave the organization. With Lehrer’s departure, the Heartland Institute has been excised from the websites of two green coalitions:

The Smarter Safer Coalition, an effort to reform the National Flood Insurance Program by top insurers, environmental organizations including American Rivers, the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife, Ceres, and the Nature Conservancy, alongside conservative groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Conservative Union, and Americans for Tax Reform

The Green Scissors Campaign, an initiative to reduce anti-environmental government spending with Friends of the Earth and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

According to leaked documents, Lehrer brought about $700,000 a year into the Heartland Institute for his Center on Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, including the majority of Heartland’s corporate funding. The insurers who announced their departure from Heartland include the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers, XL Group, Renaissance Re, Allied World Assurance, and State Farm Insurance.

Corporate sponsors of the Heartland Institute who have resisted calls to end their financial support include Microsoft, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Comcast, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Heartland’s seventh climate-denier conference will take place in Chicago in two weeks.  To add your voice to the petition calling on corporations to end support for the Heartland Institute, click here.

I don’t know what is more amazing, truly, that the Heartland organization collectively ever thought this major messaging campaign was a good idea — or that they refuse to apologize or take down any of the absurd attacks on climate scientists and reporters from their website.

Every day, new groups condemn Heartland. Conservation Hawks, Inc., “a group of hunters and anglers working to defend America’s sporting heritage,” released a powerful statement condemning Heartland, which concluded:

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Figure 1. The ten warmest 12-month periods in the contiguous U.S. since record keeping began in 1895. Image credit: NOAA/NCDC.

by Jeff Masters, via WunderBlog

The past twelve months were the warmest twelve months in U.S. history, said NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) on Tuesday, in their monthly “State of the Climate” report. Temperatures in the contiguous U.S. during May 2011 – April 2012 broke the previous record for warmest 12-month period, set November 1999 – October 2000, by 0.1°F. The past twelve months have featured America’s 2nd warmest summer, 4th warmest winter, and warmest March on record. Twenty-two states were record warm for the 12-month period, and an additional nineteen states were top ten warm. NOAA said that the January – April 2012 period was also the warmest January – April period since record keeping began in 1895. The average temperature of 45.4°F during January – April 2012 was 5.4°F above the 20th century average for the period, and smashed the previous record set in 2006 by an unusually large margin–1.6°F.

Figure 2. The average temperature of 45.4°F during January – April 2012 was the warmest on record: 5.4°F above the 20th century average for the period, and was 1.6°F above the previous record set in 2006. January – April temperatures have been rising at about 1.9°F per century since 1895. Image credit: NOAA/NCDC.

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The Nation’s leading scientists have issued a stark warning: America’s ability to monitor the environment is rapidly diminishing. And if we don’t properly fund our satellite capabilities, the country could lose three quarters of its Earth observation systems by 2020.

That alarming conclusion comes from the National Research Council in a new report assessing the progress of the nation’s Earth observation programs. In short: our leading scientific institutions aren’t actually making much progress.

Rather, a lack of funding and infrastructure will result in “a rapid decline” in our ability to monitor extreme weather and changes to the climate.

The committee found that the number of NASA and NOAA Earth observing instruments in space is likely to decline to as little as 25 percent of the current number by 2020….  The U.S. system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse.

The projected loss of observing capability could have significant adverse consequences for science and society. The loss of observations of key Earth system components and processes will weaken the ability to understand and forecast changes arising from interactions and feedbacks within the Earth system and limit the data and information available to users and decision makers. Consequences are likely to include slowing or even reversal of the steady gains in weather forecast accuracy over many years and degradation of the ability to assess and respond to natural hazards and to measure and understand changes in Earth’s climate and life support systems.

The report is a mid-term update of the NSA’s 2007 decadal survey — a proposed 10-year plan for improving earth sciences programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NSA assessment did find that NASA was able to launch new satellites into space and work on international partnerships to make up for shortfalls in money; however, those won’t be enough to meet needed technology improvements.

