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Antarctica ice may reveal clues to global warming in prehistoric past PARIS - Levels of carbon dioxide rose hand-in-hand with warming at the end of the last Ice Age, according to a study Thursday that deals a blow to climate skeptics.
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The anomaly is this: the CO2 in the bubbles do not correspond to the level of warming indicated by the surrounding snowfall of that time.
Climate skeptics argued that this showed the CO2 rose after Earth's atmosphere warming.
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During the last deglaciation, the temperature rose by 19 degrees Celsius (34.2 degrees Fahrenheit) while at the same time CO2 levels in the atmosphere rose by about 100 parts per million, they said.
The discrepancy comes from the physical process by which CO2 bubbles are formed in successive layers of snow.
"The gas bubbles are always more recent than the ice that surrounds them," France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a statement.
Carbon tax hits ArcelorMittal - South AfricaShares of ArcelorMittal SA dropped more than 6% yesterday after the government said it would tax carbon emissions from 2015, sparking concerns that heavy polluters' earnings would be hit.
Twitter / RyanMaue: A 21st Century quiet sun would ...A 21st Century quiet sun would shave 0.3°C off global warming -- or the last 30-years of observed warming. Right?
THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New paper finds no increase in tropical cyclones over past 200 yearsA paper published today in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology reconstructs tropical cyclones in Queensland, Australia and finds that "tropical cyclone frequency did not increase in the past 200 years." The paper adds to many other peer-reviewed publications demonstrating that, contrary to the claims of climate alarmists, tropical cyclones have not increased, and in many cases have decreased due to warming, and are projected to further decrease in the future.
THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Clouds/aerosols control the climate, not man-made CO2A paper published today in the Journal of Climate notes that "global dimming" from clouds/aerosols occurred from 1950s to 1980s at a rate of -3.5 Wm-2 per decade, followed by "global brightening" from 1992 to 2002 at a rate of 6.6 Wm-2 per decade. By way of comparison, the IPCC claims* CO2 forcing since the 1950s was 1.18 Wm-2, and .25 Wm-2 from 1992 to 2002, 26 times less than the effect of "global brightening" during the same period. The global temperature record shows that temperatures correspond to these periods of global dimming and brightening rather than the slow steady rise of CO2 levels. It is thus apparent that clouds/aerosols are the "control knob" of climate, not man-made CO2.
Obama Should Kill Coal Power to Create Jobs A Solyndra in every pot!
#266) Curb Carbon or Fission Fast? | The Benshi The climate movement is so massively cerebrally driven (thus my complaint a while back about what I termed, “The Nerd Loop”). They are so proud of their endless, endless studies of polling data and framing and message boxing and semantics and semiotics and … yet … in the end, they can’t communicate their way out of a box. And thus they allowed their entire message and movement to be co-opted by a group of Hollywood producers who shoved out on the world stage a nice guy who had lost his Presidential bid and taken to giving humble Powerpoint talks. All of which drove the entire movement into the ditch in which it now sits, smoldering, directionless and leaderless.
European Climate Official Urges Keystone XL Veto - NYTimes.com“If you had a U.S. administration that would avoid doing something that they could do, with the argument that in the time we are living in and with climate change we are faced with, we should not do everything we can do, then it would be a very, very interesting global signal,” she said.
Twitter / RealityDrop: We've already seen a tremendous ...We've already seen a tremendous response today! With your help, we will spread truth and destroy denial about climate change!
Why Al Gore Believes Gaming Can Stop Climate Change Deniers“Social networks are the key in helping us move the needle in the right direction…the key is to seed the conversation with reality,” said Gore, from a hotel conference room in Long Beach, California. “Wherever there is an example of denial in the media, we will give everyone that participates the precise scientific answer to the denial in the story.”
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Gore ended his roughly 45-minute presentation on a call to action, saying its “time to win the conversation on personal terms,” making an analogy to the recent groundswell of support in America for gay marriage.
“Two, three, four years ago, nobody would have imagined how gay rights would have transformed this country—it’s so inspiring,” said Gore. “That same conversation phenomenon has to happen on carbon.”
Environmentalists still waiting for Obama to act on climate change | Environment | guardian.co.ukIf anything, Zichal, like other White House officials pressed for details of the president's climate strategy, moved to squash expectations raised by those very same speeches that Obama would indeed take ambitious action to reduce the carbon pollution that causes climate change.
Zichal, when pressed on the time line of Obama's State of the Union ultimatum, seemed to suggest the president might be willing to sit out the two years of this newly elected Congress before making good on his threat to use his executive powers.
