Strong evidence that cloud changes may exacerbate global warming

This image shows unique cloud patterns over the Pacific Ocean of the coast of Baja California, an area of great interest to Amy Clement and Robert Burgman of the University of Miami and Joel Norris of Scripps Oceanography, as they study the role of low-level clouds in climate change. (Credit: NASA)

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2009) — The role of clouds in climate change has been a major question for decades. As the earth warms under increasing greenhouse gases, it is not known whether clouds will dissipate, letting in more of the sun's heat energy and making the earth warm even faster, or whether cloud cover will increase, blocking the Sun's rays and actually slowing down global warming.

In a study published in the July 24 issue of Science, researchers Amy Clement and Robert Burgman from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Joel Norris from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego begin to unravel this mystery. Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet.

The complete article in ScienceDaily is here.

Texas drought could be the worst ever

(The drought gripping the southern 1/3 to 1/2 of Texas is described as "extraordinary", the worst in 50 years or more. A slow-moving tropical storm or hurricane might help, but no rapid improvement is expected before sometime in 2010 at the earliest).

LUBBOCK, Texas — Drought in Texas has led to an estimated $3.6 billion in crop and livestock losses, and without ample rains, the year's final tally could top the state record set in 2006, Texas agriculture officials say.

Crops and rangeland are scorched from lack of rainfall and record triple-digit temperatures throughout parts of Texas — the nation's second-largest agriculture state behind California. Much of the central and southern parts of the state have been in the two most severe stages of drought for months.

Agriculture officials in the state, which leads the nation in cotton and cattle production, estimated Monday that total crop losses attributed to the drought that started in November have reached $2.6 billion. Livestock losses have reached an additional $974 million. And officials have not yet tallied how much ranchers will lose from having fewer cattle to breed or from selling calves earlier than usual because they don't have pasture on which their animals can graze.

It could be two years before a reduced beef supply and higher prices hit the grocery store, said Travis Miller, a drought specialist with the Texas AgriLife Extension. He noted that many cattle being sold at Texas sale barns will end up in states where grazing lands are better.

The complete USA Today article about this historic drought is here.

Drizzle causes emergency in Chilean city

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — In one of the driest regions on Earth, even a drizzle can cause an emergency.

Less than 1/100th of an inch of rain fell on the Chilean port city of Iquique Monday afternoon, accompanied by moderate winds of about 10 mph, according to the country's weather service. That was enough to knock out power to several neighborhoods and to damage the roofs of 4,000 houses, said Gov. Miguel Silva.

Schools were closed Tuesday so that officials can repair the damage.

The city of 170,000 people in northern Chile is in the heart of the barren Atacama Desert, squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. It averages about 0.02 inch of rain a year, according to University of Chile meteorologists.

Houses in the region are not built to resist rain and their roofs often have no slope for runoff.

New NOAA chief brings attention to "dead zones"

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 6:15 PM CDT

The "dead zone" off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, where there is too little oxygen in the water for anything to live, is getting new federal attention under President Barack Obama's administration.

Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has scheduled a teleconference Monday with Nancy Rabalais, who has been studying the problem, called hypoxia, since 1970 and is currently measuring this year's hypoxic area.

"We've got a new administration, a little more environmentally conscious," NOAA spokesman Ben Sherman said Wednesday. "Dr. Lubchenco is a research scientist who has studied the dead zone. She believes it's a national issue, not just a Gulf of Mexico issue."

Lubchenco, Rabalais and other officials and scientists planned to announce the zone's current size and talk about its implications and plans to reduce it.

"We want to raise some of the issues behind it and some of the debate about the changes needed to shrink it," Sherman said.

R. Eugene Turner, the Louisiana State University scientist who first linked the dead zone to nutrient runoff from the vast Mississippi River basin, said, "It's the first time anybody in NOAA has done this. I think they're raising the visibility a little bit."

In 2008, 415 coastal areas worldwide _ 131 of them in North America or the Caribbean _ either had documented dead zones or such high nutrient levels that hypoxia was likely, according to the World Resources Institute and Robert Diaz of Virginia Marine Institute.

The complete article is here.

Celebrating 40 years - Apollo 11



Check this out:
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/apollo11Splash/index.html

Here's more on the Apollo 11 mission:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th/index.html

The astronauts that landed on the moon want astronauts to fly to Mars:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8158519.stm

Countering the contrarians on global warming

Just how hot is it going to get?

That’s what everyone wants to know, and the focus of a lot of research. But parsing through the science can present some problems, with plenty of opportunity for mischief.

Aaron Huertas has been in this game for a while, so he figured there might be problems as soon as he saw the headline on the release from Rice University: “Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong.”

The text of the release, which was promoting a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, noted that climate models can’t explain all of the heating indicated in the geologic record of a warm period some 55 million years ago. And one of the scientists who did the research told Reuters that this could mean current forecasts are underestimating how hot Earth’s atmosphere will get in the future.

But Huertas, press secretary at the Union of Concerned Scientists, figured the initial headline from Rice University might be used by those skeptical about climate change — he calls them contrarians because he feels all scientists are skeptical — to argue that the carbon dioxide generated by human activities isn’t to blame for global warming.

The complete text of the Reuters blog is here.