There are three major factors contributing to this unprecedented decline in Earth monitoring capabilities: budget cuts, a rapidly aging fleet of satellites, and a lack of launch capabilities.

The budgetary issues have been ongoing. According to the NSA progress report, NASA’s Earth science program still hasn’t been funded to the requested $2 billion to meet future objectives.

And as Climate Progress reported last year, Republican lawmakers proposed slashing $1.2 billion from NOAA’s funding levels, cutting into satellite programs. The satellite programs were eventually funded to requested levels, but future funding is uncertain. Senate lawmakers have proposed moving NOAA’s satellite program over to NASA where operational efficiencies could potentially save money.

Officials at these agencies say that more money is needed to replace the fleet of aging satellites that will inevitably fail in the coming years. According to the NSA report, there’s also a severe lack of launch vehicles for Earth satellites that “directly threatens programmatic robustness.”

After all, satellites aren’t much good without a way to launch them.

What’s the solution? Increasing the budget for new satellite infrastructure is the most obvious. But a major boost in funding for these programs is unlikely. So the NSA report recommends establishing new partnerships and “balancing costs with science objectives and priorities” by focusing on a more diverse range of projects rather than a few high-profile missions.

Programmatic efficiency is key. But it still doesn’t fully address what could become a national crisis. As our planet overheats — making extreme weather more intense, deadly and expensive — our ability to monitor the health of planet is collapsing.

By Jessica Goad

Yesterday the Silver State North Solar Project on the California border near Primm, Nevada began generating electricity. It is the first-ever solar project sited on public lands to be completed and produce power.

The 50-megawatt project, which was developed by First Solar and owned by Enbridge, will power approximately 9,000 homes. It employed 380 workers at peak construction, just a portion of Nevada’s 17,254 jobs in green goods and services.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar described the significance of the project in a dedication ceremony:

… a landmark for America, a landmark for the solar industry and a landmark for how we use public lands.

The Silver State project is also notable because the company worked with stakeholders to avoid places unfit for industrial energy development. It is close to existing transmission lines and the size of the project’s footprint was reduced in order to minimize impacts on wildlife and the landscape. As the Nevada Wilderness Project wrote on its blog:

In the case of Silver State North, we dubbed this 600-acre project 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas “smart” because the developer was willing to gather environmental input early on to avoid complications during the formal review process. From where we sat at the review table, that was a good sign.

Currently there are a handful of wind and geothermal project sited on public lands that are operational. But until today, there were no solar energy projects producing power. The Interior Department has permitted 15 other solar energy projects that are in various states of construction, financing and permitting.

The Obama administration has permitted more renewable energy projects on public lands than all other administrations combined.  It is also in the process of finalizing a landmark set of guidelines that guide solar energy development into specially-designated zones, a new and improved model for energy development on public lands.

Jessica Goad is Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress.

Figure 1: Annual global average surface temperatures from the current NASA GISS record through 1981

by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

In previous Lessons from Past Predictions entries we examined Hansen et al.’s 1988 global warming projections (here and here).  However, James Hansen was also the lead author on a previous study from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) projecting global warming in 1981, which readers may have surmised from my SkS ID, is as old as I am.  This ancient projection was made back when climate science and global climate models were still in their relative infancy, and before global warming had really begun to kick in (Figure 1).

As Hansen et al. described it,

“The global temperature rose by 0.2°C between the middle 1960′s and 1980, yielding a warming of 0.4°C in the past century.  This temperature increase is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect due to measured increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean trend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980′s.”

This analysis from Hansen et al. (1981) shows a good understanding of the major climate drivers, even 31 years ago.  The study was also correct in predicting warming during the remainder of the 1980s.  The Skeptical Science Temperature Trend Calculator reveals that the trend from 1981 to 1990 was 0.09 +/- 0.35°C per decade – not statistically significant because this is such a short timeframe, but most likely a global warming trend nonetheless.