OPINION:Leader of global warming awareness movement [McKibben] speaks in HaywardThree significant numbers were a big part of the author’s presentation on human causes of global warming. First, there is the amount of temperature increase that our civilization can endure before catastrophe changes occur: 2 degrees Celsius.
Climate Change Dispatch - So much for global warming! Four out of the last five winters have been COLDER than averageSoaring gas prices are not the sole reason for our increasing heating bills - four out of the five past winters have been colder than average, the Met Office has revealed.
Renewable Energy: Bringing Blackouts Back to California? | Via MeadiaThe epidemic of power outages and “rolling blackouts” which nearly shut down California in the early 2000s may be returning. Back then, the culprits were unscrupulous energy providers like Enron and a poorly-thought out process of deregulation. This time, renewable energy would be to blame, as the state has pushed to increase the use of solar and wind energy without ensuring that there is enough traditional power generation to keep the grid stable on cloudy, windless days.
The Times Does Geometry | Power LineDon’t you wonder, sometimes, how the Times’s reporters and editors did on their SATs? Just remember, next time that paper tells you the science on some topic or other is settled, that you are getting that assurance from people who don’t know the difference between diameter and circumference.
Obama to Tackle Climate Change Soon, Advisor Says - Bloomberg“We hope Congress will act soon on a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change,” Zichal said.
Worrying about global tipping points distracts from real planetary threatsWe argue that at the global-scale, ecological “tipping points” and threshold-like “planetary boundaries” are improbable. Instead, shifts in the Earth’s biosphere follow a gradual, smooth pattern. This means that it might be impossible to define scientifically specific, critical levels of biodiversity loss or land-use change. This has important consequences for both science and policy.
Buying an Energy Loan | Cause of ActionCould the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program be characterized as a breeding ground for cronyism in the distribution of loans through the 1703, 1705, and Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Guarantee Programs?
Fox News Mocks German Solar Power, But It's Still A Winning Strategy | ThinkProgressThe real reason Germany dominates in solar (and wind) is their commitment to democratizing energy.
EU Climate Chief Says Talks on Airline Emissions Will Test Obama - Bloomberg“I really believe that when it’s about finding a global way forward for aviation now, we -- the U.S. and the European Union -- should be on the same side, working for the obvious, namely that if I take a long-haul plane, be it from Washington to Europe or from Europe to Beijing, it is only common sense that I pay for my pollution,” Hedegaard told reporters today at a briefing in Washington. [Hey Connie: Do you voluntarily buy carbon dioxide rip-offsets so that your own numerous long-haul plane rides won't give my grandchildren kidney stones?]
Is climate change linked to the spread of flu? | Dylan Walsh | Environment | guardian.co.ukTwo weeks after that, Sherry Towers, a visiting scholar at Purdue University in Indiana, published an article in academic journal PLOS Currents that associates this year's severe flu epidemic with last year's unusually warm winter and low infection rate.
How The Dirty Energy Money Funding Climate Inaction Slips By The Press | Blog | Media Matters for AmericaMedia Matters has received funding from the Tides Foundation, which is a donor-advised fund like Donors Trust.
Early spring calves battle hypothermia - Iowa Farmer TodayWhether you are a beef producer who may calve early, or you have a calf that is born under less-than-desirable conditions, hypothermia is something we need to be concerned about, especially this time of year.
Al Gore Gamifies the Climate Change ConversationGore introduced Reality Drop during a TED Talk Thursday morning in Long Beach, Calif.
"No matter how much is occurring in the world with extreme weather, the industry keeps feeding denial. Though not all denial occurs online, we want to give people the tools to respond quickly and sharply to that denial," Maggie Fox, CEO of Climate Reality, told Mashable.
"It's time for us to go on the offense in a space that we can not only dominate, but change opinions."
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To create Reality Drop's content, Climate Reality Project partnered with Skeptical Science, an organization of volunteer scientists who researched and responded to a list of common arguments against Climate Change. Fox says careful attention was given toward using simple, honest language and not using an attitude when crafting the rebuttals.
"It's actually a lot of work for someone who's new to the conversation about climate change to shut down denial, but also to serve as a resource," Fox says. "Our ultimate goal is to get conversation open and flowing. We need to move the conversation forward and not waste time arguing over whether it's happening or not."
November 2012: It's now been two weeks: Does anybody know what happened to happened to Al Gore's "Reality Drop" campaign?
