by Greg Laden via Scienceblogs

You may know the blog Watts Up With That. It is Anthony Watts’ anti-science blog, dedicated to climate change denialism.

A current post reports the finding of life forms from another planet, in a meteorite.

This looks to be a huge story, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life, if it holds up….

This is from a recent meteorite find in December 2012. A large fire ball was seen by a large number of people in Sri Lanka on December 29th 2012, during that episode a large meteorite disintegrated and fell to Earth in the village of Araganwila which is few miles away from the city of Polonnaruwa.

Look at what the electron microscope shows of a sample purported to be from the meteorite:

Then he shows a picture of a rock with a bunch of contemporary Earth-based diatoms stuck to it.

It is very fun to read the comments. I provided a comment that will not be printed because Watts never prints my comments, but I’ve screen captured it for you (it is below).

Phil Plait has reviewed the Alien Life in the Meteor story here, and as I said, it is not alien life come to earth in a meteor. It is (I guess) a fragment of a meteorite with fresh water diatoms stuck to it. There are fresh water diatoms stuck to your shoe, your car tires, your dog, everywhere. The silica bodies of these tiny algae are part of the dust, not as numerous perhaps as skin cells or, certain times of the year, pollen, or the loess blowing off the melting glaciers and such, but common. This is why real scientists grind down the meteorite, cross sectioning it, before looking at the sample.

As Phil points out, this report is by a “scientist” who has made many outrageous and incorrect claims about aliens, reported in a journal that is famous for printing bogus and incorrect science, the methods are obviously bogus and anyone who knew anything about, say, climate studies (where fresh water diatoms are used all the time as proxyindicators) would at least be suspicious, and would know how to check for veracity of the claim.

Anthony Watts, the anti-science global warming denialist, was not equipped to recognize this bogus science as bogus. We are not surprised.

JR UPDATE: Watts feels he was quoted out of context, that he put in appropriate caveats. His response is here. Greg Laden replies here. You decide.

Read more

Tuesday

By Catherine Woodiwiss, Special Assistant for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative

A crowd filled New York Ave Presbyterian church in Washington DC yesterday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday with a demand for the White House: take action on climate change.

The interfaith “pray-in”, which ended as a rally outside the White House, drew strong connections from Dr. King’s fight for racial justice 50 years ago to the ongoing fight for environmental justice today.

“Fifty years ago, we faced a racial crisis,” said Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr of the Hip Hop Caucus to the crowd gathered in the rain. “We all came together, we all made a difference. We can again. The time is now.”

Many credit Dr. King with planting the seeds for the environmental justice movement, and his well-known speech on moral urgency was quoted by several at the event.

“Dr. King said ‘We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now… Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.”’, said Bob Edgar, CEO of Common Cause, calling these words “prophetic” in relation to the challenge of climate change.

The choice to hold the rally on what would have been Dr. King’s 84th birthday was symbolic of the moral seriousness needed to address climate change, said Lise Van Susteren, an organizer of the event. “People talk about climate change as weather. This is not about weather. This is a human rights issue that requires a moral attitude – to think otherwise is inhumane.”

The event – organized by the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate and representing diverse coalitions including Buddhist Global Relief, The Shalom Center, Judson Memorial Church, and Occupy Sandy – follows on previous public demonstrations that looked to Congress for action.

Yesterday, on the eve of the Inauguration, they took their message to the President.

“We are now facing a climate cliff that will not wait for gridlocked Congress,” said Yearwood. “If we go over the climate cliff now, our grandchildren will face suffering.”

The organizers believe President Obama is in a unique position to show leadership on climate issues. They publicly called on the President to “break the silence on climate change” through actions including permanently refusing permits for the Keystone XL pipeline, hosting a national climate summit, publically support and advocate for a carbon fee, and ending subsidies to coal, oil, and gas.

“This is a pressure point, and we aim to be relentless,” said Van Susteren, pointing to the growth in numbers at yesterday’s rally. “These weather events are relentless – so are we.”

