A new study, “Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011,” confirms that climate change is happening as fast — and in some cases faster — than climate models had projected. The news release explains:

The rate of sea-level rise in the past decades is greater than projected by the latest assessments of the IPCC, while global temperature increases in good agreement with its best estimates. This is shown by a study now published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and his colleagues compare climate projections to actual observations from 1990 up to 2011. That sea level is rising faster than expected could mean that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sea-level rise projections for the future may be biased low as well, their results suggest.

As Dr. Rahmstorf notes, “the new findings highlight that the IPCC is far from being alarmist and in fact in some cases rather underestimates possible risks.”

The oceans are rising 60 per cent faster than the IPCC’s latest best estimates, according to the new research. The researchers compared those estimates to satellite data of observed sea-level rise. ” Satellites have a much better coverage of the globe than tide gauges and are able to measure much more accurately by using radar waves and their reflection from the sea surface,” explains Anny Cazenave from LEGOS. While the IPCC projected sea-level rise to be at a rate of 2 mm per year, satellite data recorded a rate of 3.2 mm per year.

Figure: Sea level measured by satellite altimeter (red with linear trend line) … and reconstructed from tide gauges (orange, monthly data from Church and White (2011))…. The scenarios of the IPCC are shown in blue (third assessment) and green (fourth assessment); the former have been published starting in the year 1990 and the latter from 2000.

The release notes, “The increased rate of sea-level rise is unlikely to be caused by a temporary episode of ice discharge from the ice sheets in Greenland or Antarctica or other internal variabilities in the climate system, according to the study, because it correlates very well with the increase in global temperature.”

As sea level rises, storm surges worsen, coastal populations are put at risk, and salt water infiltrates rich deltas. For more on likely future sea level rise, see “New Studies on Sea Level Rise Make Clear We Must Act Now” and “JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050.”

On the subject of global warming, the release explains:

“Global temperature continues to rise at the rate that was projected in the last two IPCC Reports. This shows again that global warming has not slowed down or is lagging behind the projections,” Rahmstorf says. Five global land and ocean temperature series were averaged and compared to IPCC projections by the scientists from Potsdam, the Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales (LEGOS) in France and the US based Tempo Analytics. To allow for a more accurate comparison with projections, the scientists accounted for short-term temperature variations due to El Niño events, solar variability and volcanic eruptions. The results confirm that global warming, which was predicted by scientists in the 1960s and 1970s as a consequence of increasing greenhouse concentrations, continues unabated at a rate of 0.16 °C per decade and follows IPCC projections closely.

Figure. Observed annual global temperature, unadjusted (pink) and adjusted for short-term variations due to solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO (red) as in Foster and Rahmstorf (2011). 12-months running averages are shown as well as linear trend lines, and compared to the scenarios of the IPCC (blue range and lines from the third assessment, green from the fourth assessment report). Projections are aligned in the graph so that they start (in 1990 and 2000, respectively) on the linear trend line of the (adjusted) observational data.

For more on the 2011 study, see “Study of ‘True Global Warming Signal’ Finds ‘Remarkably Steady’ Rate of Manmade Warming Since 1979.

James Balog/AP

by Sally Steenland

For several years now, increased pollution from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been fueling extreme weather across the globe. Droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and heat waves: Our planet’s weather report is starting to sound like the biblical plagues.

Last month was the 331st month in a row where temperatures rose above the 20th century average. Just this year, the United States suffered “two record heat waves, a record drought, [and] an above-average fire season.”

Then, just before Halloween this year, Hurricane Sandy roared up the East Coast and battered parts of the Midwest. With its ferocious winds and hammering rains, Sandy knocked out power, flooded homes and businesses, triggered fires, tore down trees, and devastated neighborhoods. More than 100 people died. Sandy is estimated to cost around   $50 billion in damages Just one week after Sandy hit, another storm ravaged the East Coast—only this time it was a blizzard that inflicted even more damage on the communities ravaged by the hurricane and further hampered efforts to restore power and rebuild homes and businesses.

Concerns about climate change and global warming used to be a bipartisan affair. Republican Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) previously supported a tax on greenhouse gases—known as cap and trade—as did many Democratic lawmakers. Even 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney took global warming seriously and supported cap-and-trade policies when he was governor of Massachusetts.

So what happened?

