Climate of doubt as superstorm Sandy crosses US coast

by Graham Readfearn via Readfearn.com

A 30-year-old man has just become the first New Yorker to be killed by the destructive force of the super-charged storm Sandy which, as I type, is moving across the eastern side of the United States.
     The New York Times reported how the man died when a tree fell on his house in Queens. The former-Hurricane Sandy has already claimed more than 60 lives in Caribbean countries.
     There are something like 50 million Americans currently in the storm’s path. It seems inevitable that more people will lose their lives in the coming hours.
     Whatever transpires we no doubt all hope that the number of fatalities is low. But neither good fortune nor any god will decide. The death toll will be what it is, and families will grieve.
It seems insensitive to mention the billions of dollars of damage the storm will cause. It might, to some, seem insensitive to mention human-caused climate change at a time like this.

Connecting the dots between 'Frankenstorm' and global warming as extreme weather becomes the new norm

Courtesy: AP

“It's a freakish and unprecedented monster,” says Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein of a super storm heading towards the US east coast “threatening 60 million Americans in the eastern third of the nation in just a couple of days with high winds, drenching rains, extreme tides, flooding and probably snow.”
     As Hurricane Sandy heads towards the east coast, it is likely to merge with an Arctic jet steam cold front to transform into an “unprecedented” “super storm”, the likes of which has not been seen over the eastern US in many decades, with sea surges of 1 to 2 metres.
     This storm is dangerous and unusual because it comes at the tail end of hurricane season and beginning of winter storm season, "so it's kind of taking something from both — part hurricane, part nor'easter, all trouble," says Jeff Masters of Weather Underground.

Scientific consensus shifts public opinion on climate change

By Sunanda Creagh, 30 October 2012, via The Conversation

People are more likely to believe that humans cause global warming if they are told that 97% of publishing climate scientists agree that it does, a new study has found.
     Despite overwhelming evidence showing that human activity is causing the planet to overheat, public concern is on the wane, said the study, titled The pivotal role of perceived scientific consensus in acceptance of science and published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday.
     “One reason for this decline is the ‘manufacture of doubt’ by political and vested interests, which often challenge the existence of the scientific consensus. The role of perceived consensus in shaping public opinion is therefore of considerable interest,” the study’s authors said.

Climate News

Week ending 28 October 2012

PICKS OF THE WEEK

'Frankenstorm': Worse than sum of its parts
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOe_VgN1vO9ESj6xq4BIGUOlvmKw?docId=0a01f70bfe9143c0ade2296cecd08af2
Seth Borenstien, AP, 28 October 2012The storm that is threatening 60 million Americans in the eastern third of the nation in just a couple of days with high winds, drenching rains, extreme tides, flooding and probably snow is much more than just an ordinary weather system. It's a freakish and unprecedented monster.
AND
Connecting the dots between 'Frankenstorm' and global warming as extreme weather becomes the new norm
http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/10/connecting-dots-between-frankenstorm.html

Renewables: Australia's a land of plenty
http://www.theage.com.au/business/carbon-economy/renewables-australias-a-land-of-plenty-20121026-28ai7.html
Peter Hannam, the Age, 26 October 2012
When feisty UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres swept into Sydney this week, she mocked suggestions Australia is alone in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

NASA climate chief demolishes denialist claims on sea levels

NASA climate chief James Hansen has three great attributes: his research is impeccable and pertinent, he is politically courageous, and he communicates with great clarity to lay audiences.
     Reading his presentation on 5 September — when he stepped in the deniers’ lion’s den at a meeting organised by the climate-denialist lobbyist Grover Norquist to rebut arguments previously presented by Pat Michaels — all three features of Hansen’s work were on display.
     Hansen shows how Michaels uses the denials’ favourite method – cherry-picking data over a particular range – to prove that black is white.
     Last week in Deniers cherry-pick in vain effort to prove up is down, we looked at how that technique had been used to falsely claim that “Global warming stopped 16 years ago”.

After the Arctic big melt: (1) A hotter planet

by David Spratt

The Arctic is a place of seasonal climate extremes, and it will become more extreme as the planet warms. “In the most dramatic reconfiguration of the map of the world since the end of the last Ice Age”, wrote John Gibbons recently in the Irish Times, “the Arctic ice cap is now committed to accelerated collapse”. There are global consequences.
    In the first of a series, we look at how Arctic melting, in a self-perpetuating positive feedback, is leading to more global warming and a hotter future.
    