By Jessica Goad, Tom Kenworthy, Christy Goldfuss, and Michael Conathan

News broke this morning that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will be stepping down in March and returning home to Colorado.

Salazar, who joined the cabinet after serving as a U.S. Senator (D-CO) and Colorado Attorney General, will be remembered for founding a renewable energy program for public lands and waters, overhauling offshore oil and gas drilling regulation in the aftermath of one of the worst environmental disasters in our nation’s history, and championing community-based land conservation.

Salazar began his term as Interior Secretary by cleaning up the mess left by the George W. Bush administration, famously calling himself the “new sheriff in town” and vowing to reform a scandal-plagued oil and gas leasing process.  Understanding that there are more values to lands and oceans than just oil and gas drilling, he implemented critical reforms to both onshore and offshore leasing, while at the same time overseeing a resurgence in production—in fact, there was more oil and gas production from public lands and waters every year between 2009 and 2011 than between 2006 and 2008.

Salazar’s efforts to reform offshore drilling were accelerated following the calamitous BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.  In conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he oversaw response efforts in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. And despite intense criticism from industry, Salazar issued and maintained a moratorium on new deepwater oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico until reforms could be put in place.  These included bifurcating the agency that had overseen offshore drilling leasing and operations, the Minerals Management Service, into two new agencies with separate and distinct responsibility for permitting and enforcement.

Onshore, Salazar prioritized the protection of public lands, by establishing seven new national parks and 10 new national wildlife refuges.  In addition to these types of designations, he championed a new model of conservation by focusing on partnerships with private landowners, states, and other entities to protect large swaths of land.

For example, he proposed a conservation area in Montana’s Crown of the Continent that contains only about 40 percent protected public lands, with the rest linked by conservation easements and the efforts of private landowners.  This is a“conservation agenda for the 21st century,” as Salazar stated, because it:

…turns the conventional wisdom about the federal government’s role in conservation on its head.  Rather than dictate policies or conservation strategies from Washington, it supports grassroots, locally driven initiatives.

Similar conservation successes were achieved in Florida’s Everglades, Kansas’ Flint Hills, and North and South Dakota’s prairie grasslands.

Yet even with the tremendous gains in regulatory oversight and land protection, Salazar’s most enduring legacy will likely be his fight to make a place for renewable energy development on public lands and waters.

Read more

Projected average increases in the number of days with a maximum temperature greater than 95°F between 2041-2070, compared to 1971-2000 assuming continued increases in global emissions.

The draft of the Federal Advisory Committee’s National Climate Assessment was released several days ago, with dire warnings of significantly higher temperatures across the nation bringing more heat waves, deluges, droughts, and other forms of extreme weather. It also concluded that much of the climate change seen over the last 50 years was primarily driven by human activity.

But the report also had more locally relevant news for residents of Washington, D.C., which just experienced a record-breaking 11 straight days of temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit this past summer. If humans continue driving up the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at their current pace, the number of days D.C. sees over that temperature threshold could increase by more than 15 days per year by mid-century:

If emissions continue to increase… warming of 4.5ºF to 10ºF is projected by the 2080s; if global emissions were reduced substantially… projected warming ranges from about 3ºF to 6ºF by the 2080s.

Under both emissions scenarios, the frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves is expected to increase, with larger increases under higher emissions. Regional climate model simulations suggest that the southern part of the region, including large parts of West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware could experience more than a doubling of days per year over 95ºF by the 2050s.

Much of the southern portion of the region, including the majority of Maryland, and Delaware, and southwest West Virginia and New Jersey, are projected to experience more than 15 additional days per year above 95°F, which will impact the regions vulnerable populations, infrastructure, and agriculture and ecosystems.

2012 was Washington, D.C.’s hottest year, with records going back all the way to 1871. And this past summer was the third hottest the city has seen in that time — and the two summers that beat it out were 2010 and 2011.

