John Kerry Calls Out Climate Change Denier B.S.

A hack of an “environmental scholar” working for an organization that consistently seeks to undermine efforts to fight global warming got schooled on climate change policy by Senator John Kerry during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on November 10th. Kerry rebuked Green’s comments for a solid five minutes, leaving a floundering Green unable to defend his views as anything other than his own personal opinion.

Kerry: “You may know something that thousands of other scientists don’t. They won a Nobel Prize. You and I didn’t.”

Ken Green’s title as ‘resident environmental scholar’ at the American Enterprise Institute may seem to indicate that he has a clue what he’s talking about. But who, exactly, are Green and this Institute?

From a 2007 Treehugger article:

The American Enterprise Institute, according to the Guardian, was called out in February for ” offering scientists and economists $10,000 each, “to undermine the IPCC report. .” AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green made the $10,000 offer “to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere,” in a letter describing the IPCC as “resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent.” They noted also that AEI “has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil, and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI’s board of trustees.”

It just goes to show who these people really are – and how easy it is for them to misrepresent themselves to climate change skeptics as “experts”. What a joke.

Link [Treehugger]

Run, Kids, the Carbon Monster is Coming!

How do you get adults to care about the environment? How about scaring their kids shitless with the specter of a ‘carbon monster’ in the sky that’s going to get them if their parents don’t act against global warming? That’s the tact the British government has chosen to take with an ad that seeks to change skeptics’ minds about climate change, but has only angered viewers who saw it during prime-time television broadcasts.

The intentions behind the ad are understandable. It’s a response to a recent survey in Britain showing that 52% of people don’t think they’ll be personally affected by climate change, but 74% would change their lifestyles if they knew that climate change would have a serious affect on the lives of their children.

From the Times Online:

Ministers sanctioned the campaign because of concern that scepticism about climate change was making it harder to introduce carbon-reducing policies such as higher energy bills.

The advertisement attempts to make adults feel guilty about their legacy to their children. It features a father telling his daughter a bedtime story of “a very very strange” world with “horrible consequences” for today’s children.

The storybook shows a British town deep under water, with people and animals drowning.

Carbon dioxide is depicted as rising in clouds of black soot from cars and homes, including from a woman’s hairdryer. The soot gathers into a jagged-toothed monster menacing the town.

Watch the ad over at the Times Online.

Predictably, global warming skeptics are having a field day with this one, calling it propaganda. People in Britain who saw it on TV were so angry about it that the ad has been pulled and is currently being investigated.

But one fumbled ad doesn’t mean that people should forget or ignore the harsh reality. Children will, indeed, be the victims of climate change if we don’t act – in fact, the Telegraph reports that 250,000 children could die due to climate change next year and that number could rise to more than 400,000 annually by 2030.

Climate change is a real and pressing problem, and far too many people across the world are covering their eyes and plugging up their ears so they don’t have to deal with it.

Link [Times Online]

Biofuels Could Make Global Warming Worse

What could be more environmentally harmful than fossil fuels? Try biofuels. That’s right, a new study claims that we’ll make global warming even worse if we rely too much on the new generation of biofuels, because rules governing their production encourage deforestation. And, as another recent report illuminated, our forests are our most important line of defense against climate change.

From Reuters:

In a study to be published Friday in the US journal Science, a group of 13 scientists called for the rules, which contain a loophole exempting carbon dioxide emitted by bioenergy regardless of its source, to be overturned.

“The error is serious, but readily fixable,” said lead researcher Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University.

The study called for the issue to be addressed in the climate treaty that nations around the world are hoping to sign at the Copenhagen summit in December to supercede the Kyoto Treaty.

Researchers said numerous analyses — including one released by the US Department of Energy — have found that this loophole “could lead to the loss of most of the world’s natural forests as carbon caps tighten.”

The loophole needs to be closed before oil companies, power plants and other energy industry firms – who stand to benefit the most from it – can exploit it.

But that’s not the only problem with biofuels. Another study published in Science Express on Thursday noted that there’s not enough oversight on land use when it comes to producing biofuels, meaning some unscrupulous companies could cut down forest lands and use them to grow fuel.