Day and night

For almost six months a year in winter, it is dark 24-hours-a-day at the North Pole as the Earth’s northern axis tips away from the sun. The sun sets around 25 September each year and does appear over the horizon again until 17 March, when it then stays in sight all day, every day, for the next six months. 
     Almost 2600 kilometres further south, around the Arctic Circle, there is sunlight 24-hours a day for a month around the summer solstice, but only two hours a day of sun at the December winter solstice.

Climate News

Week ending 21 October 2012

Rank of hottest years to coldest. Courtesy UK Met Office

PICKS OF THE WEEK

UN warns of looming worldwide food crisis in 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/oct/14/un-global-food-crisis-warning
John Vidal, The Observer, 13 October 2012
Global grain reserves hit critically low levels; Extreme weather means climate 'is no longer reliable'; Rising food prices threaten disaster and unrest
AND
Empty Promise
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/10/15/empty-promise/
By George Monbiot, Guardian, 16 October 2012
Could scientists have got the impacts of climate change on food supply wildly wrong? I believe we might have made a mistake: a mistake whose consequences, if I am right, would be hard to overstate. I think the forecasts for world food production could be entirely wrong.

Deniers cherry-pick in vain effort to prove up is down

It's spring, but today was cooler than yesterday. The trend is obvious, it's getting cooler and winter is coming?
     That's the cherry-picking method at the heart of climate denial, and it's at work again in a story by David Rose first published by the Mail on Sunday claiming that "Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it".  It's doing the rounds.
   Whilst the UK Met Office was reported as the source of the figures, they were in fact quick to issue a rebuttal, noting that it is "the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme".

Climate News

Week ending 14 October 2012

Extreme Weather Photo Contest Winner: Ormond Shelf, by Jason Weingart

FEATURED

Climate change behind rise in weather disasters
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2012/10/10/weather-disasters-climate-change-munich-re-report/1622845/
USA Today, 10 October 2012
The number of natural disasters per year has been rising dramatically on all continents since 1980, but the trend is steepest for North America where countries have been battered by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, searing heat and drought, a new report says. The study being released today by Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance firm, sees climate change driving the increase and predicts those influences will continue in years ahead, though a number of experts question that conclusion.

PICKS OF THE WEEK

The food security risk index – map
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/graphic/2012/oct/10/food-security-risk-index-map
Guardian, 10 October 2012
The index has been developed by the risk analysis company Maplecroft for governments, NGOs and business to use as a barometer to identify those countries which may be susceptible to famine and societal unrest stemming from food shortages and price fluctuations. This map shows the results of evaluating the availability, access and stability of food supplies in 197 countries, as well as the nutritional and health status of populations
AND
UN warns of rising food costs after year's extreme weather
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/10/un-rising-food-costs-weather
John Vidal, Rebecca Smithers and Shiv Malik, Guardian, 10 October 2012
Warning comes as shops struggle to fill shelves and farmers' union reports wheat yields are at lowest level since 1980s.

Antarctic sea ice and global warming

by Mark Robison, FactChecker, 6 October 2012

The claim

Record high amounts of Antarctic sea ice contradict global warming.

The background

Reno reader Judson Pierce contacted Fact Checker on Monday with a story from Newsmax headlined “Record Antarctica ice contradicts global warming trend”.
     He wanted to know whether it truly contradicts global warming and why the mainstream media seems to be ignoring this fact after widely reporting Arctic sea ice being at record lows.
    Pierce is right that, as of this writing, the mainstream media hasn’t reported much about the Antarctica ice. It’s likely they will, as the national data center for such statistics announced the news just this week with a story headlined “Arctic sea ice shatters previous low records; Antarctic sea ice edges to record high.”

From Kermit to coal, book reveals how world's top brands greenwash the public

by Graham Readfearn, DeSmogBlog

"I guess it is easy being green," said Kermit the Frog as he bounced around a Ford Escape Hybrid in a 2006 television ad campaign.
    During the ad, Kermit displayed his innate talent for not blinking which, it has to be said, is due essentially to his congenital lack of eyelids.
    But had Kermit blinked, he would have missed the small print at the bottom of the ad which showed that at the time, this "green" vehicle had a fuel consumption slightly worse than the US average.
    But that seems to be the rule when it comes to claims of climate friendliness made by some of the world's biggest brands.
    Check the small print, and the responsible green hue soon fades to something resembling bullsh*t-brown (or whatever color denotes hypocrisy). At least that's the conclusion after reading Australian author and researcher Guy Pearse's latest book. Pearse spent close to four years immersing himself in some 3000 TV commercials and viewing about 4000 print and web adverts, all of which make claims of climate friendliness (I disclose here that I had a small paid role as a fact-checker on the book).

Climate News

Week ending 7 October 2012

FEATURED...

