Climate change opens arctic route for German ships

BERLIN (Reuters) - Two German ships set off on Friday on the first journey across Russia's Arctic-facing northern shore without the help of icebreakers after climate change helped opened the passage, the company said.

Niels Stolberg, president and CEO of Beluga Shipping GmbH, said the "Beluga Fraternity" and "Beluga Foresight" left the Russian port of Vladivostok on the historic and cost-saving journey with cargo picked up in South Korea bound for Holland.

The melting of Arctic ice as a result of climate change has made it possible to send Beluga's multi-purpose heavy lift ships along the legendary Northeast Passage, Stolberg said.

Beluga got Russian authorities' clearance to send the first non-Russian commercial vessels through the route on Friday.

The Northern Sea Route trims 4,000 nautical miles off the usual 11,000-mile journey via the Suez Canal -- yielding considerable savings in fuel costs and CO2 emissions, he said.

"Russian submarines and icebreakers have used the Northern Route in the past but it wasn't open for regular commercial shipping before now because there are many areas with thick ice," Stolberg told Reuters in an email interview.

Here is the complete Reuters article.

Study: climate change means more heavy rain

Record rainfall led to disastrous flooding across much of Iowa in 2008, including the town of Cedar Rapids. Scientists say climate change will lead to an increase in heavy rainfall events for most of the world.

Climate change will lead to an increase in heavy rainfall events across most of the world, according to a study published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech.

The computer models used in the study predict that areas such as North America can expect a significant increase in heavy rain.

How much rain? The study suggests that precipitation in extreme events will increase by about 6% for every 1.8 degree rise in global temperature. A global temperature increase of anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees is expected by 2100, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Overall, while the pattern is clear and consistent outside of the tropics, climate models give conflicting results within the tropics so more research will be needed to determine the outcomes in those regions.

The primary reason for the precipitation increase is that warmer air can retain more water vapor than cooler air. So as the climate heats up, "there will be more vapor in the atmosphere, which will lead to an increase in precipitation extremes," says study co-author Paul O'Gorman of MIT.

The USA Today article is here.

Review of Cleveland rainfall records indicates climate change has already arrived

A climate-change storm isn't coming. It's already here.

That's the conclusion drawn by some climate scientists - and supported by an independent analysis of National Weather Service rainfall records by The Plain Dealer.

The rainfall records reveal an increasing number of days each year with heavy storms - those quick, violent bursts that drop a large amount of rain in a short time. Those types of storms more often also lead to damaging and expensive suburban flooding - and conversely, dangerously dry periods or even drought in between.

The complete article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer is here.

Minneapolis tornado, New York City's violent winds, Anchorage's tremors

Twin Cities Doppler Radar display around 2 pm yesterday, showing a tight velocity "couplet" over south Minneapolis. The bright red area is wind moving away from the Doppler site in Chanhassen, the bright green smudge is high velocity air moving toward the radar - evidence of a small, tight, vigorous mesocyclone, a rotating thunderstorm capable of damaging winds, in all probability, an EF0 or EF1 tornado. We were in a "slight risk" of isolated severe storms, according to SPC. But no watches were in effect at the time the tornado touched down, the local NWS would issue a tornado warning for this cell approximately 15-20 minutes later, around 2:20 pm, after the circulation had passed directly over downtown Minneapolis (debris was spotted from a number of downtown high-rise office buildings!) Thankfully it was a "minor" tornado - had it been a major tornado there would be a lot more red faces today.

Nature reminded several American cities of its powerful presence in the last 24 hours.

Both Minneapolis and New York City are cleaning up, the former after a tornado struck south of downtown on Wednesday, the latter after a storm brought hurricane-force winds Tuesday night that toppled scores of trees in Central Park, including giant American elms more than 100 years old.

Meanwhile, Anchorage, Alaska was shaken on Wednesday by a magnitude 5.0 earthquake which apparently jangled some nerves but didn't break anything.

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Minneapolis tornado destroyed trees and caused some damage to buildings but caused no injuries.

An excerpt:

"This dispels myths that tornadoes don't hit urban areas, they go where they want to," said Pete Boulay, assistant state climatologist. "It doesn't happen very often, but they do happen."

Northbound Interstate 35W at Hwy. 62, already a tangled mess at the southern edge of Minneapolis because of construction, is closed due to flooding.

