Climate News

Week ending 29 July 2012

Global Drought Monitor July 2012   Source: http://drought.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/drought.html

Erratic Weather Across Globe Fueling Impending Food Crisis
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/23-0
Common Dreams, July 23, 2012
In addition to the ongoing drought in the United States, experts warn that the potential for a worldwide food crisis is heightened by extreme and erratic weather across the globe.

Extreme Drought Areas in US Nearly Triple in One Week
http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/extreme-drought-areas-u-s-triple.html
Mat McDermott, Treehugger, 27 July 2012
The drought gets worse: The US Drought Monitor reports that areas on the nation under extreme drought conditions in key agricultural states has tripled in the past week. Furthermore, the amount of land experiencing drought conditions more broadly has increased to nearly two-thirds of the nation, up from 56% just a week ago.

When National Climate Disasters Go Global: On Drought, Food, And Global Insecurity
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/18/535661/when-national-climate-disasters-go-global-on-drought-food-and-global-insecurity

The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic

By Joe Romm, a Climate Progress cross-post

“The decadal land-surface average temperature using a 10-year moving average of surface temperatures over land. Anomalies are relative to the Jan 1950 – December 1979 mean. The grey band indicates 95% statistical and spatial uncertainty interval.” A Koch-funded reanalysis of 1.6 billion temperature reports finds that “essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.”

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) is poised to release its findings next week on the cause of recent global warming.

A sober assessment of our situation (3)

by David Spratt

[Final of a 3-part series]

The first part in this series described some characteristics of the climate debate and the climate action advocacy movement in Australia. Part two explored some of the forces which have moulded the shape of climate politics in Australia today.

• Read Part 1: Where we are
• Read Part 2: How we got to here
• Related post: As Tony Abbott launches all-out war on climate action, what's the plan? (2 Feb 2014)

3. Challenges  

3.1 The “possible” and the necessary

Our goal is to achieve a desirable future, not to just reduce the misery, because the alternative is really awful, and failure is not an option. Current global greenhouse gas mitigation commitments will result in global warming of  4 degrees Celsius plus by 2100. Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency says that “with the current policies in place, the world is perfectly on track to six degrees Celsius increasing the temperature, which is very bad news. And everybody, even school children, know this will have catastrophic implications for all of us.”

Climate News

Week ending 22 July 2012

Carbon dioxide emission per head of population - see first story

PICKS OF THE WEEK

As emissions rise, China loses moral high ground
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/07/as-emissions-rise-china-loses-moral-high-ground.html
Jeff Tollefson, Nature News Blog, 18 July 202
For years China has dismissed concerns about its rising carbon emissions by pointing out that, on a per-capita basis, Chinese citizens still emit far less than their counterparts in the industrialized world. But now that China’s per-capita emissions are on par with those of the European Union, that argument will be much harder to make.
AND
A da xiang in the room: new emissions data
http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/07/20/theres-a-da-xiang-in-the-room-new-greenhouse-emission-data/
Cathy Alexander, Crikey, 20 July 2012
There’s a dà xiàng in the room when it comes to addressing climate change. Dà xiàng is mandarin for elephant. And if you want to get your head around the latest data on greenhouse gas emissions, you’ll need to look to China.

Post-Carbon Postcard #2: New York City

by John Wiseman, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne

a Post Carbon Pathways crosspost

Over the last few months I’ve had the privilege of listening to a range of leading climate change policy advocates in Australia, the US, Canada and Europe reflect on priority actions for reducing the risk of runaway climate change.
     This has included interviews with many of the lead authors of the strategies reviewed in the Post Carbon Pathways report. In this Post Carbon Postcard #2, written from New York City, I’d like to highlight a few of their responses to two of the most common questions in the minds of people who have been working on climate change and environmental issues for many years: Is it too late? And...So what should we do now?

A sober assessment of our situation (2)

by David Spratt

The first part in this series described some characteristics of the climate debate and the climate action advocacy movement in Australia.

• Read Part 1: Where we are
• Read Part 3: Challenges
• Related post: As Tony Abbott launches all-out war on climate action, what's the plan? (2 Feb 2014) 

2. How we got to here  [Part 2 in a series of 3]

2.1 Climate in the media

In the USA (and Australia too), concern about climate change (as measured by the climate change threat index - see chart below) peaked around 2007.  Research studies find that media coverage of climate change directly affects public concern levels, and that the actions of political elites turn out to be the most powerful driver of public concern. Concern in the USA was at its heightat the time of media focus on the IPCC’s 2007 fourth assessment reports and Al Gore’s “The Inconvenient Truth”.

