Videographer Peter Sinclair has another excellent video for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media featuring leading Arctic experts:

One of the featured scientists is Dr. Jennifer Francisof Rutgers’ Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. We’ve featured discussion of Francis’s important work here.

Francis was lead author of a 2012 Geophysical Research Letters study, “Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes,” which found that the loss of Arctic ice favors “extreme weather events that result from prolonged conditions, such as drought, flooding, cold spells, and heat waves.” You can find some good explanations of her findings here.

The Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang featured a guest post by Francis last Friday, “Shrinking Arctic ice and the wicked backlash on our weather.” Here are some key excerpts:

Heat waves. Drought. Flooding. Cold spells. Wildfires. The climate system is changing before our very eyes, and there is no more glaring proof than the record-shattering loss of Arctic sea ice this summer.

Via NASA: “The area covered by older and thicker sea ice in the Arctic diminished by almost 50 percent between 1980 and 2012.”

And, since overall the ice thinned out, the volume dropped by 75% during that time, making a reversal of this trend anytime soon exceedingly improbable. Francis notes:

Fossil fuels – such as oil, coal, and natural gas – are the main source of these added greenhouse gases, as they’re burned to provide the energy that heats our homes, lights our streets, and runs our vehicles. It now appears, however, that a gradual warming may not be the primary concern, as the gases may also fuel extreme weather around the world.

How does warming fuel extreme weather? Francis explains:

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by Katie Valentine and Stephen Lacey

Two House Democrats have released a report that aims to connect the dots on climate change and extreme weather events.

The staff report, issued by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), outlines the past year’s record-setting temperatures, storms, droughts, water levels and wildfires, and is being circulated in an attempt to rebuild congressional momentum to address climate change.

“The evidence is overwhelming — climate change is occurring and it is occurring now,” said Rep. Waxman, a Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement.

The report outlines the stunning array of record-breaking extreme weather events throughout 2012 within five categories:

Extreme temperatures

• July was the hottest month ever recorded in the continental U.S.  Some areas were 8 degrees warmer than average, with the average temperature in the lower 48 states at 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20^th century average.
• Spring 2012 saw the warmest march, third-warmest April and second-warmest May in history, and was approximately 5.2 degrees Fahrenheit above average overall.
• Through late June 2011, daily record highs were outnumbering daily record lows by 9-to-1.

Drought

• As of September, 64 percent of the continental U.S. is experiencing drought, with August and September 2012 comparable to the worst months of the 1930s Dust Bowl.
• By the beginning of August, more than half the counties in the U.S. had been designated disaster zones because of drought.
• As of August, 51 percent of corn and 38 percent of soybeans grown in the U.S. were rated as poor or very poor by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some states’ corn fared worse – Indiana had 70 percent of its corn rated as poor or very poor, and Missouri had 84 percent.

Wildfires

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by Jessica Goad

A report released today by the Better Future Project further highlights the wide gulf between academia and politics when it comes to climate science.

While 97 percent of climate scientists actively publishing in the field say that climate change is human caused, the issue has become intensely politicized.

Today’s study offers a thought-provoking perspective on this phenomenon: it analyzes 18 politicians who hold office or are running for office in Massachusetts, and compares their opinions about climate change to those of researchers at the colleges and universities they attended.

In sum, 203 climate scientists from the alma maters of the various politicians were surveyed, all of whom had published related research in peer-reviewed journals. Overall, 202 of the experts agreed that human-caused climate change is real (99.5 percent).  On the other hand, only 9 out of the 16 politicians (56 percent) holding or running for office in the state Massachusetts agree that climate change is man-made and real, while 7 have at some point denied it.

The positions of our two presidential candidates were also included in the analysis. Of particular interest are the views of climate researchers at the institutions that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney attended (Stanford, Brigham Young University, and Harvard).

Although Romney at one point professed his belief that climate change is real and man-made, he has since denied it by saying “my view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”  But, the report makes clear that:

…depending on how former-Governor Romney chooses to look at the matter, either 97-98% of all national experts, 97.6% of experts at the universities he attended, or 86% of the experts at his primary undergraduate institution (BYU) agree that climate change is real and manmade.

Of course, many of the experts surveyed were likely not at those institutions when Romney attended.  But as the authors of the report explain, the candidates valued the academics and pedigree of the schools enough to choose them and spend money at them. And educational credentials are often highlighted on the campaign trail.

Not only does Romney disagree with experts from his alma maters and the overwhelming majority of scientists, he has gone so far as to mock President Obama and others who believe that global warming will be catastrophic.  At the Republican National Convention, and again on the campaign trail, he said:

President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans — [pauses for audience laughter] — and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.

While some politicians may be laughing, experts and most of the American public are not.

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

by Nathaniel Niemann and Stephen Lacey

Mitt Romney’s stance on avoiding action on global warming has been well established.

Saying last year that he believes reducing CO2 emissions is “not the right course for us,” Romney falsely claimed that “we don’t know” what is causing climate change.