Burning biomass releases almost as much carbon dioxide as burning fossil fuels, but that CO2 is partially offset by the plants themselves, grown for biofuel, absorbing CO2 from the air. That’s a big benefit – but we can’t cut down forests to grow these plants. Talk about counterproductive.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Dave Reede

Saving Forests Five Times More Effective than Carbon Capture

The best way to fight against global warming isn’t expensive, potentially ecologically disruptive carbon capture methods. It’s saving the forests that we already have, which act as massive carbon sinks, protecting the planet against catastrophic climate change.

According to a new report released by WWF Sweden, world leaders have got to join together in an international agreement to halt forest loss as a highly cost effective measure on climate change.

From Panda.org:

“Sweden should follow the examples set by its northern neighbors in developing systems to halt deforestation,” said WWF CEO General Lasse Gustavsson.. “One Swedish krona to stem deforestation results in the same emissions reductions as five kronor for the controversial carbon capture and storage technique,”

Gold in Green Forests, a report issued today by WWF-Sweden, says that next to energy efficiency halting forest loss and degradation is the most cost-effective method for mitigating climate change.

The annual loss of natural forests in developing countries is equivalent to one third of Sweden’s surface area. Forest fires, the conversion of forests to agricultural land and the cultivation of energy crops are responsible for the high rate of forest loss.

A program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is currently being discussed in the negotiations for a global climate deal. REDD aims to make it worthwhile for developing countries to maintain their forests, as opposed to cutting them down.

Preventing deforestation should be among our first lines of defense against climate change. It definitely makes sense financially. The trick is getting nations like Indonesia – which is cutting its forests down at an alarming rate to make room for lucrative palm oil plantations – to agree to the program.

The whole report is available over at Panda.org.

Link [Panda.org]
Photo credit: Flickr user zoutedrop

Climate Change Costs: 25 Million More Starving Children by 2050

Conservatives love to whine about perceived costs of climate legislation, but they’re clearly more worried about their own bottom lines than about the true costs of catastrophic climate change. A new report issued by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) states that the world will have 25 million more starving children by the year 2050 as climate change causes food shortages and soaring food costs.

From The Guardian:

The grim scenario is the first to gauge the effects of climate change on the world’s food supply by combining climate and agricultural models.

“The food price crisis of last year really was a wake-up call to a lot of people that we are going to have 50% more people on the surface of the Earth by 2050,” said Gerald Nelson, the lead author of the report. “Meeting those demands for food coming out of population growth is going to be a huge challenge – even without climate change.”

After several years in which development aid has been diverted away from rural areas, the report called for $7bn a year for crop research, and investment in irrigation and rural infrastructure to help farmers adjust to a warming climate. “Continuing the business-as-usual approach will almost certainly guarantee disastrous consequences,” said Nelson.

The G20 industrialised nations last week began discussing how to invest some $20bn pledged for food security earlier this year.

Some regions of the world outlined in the report are already showing signs of vulnerability because of changing rainfall patterns and drought linked to climate change.

And this is the great irony about religious conservatives in particular: they’re so worked up over abortion, yet they don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the people who already live on our planet. Twenty five million starving children in addition to the millions that already exist – now that’s something to be angry about.

Link [The Guardian]
Photo credit: MiaFarrow.org

Arctic Record Proves Global Warming is Caused by Man

The Arctic’s geological record provides all the evidence we need that global warming is man’s doing, experts say. A closer look at the sediment timeline has shown that increased ice melt falls right in line with the birth of the Industrial Age, when those billowing clouds of greenhouse gases first started to flow from factory smokestacks.

From the LA Times:

For more than 2,000 years, a natural wobble in Earth’s axis has caused the Arctic region to move farther away from the sun during the region’s summer, reducing the amount of solar radiation it receives. The Arctic is now 600,000 miles farther from the sun than it was in AD 1, and temperatures there should have fallen a little more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since then.

Instead, the region has warmed 2.2 degrees since 1900 alone, and the decade from 1998 to 2008 was the warmest in two millenniums, according to a team headed by climatologist Darrell S. Kaufman of Northern Arizona University.

Not only was the last half-century the warmest of the last 2,000 years, “but it reversed the long-term, millennial-scale trend toward cooler temperatures,” Kaufman said.

The results seem to negate the primary argument of those who say the current warming of Earth is simply a natural variation, he said.

It’s not too difficult to understand the argument that people have against anthropomorphic global warming – that we, as humans, are simply too small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things to cause such changes in the earth and its natural balance. After all, nature is quite an amazing force.