Global Warming Skeptics Stuck in 1981?

Hansen et al. noted that the human-caused global warming theory had difficulty gaining traction because of the mid-century cooling, which ironically is an argument still used three decades later to dispute the theory:

“The major difficulty in accepting this theory has been the absence of observed warming coincident with the historic CO2 increase. In fact, the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere decreased by about 0.5°C between 1940 and 1970, a time of rapid CO2 buildup.”

However, as we will see in this post, despite these doubts, the global warming projections in Hansen et al. (1981), based on the human-caused global warming theory, were uncannily accurate.

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by Bruce Dorminey, via Renewable Energy World

The world’s largest untapped source of solar energy doesn’t lie on the vast sands of the Sahara or even atop the high chaparral of the desert Southwest. Instead, it stretches across at least 23 million square miles of earth’s tropical oceans; the uppermost layers of which make a prime natural source of thermal energy.

by Dave Levitan, via OnEarth

The Avengers is now playing at a theater … well … everywhere, featuring the most impressive array of superheroes on one screen that anyone’s ever seen (sorry X-Men). And it got us thinking: superheroes seem to spend a lot of time fighting off environmental catastrophe brought on by the schemes of their archnemeses. We thought the bad guys wanted to rule the world, not just pollute it. (Anyone know if the Heartland Insitute is funded by Doctor Doom? Because it might explain this.) We looked back at some of the biggest comic book movies of recent years to find out which super villains have been plotting environmental disaster. And we probably don’t need to say this, but… SPOILER ALERT.

Supervillain: Scarecrow, Batman Begins

Warner Bros. Pictures

Evil plot: With the backing of the shadowy Ra’s Al Ghul, this twisted psychiatrist/psychopath wants to dilute Gotham’s water supply with a toxin from a rare blue flower that will cause mass hallucinations, panic, and the ultimate destruction of the city.

Did the superhero thwart it?: Yes. He’s Batman.

Could it happen?: Toxins in the water? Of course! Take California, where unsound practices have led to groundwater pollution from nitrates and other substances. And of course there’s the ongoing risk that fracking for natural gas or building tar sands pipelines will contaminate rivers and streams that provide drinking water for millions.

Preventive measures: Reduce fertilizer and pesticide use in agriculture (and on our lawns), provide stronger oversight of oil and gas drilling and transportation, ban imports of rare blue hallucinogenic flower.

—–

Supervillain: Lex Luthor, Superman Returns

Warner Bros. Pictures

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A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post additional links below.

EU nations have yet to come up with a plan on how to fill a multi-billion euro fund to help tackle climate change, even as the region’s executive body hosts talks with countries likely to bear the brunt of extreme weather. [Reuters]

The effects of global warming are making it more difficult for reservoir managers to control floods and manage flows for irrigation, recreation and fisheries. [Idaho Statesman]

Disadvantaged kids not only breathe disproportionate amounts bad air, but they also can be more vulnerable to the ill effects of that bad air. [Huffington Post]

California Superior Court judge Elizabeth Allen White has dismissed most of Ben Stein’s lawsuit that claimed the Japanese company Kyocera Mita backed out of a $300,000 deal to hire him to act in commercials for a line of computer printers when it found out about his controversial beliefs on global warming. [Hollywood Reporter]

Crude oil prices slid Monday to the lowest level since February as weak economic data and high prices dampened expectations for consumption just three weeks ahead of the summer driving season. [Washington Post]

The next great hurdle for selling electric cars could be to attract new customers from among those who live in apartment complexes. [USA Today]

Smart meters eventually will be ubiquitous globally over the next few decades, but, interestingly enough, installations of smart meters in the U.S. will actually sharply decline over the next two years, before they pick back up, according to Pike Research. [Earth2Tech]

The Asian Development Bank urged countries in the Asia-Pacific region to take immediate action to reduce the negative impact of climate change. [UPI]