On Water Vapor and Warming - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

[Revkin] A new study led by Susan Solomon, a federal climate scientist and co-leader of the 2007 science review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is fascinating not only for the revelations, but the underlying lessons, too.

The study, described in an article today in The Times, finds that poorly understood variations in water vapor concentrations in the stratosphere were probably responsible for a substantial wedge of the powerful warming trend in the 1990s and a substantial portion of “the flattening of global average temperatures since 2000″
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Another [lesson], of course, is that the science illuminating the extent of the human influence on climate is not “settled” for many specific, and important, points, even though the basic case for  rising risks from rising concentrations of greenhouse gases  is robust enough to merit a strong response, according to a host of experts (even if you take the intergovernmental panel’s findings with a grain of salt).

Flashback: Irreversible Warming | ScienCentral | Science Videos | Science News

“We have to think about it [carbon dioxide] much more like nuclear waste than, like say, smog or acid rain,” explains one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, Susan Solomon, Senior Scientist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Solomon is leading the research team. She adds, “What we’re doing with carbon dioxide is forever.”

A moment of truth in the State of the Union? « JoNova

Watch Pelosi, she beams for most of Obama’s talk, but there’s a flickering grimace as the laugh keeps building. For a second she’s worried it will become even louder. Belatedly Obama joins the laughter. There wasn’t much else he could do.

He will have noticed the effect his use of the word “overwhelming” had on the crowd.

What was unfolding is that the news of the climategate scandal, (and the seemingly endless round of other scandals) means that in the mixed audience of republicans and democrats there would be a sizeable group who would be well versed in just how corrupt the system is. For these people, it’s involuntary, it’s hard to hear the words “overwhelming evidence” and not think “let’s hide the decline”, “use some tricks” and “delete the data”. (Once you know, you can’t help but laugh at the pretence that this is meant to persuade us).

This naked moment tells everyone in the room that the political force of fake authoritative science is spent. The tipping point has tipped in the highest of circles. Many people in the crowd may have known for a while that there is no overwhelming evidence, but now the whole crowd knows that the bombastic line about evidence has backfired.

Osama bin Laden lends unwelcome support in fight against climate change | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Drudge, Fox News and other right-wing media seize on al-Qaida leader's taped comments reportedly sent to al-Jazeera

Climate science is under assault, progress towards a treaty to end global warming is shuddering to a halt, and Barack Obama is struggling to press on with his clean energy agenda.

This was the last conversion to the environmental cause that anybody would have wanted.