IPCC urges Obama to raise awareness of science behind climate change | Environment | guardian.co.ukBarack Obama should spread awareness of the "scientific realities of climate change" in the US, the head of the UN's climate science panel has told the Guardian.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that one of the president's priorities should be "awareness creation" on the public's understanding of the science underpinning man-made global warming.
The IPCC has come under some of the most intense attacks it has faced from heavily funded climate sceptic groups in the US, where industry-funded lobbing groups, Republicans and some Democrat politicians have resisted federal action on energy policy and climate.
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Pachauri said there were three priorities for the US: to spread awareness of the "scientific realities of climate change"; it must make different types of energy, such as coal, properly reflect their impacts on climate and their scarcity by introducing some form of carbon pricing or 'cap in trade', and finally, focus quickly on preparing for extreme climate events.
He listed those three issues as "awareness creation; making sure energy prices are rationalised and providing a price on carbon, because that would ensure you're going to develop policies that are going to be low in terms of emissions and intensity. And finally, I think it's also important for a country like the US to take in hand climate adaptation measures: there should be a very clear plan."
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"That [some countries have reached or are crossing a tipping point] clearly gives you the pathway that you should be adopting right away," Pachauri said. "And secondly, even with a 2C or 2.4Cincrease, sea level rise in account of thermal expansion alone will be somewhere between 0.4 and 1.4m, okay, and that's only thermal expansion. If you add to that the melting of the bodies of ice across the globe, then of course it will be higher.
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Asked about the leak of a draft of the IPCC's fifth report, , Pachauri said the criticisms from climate sceptics did not deter the panel's members: they took it for granted there would be disputes over its findings.
"We're living in a free world and people will interpret things in the way that perhaps suit them, perhaps that they've a predisposition for.
"But I think in the ultimate analysis, if sane voices were to look at truth for what it is then I think people will realise that what we're saying and what the scientific community globally is saying is something that you cannot ignore, and the longer you delay taking action on it, the more complex the challenge is going to become."
Fight the Keystone XL Pipeline | TIME.comThe respectable center has recognized that climate change is not only real and man-made but also a genuine emergency. The scientific evidence has become too stark to indulge denial or dithering...
...Fossil fuels are broiling the planet. The pipeline would turn up the heat. If Obama approves it, he’ll deserve all the abuse the activists hurl his way.
Council’s Climate Change Park bid to take root with helping hand from local school childrenAberdeen City Council's bid to create Scotland's first Climate Change Park will receive a helping hand from local school children this weekend.
Global Warming Alarmists Chant 'Forget The Carbon, We Demand The Tax' - ForbesGlobal warming alarmists and environmental activists constantly praise China and hold the nation up as an example for the United States to follow. Yet the two nations are on distinctly different trajectories regarding carbon dioxide emissions and environmental quality. Given the choice between a policy of more taxes and more government programs that do nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and a policy of fewer taxes and fewer government programs that nevertheless result in declining carbon dioxide emissions, I will take the latter. It is surprising (then again, maybe not) that so many self-professed global warming advocates prefer the former.
When it comes to choosing between a carbon tax and fewer carbon dioxide emissions, alarmists show their true colors by turning up their noses at real-world carbon dioxide reductions and instead pushing wholeheartedly for ineffective central planning and carbon taxes.
RIGZONE - UK Energy Production Falls for 11th Straight YearLONDON - U.K. energy production fell for the 11th consecutive year in 2012, although at a slower rate than in 2011.
How NASA Scientists Are Turning L.A. Into One Big Climate-Change Lab - Technology - The Atlantic CitiesDuren’s team is already coordinating with French scientists running a Megacities sister project in Paris. (Researchers had to move a Picarro on the Eiffel Tower because its readings were skewed by steamy tourist lung vapors.)
New Poll Finds Americans Are Worried About Runaway Population Growth - The Daily BeastBut wait, you might be saying, didn’t I just read a slew of recent pieces on The Daily Beast sounding the alarm on how the U.S. was a facing a population catastrophe, that we weren’t breeding enough?
89 WLS - Man who collapsed in Roseland is county's 12th cold deathA man who collapsed in the Far South Side Roseland neighborhood Monday is Cook County’s 12th cold-related death of the season.
Cheap Energy And America’s Red State Growth Corridors | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)Energy, manufacturing and agriculture are playing a major role in the corridor states’ revival. The resurgence of fossil fuel–based energy, notably shale oil and natural gas, is especially important. Cheap U.S. natural gas has some envisioning the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge as an “American Ruhr.”