Climate change may force evacuation of vulnerable island states within a decade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/polar-arctic-greenland-ice-climate-change
Jo Confino, Guardian, 4 October 2012
Leading climate scientist warns that vulnerable island nations may need to be evacuated within a decade as evidence shows polar ice is shrinking at greater speeds than models predicted

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Calls for climate action as Great Barrier Reef suffers major coral loss
http://theconversation.edu.au/calls-for-climate-action-as-great-barrier-reef-suffers-major-coral-loss-9922
The Conversation interview, 2 October 2012
The Great Barrier Reef has lost half its coral cover in the last 27 years, and it could halve again by 2022 say researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
AND
Great reef catastrophe
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/great-reef-catastrophe-20121002-26vzq.html
Nicky Phillips, SMH, 2 October 2012
Half the Great Barrier Reef's coral has disappeared in the past 27 years and less than a quarter could be left within a decade unless action is taken, a landmark study has found
AND
Marine environments in Australia's southern waters under threat
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3601785.htm

Climate News

Week ending 30 September 2012

Images: NASA

FEATURED ARTICLE

Arctic Sea Ice: What, Why and What Next
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/09/21/arctic-sea-ice-what-why-and-what-next/
Ramez Naam, SA blog, September 21, 2012
On September 19th, NSIDC, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, announced that Arctic sea ice has shrunk as far as it will shrink this summer, and that the ice is beginning to reform, expanding the floating ice cap that covers the North Pole and the seas around it.

Interactive map: Arctic sea ice concentration, 1984 and 2012
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-27/arctic-sea-ice-maps-before-after-1984-2012/4283418

Climate News

Week end 23 September 2012

PICKS OF THE WEEK

ACT government seeks 90% renewables by 2020
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/act-government-seeks-90-renewables-by-2020-2020
Giles Parkinson, Renew Economy, 19 September 2012
The ACT government has outlined an ambitious plan to source 90 per cent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2020, with solar, wind and energy efficiency at the centrepiece of its strategy.

Four-degree rise demands 90-degree rethink
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/fourdegree-rise-demands-90degree-rethink-20120921-26byz.html
Ian Dunlop, SMH, September 22, 2012
Climate change has moved into a new and dangerous phase. The Arctic has been warming two to three times faster than the rest of the world. In the past few weeks, melting of the Arctic sea ice has accelerated dramatically, reducing the area and volume to levels never previously experienced.

Arctic warning: As the system changes, we must adjust our science

Update 20 September:
EXTENT: Satellite data shows Arctic melt sea-ice extent probably reached the minimum for the year at around 3.4 million square kilometres on Monday 17 September, 18 per cent less than the previous record in 2007 of 4.2 m.sq.kms. The JAXA daily raw data is here and the NSIDC date is here. This extent is now well less than half of the average extent of the 1980s.

VOLUME: The sea-ice volume is now down to just one-fifth of what it was in 1979. Latest PIOMAS volume from September 3, 2012 is 3407 cubic kilometers of ice remaining in the Arctic. Contrasted with the 16,855 of 1979, that is just about 20 per cent. Extent has dropped further since 3 September, so minimum volume this melt season will be about 5–10 per cent less than the early-September figure.

ICE-FREE ARCTIC: Debate rages within the scientific community. Previously we covered Big call: Cambridge prof. predicts Arctic summer sea ice “all gone by 2015”. On Monday the Guardian reported "Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years", in which Prof. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge said:  "I have been predicting [the collapse of sea ice in summer months] for many years. The main cause is simply global warming: as the climate has warmed there has been less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer… in the end the summer melt overtook the winter growth such that the entire ice sheet melts or breaks up during the summer months. This collapse, I predicted would occur in 2015-16 at which time the summer Arctic (August to September) would become ice-free. The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates. As the sea ice retreats in summer the ocean warms up (to 7C in 2011) and this warms the seabed too. The continental shelves of the Arctic are composed of offshore permafrost, frozen sediment left over from the last ice age. As the water warms the permafrost melts and releases huge quantities of trapped methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas so this will give a big boost to global warming." Unforntunately, the eviednce is on his side.

Northern Polar Institute Research Director Kim Holmen, left,
with UN Foundation Board Chairman Ted Turner and
President Timothy Wirth in the Arctic

Post of 13 September:
By David Spratt,
published in ReNewEconomy on 12 September 2012
and in Climate Progress on 13 September 2012

The Arctic sea-ice big melt of 2012 “has taken us by surprise and we must adjust our understanding of the system and we must adjust our science and we must adjust our feelings for the nature around us”, according to Kim Holmen, Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) international director.
     From Svalbard (halfway between mainland Norway and Greenland), the BBC’s David Shukman reported on 7 September that Holmen had described the current melt rate “a greater change than we could even imagine 20 years ago, even 10 years ago”.
     As detailed last week, the thin crust of sea-ice which floats on the north polar sea is now only half of the average minimum summer extent of the 1980, and just one-quarter of the volume twenty years ago.