According to the climate assessment, the snowless winters the nation’s capital has recently experienced could become the norm as well. If greenhouse gases continue their current rapid increase, the number of days when temperatures dip below 32 degrees Farehnheit would decrease by 25 percent between now and 2050 — a total drop of 20 days.

Along with the heat, D.C. also dealt with persistent drought in 2012, leading to rainfall about 8 inches below normal. Conversely, and consistent with global warming’s tendency to drive more erratic weather, the District has also been hit with more severe flooding as recently as 2006. And the city is already adapting: Thanks to its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Washington, D.C. was recognized in 2011 and 2012 as the number one U.S. EPA Green Power Community. The city is constructing a floodgate on the National Mall to protect its core from flooding, it surpassed 1.5 million square feet of green roofs in 2012, and it grew its tree canopy by 818 acres between 2006 and 2011 — bringing added shade, cooler temperatures, and reduced energy use.

– by Justin Guay, Sierra Club, via HuffPost

If we are going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change we need disruptive innovations that fundamentally alter the broken systems that continue to build out inequitable, fossil fueled societies. Solar and other renewable energy technologies can do that to energy markets. But it won’t happen without fixing another broken system – finance. Now it appears that the energy innovation axiom –small is big — also applies to financial innovation as solar crowdfunders prove that aggregating small investments from individuals can break down financial barriers to a clean energy revolution.

Crowdfunding is a potentially disruptive financial innovation that unlocks and aggregates small amounts of capital to ensure what society deems socially and environmentally important receives the capital it requires. The disruptive potential of this ‘social bankability’ was on full display last Monday when Solar Mosaic officially opened its doors to investors in California and New. In just 24 hours three solar projects (built on affordable housing projects) totaling $313,000 were fully-funded by average people contributing as little as $25. Including its beta testing Solar Mosaic has raised $1.1 million for distributed solar.

Seeing this happen in the U.S. is truly awesome given the painful obstruction to climate and clean energy solutions our politicians have put forward on a global stage. Combining crowdfunding with other financial innovations like opening Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT’s) and Master Limited Partnerships (MLP’s) to renewable energy in the U.S. (something on the table in the form of the Coons Bill) offers a unique opportunity to further tear down financial barriers. Doing so will help unlock U.S. clean energy leadership and not a moment too soon.

But the real opportunity for crowdfunders lies with distributed solar in emerging markets where the world’s poor pay obscene amounts for dirty fuel based lighting. It’s the 1.3 billion people living in off grid communities for whom the economics of solar make the most sense and have the most impact.

That’s why the Sierra Club advocates for international financial institutions (IFIs) (like the World Bank) to fund distributed solar in emerging markets. But despite the high profile calls from entrepreneurs like Jigar Shah to capitalize on the opportunity IFI’s have simply not stepped up to the challenge. In fact, getting them to pony up even relatively small amounts of public money to make solar bankable — like the $313,000 Solar Mosaic raised in one day — is like pulling teeth (except, of course, for the renewable energy champion OPIC).

That’s because providing funding in these relatively small amounts to ‘new’ technologies is just not what these guys do. They don’t because their business and operations model is suited to a different age, one which helped produce the problem of climate change and inequality but is ill-equipped to solve it. That means that solving energy poverty and climate change is up to those capable of financing and deploying small scale distributed renewable energy — at least according to the the International Energy Agency.

So while Solar Mosaic’s first day is exciting, it’s their next steps that hold the truly disruptive potential. Solar Mosaic and other crowdfunders like SunFunder are already eagerly eyeing emerging markets like India where the coal sector is a mess, grid expansion isn’t happening and diesel prices are unbearably high. These conditions along with exciting new business model innovations like community power offer a potent alternative to the status quo. But the only reason they will happen is that a new age of entrepreneurs and financiers have deemed them socially bankable.