Comforting the child who fears global warming

(I wrestle with this question myself, so I was happy to see a thoughtful article at OregonLive.com addressing the issue. On the one hand you want to tell the truth, and explain a). what the scientists who study this believe, and b). the limits of science, but that can be difficult, especially with a small child. Should you candy-coat it (a little) and be reassuring. I think so - odds are we'll figure it out, even if we go kicking and screaming into a new, green, renewable economy. I thought this was some well-balanced advice. For the complete article click here).



In the car, on the our way to get gas, the 4-year-old asks:

"Dad, how far does outer space go?"

And in the kitchen, while making brownies:

"Mom, what happens to your stuff when you die?"

Good questions, honey.

I know, too, the questions will only get bigger. I'm sure I'll hear the one I fear the most while gardening or some such:

"Mom," she'll start, "this global warming thing? Even if we immediately stop producing C02, the earth will continue to warm, so aren't we in trouble no matter what?"

Even though I won't have an absolute answer, I don't want her to lose sleep on it.

"Cooling trend" and global warming

(I found this to be a thought-provoking blog from Harry Fuller at ZDNET. To see the original post click here).

I found an interesting fact-based argument on the “cooling trend” that is frequently used to “refute” global warming warnings. Here’s the link, complete with charts. His basic argument: using the 1998 peak makes recent years look cooler, but take a loooooonger look and the curve is distinctly toward hotter times ahead. That means the refuters of global warming may have to fall back on the “bad data from bad thermometer” argument as only a small minority of voters seems to be buying the eco-nuts’ conspiracy theory.

Then there is the nagging issue of the disappearance of the glaciers and ice sheets, from Alps to Greenland to Arctic. If you don’t want to accept global warming, the argument can basically be “hard cheese, some things come and some things go.” But that gets dangerously close to admitting evolution. Be interesting to see survey of global warming deniers and natural evolution deniers and see if there could be anybody able to pretzel his or her mind around those two positions simultaneously.
STANDARD BOILER PLATE
This verbiage will now be attached to any blog I do about global warming. It’s amazing to me that somebody who can apparently read and then post comments still wonders in public why global warming matters on a technology web site. But I am naive, always assuming everybody’s paying attention.
It’s because of money. If global warming has enough acceptance among corporations, the public and even pols, there will be more money spent on green tech, wisely or unwisely. If oil prices stay low and most people don’t care a fig about global warming, green tech will have a difficult time succeeding, regardless of its merits. Not every good idea succeeds. VCs usually invest where they think there’s best chance for a good return. In greentech as in any tech the winners will often be determined by luck, brilliance, timing, happenstance and even marketing. Behind it all will be the money and behind that: whether the evidence for global warming and curtailing pollution drive action or is written off as claptrap.

A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Email Harry Fuller

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Bill Gates envisions fighting hurricanes by manipulating the sea

If you thought domination of the world's software market was cool, get a load of Bill Gates' next technological vision: giant ocean-going tubs that fight hurricanes by draining warm water from the surface to the depths, through a long tube.

A second tube could simultaneously suck cool water from the depths to the surface.

Microsoft founder Gates and a dozen other scientists and engineers have a patent pending for deploying such vessels, which they say would collect water through waves breaking over the walls of the tub. Some variations have the water moving through turbines on their way down, which would in turn generate electricity to suck up the cooler water. The article is here.

Could we be wrong about global warming?

Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong?

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

The article in USA today is here.

Cooling trend does not refute global warming

With the current Cap and Trade legislation pending in Congress many commentators have been presenting the argument that global temperatures have actually been cooling over the last ten (10) years and global warming is not really occurring. While I think that the Cap and Trade bill should not be passed, this argument of cooling temperatures is very misleading.

Let’s take a detailed look at the argument that temperatures are actually cooling. The temperature data from NOAA does show that the average temperature peaked in 1998 and each year since has been cooler than the 1998 peak. This does not, however, represent a cooling trend. Just take a look at the chart of the data. The moving average temperature has clearly been rising. The ‘cooling’ is simply temperatures that have not exceeded a one year spike.

The complete article is here.

Does global warming threaten national security?

The Pew Environmental Group, aided by conservative ex-Sen. John Warner, is launching a new effort to listen and share with the public information on the "critical link" between national security, energy and global warming.

The Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate Change will bring together scientific and military experts to assess possible impacts of rapid warming in various parts of the Earth.

"I spent 30 years in the U.S. Senate working on behalf of our men and women in uniform and on issues related to the impact of climate change on their future military roles and missions," said Warner.

"Leading military and security experts agree that if left unchecked, global warming could increase instability and lead to conflict in already fragile regions of the world.

"We ignore these facts at the peril of our national security and at great risk to those in uniform who serve this nation."

The complete article at SeattlePI.com is here.

Report predicts even hotter southeast in decades to come

Are Middle Georgia summers hot enough for you?

Because according to the U.S. government, they’re going to get hotter.

Due to global warming, the Southeast is likely to see twice as many days a year with temperatures hitting the 90 degree mark or hotter, according to a federal report released last month. The report also predicts that the hottest days will be more than 10 degrees hotter.

The report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program synthesizes the results of research assembled by 13 federal departments and agencies including NASA, the departments of defense and energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council. It is the second report ever issued by the federal government on the predicted impacts of global climate change on the United States, and the first one to break down impacts by region.