Forward on Climate - Or Back: Did The Biggest Climate Rally In History Matter?A historic rally for the climate takes place in Washington, D.C., but is largely ignored by the media and politicians. What does that imply for climate policy?
Twitter / PaulREhrlich: #INSANITY. Kansas introduces .... Kansas introduces bill to ban development.
5 Oily Myths About Gasoline Prices | Center for American Progress[Warmist Daniel Weiss] Big Oil’s tired and phony solutions to high gasoline prices won’t help American families. Instead, the federal government should pursue real solutions, including better fuel-economy standards—which are currently underway—more investment in recharging infrastructure for electric vehicles, and investments in public transportation so families have alternatives to driving when gasoline prices spike.
Climate change threatens corn cropsIf climate-change projections are right, we'll need to improve yields per acre by as much as 12 per cent between 2016 and 2035 just to maintain today's total production. [Huh?]
Britain’s power output hits 15-yr low, CO2 likely up - News - Point CarbonLONDON, Feb 28 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Power production in Britain fell to the lowest level in 15 years in 2012, according to government data published on Thursday, but carbon emissions in the EU’s second biggest emitting nation likely rose as electricity produced from coal soared.
S. Korea’s GHG emissions rise 9.8 pct in 2010 - News - Point CarbonBEIJING, Feb 28 (Reuters Point Carbon) – South Korea’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 9.8 percent in 2010 [?] as electricity generation and steel production surged, the government said Thursday.
NZ spot carbon softens on thin demand - News - Point CarbonBEIJING, Feb 28 (Reuters Point Carbon) - Spot permits in New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme fell 5.7 percent in the seven days ended Thursday to close at NZ$1.65 amid weak demand.
An Emblem for Puerto Rico's Climate Fight - NYTimes.com “Congress must limit greenhouse emissions before climate change forever silences the evening symphony of the coquÃ,” he writes.
...Puerto Rico’s overall temperature has risen by about one degree in the last 30 years, and while that may not sound like much, “it’s causing real problems for the frogs, Dr. Joglar said. “It’s critical for the coquÃ.”
Green Energy Has A Brownout Problem - Investors.comIf this is how the green power utopia is going to work, we want none of it.
Global Fear Of CO2 Is At A 20 Year Low | Tory AardvarkThere are of course other reasons for the decline in ManBearPig, hypocritical Hollywood champagne environmentalists telling people not to fly, or travel more than 20 miles from their home a day, all the while carrying on regardless with their massive CO2 footprint luxury lifestyles, the self appointed followers of Gaia in Green NGOs telling us all how to live and feel guilty, years of failed apocalyptic predictions, the lack of warming, the rapid and increasing rise of Eugenics in the environmental movement, the pettiness of making people feel guilty for owning cats and dogs, and last but not least, the return to 15th Century superstition and belief in witchcraft whereby every weather event real or predicted is always attributed to man made climate change.
Shell Sees Solar as Biggest Energy Source After Exiting It - BloombergRoyal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) says solar power, a business it abandoned four years ago, may expand into the world’s biggest source of energy in the next half century.
California in Crisis: Golden State's green jobs bust | WashingtonExaminer.comWith an unemployment rate 1.8 points below the national average, and 3.7 points below California's, Texans are probably happy they decided to skip the costly "green jobs" craze.
Forecasting Change: A Meteorologist and an Artist on the Climate Crisis — Magazine — Walker Art Center
Paul Douglas considers himself an “albino unicorn.” A moderate Republican, he’s also a meteorologist who believes climate change is real. That position was met with scorn by some of the right, who called him a “RINO [Republican In Name Only] climate poser,” a “global warming hoax promoter,” and worse.
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A lot of this comes down to science literacy, and the fact that many Americans really aren’t willing to dig into the science. It’s much easier to turn on a cable news show with bloviating talking heads going back and forth, and it’s kind of sad. You know what’s ironic? Mother Nature is now accomplishing what climate scientists have had a hard time doing—getting people’s attention. The past two years have been the most extreme, weather-wise, in America’s history. In 2011, four out of five Americans surveyed personally witnessed severe weather. One out of three were personally injured by severe weather. We’ve had $188 billion in severe-weather damage in the last two years, so Mother Nature is accomplishing what climate scientists cannot, and that is, convince a majority of rational, god-fearing people that something has changed. It’s not your grandfather’s weather.