How British government's climate forecasting MET Office gets the Arctic wrong

Introductory note: It is now very likely that the Arctic will be sea-ice-free within a decade, with enormous consequences. Not only has the 2007 record minimum low been smashed, but the new record low 2012 sea-ice extent (3.4 million square kilometres) is less than half the figure three decades ago. And the volume of ice is now down to just one-fifth of the figure three decades ago. In 1979 the summer volume was 16,855 cubic kilometres, on 3 September this year it was just 3,407 cubic kilometres. 80 per cent of the ice has already been lost.
     The IPCC 2007 got the Arctic sea-ice wrong in projecting an Arctic still containing summer sea-ice by 2100. Now, Arctic specialists relying on new, regional climate models such as Prof. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge are making the big call of a summer ice-free Arctic as early as 2015.  By contrast, those relying for Arctic forecasts on global general circulation models (GCMs) used for the 2007 IPCC report are sticking to a 2030-2040 projection, but lament that “We just don’t know exactly why this (sea-ice loss) is moving so fast”. The predictions of those who rely too much on the GCM models seem strangely removed from the reality on the ground and even a common sense view of the evidence, as this analysis from Arctic News shows. Underestimating the speed and likely future rate of change in the climate system has deadly consequences. – David

UK MET Office keeps downplaying significance of events in the Arctic

by Sam Carana, Arctic News

One of the most respected datasets on Arctic sea-ice volume is  PIOMAS, the  Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System developed at the Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington. The graph below shows PIOMAS data for annual minimum Arctic sea ice volume (black dots) with an exponential trend added (in red).

Climate News

Week ending 16 September 2012

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Coal company shareholders dudded, says Garnaut
http://afr.com/p/national/coal_company_shareholders_dudded_JZtQMNBDihfjcEAliiYWNN
Ross Garnaut, AFR, 12 September 2012
Labor’s former climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, has accused coal companies of “dudding” their shareholders by overinvesting in mining projects

Decades Of Deception: The Coal Industry Has Advertised ‘Clean Coal’ Since At Least 1921
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/13/845311/decades-of-deception-the-coal-industry-has-advertised-clean-coal-since-at-least-1921/
Stephen Lacey, Climate Progress, 13 September 2012
The coal industry has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to convince people that it can create an environmentally friendly product. However, whether it be the technological and cost barriers associated with capturing and storing carbon dioxide or the devastating impact of mountaintop mining on groundwater, ecosystems and human health, the concept of “clean” coal is a proven myth.

On thin ice: Time-frame to save the Arctic is melting away

By David Spratt, first published by ReNew Economy on 5 September 2012

 Something extraordinary is happening when graphs of melting Arctic sea-ice have their vertical axis redrawn because the data are falling off the chart.
     But that’s what has occurred in the last 10 days, since the extent of floating Arctic sea-ice broke the satellite-era minimum record on 24 August. On that date it was 4.2 million square kilometres, according to data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
     Since then, an additional half a million square kilometres of sea-ice has melted. The extent on 4 September was just half of the average minimum extent of the 1980s. At the current rate of loss, with one to three weeks left in the northern melt season, the minimum may well shrink below 3.5 million square kilometres. This is an astounding story.

Climate News

Week ending 9 September 2012

Arctic sea ice extent over the past 1,450 years reconstructed from proxy data by Kinnard et al., with a 40-year low pass filter applied.  Note that the modern observational data in this figure extend through 2008, and thus it is a close approximation of current conditions, even though the extent is not as low as current annual data due to the 40-year smoothing. Courtesy Skeptical Science

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Life Is Sacred
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/life_is_sacred_20120903/
Chris Hedges, TruthDig, 3 September 2012
Corporations care nothing for democracy, the rule of law, human rights or the sanctity of life. They are determined to be the last predator standing. And then they too will be snuffed out. Unrestrained hubris always leads to self-immolation.

Climate News

Week ending 2 September 2012

Arctic sea-ice volume 1979 to 25 Aigust 2012

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”
– Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (2006)
PICKS OF THE WEEK

Grassroots Movements Driving Back Coal Worldwide
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/27/746681/grassroots-movements-driving-back-coal-worldwide/
Gordon Scott, Sierra Club, August 27, 2012
The global grassroots movement against dirty, polluting coal-fired power has added another continent to the ranks of those finally moving away from the carbon-intensive fuel source: Australia.