Click here to read the complete article in Macon.com

Among other things, it shows a sweltering Southeast. The report predicts that by the 2080s, the region will see an increase of 4.5 to 9 degrees in its average temperatures, depending on carbon dioxide emissions. But the extremes of heat will be greater and the heat index higher.

Engineer studying hurricane damage

Photo by Julio Cortez//Houston Chronicle/AP

Kara Bridwell, 26, left, and her brother Paul Bisso, 17, stand on the roof of a neighbor’s house on Sept. 14, 2008, in Surfside Beach, Texas, after Hurricane Ike washed away the home. ORNL aeronautical engineer Andre Desjarlais went to Houston last year as part of a team from the roofing industry to study the damage left by Ike.

OAK RIDGE - As we enter the hurricane season for 2009, building researchers are still learning from hurricanes of the past - including last September's Hurricane Ike.

Andre Desjarlais, an aeronautical engineer who heads Oak Ridge National Laboratory's building envelopes research group, traveled to the Houston area last fall as part of a team from the roofing industry to study damage from Ike, which hit Texas.

Desjarlais' work focused on the vulnerability of buildings with large open areas, such as a garage or loading dock.

The ORNL researcher said high winds may cause those buildings to lose their roofs or suffer unusual damage, even if the construction meets up-to-date building codes. The door to a garage or other open spaces is usually the first to fail, creating additional stress on the building, he said.

The story at knoxnews.com is here.

Bill O'Reilly "believes" in global warming

From the article at Huffington Post:

Later, O'Reilly stated that he himself believes in global warming, getting into a tough argument with guest Laura Ingraham, who proudly touted that she was "stockpiling SUVs... I'm buying as many as I can."

When Ingraham claimed that the planet was getting cooler - O'Reilly cut her off and said, "Well, that's not what the temperature says."

(I know, the seventh seal has been broken. A sign of the Apocalypse? Perhaps, but newsworthy nonetheless). For the complete article/video click here.

Winter, like guest uninvited, drops in

A hailstorm left three feet of ice and debris in Grace Martini’s basement in Yonkers, practically burying her washer and dryer.

The calendar says it is July — a natural time to break out the snow shovels and for children to reach for their sleds.

No?

Well, in a season of meteorological extremes, perhaps it should not come as a great surprise to see several inches of hail accumulate in Yonkers on Tuesday night, creating scenes of winterlike wonder that residents were still dealing with on Wednesday.

Grace Martini, 89, found her basement in Yonkers buried under three feet of ice after Tuesday’s storm, which left about 21,000 customers without power. The hail had rolled down her steep, sloped driveway and into the garage and the basement, said Nancy Valedes, Mrs. Martini’s sister.

The Yonkers Fire Department was called in to help clear the hail, which ruined the washer and dryer and covered the furnace in ice, Ms. Valedes said.

“When I called the insurance company, they said they need some proof,” she said. “Well, I think they’re going to have plenty of proof. This is something you have to see to believe.”

(No, this wasn't a true wintry form of precipitation: sleet, same thing as ice pellets. It was hail, from persistent, unusually strong thunderstorms. Frankly, this could have happened anywhere, much more common on the High Plains than metro New York). The New York Times article is here.

5 signs global warming is here

Sea squirts are smothering Connecticut's shellfish industry.

Sea squirts, poison ivy and other evidence that climate change is altering Connecticut's environment

Tuesday, July 07, 2009
By Andy Bromage

Sea squirts are smothering Connecticut's shellfish industry.In the film The Day After Tomorrow, global warming looks like hell on Earth.

Polar ice caps melt, causing sea levels to rise and swallow Manhattan in a single tidal surge. Hail stones as big as footballs pummel Tokyo. Twisters rip through Los Angeles, destroying skyscrapers and shredding the Hollywood sign. Then comes a deep freeze, and the world is consumed in a second Ice Age.

In real life, global warming looks like a harmless yellow sea sponge. Non-native sea squirts, also known as Tunicate or sea pork, are proliferating in Long Island Sound and elsewhere as water temperatures rise. Marine scientists at the University of Connecticut found that warmer winters are causing the invasive invertebrates to explode in population. Sea squirts reproduce rapidly and compete with shellfish for food and space, threatening Connecticut's shellfish industry.

Like sea squirts, the early signs of global warming mostly fall into the non-life-threatening category: fast-spreading poison ivy and clinging kudzu vines. But that's just a preview of what's to come.

The complete article in FairfieldWeekly.com is here.

Have you invested in a NOAA Weather Radio yet?

As of June 1 it is officially hurricane season here in the US. Though the Atlantic hurricane season is getting off to the slowest start in at least five years, the hurricanes will start to appear sooner or later. These hurricanes bring with them the potential for life threatening weather in many parts of the country. When severe weather approaches time can be the difference between life and death or serious injury. A weather radio can buy you the extra time you need to prepare or evacuate.

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, believes that NOAA weather radios should be as common in houses and places of business as smoke detectors are. Unfortunately, weather radios are nowhere near as ubiquitous as smoke detectors. I believe part of the reason is people don't know they exist, what they do, or how they can save lives.

Here's how weather radios work: NOAA operates a nationwide network of around 1000 radio stations known as NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR). Coverage is for all 50 states, adjacent waterways, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The NWR works with the FCC to broadcast weather service warnings, forecasts and other information about hazards and they do this 24/7.