But, to believe that we aren’t capable of causing global warming is to ignore the massive destruction we have unleashed upon this planet as we rose to the top of the food chain and began industrializing. We have changed the atmosphere. We have destroyed ecosystems and decimated much of the rainforest that would otherwise be helping to balance the greenhouse gases we’re pumping into the air.

It’s real, it’s happening, and we did it. Now we have to find a way to make up for it.

Link [LA Times]

Photo credit: Flickr user A6U571N

Dutch Begin Preparing for Rising Seas

The Dutch have always been a little bit ahead of the curve, so it’s no surprise to learn that they’re not just sitting on their hands waiting for global warming to cause the seas to rise up around them. They’re being proactive to ensure that the Netherlands, which is well below sea level, survives the coming challenges.

As glaciers in Switzerland melt, the water level of the Rhine will rise, necessitating a long-term solution to keeping water out of the city. Dutch people remember all too well the great flood of 1953, which killed over 1800 people and wiped too villages off the map, and they don’t want a repeat performance.

From Reuters:

Some 70 percent of the country’s economic output is generated below sea level, protected by a complex-system of ancient dikes and modern cement barriers that hold back water from the sea and the multitude of rivers that weave through the country.

Now, with scientists’ predicting that sea levels will rise by about one meter (3.3 feet) this century, the Dutch are reversing centuries of tradition to create natural flood plains for rivers as well as rebuild mangrove swamps as buffers against the sea.

“We’ve been adapting for 1,000 years. That’s nothing new. It’s just that climate change is going faster than it was before,” said Lennart Silvis, the operational manager of the public-private Netherlands Water Partnership.

Instead of raising dikes, the Dutch want to reclaim land and build public recreation areas that can absorb storm surges.

Plans in the works include developing floating housing that rises and falls with the water level. And, even if there were to be dangerous flooding, these people are prepared – children start a five-year course of swimming lessons at the age of four, which requires a test that includes swimming 100 meters while fully dressed in heavy winter clothing.

If you’re going to live in a vulnerable area, it’s important to accept reality and not just wait until a crisis happens. Communities around the world could definitely learn a thing or two from the Dutch.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Flickr user Daveness_98

Oozing Methane Has Scientists Worried About Climate Catastrophe

It may start happening extremely quickly, or it may take centuries, depending on whom you ask – but enough pure methane is currently escaping into the atmosphere from thawing permafrost to make many scientists very worried about effects on climate.

Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is currently building up in the atmosphere at rapidly increasing rates after bubbling up from underwater vents.

From The Columbia Daily Tribune:

Researchers say air temperatures here in northwest Canada, in Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic have risen more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970 — much faster than the global average. The summer thaw is reaching deeper into frozen soil, at a rate of 1.5 inches a year, and a further 13-degree temperature rise is possible this century, said the authoritative, U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC.

In 2007, air monitors detected a rise in methane concentrations in the atmosphere, apparently from far northern sources. Russian researchers in Siberia expressed alarm, warning of a potential surge in the powerful greenhouse gas, additional warming of several degrees and unpredictable consequences for Earth’s climate.

Others say massive seeps of methane might take centuries. But the Russian scenario is disturbing enough to have led six U.S. national laboratories last year to launch a joint investigation of rapid methane release. And in July, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri asked his scientific network to focus on “abrupt, irreversible climate change” from thawing permafrost.

As the world warms, surface permafrost at a depth of about 5 meters is at risk of thawing. That would release a hell of a lot of methane into the atmosphere, causing a serious acceleration in climate change.

Scientists may disagree right now on how fast permafrost can thaw, but one thing is clear: there’s a very good chance that failing to act could have extremely negative consequences. While it’s encouraging that there are many research teams currently studying this issue, policymakers around the world have got to make fighting it a priority.

Link [Columbia Tribune]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Global Warming Could Cause Tilt in Earth’s Axis

Oceans warmed by the rise in greenhouse gas levels could cause the Earth’s axis to tilt, according to a new study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Researchers say the tilt would be significant enough to create a large shift in the distribution of the Earth’s mass, especially when combined with the tilt being caused by the melting of Greenland’s ice.

From New Scientist:

The researchers modelled the changes that would occur if moderate projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a doubling of carbon dioxide levels between 2000 and 2100 – were to become reality.

The team found that as the oceans warm and expand, more water will be pushed up and onto the Earth’s shallower ocean shelves. Over the next century, the subtle effect is expected to cause the northern pole of Earth’s spin axis to shift by roughly 1.5 centimetres per year in the direction of Alaska and Hawaii.

