global warming

The Koch brothers have spent far more than even ExxonMobil to spread doubt and misinformation about the 97% scientific consensus on climate change in recent years — over $67 million on climate denial, in fact. Out of 13,950 peer-reviewed scientific journals, only 24 reject global warming. But the Kochs and the extensive, well-funded network of front groups and media echo chambers would prefer that we ignore our responsibility to stay well below 2 degress Celsius of warming so that the Koch brothers and their friends can continue to profit from pollution-based enterprises. 

The folks at Brave New Films compiled this great 90-second video of some of the worst Koch-funded lies about global warming for your viewing displeasure. Watch “The Worst Koch-Funded Lies About Climate Change”: 

Climate deniers have been left red-faced as the world basks in some of the hottest temperatures in living memory, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicting 2014 could break all records.

Lord Lawson, who resigned as chancellor in the 1980s after overheating the British economy, has led the siren chorus, claiming that a recent plateau in global earth surface temperatures is proof that the threat of global warming has been wildly exaggerated. 

The deniers have either ignored or attacked the latest research, which shows that the heat created by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been absorbed into the oceans and that surface temperatures are likely to begin rising again.

Fossil fuel industries spent an estimated $213 million lobbying U.S. and European Union decision makers last year, according to a new report published by Oxfam International on Friday.

In the U.S. alone, the estimated 2013 bill for lobbying activities by fossil fuel interests amounted to $160 million, said the report called Food, Fossil Fuels and Filthy Finance.

In addition, the 40-page report said, the global fossil fuel sector receives approximately $1.9 trillion in subsidies each year.

“In the absence of robust climate legislation, finance continues to flow unabated into the fossil fuel industry,” the report said. “At the current rate of capital expenditure, the next decade will see over $6 trillion allocated to developing the fossil fuel industry.”

The world produces enough food to feed everyone, the report said, but every day more than 800 million people go to bed hungry.

“This is a scandal – and climate change is set to make things even worse,” the report added. “Fossil fuels are the single biggest driver of climate change; if the world is to avoid exceeding dangerous global warming of 2°C, up to 80 per cent of known fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground.”

Southern Hemisphere ocean temperatures have been rising much more quickly than previously thought, so much so that global ocean warming may have been underestimated by as much as 24 - 55%, according to a new study.

Published by the journal Nature Climate Change and carried out by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the study sought to determine just how much we've underestimated long-term upper-ocean warming given the scarcity of data collected on Southern Hemisphere ocean temperature increases.

“It's likely that due to the poor observational coverage, we just haven't been able to say definitively what the long-term rate of Southern Hemisphere ocean warming has been,” said the study's lead author, Dr. Paul Durack.

Using satellite data, which offers accurate assessments of sea-leavel rise, predictions based on published findings in Northern Hemisphere oceans, and “a large suite of climate models,” Durack and the other researchers discovered that not only has there been perhaps twice as much ocean warming as scientists had thought, but that the upper layers of the world's oceans—the top 700 meters, or just under 2,300 feet—have been impacted the most by climate change.

“We continue to be stunned at how rapidly the ocean is warming,” Sarah Gille, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography professor who was not involved in the study, told Climate Central.