(It's still the cheapest life insurance you'll ever find. Consider one for home, maybe one for each floor of your house. I have in my office as well. If there is a tornado warning at 3 am [rare, but not impossible] this will be the ONLY method that wakes me up, giving me time to get to the basement). For more on NOAA Weather Radio click here.

El Nino weather menace looms for frail economies

Cross-section of Pacific Ocean water temperatures in March, 1998, during the strongest El Nino in modern-day records. (courtesy NOAA).

By Rene Pastor

NEW YORK, July 6 (Reuters) - A nascent El Nino weather cycle threatens to wreak more economic havoc and disrupt raw material production across a wide swath of the world, evoking memories of the killer edition of 1998.

The timing could not be worse. This El Nino appears to be developing as the world is struggling to emerge from the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. Eleven years ago, a damaging El Nino occurred in the middle of the Asian financial crisis which roiled financial markets.

"El Nino is a little bit like recession: you are in it before you can say you have one. If it continues as it is now, the historians will say the El Nino started in May," said David Jones, head of climate analysis in Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. Jones said they could declare an El Nino in weeks.

During El Nino, an abnormal warming of the waters of the equatorial Pacific unhinges weather patterns in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. A La Nina weather pattern, in which waters cool, was in place last year.

In 1998, El Nino-related storms, floods, tornadoes and mudslides killed more than 2,000 people and caused billions of dollars in damage to crops, infrastructure and mines.

Michelle L'Heureux, head of the U.S. Climate Prediction Center which tracks El Nino, said this version may not approach the one in 1998, the strongest weather anomaly in 150 years. The CPC is an office under the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

The complete article at the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper is here.

Ask Anything: 10 questions for hurricane expert Jamie Rhome

3-D NASA image of Hurricane Fran, which hit the (aptly-named) town of Cape Fear, North Carolina on September 5, 1996 with sustained winds of 115 mph.

Posted: Jun. 30, 2009

If a Cat 5 Hurricane hit our coast and made a bee-line for Raleigh, what kind of damage would we expect to see in Raleigh? – James Radford, Garner

James, since warm waters are the fuel for hurricane and tropical storms, these storms typically weaken as they move inland. The extent of damage from a hurricane moving into the Piedmont of North Carolina would be a function of many things, such as the forward speed of the hurricane, the rate of decay/weakening, and pre-existing conditions.

Thus, it is hard to say for sure exactly how much damage one could expect. People often forget that hurricanes are not just a coastal hazard and produce significant inland damage. We only need to look at two historical hurricanes affecting North Carolina to prove this point.

Hugo (1989) produced significant damage in Charlotte after making landfall in the Charleston, S.C., area as a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Similarly, Fran (1996) downed many trees and produced widespread power outages in the Raleigh/Durham area. Life-threatening flash flooding is also a major hazard and can be worsened if the soil is moist from earlier rain.

For the other 9 (very good) questions at wral.com click here.

10 Outrageous Claims

As the House debate heated up, so did the hyperbole.

We already knew that climate action opponents were, shall we say, special.

They've spent years denying the reality of global warming and doing everything possible to delay action. But, last week's floor debate put their tortured reasoning in the Congressional Record.

We've compiled 10 of the most outrageous comments from the floor last week.

Yes, they're bizarre. But, it's important to keep in mind that we are very likely to see much more of this as the bill moves to the Senate.

Read on to see the 10 biggest whoppers. The article written by the Environmental Defense Action Fund is here.

Permafrost melting a growing climate threat - study

SINGAPORE, July 1 (Reuters) - The amount of carbon locked away in frozen soils in the far Northern Hemisphere is double previous estimates and rapid melting could accelerate global warming, a study released on Wednesday says.

Large areas of northern Russia, Canada, Nordic countries and the U.S. state of Alaska have deep layers of frozen soil near the surface called permafrost.

Global warming has already triggered rapid melting of the permafrost in some areas, releasing powerful greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.

As the world gets warmer, more of these gases are predicted to be released and could trigger a tipping point in which huge amounts of the gases flood the atmosphere, rapidly driving up temperatures, scientists say.

"Massive amounts of carbon stored in frozen soils at high latitudes are increasingly vulnerable to exposure to the atmosphere," said Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project at Australia's state-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

"The research shows that the amount of carbon stored in soils surrounding the North Pole has been hugely underestimated."

The complete Reuters article is here.

Does the sun have more impact on climate change than humans?

By E/THE ENVIRONMENTAL MAGAZINE

Emagazine.com

Dear EarthTalk: Don't some scientists point to sunspots and solar wind as having more impact on climate change than human industrial activity?

- David Noss, California, Md.

Sunspots are storms on the sun's surface that are marked by intense magnetic activity and play host to solar flares and hot gassy ejections from the sun's corona. Scientists believe that the number of spots on the sun cycles over time, reaching a peak - the so-called Solar Maximum - every 11 years or so. Some studies indicate that sunspot activity overall has doubled in the last century. The apparent result down here on Earth is that the sun glows brighter by about 0.1 percent now than it did 100 years ago.

Solar wind, according to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, consists of magnetized plasma flares and in some cases is linked to sunspots. It emanates from the sun and influences galactic rays that may in turn affect atmospheric phenomena on Earth, such as cloud cover. But scientists are the first to admit that they have a lot to learn about phenomena like sunspots and solar wind, some of which is visible to humans on Earth in the form of Aurora Borealis and other far flung interplanetary light shows.