Luckily, the effect is expected to be relatively small, and shouldn’t induce any negative feedback in the planet’s climate. It just needs to be taken into account when interpreting shifts in Earth’s axis.

Still, this should be a strong message to those who still insist that we insignificant little humans can’t affect the planet we live on to a great extent. We may be relatively unimportant in the scheme of things, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of causing some serious changes.

Link [New Scientist]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Youth to World Leaders: Less Talk, More Action on Climate Change

The biggest-ever youth gathering on climate change took place last Thursday in Daejeon, Republic of Korea with 700 participants releasing a statement to world leaders expressing “concern and frustration that their governments are not doing enough to combat climate change”, adding that “we now need more actions and less talking”.

The statement was the product of eight-week-long web discussions between young people across the world about their governments’ track record on addressing climate change. It was finalized as part of the global UN ‘Seal the Deal!’ campaign to garner public support for a comprehensive global climate agreement.

The children and youth asked governments around the world to agree on a more fair, just and action oriented post-Kyoto agreement adopted and implemented by all countries, strict laws against pollution, carbon action plans and much more.

From UNEP:

“It is very important to include the voice of children and youth in every environmental decision. It is our request to all politicians that they please take this statement into consideration in Copenhagen,” said 13-year-old Yugratna Srivastava from India.

The children and youth also addressed the citizens of the planet and urged them to push their governments to create a global green economy. Other recommendations included a call to pressure businesses, producers and governments to promote environmentally friendly products and eco-labeling policies.

“We are the generation of tomorrow. The decisions that are made today will define our future and the world we have to live in. So we young people of the world urge governments to commit to a strong post-Kyoto climate regime. It is our lives we are talking about,” said youth delegate, 23-year-old Anne Walraven from the Netherlands.

Visit UNEP.org to read the full statement and learn more about the youth conference.

It’s nice to know that even if the generation currently holding power around the world refuses to act, the next generation is ready to take the reigns and do what needs to be done. There’s a lot of security in this kind of enthusiasm among youth.

Link [UNEP]
Photo: Art by Li Pik Hei, 13-year-old winner of the 2008 International Children’s Painting Competition on Environment

China’s Air Pollution Causes Reduction in Rainfall

Bad air quality may be affecting China’s ability to raise crops, in addition to the health and environmental problems it causes. Air pollution in the eastern part of the country has reduced the amount of light rainfall over the past half-century, and has also decreased the number of days of light rain by 23%.

From Science Daily:

The study links for the first time high levels of pollutants in the air with conditions that prevent the light kind of rainfall critical for agriculture. Led by atmospheric scientist Yun Qian at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the study appears August 15 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.

“People have long wondered if there was a connection, but this is the first time we’ve observed it from long-term data,” said Qian. “Besides the health effects, acid rain and other problems that pollution creates, this work suggests that reducing air pollution might help ease the drought in north China.”

Researchers discovered that pollution’s aerosols cause smaller cloud droplets, which then have a harder time forming rain clouds. Water drops in polluted skies are up to 50% smaller than in clean skies.

Meanwhile, in Australia, drought experts have found a definite link between rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a decline in rainfall. A study confirmed that the continent’s drought is not a natural dry stretch, but a shift related to climate change.

Link [Science Daily] + [Sydney Morning Herald]
Photo credit: Flickr user robennals

Oil Industry Planning Town Hall Protests Against Climate Bill

As angry, misinformed mobs take over town halls to scream in people’s faces about health care issues they don’t understand, the oil industry is quietly taking notes – and planning to use similar tactics against the climate bill.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the American Petroleum Institute and other energy groups are funding rallies in 20 states where they will hand out a flier that says things like “Climate change legislation being considered in Washington will cause huge economic pain and produce little environmental gain.”

The flier says the bill passed by the House in June and expected to come to the floor for a vote later in the year, “will cost 2 million American jobs, raise gasoline and diesel prices up to $4,” and threaten both U.S. competition and energy security.

“Let our U.S. senators know they need to ‘get it right’ and not make the same mistakes as the House,” the flier reads. Local organizers fill in the location, date and time slots.

The rallies will be organized in about 20 states, include those whose Democratic Senators aren’t strong supporters of a stringent bill, such as Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mark Begich of Alaska.