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This YouTube video of a self-described climate skeptic was posted earlier this week and picked up yesterday over at Take Part. After watching the new film “Chasing Ice,” in which a former climate skeptic documents the decline of glaciers around the world, 59-year old Lolly Hellman said she completely changed her perspective on the problem of global warming:

“There must be something I can do … to help our children, to help my grandchildren…. I thought it [global warming] was bullshit … and that is because I listened, I believed Bill O’Reilly … and I saw this movie and now I will apologize to anyone I ever talked into not believing in global warming.”

The video was filmed by Justin Kanew, who told me he filmed it outside the movie theater and that Hellman “was on the verge of tears. The film had an effect on a number of people.”

And here’s what Kanew wrote today on his YouTube page:

People have been asking me if this video is set up. I promise it isn’t. I was at the theater helping with the release of the movie all weekend, mostly managing the guest list. Many people came out of the movie emotional, but none as emotional as this lady. She started talking to me in a very real way, with tears in her eyes, essentially apologizing to me for her previous position on the subject and letting me know she was a Fox/O’Reilly watcher who just had her mind changed by the movie. It occurred to me that that was a pretty powerful moment, and one you don’t see every day, so I asked her if she would mind telling me that on video. She said she wouldn’t, so I pulled out my camera, and what you see here happened.

The production company behind “Chasing Ice” sent out the video in a promotion for its film earlier today.

Related posts:

• Republicans Tired Of Climate Change Deniers Launch Initiative For Global Warming Action, Carbon Price
• A Message From A Republican Meteorologist On Climate Change

On election night, polluter-backed candidates lost in some of the most expensive races targeted by polluters, despite outside ad spending that tallied to $270 million.

The American Petroleum Institute already has 2014 in its sights, and it is spending aggressively to protect the oil industry’s multi-billion-dollar tax breaks. Three weeks since election day, API has spent $3 million on TV ads, according to a ThinkProgress analysis of Kantar Media’s CMAG data. That is already $1 million more than what API spent in the final two months of the election, as part of its “I’m an Energy Voter” campaign.

A bulk of the spending, $600,000, targets specific senators over Big Oil’s $4 billion annual tax breaks, all of whom are up for reelection in 2014. All but two voted in March to end oil subsidies, a vote blocked by 47 senators who have taken more than $23.5 million from the oil and gas industry.

Here is an example of one ad directed at Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA):

NARRATOR: America spoke loudly. Clearly, we want a commonsense plan to help people succeed. Senator Mark Warner can make energy a big part of improving our economy. He can choose economic growth and American jobs, not slow them with job-killing energy taxes. Let’s take advantage of America’s energy resources to power growth. American energy – not higher taxes on energy – will create jobs. Let’s get to work.

Ending the industry’s tax breaks would not affect Americans’ gas prices, or kill jobs. Factcheck.org writes that “nonpartisan congressional analysts and industry experts say higher taxes would have little or no effect on gasoline prices.” And at the same time oil enjoyed low tax rates and earned high profits, Exxon, Shell, and BP still shed 17,500 jobs.

ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips have paid federal tax rates well below the 35 percent top corporate rate. ExxonMobil, for instance, paid a 13 percent tax rate in 2011, after drilling deductions and benefits, and 14 percent on average between 2008 and 2010.
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by Graham Readfearn, via DeSmogBlog

A British MP revealed to be holding $400,000 worth of share options in an oil firm while sitting on an influential parliamentary climate change committee is also being paid $300 an hour to advise an Indian company building a coal fired power station, DeSmogBlog has discovered.

Veteran Conservative MP Peter Lilley has billed the New Delhi-based Ferro Alloys Corporation Limited (FACOR) for at least 220 hours of consultancy advice and is still working for the group.

It emerged in The Guardian last week that self-described “global lukewarmist” Mr Lilley, a director with Tethys Petroleum, was also holding $400,000 worth of share options in the company which is drilling for oil and gas in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

As The Guardian reported, Mr Lilley is also paid by Tethys to attend meetings and provide advice and has received about £47,000 (US$75,000) in the past year.

The UK Parliament’s register of members’ financial interests shows that in the period from January to June this year, Mr Lilley racked up 228 hours of work for Tethys, FACOR and IDOX plc, a document management company where he is also a director.

The register shows how Mr Lilley was paid £37,696 (US$60,360) for 220 hours of “advice on the management and flotation of a power generating subsidiary” by Ferro Alloys Corporation Limited between July 2011 and June 2012.