Some skeptics of human-induced climate change blame global warming on natural variations in the sun's output due to sunspots and/or solar wind. They say it's no coincidence that an increase in sunspot activity and a run-up of global temperatures on Earth are happening concurrently, and view regulation of carbon emissions as folly with negative ramifications for our economy and tried-and-true energy infrastructure.

The complete article on MiamiHerald.com is here.

VORTEX 2 Bust?

VORTEX 2 Bust?

A nearly 12 million dollar, 35 day tornado research project was only able to capture 1 tornado - "The least number of tornadoes in that time period since the early 1990's and only the second time it's happened since WWII" (source: usa today)

Read more on the article here:

Viewpoint: Humans Cause Warming

MIAMI — The science behind climate change is complex, and there still is much to learn. But it’s clear that our climate is undergoing dramatic changes, and there is strong scientific evidence that human activity is the primary cause.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an international body of experts charged with providing a comprehensive, objective and transparent assessment of the science of climate change. I had the privilege of working on the panel’s most recent Fourth Assessment Report.

Our conclusion: The warming of the planet is “unequivocal,” and most of the warming over the past half century is caused by human activity.

The panel is not alone. The U.S. National Academy of Science — the most prestigious scientific organization in our country — has endorsed this conclusion, along with virtually every other mainstream scientific organization of relevance.

Many are surprised or even doubtful that such scientific accord exists, their perceptions of climate change often being shaped by seemingly contradictory media reports or disingenuous internet blogs. But among scientists, there exists a strong and widespread consensus about the reality of climate change.

In the largest poll of scientists’ opinions on climate change ever conducted, more than 80 percent stated that humans were the primary cause of our current warming. More compelling, 97.4 percent of climatologists who actively publish research on the subject agreed that humans are causing the climate to warm.

The results of this poll can be found in the Jan. 19 edition of Eos, a scientific journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Such a consensus is not the product of a worldwide scientific hoax. As a scientist, I can attest that we are not nearly organized or imaginative enough to pull off such a stunt.

The complete article in the Grand Forks Herald can be found here.

Democrats kowtow to farmers on global warming bill

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Democratic lawmakers Tuesday went too far currying favor with Midwesterner farmers and ethanol producers in efforts to pass a climate change bill.

Top Democrats, including Henry Waxman and Steny Hoyer, said the compromises were needed. In reality, they were unjustified sops to farm states.

-- The Dems said they would allow the Department of Agriculture to oversee how farmers reduce carbon pollution on their property.

That decision would rip the oversight away from the experts in the Environmental Protection Agency.

-- The new bill would gut the EPA's attempt to monitor greenhouse gases created by some of the ethanol produced by Midwestern farmers.

The EPA deserves to have that power so it can determine whether ethanol is hurting, rather than helping, this nation's attempt to combat global warming.

On Tuesday President Barack Obama urged Congress to move ahead with a strong bill to cut emissions that are warming the Earth.

But the Democrats gutted an important part of the bill in an effort to pass it. Environmental groups should strongly object and shine a light on the actions taken by the Democrats.

House Democrats reach global warming bill deal

WASHINGTON, June 23 (UPI) -- U.S. House Democrats said Tuesday evening they have ironed out differences on legislation to fight global warming, setting the table for a Friday vote.

"We have an agreement, and we're moving forward on Friday," House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., told reporters Tuesday evening. "We're going to pass this bill."

The complete article at UPI.com is here.

Carbon level the highest in 2 million years

Variations in CO2 concentration that used to take several million years to occur are now happening in a few decades, scientists say.

Michael von Bülow 22/06/2009 11:45

The level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is the highest in at least 2.1 million years, according to a new study published Friday by Science.

A team of researchers drilled into the ocean floor off the coast of Africa to remove shells of ancient marine animals that contain climate records.

The CO₂ concentration ranged between 181 and 297 parts per million. It may be necessary to go back as far as 2.7 million years to find carbon levels similar to today’s, the study concluded.

“What’s remarkable is how little CO₂ concentration changed in the past,” said Jerry McManus, a paleoclimatology professor at Columbia who participated in the study.

“What we’re seeing now is the same magnitude of natural variations happening in only a few decades.” (Photo: NASA)

For more on this story at physorg.com click here.

An Open Letter to the President and Members of Congress Strong Leadership Needed Now on Climate

Strong leadership by the United States will be required to move the nations of the world away from what scientists increasingly recognize as a rapidly developing global climatic catastrophe. That leadership requires the insight, energy and relentless attention of the President and no less vigorous interest from both houses of the U. S. Congress.

The Waxman-Markey bill now being considered by the Congress offers a powerful advance and must be enacted this year. But at its best it will be only a first step in the direction that scientists now recognize as necessary to protect local and regional climates. Our purpose is to call attention to the large difference between what U.S. politics now seems capable of enacting and what scientists understand is necessary to prevent climatic disruption and protect the human future. We urge President Obama to exercise maximum personal leadership beginning now to ensure that the strongest possible legislation emerges from the Congress.