“We’ve all seen those angry folks raising heck about health care,” said Frank O’Donnell, head of the environmental advocacy group, Clean Air Watch. “So I guess it was inevitable a special interest would try the same thing on the climate legislation,” he said in an email.

The ultra-dirty tactics – like outright forgeries – didn’t work, so Big Oil figures that it will merely take advantage of the public’s fear about the economy and their jobs to manufacture an anti-climate movement.

What’s really scary is how easily people are manipulated. If millions of people are willing to swallow outrageous lies about health care reform (i.e. Sarah Palin’s “death panel” comment), there’s no telling what else they’ll believe.

Link [The Wall Street Journal] via [Treehugger]
Photo credit: The Huffington Post

Can You Spare 23 Cents a Day for Climate Change Action?

Much has been made of the potential financial costs of climate change legislation by conservatives, but as it turns out, the American Clean Energy & Security Act will cost the average citizen just 23 cents a day.

Reps. Markey and Waxman asked the Energy Information Agency to analyze the cost to consumers, to put out-of-control estimates by anti-climate-bill pundits and lawmakers to rest. They delivered, with a report (PDF) that projects the annual cost of the ACES to be roughly $83, adjusted for inflation, by 2030.

ACESA increases energy prices, but effects on electricity and natural gas bills of consumers are substantially mitigated through 2025 by the allocation of free allowances to regulated electricity and natural gas distribution companies. Except for the ACESA No International/Limited Case, electricity prices in five of the six main ACESA cases range from 9.5 to 9.6 cents per kilowatthour in 2020, only 3 to 4 percent above the Reference Case level.6 Average impacts on electricity prices in 2030 are projected to be substantially greater, reflecting both higher allowance prices and the phase-out of the free allocation of allowances to distributors between 2025 and 2030. By 2030, electricity prices in the ACESA Basic Case are 12.0 cents per kilowatthour, 19 percent above the Reference Case level, with a wider band of 11.1 cents to 17.8 cents (10 to 77 percent above the Reference Case level) across all six main policy cases.

So the question is, do Americans want to pony up 23 cents a day and take care of this problem before it blows up into an all-out global nightmare, or just wait until the cost of fixing it reaches epic proportions?

Link [Treehugger]
Photo credit: Flickr user Macinate

Composting Contributes to Climate Change?

Composting is good for the earth, right? It takes waste and transforms it into not just something usable, but something that helps us grow food. It has become so popular, that many cities around the world are starting large-scale composting projects. But, Sustainablog reports that even the most conscientious large-scale composting operations emit methane, a greenhouse gas.

From Sustainablog:

There are actually very few published scientific studies about greenhouse gas emissions from composts, but the two that I have been able to find show that around 2-3% of the original carbon in the manure or green waste is emitted as methane (21X carbon dioxide in GHG potential) and there is also a little nitrous oxide as well (310X carbon dioxide in GHG potential).  That doesn’t sound at all bad until you do some math with the values in these publications.

If you think of it in terms of delivering a hundred pounds of nitrogen/acre (as you would for something like an organic vegetable crop) you would need to start with 8600 pounds (on a dry weight basis) of cow manure (because there is a loss of mass and because the compost is only 1.7% nitrogen).  The greenhouse gas emissions are the equivalent of 0.74 lbs CO2 per dry lb of manure.  That means that the “carbon footprint” of the 100 lbs of N in compost fertilizer is 6,403 lbs CO2.  That is 14.6 times as much as for synthetic urea fertilizer! It is the equivalent of burning 331 gallons of gasoline! (if you are interested you can see a more detailed explanation).

Sustainablog’s math was confirmed by USDA scientists.

So, does that mean that those of us with backyard compost piles should stop recycling our food and garden scraps into fertilizer? Definitely not. And it doesn’t mean that large-scale composting operations should be halted either. Sustainablog will have future posts on possible solutions, so stay tuned.

But a commenter named Ken at the Sustainablog website made a great point: “Composting converts what might otherwise be tossed into a landfill (or burned) into useful soil organic matter. Carbon will be released no matter what is done – the proper question is which choice produces the most appropriate benefit along with those costs.”

Link [Sustainablog]
Photo Credit: Flickr user normanack

Bay Area Global Warming Experts Prepare for Epic Flood

Experts in the San Francisco area are planning for a flood “of Noah’s Ark proportions” which they believe could be a possible consequence of global warming. To anyone who lives in the area, that may seem unlikely, especially given that much of California has spent the last few years clenched by a severe drought.