Central Lutheran Church in downtown had an old copper steeple damaged, and two tents used for entertaining also were struck. One was blown into the street and the other was collapsed, said church spokesman Joe Bjordal. The tents were set up in connection with the national gathering of about 2,000 at the Evangelical Church in America at the Convention Center. "We're thankful that nobody was hurt," Bjordal said.

Representatives on the convention floor could hear rain on the roof, but only became aware of the turbulence outside when unofficial convention-goers were moved in from the outside corridors for their safety.

(There is still some question about whether the wind damage in Minneapolis was caused by a real tornado or straight-line winds, a "wet downburst", I've heard a number of competing theories. But after looking at the video [check it out on WeatherNation's main web site here], after hearing the reports from survivors - those in the path of the storm - AND - after seeing the Doppler SRV, storm relative velocity image from 2 pm yesterday, sorry, I don't think there's any question this was a tornado).

I know this makes a number of people uncomfortable - no severe watches or warnings were in effect at the time, no local media was on the air giving advance notice of this potentially dangerous/deadly situation. A lot of people would LOVE for this to go away, or be designated as straight-line wind, which doesn't have quite the stigma, or impact of a TORNADO. I'll be amazed if it was anything but a small EF0 or EF1 tornado. BTW, the rest of the article from NPR is right here.

Big tropical storms in the Atlantic hit a 1,000 year high

The people of U.S. Gulf Coast have felt unusually battered by big storms during the past few years. Now, it turns out their instincts are right.

A new report in the scientific journal Nature indicates that the last decade has seen, on average, more frequent hurricanes than any time in the last 1,000 years. The last period of similar activity occurred during the Medieval Warm Period.

The study is not definitive, but it is a unique piece of work that combines an analysis of sediment cores from inland lakes and tidal marshes with computer modeling and finds a "striking consistency" between the two, the authors suggest.

The use of sediment cores to place and date ancient storms -- called "paeleotempestology" -- is becoming an increasingly useful tool in the broader effort to try to reconstruct the history of hurricane activity in order to better predict a future potentially influenced by climate change.

The complete ABC News story is here.

Considering a tornado chasing vacation?

A group from Silver Lining Tours scanned the skies over eastern Colorado in June for signs of a tornado.

“WE’VE got to go right now, folks,” Roger Hill shouted on a recent Monday afternoon in Scott City, a beautiful speck on the map of western Kansas. “We’re going east. The eastern storm is a monster.”

After waiting hours on a sultry day — first at a Pizza Hut, then at a Dairy Queen — we finally heard the words we had been waiting for. We were on the second day of a tornado chase in the Great Plains led by Mr. Hill and David Gold, owners of Silver Lining Tours, a 12-year-old company that specializes in extreme-weather travel, and it seemed that our quarry was finally within reach.Along on the journey were seven tourists, from Oregon to England — each had paid $2,200 for a six-day storm-chasing vacation devoted to seeing some of the world’s worst weather up close — and me, a reporter shadowing their experiences for two days. It was not, as you might imagine, a typical vacation. As Russell Glenister, from London, told me, “Most of the time when you tell people you’re chasing tornadoes, they think you’re crazy.”

(I have chased tornadoes on 3 separate occasions, and gotten "lucky" each time, although the truth of the matter: I had to invest a couple of weeks each time I went out before I actually saw a tornado. The first few days you invariably see hail, rainbows, thunderheads of every possible shape and dimension - a LOT of false alarms. If you know what you're doing and how to approach a severe local storm the threat to life and property is fairly small and manageable. The biggest risk is being hit by lightning, or some yahoo driving at 100 mph + to try and intercept a twister and get the money shot! It is the most amazing visceral rush you can ever imagine - a buzz to end all buzzes! Not sure you have to pay thousands of dollars to see a tornado - one of the cheapest, most effective ways to see a tornado is to fly to Oklahoma City, rent a car [never use you own car, the hail damage risk is off the scale!] and drive down to NSSL, the National Severe Storms Lab in Norman, Oklahoma, and TAG ALONG with the pro's. That's right, stalk the pros! The best time to go is late April into mid May. If you spend at least 2 weeks in Oklahoma, and are willing to drive a rental car (fast) into Texas, Kansas, Nebraska - if you're tenacious, you WILL see a tornado!)

For the complete New York Times article from Brian Stelter click here.

10 things weather forecasters won't say

1. “Long-term forecast? Your guess is as good as ours.”