Actually, we do know. Even a prominent scientist funded by the Koch brothers agreed with the scientific consensus when he recently concluded that “humans are almost entirely the cause” of our warming planet.

So how would Romney’s stance on climate science impact ongoing international negotiations on addressing the issue? According to an article published today by the European news outlet EurActive, some diplomats are expressing fears that a Romney Administration could negatively change the process.

EurActive is reporting on comments from two international climate experts who said that a Romney presidency “would make [climate negotiations] more of an uphill struggle than they are now,” dramatically reducing the chances for international action:

Nigel Purvis, an advisor to the US’s chief Kyoto negotiator in 1998, said that as a president, Romney “would probably have less of an interest in reaching a global agreement [at ICAO] that genuinely reduces emissions in an ambitious kind of way”.

Purvis is the founder and president of the Climate Advisers consultancy.

Under a Romney presidency, there would also be “an enormous change in the level of urgency and attention,” given to negotiations for a successor deal to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of this year, Purvis told EurActiv.

“Romney is not prepared to do anything which has any political cost,” he added.

An EU official told EurActiv that he expected climate talks would “become much harder again” under a Romney administration, while EU-US relations on climate issues would become “quite challenging”.

“It would make [climate negotiations] more of an uphill struggle than they are now,” another EU source said.

“The first thing [Romney] would do would be to fire [US climate chief negotiator] Todd Stern and find someone with his own climate change agenda because Todd Stern has some knowledge about this issue,” the source speculated.

Given that Romney’s energy policy focuses almost entirely on a massive increase in fossil fuels, his recent recently-changed stance that we should “consider the risk of negative consequences” of climate change, is nothing more than lip-service to the issue.

At this point, experts can only speculate as to how a Romney Administration would treat international climate talks.

Some, like Andrew Light, director of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, believe that the impact could be more limited. Because climate change is becoming a broader piece of foreign policy and diplomacy, Light said “there would be members of the administration who are not isolationists” who might understand the importance of participating in climate negotiations.

“Climate negotiations are coming close to breaking out of their silo, making climate a central driver of broader foreign policy. In that case, leaving the negotiations behind would escalate into a much bigger problem,” Light told Climate Progress before last year’s negotiations in Durban.

However, there’s a big difference between simply participating and actually brokering positive action. And even if a Romney Administration remains within the negotiations, experts are clearly concerned that he would make a difficult process even more difficult.

Nathaniel Niemann is an intern for ThinkProgress coming all the way from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan; Stephen Lacey is Deputy Editor for Climate Progress.

Over the last year, there’s been increasing talk in Washington political circles — including conservative ones — about how to use a carbon tax as a deficit reduction tool. However, with an election season in full swing and a large number of Congressional Republicans campaigning against climate action, the current likelihood of getting a price on carbon is officially zero.

In theory, if Obama gets re-elected in November, there could be an opportunity to pass a carbon tax as part of a deficit reduction plan. With Bush-era tax cuts set to expire and Republicans talking a big fiscal game, Obama might have some leverage to play hardball with Congress and push for carbon pricing as part of a larger package.

It’s a long shot. But a new report from the Congressional Research Service released today illustrates why it’s such an enticing prospect. According to the CRS analysis, a modest carbon tax of $20 per ton that rises 5.6 percent annually could cut the projected 10-year deficit by 50 percent — from $2.3 trillion down to $1.1 trillion.

The CRS report models two scenarios — one based on current law (the blue bar below) and one based on an alternative scenario (gray bar below) that assumes a much greater increase in the deficit due to extension of tax cuts and the avoidance of automatic spending cuts through the Budget Control Act. While the two scenarios vary widely, they show that a price on carbon starting in 2013 could fill in a sizable chunk of the federal budget gap:

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by Mike Davis, via the Institute for Market Transformation

It was headline news in my corner of the Twittersphere when the New York City Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability recently released its first annual report on building energy use, called the New York City Local Law 84 Benchmarking Report.

And now, the August issue of Environmental Building News has picked up the thread with its excellent cover story: Energy Reporting: It’s the Law. The influential publication devoted six-plus pages to benchmarking and the PlaNYC report, giving considerable credit to IMT for assisting New York (and cities around the country) in developing, passing, and implementing this game-changing new ordinance.

Architects? Are you listening? This is big. You need to be fully up-to-speed with benchmarking, ready for its adoption in the city where you live, and convinced that it spells win-win-win for everyone.

Why so? Read up.

First, the list of cities implementing or considering benchmarking laws is growing quickly. In addition to the Big Apple, the cities of Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Boston (“you’re my home!”) are currently on board, to varying degrees, with this policy. The ordinance in New York requires owners of all commercial and multifamily residential buildings over 50,000 GSF to report actual building energy use intensity (EUI), carbon emissions, and Energy Star scores.

As with a tough new energy code, the more you know about benchmarking, the more valuable you become to your clients. So brush up. You have been warned.