But that doesn’t mean that rain isn’t coming – and when it does, the parched, crusty earth won’t be able to absorb much water.

From The Daily Bulletin:

Last year, a USGS-led team of 300 scientists created a detailed scenario for a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Southern California, followed by a “ShakeOut” drill of 5.4 million residents, a disaster preparedness record.

Many of the same scientists are now fashioning a hypothetical ARk Storm scenario similar to the mother of all known California floods – the Great Flood of 1861-62.

That flood, occurring during 45 days of rain, turned California into an inland sea. It also forced Gov. Leland Stanford to take a rowboat to his inauguration, wiped out a third of taxable land and virtually bankrupted the state.

Despite more than a century of flood channels, debris dams and levees built since, such a flood could wreak $25 billion in damage to the state capital alone, according to the Geological Survey.

And because of global warming, scientists forecast such a colossal gully-washer born by the “pineapple express” jet stream to happen sooner rather than later.

Winter rainfall is expected to increase dramatically on the West Coast with climate change, but summers will still be incredibly hot and dry. Add wildfires into the mix – which cause erosion – and you’ve got prime conditions for floods that, according to NASA scientist Bill Patzert, “will make Katrina look minor league.”

10 teams of experts are currently working on ways to prepare. They’ll be revealing their recommendations in the summer of 2010.

Link [The Daily Bulletin]
Photo credit: Science Daily/FEMA

Moon Landing Conspiracy Theorists Provide Insight into the Climate Change Denier’s Mind

One in five people believe that the moon landing was faked. They’re completely and utterly convinced that it all took place on a sound stage somewhere and that NASA went to great lengths to make it look real, from airbrushing photographs to creating elaborate props.

This myth has been busted again and again – check out this photo set by National Geographic, and Mythbusters Episode 104: NASA Moon Landing. But that doesn’t mean anything to the stubborn, vocal segment of the population that insists it was all a hoax.

The Daily Green points out the parallels between moon landing conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers, stemming from a lack of trust in big institutions, the ease of accessing bad information on the internet that seems plausible to the layman as well as “the allure of possessing what is thought to be secret knowledge”.

One of the moon landing hoax debunkers, astronomer Philip Plait, offers an intriguing explanation. Understanding why the hoax believers’ plausible-sounding claims are hogwash takes work. You have to know a few things about photography. You have to understand the weird optics of the moon’s airless environment. You have to know how the moon landing equipment was designed. You have to be versed in the biology of spaceflight. And so on.

You have to dig deeper and exercise critical thinking skills.

It’s similar to grasping the science of climate change. Which might partly explain the persistence of beliefs, from the hallowed halls of Congress to the corner saloon, that climate change linked to human activities is a hoax.

It can be blasted difficult sometimes to make clear the reasons why alternative global warming explanations that are regularly trotted out by climate skeptics don’t work. The climate’s workings, driven as they are by various forcing mechanisms, feedback loops, and differing time and space scales, make simplified explanations hard work.

Like some in the moon-landings-were-a-hoax crowd, some climate denialists exploit complexity to assert claims that appear reasonable on the surface but require a bit of parsing to tease out the nonsense hidden within.

It’s simple: it all comes down to whether you believe that the world’s top scientists know what the hell they’re talking about. Because honestly, do you, Bill the Grocery Store Manager, truly believe that you know more about the intricacies of climate science – or outer space – than the experts? Or you, Martha the Dog Groomer – do you claim to understand the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the earth better than tens of thousands of climatologists worldwide?

If so, then kudos, you’ve managed to create one hell of a fantasy world for yourself.

Link [The Daily Green]

Sea Ice Images from Spy Satellites Made Public

For the past 10 years, spy satellites have captured super high-resolution images of sea ice at the North and South Poles, but until now, the public –and even most scientists – hasn’t seen them. Finally, hours after a National Academy of Sciences committee recommended that the intelligence community should release the images, they were published by the United States Geological Service.

From Wired:

The new data provides what NAS committee member Thorsten Markus called “a dramatic improvement” in what we can see. The previously off-limits sea ice data has a resolution of one meter. The previous scientific standard sea ice images from the Landsat program have a resolution of 15 meters.

With the new info in hand, scientists should be able to build better models of smaller sea-ice features like melt ponds and ridges. Both are believed to have important roles in sea ice dynamics, but how important they are remains unclear.