WEATHER FORECASTERS have gotten pretty good at nailing the outlook two to three days ahead. The problem is, “everyone wants to know what the weather is going to do next weekend,” says Paul Karpowicz, president of the Meredith Broadcasting Group, and forecasting the weather a week or more down the road isn’t so easy.

Eric Floehr, founder of ForecastAdvisor, which tracks the accuracy of predictions, looked at high-temperature forecasts from the National Weather Service, AccuWeather and other organizations for 2008 and compared their
numbers with actual temperatures. When predicting highs for the following day, they were off by about three degrees; when forecasting nine days out, they missed by nearly seven degrees. Doug Young, performance branch chief at the National Weather Service, says his organization’s precipitation forecast for seven days out is only 55 percent accurate. “You’re almost flipping a coin at that point,” he says. Ray Ban, consultant for The Weather Channel, says the best forecasters can do is try to convey the uncertainty of long-range predictions.

2. “We’re pretty accurate—as long as the sun is shining.”

ONE OF THE MOST important things forecasters can do is tell you when bad weather is on the way. Unfortunately, they’re not very good at predicting rain. That’s especially true in summer, when most rainfall comes from thunderstorms, which are small, unpredictable and hard to track. It’s often difficult to tell where they’re headed or whether they’ll produce any rain. Most models for forecasting weather divide the country into a grid of squares that cover about 55 square miles each, though some have smaller squares. Whatever the square’s size, rain, snow, sun and temperature are forecast as a whole for each one. Since most thunderstorms are smaller than the squares, it’s tough to predict exactly where it will rain. “Forecasters are terrible at telling you if rain is going to fall where you live tonight,” says William Gallus, a meteorology professor at Iowa State University.

(The author is a bit harsh in spots, but yes, we need to take our lumps, like any other profession. Then again, you have to be borderline insane to even contemplate wanting to predict the weather. The rest of the article from smartmoney.com is here.)

Antarctic glacier "thinning fast"

David Shukman joined a team surveying Pine Island glacier in 2004

One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to research seen by the BBC.

A study of satellite measurements of Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica reveals the surface of the ice is now dropping at a rate of up to 16m a year.

Since 1994, the glacier has lowered by as much as 90m, which has serious implications for sea-level rise.

The work by British scientists appears in Geophysical Research Letters.

The team was led by Professor Duncan Wingham of University College London (UCL).

Calculations based on the rate of melting 15 years ago had suggested the glacier would last for 600 years. But the new data points to a lifespan for the vast ice stream of only another 100 years.

The BBC article is here.

The cold facts about melting glaciers

Host: Jessica Robertson

Most glaciers in Washington and Alaska are dramatically shrinking in response to a warming climate.

USGS scientist Edward Josberger discusses research from the past 50 years to measure changes in the mass (length and thickness) of three glaciers in Alaska and Washington. These are the longest such records in North America and among the longest in the world.

To hear the entire podcast - direct from the scientists who have been studying these key glaciers in Washington and Alaska (which respond to "climate", not day to day fluctuations in "weather") click here.

America's National Parks: canaries in the climate change coal mine

"The house of America is founded upon our land and if we keep that whole, then the storm can rage, but the house will stand forever." – President Lyndon B. Johnson

Despite the easy association of American culture with prosperity and modernity, historically, it was America’s National parks that were seen as a reflection of national character, as well as national priorities.

Travel to America’s National Parks, and you are quickly reminded that it is not our wealth, not our cars, not our designer boutiques, our high rise buildings or our suburban homes that define America. Rather, as so many have said, it is these parks that are the crown jewels of our country.

I was reminded of this over the last two weeks as I hiked through the lunar landscape of Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park and the pine forests, streams and crystal blue lakes of California’s Yosemite National Park.

The rest of the article is here.

Drought still effects Minnesota's lakes and streams

A dry summer and fall means water levels on Minnesota lakes and rivers are down. The flow on the Mississippi River near Little Falls Minnesota is about half of what it should be this time of year. (MPR Photo/Tim Post).

No doubt you've noticed that Minnesota is in the middle of a snow drought. With the exception of far northern Minnesota, much of the state is without snow. This precipitation-free winter is no help to the region's already parched soil. Minnesota suffered through a hot dry summer, and received little relief in the form of rain this fall. Weather watchers say come spring the region will be really dry.