New information arrives daily to confirm what many specialists have known for three decades: human-caused climatic disruption is serious, moving rapidly, and gaining momentum with every delay in correcting the trend. In 1992 more than 180 nations including the United States met in Rio de Janeiro, signed, and later ratified, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and in so doing agreed to “stabilize” the heat-trapping gases of the atmosphere at levels that will protect human interests and nature. We, the nations globally, have not been true to our word, and climate is moving out from under civilization rapidly. Major droughts on every continent are but one current symptom of the scale of the global environmental corruption now entrained.

In many political circles around the world, the view has taken hold that nations should endeavor both to limit the buildup of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas and a by-product of burning coal, oil and natural gas, to 450 parts per million and to limit the rise of global temperatures to less than 2°Celsius. We and many others are of the view that these objectives are inadequate to sustain the integrity of global climate and to hold the risk of ruinous climatic change to an acceptably low level. United States policy must provide a fully satisfactory U.S. contribution to global greenhouse gas reductions that move beyond these inadequate international limits.

It is essential that the Waxman-Markey bill, strengthened wherever possible and certainly not weakened, advance into law rapidly. It is also essential that it become the basis for a serious, continuing, and urgent effort on the part of the President to lead the American public into recognition of the scale of the climatic disruption so that the U.S. will embrace still stronger policies to do what we know from scientific investigation is necessary to prevent disastrous climatic alteration.

As we write, we see the unfolding Presidential effort to lead the nation in the area of universal health insurance. We urge the President to initiate an effort at least comparable in the area of climatic change. We recognize the difference in popularity of these two causes, but it is the essence of Presidential leadership to show the way even where adequate public awareness of the risks ahead may be lacking. Speaking in Germany recently, President Obama referred to climatic change as “a potentially cataclysmic disaster.” We agree and believe that message must be communicated and elaborated to the American people in time to assure strong, effective Congressional action in both houses of Congress this year.
The time for national action on climatic change is now. There has already been too much delay. The stakes are far too high to compromise the integrity of, and our responsibility for, prompt national action.

Signed
Dean Abrahamson, Professor Emeritus, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Robert Costanza, Gordon and Lulie Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, The University of Vermont
Peter H. Gleick, N.A.S; President, Pacific Institute, Oakland, California
Richard A. Houghton, Senior Scientist, Acting Director, The Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Ralph Keeling, Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Donald Kennedy, President Emeritus and Bing Professor of Environmental Sciences, Emeritus, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
Thomas Lovejoy, Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, Washington, D.C.

Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute, Washington, D.C.
Michael E. Mann, Director, The Earth System Science Center, Professor of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Michael McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Science, Harvard University. Cambridge, MA
Steve Running, Professor, Director , Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, Department of Ecosystem Science, Univ. of Montana, Missoula
William Schlesinger, President and Director, The Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies, Millbrook, N.Y.
Stephen H. Schneider, Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies; Professor, Department of Biology, Stanford University
Richard C. J. Somerville, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
James Gustave Speth, Dean, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, New Haven, Connecticut
Lonnie G. Thompson, Distinguished University Professor, School of Earth Sciences; Senior Research Scientist, Byrd Polar Research Center. The Ohio State University, Columbus
Warren Washington, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
Richard S. Williams, Senior Scientist Emeritus, USGS; Visiting Senior Scientist, The Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Timothy E. Wirth, President, The United Nations Foundation, Washington, D.C.; former US Senator from Colorado
George M. Woodwell *, Director Emeritus, Senior Scientist, The Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Scientists look to cloud-tops for faster severe storm predictions

Severe thunderstorms can be nasty beasts. Intense lightning, hail, high winds, torrential rain, and at worst, tornadoes top the list of severe storms’ more, er, stimulating features.

Now, two scientists at the University of Wisconsin’s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies say they have figured out a way to dramatically improve forecasters’ ability to predict which seemingly run-of-the-mill storm cells are likely to go postal.

Essentially, they use infrared images from weather satellites to give forecasters as much as 45 minutes earlier notice that a severe thunderstorm is brewing than the forecasters currently can get if they only used radar or reports from storm spotters.

Tools like this would be valuable enough today as a way to help improve severe-weather warnings. Their value likely would increase as the country copes with global warming.

Click here for the full article in Christian Science Monitor.

Global warming: want to see Northwest impacts? Just look around

(This article caught my attention, especially the news that Alaskan winters are running nearly 6.5 degrees F. warmer than average. The result: beetles aren't being killed off during the winter months - they're destroying millions of acres of rich forestland from Alaska and British Columbia into the U.S. Rocky Mountains. My fear: the beetle infestation works its way east into Minnesota's hardwood forests and the BWCA. Is that what its going to take for the professional skeptics to wake up and admit something is going on? Lately I've read some articles linking people concerned about climate change with evolution and abortion rights. It made my blood boil: everywhere you turn there's a new conspiracy theory, zealots stereotyping anyone and everyone who looks at the [real] science and jumps to conclusions - we're all socialists or communists, this is merely a smokescreen for the government to take away our personal rights, blah, blah, blah. Say what you will, but the science is unequivocal now. There IS a global problem. Just because we all experience day to day weather does not make us experts on climate change. For the record I don't pretend to be a climate scientist, but I've been following the science closely. Everyone from the National Academy of Science to the National Science Fund and the American Meteorological Society agrees that climate change is real. This is the result of peer-reviewed science, not some wing-nut with a blog. What's it going to take for the skeptics to admit they've been misleading people, twisting the science and the truth in the process? Most logical, rational people [of both parties] who actually examine the data come to the conclusion that something is going on. To believe otherwise, with the preponderance of evidence, is disingenuous. It's not science but dogma, adherence to a world-view and philosophy that can't get past the fact that man might actually impact the world around him. Actions have consequences. To pretend that a 38% spike in greenhouse gases, most of that in the last 50 years, will have NO impact is dangerously naive, borderline pathological. I'm conservative in most aspects of my life, but that doesn't negate the science, it doesn't trump the facts. Climate change is slow-motion global transformation. You can't look out your window, looking at WEATHER, and use that as an argument disputing what's happening worldwide. Unless you're seeing new trees, flowers, shrubs and birds in your yard that weren't there a generation ago. Sorry for the rant, but I'm increasingly frustrated with the denier's refusal to open their eyes and SEE what's happening all around them. The slow trickle of evidence has turned into a torrent. This article is another piece of the puzzle).