Already India is home to Milaap, a domestic Indian crowdfunder funding solar lanterns in West Bengal with ONergy, and improved cookstoves in Orissa. As Uttar Pradesh and Bihar continue to incubatedistributed solar revolutions the need for financing becomes more stark. While IFIs fund feasibility study after feasibility study watch for the crowdfunders to step in and catalyze the market.

It’s clear that in the United States at least, our current financial system is broken. Which is why rooting out entrenched financial power must happen alongside efforts to root out entrenched fossil fuels. Because climate change is not just about technology, it’s about systems that produce equitable outcomes for people and the environment. It’s clear our current financial and energy systems can’t, or simply won’t, do that. Let’s work to make sure the systems of the future, built on a foundation of social bankability by disruptive innovators like solar crowdfunders, do.

Black carbon is the second largest man-made contributor to global warming and its influence on climate has been greatly underestimated, according to the first quantitative and comprehensive analysis of this issue.

Figure 1.1 Schematic overview of the primary black carbon emission sources and the processes that control the distribution of black carbon in the atmosphere and determine its role in the climate system [Bond et al., 2013].

An International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme news release

by Kevin Matthews

Either by action, or by inaction, it’s most likely that the climate decision will be made this year.

The decision, simply put, is whether to step aside from business-as-usual, and fully mobilize, or to generally continue business as usual, and condem humanity to a thousand years of torture.

The decisiveness of this particular historical moment is highlighted by an important new paper in Nature (with the classically obscure name, Probabilistic Cost Estimates for Climate Change Mitigation) which finds first, that when we start serious change is the most important factor in limiting the damage from climate change, and second, that we have to start serious change now, with policy shifts comparable to an international carbon price of $60 a tonne by 2015, to, essentially, save the day.

The study further finds that if we wait until 2020 to make our pivot to serious change, the effort would have to be equivalent to an international carbon price of $150 per tonne.

If we wait until 2025, then there’s no realistic level of effort modeled by the researchers that would have a reasonable likelihood of preventing devastating (and multiplying) impacts.

Climate Change: All in the Timing, an accompanying interpretive article to the paper at Nature, describes the approach used in the study:

“The authors quantify the importance of five ‘uncertainties’ that are thought to influence the chance of limiting global temperatures to different levels, using a suite of models to generate around 500 scenario variations. They find that the timing of international action to limit emissions has by far the largest impact. Furthermore, the models show that the impact of timing is highly nonlinear, and that delaying emissions limits by only five years, from 2020 to 2025, would dramatically cut the likelihood of limiting warming to 2°C.

“The five major uncertainties assessed by Rogelj and colleagues were the following: the responsiveness of the physical climate system to cumulative emissions; the deployment of energy- and land-based emission-reduction technologies; the global demand for energy (which includes combined uncertainties about population, income growth and energy efficiency); the global carbon price that the international community is willing to impose; and the timing of substantive action to limit emissions (phased in from 2010)…

“These scenario comparisons revealed timing of global action to be the uncertainty with the greatest effect. For example, the authors find that bringing forward global action on emissions from 2020 to 2015 would improve the chance of limiting temperatures to 2°C from 56% to 60%, all else being equal. To put this another way, achieving the same 60% chance of success with action starting in 2020 would require a 2020 carbon price of around US$150 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) — more than double the $60 per tonne CO2e required if action begins in 2015. However, delaying emissions limits from 2020 to 2025 would bring the chance of success down to 34%, and the authors found no scenario in which a feasible increase in carbon price or improvements in energy technology could make up for these five years of delay.”

These findings are entirely consistent with the overall thrust of the latest strong climate research.

National Climate Assessment Draft

Another new piece of the puzzle is the Draft U.S. National Climate Assessment Report (NCA), just released, which opened for 90 days of public comment on Monday, January 14, 2013.

Initial media coverage has focused on the climate science chapters of the draft report, which are excellent, as well as foreboding:

Read more