Little Falls, Minn. — A flock of geese gathers on the frozen Mississippi River near downtown Little Falls. The river's coating of ice cracks and shifts as it's warmed by the December sun. This winter scene hides the fact that water levels on the Mississippi, and most of the other rivers and lakes in Minnesota, are down because of drought.

Upstream near a dam the signs of drought are easy to find. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources hydrologist Tim Crocker scrambles down a boulder-strewn riverbank and stands on rock that would normally be under water.

The rest of this (excellent) MPR report on the lingering drought can be found here.

DNR Graphic showing the Departure from Normal of Rainfall for the period April 1 to August 3. Note the 7-9" rainfall deficit for the Twin Cities metro area, with a 7" deficit near Alexandria. It's going to take more than a couple of thunderstorms to make up for this - although Fridays waves of heavy/severe storms certainly did put a dent in the drought!

For a thorough, exhaustive update on the drought of '09 compiled by the Minnesota Climatology Working Group click here.

The top 5 ways the "birthers" are like the global warming deniers

The people who refuse to accept the reality that President Obama was born in the United States share much in common with those who refuse to accept the reality that humans are dramatically changing the climate.

5. Both groups are impervious to the evidence. During the campaign, "Obama released a certification of live birth, which is the official document you get if you ask Hawaii for a copy of your birth certificate," as Salon explains. Further, "state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii." Politico labels this "seemingly incontrovertible evidence." Similarly, the reality of human-caused warming has been overwhelmingly demonstrated and affirmed by the peer-reviewed literature, the hundreds of scientists who review and report on that literature periodically as part of the IPCC process and the more than 100 world governments (including the Bush Administration) who approved the 2007 IPCC summary reports word for word (see "Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report: Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly" and "Can you PROVE to me that global warming is being caused by mankind?"*).

Joseph Romm is the Editor for ClimateProgress.org. The rest of his story is here.

Climate change melting US glaciers at faster rate, study finds

A composite image showing South Cascade glacier in Washington state (year 2000, left, 2006, right). A new study today found a sharp rise in the melt rate of three key American glaciers over the last 10-15 years. Photograph: USGS

Climate change is melting America's glaciers at the fastest rate in recorded history, exposing the country to higher risks of drought and rising sea levels, a US government study of glaciers said today. The long-running study of three "benchmark" glaciers in Alaska and Washington state by the US geological survey (USGS) indicated a sharp rise in the melt rate over the last 10 or 15 years.

Scientists see the three - Wolverine and Gulkana in Alaska and South Cascade in Washington - as representative of thousands of other glaciers in North America.

"The observations show that the melt rate has definitely increased over the past 10 or 15 years," said Ed Josberger, a USGS scientist. "This certainly is a very strong indicator that climate change is occurring and its effects on glaciers are virtually worldwide." The survey also found that all three glaciers had begun melting at the same higher rate - although they are in different climate regimes and some 1,500 miles apart.

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

The Los Angeles Times has a slightly different angle; the report tracked 3 "benchmark glaciers" over the span of 50 years.

What's Inside a Hurricane?

What's Inside a Hurricane?

Eastern Pacific Hurricane Felicia made headlines recently as it quickly become a category 4 hurricane (sustained winds of 140mph) within a days time. NASA has a nice 3D view of Felicia here, check it out:

The Atlantic Hurricane season began June 1st, but has yet to see its first named storm of 2009. On average, we should have seen the first named storm July 10th. Still, it remains "All Quiet on the Western Front".

The Inflection is Near?

Minnesota's own Thomas Friedman wrote an excellent column back in March which I felt compelled to re-post, in light of the previous (Joe Romm) blog equating the global economic bender we've been on with a Ponzi scheme.

Friedman writes, "What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

The thermometer record (worldwide) goes back to the mid 1800s, but we have reliable "proxy data" going back hundreds of thousands of years: tree rings, ice core samples, fossilized sediment from lake bottoms. Call me crazy, but do you see anything unusual about this graph?

Climate change deniers like to point out that Earth has cooled since 1998. Not true. We were in the midst of a Super-El Nino in 1998 which compounded and amplified the warmth observed on land and at sea. But climate scientists all agree that the decade from 1998-2007 was warmer than the previous decade, from 1989-1998 - that decade was warmer than the previous 10-year span, and so on, going back to the mid/late 70s.

Friedman's entire article in the New York Times is here.

Move over Madoff. Introducing the Mother of all Ponzi Schemes (sadly, Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts)

From Joe Romm's blog article, "Is the Global Economy a Ponzi Scheme?"