It’s not just the high resolution of the satellite data that’s got scientists excited. The intelligence community has also been snapping photos of more locations and for longer than anyone else.

“[The data] is better in quality, it’s longer in duration and it’s broader in coverage,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, who did not contribute to the new report, but is looking at similar issues for the National Academy of Sciences.

You can view sets of images from a number of locations including the Canadian Arctic, Barrow Alaska and the East Siberian Sea. For each location, there are high quality images from the years 2000, 2001, 2002-2006 and 2007-2008. It’s fascinating stuff.

Hopefully these images will help scientists get more information about how polar sea ice has changed over the past ten years. It will be interesting to see the influence they might have on current global warming science.

Link [Wired]

Warming Shifts Tropical Rain Band Northward

Today’s wet, temperate areas near the equator will someday be arid thanks to a tropical rain band that has been moving north at an average rate of almost a mile a year for three centuries – probably because of global warming, according to scientists. And ‘someday’ isn’t centuries away: it’s as soon as 2050 for some Pacific Islands.

New research suggests that we need merely look toward the Galapagos Islands as evidence of where this has already happened. The dry, freshwater-starved island had a wet climate four centuries ago.

From MSNBC:

“We’re talking about the most prominent rainfall feature on the planet, one that many people depend on as the source of their freshwater because there is no groundwater to speak of where they live,” said Julian Sachs, associate professor of oceanography at the University of Washington and lead author of the paper. “In addition many other people who live in the tropics but farther afield from the Pacific could be affected because this band of rain shapes atmospheric circulation patterns throughout the world.”

The authors analyzed natural records of rainfall (including microbes and chemical ratios) left in annual layers of lake and lagoon sediments from four Pacific islands at or near the equator.

Washington Island, about 5 degrees north of the equator, is now at the southern edge of the intertropical convergence zone and receives nearly 10 feet of rain a year. But during the Little Ice Age it was arid. A similar arid past was found for Palau, which lies about 7 degrees north of the equator and in the heart of the modern convergence zone.

In contrast, the researchers present evidence that the Galapagos Islands, today an arid place on the equator in the Eastern Pacific, had a wet climate during the Little Ice Age.

Once again, the time to act was yesterday – at this point, we need to start preparing for some of the consequences of global warming as well as taking action to keep it from getting worse.

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Flickr user sly06

Mountain Pine Beetles: Climate Change Disaster or Natural Phenomenon?

Are mountain pine beetles, which have ravaged western forests from the American southwest up into Canada, a global warming-caused disaster or a necessary natural phenomenon? Some scientists and environmentalists believe that the much-maligned beetles are actually playing a vital ecological role, similar to forest fires.

From The New York Times:

Dr. Gregg DeNitto, a forest health specialist with the Forest Service here, said the beetles were not “an exotic like the emerald ash bore.”

“This is a native insect in a native host, and these are normal biological processes that have happened for millennia,” Dr. DeNitto said.

Nothing can or should be done to halt the spread of the beetle, experts say. After they kill the mature trees, the soil becomes more fertile as nitrogen levels increase, sometimes tripling. The growth rate of surviving trees increases when the infestation ends. After dead trees fall over or burn, grass grows and provides elk habitat, and slightly more diverse forests rise up.

Beetles help by breaking down fallen trees, as well. “They digest the wood and are valuable in terms of nutrient recycling,” said Dr. Ken Raffa, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin who studies the beetles. “And they introduce micro-organisms that further break down the wood.”

That’s not to say that the beetles aren’t causing major damage, with the potential to do even more harm in the future. Bark beetles have destroyed 8 million acres of forest, a level of destruction not seen in 150 years. Once killed and vacated by the beetles, affected trees are at high risk of burning so hot in places that the fires could bake the soil, causing severe erosion and runoff. Moreover, many of the affected trees provide sustenance that species like grizzly bears rely on for survival.

Even the scientists who insist that the infestations are part of a natural process admit that, well, okay, maybe it’s not entirely natural. Fire suppression efforts and large-scale clear cuts make forests more vulnerable.

Dr. Diana Six, who has studied the phenomenon and believes that it’s a natural cycle that must play its course, says there’s no foreseeable end to the outbreak and that if it’s climate driven, “we have to reverse climate change.”

Link [The New York Times]

Photo credit: West Coast Climate Equity

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