The Climate Change Threat Index aggregates data from 6 different polling organizations gauging how much people worry about global warming

The wet side of Greenland

An Arctic Sea Ice blog crosspost

When writing The dark side of Greenland, a recent blog post on decreasing reflectivity of the Greenland ice sheet, with images comparing the southwest of Greenland with satellite images from previous years, I of course realized that when that ice sheet becomes less reflective, it will soak up more solar energy and thus melt faster. But the practical aspect of this theory never really dawned on me, until I saw this video:


More videos here and here.

Climate News

Week ending 15 July 2012

PICKS OF THE WEEK

The bush is dying, yet still we deny it
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/editorial/the-bush-is-dying-yet-still-we-deny-it-20120712-21z1p.html
Canberra Times Editorial, July 13, 2012
Australian politicos' focus on Whyalla earlier this month - will or won't the carbon tax wipe it ''off the map''? - summed up just how low the national climate change debate has sunk

Must-See Videos: ABC Interviews Climatologist Michael Mann
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/12/513131/must-see-videos-abc-interviews-climatologist-michael-mann/
Joe Romm, Climate Progress, July 12, 2012
ABC’s Bill Blakemore has a 5-part interview of the most vindicated climate scientist in America, Michael Mann. All 5 videos are posted below with links to their transcripts.

A sober assessment of our situation (1)

by David Spratt 

Where we are   [Part 1 in a series]

• Read Part 2: How we got to here
• Read Part 3: Challenges 
• Related post: As Tony Abbott launches all-out war on climate action, what's the plan? (2 Feb 2014) 

1.1 Introduction

In the last five years, Australia has signed the Kyoto Protocol, legislated a price on greenhouse gas emissions, established a Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), and more than doubled the Renewable Energy Target (RET) to 20 per cent of electricity production by 2020. The Contracts for Closure of around 2GW of dirty coal power is due to be resolved soon. Household electricity demand is falling and the wholesale price has dropped substantially. Energy efficiency measures, installed household solar PV and higher prices have already reduced demand by the equivalent of Hazelwood power station’s full capacity.
     The Greens’ vote and influence has increased, the Transition Towns and sustainability movements are growing, and a formidable community campaign against coal seam gas is gaining significant political power. The coal industry in Queensland is a hot topic. The cost of renewable energy, especially PV solar, is falling quickly and household rooftop solar is already grid competitive. Community support for replacing dirty fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy is strong.

Climate News

Week ending 8 July 2012

Infographic: Australia Institute

The case for shutting Hazelwood, Australia's dirtiest power station

by Roger Dargaville, Research Fellow, Energy Research Institute at University of Melbourne 

Under its Clean Energy Future, the Federal government will negotiate to close 2000 MW of the dirtiest fossil fuel power generating capacity in Australia by 2020.
     With the price on carbon now in operation, there will be pressure on some highly carbon intensive station to remain viable – this policy pre-empts the failure of the most vulnerable businesses and provides some certainty as to which stations will close, as well as compensating the companies affected, including the workers who will lose their jobs.
The plants under consideration are Hazelwood, Yallourn and Energy Brix in Victoria, Playford B in South Australia and Collinsville in Queensland.

Arctic sea-ice takes a nose dive

Neven Acropolis, a Climate Progress cross-post

Arctic sea ice area for June in recent years. Source: Cryosphere Today

If you want to mislead people into thinking that there is nothing weird going on in the Arctic, you have to do it during winter. In winter things almost look normal on some graphs, with gaps between trend lines and long-term averages not as ridiculously big as during spring and summer.  If you’re lucky, anomalous weather patterns can make those trend lines come real close to the long-term average, and you’ll have a couple of weeks of shouting ‘recovery’, ridiculing scientists and suggesting graphs are being cooked. It’s an annual ritual on pseudo-skeptic blogs, which is only logical. The Arctic is becoming ever more problematic for their life work, i.e. denying AGW could ever be a problem and thus delaying any meaningful action on mitigating the consequences of AGW. Thank God water still freezes in winter.

Why we are going nuts

As noted in the End game for the climate policy paradigm post, I am re-posting two articles by the US environmentalist Ken Ward, because they are so relevant to our circumstances today. Next week, I will start a 3-part series, tentatively entitled "A sober assessment of our situation" — David


Why we are going nuts
Lessons from cognitive dissonance theory for US environmentalists

by Ken Ward, first published on Grist, March 4, 2009

"If we do not raise our sights and ambitions, then we are guaranteed to fail. Itʼs a tough but simple choice and if we continue down our present road, we will leap from foggy thinking into pure madness, there being no other means of keeping reality at bay."