"By enriching those who did the most plundering the most, we enabled them to fund lobbying and disinformation campaigns to convince substantial fractions of the public and media that there is no Ponzi scheme — that global warming is “too complicated for the public to understand” and nothing to worry about. In our case, investors (i.e. current generations) are paying themselves (i.e. you and me) by taking the nonrenewable resources and livable climate from future generations. To perpetuate the high returns the rich countries in particular have been achieving in recent decades, we have been taking an ever greater fraction of nonrenewable energy resources (especially hydrocarbons) and natural capital (fresh water, arable land, forests, fisheries), and, the most important nonrenewable natural capital of all — a livable climate."


(A climate Ponzi Scheme? I chuckled when I read the headline, but after reading this carefully I have to admit that all of us have been suckered. The western world has been binging on cheap energy, we are, in a very real sense, "paying ourselves" with wealth from future generations. It's good to be a little skeptical in life, to not take anything at face value. I wish someone had taken me aside and explained about those nasty Nigerian e-mail scams before I sent along my social security number and Am Ex information. Duh! After reading this post I am more convinced than ever that there really is no free lunch. Actions have consequences. My father, who fled Communists in East Germany, who's relatives were hung for conspiring to assassinate Hitler, taught me this at a tender age. He's very conservative in his politics - always has been. On more than one occasion he reminded me to "never take my freedom for granted." But as I keep [pleading] with my father, climate change transcends day to day politics. Science and politics can be oil and water. Some day soon we're all going to wake up with a severe headache, a global fever, and wonder in an acrimonious cry how we got here? How were so many of us deceived and deluded by a handful of professional deniers, lobbyists and "flat Earthers" into not taking meaningful action sooner? Temporary insanity? Fear of the unknown? It defies common sense. Galileo was persecuted for believing the science, that the earth rotated around the sun, and not vice versa. He risked everything to make his point and elevate our understanding of how the universe really works. There are still notable gaps in that understanding. We're learning more and more about climate, and how rapid industrialization and massive spikes in carbon-based energy consumption are impacting climate today. Like the tobacco lobbyists in the 70s who kept doubt and uncertainty alive "you can't PROVE that smoking causes lung cancer, can you?" the current energy lobby and their scientifically-challenged SWAT teams of bloggers are keeping an undercurrent of doubt and uncertainty going. Yep, this cool spell PROVES that global warming is a scam! Never mind the 80s and 90s in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon and Siberia, that's just an inconvenient nugget of irrelevant information. If you're worried about climate change that makes you a flag-waving liberal, you're somehow swept up in the religion of global warming, one of those brainwashed Gore sycophants. Oh how I love labels and stereotypes. Both sides are guilty of this. It's sad that we have "sides" at all. O.K. Time to freshen up my lungs with a case of cigarettes, then head outside to watch the sun do circles around the Earth. Sounds like a good time huh?) - P.D.


Is the Global Economy a Ponzi Scheme?

Joe Romm, Physicist, Climate Expert, climateprogress.org

Yes, homo “sapiens” sapiens have constructed the grandest of Ponzi schemes, whereby current generations have figured out how to live off the wealth of future generations. Yes, we are all in essence Madoffs (many wittingly, most not) or at least his most credulous clients. What comes next will be the subject of a multipart series.

I had been planning to write something on this for a while when NYT columnist Tom Friedman interviewed me for “The Inflection Is Near?” which appears in today’s New York Times:

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows.

“You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate …’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”

A few years ago I thought that aggressive action by governments around the world to push clean energy could spare the public dramatic lifestyle changes in the coming decades, but I have been convinced otherwise by

• the failure of U.S. leadership [thank you George W. Bush and the conservative movement stagnation]
• the remarkable shift in our understanding of climate science in the past two years (here, here, and here)
• China’s decision to join the Ponzi scheme full throttle and emulate our rapaciousness (see here and here), and
• a recent, brilliant talk I heard (a teaser for a future post).

The adults, in short, are not standing up. Sadly, most haven’t even taken the time to understand that they should (see “Most opinion leaders just don’t get global warming“).

And so every generation that comes after the Baby Boomers are poised to experience the dramatic changes in lifestyle that inevitably follow the collapse of any Ponzi scheme.

This global Ponzi scheme is not just a metaphor (see “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor”), but for me a central organizing narrative of how to think about the fix we have put ourselves in (see How Lincoln framed his picture-perfect Gettysburg Address, 4: Extended metaphor).