By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Living in a corner of America powered, irrigated and inspired by water, we ought to treat Tuesday's report released by the White House, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, as a wake-up call and cold shower.

"We are the alpha and the omega of global warming," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., who helped write a flawed -- but needed -- bill to change national energy policy. It's pending in the House.

Want to know how climate change is changing America? Read the report. Want its bottom line: "Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced." Changes "are expected to increase."

Want to see impacts on the Northwest? Just look around, something that global-warming skeptics resolutely refuse to do.

Global warming is shrinking the winter snowpack. A smaller snowpack means reduction in the runoff that sustains our river flows, makes the desert bloom, allows salmon to reach and return from the ocean, and powers the world's greatest hydroelectric system.

The consequences don't end when our rivers reach salt water.

"Climate change and ocean acidification are already having major impacts on Washington: Our $100 million shellfish industry is in crisis after four years of oyster reproductive failure from ocean acidification," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

The complete article at SeatlePI.com is here.

Oceans rising faster than UN predicted, scientists say

By Alex Morales

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Polar ice caps are melting faster and oceans are rising more than the United Nations projected just two years ago, 10 universities said in a report suggesting that climate change has been underestimated.

Global sea levels will climb a meter (39 inches) by 2100, 69 percent more than the most dire forecast made in 2007 by the UN’s climate panel, according to the study released today in Brussels. The forecast was based on new findings, including that Greenland’s ice sheet is losing 179 billion tons of ice a year.

“We have to act immediately and we have to act strongly,” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told reporters in the Belgian capital. “Time is clearly running out.”

In six months, negotiators from 192 nations will meet in Copenhagen to broker a new treaty to fight global warming by limiting the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and clearing forests.

“A lukewarm agreement” in the Danish capital “is not only inexcusable, it would be reckless,” Schellnhuber said.

Fossil-fuel combustion in the world’s power plants, vehicles and heaters alone released 31.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, 1.8 percent more than in 2007, according to calculations from BP Plc data.

To read the complete article click here.

Amazing video of the Austin, Minnesota tornado

Amazing storm chasing video of the Austin, Minnesota tornado is here (thanks to Brad Nelson from DTN in the Twin Cities).

From KEYC-TV in Mankato:

Residents in Austin spent much of the day cleaning up after strong storms last night.The National Weather Service says one tornado touched down Northwest of Austin.The tornado track was 10 miles long, with winds of between 111 and 135 miles per hour.Several homes were damaged as well as businesses in town.Cars and even one truck were flipped.Downed trees and power lines blocked some streets, cutting power to much of the city.Chief Paul Phillipp says, 'The main power lines coming in from the north - if you've been out there at all, the power lines are just snapped all over the place, so quite a significant amount of devastation there."One man who rode the storm out in a shed that was rolled by the twister was slightly injured.No word yet on what the cost of the damage will be.

See more at KEYC-TV's web site here.

KTTC-TV in Austin has some great coverage on the tornado here.

Report says U.S. already feeling the effects of global warming

A government climate-change report predicts increases in very high temperatures, which scientists say will have wide-ranging affects.

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A new government study on climate change says the United States is already feeling effects of human-induced global warming.

A report released June 16 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program says global warming is "unequivocal and primarily human-induced." It says climate changes underway in the United States probably will grow, and how much depends on how policy makers respond.

"First and foremost, human-induced climate change is a reality, not only in remote polar regions and in small tropical islands, but every place around the country, in our own backyards," Jane Lubchenco, director of the office of science and technology policy at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a press conference at the report's release.

Areas of Florida illustrated in red would be under water with a three-foot sea rise in sea level, which is predicted for this century, the report say.

The complete article is here.

Government study warns of climate change effects

By JOHN M. BRODER

Published: June 16, 2009

WASHINGTON — The impact of a changing climate is already being felt across the United States, like shifting migration patterns of butterflies in the West and heavier downpours in the Midwest and East, according to a government study to be released on Tuesday.

Even if the nation takes significant steps to slow emissions of heat-trapping gases, the impact of global warming is expected to become more severe in coming years, the report says, affecting farms and forests, coastlines and floodplains, water and energy supplies, transportation and human health.

The complete New York Times article is here:

Click here to go to the United States Global Change Research Program, charged with "integrating federal research on climate and global change"

Making case for climate as driver of migration

By TOM ZELLER Jr.