...But I think the most effective image, especially for a denier over the age of 55 or 60, is a photograph of their grandkids...It’s not rocket science! It’s basic physics!...here’s a forecast with 100% accuracy: at some point, your kid or your
grandkid will come to you and say, on this subject—climate change—“What did you know, when, and what did you do? Did you sit on your hands? Did you continue business as usual? Or were you part of the solution?” I want to pass the red-face test with future grandkids... I said, “Senator McCain, is it possible, is there even a chance that this could be a natural cycle, that this could be a fluke, an aberration?” He looked at me, rolled his eyes, and chuckled. “Paul, I just got back from the Yukon, where a village elder presented me with a 4,000-year-old tomahawk that just melted from the permafrost. This is no natural cycle. Next question.” [How, specifically, does that anecdote prove that CO2 is overheating the planet?]
...We’ve become a planet of fossil fools...I refuse to believe that we have to rely on 19th-century extraction technology to power our economy in the 21st century. Really?! You’ve gotta be kidding me. We’ve gotta suck stuff out of the ground to keep the lights on? We have the technology. [Like what, specifically, Paul? Are you personally using this technology to keep your own lights on and/or power your own vehicles?] What we don’t have is the political will.
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[Schmelzer] Isn’t the extraction of oil from tar sands so intensive that it it’s kind of like the junkie robbing from grandma to get a fix?
[Douglas] Absolutely. It’s the dirtiest oil.
Climate change abolitionists [photos here]: who is fighting for a more sustainable world? It took Abraham Lincoln and others many years of campaigning to abolish slavery - but who are the contemporary figures fighting to abolish dangerous climate change?
Here we have a selection of climate change abolitionists, those engaging in an uphill battle to challenge the broken systems that threaten our survival. As you can see, we've left eighteen spaces blank - these are for your suggestions.
'GDP linked to climate change' - The Times of IndiaKOCHI: GDP growth is closely linked to global warming and climate change, and scrapping the GDP-based growth model is the need of the hour, according to Anandi Sharan, historian of climate negotiations.
UK energy statistics show big jump in coal-fired electricity last year Last year saw a dramatic increase in the amount of UK electricity generated using coal power, preliminary figures from The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) show. Coal power overtook gas to become the biggest single source of UK electricity in 2012.
Another Cold Month Ahead For The UK | Real ScienceIt is likely to be cold at first with the winds from the east, and the likelihood is that the middle of the month may become colder, before we see a rise of temperature towards the end of March.
Germany Weathers Darkest Winter in 43 Years | Watts Up With That?If the sun doesn’t start shining soon, it will be the darkest winter on record...Less than an average of 100 hours of sunshine have been recorded so far over the course of the meteorological winter, which runs from December through February, said National Meteorological Service (DWD) spokesman Gerhard Lux on Monday. The winter average is an already measly 160 hours of sun [Under those conditions, it must be tough to use solar panels to heat their homes and power their cars, trains, factories, planes, etc.]
ABC science “expert” Dr Karl makes more false warming claims | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt BlogDr Karl presents science for the ABC. This presentation was staggeringly false, not least because he’s had the facts repeatedly drawn to his attention.
When Alan Jones, a sceptic, made an error on 2GB about carbon dioxide concentrations, he was pilloried on Media Watch and given a re-education session from the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Will the same sactions be applied to a fervent warmist for stubbornly and repeatedly making even more fundamental errors?
- Bishop Hill blog - Greens and the rule of lawOverturning the decision of a lower court, the judge ruled, in the following rather amusing terms, that the Sea Shepherd's actions constituted piracy:
You don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch. When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be.
Movement! German Media Reopen Climate Discussion – Concede Warming Has Stopped, Other Factors At PlayIf Germany had recorded a record 5 warmer winters in a row, people would be reading and hearing about it for days without end. However, just the opposite has occurred: Germany has now experienced 5 colder than normal winters in a row - “a record” - now made official by the German Weather Service (This winter 0.6°C below 1981-2010 average). Yet, hardly a peep from the media on this.
- Bishop Hill blog - Greenpeace labouring night and day to make you colder and poorerIt's hugely encouraging that so few LibDems have signed up for the "lights out" amendment. Surely they can't have found their collective backbone?
The New Nostradamus of the North: Price shock: Cost of Germany's "green" energy transition - $1310 billion!For an ordinary person that astronomical amount of money is almost impossible to fathom. But there it is: That is how much Angela Merkel's "green" energy transition policy - getting rid of nuclear power and installing subsidized wind and solar power - will cost the German taxpayers.
And note that cost estimate is not coming from some shady "dirty energy" lobby organization - it is Angela Merkel's own environment minister Peter Altmeier, who disclosed the sum in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.
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