What exactly is a Ponzi scheme? Wikipedia has a good entry:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit. The term “Ponzi scheme” is used primarily in the United States , while other English-speaking countries do not distinguish colloquially between this scheme and pyramid schemes.

The Ponzi scheme usually offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice new investors. The perpetuation of the high returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.

In our case, investors (i.e. current generations) are paying themselves (i.e. you and me) by taking the nonrenewable resources and livable climate from future generations. To perpetuate the high returns the rich countries in particular have been achieving in recent decades, we have been taking an ever greater fraction of nonrenewable energy resources (especially hydrocarbons) and natural capital (fresh water, arable land, forests, fisheries), and, the most important nonrenewable natural capital of all — a livable climate.

The rest of Joe's thought-provoking post is here.

Thaw Point

(The past few weeks we've been tracking temperatures in the 70s and 80s precariously close to the Arctic Circle. The Canadian Yukon has experienced 90s in recent days! Kind of cool, huh? Not really. Here's what makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up. Unusually warm spells WAY north, unnaturally far north, may release prodigious amounts of methane, a GHG, greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The more methane released, the warmer it gets, the warmer it gets, the more methane is released....and so on. This is an example of "positive feedback", a runaway cycle that worries climate experts. What keeps these guys (and gals) awake late at night? The notion that unusual warming unusually far north is leading us closer to a "tipping point", a point of no return. That's why this article, coming after a spell of record warmth across FAR northern Alaska and Canada, caught my eye).



The Arctic tundra is one of the world’s most extensive ecosystems, and the frozen soil known as permafrost, which underlies it, can be hundreds of metres deep. But as the world warms up in response to the millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being poured into the atmosphere each year, so does the permafrost. As the permafrost thaws, bacteria start chewing up the organic matter it contains. This releases yet more carbon dioxide, as well as methane, another greenhouse gas, which has 25 times the warming potential of CO₂. Edward Schuur of the University of Florida in Gainesville, a doyen of the field, estimates that the world’s permafrost contains twice as much carbon as its atmosphere. If even a fraction of that were released as CO₂ and methane, it would be bad news.

Nor is that all. Thawing permafrost also leaks nitrates and phosphates into the tundra, allowing novel plant species to get a foothold in what was, to start with, a fairly spartan habitat. It distorts the Earth’s surface, too, creating a landscape of domes and pits known as thermokarst because of its resemblance to the karstic terrain of limestone-rich parts of the world. This changes the tundra’s ecology. It also plays havoc with human structures, such as buildings, roads and pipelines, that sit on top of it. For all of these reasons, then, more research is needed into this icy realm. And that is the object of a project with the unsnappy name of Spatial and Temporal Influences of Thermokarst Failures on Surface Processes in Arctic Landscapes, which was kicked off by a group of scientists who gathered in late June at the Toolik Field Station in northern Alaska.

The complete Economist article is here.

Climate activists in denial

The phrase “climate change denier” has a nasty ring to it. It links those who dispute mainstream science on global warming with “Holocaust deniers”. They are not just wrong, it implies, they are evil.

But the climate change lobby is in the grip of its own form of dangerous fantasy. It is in denial not about science – but about international politics.

At the moment, efforts to deal with global warming are focused on a huge international summit in Copenhagen in December. But the chances of Copenhagen delivering a deal that meets the goals for carbon dioxide emissions set by the United Nations Panel on Climate Change is vanishingly small. In private, many climate change activists will admit this. But Copenhagen is the only game in town – so they keep playing.

The first UN agreement on climate change was struck in Rio back in 1992. But in the intervening years, the rate of CO2 emissions has risen steadily – seemingly undeterred by huge emissions of hot air at UN conferences.

It was convenient to blame the lack of international progress on George W. Bush. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House will not be the game-changer that many climate change activists hoped for. The House of Representatives in Washington has passed a bill to limit carbon emissions. But its provisions are so mild that they seem unlikely to make much impact. The climate change lobby hoped that if the US took the lead with new laws, the rest of the world would respond. There is little sign of this.