Next, in Fall 2012, all energy use reporting in New York City becomes public information. When this happens, the data will inevitably influence both municipal policy and private real estate investment. The New York benchmarking report estimates that if the performance of the largest and least energy-efficient buildings were improved to just match the city’s median EUI of 64 kBTU/SF/year, the city’s entire energy use from large buildings would be reduced by almost 20 percent.

So it’s easy to imagine the deep-energy-retrofit work that this change may produce. With benchmarking as the law, urban architecture becomes greener. Thermal imaging, retro-commissioning, energy modeling, and fully-integrated design processes could well become front and center to our design services. This will truly set us on a course to meeting those Architecture 2030 net-zero-energy targets.

Plus, energy-use benchmarking gives us objective, real-time comparison standards to work toward. When we begin to use actual energy-use data to develop effective strategies for improving building energy performance, architects’ value in the real estate market skyrockets.

And, finally, if we really want to be part of the climate change solution (and we do), benchmarking laws will improve building performance like nothing else. Even the best building code loses its leverage once a certificate of occupancy is issued. By allowing municipal governments to track actual post-occupancy building performance year to year, we – the design community – will be able to point to the difference that higher-performing architecture has made.

So there you have it. Building energy use benchmarking will soon shape the future of sustainable design. Get on board!

Michael R. Davis, FAIA, LEED AP, is a principal and vice president at the Boston architectural firm Bergmeyer Associates, Inc. This piece was originally published at the Institute for Market Transformation and was reprinted with permission.

by Nicole Lampe, via Climate Access

The advocacy community has gone mad for story. But stories are only as strong as the latest retelling. While compelling characters and evocative details give our stories life, it is email subject lines, tweets, Facebook posts, and headlines that give them legs.

The best stories have a clear message—or moral—that can be repeated over coffee or conveyed in 140 characters. And the messages that move tend to inspire and empower.

In today’s web 2.0 world, our supporters are the most powerful communications asset we have. Broadcast mediums are shrinking, and people are turning to social networks for information about everything from politics to human rights. But the social web is awash in content, and the only way to break through the noise is to build a chorus of voices carrying your tune.

Stories represent a vast improvement over the facts and figures we used to rely on to convince people to pay attention to our issues. Cognitive research has shown that stories circumvent our nitpicky critical brains and connect to feelings, which are the key engaging supporters as evangelists, and, ultimately, to changing hearts and minds.

However, while you might keep an audience rapt for five minutes with a riveting video about the tar sands, or a compelling first-person account of sea-level rise impacts on a coastal community, supporters are unlikely to recount feature-length stories to their friends around the water cooler.

To really engage audiences as activists and ambassadors, you have to equip them with a shareworthy message.

At Resource Media, we have a recipe for creating messages that move people: values+problem+solution. It’s simple enough to work for any medium, and does three key things:
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In the midst of the very active North Atlantic hurricane season, the main weather satellite scientists use for keeping tabs on the weather across eastern North America and the Atlantic Ocean has gone offline. [Climate Central]

A San Diego County brush fire that has already destroyed 20 homes and damaged 10 others continued to threaten an additional 80 homes, officials said. [Los Angeles Times]

Forty-seven Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing Speaker John Boehner to eliminate the wind production tax credit, a tax break that has split Republicans and drawn criticism from presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. [Reuters]

A new study released today confirms what many have always suspected: children who live near busy roads are more likely to develop asthma. [Atlantic]

The solar energy market is booming in Massachusetts, as commercial building owners, municipalities, and name-brand retailers like REI and Kohl’s take advantage of state incentives that have made it more affordable to fund solar power projects. [Boston Globe]

Recent research suggests that there’s another, more subtle effect of a warming planet that could be even more economically significant. Higher temperatures appear to cause worker productivity to plummet. [Wonk Blog]

Might want to get your fill of ham this year, because “a world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable,” according to an industry trade group. [Los Angeles Times]

It didn’t generate as much attention as the Detroit auto show or, for that matter, a meeting of global oil ministers. But for fans of a technology that seemed on its death-bed a few years ago, National Plug In Day proved to be a powerful way to celebrate a remarkable recovery. [Christian Science Monitor]

The Mediterranean, with its baking summers and warm, wet winters, usually provides an ideal climate for olive groves. But a drought in Spain is having a dramatic impact on the market, according to Thomas Mielke of Oil World, a research firm. [Star Tribune]

For the 16 years preceding Cancun, more than 80 percent of the journalists reporting these conferences came mainly from Europe, the US, Japan and Canada. But Cancun—otherwise known as COP16—saw a reversal of that dynamic, with 55 percent of the reporters from the Global South. This increased to 66 percent in Durban, while those from developed countries dwindled to 34 percent. [Columbia Journalism Review]

The Lib Dem conference this morning apparently ‘overwhelmingly’ passed a motion in favour of decarbonising the UK power sector by 2030. [Carbon Brief]

Satellite measurement of sea surface temperatures has yielded clear evidence of major changes taking place in the waters of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef over the past 25 years, marine scientists have found. [Science Daily]