Published: June 14, 2009

NEW YORK — A new report on human migration and climate change, released as delegates from 182 countries gathered in Bonn over the past two weeks to continue hammering out some preliminary language for a new global climate treaty, made its case plainly:

“The impacts of climate change are already causing migration and displacement,” the document began, adding that by midcentury, “the prospects for the scope and scale could vastly exceed anything that has occurred before.”

The study, titled “In Search of Shelter” and written by a large cast from several nongovernmental organizations, including the United Nations, CARE International and Columbia University, combined climatological and demographic data with field interviews of migrants already on the move. The aim was to provide an overview, with rich maps and an oft-lacking dose of empiricism, of where the changing environment is driving decision-making on the ground and which areas are likely to be hit hardest if things get worse.

The New York Times article is here.

Don't try this at home: driving INTO a tornado

I've seen people do some pretty dumb things, and then post them to YouTube. But nothing prepared me for this video clip. These guys have reinforced and fortified a vehicle with armor, with the goal of driving INTO a tornado. I know, sounds very Darwinian, doesn't it? Talk about thinning the herd. Do not do this in a Chevy Lumina or gently-used minivan. These guys were lucky they didn't become a big hunk of airborne debris traveling at 200 mph. To see the wild video for yourself, from the recent Goshen county, Wyoming tornado, click here.

14 year old German boy survives meteorite strike

So you think you had a tough day? Check out this 14 year old, who was hit by a meteorite traveling at 30,000 and lived to tell about it. This happened in Germany, and suddenly the kid is a Super Hero in the local media! It's quite an amazing story. For the complete (eye-opening) story in Gizmodo click here.

Fickle breezes: study says climate change means lower wind speeds

By Keith Johnson

Chalk up another casualty of climate change: Wind speeds in many parts of the U.S. seem to be decreasing, which could make life tougher for the wind industry.

A study to be published later this summer says that climate change has led to lower average wind speeds in the Midwest and eastern part of the U.S., AP reports.

If true—and the study goes against what most computer models predict will happen—it seems to be because rising temperatures at the poles change pressure patterns around the globe, which leads to less wind. From AP’s story:

“It’s a very large effect,” said study co-author Eugene Takle, a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University. In some places in the Midwest, the trend shows a 10 percent drop or more over a decade. That adds up when the average wind speed in the region is about 10 to 12 miles per hour. There’s been a jump in the number of low or no wind days in the Midwest, said the study’s lead author, Sara Pryor, an atmospheric scientist at Indiana University. Wind measurements plotted out on U.S. maps by Pryor show wind speeds falling mostly along and east of the Mississippi River. Some areas that are banking on wind power, such as west Texas and parts of the Northern Plains, do not show winds slowing nearly as much. Yet, states such as Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Kansas, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, northern Maine and western Montana show some of the biggest drop in wind speeds."

(If true this would have profound impacts, including a drastic implication on turbines as a source of alternative energy. For the AP article and a thoughtful blog in the Wall Street Journal click here).

Storm Chasers from Australia make a trip to the U.S.

Storm Chasers from Australia make a trip to the U.S.

Thanks to Rich Koivisto, a good friend of mine from Duluth, for this next story. Friends of his from Australia recently made a trip to the United States to catch some wild weather, see the Great Lakes and take lots of pictures! Read about their journey, which took them from just north of Mexico to Lake Superior. The 26 day road trip can be seen here


Check out day 18 when Clyve and Jane (from Down Under) see Lake Superior for the first time - a dream come true!

Want more Australian weather? Check here

As for my friend, Rich Koivisto, his pictures are featured in the Australian Storm Chasing web site here and here and here - here's one of them

Staring up into the "eye" of a tornado

(The Weather Channel caught some amazing video of a tornado in Wyoming over the weekend. They were tagging along with the Vortex2 storm chasers, a huge team of scientists trying to intercept - and study developing tornadoes, using DOW, Doppler on wheels, weather balloons, and a small army of volunteers surrounding tornadic storms with weather instruments. The goal: shed light on how tornadoes form, why some go on to intensify while others weaken rapidly. Word to the wise: don't try this at home!)

To see an amazing tornado clip on MSN.com click here.

What really happened on Air France Flight 447?

The Air France 447 mystery may never be solved beyond a shadow of doubt, but there are some telling, tragic clues to consider based on what we know about the airplane systems and the extreme weather and aerodynamic conditions it encountered before it went down a week ago.

First, a bit of aerodynamics: The doomed Airbus A-330-200 was flying ever so close to its maximum altitude – in a zone pilots call the “Coffin Corner”. It refers to the edge of so-called “flight envelope” of an aircraft. At this altitude, the air is much thinner and that significantly narrows the swath of speed at which the airplane can safely operate.

Check out the complete post at trueslant.com.

(I was always a big fan of Miles O'Brien at CNN, who did a masterful job with science and space-related stories. I was shocked when they let him go last year - to save money, I guess, but what a loss. He is starting his own blog site where you can hear he take on science, astronomy, and aviation-related stories. Here is a thoughtful post on what may have really happened during Air France #447's doomed flight from Brazil to Paris. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is a very believable scenario, based on what little we know from the transcript of the last moments).

Click here to read the rest of Miles' post, including a detailed meteorological explanation of a MCS, a Mesoscale Convective System - a broad swarm of severe thunderstorms that tends to form at night. Tim Vasquez has posted comprehensive information on weather conditions encountered by the Air France flight the night of the apparent crash, another very good read.