*I found this article to be on the money, and terribly depressing. I think there is more than a glimmer of truth to this. Doing the right thing - for future generations - will be terribly expensive and politically risky, requiring a level of international agreement that may just be wishful thinking at this point. In an age of massive deficits, economic malaise, special interests lobbying - in most cases, successfully - to retain the current status quo, and a rather alarming level of scientific ignorance, the odds are stacked firmly against the upcoming Copenhagen meeting resulting in any true global breakthroughs. Scientific ignorance? A recent study highlighted 88% of America's professional scientists who believe climate change is real and the planet is warming. By comparison 49% of Americans believe global warming is real. That disparity fills me with confidence. Tomorrow maybe I'll regain some sense of (naive) optimism, but today I'm bummed. The scope of this problem is so big, so reliant on America's best minds coming together (the energy equivalent of America's 1969 moon shot), so dependent on a level of international cooperation - it would be almost impossible to achieve, even if the global economy was rocketing along at breakneck speed!

As it is, I'm increasingly convinced that we will have to adapt. There, I said it. There is probably only so much we can do to mitigate the warming, in spite of good intentions and promising (renewable) technologies. We will have to figure out how to survive, and hopefully thrive in a warmer, stormier world. The thing is, America will be able to do just that. We have the wealth, we have the entrepreneurs to adapt, to build levees and dikes along America's coastline, to develop new, drought-resistant crops, enhanced infrastructure able to withstand more flash flooding....we'll eventually figure it out and adjust.

Unfortunately (and here is where this becomes a moral issue) the nations likely to experience the most horrific symptoms of warming are also the poorest. There will be mass migrations on a scale that have never been seen before - endless searches for clean water and reliable food supplies that may spark riots, civil wars, regional conflict.

The rest of this (thoroughly depressing, but dead-on) article is right here.

Disaster insurance losses close to $11 billion in first half of '09

By Geir Moulson, Associated Press

BERLIN — Natural disasters and severe weather caused insurers above-average losses of $11 billion in the first half of this year, with a winter storm in southwestern Europe and tornadoes in the U.S. incurring heavy costs, a leading reinsurer said Monday.

Munich Re AG said the costs between January and June were "somewhat above the average for the same period in the past 10 years" of about $10 billion.

Total economic losses, including losses not covered by insurance, were $25 billion, far below the average of $42 billion, Munich Re said. The number of people killed in natural disasters was 3,000 — compared with a 10-year average for the January-June period of 24,000.

However, many of this year's disasters so far hit relatively well-insured areas.

The most expensive single event was a winter storm which hit northeastern Spain and southwestern France in late January and caused insured losses of $2.3 billion, Munich Re said. Total economic losses were $3.8 billion.

Click here for the complete article in USA Today.

Off the chart drought in Texas, tornadoes in New York

MSNBC has an alarming report about the extreme weather conditions happening across the country. In Texas, half the corn crop is dried up, lakes have disappeared, cattle ranchers are selling cows early because there is no grass to graze on, and 77 counties are designated as having exceptional or extreme drought conditions. Historians say this drought is virtually unprecedented, and there is no relief in sight.

Click here to watch video of the historic drought gripping the southern third of Texas. Nothing short of a couple of hurricanes or tropical storms will provide relief anytime soon.

Scientists expect wildfires to increase as climate warms in coming decades.

This graph shows the percentage increase in area burned by wildfires, from the present-day to the 2050s, as calculated by the model of Spracklen et al. [2009] for the May-October fire season. The model follows a scenario of moderately increasing emissions of greenhouse gas emissions and leads to average global warming of 1.6 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050. Warmer temperatures can dry out underbrush, leading to more serious conflagrations in the future climate. (Credit: Loretta Mickley, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences)

ScienceDaily (July 29, 2009) — As the climate warms in the coming decades, atmospheric scientists at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and their colleagues expect that the frequency of wildfires will increase in many regions. The spike in the number of fires could also adversely affect air quality due to the greater presence of smoke.

The study, led by SEAS Senior Research Fellow Jennifer Logan, was published in the June 18th issue of Journal of Geophysical Research. In their pioneering work, Logan and her collaborators investigated the consequences of climate change on future forest fires and on air quality in the western United States. Previous studies have probed the links between climate change and fire severity in the West and elsewhere. The Harvard study represents the first attempt to quantify the impact of future wildfires on the air we breathe.

The complete article at ScienceDaily.com is here.

Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming the previous administration tried to hide

Satellite images of polar ice sheets taken in July 2006 and July 2007 showing the retreating ice during the summer. Photograph: Public Domain.

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice - a record loss - were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.

The complete article in the U.K Guardian is here.

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.