If we accept the worst, or precautionary assessment, then US environmentalists have perhaps a year to avert cataclysm and nothing we are doing now will work. We are dealing with this terrible situation in a very ordinary and human way, by denying it.
     Our denial comes in a variety of forms: we believe that President Obama can and will solve the problem; we ignore Jim Hansenʼs assessment and timeline; we concentrate on our jobs and organization agendas and pass over the big picture; we focus on the molehill of climate policy rather than tackle the mountain of climate politics; we assess our efforts by looking back on how far we have come and do not measure the distance still to be traveled; we scrupulously avoid criticizing each other, lacking conviction in our own courses of action and not wishing to invite criticism in turn; and we are irrationally committed to antique approaches that are self-evidently inadequate.

Climate News

Week ending 1 July 2012

The U.S. surface temperature map from Unisys at 4 pm, June 29, 2012, shows 100° temperatures stretching almost continuously from California eastward to the Carolinas

PICKS OF THE WEEK

While Colorado burns, Washington fiddles
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/while-colorado-burns-washington-fiddles
Bill McKibben, Guardian, 29 June 2012
Drought, wildfires, storms, floods – climate change is happening, but the real disaster is our Big Energy-owned politicians' inaction

Climate News

Week ending 24 June 2012

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Campaigners demand an end to $1tn fossil fuel subsidies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jun/18/campaigners-end-fossil-fuel-subsidies
Guardian, 18 June 2012
Twitterstorm calls for an end to fossil fuel subsidies as a new report says oil, coal and gas companies could be getting $1 trillion of government support.

Climate News

Week ending 17 June 2012

The Northern Hemisphere land and ocean average surface temperature for May 2012 was the all-time warmest May on record, at 0.85°C (1.53°F) above average: State of the Climate Global Analysis” May 2012

Climate News

For week ending 10 June 2012

Difference between the number of melt days in 2011 and the average number of melt days during the period 1979 - 2010. Large sections of the island experienced twenty more days with melting conditions than average. Image credit: Arctic Report Card

Unprecedented May heat in Greenland, new May record just 0.7C below hottest ever recorded
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2110
Jeff Masters, Wunderblog,  May 31, 2012
The record books for Greenland's climate were re-written on Tuesday, when the mercury hit 24.8°C (76.6°F) at Narsarsuaq, Greenland, on the southern coast. According to weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera, this is the hottest temperature on record in Greenland for May, and is just 0.7°C (1.3°F) below the hottest temperature ever measured in Greenland

End game for the climate policy paradigm

Note: Next week, this site will start a short series on the state of climate politics in Australia, with some emphasis on the future of the community activist and non-for-profit sectors. In part, it will be  a follow-up to the Bright-siding series, plus also sober assessment of our present circumstances, how we got here and a few thoughts on what to do. But there is no better place that this piece by the US environmentalist Ken Ward, first published in 2008. It remains fresh for our circumstances today which, if anything, have deteriorated in the last four years. This could be Australia today:

Why so? Because we think that if we hit upon just the right formula – the perfect blend of incentives, quasi-free markets trappings, tax breaks and so on – we can accomplish the political equivalent of changing lead into gold, and pass effective climate legislation without major opposition. But political power is immutable and we are not alchemists. Policy – a plan of governmental action – is an outcome of power, not a means of achieving it. We do not have enough power to win functional climate policy in the US,  and until we do so, there will be no global climate solution.

Climate News

Week ending 3 June 2012

Courtesy Climate Spectator

PICKS OF THE WEEK

The biggest climate victory you never heard of
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201252614334480622.html#.T8MIK-S-NrA.facebook
Mark Hertsgaard, Aljazeera, 27 May 2012
Coal is going down in the United States, and that's good news for the Earth's climate. The US Energy Information Administration has announced that coal, the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive conventional fossil fuel, generated only 36 per cent of US electricity in the first quarter of 2012.

Projected warming increases as emissions rise, politics fails

Climate scoreboard at 29 May 2012. View live scoreboard

This chart needs no explanation. The Climate Scoreboard is an online tool that allows the public to track progress in the ongoing negotiations to produce an international climate treaty. The Scoreboard automatically reports, on a daily basis, whether proposals in the treaty process commit countries to enough greenhouse gas emissions reductions to achieve widely expressed goals, such as limiting future warming to 1.5 to 2.0°C (2.7 to 3.6°F) above pre-industrial temperatures. And users can explore the analysis behind the numbers. At time of posting, the scoreboard projected an increase in global temperature of 4.5°C by 2100.