FACOR is building a 100MW coal fired power station at Randia in the state of Orissa in eastern India to provide electricity to its ferro alloys plant, with excess power being sold to the grid.

Mr Lilley’s latest payment from FACOR suggests an hourly rate of £187 (US$300). The payments from Tethys and FACOR come on top of Mr Lilley’s annual MP’s salary of £65,738 (US$105,000).

Mr Lilley has recently been appointed to the UK Parliament’s Energy and Climate Change Committee, which examines the policies of the government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Environment groups criticised the appointment, which has been seen as a sign that “anti-green” forces were gaining hold on the UK’s Conservative Party.

In a response to questions from me, Mr Lilley confirmed his work with FACOR was continuing. I asked if his work with the oil and coal sectors represented a conflict of interest, “given your position on the climate committee in a parliament as internationally influential as the UK.” I also pointed out that the “peer reviewed literature would suggest that coal power is detrimental to the climate”.

In a feisty and provocative response, Mr Lilley said:

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Climate advocates celebrated after winning nearly every Congressional race they targeted during the national elections, including four of the “Flat Earth Five” climate deniers in the House of Representatives. But with the balance of power essentially the same in Washington, many rightly worried that little would change moving into the 113th Congress.

Case in point: yesterday’s nomination of Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) to chair the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology — a body with jurisdiction over many laboratories, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Weather Service.

Smith is a climate skeptic who has taken to the House floor to rant against scientists and journalists “determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming.” Here’s Smith in a 2009 speech after scientists’ emails were hacked from a server at the University of East Anglia:

“We now know that prominent scientists were so determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming that they worked together to hide contradictory temperature data. But for two weeks, none of the networks gave the scandal any coverage on their evening news programs. And when they finally did cover it, their reporting was largely slanted in favor of global warming alarmists. The networks have shown a steady pattern of bias on climate change. During a six-month period, four out of five network news reports failed to acknowledge any dissenting opinions about global warming, according to a Business and Media Institute study. The networks should tell Americans the truth, rather than hide the facts.

In fact, independent reviews found that climate scientists neither hid nor tampered with data.

Compared to the outgoing chair of the committee — Texas Republican Ralph Hall — Smith has been a bit more “moderate” in his skepticism of climate change. Last year, Hall said he doesn’t “think we can control what God controls” and explained that he wasn’t concerned about global warming because he’s “really more fearful of freezing,” even though “I don’t have any science to prove that.”

Smith acknowledges on his website that the climate is changing; however, he does not mention the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community that humans are responsible.

Over his political career, Smith has received $500,000 from oil and gas. And just last year, he received $10,000 from Koch industries.

Nicole Ghio, via the Sierra Club

When Dr. Jim Yong Kim took over as President of the World Bank, there was hope amongst health advocates and environmentalists that, given his background, the Bank would reevaluate its support for deadly fossil fuel projects. Dr. Kim’s assertion that a new World Bank report on global warming should “shock us into action” is a step in the right direction.

Now, however, he has an opportunity to back this rhetoric with concrete action as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) reviews the social and environmental impacts of its $450 million loan for the enormous four-gigawatt Tata Mundra coal plant in Gujarat, India.

Top International Energy Agency (IEA) officials offered a bleak assessment Tuesday of the prospects for global progress on preventing big temperature increases. [The Hill]

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, said Tuesday that he sees “no momentum” on climate, noting that prospects for a legally binding global agreement are currently a “stretch.”

He said climate change is “slipping off the policy radar screen.”

According to study released late Tuesday in Environmental Research Letters the ocean is already rising faster than the most recent authoritative report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was projecting as recently as 2007.  [Climate Central]

The United Nations sounded a stark warning on the threat to the climate from methane in the thawing permafrost as governments met for the second day of climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar. [Guardian]

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest slowed dramatically last year as the government stepped up efforts to detect and halt illegal farming and logging, though some environmental groups warn that recent changes to the law protecting the forest might slow further progress. [Wall Street Journal]

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire on Tuesday ordered state agencies to take initial steps to combat ocean acidification, making it the first state to address problematic changes in ocean chemistry that threaten shellfish farms, wild-caught fish and other marine life. [Los Angeles Times]

Scientists said on Tuesday they had proof that climate change was hitting the Perigord black truffle, a delight of gourmets around the world. [AFP]

Beneath a 50-foot-thick sheet of ice, the salty, frigid Antarctic Lake Vida is somehow teeming with life. That’s according to a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Los Angeles Times]